Upcoming Things and Links
Well there are some important things coming up soon here, and I’ll have some fun links for everyone too.First, I have an interview from Dana Copithorne in the works. I sent her my questions not too long ago. Sorry for the delay, but I not only was stuck right in the middle of the fall quarter, but I also didn’t want to send a bunch of typical questions. I came up with some good ones I think.Second, I’ll have a review for The Longevity Thesis by Jennifer Rahn soon. I’m catching up on all my reading over the holiday.Third, I’m thinking of releasing the first chapter of The Lies of Venicia, in its relatively unedited form, for everyone to read. Is anyone interested? It won’t read like complete garbage, but there might be little tidbits in it that will get changed at some later date, depending where the story goes, but for the most part it will stay the same. Now to links: Grasping for the Wind has this awesome link to a Youtube video where a guy shoots books he, I assume, doesn’t like with various police guns (he’s a police officer). I’m not sure if he really hates these books, but it’s somewhat entertaining to see what happens to these various books when they are shot with police-grade weaponry. Futurismic brings you cats that glow in the dark (yes, seriously). I’ve seen this article elsewhere. They apparently genetically altered these cats so they glow under ultra-violet radiation. The full official article is here. Apparently sex has already taken place in space. Yes, that’s a serious statement. US and Russian astronauts basically got to go up to space and have sex for science. I’m sure the lines for that job were rather long. The results? The Missionary Position…doesn’t work. Yeah. Who knew? Dinosaurs have mummies too! Paleontologists discovered ‘mummified’ skin in Montana. This discovery adds a whole lot to the whole dinosaur discussion! Read the article and look at the two pictures! Magnaverse has a really cool info-article-post-thingy, whatever you want to call it, that talks about parallel worlds in science fiction and fantasy. Check it out! Elizabeth Bear has a list of 15 things you should know or be aware of when you’ve finally made it (whether that be published or whatever). You can read it at Subterranean Press here. Apparently we missed Voyage 1 when it crossed the little zone called the ‘termination shock’: There, the solar wind – made of charged particles from the Sun – suddenly falters as it feels pressure from gas in the interstellar medium lying outside the solar system. Well, scientists didn’t miss Voyager 2’s trip through this zone. Nope. We were paying attention this time (I’m going to rant on this later, trust me). And apparently since the barrier fluctuates–wobbling if you will–so we got a glimpse of Voyager 2 passing through this zone a bunch of times. To add, apparently what was expected to happen during this event was a little off, and scientists are a bit puzzled. Read the full article here. The Thinking Blog has a video of what could be the next, more efficient energy source produced by wind! Wind could be used to cause the vibration of a band that could then produce cheap, efficient energy, or at least somewhat efficient. The little model the man in the video made could run a radio, a clock, and even some small LED lights. Pretty cool huh? Solaris Books have announced that they are going to produce a steampunk anthology called Extraordinary Engines: Airships, automatons and aether! Extraordinary Engines is a brand new anthology of all-original stories from some of the genre’s foremost writers. Featuring an eclectic range of Steampunk-inspired stories by such luminaries as Daniel Abraham, Kage Baker, Stephen Baxter, Beth Bernobich, Eric Brown, Keith Brooke, Paul Di Filippo, Hal Duncan, Jeffrey Ford, Jay Lake, Margo Lanagan, James Lovegrove, Ian R. MacLeod, Michael Moorcock, James Morrow, Kim Newman, Robert Reed, Chris Roberson, Adam Roberts, Lucius Shepard. Brian Stableford, Jeff VanderMeer and Marly Youmans (Subject to change). All stories are original to this collection. Sounds cool doesn’t it? I’m excited about it! Artificial stem cells cure sickle cell in mice. That’s the title of the article at DailyTech. Scientists created healthy bone marrow cells by taking bad cells and snipping out all the sickle cell material and putting in healthy material. Then they take the bone marrow cells, throw it into the marrow of a mouse with sickle cell and let it go to work creating healthy red blood cells. That’s the short, rather uneducated version. Read the full article! How hard is it to find planets with plant-life? Well, in the near future it might not be so hard, assuming they exist. Futurismic has this article about new research in space research that postulates that spectral-analysis could help find planets with plant-life! So far the technology isn’t quite there yet, but some scientists have found out atmospheric contests of some gas giants around other stars. Here’s a clue: the atmospheric content is semi-related to something you put on foot to make it taste good. You can also read this article at UniverseToday and this related article. Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist has beautiful pictures of art prints for George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. Check them out here. New Scientist has this article about a five story tall structure that focuses moonlight into a single beam over a small area. It might have medical applications, but really this is a fascinating waste of money and time. I mean that in a good way. It’s cool, but really sort of crazy. Prologues are evil and this article at The Toasted Scimitar explains why. Well, the article really just talks about prologues in fantasy and how fantasy redefined the meaning of prologue. Did you know that sitting down helps make you gain weight? The enzymes that control fat burning apparently just shut off when you sit
Fantasy Creature Inspiration!
It’s hard to come up with valid articles that deals with fantasy. The reason being that there isn’t much in the realm of fantasy to really talk about that hasn’t already been discussed to death. I will certainly discuss things if they come up in a comment, but generally I think you can find the myriad of debates already out there with a simple Google search. But I’ve found something interesting that I think will be of use to you fantasy writers out there. It could also be good for an SF or even horror writer, but since I took some influence from a similar thing I would like to point you all to this Top 15 list of unusual deep sea creatures. I know I said no links, but this is an actual post, not just a collection of links for you to check out. The interesting thing about that list is that everything looks so alien, yet they’re really from this planet. You can imagine the bizarre, even freaky possibilities of a fantasy world if you take into account that things don’t have to be ordered, mammalian, or reptilian. Things can defy conventional logic. The Chimaera, for example, looks like something from a Men In Black movie, sort of like a baby alien with those big black eyes. The Fangtooth fish looks like some creepy Halloween mask. My favorite, though, is the Viperfish , although I imagine there are a variety of similar critters out there that have similar features, but for whatever reason aren’t mentioned. Some of you might actually remember this fish. Can you guess from where?…Well if you guessed from The World in the Satin Bag, then you were right. There is actually a scene where a similar fish showed up and attempted to eat the characters. This was right after James, Pea, and James had escaped from Arlin City just before Luthien destroyed the entire city with his army. They took an underground path that passed under the river and when they reached the lowest point they found themselves in a bottomless pit filled with water, which happened to be home to a giant fish-creature that looked remarkably like the Viperfish. I did this intentionally. I wanted something so creepy, but real at the same time that it would be terrifying. I don’t know if anyone was scared while reading that section, but I’m sure some were thinking “oh, that can’t exist” (then again, maybe not because WISB is a fantasy novel). But, it is a real creature. You can tell from the link. I just made it a thousand times its normal size. The great thing about nature is that it is a treasure tome of great ideas. You don’t have to invent every single thing in your fantasy world. Sometimes you can create something that is similar to something that exists on Earth, and it will work just fine. Even if you don’t want to do that, you can still look at nature and find all sorts of ideas. It’s all right here at your fingertips!
Inflatable Moon Habitat: Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight…
M*A*S*H meets the Moon…….Because micrometeors and other such fast moving space objects can’t puncture through that at all…I can see the headlines already: “Moon colonists die from rapid decompression” or “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” (that one’s a funny pun…) Is anyone else thinking that this is a seriously bad idea? Or am I alone in thinking that any long standing moon colony has to be built to last? (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this)
Don’t Write Speculative Fiction If…
…any of the following things are true. Science Fiction: You can’t handle the idea that your audience is smaller than fantasy and more specific. You think science fiction is retelling Star Wars or Star Trek ad naseum. You believe that FTL travel is logical and implies ‘hard’ science fiction. You think populating all alien planets with human-like, intelligent, spacefaring peoples, but giving them different cultures, is good creature building. You think that sound actually travels through the vacuum of space and so your characters can hear distant explosions through the hull of a ship. You think that info-dumping in science fiction is normal. Alternately, you believe that it’s okay to confuse the reader by using science that most people wouldn’t understand in such a way that the reader still doesn’t get it. You can’t take criticism of your science or of your story itself. You think it’s okay for your main character to be completely awesome and not have flaws. You believe that your family will be completely honest with you about your writing. Alternately, you think your non-writing, non-reading friends can actually give you worldly advice. You are under the impression that future technology will be perfectly beautiful and not be subject to Murphy’s Law. Fantasy: You think your fantasy story is 100% original right down to the very characters within the story. You can’t take criticism of your work, which will be a lot. You think that just because it is fantasy you can make up anything and expect it to be okay. You think that fantasy doesn’t have to be realistic. You think info-dumping fantasy is acceptable writing behavior. You think that your lively culture of little people is not going to be compared to Hobbits. You believe that your story is better than anything Tolkien could ever come up with. You believe Peter Jackson will turn your unpublished novel into a blockbuster movie. You’re under the impression that fantasy is not derivative by nature. You think your main character can be completely awesome and not have flaws. You believe that your family will be completely honest with you about your writing. Alternately, you think your non-writing, non-reading friends can actually give you worldly advice. You believe that your main character doesn’t have to deal with some sort of conflict and instead can go around being happy and not do anything important. What would you guys add?
Space Travel De-mystified
Well, here we are living in a world where we can barely get human beings to the moon and with NASA constantly canceling projects like network TV drops shows, the chances of sending people to Mars get worse and worse. But science fiction writers aren’t simply going to give up writing about faster-than-light spaceships because our current society seems to be in a bit of a rut–nothing truly monumental has happened in the last twenty years, at least nothing like the first moon landing.Space travel, however, is rather complicated, depending on the sort of story you intend to write. If you write hard SF you may find yourself in a bind. Einstein–that unrelentingly intelligent bastard–basically makes faster-than-light travel impossible (theory of relativity and all). Yet there are so many different types of fictional, and real, methods of traveling in space. What methods are realistic and what methods are fantasy? Fantasy Faster-than-light Standard & Lightspeed (i.e. at the speed of light)Your typical, commonly used, rarely explained method. Basically, it literally goes faster than light by its own power and within real space–not a wormhole, hyperspace, etc.. This is the type of drive you can’t really explain because it’s so unbelievable anyway it would be a waste of your time, and the time of your readers. You’d find yourself in a conundrum if you did. Einstein made this obsolete as a realistic approach–though it sort of was fantasy to begin with–by postulating that the closer you get to the speed of light, the more fuel you need to close the gap. The problem is that you eventually hit a point where no matter how much fuel you add, the fuel’s weight counteracts the push it would provide. You’d hit a point where you couldn’t ever put enough fuel in the ship to go any faster. It was a lot more complicated than that, because it’s Einstein, but you get the idea.Generally speaking, your standard form of FTL drive has a fuel source that is tangible and accessible and in some way or another works like rocket fuel–meaning it burns away or dissipates and doesn’t have any affect on the fabric of space. HyperdriveI’m referring to your typical instant-to-light-speed drives. Strangely, these are also drives that are never really explained, mostly because you don’t have to. Your audience simply has to assume that you can go from zero to light speed in less than sixty seconds and there isn’t anything out of the ordinary about that. Maybe you’d come up with a really inventive way to make this work, but most likely you’ll just resort to calling it an FTL drive or give it a fancy name and leave it at that. If the rest of your story is good it won’t really matter anyway. Jump DriveThis may have a different name. You could call it a teleport drive. The idea is that your ship simply disappears and reappears somewhere else. These are also called “discontinuous” because the traveler never traverses the actual real-space distance. You simply poof into existence somewhere else–like a genie. These could be in many different forms–jump to anywhere, jump to a ‘node’ in a specific location, jump only certain distances, jump in known space, etc. Either way, it’s all fantasy because, as far as we know, you can’t just disappear and appear somewhere else. The Middle Ground (meaning ones that are plausible, but without any real, consistent evidence to support it) Fold DriveThis is somewhat like a jump drive, as from the perspective of someone watching it would look like the ship simply disappears and reappears somewhere else. Fold drives revolve around the idea of being able to actually fold space so that two points are put side by side. Think of it this way: take a piece of paper and poke a hole on each end (longways), then fold that paper until those holes meet up and put your finger through it. That’s folding space. The concept is, well, probable, but not possible in our near future. The energy required would be considerable. However, since space is filled with events where things get screwed up from black holes and the like, it wouldn’t be all that surprising to realize that folding space isn’t all that hard…at least to the universe. “Trail” DriveThink of this as being like a railroad. A train has to have tracks to get from one point to another. The idea behind a “trail” drive, or railroad drive, is that the ship could achieve FTL in one of two ways: along a fix structure that allows the ship to do so, or along a trail of materials that the ship could use to achieve FTL.In the first case you have two problems. The first is figuring out how to use such a structure to allow a ship to break the light barrier, which, according to Einstein, is impossible. Perhaps if the structure manipulates real-space it my be possible. The second is that you would have to build this structure in the first place, which would take thousands upon thousands of years most likely. You need a lot of material and you need people to watch over the structure when it breaks.The second case is probably even more ridiculous. If you were to put a trail of matter that could be used to propel a ship to the speed of light you would have presented several problems while solving another. While you have figured out how to get a ship up to speed without the ship having to carry its fuel source with it, you also have created a big problem: you can’t do these travels all the time. You’d have to put the material there, which would take thousands of years, and you’d have to keep putting it there every time it is used. This would be a logistics nightmare. It would still be possible, but it is very unlikely that someone would waste the time to do this. Realistic Ion DriveThese are
Sacrificing Quality For Style in Spec. Lit.
To say that the idea of sacrificing quality for style applies only to speculative literature would be a severe misrepresentation of the truth. However, speculative literature has one problem that literary fiction seems to either be incapable of addressing or simply never plans to address in the first place: speculative literature must always entertain. This is a stigma particular present in fantasy where the concept of originality, in more ways than one, doesn’t exist. Tolkien created the mold for the genre and as such it becomes increasingly difficult for new writers to come up with considerably profound works of fantasy. World building is often compared to Tolkien, and in a lot of cases when that happens, those comparing typically say that non-Tolkien world building lacks depth–an absurd notion considering that even Tolkien was no divine creator of fantasy tropes; he simply pioneered them. Given this, fantasy must, as a rule, entertain to be considered of any value in our increasingly popularized culture. That’s the truth and that may very well lead to the notion that one does not need to attempt to be original, or at least fresh, and instead can simply write grandiose stories that hinder on the absurd. Speculative fiction as a whole, however, must entertain the masses. The reasons are numerous, but the primary and likely most important reason is that those who place critical acclaim on a novel as literature generally do not read speculative fiction and consider speculative fiction to be of ‘lesser quality’. This leaves speculative writers a very narrow viewpoint to work in, and while certainly that viewpoint encompasses a large portion of the market, there is perhaps some desire there to be recognized among those that have shunned the genre–a sense of acceptance. Taking into account that speculative fiction must always entertain we run into a persistent issue of quality vs. style. One might conclude that in literary fiction quality is in conjunction with style, and perhaps there is some validity to this in the literary theory camp. However, typically, style does not determine quality. One could write a novel that represents truly magnificent ideas and destroy the quality of those ideas by using a style that borders on the unintelligible. A novel, therefore, cannot be based solely on the style of the writing. It must, for its sake and the sake of the author, present itself in a manner that can be read. Readability could probably be broken up into the following categories: Popcorn Fiction ReadabilityThis is basically the simplest, most basic, most bare-bones you can possibly get in terms of writing. Most of the novels in this group are formulaic and so utterly simplistic that one really need not read too deep into what is going on. It’s pretty basic. Ironically, this is also the majority of what shows up on best seller kiosks in the grocery store and many other stores you frequent. General ReadabilityNot too simple and not too hard. The difference here from Profound is that the novels in this section actually do have a profound effect on literature and society without having to intentionally be profound in style. Profound ReadabilityLiterary fiction. That pretty much sums it up. If something is written in such a way that the structure itself leans on the complicated, it’s generally literary fiction. The style here is one that tends to ignore the typical conventions of writing–the ‘rules’ if you will–in order to make some grand statement. The problem? Most of us don’t read this stuff because it’s, mostly, b-o-r-i-n-g. For this reason, I never call ANY speculative literature ‘literary fiction’ because that would mean that 1984 by George Orwell is dull and boring. Now, almost all speculative fiction is intentionally readable. That sounds like a rather stupid statement, but when you think about the dying market of unreadable literary fiction, fiction that tries so desperately to be profound and interesting and is incapable of realizing that the average reader doesn’t read above an 8th grade level, it becomes obvious that speculative fiction is pretty much almost always readable. Here’s where style comes in, though. Now, when Isaac Asimov proposed that we are in an Age of Style in regards to Science Fiction, he wasn’t simply speaking about the actual style of writing–as far as grammar and structure are concerned. He was actually talking very much about the style of science and the style of the stories told. We are seeing a lot more in the genre dealing with quantum physics, string theory, and other advanced sciences that most people probably would have problems understanding even if it were common knowledge. The problem, then, is that science fiction is making efforts to use these sciences in the story, without making it clear what is going on. SF writers have to realize that we’re not all scientists. Certainly science is acceptable and obvious, but if the science seems to get in the way of the story, that is an example of sacrificing quality for style. It also is something we all should be avoiding. Regardless of how much science plays an important role in SF–and I can recognize this and actually enjoy the use of science to add validity to the literary form–when it is used stylistically or, as I like to say, ‘text-book style’, it detracts from the story, from the form, and from the quality of the book as a form of literature. To apply the same ideal to fantasy I’ll have to take something that has probably been done in SF too, but seems more prevalent in fantasy as the use of this particular thing is rather common in fantasy, or at least better presented or useful in that genre. Flashbacks and multiple POVs in the same paragraph section. Stylistically speaking, flashbacks actually can work wonderfully well, if utilized appropriately. But just like with science in SF, some authors use flashbacks poorly and draw the reader away from the story. Transitions are important. You can’t just go to a