You’ve Got It, More Links For you Genre Folks! (Part Three)
And here is the last of them. Expect quite a lot more standard blogging from me for the next few months. I’m tired of putting links on here. It takes a long time. Enjoy! A huge assortment of worldbuilding links over at SpecFicWorld. Everything from websites to books. Universe Today has a great article about new research into that 1996 meteorite from Mars that shows that life may have started there during a cooling period of fluids, and another event from carbonate materials when the meteorite was chucked off of Mars to begin with. YouTube video of Isaac Asimov talking about the changes in SF after 1949. YouTube video of an H. P. Lovecraft newsreel. YouTube video of an interview with Frank Herbert on TV. YouTube video of a rare Philip K. Dick interview. Writing languages and systems of the world. Lots of stuff here that might help some of you in creating your own languages. Uncle Zip’s Window talks about worldbuilding. Yes, I have a lot of these links. They just pop up everywhere. Ten big myths about copyright revealed. Yup, you need this at some point I think. Apparently they are shutting down FUSE, a satellite used to search for planets and other such goodies out in space. It has outlived its three-year expected use and managed a total of eight. The thing that irritates me about this is that it’s just going to be shut down and in in several decades its orbit will decay and it’ll burn up in the atmosphere. Why can’t we make use of it for other purposes though? Right now it’s being used by a university. So, couldn’t we hand it off to another university, or to a collection of universities that would be willing to pay the upkeep? Just a waste of money to me. The Scots apparently have developed a robotic arm that is stronger than the real thing. It sounds cool, but I wonder if we’re one day going to have little contests where humans try to beat robots in strength contests…sort of like those guys who race monkeys to the tops of trees. And I’ll leave you with this amazing image from NASA. Beautiful.
You’ve Got It, More Links For you Genre Folks! (Part Two)
I’m almost through all of my links. One more post after this. There’s just a lot of interesting stuff in here. I’m saving a few items for deeper discussion. Still, here is part two of the links! The Anthology Builder. Everyone else has talked about it, but here I am to bring it up again. Possibly one of the coolest ideas ever. Think about all the things you wish the record companies would let you do in your local Walmart with artist tracks and apply that to short stories. That’s what AB does. You can build your own anthology! Apparently, according to this article provided by Futurismic, sperm actually can affect the psychological behavior of a female. At least that’s so in fruit flies. I wonder if it does anything to female humans… Stargate is real! No, not really, but if you look at the image provided in this article at Futurismic you’ll start to wonder. Apparently some physics students are trying to accelerate two particles at high speeds, collide them, and create new particles that haven’t been seen before. It sounds like science fiction doesn’t it? I wonder if they’ll accidentally discover wormholes. Dusk Before Dawn talks about why Asimov’s three laws will be almost impossible to implement. I have to agree that at this point his laws would be beyond our capabilities. TimesOnline lists the 50 greatest British authors since 1945. George Orwell happens to be number two. Represent. (Courtesy of SF Signal) Rumor has it that Richard Matheson, the author of I Am Legend, has sold the rights to a sequel to the film adaptation with Will Smith. Needless to say it’s not hard to see why. The film has raked in over 220 million dollars, which puts it well above its budget. Hopefully the sequel will be good too. (Courtesy of SF Signal) What about strange machine animals? Look no further than Nantes in France. These bizarre machine creatures have sprung up there. Truly brilliant design I must say. Looks like that was a hell of a project to work for. (Courtesy of SF Signal) Curious what sf/f authors have popped up in the movies? Well, look no further than here. Well, maybe look further, as it does miss some things (namely the fact that Arthur Conan Doyle was in Shanghai Knights), but it’s really interesting nonetheless. (Courtesy of SF Signal) Not sure if I mentioned this before, but here is a brilliant website that helps clear up all that confusing mess about the ten dimensions. Meaning, it’s sort of like complex science for us folks who don’t really want to deal with long words and such. A dictionary of symbolism, for those of you interested in that sort of stuff. A medieval sword resource, with lots of pictures and information about swords from those crazy days. This is probably the coolest thing done with dinosaurs that I have ever seen. Imagine seeing dinosaurs moving as if they were real, but not CG or any of that. Massive puppets with realistic movements! Well, bulletproof vests didn’t give us Robocop, but research by some nanotech folks just might. This article talks about how scientists may have figured out how to create a nano-vest that can stop bullets and repel their force! By the way, in a few years we won’t have to argue about how we get stem cells. So, to all those of you who are complaining about our current methods, here is the wave of the future. They’ve figured out how to use human skin cells to get just about any cell type they want. With growing concern with China’s space program, which has just demonstrated that they have the capability to knock satellites out of the sky, the U.S. is working on a program of their own to take care of those threats that might exist out there now or in the future. It’s dubbed the ‘Falcon’. It’s a super-sonic craft that can deliver a hell of a payload to any location on the planet in minutes. No doubt it’s expensive. Beam Me Up talks about ten books that should be movies. I would argue that Asimov’s Foundation would be near impossible to make into a good movie, but I can see a lot of the others working out. On the other side is AV Club’s list of 20 good books that were turned into bad movies. I don’t agree on Bicentennial Man, because I enjoyed the movie. I never read the book though. It’s an interesting list nonetheless. I don’t agree with their assessment of Stardust either. Here is a huge list of places you can get free books. Some of them are book-swap places and others are e-book sites. I assume all are legit. SFWA has a great checklist for critiquing science fiction. Give it a read and keep it saved somewhere. A chronological bibliography of science fiction history, criticism, and theory. I love it! That’s my Christmas wishlist for the rest of my life by the way. The great thing about Google is that you can find all sorts of amazing free stuff on there. Like this book about Bernard Shaw on Google Books. 30+ tools for the amateur writer. The name explains it all. The grand list of overused science fiction cliches. I’m sure there is some version of this out there for fantasy too. Top 15 best movie sequels at The List Universe. There are a lot of science fiction and fantasy nods in there. Meat, the hilarious science fiction play by Terry Bisson! I love it. I think I linked to a theatrical production of it at one point. It’s brilliant! Remoting Future is a brilliant website that uses a bunch of web clocks counting down the various futures of science fiction worlds (Dune and Blade Runner) and even real world ‘futures’ (Y2K). Some of the clocks have passed, obviously, and are simply counting the other direction now, but it’s really interesting to see what futures just
You’ve Got It, More Links For you Genre Folks! (Part One)
This is a huge bunch of links, so you’re in for a bit of a treat, I think. I’m unloading all the links I’ve acquired in the last few weeks both on my laptop and my desktop. I’m going to split it up between several posts. Here goes: Red Meat, an interesting little web comic, has a hilarious strip about God, L. Ron Hubbard, and Philip K. Dick. Read it, it’ll tickle your fancy. (Courtesy of SF Signal) There’s been talk going around of a convention focusing on young adult science fiction and fantasy. You can check it out here. My thoughts? I’m so in. I would love to be a part of this. Planetocopia. What is it? A truly bizarre project that tries to recreate Earth’s that might have existed visually. What would the Earth look like if the poles were tilted? There are various other planets no there too, some real and some science fiction. Truly interesting project. Need a list of old European terms for nobility and titles? Well, here you go. Or, perhaps you’re wanting some real historical perspectives on actual mad men and women that once lived and terrorized people? Here’s a link to an e-book that talks about medieval life and the 100 years war. Also, a pictorial glossary of armor terms (primarily medieval). Dave’s Mythological Creatures and Places is a nice website that gives you quite a bit of information on those subjects. Worldbuilding, of course, is a fantasy writer’s best friend. Most of you have seen this already, but here are Patricia C. Wrede’s worldbuilding questions. Also, Rutgers has an awesome collection of stuff to help develop the background of your fictional world. And, Seventh Sanctum has some articles too. Project Gutenberg. Need free stuff to read? Here’s the place to go. Lots of old books that are now public domain! The Top 50 Dystopian Movies of All Time. (Courtesy of SF Signal) The Washington Post lists some great scifi for people that don’t like scifi. I think the list is a little antiquated, but in some ways it makes sense. Seems that Anne McCaffery has sold the rights to The Dragonriders of Pern to Hollywood. Maybe we’ll have ourselves some movies! 20 things you didn’t know about aliens! Brilliant list by the way! (Courtesy of SF Signal I think) Every so often someone comes up with a really cool invention that makes something else look even cooler. And here it is. You know those cool sliding doors on Lamborghini’s? Well how about doors that actually fold into the car? No more worrying about parking too close and banging your door on the car next to you! Pullman is writing another book in the same world as the His Dark Materials books. That’s good news for his fans. The moon, apparently, is actually 30 million years younger and more Earth-like. Read about it here. Guess what? The One Ring to Rule Them All actually works. Okay, well not really, but scientists at the University of Maryland have figured out how to cloak very small particles. Sound cool? That’s because it is! This company is apparently working on making hydrogen fuel cells a commercial reality. I’m keeping on eye on them for sure. Anyone think it’s a good investment for the future? By the way, this device now allows me to see you in the shower. Not that I’d use it for that. Actually, it seems to work somewhat like radar, only using an irradiate beam like a portable x-ray machine. So, I probably wouldn’t see much more than bones. The Amish probably don’t know this, but they’ve been referenced a lot in science fiction. Find out where at this link! Want to make your own steampunk candle? Well, it’s not all that hard! Go here to find out how! A. R. Yngve talks about fads and fashions in science fiction. It’s funny, so read it! Justine Larbalestier talks about re-writing. Futurismic brings us the lovely news that oil has hit $100 a barrel, which is a record. Of course, this means that oil companies are lining their pockets with record profits and doing nothing to develop alternate fuel sources. Then again, why would they? They’re rich while the rest of us have to deal with oil prices that are a load of bull. The 100 Year Letter Project! Send an electronic letter to the children of the future! It’s really interesting. Look at things people are already sending. The Universal Digital Library with a million books! Lots of free reading in there. Need something funny? How about this dramatic prairie dog? I laughed my butt off. It’s not funny without the music, but with the music, it’s a riot. Or maybe you’d like to see Bush talking about his plans to fight off the zombies? For something beautiful, check out this video of Bjork’s song “All Is Full Of Love”. I know, it’s Bjork, but watch the video. Heck, turn off the music if you don’t like her and just watch. It’s really amazing what they did for this music video. I can’t remember where I got this, but the lolcat bible. The best way to describe this is if humans didn’t exist, and cats took over the world, what would the Bible look like? Here’s a list of ten cliches to avoid in science fiction. (Courtesy of SF Signal, I think) How much is your blog worth? Mine is apparently worth $25,968.84. Anyone want to buy it? I’m willing to sell for half that! This is ancient news, but Tobias S. Buckell released the cover for his new novel Sly Mongoose set in the same universe as Crystal Rain and Ragamuffin. Needless to say, I’m stoked to read the book! The List Universe has this top ten things you didn’t know the ancients had. Heated indoor swimming pools? Yeah, they had them first.
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!
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