The Fredösphere

An alarm went off in my head when I read the following story by my two kids. The Maharincess (now 8) started it off, then gave her brother (Der Drübermensch, 10) permission to add something of his own. Here's the first few sentences of the story. Figuring out where the girl leaves off and the boy picks up is left as an exercise for the reader:

Once there was a princess in a castle. Her name was Lexi. She was 15. Her favorite toy was Pollys. Lexi's best friend was Snowy, her cat. she wished she had a friend, a real friend. She was never happy aways sad.

One day Lexi fond a friend, her name was Nancy she was so nice Lexi asked if Nancy could have a sleepover at there castle. Her mother said "yes."

When Nancy came in she gasped and said "you live in a castle!"

"Yes." said Lexi. "I'm a princess."

They had a great tea party with apple tea. In bed they told secrets. The next morning Nancy had to leave.

Lexi played with her cat and Pollys for the rest of the day.

The next day Nancy and Lexi saw this really cute boy. His name was Jacob. Then Lexi ran home to rite a letter to him. It said, "dear Jacob, I just fell in love with you. I'm a princess. I will ride my bike on Saturday you will to. Love Lexi."

So, on Saturday, Jacob told Lexi a secret. He was a member of Team Dogatron, and was on a special mission. He needed to find the Lost Sapphire that was under the ocean before the evil Team Catomatic found it. He asked her to come with her. Then Snowy started talking, which was a surprise since Snowy had never talked before. He said that he used to be a member of Team Catomatic, but when he heard that they were evil, he secretly quit, and Team Catomatic had been looking for him.

The alarm in my head was the feeling I had seen this somewhere before. In a moment, I remembered: it was a materpiece called The Writing Assignment, ostensibly the work of two students in a college writing class, working tag-team style, so that the woman writes the odd-numbered paragraphs and the man writes the even-numbered ones. It begins like this:

At first, Laurie couldn't decide which kind of tea she wanted. The camomile, which used to be her favorite for lazy evenings at home, now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times, that he liked camomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep her mind off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she thought about him too much her asthma started acting up again. So camomile was out of the question.

Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about than the neuroses of an air-headed asthmatic bimbo named Laurie with whom he had spent one sweaty night over a year ago. "A.S. Harris to Geostation 17," he said into his transgalactic communicator. "Polar orbit established. No sign of resistance so far..." But before he could sign off a bluish particle beam flashed out of nowhere and blasted a hole through his ship's cargo bay. The jolt from the direct hit sent him flying out of his seat and across the cockpit.

. . .and after that, it only gets better and better. Go thither and read it now!

Labels: Creativity, Fiction, fun

Mahler's 6th Symphony caught my attention a while back when Alex Ross mentioned the big box constructed especially for the Redwood Symphony, to be used in the symphony's final movement.  Something in Alex's description moved me, especially when he wrote "to produce the famous hammer blows in Mahler's Sixth, the orchestra deployed a large wooden box that matched Mahler's original specifications."

Oooh, that got the latent speculative fiction author in me thinking.  The resulting story is still gestating and will continue to do so for a while, as fiction writing is my third-ranked hobby (after composing and bread baking) but I may finish the thing eventually.  Meanwhile I am loathe to give away all the details, but I'll mention that the story will feature a black hole, a skeleton orchestra sawing away on their violins with femurs--or something--and will definitively explain why Mahler was never comfortable with that last thud at the end of the fourth movement.

The thud whereof I speak is one of three (later revised to two) thuds Mahler specified in his score.  He did not, however, specify the means, asking only that the sound be loud but dull, and non-metallic, "like the stroke of an ax."  They were meant to be three blows that fate delivers on the heroic protagonist of the symphony.  Alma Mahler famously described these blows as prophetically depicting Gustav's own coming disasters:  the death of his daughter; his forced resignation from the Vienna opera; and the diagnosis of his (eventually fatal) heart condition.  (Keep in mind that, for whatever reason, almost anything Alma has said about Gustav and his music is generally treated as dubious.  And one critic has pointed out her oversight in mentioning another hammer blow of fate: her own infidelity.) Various orchestras have devised ingenious devices--usually big wooden boxes or giant bass drums--of varying thuddiness in an attempt to carry out the composer's wishes.  Mahler himself was doomed to frustration with his thudders, never finding a satisfying instrument.

For more information on Mahler's 6th and its tripartite thuddiness, do listen to Benjamin Zander's superb analysis of the four movements, and his decision to restore the 3rd thud in the recording he made with the Boston Phil.  (The mp3s are available at the link; I'm told the files of the symphony itself are low-res, but those of the discussion disc are crystal clear, and feature the most awesome, phattest thuds imaginable.)  Meanwhile, Ionarts has a good comparison of the various recordings of No. 6.  I've enjoyed Iván Fischer's Budapest recording, even though he chooses Mahler's second (and final, apparently) thoughts on both the thud numbering (only two) and the ordering of the middle movements (Andante, then Scherzo).  I lean heavily toward Mahler's original concept, although I'm hardly ready to call myself an expert on the work.  (I can say I also bought Lenny Bernstein's reading as a bargain from Amazon, but the recording seems veiled; perhaps a failing of the original engineers, or a mistake in conversion to a compressed file format.)

Finally, let me leave you with a quote from David Hurwitz, writing in The Mahler Symphonies: An Owner's Manual: "There has been more nonsense written about this symphony [no. 6] than any other work by Mahler."  As I sketch the outline of my story, to be titled Mahler's Box, I can't tell you how much I am looking forward to this opportunity to contribute yet more nonsense to the pile.

Labels: Composer, Fiction, Spooky

Those of you who devote your lives to memorizing the content of this blog will remember I am a fan of the book The Seven Basic Plots.  Author Christopher Booker drew much information from the anthropologist Joseph Campbell, one of the world's top authorities on myths and a man who famously influenced George Lucas' development of the Star Wars story line.

Long have I intended to watch Joseph Campbell's PBS specials, hoping an answer to the following questions would I find:

What is the purpose of myth-making in a culture?  What is its job?
What lessons can modern fiction writers learn from the ancient myths?

Finally, I've done it.  My local library has several Campbell videos to choose from.  I began with Mythos.  It's a 3-disc series but my library owns only numbers 1 and 3.  The first disc examined the psychological foundation of myth.  Campbell is an engaging speaker, with deep knowledge and a rare knack for teaching.  I found this part of the series very stimulating, even though much of it I didn't buy, as it relied heavily on Jungian and Freudian concepts which have lost much of their scientific cachet.  (Thad, my friend the psychology professor, tells me that the use of drugs in psychiatry has not so much refuted those two giants as rendered them irrelevant.)  The third disc was less interesting to me as it simply described certain myths without the  kind of analysis I was hoping for.  Here, Campbell's bias became more obvious, which is:  all traditions are equal and equally glorious, except the European/Christian tradition which is uniquely bad.  At the point Campbell mentioned "Jesus Christ" and "the speed of light" in the same sentence (by way of refuting the Ascension as a historical fact), thereby dropping a notch in my estimation.  That's one of my rules:  never fully respect anyone who uses the words "Jesus Christ" and "the speed of light" in the same sentence.

Were my questions answered?  No, not completely.

I moved on to another, more famous PBS video:  Bill Moyers' interview of Campbell at George Lucas' Skywalker Ranch, titled Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth.  This was even less interesting.  It quickly devolved into Hindu apologetics.  That's fine if that's what you want, but maybe they could have given the video a more honest title, like maybe Joseph Campbell and the Power of Hinduism and Buddhism Which Are Religions Far Superior to Christianity With All It's Annoying Dogmas and Neurotic Fixation On Sin.

Were my questions answered?  No, not at all.

My search for enlightenment continues.  I'll give one of Campbell's books a try.  I think I'll start with The Hero With a Thousand Faces, which I believe was the starting point for George Lucas.  In the meantime, I'll have to rely on this brief summary of "the hero's journey," complete with disco cheezeball Star Wars soundtrack:



So now I'm thinking about writing a story about some warrior dude who rips the arm off a monster.  A monster who wears black and breathes noisily, and uses an ill-defined, magical "force."  And whose name is Grendel.  Or Darth Grendel.  Or. . .well, obviously this is just a work in progress.

Labels: Culture, Fiction, Religion

Because it came out when I was on vacation, I missed a chance to brag about my first published story, a bit of micro-mini fiction on a Twitter magazine called Thaumatrope. Sadly, my first professional sale indulges in vulgar humor, but one must take what one can get.

Labels: Fiction, sci-fi

Today I address you, gentle reader, in my role as an aspiring but, for now, frustrated science fiction writer.  First, I direct you to this wonderful bit from Nielsen Hayden, a slush pile reader.  You'd think such an avenging angel would derive sufficient spiteful satisfaction from writing all those rejection letters, but no:  upon discovering a website exists for disgruntled and rejected authors, the angel turns demonic:

What I find weirdest about their take on rejection is that it's all completely personal. I don't just mean the rejection itself, which they're bound to take personally, being writers and all. They take things personally which have nothing whatsoever to do with them [. . .]

and then he tears the authors to shreds.  For example, to the person who was insulted because the rejection came typed on a half-sheet of paper:

Right. I can just see the staff at Prominent Science Fiction Magazine doing the slush, with all their different-size rejection notes stacked up in a little row in front of them. If your story really sucks, you get a rejection note that's mimeographed on a sheet of paper the size of a large postage stamp. If you've got strong writing but defective storytelling skills, you get a half sheet. Acceptances come on foolscap. And so on.

Great stuff.  Read and savor the whole thing.  Thanks to the ever-fascinating John C. Wright for the link.  John has his own list of authorial boo-boos, and his commenters (why can't I seem to attract dozens of clever, literate commenters?  No offense, Steve) riff at length on his "empirical storm troopers."  Not to be missed.

By the way, since I know you're dying to ask me, I have sufficient experience as a writer to have attained Nielson Hayden's level 9 (Nobody but the author is ever going to care about this dull, flaccid, underperforming book) which is something I'm pretty proud of.  Sadly, the final level (Buy the book) is level 14.  Five more to go, which doesn't sound like a lot until you realize each level is 20 times harder to attain than its predecessor.

Other fun links:  a 13-year-old boy tries out a music-playing gadget called a Walkman and finds it inadequate.  Don finds an animation to accompany the Hoedown from Rodeo.  And finally, Jalopnik has fun with a rendering of a gorgeous but hopeless Bugatti concept car:

[. . .] French industrial designer Bruno Delussu's rendering of a modern Bugatti Type 57 is so far removed from reality that the mind is free to conceive of anything. Say, a France removed by tractor beams from the way of an imminent Nazi invasion. Then allowed to grow in isolation for decades, acquiring high technology on the border of magic, to come up with this thing. A modern take on the Bugatti Type 57 Atlantic, powered probably by ion cannons instead of the original's clockwork straight-eight.

Not to mention that this princess has a chassis clearance so minimal, she would crash if she hit a rock the size of a pea.

Labels: Design, Fiction, Futurism, sci-fi, VideoClip

Neal Stephenson's Anathem sits at the intersection of science fiction and choral music, so naturally I'm going to blog it repeatedly.  However, there's more going on with this book (I'm about 70% of the way through its 900 pages, btw) that needs to be talked about.

Good or bad, lovable or hateful, this book is very unusual.  (If it were just an ordinary novel, not SF, I'd have to call it extremely unusual.)  Anathem has the chance to become a movement book.  Like Stranger in a Strange Land and a very few other novels I could mention if I took a while to remember them, Anathem presents a way of life that is very seductive and somewhat achievable.  (Much more achievable than SIASL, where you need to learn how to communicate with the dead and manipulate matter with your thoughts if you really want to get with the program.)

It will take a lot of stars getting into alignment for any significant Anathem monastic communities to get organized.  I'm not saying I think it will happen; only that Anathem is that rare book where such a movement could be even possible.  Plus, it's not like SIASL made much of a mark on our culture, although it did at least introduce one word into common use (common among geeks, that is).  And that's nothing to sneeze at.

Stephenson's goal (if it was a conscious goal) to write a movement book will be helped along a bit because it was inspired by the work of an organization already in place:  the Long Now Foundation.  Stephenson is on video reading from the book and answering questions at a Long Now event.  Cantors in funky robes are thrown in for fun.  The music they sing is inspired by mathematics.  Some of it doesn't really work for me on a musical level, frankly, but it's worth something as a curiosity and a kind of proof-of-concept.  Give them time.  I may even try my hand at it too.  After I finish the 3 or 4 other projects clogging my queue.

Labels: Choral, Culture, Fiction, sci-fi

Look carefully at this post at John Scalzi's blog.  Look at the first photo.  In particular, look at the painting of the strawberry on the far wall in the picture.  Note the lower-left corner of that painting.  Notice the gray head that is almost, but not quite, obscuring that corner.

That head just happens to be the one attached to my body.  Yes, I was in attendance at the author event at the Ann Arbor District Library last Sunday.  John was joined by fellow Ohiöspheric SF authors Tobias Buckell and Paul Melko.

The one boooooing! moment occurred when a gentleman from the audience questioned the value of publishing on the internet, compared to the "relatively permanent" nature of print.  The panel responded with more grace and patience than I probably would have, but the content of their answers shot down his premise.  Scalzi noted that "the disappearance of the internet implies apocalypse."  And then he noted that apocalypse would be very bad.  For people, for books, for everyone.  Then he described the many people busy archiving the whole internet.  The Noösphere Is Eternal!  (My words, not his.  But you knew that.)

Yes, Toby and Paul are funny and smart, but John modestly fails to mention he outdid even those two in clever, cogent, articulate comments on the state of SF publishing today.  In sum, the event was marred only by its brevity.  John, if you read this:  I was the one in the question line who stuck out his tongue impatiently when you called a halt to the Q&A session.  I apologize for my bad manners.  Please come back to Ann Arbor anytime.

Labels: Fiction, sci-fi

Good news.  When I last linked to Outsider, a free webcomic by Jim Francis (a.k.a. Arioch), the series was stalled at page 50, with much more of the plot yet to be written and drawn.  Regular checking-in on my part over the intervening months led me to fear this project was permanently comatose.

Today I have discovered that, somewhere along the line, four more pages have been drawn.  The work resumes!  Sadly, one can read the new material in a matter of seconds, a pathetic amount of time compared to what was needed to create it...and yet, we have progress.

To recap the plot:  a human male finds himself rescued/captured by a star cruiser staffed by aliens who are 95% humanoid and 100% female.  Form-fitting uniforms!  Blue skin!  Pointy ears!  Pouty lips!  You get your guilty, and you get your pleasure, all in one convenient package.  Don't miss it.

Labels: Comix, Fiction, sci-fi

I've said it before, and I become more convinced of its correctness by the day:  some of the most entertaining literature of any genre is found among the Advice to the Young Writer.  Most choice among this type is the Fiction Magazine Submission Guidelines.  Such guidelines are de facto distillations of all the entertainment value (which is to say, unintended entertainment value) of the bottom 90% of the slush pile.  These editors do the miserable work of reading the drek; we reap the rewards.

Today, I direct your attention to Clarkesworld Magazine, an online outlet for the big three--fantasy, science fiction and horror.  These are among the types of stories the editors list as "hard-sells" (as they can't quite bring themselves to state unequivocally that they will never print one of these):

stories in which a milquetoast civilian government is depicted as the sole obstacle to either catching some depraved criminal or to an uncomplicated military victory

talking cats

 talking swords

stories that depend on some vestigial belief in Judeo-Christian mythology in order to be frightening (i.e., Cain and Abel are vampires, the End Times are a' comin', Communion wine turns to Christ's literal blood and it's HIV positive [yeeee-ikes! -ed.], Satan's gonna getcha, etc.)

stories about young kids playing in some field and discovering ANYTHING. (a body, an alien craft, Excalibur, ANYTHING).

stories about the stuff we all read in Scientific American three months ago

stories where the Republicans, or Democrats, or Libertarians, or the Spartacist League, etc. take over the world and either save or ruin it

your AD&D game

"funny" stories that depend on, or even include, puns

sexy vampires, wanton werewolves, or lusty pirates

stories that take place within an artsy-fartsy bohemia as written by an author who has clearly never experienced one

The guidelines are not restricted to Thou Shalt Not invectives; here's what thou shalt include in the cover letter that accompanies your submission:

[I]f you send us a lusty pirate story and happen to BE a lusty pirate, mention that.

Dang, I could read this stuff all day.  Editors are geniuses!

Labels: Fiction

It's amazing how the existence of something like Lulu Titlescorer--its mere existence--can expand one's creative boundaries.  After playing with this thing for just five minutes, I suddenly knew (knew!) that a book with the title The Truth of Lies would be a hit.  Lulu agrees, giving it a 69.0% chance of becoming a bestseller. 

Lulu loves titles with abstract nouns and figurative meanings.  She also likes the "The __ of __" template.  I think she would have preferred my title have a proper noun in it too, but sorry Lulu, you are a harsh mistress and I cannot give you everything.  (But I notice The Moon is a Harsh Mistress has a mere 26.3% chance of being a bestseller.  Back to the drawing board, Robert A. Heinlein!)

Now, to the obvious question:  did I find The Truth of Lies first?  Not...exactly.

Labels: Fiction

I do hope you are catching the YouTube sneak peeks of the Harlan Ellison documentary, Dreams with Sharp Teeth.  Start here (bad language alert), and also don't miss Mr. Ellison's unambiguous (and salty) opinion on the new all-content-is-free era we seem to be living in.  Don't overlook the irony, as you watch it, that you downloaded it for free.

Labels: Fiction, VideoClip

Eight months ago, the wifeösphere was convalescing after a pair of hammer blows in the form of a brain tumor and bacterial meningitis.  Reading was the only thing she could do without discomfort.  I was tasked with finding books she would like.  Naturally, I turned to Literature Map and entered a name, probably Madeline l'Engle.  Up popped Dorothy Sayers.  I went to the library and swept the shelves clean of her.

Later, wanting to join the Sayers club the quick and dirty way, I borrowed DVDs of BBC adaptations of Sayers' detective stories.  Sayers' answer to Sherlock Holmes is Lord Peter Wimsey.  He's the monocle-wearing son, but not heir, of a Duke; he's rich and sophisticated, and thus enjoys all the advantages and few of the obligations (beyond military service) of nobility.  He's also always the smartest (in every sense) person in the room, yet somehow not too arrogant.  He's Sherlock Holmes without the opium addiction or the misogyny; in short, he's perfect.

He's also perfectly portrayed by actor Ian Carmichael, who makes it impossible to imagine Lord Peter with any other face or voice.

I'll focus on The Nine Tailors, which the wifeösphere and I watched last week.  The title refers to the practice of ringing nine "tailor" or "teller" strokes of one church bell to announce the death of a parishioner.  Much of the mystery (involving some stolen and never recovered emeralds) revolves around the belfry of a certain country church, which boasts eight great bells. The rector fits the stereotype:  he's a scrawny dork infatuated by his ambition to ring an especially complicated change, all permutations of which require nine hours to complete.  Naturally the omnicompetent Lord Peter is an experienced ringer, so he participates in the ringing.

Ringing a change of any complexity requires certain manual skill:  one initiates the pull of the rope a second or two in advance of the moment the bell must ring, so the timing is tricky.  In addition, one must count carefully and keep track of the permutations, maintaining one's concentration over a long time.  This especially is what makes a change such an impressive feat, especially when one considers what an unappreciated feat it is.  (Surely only the ringers themselves ever keep count, or notice if a mistake is made.) 

Bell ringing is one of the purest examples of the matchstick cathedral mentality, especially when one considers the cost of the bells.  Like any geek pursuit, it intimidates with its arcane terminology:  "Kent Treble Bob Major," "cross and stretch," "calling up" and "calling down," etc.  Of course, in the age before electronic communication, church bells served an important function, as is shown in the final scene of The Nine Tailors where ringing of the bells warn townspeople to seek high ground before an impending flood.  They also play an important role in the denouement of the story; I wish I could give away the surprise, which is exquisitely calibrated by Sayers to illicit horror and amusement all at the same time.

This story reminds us that the hyper-mathematical impulse behind minimalism and its Eastern influences is not unknown in the West.  Perhaps we forget because we never quite thought of ringing the changes as music.  Silly of us, what.

Labels: Fiction

What do you read for pleasure?  There's a genre of non-fiction that's new to me, that few people know about, but is a source of endless delights:  Advice To Would-Be Fiction Writers.  Typically, an ATW-BFW author is an editor haunted by years of reading bad manuscripts.  There's a build-up of exasperation that comes out in the advice.  To our everlasting benefit.  And entertainment. 

Consider E. E. Knight's restrained complaint about extravagant emotions:

Marcia! Marcia! Marcia! - characters who always have their emotions dialed up to "11." They laugh "uproariously" at stuff that's worth a mild snigger, fight to keep from screaming when they're third in line at the ATM, agonize over whether to have the vinegarette or ranch. Can we save the "I'll never be hungry again!" fist-shaking for something more important that a checkout line, please?

The name "Fred" turns up sometimes.  It's more proof that "Fred" is the ultimate old-shoe name, rendered odd by the extremity of its familiarity:

For example, "Jane's dog" means the dog belongs to Jane. "Fred's house" means the house belongs to Fred (or at least that he lives in it). Apostrophe-S is used to indicate possession.

Another Fred, this one doing that ol' who-whom thang that Lenin talked about:

The nameless character would be a harmless trifle were it not for the fact that this conceit requires the writer to perform all sorts of elaborate literary gymnastics to avoid revealing the name. I once read what was otherwise a fine piece of work wherein the lead character's name (and gender!) were hidden through the first 57 pages, including a fairly graphic scene of the character having sex. Neat trick, no? Neat trick, no. See: Show-Off Experiments.) This bit of legerdemain was accomplished by arranging that every person in the book just happened to talk to and about this person without using a name, and by the writer referring to the protagonist as The Ranger, the Leader, the captain of the band, etc., etc., etc.

It did not take long for it to turn stilted and awkward. Nor did the eventual revelation of the character's name and gender have any particular effect on the story, or have any dramatic purpose. The sex scene was especially baffling, as the writer, of necessity, could not reveal the sex of the character's partner in bed. While the writer made it clear what was being done, the writer, trapped by her own cleverness, was unable to make it clear who was doing what to whom. Oy. If your character has no name, or if you keep his or her name hidden with a series of allegedly clever artifices, you will spend 23 pages stuck with damn fool locutions such as "the boy in the shirt." Knock it off. If his name is Fred, say so.

Another great (manufactured) example from the same link is the weird opener.  This is considered bad:

"Sarah walked down the aisle, still unclear why she had agreed to marry a giraffe. The groom, waiting patiently at the altar, resplendent in black tie, spats and spots, swung his long neck around to watch her approach, all the time placidly chewing his cud."

The spats are a nice, and nicely decadent, detail.  Frankly, I would be proud to be the author of such an opener.

C.J. Cherryh has her own pet annoyances:

Mirrors … avoid mirrors, as a basic rule of your life. You get to use them once during your writing career. Save them for more experience. [...]  If you haven't read enough unpublished fiction to have met the infamous mirror scenes in which Our Hero admires his steely blue eyes and manly chin, you can scarcely imagine how bad they can get.

Limpid pools and farm ponds: I don't care what it is, if it reflects your hero and occasions a description of his manly dimple, it's a mirror.

I recently listened to the classic Princess of Mars in an audio book from Libravox.  The faux-horses and faux-dogs made me roll my eyes, because I knew about the dreaded Smeerp:

[W]atch out for what Damon Knight calls “calling a rabbit a smeerp.” Just because you call a long-eared short-tailed lagomorphic mammal with long hind legs a “smeerp” doesn’t make it alien. We all write sf in standard English, unless we are Anthony Burgess (who did made-up dialect well), or some other people who do it not so well. There’s no particular reason to translate words for time, distance, and food into gibberish. (I don’t know why time, distance, and food are so susceptible to this in science fiction, but they are.) If your characters are drinking coffee, have them drink coffee, not “klaa” or “jav.” Coffee’s been around for more than a millennium. It’s probably going to last.

And, from the previous link, here's one of my faves, which reminds me of the time a white woman described her black adopted daughter as "literally an oreo."

"His Head Literally Exploded!"

"Figuratively" means that you are speaking metaphorically or symbolically. "Literally" means that you are speaking with precision and realism, that you are saying what exactly happened. "Literally" is not a generic intensifier. If you are talking about someone's headache, "figuratively exploded" is the phrase you're looking for -- at least in comparison to "literally exploded."

Ouch.

Labels: Fiction