Authors like reading. Go figure. So it’s not surprising that we sometimes bog down in the research stage of new writing projects. Happily, researchphilia is not the problem it once was. The Internet makes just-in-time research very practical. (But surfing is its own addiction. Sigh.)
But there is a related problem discussed wherever authors congregate: how much of our research, aka story background, to share with readers.
I recently attended Launch Pad, an astronomy program for writers. One of our most heated discussions was about sharing vs. withholding story research, and the related topic of how to present it. These topics come up regularly at writers’ panels at cons.
Ever wonder how people can believe Elvis and Hitler are still alive?
Sad fact is, we are bunglers when it comes to believing things we can’t immediately see. We are prone to over-simplify. We are prone to feel certain about dubious things. We are prone to cherry-pick what confirms our views, and to selectively overlook what challenges them. We are prone to understand complex phenomena in psychological terms.
The list goes on and on.
Science can be seen as a kind of compensatory mechanism, a family of principles and practices that allow us to overcome enough of our cognitive shortcomings to waddle toward an ever more comprehensive understanding of the world. Unlike ‘theory’ in the conspiracy or detective novel sense, scientific theory is the result of processes developed over centuries to correct for our biases. If the technological transformation of the world over the past few centuries provides us with a stunning demonstration of science’s theoretical power, then the thousands of years of muddling that precede that transformation provide an equally impressive demonstration of our theoretical incompetence absent science.
My novel, Give Up the Ghost, has a set-up that might feel familiar to fans of paranormal fiction. There’s a main character with supernatural ties. There’s a character of the opposite sex who enters her life and shakes it up. You know where this is going, right?
If you guessed that they end up in a heated romance, you would actually be wrong. But I wouldn’t blame you for assuming that. Before I even started writing the book, I knew a romance would be the expected outcome. It was very deliberate that I chose not to meet that expectation.
I had reasons, of course. Both of the characters were pretty messed up, and even though they’d come a long way by the end, I didn’t think either was ready for more than friendship. Just as importantly, though, I wanted to rebel against the idea that two people would need to be in love to have a meaningful connection and make a difference in each other’s lives.
I have never liked Lord of Light. If I’ve ever been in a conversation with you and you’ve mentioned how great it is and I’ve nodded and smiled, I apologise. The reason I’d have done that is because my dislike of the book is amorphous and hard to pin down, which makes it hard to defend when I know it’s a much loved classic. There’s also the thing when I haven’t read it for a while and I start believing that it must be the book everybody else seems to find, rather than the one I remember.
The story of Lord of Light is that a group of high tech people with ineluctable European-origin names like Sam, Jan Olvegg, Candi and Madeleine colonized a planet on which they are now pretending to be the Hindu pantheon.
[Read more about about the book and why I don’t like it; no spoilers]
The following is the first chapter in R. Scott Bakker's book Neuropath, out now from Tor Books. For the cover copy:
Tom's life is not what it once was. His marriage to the beautiful Nora is on the rocks and he now sees his two young children only on her say-so. His best friend Neil has moved to California to teach neurology. He has one success - a book on human psychology. Tom wiles away the time trying to teach bored grad students. But that all changes when Neil comes back into his life. For it seems that Tom's best friend was working for the National Security Agency, cracking the minds of suspected terrorists. Now it is Neil himself who has cracked and gone AWOL - what's more, he has left behind evidence that he has been employing his unique skills on civilians - obsessed with the idea that he can control the human brain. . . .
[Read on of the first chapter]
David Bowers began his career in animation as an in-between artist* on Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. He went on to be an animator and storyboard artist for varied projects ranging from Count Duckula and Danger Mouse to The Road To El Dorado and Ferngully: The Last Rainforest. He moved up in the ranks to supervising animator and storyboard supervisor on films like Chicken Run and Balto. He directed his first animated feature in 2006, the much underrated Flushed Away, which featured voice performances from Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet and Ian McKellan, to name a few. Bowers is no stranger to the field and process of animation and clearly used to working with top talent; his latest film is Astro Boy.
I’m bored... let’s do something evil.
It is occasionally nice to be reminded that even geniuses have their off days.
You’ve seen F. W. Murnau’s 1922 horror classic Nosferatu, right? Hopefully in the restored edition from Kino? A brilliant creepfest from its opening frames. You would think, wouldn’t you, that his Haunted Castle (aka Schloss Vogeloed) from just a year earlier would be full of signs of budding talent? Especially with the great Fritz Arno Wagner (Nosferatu, Der mude Tod, the Dr. Mabuse films) as cinematographer?
Not so much, actually. In fact, hardly at all. In fact... Haunted Castle will have you shaking your head at the bitter irony that this film survived the ravages of time while Der Januskopf, Murnau’s celebrated Jekyll-and-Hyde knockoff, is lost.
Illustration by Idiots’Books
Lester wouldn’t work the ride anymore, so Perry took it on his own. Hilda was in town buying groceries—his chest-freezer of gourmet surplus food had blown its compressor and the contents had spoiled in a mess of venison and sour blueberry sauce and duck pancakes—and he stood alone. Normally he loved this, being the carnival barker at the middle of the three-ring circus of fans, tourists and hawkers, but today his cast itched, he hadn’t slept enough, and there were lawyers chasing him. Lots of lawyers.
A caravan of cars pulled into the lot like a Tim Burton version of a funeral, a long train of funnycar hearses with jacked-up rear wheels and leaning chimney-pots, gargoyles and black bunting with super-bright black-light LEDs giving them a commercially eldritch glow. Mixed in were some straight cars, and they came and came and came, car on car. The hawkers got out more stuff, spread it out further, and waited while the caravan maneuvered itself into parking spots, spilling out into the street.
Riders got out of the cars, mostly super-skinny goths—a line of special low-calorie vegan versions of Victorian organ-meat delicacies had turned a mom-and-pop cafe in Portland, Oregon, into a Fortune 500 company a few years before—in elaborate DIY costumery. It shimmered darkly, petticoats and toppers, bodices and big stompy boots and trousers cut off in ribbons at the knees.
Jonathan Lethem (pronounced, in case you are curious as I was, leeth´-em) is one of those rare science fiction/fantasy authors like Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. and Tom Robbins whose novels are shelved in the mainstream fiction sections of book stores. If you had read only his masterful Motherless Brooklyn, about a detective with Tourette’s syndrome, you might feel that justified. Yet beginning with his inaugural novel, Gun, with Occasional Music, the majority of the author’s work has involved genetic mutations, futuristic scenarios, space travel and other elements of the fantastic. This year’s Chronic City is an expedition into the surreal that takes place in an alternate Manhattan where winter has apparently come to stay, and either a giant tiger or a mad robotic tunneling machine or both are laying waste to the city.
The Gloaming: This office looks way too familiar. By Andrew Huang, who created one of my favorites, Doll Face. (2:56 minutes)
Ida’s Luck: Gotta love the creepy black-eyed girl. “Everywhere Ida goes, misfortune is soon to follow” (20 minutes)
A stranger leaves a package on your doorstep, a box wrapped in plain brown paper. You aren’t expecting a delivery, but Christmas is coming. Your sister’s getting married in a few weeks, so it could be a present for members of the wedding party. You open it. You find another box inside, a curious black device of wood and aluminum, with a clear glass dome enclosing a small red button on top. The dome is locked. If you had the key, would you push the button?
Time for chapter IV.6 of The Two Towers, “The Forbidden Pool,” in our Lord of the Rings re-read. As always, spoilers for all of LotR and comments after the jump.
Do you know where your towel is? Right now? This instant?
Do you want to?
Thanks to the wonderful Colleen Lindsay, we have a prize pack to give away, consisting of a set of the new US editions of Douglas Adams’ original five-book Hitchhiker trilogy; a signed copy of Eoin Colfer’s new Hitchhiker book, And Another Thing; a copy of Colfer’s Artemis Fowl; and your very own DON’T PANIC tea-towel. (The words on the towel are much larger and friendlier that that; see below.)
The Rules: All you have to do to win this embarrassment of riches is comment (once—duplicates won’t count) on this post before noon EST, Tuesday, November 10th. A winner be be selected at random. Please check your email on Tuesday! You have 24 hours to respond before I select a new winner. And if you’re not the winner this time, well...
With Tor.com’s steampunk month now behind us, I would like to ponder what may come next. Certainly, steampunk as a genre and as a subculture is here to stay, there’s no doubting that; in all ways, steampunk is still heating up and will probably continue to grow for years. However, trends naturally evolve and new ones come into being, and I have pondered what the next aesthetic of interest will be. There is no doubt in my mind that the whole neo-vintage trend is still going strong, so the next big genre will be another subset of retro-futurism.
There’s a feminine kind of sentimentality which is most often seen in stories about True Love. And there’s a masculine kind of sentimentality which is most often seen in stories about Just War. There’s a moment near the beginning of Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen (1961) where a man charging into battle says “All right you guys, do you want to live forever?” And there you have it, the violins, the heart stirring, the tears in the eyes—my eyes anyway. That kind of thing has a direct and visceral appeal, and nobody does it better than Piper.
This is one of those books that I read when I was twelve (under the British title Gunpowder God) and loved uncritically. It’s hard to overstate just how much fun it is—this is a vastly enjoyable book. It’s military SF with added history of technology, and I think it might have been the first thing on those lines I read, and it set the pattern.
We continue our Letters from Abroad interview with Professor Kelly Joyce—an old friend and one of the most interesting people I’ve ever known—currently a program director at the National Science Foundation, normally a sociology prof specializing in scientific, medical, and technological issues at The College of William & Mary. She explores in the real world what science fiction explores through fiction: follows the introduction of technology and how it is adapted into society. Perhaps books in her field explore ideas that can be applied to science fiction, and vice versa. Okay, let’s get right into the interview. [Note: Some of the interview refers to her recent book on MRI technology, Magnetic Appeal: MRI and the Myth of Transparency.] Part 1 of the interview, on MRI, Dr. House, and diagnostic dogs, is here.
Q. You study technology and the aging. Can you tell us about that?
A. Recently, I took up the issue of technogenarians. That is, I looked at how old people actively use and shape technologies that may or may not have been designed with older bodies and abilities in mind. Meika Loe and I are the co-editors of Technogenarians: Studying Health and Illness through an Aging, Science, and Technology Lens, which will be published in 2010 by Wiley-Blackwell Publishers.
In this project we also challenge the stereotype that old people are technologically illiterate and show how they creatively adjust or invent technologies to fit varied needs. The book will take a look at the rise of gerontechnologies.
Companies and academic centers are busy creating new technologies to augment changes in bodies that might occur as we age. In business worlds, people are well aware of the aging populations in Canada and the U.S, and want to capitalize on these markets.
Illustration by Idiots’Books
He wasn’t ready to leave the hospital. For starters, he couldn’t walk yet, and there were still times when he could barely remember where he was, and there was the problem of the catheter. But the insurance company and the hospital had concurred that he’d had all the treatment he needed—even if his doctor hadn’t been able to look him in the eye when this was explained—and it was time for him to go home. Go away. Go anywhere.
He’d put it all in his LJ, the conversation as best as he could remember it, the way it made him feel. The conversation he’d had with Perry and the idea he’d had for pawning Disney-in-a-Box. He didn’t even know if his apartment was still there—he hadn’t been back in weeks and the rent was overdue.
And the comments came flooding in. First a couple dozen from his friends, then hundreds, then thousands. Raging fights—some people accused him of being a fakester sock-puppet aimed at gathering sympathy or donations (!)—side-conversations, philosophical arguments.
In my debut novel, Revolution is not a Dinner Party, there is a scene where Ling, the main character, watches her father burn the family’s books and photos. This actually occurred in my childhood. My father, a prestigious surgeon trained by American missionaries, destroyed all his beloved books to protect our family from the zealous Red Guard. Yet he continued my education in secret, which included English lessons, a dangerous violation. He instilled in me a love for books and a yearning for freedom. During the Cultural Revolution, the only books we were allowed to read were Mao’s teaching and government-approved propaganda that praised the Communist philosophy. Everything else was banned and burned.
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My father, Dr. Chang Sin-Liu |
Revolution Is Not |
Since I’ve talked a bit about how psychology and appreciation of stories might interact, I thought it’d be interesting to consider something many people mention first when talking about a story: characters. Sometimes a great protagonist or villain can raise up an otherwise mediocre story. Sometimes a plot that sounded fascinating gets bogged down by cardboard characters. And, of course, readers don’t all agree: a character one finds impressive another may find repulsive, and vice versa.
Why is that, and what factors might make a character more or less appealing? Psychologists have suggested that for readers to care about characters, they need to react to them as if they were friends or enemies. So let's start by examining what makes us like other people in our lives.
Caroline Stevermer is one of the writers who unaccountably doesn’t get much attention. I don’t understand why this is—maybe because she hasn’t written a series, or maybe because some of her work is YA, though YA is popular lately. She co-wrote the Sorcery and Cecelia books with Patricia Wrede, and she’s also written a number of adult books on her own. She’s one of the astonishing crop of writers from Minneapolis—I think it must have the highest density of fantasy and SF writers per capita of any city in the world.
I was born on the coldest day of the year. When the midwife handed me to my father he said “Hail the newcomer! Hardy the traveller who ventures forth on such a day.”
After four sons, my family was pleased to have a daughter at last. My father persuaded my mother than I should be named Hail, to commemorate the welcome I’d been given. My name is a greeting, dignified and sober, not a form of bad weather.
Some books take a little while to get going, but this one grabs from the first instant.
