Showing posts with label interview. Show all posts
Showing posts with label interview. Show all posts

Saturday, October 03, 2020

Piracy, the Photographer, and the Photographer's Models

I found Mitchel Gray in the front matter of Men's Health Magazine in 1994. At least, I found his name in very small print, in the credits for the photograph of the cover model. Over the years, he has been my go-to source whenever I have needed a gorgeous, shirtless male for my books' cover art.

This double portrait of an NFL player is an example of Mitchel Gray's artistry from his "Bodies In Motion" series. The most unique feature of this series is that both figures are the same person.


Please note that the image is watermarked in dark red (which is subtle, but "there"). The copyright belongs to Mitchel Gray, the image is shown here with Mitchel Gray's explicit permission. Snag it at your peril.

Print costs vary according to the size of the print, and are available from 11 x14 to 40 x 60
$750 - $4,000.  Licenses for cover art and more would depend on time frame and usage.  To see more, check out www.mitchelgray.com
 

Recently, I asked Mitchel Gray a flurry of copyright infringement related questions.

1) How has piracy affected you?  (Have any of your photographs been snagged from the internet and exploited by someone without permission?  Have you found any of your photographs, without your permission or payment, on any of the sites that sell licences to use images?  Have you found any of your images online with the copyright information cropped out or stripped out?  How does that make you feel? 

Mitchel: Piracy has not impacted me terribly badly, but certainly a few times --as far as I know-- and that’s the problem. I may not be aware of any number of snagged images. I try to watermark any online usage of mine, but that certainly does not exclude being “copied and pasted” directly from my website or elsewhere my pix may appear -- there are some very competent “thieves” out there. I have not found my images on the sites that sell licenses, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there—I can't spend all the time required to search. I have found images online with my credit removed, but that usually occurs when the models post the images—and not that often even then. Sometimes the client will do it. 

It’s very irritating.

My next salvo of questions were:

2) How does a photographer make money?  What does piracy do to your cash flow?  Is it good, free publicity?  Or is it very damaging? 

Mitchel: A few different ways: direct commissions from private clients, Ad agencies booking jobs, or purchasing existing images, magazine editorials, stock photo sales, fine art private and gallery sales, and books, both printed and virtual. Piracy simply deprives the photographer of revenue which ain’t good. But sometimes as you mention, it may be free PR, however that depends who and where they are posted

3) What can you do, if you see copyright infringement of your photographs?  Has this happened to you?  Has the DMCA "takedown" process worked for you?  Have you ever sent a DMCA and been thwarted by a counter notice?  Have you ever sued anyone? 

Mitchel: You can sue the user, or publish a wide ranging post about its misuse naming the user, you can force it to be removed from the site using DMCA. I’ve never been thwarted by any counter notice. However, sometimes there may an issue of interpretation of an agreement. I have sued a few.

4) What goes into taking great photographs that you could sell for cover art for a novel? Location?  Light quality? number of shots?  Amount of time? Do you pay the model?  Airbrushing? 

Mitchel: All the above plus a clear knowledge and discussion of the intent for the look, location, and subject matter from the author or publisher, depending on who is hiring me. And concept, concept, concept!

Asked to explain, Mitchel obliged.

"Concept, concept, concept” refers the idea of the photo—or what am I trying to say in the picture. There are a lot of ways to get your point across and each of them will present a different visual while doing it, and it gets more complex depending on the project—a portrait is different than headshot, a book is different than a magazine editorial, an ad is different than a label on a can, etc. That is one of the joys of the medium.  

 5) How has piracy affected your models?

 Mitchel: In a similar way, but with more potential impact, depending again on the location of the post, who is doing the posting, and on what is the intent the post is- who is it being used for. Also if it is being used in conjunction with other questionable content. It can be very painful, and infuriating

6)  How long can a cover model's career last?

Mitchel: A wide range here. A few years for some, 30+ years for others, all depending on how they adapt - or are allowed to adapt- to the aging process, and the type of publication or a story that will be told. I have one friend who is now 57 and still modeling. Different clientele, different uses.

7) What should an independent author know about buying a photograph for the cover art of an ebook?   What should she expect to pay?  What rights would she get for the money?  What waivers and releases would she need to obtain (and pay for)? 

Mitchel: This is all up for negotiation each time. The price is based on time limits, the expanse of circulation areas, what else she might want to use it for other than the cover, i.e. advertising, promotion, social enhancement, etc. She would need a release from the photographer that states either the areas, or if the shooter is willing, a buyout which is always the most expensive.

8) Where are good, reputable sites for buying licenses for cover art? 

Mitchel: There are the stock photo companies (they are also generally the cheapest which stinks for us), a number of new online sites that offer photo sales, and private individuals. Since the business is now virtually totally digital, one only has to provide digital files and that has fueled in increase in online sites.. I’m sure there a more, but these are the legitimate ones.

9) What other services might photographers offer (if any) in cover art preparation?

Mitchel: So many options- 

1. conceptual sit-downs to lock in on the purpose and market.
2. location search and securing.
3. Hair & Makeup artists and stylists
4. travel arrangements if need be.
5. studio usage and rental
6. lighting approaches
7. digital application and knowledge 
8. editing !!!!!

And a lot more.


10)   Do you have any advice for any amateur photographer who lives in an especially scenic location for monetizing their photographs?

Mitchel:  Yes, shoot a whole lot of images, perfect your editing skills (photoshop, and more), research research research stock houses and stock sites for both legitimacy, style of images, and price points. And keep on shooting! You never know what you might capture that someone may have a use for.  Of course, this pertains mostly to stock sales. Comission shooting is obviously a much different story. In that case you shoot those pictures to get hired, not to sell directly

As an example of what Mitchel did for me, here is the before shot of the rock climbing model who seemed perfect as 'Rhett, hero of Knight's Fork.











And here is how Mitchel cut the ropes and inserted a sword.






 








To contact Mitchel Gray

Mitchel Gray
mitchelgray7@icloud.com

917.721.7303

www.mitchelgray.com


Thanks, Mitchel!

All the best,
Rowena Cherry 


Tuesday, July 02, 2019

How Do You Know If You've Written A Classic Part 3 - Podcast Interview With Jacqueline Lichtenberg

How Do You Know If You've Written A Classic
Part 3
Podcast Interview With Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous parts in "How do you know if you've written a classic?" series are:

Part 1 in this Series is about writing a "classic" illustrating the long time fan discovering new entries in a series.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/02/how-do-you-know-if-youve-written.html

Part 2, Spock's Katra, is a long answer to a request for material for an online blog.  My answer focused on Theodore Bikel and his roles in Star Trek. 

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/10/how-do-you-know-if-youve-written.html

And here is Part 3, answers to very insightful interview questions from a Podcast host.  The verbal podcast interview is very different, but here are answers done with some time to think of how to explain the invisible connections between Star Trek, my deep study of the fan dynamics of the TV Series, and my own original universe Sime~Gen novels.

It's all about the connections.

Here is the initial query on whether I'd do the podcast.

---------quote----------

Hi Jacqueline,

My name is Sue, and I'm one of the hosts of Women at Warp, on the Roddenberry Network.  We're a podcast and associated blog that focused on the women of Star Trek - on screen, behind the scenes, and in fandom.

I'm writing because Women at Warp has an ongoing series where we talk about women in Star Trek fandom.  So far, we've interviewed Bjo and John Trimble about the Save Star Trek campaign, spoken to Devra Langsam and Lynn Koehler about organizing the first conventions (and a little bit about Spockanalia, of course), and chatted with a grad student studying the Trek zines of the 60s and 70s, plus B.A. Lopez, a fanfic writer from the early days of ASC.

I'm wondering if you might be interested in joining us to talk about your experiences in Star Trek fandom?  I would love to talk about the Welcommittee, the Kraith series, Star Trek Lives, and anything else you'd like to share.

Live Long and Prosper,
Sue Kisenwether

Women at Warp:  A Roddenberry Star Trek Podcast
womenatwarp.com | podcasts.roddenberry.com
Twitter/Instagram/Facebook:  @womenatwarp

-----end quote----

Sunday, May 5 - 10:00 AM Arizona Time

Sue posted a set of questions to me via Google Docs.  I copied them into an email and answered as follows.

______________________________


QUESTION: Before you became to so fully immersed in the fandom, what was the think that drew you to Star Trek?

The fact is that I've been FULLY IMMERSED in fandom since 1950, long-long before GR even thought of Star Trek.

I wrote a letter to a science fiction magazine, WORLDS OF IF, edited by Fred Pohl.  He published the letter, and in those days addresses could be published without fear. So members of the N3F Welcommittee wrote me (lots of letters), and I joined N3F and took my first writing lessons from a professional writer, Alma Hill. I participated in the fiction Round Robin (an early form of RPG, on paper, by snailmail), and I grew up in Fandom.

So the premise of your question is a bit off target.

What drew me to Star Trek (before ever seeing an episode) was Bjo Trimble's letter writing campaign (the first one).  Here I am with Bjo Trimble at a recent con:

I knew her, and her judgement in science fiction, many many, years before Star Trek, and trusted her judgement. I was living in Israel at the time, planning to move to New Jersey, so I wrote an air mail letter to Paramount (in fact several), to keep it on the air until I could get back.  At that time, there was no way to see old shows.

I LOVE NETFLIX! But I wish Netflix would archive, and never delete anything.


QUESTION: In addition to being a science-fiction fan, you’re a professional author.  For our listeners who may not know, can you tell us about your work and the Sime~Gen Universe?

Again there's an issue with the premise of the question.  The N3F was founded by the same person who founded SFWA, damon knight (always writen with small initial letters).

I'm not a pro writer IN ADDITION TO being a fan.  There is in fact no difference, at least there wasn't a difference when I was a beginner.

Fred Pohl was a member of N3F, bought my first professional sale which is a Sime~Gen short story, OPERATION HIGH TIME, now posted online for free reading.  At that time, the sale qualified me for SFWA (qualifications are higher today, and I'm a Life Member).  Later, Fred Pohl became editor at Bantam Books, and bought Star Trek Lives! which is a book about WHY Star Trek Fans love Star Trek, and who those fans are.  The identity profiles we put into the book were garnered from questionnaires circulated (by snail mail), and reveal the high powered, highly educated, creative, and fiercely goal directed personalities of Star Trek fans.

Those profiles are about the same as the average science fiction fan -- except Star Trek fans came from a group who THOUGHT they hated science fiction.  They were wrong.  My Sime~Gen novel (my first novel) HOUSE OF ZEOR (now in e-book, audio-book, and new paper editions), was specifically structured to captivate Spock fans.  I sold the expensive hardcover edition to Spock fans on a money-back guarantee and never had one returned.  Perhaps that proves I understand why fans loved STAR TREK.

Fiction Writing


QUESTION:  You began writing the Sime~Gen books in the late 60s, around the same time that you started writing Star Trek Fan Fiction.  By my count, you’ve had works appear in over 25 different fanzines.  Knowing that authors were not paid, what drew you to Trek fan fiction when you were already a published SF author? 


The premise of this question is correct!  I sold my first story before embarking on the Kraith series, and I do believe it's way over 25 'zines that pieces of Kraith have appeared in.  I also contributed letters of comment to every zine I ran across, and it was through such 'zines that I distributed the questionnaires that became STAR TREK LIVES!

I designed the Kraith series as homework assignments for the writing course I was taking at the time (Famous Writer's School, it was called). Since I had to do homework anyway, why should I waste the time and effort on things nobody would ever read but some instructor who knew nothing about the very different literary requirements of the science fiction field.  (in fact they looked down on the genre!)

Sime~Gen actually dates from the mid-1950's, though it was first written down in the early 1960's.  The first REAL story, with a beginning/middle/end structure and a theme was OPERATION HIGH TIME which I wrote as the homework assignment for the 4th lesson in the course.  The correspondence school's pitch was that students would SELL stories by their 4th assignment.  They were sued and lost and went out of business as a jury decided the pitch wasn't true.  But the thing is -- it was true for those who had spent their lives preparing for one thing only - to be a professional writer.


QUESTION: You’re well-known for the Kraith Universe of Trek stories - How would you describe these stories for our listeners who may not be familiar?

I saw Star Trek as the first real science fiction on television.  But it was missing so much of the richness that characterized science fiction.  The premise had so many holes in it, and lacked so much in character and relationship that makes the science fiction genre Great Literature.  Being a TV Series (forced into the old anthology format by distribution/marketing requirements), Star Trek couldn't explore Relationships on the air, and tell ongoing stories with Character Arc - characters becoming different people as they learned from the beating they took during their adventures.

Novel series can do that.  My best example at that time was Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover Series (which has since become much longer, and more popular).  Marion Zimmer Bradley is credited with THE FIRST science fiction story with a character driven plot.  It was published in about 1955, about the time Zena Henderson's PEOPLE stories hit the magazines.  The genre CHANGED because of these women writers.  Yes Andre Norton was a prominent woman who wrote science fiction -- but under a male name.

There's a lot to say about the history of the field, but Bradley's contribution was seminal.  And it encompassed precisely what was missing in aired STAR TREK.  So to generate Kraith, I took aired Trek and added Darkover, spun it through my own imagination, and came out with Kraith.

I was pretty sure I understood why Trek had caught on so widely, and I wrote Kraith to find out if I was correct.  Kraith, a writing homework assignment sequence, was actually an experiment to test the market for Sime~Gen.  My aim was to write novels that would lay out the framework for a TV Series -- or several TV Series.

TV is written by teams of hired writers -- it is collaborative creativity, a very different sort of activity than novel writing.

I constructed Kraith to have that collaborative, open framework that would induce other writers to write in my universe, just as fans had begun writing fiction in Gene Roddenberry's universe.  That invitational quality to engross and immerse other creative participants is what STAR TREK LIVES! names The Tailored Effect.

I was delighted when others spontaneously began contributing to Kraith, and accepting my editorial direction to make the stories they wrote fit onto a coherent master plan.  We had 50 creative writers, artists, poets, musicians involved in creating Kraith.  Many different people originated ideas we incorporated into a smooth narrative.  At least two Alternate Universes were spun off of Kraith that I know of (and I've heard of others).

This indicated to me that I understood what energized Star Trek fans to create their own stories and characters.

I used what I learned experimenting with Kraith to structure Sime~Gen to allow for other writers to create their own Sime~Gen stories.

Fans of Sime~Gen began asking questions and writing stories in Sime~Gen, which generated 5 fanzines full of fiction, non-fiction, artwork, poetry, music, and handicrafts (and convention costumes!).

Right at the beginning of this, Jean Lorrah wrote a review of HOUSE OF ZEOR which was published in a fanzine. I wrote to her, and very soon sent her a draft of UNTO ZEOR, FOREVER which she sent back dripping red ink editorial comments (what is called, today, beta reading).

Jean Lorrah, author of the Night of the Twin Moons fanzines (concurrent and of the same stature as Kraith), jumped in and began writing about her OWN characters in Sime~Gen, the HOUSE OF KEON folks.  Keon is designed as the literary foil of Zeor, the people I write about.  We met at a Star Trek convention, and she gave me the outline for a story she wanted to write, and I said do a chapter-and-outline submission package and we'd send it to Doubleday (my hardcover publisher at the time).

She did that, and we sold FIRST CHANNEL
as the third Sime~Gen novel to be published.  We suspect we were the first female-female collaborating team in Science Fiction professional publishing.

Jean Lorrah may have been the first English Professor to get tenure on the basis of a science fiction novel publication -- and a collaboration, to boot.  The byline reads by Jean Lorrah and Jacqueline Lichtenberg. We established a convention that the first-drafter of a novel gets top billing, so the Series alternates our bylines.  Now we've been joined by one of our best fanfic writers, Mary Lou Mendum (a Ph.D. in plant genetics), So 3 women collaborators get the triple byline on her novels as we all work on them.

Mary Lou is also a Trek fan, and one of the most prolific Sime~Gen fanfic writers. Her second professional Sime~Gen novel is now in production at Wildside Press.

A 4th professional has joined the Sime~Gen Group - he's a video game producer and is working on the Sime~Gen space age story, bringing up the Star Trek/Kraith space-adventure-with-aliens elements in Sime~Gen.  He's aiming at graphic novels, board games, video games, and many other platforms.  Jean and I incorporated Sime~Gen and the corporation is under contract to Loreful LLC giving them 150 years of our thousand year future history (Heinlein style) to play with First Contact stories.  He gets to invent the aliens.


QUESTION:  Your website says that these works were influenced by Marion Zimmer Bradley - can you tell us more about that?

I think I jumped the gun on that question.  See above.

QUESTION:  Eventually, other writers started contributing to the Kraith Universe.  Were you actively managing these stories?  Or was there fanfiction about fanfiction?  


Both, I suspect and I tried to cover that above.  I was learning to do what Gene Roddenberry was doing as he managed all those writers, directors, and actors.  What GR did was different from what other TV Series Producers had done -- he included science fiction novel writers who had never sold a script in his first season writers.  Then he bought David Gerrold's script (Trouble with Tribbles) before David (who is still a good friend on Facebook) had sold a book.  Subsequently David had many best seller science fiction novels to his credit (good ones!), and kept on working in visual media, too.  GR connected different artistic media outlets and released enormous creativity into the world by doing that.
A volume of the 6 volume Kraith Collected, collected from all the scattered 'zines.
http://www.simegen.com/fandom/startrek/kraith/


Star Trek Lives!


QUESTION:  In 1970-1, you had a project called the Strekfan Roster Questionnaire, with one questionnaire for zine publishers and another for general fans.  Can you tell us about the genesis and goals of this project?


I was raised in the news business.  I knew a news story when I saw one.  Up until Star Trek, science fiction fans wrote and published fanzines by the hundreds (I know because I got most of them!), but except for the N3F Round Robin fiction efforts (proto-RPG and more of an APA than a 'zine), science fiction fanzines were NON-FICTION.  The NEWS STORY was fanzines with fiction, original fiction using non-original characters interacting with original characters).

That this shift to amateur publication of fiction (the first since maybe the mid-1800's women's Gothics), and fiction based on a TV show, was a huge news story.  But  none of the newspapers or magazines I saw had any mention of this development.

So I set out to write a news article, maybe for the New York Times or the local county newspaper -- just a news article I could submit, as I wasn't employed by them at that time.

To do that article, I needed the classic structural elements, "who-what-where-when-how many" --  I didn't know!  So I started asking fanzine publishers (by snail mail)  about their readership, and found out there were too many fanzine publishers to ask one by one and using different wordings.  I needed to ask everyone the same questions the same way, like a survey.

So I created the Roster Questionnaire trying to find out the scope of the 'zine readership.

Well, I still needed to know "who" these people were.  So I did another Questionnaire for the readers, got that published in fanzines, got a lot returned very articulately filled out.

It was hard to get a handle on the size of the groups of readers and publishers, writers, editors, teams of teams of people, because the number of 'zines and their readerships were growing and growing.  I realized this couldn't be an article -- it was a book.  And not a small one.

A bit deeper into the concept of a book, after I got Gene Roddenberry to enthusiastically say he'd write a forward if we could sell the book, I realized I couldn't do it by myself.  So I took on Sondra Marshak and she recruited Joan Winston.  Just like Trek itself, a book about fans had to be a collaborative effort between fans of different points of view.

Interviews with the cast and crew were Sondra's idea.  She organized and executed most of that.  But I did a lot of it, too.  We recorded conversational interviews, then I transcribed them (back in the day, to get typescript, you had to listen-type.)

Joan Winston added eye-witness accounts of the New York Conventions as she was on the famous Committee, and ran publicity for them.

Joan sold STAR TREK LIVES! to Fred Pohl at Bantam Books while she was a Guest at a Star Trek con in Canada.  Pohl had turned down STL! on first submission because they had a contract with James Blish who got that contract via SFWA connections when he became ill.  Because of illness, though, Blish missed a deadline.

Publishing works like a freight train.  Books ride a flatcar pulled along a track. Eventually, the produced book is slotted into a display at a book store.  A publisher must fill their slots at the bookstores because the slots are automatically emptied every few weeks.  If the publisher doesn't put a manuscript on the passing flatcar, headed for their wall-slot, the publisher loses that slot to another publisher, and all the sales that go with it.  Publishing was and still is a slender margin, competitive business.  Publishers pay Amazon extra to feature a book, just as they used to pay chain bookstores to put a book in the window, or in an aisle dump.

Book contract deadlines are set to bring the book to the slot with the inevitability of a juggernaut.  Publicity is cooked up, contracted, paid for, to hit at a certain date. Publishers must fill their slots and editors feel that pressure.

Pohl needed to fill a Star Trek Book Slot at the big chain bookstores that would suddenly go empty because a manuscript deadline was not going to be met.

Hearing about Blish's delay, Joanie pointed out to Fred at the meet-n-greet cocktail party that a complete STAR TREK book was ready to go into production in time to fill that slot.  He remembered liking the book manuscript, had some editorial changes and additions he wanted, but figured we could do it.  Remember, Pohl had bought my first sale years prior.    We were not unknown writers to him.

We signed the contract and worked ourselves to melt-down to get all the changes done.

Remember every single time some pages were deleted or edited, chapters moved around, and myriad references deleted or added material had to be changed, the ENTIRE BOOK had to be retyped by hand, without typos.  The retyping was my job, and I had to rephrase many sentences on the fly.

In the end, we couldn't do it so just whole chapters got retyped, which messed up the manuscript page numbers, putting an added burden on the copyeditor and typesetter.  Today, nobody has that problem any more.

There was no electronic means to email a copy to my collaborators.  I was in New York, Sondra in Louisiana, and Joanie in Manhattan.

We got it done and made the deadline, and paid the huge phone bills.  It went 8 printings!

My goal with the project that became STL! was to inform the world why STAR TREK was important in human history, an event as important as the Agricultural Revolution.

Sondra took that comparison as hyperbole.  It's not, and that has, I think, been illustrated amply by now.

It was Trek fans playing a computer game who hooked computers together in different cities starting the internet.  The Web came from another country, with the invention of the "Browser" able to read pages posted on the internet if they had code in common.

Much of what NASA has accomplished after the first orbital mission, was done (and funded by) people who caught the vision via Star Trek.  Many of the changes because of social networking (web 2.0) were instigated by Trek viewers, if not actual fans.  And paper fanzines moved to the web.

Socially, women's place in world history has shifted into the path Trek illustrated was possible.

Trek didn't originate any of this change.  A TV show doesn't initiate change.  A TV show - especially fiction - just brings everyone yearning for a particular change onto the same page.

Trek gave us a "common language" to discuss these issues, and Characters to speak for us.

Trek was (and is) Art.  Most TV at that time was not Art.  Trek stood out in high relief, clearly different from all other shows, while disguised as just another TV show.  People thought science fiction was for kids, or just adolescent males.  Trek proved them incorrect.

QUESTION:  In 1975, along with Sondra Marshak and Joan Winston, you published Star Trek Lives!  How did that come about?

Ooops, I answered that above.

QUESTION:  STL! explored why Star Trek affected and stuck with so many fans.  Why do you think that is, even today?

I haven't watched the newest CBS streaming only Trek: Discovery.  Streaming is another outgrowth of the moment I understood ToS was not just another lackluster attempt at TV science fiction, and I have been an early adopter.  I now prefer to binge-watch whole seasons in a row, rather than wait a week between episodes.

We live in a new world where you don't have to drop everything and rush to the TV screen before they yank away what you desperately want to savor and enjoy.

But there is a problem I have with some of the films that might apply to the new series.

Fred Pohl and John Campbell, and Heinlein and Asimov etc had a litmus test for placing a story in the science fiction genre.

I think it applies to all genres, and even Series.

If you can take the science out of a story and still have a story, it wasn't science fiction.

Likewise, if you can take the Trek out of a story and still have a story, it wasn't Star Trek.

Many of the current entries into the Trek genre are just mundane stories that could happen to any characters anywhere.  And so, at heart, they lack the driving theme, the seminal statement of the nature of humanity and the nature of reality and the relationship between them, which is the core essence of science fiction.  Roddenberry insisted on including the Spock character because that was the only way to make the series Science Fiction, not "Wagon Train To The Stars."

But I do think the newer efforts to extend the Trek franchise are valid, exciting, and inspiring Art in and of themselves.  Mostly, they are good science fiction, too.  But I think many of the stories would be better stories in and of themselves were they set in Universes of their own, designed to contain and showcase those stories.

I think what fans love about Star Trek is that it is science fiction, but the label "science fiction" has become associated in their minds (largely through High School literature courses) with dull-and-boring.  Adding "adventure" just makes the genre more boring to some girls if the "action" gets in the way of the "story."  It's that way for guys, too, though they don't necessarily know it until later in life.

Debate has raged for decades trying to define what is or is not science fiction.  I can't settle that here, but I think Roddenberry's sense that, no matter what, Spock had to be on the bridge, shows he understood what science fiction genre actually is.

One definition says that science fiction is about the impact of science/technology on human personality/character/psychology/society/culture.  That's what GR added with Spock -- a visual commentary on how humanity changes (as he always said, Becomes Wise) under the impact of new discoveries.

Science fiction happens at the collision zone between hard and soft science.

Science fiction is scientists at play.

I'm a Chemist, Jean Lorrah is an English Professor, and Mary Lou Mendum is a plant geneticist, Aharon Cagle (Loreful LLC videogames) is a high level marketer -- we write science fiction.

We are seeing the new generation gap created by cell phones and iPhone connectivity, AI, and Internet of Things (IoT).  How current 15 year olds differ from current 65 year olds illustrates the subject matter of science fiction, the signature issue that sets that one genre apart from all others.


Jacqueline Lichtenberg
https://www.amazon.com/author/jacquelinelichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/
http://twitter.com/jlichtenberg

Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Interview With Francis Carmody via Facebook

Interview of Jacqueline Lichtenberg
By
Francis Carmody
via Facebook

In November, 2016, Francis Carmody contacted me by leaving a post on my Facebook "wall" asking me to do an interview.  I agreed, and he posted the following questions which I thought interesting to Science Fiction Romance Writers because he demonstrates an entrepreneurial spirit that fiction writers (who are self-employed business people) need.  Look at what Francis Carmody is doing and absorb that attitude of getting the task done.  The numbered paragraphs are the questions he created and JL: is me answering.

----Francis Asked ----
1. The last time we talked together, you said that you “loved my spirit.” Why?

JL: This set of questions is a good example of why.  The Major Media should do so well at formulating their queries!  Fiction writers, likewise, plot by asking questions, presenting possible answers, confronting Characters with choices.  Characterization is always rooted in "Why" -- "What does she see in him?  Why did he betray her?" Much of this list of questions consists of prime thematic material.  If the New York Times asked this type of Question (and got truthful answers), we'd be in much better shape as a country than we are today.

2. If you had to pick a single issue as the most important concern for the 21st Century, what would it be?

JL:  I think Alvin Toffler nailed the issue, way back in the 1970's with his book (still available because it is a fine illustration of the problem).  It is FUTURE SHOCK -- technology is causing the way we live life day to day and minute to minute to change faster than the human brain/nervous system can adapt. 

The issue is how we configure the human/A.I. interface. 

Inside that issue is the problem science fiction (and Romance Genre, too) has been gnawing on since the 1940's and before: The fully transformed world (Asimov's vision of Robotics, colonies on other planets, Caves of Steel here) will be able to supply all human needs with only a tiny fraction of humanity employed in paying jobs.  What does everybody else do? 

Gene Roddenberry answered that question in STAR TREK -- art, exploration, creativity.  No pockets in the uniforms because nobody carries "money." 

So our 21st Century must address the problem of how do we get from here to there and avoid the pitfalls Asimov (and Heinlein) so ably pointed out. 

Science is now showing how a child's activities (or lack thereof) configures the child's brain with synapses often shaping the adulthood the child will live.  This produces the "generation gap" issue where parents in the 1970's couldn't program a VCR and today adult children are dealing with parents who can't use a smartphone.  Can't not won't. 

The technological generation gap will become most apparent in the next few decades as kids who had smart(phones; toys) as 3 year olds (and yes, I've watched kids playing educational games on handheld smartscreens), grow up to deal with their 90 year old parents who can't adapt to the next innovation. 

By 90 years from now, we will have self-driving cars and household robots, and other outgrowths of the 1940's thrust to create "labor saving devices."  We may have Lunar and Martian colonies and be exploring way beyond our solar system. 

At the turn of the 20th century, science postulated that it should be possible to distinguish humans by measuring their Intelligence and ranking them by capability and potential, thus allowing government to avoid wasting educational resources on the incapable.

Today, science is exploring genetics and brain function to the point where "intelligence" is being redefined and redefined. (Emotional Intelligence, Mechanical, Artistic -- whatever).  Bottom line: we know NOTHING about ourselves (yet).  But we will before this century is out.

We have CRISPR now:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR
And in 2016 word has come out that the Chinese are experimenting with genetic modification of human beings.  Their "one-child" Communist Government imposed limitation is about to cause their country to "implode" -- and they realize they don't need all their people, but only those capable of contributing to this new, highly complex, technology based world. 

So what it comes down to is Power, it's use and abuse, a big topic on this blog
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/

Science is producing technology which lays Power into the hands of human beings who have not evolved to be immune to the psychological need to dominate other humans. 

Science is also simultaneously laying the Power to modify humans into the hands of humans.

Therein lies the challenge we are facing -- the configuring of the interface between the human Spirit and the technology we produce. 

Science Fiction Romance is a fiction genre uniquely suited to explore the possibilities, and create "What if ..."  "If only ..." and "If This Goes On ..." models of the futures we must choose among.

This blog is designed to reveal the potential of Science Fiction Romance Genre as a problem solving tool of the 21st Century.


3. Today I see a lot of Christendom caught up in what I call the Disinformation Wars or even more simply the Apocalypse Fever. What do you think is going wrong in our churches, and why?

JL:  I don't frequent Churches, so I am not qualified to comment on this question.

4. What is your spiritual orientation? I ask for the benefit of the audience...so the real question is, why are we NOT enemies?

JL: Actually, I've written 5 books that nibble around the edges of this question.

https://www.amazon.com/Not-So-Minor-Arcana-Books-ebook/dp/B010E4WAOU/

Jean Lorrah calls me a Mystic, and I'd guess that fits.  My degree is in Chemistry (with minors in Physics and Math) -- however, I really majored in Science Fiction Writing but didn't tell the University that (because they basically despised it and held any fan in utter contempt.)  I did not take a single English or History course in college, just passed tests to get the credit without attending classes (which was permitted and even encouraged for Math and Science majors). 

To be a science fiction writer, one must know science.  For that, University is essential because you need the expensive labs to do actual hands-on experiments and work your way through how all that we know was originally worked out, one tiny step at a time. You may not use scientific knowledge that you were TOLD -- you must PROVE IT for yourself, in order to possess it at a level where you can use it to create with.  

Fiction, on the other hand, you can teach yourself easily and cheaply through Free Public Libraries (and now the Internet, with tools such as my blog.)  To teach yourself, you only need the cognitive tools acquired through a University science education (wall-to-wall physics/math/chemistry) with an occasional bit of Archaeology or Linguistics, Paleontology etc so you know what to look up.

I wrote STAR TREK LIVES!
(see discussion on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/bob.eggleton/posts/10154555763342626  )
essentially to present my argument that the University Professors were wrong about Science Fiction, and I expect that is a gut-level reason Gene Roddenberry wrote Star Trek.  Science Fiction is crucial to humanity surviving the next epoch, and survival means getting off this planet sooner rather than later.

Study of Science brings you an understanding of the physical matrix in which life is embedded.  Study of Fiction gives you an understanding of the psychological matrix in which you live your personal Life.

Studying the interface between physical reality and psychological reality, we find grand and great Works (especially Romances about improbable Soul Mates) scattered throughout human history, spawning philosophies and religions galore.  I've studied most of them in some detail -- and all that effort just led me back to where I started -- Kaballah, the Oral Tradition about the meaning of the collection or anthology we now call The Bible.

The traditional story goes that God offered the Torah (the first 5 books of the Bible) to all the other Nations before coming to Abraham.  Sort of the same approach you've used -- try to peddle services to whoever is around, and then just do-it-yourself.  He chose Abraham and then made of him a great Nation.  And this is illustrated by the scattered bits and traces, the Ultimate Truths, you find in each and every civilization we've dug up or preserved.  Every successful civilization has been fueled by a bit of the Torah.  

I do not see a separation between the spiritual and the physical.  I never have.

5. Part of the reason I created this ministry ( https://www.facebook.com/francis.carmody ) was simply so that I could teach myself how to be successful in earning my own living. Please name one service that my growing network of supporters and myself can do for you and Simegen.com that you would actually pay me for.

JL: Well, see that question is another reason I admire your spirit.  THAT is the spirit that will fuel the successful negotiation through the coming century where we must create an interface between what is human and what humans create. 

At this particular moment, Sime~Gen Inc. is not hiring and has no employees.  That could very well change soon.  We will need more Lawyers, Accountants, and Agents, maybe a Manager to interface with Hollywood.  As the formats for tech delivery of text change, we may need techs to re-do all our books.  And there is a graphic novel/video game project designed to take Sime~Gen into the space age. ( news breaks first on the Sime~Gen Group on Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/SimeGen/

6. What would you consider your ruling passion in life?

JL:  Maybe an absolute greed for knowledge, to know everything, to understand everything.  That's probably shared with most other fiction writers.

7. What about politics? What do you think of the upcoming Trump presidency?

I have to write a blog entry about this for the Science Fiction Romance Writers.  I followed the election via Astrology -- many astrology websites predicted a clean Clinton landslide, and had evidence to prove their points.  I, on the other hand, used a totally different analysis (it's that science fiction writer thinking - looking at life, the universe and everything as a STORY). 

Point by point, day by day, throughout the entire year's campaign, all Trump's blurted mistakes and Clinton's failure to follow-through, or her dazzlingly gorgeous performances (the speech at the Convention was marvelous), all were easily traced by comparing various charts.

There was no astrological evidence about which candidate would become President.

That is the nature of Astrology and for that matter, Tarot. There is no "future" to "foretell."

There is no "power" to be attained by mastery of the Occult or any form of Mysticism.  The future is determined by by the Creator of the Universe, and you may argue well in prayer and deed, thus altering His choices. But Free Will (of each and every one of us, plus all of us together) is primarily active in shaping our world and our personal destinies. So Astrological Natal Charts do now show "death" for example, because the universe goes right on spinning after you die.  Tarot can't predict if you will succeed or fail, but only read your present emotional frame of mind and heart.  Just like Astrology, Tarot can tell you only what you already know, (but sometimes don't know that you know.)

However, there are things you can learn that can be of great interest to fiction writers trying to craft a plausible plot.

Trump's natal chart has Relationships to the USA natal chart that are as distinctive (but different) as Obama's natal chart's relationship to the USA Natal chart.

And transiting Saturn is descending into the Obscure part of Clinton's Natal Chart, but Ascending into the Public (New Starts, New Career) part of Trump's chart.

But it was a Battle of the Titans, toe to toe, nose to nose, eyeball to eyeball.  It is amazing it has not (yet) spread more destruction than it did.  They are too evenly matched.  And in the end they both "won" -- Trump the Electoral College (which is indicated by his connections to the USA natal chart), and Clinton the popular vote (indicated by her Natal Chart and derivatives of it -- she was at a lifetime peak of popularity and accomplishment but under a long transit that undermined her judgement).

So Trump is the man of the hour - on the hot-seat - has bitten off much more than he can chew, and is only now discovering that.  He has much more humbling before him.

He will do very well indeed the first part of 2017, with disasters and spiritual defeats and sagging spirits maybe in February, but lots of blazing hot accomplishments up to maybe around August, and then a huge downsweep, overwhelming defeats -- and then up again into the end of 2017. We may not notice his sagging spirits or defeats.  This reading is only about what's going on inside him, not what others see.

For the USA, his Administration is not a culmination but a prelude.

Look at the transits to the USA Natal Chart (I've done some blogs about this -- here's an index post to some blogs on Astrology Just For Writers)  Pay attention to the two part entry called Part 6.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_30.html

The USA has two distinct (equally valid) Natal Charts for the signing on July 4th, 1776, as two groups of men signed at different times.  One describes the life-course of what we now call the Democrats and the other the Republicans.  Those were not "Parties" but philosophies.

One chart is for 2:13 AM LMT, 1776, which I identify with our current "Republicans" and their philosophy of government (for various reasons in the chart's configuration).  The other is known as (and mostly given much more credence) The Sibley Chart which is for 5:10 PM LMT, the second and final group of signatures.  The Sibley Chart describes the philosophy of what we currently call "Democrats." 

Saturn is going into obscurity for the Democrats, and rising above the 7th House cusp (into prominence) for the Republicans.

Trace back through History and you see the two factions (party names changing), which have different ideas about what Government is (especially the Federal Government, a government of governments), what it does, and what it is for, and see how well the transits of Saturn correlate to which party holds the White House and dominance in the Legislature.

What is worth watching during the Trump Administration is the transit of Pluto to both Charts of the USA -- Pluto is so slow that it's place is identical in both charts, but the house position is different.  At the exact TIME of the 2008 mortgage derivatives collapse that gave the USA a financial Heart Attack, Pluto was transiting conjunct the Nation's 8th House Cusp (0 Deg Capricorn).

8th House in personal natal charts represents "other people's money" (a husband's income for example; parent's financial situation).  It also represents not love but animal sexuality.  And it is associated with the conditions at death, but that's difficult to assess.

My take on the significance of the 8th House in a nation's natal chart is that it represents Taxes, the public money trough at which politicians feed.

The USA natal Pluto is in the 9th House of that chart which predicted the financial crisis (and the connection to Obamacare is all there, too.)  In BOTH political parties' USA Natal Charts, Pluto is in the same exact place.  But in 1 it is 9th House (international affairs and philosophy of government; Natural 9th is Sagittarius, ruled by Jupiter, growth, truth, justice, rulership).  In that natal chart, 0 Degrees Capricorn is the 8th House cusp. 

Here's the thing.

Pluto is lining up to do the USA's first Pluto Return -- where transiting Pluto gets to the place where it was on that fateful July 4th.  That will happen beginning in February 2022, again in the summer through December 2022 and sustain through October 2023.  The degree to watch is 27 Degrees Capricorn.  Pluto transits typically manifest after the final contact, but in the case of 0 Degrees Capricorn, the financial collapse was right on.

That Pluto Return would be a Trump administration second term mid-term election result -- major structural power upset.  Or maybe we'll change Presidents.

To figure what that might be like you must delve deep into the significance of Pluto, of  Capricorn and its Ruler Saturn, of the 9th House (which I peg as a country's Foreign Affairs and governing philosophy), Sagittarius, Jupiter. 

I've discussed Pluto and its relationship to "accounting for taste" in fiction, to the varying tastes in fiction through the generations, and how to use it to construct a plot.

You don't have to know astrology to use astrology in writing.  Most people use it just fine by consulting their gut feelings.  Trump calls this "good judgement" and he has it in spades.  He listens to his inner voice.  He launched his campaign at the most auspicious moment for success (when he came down that escalator) and every turning point in the campaign was right exactly as it had to be. 

Astrologers point to the moment he gave his acceptance speech at the Republican Convention as being inauspicious for success -- and in fact it was, but Astrology is tricky like that!  It was his acceptance of the Party Nomination and it was very inauspicious for the Party Establishment which took a grand licking for months afterward.

I don't think Trump is using an astrologer as Reagan's wife did.  I think he just listens to his inner voice. 

People point to his business failures to say they disqualify him for the work of the Oval Office -- but I suspect it is through those false starts and the consequences of various bits of immoral behavior that he has learned to listen to that voice.  Like Reagan, he has only one talent -- and is a disaster at everything else.  He is a keen judge of people.

We all know that Reagan was not doing the President's job.  He was failing badly after being shot.  Everyone else around him, people he'd chosen via his judge of character, did the actual work of governing.  That's not the first time we've had a figure head for a president, and it won't be the last.

People view Trump with such fear, but what they fear is a fabricated image having nothing to do with the real man.  The real man is much scarier but for totally different reasons.  He is just a prelude to the President who will take this country through our Pluto Return (which no human being ever lives long enough to experience; which is why I love Vampire stories!).  He's the set-up. The real blow comes next decade.  The backlash against whatever Trump does will be a new experience in this country's history.

Other countries have survived Pluto Returns -- we can, too. 


8. What is your view of gay marriage, and why?

JL: On this and many related politicized "social issues" my view is that humans have to learn to mind their own business.  That's a hard-hard lesson, and does not come naturally to humans.  Just watch 2 year olds playing.

We don't come equipped to understand the borderline between Self and Other.  That border is depicted clearly in astrological natal charts -- we have access to it in that gut-feeling level without knowing astrology.  By the age of 5, we have begun to grasp it.  But I think most humans only gain the ability to grasp this fine point of existence in their thirties.  Whether they then learn it, or not, often depends on the marriage situation.

All that modern-technology/human interface discussion in a previous answer above pertains to this.  Big Data deep diving has stripped away the privacy barriers (read Alvin Toffler's books).  So it is assumed anything you don't make public must be secret and therefore nefarious.

People don't know the difference between privacy and secrecy (hence Clinton's email disasters).  The philosophical relationship between privacy and individual identity, the importance of individuality to the group (1st House vs 7th House), has all been wiped away for this new generation who, at the age of 3 or 4, are already learning via smartscreens.

There's an old saying that could be revived. Don't wash your dirty linen in public.  Which also has a corrolary - don't wash your clean linen in public. 

Today, there is the saying, "Too Much Information" -- a cringe written as TMI in social media because it's such a common communications problem.

This is an "editorial" function, more than a writing function.  How much to reveal, and when and to whom.  Getting that correct means knowing that line between Self and Other, and secrecy and privacy. 

This secrecy/privacy dividing line and a raft of related issues about Identity and the role of humans in a roboticized society (as discussed above) is indeed that Single Issue Of Most Concern you referenced. 

This evolving civilization is in the process of redefining very fundamental issues.  But those issues are so fundamental people don't want to think about them, even don't want to know they exist.  Because of human nature, humans focus all attention on the most irrelevant matters to avoid confronting the issues that do matter. 

9. Do you know and understand what a LARP is? For most of my life, the Christians around me have had a very negative attitude toward popular movies, “secular” music, and especially gaming. What is wrong with this picture, and how has the interview changed your understanding of what I am trying to do?

JL: yes as a long-time fan I know LARP.  In fact, there has been a Sime~Gen LARP, and I think one based on my novels MOLT BROTHER and CITY OF A MILLION LEGENDS.  The novels are designed to be played, which is why there very likely will be a Sime~Gen videogame fairly soon.

My understanding of what you are trying to do has not changed.

I wouldn't say there is anything wrong with this picture.  As noted above, we are swinging into a Pluto Return -- 8th House is also mysticism as is Neptune (which also signifies the state of mind necessary for Romance).  Right now Neptune is transiting it's own sign, Pisces.  The "Gates" are open to other dimensions of reality.  Few can tolerate that.  The level of confusion, the paniced grasp at belief as the cognitive tool to understand reality will increase, and not abate until maybe 2025. 

I did an essay, (it is on simegen.com somewhere) about the precession of the equinoxes and how that correlates to the way Earth's various populations view God. 

Once you understand that the majority around you are viewing the Ineffable through the one window with the curtains open, then it shouldn't disturb you to discover that you are peeking through a crack in the curtains of a different window.  All of us are looking at the same thing -- what is OUTside this reality.  But we all see something different.  It is the Blind Men And The Elephant problem - to know what part of reality is, is not the same thing as knowing the entire reality.

All those people who see what you do not see, and do not see what you see, are doing fine.  Mind your own business and all will be well.

10. If I asked you to help me make a Star Trek Connection, would you trust me enough to do it? What about Wil Wheaton?

JL: I doubt Wil Wheaton knows who I am or "follows" me, though I follow him on Twitter.

These people are actors (or writers, directors, producers) of a commercial product.  The people are not the characters they play or create.

Study Hollywood and you will learn that actors and writers are at the bottom of the pecking order, people of no consequence.  Talent is cheap and plentiful and they are utterly replaceable from the point of view of the Industry that reaps profit from their work.

Actors and writers don't want to hear from you unless you have the power to pay them or increase their popularity.  If you do have that power, your Agent or Manager will contact their Agent or Manager.  If you attempt to contact an actor directly, you are telegraphing that you have nothing to offer them (except fannish adulation, maybe, which is often felt as intrusive or inappropriate), have no clue how the Industry works, and will never have any place in that Industry.

This relates to my answer above emphasizing Individuality - privacy vs secrecy.  Who are you?  If you're a professional in my industry and have a business proposal for me, then you know how valuable my privacy is to me, and you know how to contact me to present your proposal.  That is one of the most widespread prevailing attitudes, and it is an attitude rammed into their heads by force -- because of the impact of loss of privacy due to fame (and/or infamy).

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

How Do You Know If You've Written A Classic Part 2 - Spock's Katra by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

 How Do You Know If You've Written A Classic
Part 2
Spock's Katra
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg 

Here is Part 1 in this Series about writing a "classic."
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/02/how-do-you-know-if-youve-written.html

This Part 2 is an Interview of sorts done for an online Star Trek 'zine.  I wrote it because, on Facebook, Kirok L'stok ( his pen name), messaged me asking for a contribution to a planned e-zine to be posted here
http://tupub-books.blogspot.com.au/

The posting date for the 'zine was Sept 8, 2015.

Here's what he asked:
---------quote---------------
I write under the pen name of Kirok of L'Stok, head of publishing for TrekUnited and editor of our irregular fanzine, Personal Logs, previous issues of which can be found on our website at Tupub-books.blogspot.com.au. Our latest 'zine, 'Spock's Katra', will be a celebration of the life and influence of Leonard Nimoy as a man and Spock as a pivotal character in Star Trek. I've put out a call for new fiction and short stories and I'm going to illustrate it, in much the same way as our previous issues, with fan art.

In our mundane world, Leonard Nimoy's death means we will never see him play Spock again but, through the magic of fan fiction, Spock will never truly die. Through the work of the fans whose lives he touched, we can share a resonance of his legacy, the TV episodes and movies that captured our hearts and minds. Is it a vanity to think that our fan produced fiction could equate to the Vulcan Katra, the essence of their being that outlasts their death? Perhaps so, but it is a pleasant fantasy to think that by putting pen to paper, or more likely fingers to keyboard, we can bring Spock to life, along with McCoy and Scotty, and that the original crew of the Enterprise can continue their adventures for as long as Star Trek fans remember them.

Could I impose on you for your thoughts on what gave the character of Spock, and by extension the chemistry of Kirk, Spock and McCoy, such universal impact on fan fiction? Was it something about the characters or storylines and settings of Star Trek, did it fill a niche that was opening at the time for depth of character or perhaps address a burgeoning appetite for science fiction? Your opinion, as a professional with roots that intertwine with the very beginnings of Star Trek fan productions would be invaluable.

We would be delighted to publish anything from a paragraph box-out to an article and will send you a copy of the draft for your approval before release. If you feel that you can't help us, that's perfectly understandable and please accept my apologies for intruding on your time.
Thank you for your contributions to Star Trek fandom.

-------------end quote------------

This was sort of like the usual interview questions I get from time to time, but lots of new things had been happening, and I had come upon many new insights into the dynamics behind Star Trek's odd success.

I have been asked questions like this many times, and every time I give a different answer using the same material, laced with new and different observations.

This year's high-impact Event for me was the loss of Theodore Bikel.

I've written about him in this blog previously:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/01/career-management-for-writers-in.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/12/theme-character-integration-part-5-fame.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/02/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

I got a phone call while in the midst of writing this essay saying he had passed away.  He had been doing public appearances just a month prior.  Not only did he appear in classics.  He was a classic, all by himself.

I became a Bikel fan via his folk music recordings, had them all on vinyl, bought them again (it's a lot) on compact tape for my car, then bought them ALL OVER AGAIN on CD, and now have bought them all over yet again on MP3 for my phone.

He was also a fabulous writer.  He wrote the dust-jacket copy for his vinyls, did various articles, and I think best of all, his autobiography.
http://www.amazon.com/Theo-Autobiography-Theodore-Bikel/dp/0060190442/

He did a lot of audiobook recordings, but apparently never recorded his own autobiography.

But Theodore Bikel was primarily an actor, and his IMDB page is huge.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000942/

I even own an Amazon Prime streaming copy of one of his earliest movies, Fraulein, in which he sings a "Russian Gypsy Song" written just for him in that movie.  The following Variety Obituary notes that he's had another song written into a Broadway Play just so his character would have a song.

They had cast him in a musical as a character who didn't sing!  He was an actor's actor.

http://variety.com/2015/film/news/theodore-bikel-fiddler-on-the-roof-star-dies-at-91-1201544826/

Theodore Bikel spent a huge amount of his time touring in Fiddler On The Roof.  I saw him do it at Dinner Theater, and elsewhere, portable sets that fold up into wheeled boxes, lots and lots of vibrant energy, great singing.

Most people know him from Fiddler which is starred in on Broadway -- also The King And I -- but for me he's a folksinger who could bring all kinds of cultures to life, even if you didn't understand the language.

That's the essence of science fiction -- connecting with cultures you do not understand via art.

So it's not surprising that most Star Trek fans remember him from the film, The Enemy Below, which was the inspiration of one of the all-time favorite Star Trek Episodes, Balance of Terror, the one in which we first meet the Romulans and note the similarity to Vulcans.

So later, Theodore Bikel was cast as Worf's adopted human father, and it made such good sense!

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000942/

He passed away just as I was writing this explanation of why Spock was such a powerful Character he walked off the screen and into the real lives of countless viewers who weren't even science fiction fans (to begin with, anyway).

And you all know we lost Leonard Nimoy this year, as well.

All of this has me thinking about Classics -- what makes a classic?  How do you create a Classic?  How do you know if you've done it before you even first send it to an Agent?

And can you make any money writing Classics?  Most of the really famous writers of the far past whose works we study in school today died as paupers.  Classics generally have little value to the contemporary audience they are created for -- but they become more popular with time, and out-live their creators.

Star Trek appears to be one of those.  My question is, of course, will Sime~Gen also be one of those?

While I was thinking about this, the request for a contribution to an online fanzine issue about Spock and Leonard Nimoy came to me via Facebook from Kirok of L'Stok.  Here is what I wrote for http://tupub-books.blogspot.com.au/


----------
      When Star Trek was first aired, after Gene Roddenberry’s long struggle, and the Network demands to eliminate the female First Officer because it was not plausible that men would take orders from a woman (I kid thee not!), Spock filled two dramatic positions.

      That one Character had to represent both the Resident Geek role and the Not-One-Of-Us-But-Our-Boss role (i.e. the female role of Number One had been folded into the Spock-half-alien persona.)  Originally, Spock was demonstrably emotional but Number One (the female) was not.  That would have been an entirely different series!

      The combined Figure was given all the dimensions of a real person, a Character, by the brilliant portrayal Leonard Nimoy brought to the role.  Time will tell if he created a Role, or just a Character.

      A “Role” is a fictional figure that can be played by other actors.  King Lear is a “role.”  Actors hatch the ambition to play such a role.
      Spock is in the process of becoming a Role, though “classic trek” may be a thing of the past.

      A “Role” has a “spirit” – the writer creates the etching of a Character but the Actor gives that etching 3-D life, 3-D printing as it were.

      The Character, barely formed, dropped into American consciousness and like a spark on dry tinder, lit a fire.  Mostly it was the female viewers who ignited in discovery of new vistas.  But a lot of men saw how they could embark on a life of achievement – and just incidentally attract women of achievement.

      I was among the women who caught fire from Spock, but I was different from the average viewer.  I was a lifetime science fiction reader, at the threshold of launching a career in science fiction writing.

      I knew what I wanted to write because I knew what all the men (and a few women using male bylines) had done wrong.  I knew that if I could just do it “right” I could drop a spark into dry tinder and ignite a forest fire of ambition among my readers.

      I didn’t get the chance to do that because Gene Roddenberry did it first.

      But he was hampered by the “rules” of Network television.  Even today, rules like that constrain the creativity of TV Series producers, and there are business model reasons for that.

      But this constraint was almost immediately seen by the fans who had become ignited by Spock – and other Characters, and how they fit together into a Crew.

      Gene Roddenberry always said that Kirk, Spock and McCoy were each a fraction of his own personality.  That’s why they work as an ensemble – together they make one whole human being, but factored apart, they make comprehensibly simple what is ordinarily hidden within human complexity.

      Star Trek was, and for decades continued to be, the only science fiction on TV.  Other shows tried to repeat that ignition of fans and failed.  They had no idea why they failed.  They thought it was the science fiction that ignited the fans.  So they produced Westerns set in Space and called that science fiction, and had no clue what they’d done wrong.

      Meanwhile, the fans became a Wild Fire, spreading and spreading.  Ruth Berman and Devra Langsam, long time members of active and organized fandom (yes, fandom is not what the newspapers portray it to be), decided to go where no fan had gone before.

      Traditionally, fan publications (fanzines, magazines by and for fans who were members of organized fandom) published non-fiction about science fiction books, writers, conventions, and general activities that members of organized fandom participated in.

      Ruth and Devra each decided to create a ‘fanzine’ to contain FICTION, and articles that might have been published inside the fictional universe.  Like traditional fanzines, these publications had a Letter Column (LoC) section where fans could talk to each other about previous issues.  All on paper.

      And so the wild fire spread and spread.

      Ruth Berman’s ‘zine was T-Negative (Spock’s blood type) and Devra Langsam’s was Spockanalia – all the trivia about Spock.  They were the first ‘zines.

      Think about that.  A character in a TV Series held in vast contempt by the general public “sparked” the two first science fiction fanzines to contain fiction.

      The whole “Mary Sue” type of story originated in T-Negative which also published my Trek alternate universe, Kraith.  Spockanalia was editorially designed to stick closer to established cannon and create within Roddenberry’s own vision.

      Jean Lorrah – much later the author of sizzling hot best-seller Star Trek novels from Pocket that are still in e-book availability – co-authored a Star Trek Fan Fiction short-story that was published in Spockanalia, which is how she came to my attention.  I came to her attention when a friend of hers sent her my first published science fiction novel, House of Zeor.

      Jean went on to write the Night of the Twin Moons fanzines (about Sarek, Spock’s father) and then to write for the professionally published Star Trek novels at the same time she and I were writing and selling novels in my series, Sime~Gen.  It’s all connected.
      Here is a page describing the Trek Connection behind everything Sime~Gen:

      http://simegen.com/history/startrek.html

      That Spark that flew off the TV Screens into our living rooms and set everything aflame could well be considered “Spock’s Katra.”

      The fictional character inhabited us, and millions of other women, who created fiction by the millions of words, created conventions where the printed ‘zines could be sold to each other, created artwork, sculpture, costumes, created and created.

      That Creative Spark ignited a firestorm, and for the first time ever, caused a cancelled TV Series to be revived.  Worse, it was a much derided, disregarded, maligned, and sneered at TV Show because it was science fiction which is only for kids because they’re gullible enough to believe that non-sense.

      The question always asked is “why” did Trek ignite a firestorm because people in the biz want to duplicate that magic.

      To answer that question, I originated the project that eventually became the Bantam paperback Star Trek Lives!   One of my objectives among many was to explain to Hollywood what they had really done by putting Trek on the air, and why it worked.  Gene Roddenberry loved the Star Trek Lives! book project and wrote the introduction to it when it was finally sold.

      Long story there.

      Mostly I focused the book on The Spock Effect by detailing who the fans were and what they did under the impact of discovering the Spock Character.  That discovery was called Spock Shock, because it left people glassy-eyed.

      That “Effect” is what eventually became termed Spock’s Katra, the feeling of having Spock inside you.

      The book Star Trek Lives! was formulated and written long before the coining of the term Katra: the Soul, the Spirit, the very personal Identity that can remain as an organized entity after the body is dead.

      The “Effect” that the Character Spock had on the dry tinder of women who had never had exposure to science fiction they could personally relate to (because the only science fiction Manhattan would allow to be published was for boys, not even for men) was explosive.

      They responded to what I had seen as missing from the field of science fiction.  In a word, “Relationship.”  In a word, “Romance.”  In a word, “Intimacy.”

      So while we were researching, sending out questionnaires, collecting Star Trek fanzines (within months, there were literally hundreds of publications, once non-science fiction fans got hold of the Idea of T-Negative and Spockanalia). I was also writing the beginnings of my Sime~Gen Series.

      Let me set the record straight.  My first story sold was a Sime~Gen story, and it was sold in 1968 to Fred Pohl, who eventually bought Star Trek Lives! when he had moved from the Magazine industry to the Book Industry.

      I was a professional, selling science fiction writer before I ever wrote my first Star Trek fanzine article (for Spockanalia) or my Kraith Series for T-Negative.  Most newspaper articles about me say I “came out of” Star Trek fandom.  That’s not true.  Star Trek, Star Trek Fandom, and I all came ‘from the same place’ – the place where Gene Roddenberry acquired Spock’s Katra.

      So, after selling my first story, and launching the Star Trek Lives! project, I created a statement of what the difference is between traditional (for teen boys only) science fiction, and the unique contribution to the field of science fiction that I could bring.

      I eventually dubbed that unique contribution, Intimate Adventure.  I called it the “Lost Genre” because it is a pattern that turns up everywhere, and no publisher would group these novels together and put a genre label on them so everyone who loves Intimate Adventure could buy with confidence.

      Here is a link to two articles, one FOR THE SCIENCE FICTION READER, and one FOR THE FEMINIST READER, describing what I had noticed as missing from science fiction.  I named a lot of novels published subsequent to Star Trek’s fame that illustrate the influence Trek had in creating Intimate Adventure.

      http://www.simegen.com/jl/intimateadventure.html

      Intimacy across the human/non-human Gulf is the spark that lit the Trek conflagration.

      The Katra, later invented for Vulcan culture, depicts the ultimate Intimacy as it can be ‘carried’ by an intimate to its peaceful resting place.  What service could be more intimate or more demanding of heroics?

      The invention of the fictional concept Katra is a result of something I helped create – a “feedback loop” between fiction creator and fiction consumer.

      Historically, writers just wrote and publishers or producers just guessed what their market wanted.

      When Star Trek fandom flashed into a conflagration, these decision makers noticed, and had access to samples of what the consumer really wanted from them.

      Kraith Collected (which had 50 contributors) was seen around the Star Trek offices at Paramount, dog eared and well read.  And it wasn’t the only one.

      Today, the professional decision makers can just drop in and read any fanfic posted online.

      Sales statistics and viewer numbers are fast and accurate, via our electronic data collection – all of which technology can be traced back to men and women who were fired up by Star Trek, often by Spock and his expertise with a computer.  We’re still inventing Trek equipment – the transporter, warp drive are all being worked on.

      So the ripples of Spock’s Katra spread and changed the way the world of fiction distribution works as well as the daring-do of work-a-day scientists.

      When we were researching for Star Trek Lives! we didn’t know that was going to happen.  We just knew that Everything Had Changed.

      The change that I thought was most vital, and most important for the future of humanity thousands of years hence, was the shift in the definition of Science Fiction to include Intimate Adventure.

      Of course, when we were writing Star Trek Lives! (1970-1974) we didn’t know we’d win.  But we knew that Gene Roddenberry had given us Spock, the main tool needed to explain to women why it is that science fiction is the most important art-form ever created.

      When we meet up with real Aliens “out there somewhere” we have to establish Relationships across that conceptual Gulf.

      The Spock Character is a fictional alien.  The whole Vulcan Culture is fabricated out of Gene Roddenberry’s take on Humanism as a life philosophy.  I.D.I.C. is the Vulcan philosophy I wrote about in Spockanalia in a fictional-article titled Mr. Spock On Logic.  My explanation of “Infinite Diversity In Infinite Combinations” was not Gene Roddenberry’s (we hadn’t yet met in person).

      What I said in that article, and in the subsequently written Kraith stories was that Logic Is Beautiful, and Beauty Is Logical.

      Aesthetics and Logic are not two separate things, nor even two sides of a coin, nor even reflections of each other.  They are THE SAME THING.  Just one thing.

      When you experience Beauty, you are experiencing Logic.  When you experience Logic, you are experiencing Beauty.  They are inseparable.  That is a non-human, and very Alien concept.

      Roddenberry’s personal notion of Spock and Vulcan culture were struck me (when I found out about it during interviews) as way too mundane to be science fiction.

      That is probably the reason Star Trek, and Spock, sparked the appeal to a wider audience that science fiction generally commands.

      Roddenberry’s Vulcans just weren’t alien enough to suit me, so I created a Vulcan for Kraith that is truly Alien – non-human, defying all the imperatives of human Nature.

      http://www.simegen.com/fandom/startrek/kraith/

      I used that concept of Logic Is Beautiful as the invisible, underlying theme of Kraith.  It is one of the cornerstones of the worldbuilding (meticulous science fiction writer style worldbuilding) behind the Kraith Series.

      Simultaneously with writing the Kraith Series, I was also writing Star Trek Lives!  Well, some weeks I’d work on one, some weeks the other, but all this was interwoven into the fabric of a life raising kids and founding a career.

      The career I was founding was professional science fiction writer, and the second professional fiction project I undertook was a Sime~Gen Novel.

      Remember, I had set out to add something new and unique to the field of science fiction, but Gene Roddenberry beat me to it.

      So now my job was to explain what he’d done with Spock, and how to do it again, on purpose, so Hollywood would begin to produce lots and lots of TV Series I would love to watch.

      In order for my explanation of what GR had done to be taken as valid, I had to duplicate the Spock Effect.  I had to create a new Spock.

      I had to use my notion of Intimate Adventure, my lifelong immersion in the field of science fiction, my degree in Physical Chemistry (minor in Math), my conviction that humanity is in for huge trouble if we don’t learn how to Bond with Aliens, and prove that I understood what had happened with the Spock Character’s explosive popularity.

      I needed to write a novel with a “Spock” type character that would make Spock fans write fiction in my universe.

      But which universe? I had many possible series outlines on file.  But I had sold that one story, Operation High Time.  I knew that universe backwards and forwards, and it came to me that one of my Characters was indeed Spock.

      In the Sime~Gen Universe, Reincarnation is real.  In other words, souls are real.  So is telepathy, telekinesis, etc etc, a whole panoply of psychic abilities are real, and some of the characters have those abilities.

      The Sime~Gen timeline I had mapped out in the 1970’s already spanned thousands of years of future history.  To write the novel that would prove my theory of the Spock Effect, I just had to pick an Incarnation and a particular time in the historical development of my Sime~Gen Interstellar Civilization and write a novel about that Incarnation of this main character.

      GR sold Star Trek as “Wagon Train To the Stars” (Wagon Train was a record-setting, long-running Western TV Series), and I knew that. Fandom knew a lot that the general public and journalists didn’t.

      At the time, there was little science fiction set in the horse-and-buggy technological level of the Old West.  By running back along my timeline from the year my first sold story was set within, I found a Historically pivotal Event with plenty of conflict and Western Adventure, that involved one of the Incarnations of my Main Character’s Katra.  That Character, Rimon, Del Rimon, Klyd, Digen, Klairon is a version of Spock.

      So I wrote the novel, House of Zeor, about Klyd Farris, to prove The Spock Effect.

      The timing of publications came out just barely even, so that House of Zeor is a tiny footnote in Star Trek Lives!

      I bought a few boxes of the hardcover Doubleday edition of House of Zeor and sold them to Spock fans active in Star Trek fandom on a money-back guarantee.  I sold 60 copies to that sub-set of Trekdom on that guarantee (at the time, the price of that hardcover book was the cost of several gallons of gasoline) and never had one returned.

      During that time, all of a sudden, fans started sending me fan letters with questions about the worldbuilding behind the Sime~Gen Universe.

      I answered at length, and eventually started publishing as a kind of carbon-copy fanzine.  Very quickly, a fan stepped up to do an actual mimeo fanzine, we called Ambrov Zeor, and before I knew it we had fans writing fanfic in the Sime~Gen Universe.  At one point there were 7 Sime~Gen ‘zines – some just non-fiction, some letters only, and several with fiction, letters and articles.  The two longest running have their contents now posted online for free reading, and there’s lots of new material online, too.

      With the spontaneous generation of Sime~Gen fanfic, I had proven that Sime~Gen had the “whatever it is” that Star Trek had.
   
   That element is Spock’s Katra, the soul of Spock, the Intimate Adventure that soul pursues.

      My original definition of Intimate Adventure is that you take an Action Adventure story, and replace the “Action” (fist fights, war, combat, violence) with Intimacy, (not with sex, but with emotional honesty) and you get Intimate Adventure.

      In Intimate Adventure, the heroic courage the main character exhibits is on the field of Emotion, not the field of Combat.
      In Intimate Adventure Logic and Emotion are not walled off from each other.  Compassion is Logical.

      That first novel, House of Zeor, also had a career parallel to Star Trek’s.  It was in print continuously for 20 years (unheard of in genre fiction, but especially in science fiction which was usually in print for about six weeks).  Then House of Zeor came back into print in various forms, and now it’s in a new print edition, audiobook and e-book as well.

      But meanwhile, my second novel in the Sime~Gen Universe, about another Incarnation of that same character, several centuries later in the era of digital telephone dialing, won my first Award.

      As I was writing that novel, Unto Zeor, Forever, Jean Lorrah’s review of House of Zeor came to me on the fannish grapevine.  I wrote back to her, and she sent me a story she had written in my universe, creating a wholly new setting in a different geographical setting, with different characters.

      Meanwhile, I sent Jean the manuscript for Unto Zeor, Forever, and she sent it back with extensive rewrite notes, most of which I incorporated into the final draft.

      We printed her Sime~Gen story in the fanzine Ambrov Zeor, and she sent another.  In those days, to get a free copy of a ‘zine (sold for printing and postage only, but still very expensive) you had to contribute something, so if you wanted another writer’s sequel to their story, you had to contribute a story of your own.  So Jean did some stories about these Sime~Gen characters she had created and their Householding Keon.

      And then we met at a Star Trek Convention and she handed me the outline for a full length novel set in the Sime~Gen Universe.
      She was already a professional writer, and it showed in her work so far.  I took her outline to Doubleday, and a few months later we sold it to hardcover publication, and later mass market, and now with all the others in new paper and e-book editions.

      Her first professionally published novel is titled First Channel, and is about Spock’s Katra in the form of Rimon Farris, centuries before it was Klyd Farris in my first novel, House of Zeor.

      She wrote that story because Rimon Farris wouldn’t quit nagging her to tell the story of the First Channel, and how the reality of his life differed from the legend I had cited.

      On the strength of having a hardcover novel published, she got a full professorship.  She is an English Professor with a specialty in Chaucer and noted for identifying the Shaman Archetype.  She has identified Intimate Adventure as a Plot Archetype (like The Hero’s Journey).

      Thus started a partnership that has woven warp and woof of the Sime~Gen Universe fabric to include an Infinite Diversity In Infinite Combinations.  It’s not easy for a Chemist to collaborate with an English Professor.

      After many novels, we incorporated Sime~Gen as a separate entity and bought the simegen.com domain where we host the previous fanzine stories plus millions of words of fanfic created just for online publication, and secured copyrights and trademarks.

      After the 12th Sime~Gen novel came out, the publisher (now Wildside Press) asked for a volume of fan-written stories.

      That anthology is titled FEAR AND COURAGE, was edited by two fans, has 14 writers, and contains many stories newly written for the anthology.

      Fans have also compiled a Sime~Gen Concordance slated for publication probably end of 2016, fairly well patterned on the original Star Trek Concordance by Bjo Trimble.

      In a way, this anthology publication is comparable to the moment when Pocket Books and Paramount bought A. C. Crispin’s Yesterday’s Son – which was I believe the first time they had contracted with an unpublished writer for a Star Trek novel.

      Yesterday’s Son is about a son of Spock, and time travel.

      I know about this novel because A. C. Crispin, the author who went on to write Star Wars and other film spinoff novels, brought me the manuscript (you guessed it, at a Star Trek convention) to ask if it was good enough to sell to Pocket.

      I took it home, read it, wrote her a list of stuff she had to change to conform to the “formula” demanded by Paramount and Pocket (yes, they had a guidelines sheet they sent out to professional writers they chose, just the way Romance publishers did.  I had a copy, but there was no way she could get a copy at that time.).

      I didn’t expect to hear from her.  But she made the changes, polished up the ragged edges where the changes had to be made, and sent it back to me.  It was perfect.  I offered to agent it to Pocket. We signed a contract. I hand carried it into the office in Manhattan (I lived near), and they bought it.  It hit best seller status, and the uproar about how much better it was than the previous books set Pocket and Paramount on a new path.  People who write for the love of the material attract readers who read for the love of the material.

      As I said, Yesterday’s Son is about Spock’s son.  Do you see the connection?  Kirk is the “star” but everything that changes the real world is rooted in Spock’s Katra.

      So why is that?  What does Spock add to standard science fiction that causes the real world to erupt?

      It’s not just that he’s sexy.  Lots of characters are sexy and they don’t change the real world.

      It’s why he’s sexy that matters.  Which leads to the question of what sexuality actually is, where it comes from, and what it means for humanity.

      Science Fiction is about the effect of technology derived from basic science on people, humans and otherwise.

      Most basic science discoveries start a few decades before the discovery.  The start is always some innovation in Mathematics.  Math is a language, and you need it to describe and talk about reality.

 Once people discuss (intimately) using the newest Math to describe something, innovation happens.  Discovery happens.  Math is the key.

      It’s all very boring, abstract, logical.

      Remember the TV Series Numb3rs?

      Old fashioned science fiction from the 1930’s and 1940’s tried to keep the emotion out of the logic of Math.  That’s futile, to coin a phrase.

      What I wanted to add to science fiction as a field was the emotional dimension – the science of emotion, the logic of beauty, the “math” equivalent of the language in which to discuss emotion.

      I’ve barely scratched the surface of that project.  Here’s what I’ve got so far.
   
      Kabbalah is the math of emotion, the math of human bonding.

      I set out with my first story and first novel to depict the connection between logic and emotion, but just illustrating it in a whopping good story and leaving the reader to figure out what it all means to them, personally.

      I learned writing craft techniques as I went along selling novels and stories.  Each novel I’ve done illustrates a different craft technique.  But I knew, from my first studies of fiction, that telling a good story is what writers do.  It’s up to the reader to interpret the meaning.

      Or as Gene Roddenberry taught me, in countless hotel rooms and convention hall greenrooms where we interviewed him for Star Trek Lives!, good fiction asks questions but doesn’t give answers.

      So I didn’t set out to give answers, but to ask questions.  Fans have answered my questions by writing their stories, their original characters, into my universe.

      Here’s my biography and bibliography
      http://www.simegen.com/jl/

      Or find the novels of Jean Lorrah and me on Amazon:
      http://astore.amazon.com/simegen-20

      And here’s where I blog on writing craft, a co-blog with a number of widely published Romance writers:
      http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/

      Simultaneously with the various incarnations of Star Trek in film and TV Series, we’ve seen the rise of the field of Fantasy.

      At the same time, mathematicians and theoretical astrophysicists decided that it was so improbable that another planet existed out there somewhere with the characteristics of Earth that we may as well not bother looking.  Established science voted against the existence of exo-planets.  As usual with science, they eventually reversed that opinion.

      Also, theoretical physics pretty much nixed the idea of traveling to the stars because it would be impossible.

      Then a whole new generation grew up inspired by Trek movies and reruns.  They gathered evidence to the contrary, so that now we have orbital telescopes mapping exo-planets and galaxies moving in formations, all with new math theories sparking particle physics experiments like the Hadron Collider.  We have identified the God Particle, the Higgs Boson, and are in hot pursuit of anti-matter, (Trek’s fuel supply for starships) identifying an anti-neutron.

      First the math, then the discoveries, then the technology.  We’re on the way to the stars.

      But during those decades when science said, “Forget it,” the fiction field that burgeoned was Fantasy.

      The worldbuilding included parallel universes, alternate realities where Magic prevailed over Physics, and vast visions of demons, angels, discorporate beings, Ghosts, Vampires, Werewolves and other shapechangers, all taken from every mythology humanity has created.

      All of these genres and sub-genres have something in common.  They are written by and for people who are searching for some kind of comprehensible description of “all reality” that makes sense in their daily lives.  A Unified Field Theory of Emotion.

      Most of the stories involving demons, angels, supernatural creatures, Vampires, shapechangers are the same stories often told of First Contact with Aliens from Outer Space.

      Our interest in these other sentient species is to make friends, enemies, conquests, vassals, or trading partners.  In other words, we seek Relationships with The Other.

      The form and dynamic of that Relationship is infinite in combinations.  But in general, the readership thirsting for these stories cannot abide the concept that humans are alone in creation, as science was saying during those years.

      The more mundane stories center on the intelligence evident in other animals on this planet – dolphins, Bonobos, dogs – we see sentience everywhere.  Now that we’ve seen other planets somewhat like ours, and found life in the caldera of sub-sea volcanoes as well as under the antarctic ice, we can’t imagine that there isn’t another species out there that we can relate to, trade with, and learn from.

      We’re still trying to figure out what a human being is.

      For many of those leading the charge into this strange future, Spock was the first Alien they ever met.  And Roddenberry’s idea that Logic and Emotion are two different things often prevails because it seems so reasonable.

      Since that dichotomy between Logic and Emotion is such a widespread assumption, science fiction (or fantasy) has to explore the opposite notion, that these two things are really the same thing.

      The way fiction explores a notion is to build an entire fictional world around that notion, letting that world evolve aliens, then bringing them into conflict with humans.

      I did that to create my second award winner, Dushau, which won the Romantic Times Award, the first Romantic Times Award given for a science fiction novel.  It is about a Romance between an Alien Soul incarnated in a human body (not knowing she’s alien), and an Alien so long-lived he remembers her, but doesn’t recognize her katra until the third book in the series.

      That book would never have sold, and would never-ever have garnered the attention of Romance Readers and been voted excellent, had it not been for Star Trek, Star Trek fan fiction, and a whole new generation trying to understand human nature by looking at ourselves from the Alien viewpoint.

      All across the Romance Genre, across Westerns, across Mysteries, across International Intrigue, throughout the world of genre fiction we have evidence of how viewers’ enjoyment of Star Trek created a demand for different views of what makes Spock so fascinating.

      Or perhaps those views have the same origin as Spock, which Gene Roddenberry often said came from adventure Radio Shows of his youth.

      Here is a free ebook, very short, giving an extremely condensed history of the brand new field called variously Science Fiction Romance, Paranormal Romance, Fantasy Romance
.
      http://www.thegalaxyexpress.net/2015/06/free-ebook-brief-history-of-science.html

      Here is the booklet free on smashwords.com
      https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/548258

      It seems the idea of combining science fiction and romance genres became popularized via Star Trek fanfic.  Because the hybrid genre was based on a common experience, watching Star Trek, sharing those fanfic stories allowed people to talk to each other in a language they had in common, Trek.

      Like Math, a fictional universe is a language.  The language has to come first, then the discoveries, then the applications.

      Like Math, and computer programming, fiction has created many languages, most of which are now being used to discuss “the human condition” the Unified Field Theory of Emotion, via online fanfic where writers reincarnate TV Series Characters into various original universes of their own.

      Star Trek fanfic created text based narrative from a TV Series.  Meanwhile, Trek films were made, and as computers became more Trek-Universe-Like, Star Trek Games were created.  In fact, we now have Trek fanfic done as live-actor streaming episodes, with some participation by original Trek professionals.

      Thus the intangible spiritual energy we might term Spock’s Katra has dispersed into our real world and saturated every medium of expression, music, podcast, TV Series, DVD, film, comic, graphic novel, videogames and more media to be invented.

      And in the wake of that vibrant effect, Sime~Gen has become contracted to a videogame company now hard at work taking Sime~Gen from cold text to visual media.

      So whatever it is that sparked so much creativity via the Spock Effect is still soaking into mundane reality and changing the world.

      I have described, to the best of my current ability, how all this works, in a series of books on the Tarot from the Kabbalistic point of view.  I first encountered Tarot at a Star Trek convention, and for many years taught the subject at Trek and SF cons.

      I came to understand Tarot from the perspective of Kabbalah and the Tree of Life.  Tarot is no good for predicting “the future” but it is dynamite at worldbuilding.
      I call the series volumes on Swords and Pentacles, Tarot Just For Writers, and you can find them for Kindle, here:
      http://astore.amazon.com/simegen-20
  In the upper right, browse by category box, click Tarot.  Or the combined volume of all 5 books:
      http://www.amazon.com/Not-So-Minor-Arcana-Books-ebook/dp/B010E4WAOU/
   Free on Kindle Unlimited.

      The overall series title is The Not So Minor Arcana because it is for intermediate Tarot students who want to go beyond the Major Arcana and understand arcana such as the origin of Spock’s appeal.

      Spock’s appeal isn’t about sex, but about Soul and Relationship, about the archetype behind humanity.  In Kabbalah that’s called Adam Kadmon, the First Man, Adam who was neither male nor female before Eve was separated leaving only Adam.  This could be the origin of the concept Soul Mate, two halves of a whole.

      The science fiction romance genre is powered by the incessant search for the nature of Humanity.  That’s why Roddenberry gave up Number One, the female First Officer, to keep Spock.

      He knew the only way to get perspective on “the human condition” was to view us from outside.

      No two Star Trek fanfic writers see the same thing when looking at us from Spock’s eyes.  Each, however, adds something vital to our understanding of humanity.

      Much later, after Star Trek was an assured success, Roddenberry allowed the establishment of Spock’s Katra – delineating the dual nature of Vulcans as a non-material matrix allied to a material body.

      The Katra survives the death of the body, and seeks its rest among its ancestors, even if it must be carried in a human for a time.
      This dual nature – material and non-material – shared with Vulcans is key to understanding Spock’s immediate appeal.

      The Spock Character appealed to creative women, highly intelligent women, who were not science fiction readers because there was no science fiction for women because science was too hard for women to understand.  We all know that women can’t do science or command starships crewed by men.  But those viewers already imagined a world where they did anything and everything.  When they saw that world depicted on a TV Screen, they recognized it.  And they recognized Spock as the kind of man who would seek Intimate Adventure with them.

      Many women who had never written fiction before were compelled by this fictional character’s dual nature of body and soul to tap their own creativity.  They could envision the power of the Soul Mate, the eternal nature of identity.

      When Spock touched off their creativity, these women liked themselves better and went on being creative.  It’s the most amazing thing!  Creative men were attracted to these women, and now we have a third highly creative generation reshaping our world, proving the Higgs Boson, stalking the anti-neutron, postulating evidence for string theory and mapping the shape of the universe, maybe inventing the Sonic Screwdriver and the Light-saber.

      Watch this animation
      http://www.upworthy.com/we-already-knew-the-earth-was-not-the-center-of-the-universe-but-now-we-know-exactly-where-it-is

      My current theory, (tomorrow another theory will arise, as usual) is that what humans and aliens from outer space will have in common is that dual-nature – body and soul, body and katra.  Everything else is a wild card.

      Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations.

      We have a lot of writing to do!

      Jacqueline Lichtenberg
      http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com