Folks:
After a whirlwind WorldCon in Anaheim across the street from Disneyland, I came home to nurse the ankle I broke just before the convention (thank goodness for the scooter rental service!). 15 panels, a 3 hour workshop, and a 2 hour press interview in 4 workdays -- whew!
The panels I was on turned out to be more interesting than even I had expected (and I love doing panels). The focus of the convention was on media and SF on TV and in film. I was on a panel on British TV which is really sizzling this season with new SF/F and others on Star Trek and so on. All in all, I encountered a lot of people working in TV and film.
And though I talked a lot, I also listened a lot. "Ript from the headlines" is still a selling point in Hollywood, as is the High Concept script. Spec scripts are selling, but TV shows still rely on scripts by committee.
I mentioned this blog at several panels with full audiences and held up the flyer I'd made with our URL on it -- and was surprised how many people came up afterwards and asked for the flyer about the blog! I mean this isn't a Romance con, you know!
So I basically spent the week talking about Intimate Adventure, Alien Romance, Vampires, and blogging. I even got invited to contribute eventually to a TV series that hasn't even sold yet, and may never sell. But what I learned is that Gene Roddenberry was right to peg most of his Star Trek stories to the Viet Nam war commentaries and arguments.
Gene taught me, during various interviews we had with him for Star Trek Lives!, that his scripts aimed to ask questions not supply answers. To pose problems not sell a point of view. Good fiction, he felt, stimulates people to think and think hard about current and future events and make wise choices.
So here I am home again, and comes in the email a circulating email that is clearly supporting a particular point of view or opinion -- but consists of a list of 18 facts. All the facts seem real to me from what I know of the situation, but they are clearly selected facts. But for me, this bald list of facts raises a host of questions -- some of which would make dynamite Alien Romance novels -- maybe a script!
I want to offer those 18 highly selected facts and my own comments here but most of you won't want to read through it, so I'm going to post this for the blog, then post the list of facts and my thoughts on what writers might do with that list in comments to my own blog post. There is some incredible fictional material buried in these questions.
The subject matter is ostensibly the Middle East problem -- but as an SF writer, I read it as an interstellar problem, or a time-travel story with a stormy romance in the making. What's more stormy than religion, politics and romance all mixed? It's not so important whether a fact is true or not, but in how you choose your facts and which ones you conveniently leave out.
So this is a writing lesson in point of view designed for explosiveness. I was told at WorldCon repeatedly that explosions sell films even if they're not physical explosions.
Click right below here where it says COMMENTS to see the rest of this post.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/
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voHere's the list of 18 facts that caught me by the creative nerve:
ReplyDeleteISRAEL AND JERUSALEM FACTS
1. ISRAEL BECAME A STATE IN 1312 B.C., TWO MILLENNIA BEFORE ISLAM;
2. ARAB REFUGEES FROM ISRAEL BEGAN CALLING THEMSELVES "PALESTINIANS" IN 1967, TWO DECADES AFTER (MODERN) ISRAELI STATEHOOD;
3. AFTER CONQUERING THE LAND IN 1272 B.C., JEWS RULED IT FOR A THOUSAND YEARS AND MAINTAINED A CONTINUOUS PRESENCE THERE FOR 3,300 YEARS;
4. THE ONLY ARAB RULE FOLLOWING CONQUEST IN 633 B.C. LASTED JUST 22 YEARS;
5. FOR OVER 3,300 YEARS, JERUSALEM WAS THE JEWISH CAPITAL. IT WAS NEVER THE CAPITAL OF ANY ARAB OR MUSLIM ENTITY. EVEN UNDER JORDANIAN RULE, (EAST) JERUSALEM WAS NOT MADE THE CAPITAL, AND NO ARAB LEADER CAME TO VISIT IT;
6. JERUSALEM IS MENTIONED OVER 700 TIMES IN THE BIBLE, BUT NOT ONCE IS IT MENTIONED IN THE QUR'AN;
7. KING DAVID FOUNDED JERUSALEM; MOHAMMED NEVER SET FOOT IN IT;
8. JEWS PRAY FACING JERUSALEM; MUSLIMS FACE MECCA. IF THEY ARE BETWEEN THE TWO CITIES, MUSLIMS PRAY FACING MECCA, WITH THEIR BACKS TO JERUSALEM;
9. IN 1948, ARAB LEADERS URGED THEIR PEOPLE TO LEAVE, PROMISING TO CLEANSE THE LAND OF JEWISH PRESENCE. 68% OF THEM FLED WITHOUT EVER SETTING EYES ON AN ISRAELI SOLDIER;
10. VIRTUALLY THE ENTIRE JEWISH POPULATION OF MUSLIM COUNTRIES HAD TO FLEE AS THE RESULT OF VIOLENCE AND POGROMS;
11. SOME 630,000 ARABS LEFT ISRAEL IN 1948, WHILE CLOSE TO A MILLION JEWS WERE FORCED TO LEAVE THE MUSLIM COUNTRIES;
12. IN SPITE OF THE VAST TERRITORIES AT THEIR DISPOSAL, ARAB REFUGESS WERE DELIBERATELY PREVENTED FROM ASSIMILATING INTO THEIR HOST COUNTRIES. OF 100 MILLION REFUGEES FOLLOWING WORLD WAR 2, THEY ARE THE ONLY GROUP TO HAVE NEVER INTEGRATED WITH THEIR CORELIGIONISTS. MOST OF THE JEWISH REFUGEES FROM EUROPE AND ARAB LANDS WERE SETTLED IN ISRAEL, A COUNTRY NO LARGER THAN NEW JERSEY;
13. THERE ARE 22 MUSLIM COUNTRIES, NOT COUNTING PALESTINE. THERE IS ONLY ONE JEWISH STATE. ARABS STARTED ALL FIVE WARS AGAINST ISRAEL, AND LOST EVERY ONE OF THEM;
14. FATAH AND HAMAS CONSTITUTIONS STILL CALL FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF ISRAEL. ISRAEL CEDED MOST OF THE WEST BANK AND ALL OF GAZA TO THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY, AND EVEN PROVIDED IT WITH ARMS;
15. DURING THE JORDANIAN OCCUPATION, JEWISH HOLY SITES WERE VANDALIZED AND WERE OFF LIMITS TO JEWS. UNDER ISRAELI RULE, ALL MUSLIM AND CHRISTIAN HOLY SITES ARE ACCESSIBLE TO ALL FAITHS;
16. OUT OF 175 UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTIONS UP TO 1990, 97 WERE AGAINST ISRAEL; OUT OF 690 GENERAL ASSEMBLY RESOLUTIONS, 429 WERE AGAINST ISRAEL;
18. THE U.N. WAS SILENT WHEN THE JORDANIANS DESTROYED 58 SYNAGOGUES IN THE OLD CITY OF JERUSALEM. IT REMAINED SILENT WHILE JORDAN SYSTEMATICALLY DESECRATED THE ANCIENT JEWISH CEMETERY ON THE MOUNT OF OLIVES, AND IT REMAINED SILENT WHEN JORDAN ENFORCED APARTHEID LAWS PREVENTING JEWS FROM ACCESSING THE TEMPLE MOUNT AND WESTERN WALL.
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Now here is my discussion.
ReplyDeleteFirst let me note that 18 is the numerological equivalent of LIFE. The Hebrew word for LIFE has letters whose numerical value is 18. In Hebrew, every letter is a number, so every number ties apparently unrelated words and concepts together.
Every Hebrew word whose letters add up to 18 is related to the concept LIFE. This is a thinking style that generates endless and artistically satisfying story ideas.
My real burning question is what facts would the opposing point of view toss into this mix to derail the forceful argument by facts.
Next let's notice the first 5 facts above. See how they are strung together to lead your thoughts in a certain direction, but there is a glaring omission. Look again and see if you can find the omission.
The omission is what would be called in geometry an axiom -- an assumption you don't have to prove to produce airtight logic.
That axiom is that the FIRST people to inhabit a land own it and have rights to it that supercede all subsequent inhabitant's rights.
American law uses that principle in passing the TITLE to a piece of property from owner to owner -- we start by ignoring the fact that Native Americans claimed the land before we did.
Then the Federal Government takes title by right of conquest. Then the Federal Government opens a parcel to HOMESTEADERS (who have to fight off the wild Indians). (We won't discuss Manhattan which we bought outright from a people who didn't understand the concept of land ownership).
Once a person establishes title to a parcel via homesteading (i.e. installing improvements such as a house and making a living off the land like farming or running cattle for a certain number of years, and fencing the land's perimerter) that person can then sell that land to another and transfer the title.
After a title transfer, the previous owner no longer has any rights to the land -- the new owner has all rights. But that only works if the previous owner transferred the title and all rights (like mineral rights) legally to the next owner in an unbroken chain back to the homesteader or original purchaser from the government. Hence today we have "Title Insurance" and companies make fortunes on that.
So this question occurs to me -- this is how we do it today but what is the correct way to establish ownership of land?
What exactly is LAND? How does it relate to PEOPLE (human or otherwise?) (Think alien planets.) Is an asteroid "land?" What if its orbit is changed, is it the same land? What about a space station? Do you have to buy orbital parking rights?
You can't find any square inch of the Earth's bare surface that hasn't been inhabited by people since people weren't even quite homo sapiens.
Our seas are another matter and I'm not sure about dolphins and whales and territory ownership. Add in wet-lands and it's a real problem.
Abandonment of land could be construed as giving up title, so extinct people have no claim on land. If they're extinct - well they had no descendents to claim the title.
But we're tracing humanity's family tree link by link deeper and deeper into the past. With DNA we may discover descendents and connections we never knew could exist and claims might emerge.
So who really OWNS the land?
Is ownership established by conquest by arms? Do the displaced have a claim on the land or on compensation?
I see a relationship between "LAND" and "sex" if not quite "ROMANCE". There is a primal male instinct to "own" a woman -- and the lust for land ownership has to be related to procreation (land to grow or hunt food) and potential immortality. So there is a huge, deep pool of Alien Romance ideas buried in this whole dry, abstract study.
To spice it up, add religion.
If you recall, the Jews of ancient times displaced the current dwellers in the Land of Israel (which is a whole lot bigger than the modern State of Israel) in a brutal war, under command of God. One could argue that war was completely unfair since the inhabitants of the land had no chance whatever against God.
Does divine mandate establish ownership forever? Does it abolish prior claims?
Does all the land belong to God and is it His/Her right to give the title to humans? (people who don't even think God exists might have a problem with that reasoning.)
Now, if we believe that God does own all land, what happens when we go adventuring off into space and "discover" a planet???? Does God own that too? Our God that is. hmmm.
A) if the planet has inhabitants we deem "people" -- what might they think of our idea of land ownership principles and our sex-based drive toward ownership of land? Could we even explain that principle to them?
B) if a planet has no indiginous "people" -- suppose we just grab it and then some "people" from somewhere else arrive and displace us by force of arms? Or psychic force? Or command of God. Or simply ignore our (possibly absurd) concept that land can be owned by the people living on it.
How can we explain ourselves? What is the real principle behind this whole Middle East dispute over whether Israel should (or can) exist or not? Has it anything to do with land and ownership? If not, then why those first 5 facts above?
People have been struggling to resolve this Israel question for well over 50 years now with literally no results. Now Iran is hosting an international conference on whether the Holocaust is just a myth perpetrated to justify the creation of the State of Israel. If the holocaust didn't actually happen, then Israel has no right to exist -- or so they appear to be reasoning.
Even if the holocaust did happen -- does that justify the re-assignment of the ownership of Land?
Maybe they're all asking the wrong question. Maybe we can't resolve this because our reasoning is based on a set of facts which are true -- but incomplete -- and a set of axioms that ought to be handled as postulates and proven by rigorous reasoning?
Who has the primary claim on LAND -- or is it even possible for human beings to make such a claim? Many Native American tribes found this concept inconceivable, just as the European concept of time and work and punctuality were just plain nonsense to them because of how they conceptualize time and even life.
Where does the claim on LAND come from? God never told Europeans to kick the Native Americans out and live here. Likewise in Australia -- even South Africa.
Take two lovers -- a human from an empty planet settled by humans and a non-human arriving with a contingent of non-humans who've decided to strip-mine the settled planet.
Now how can the human explain the human objection to having their farms ripped to shreds by the strip-miners?
Look at those first 5 facts above and explain the reasoning behind them to this non-human without destroying the romance that's developed between them.
This post is way too long. I'll try to contain myself next time. But right now I'm reading a Medieval Romance time-travel novel and this set of facts set me off like a skyrocket from Disneyland's evening display!
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/
Jacqueline,
ReplyDeleteThis is immensely interesting.
For an alien romance, I think I'd use territory instead of land, because territory could apply to airspace, (a concept I've written about in one of my alien djinn romances).
My tyrant Tarrant-Arragon owns a lot of tribute-paying worlds, or else the "space" above and around them.
The other day, I overheard a woman from another culture explain that she could never use a tampon because the applicable part of her body where a tampon would go belongs to her husband, and he doesn't want anything at all in there other than what he puts in.
I'm sure someone wrote a fascinating book about the politics of sex... I just can't recall the title.
Best wishes,
Rowena Cherry