Pregnancy Alternatives

On this season of one of my favorite TV shows, CALL THE MIDWIFE, a recently married character just suffered a miscarriage. This episode and the overall premise of the series reminded me of the ways some animals seem to have an easier time with reproduction than we do. Suppose women could resorb embryos to terminate an early pregnancy, like rats and rabbits, but consciously and at will? Or wouldn't it be more convenient if we were marsupials? Imagine giving birth painlessly to tiny, underdeveloped offspring and completing gestation in a pouch, which doubles as a cradle and food source for the growing infant. Moreover, performing mundane tasks and working at a career would be facilitated by the ability to carry babies around with us, hands-free, twenty-four-seven.

Better yet, wouldn't it be nice if fathers shared the burdens of gestation? Seahorses, of course, fertilize their mates' eggs in a pouch on the male's body where the eggs are sheltered until they hatch. TV Tropes has a page about this phenomenon in various media:

Mister Seahorse

Remember the TV series ALIEN NATION? The Tenctonese (who have three sexes, female and two types of males, but that's a different topic) transfer the pod holding the fetus from mother to father partway through gestation. The father undergoes all the typical experiences of pregnancy, including birth. If human beings had evolved this system, imagine the radical differences that might have historically existed in women's political rights and career opportunities.

Laying eggs like Dejah Thoris (John Carter's wife in Edgar Rice Burroughs's Mars series) would be a less attractive alternative. Even with high-tech incubators, parental care after hatching would be intensive and prolonged. The babies would be small and helpless, probably more so than real-life human newborns because of the limitations of an egg rather than a womb. The only advantage of oviparous over viviparous reproduction would be that both parents could share the work equally.

How about artificial wombs? In my opinion, they're never likely to become universal and replace natural reproduction as in BRAVE NEW WORLD, in the absence of some catastrophic fertility crisis. As long as the natural method remains viable, the expense and technical complications of in vitro gestation would surely far outweigh the potential convenience, except maybe for the very wealthy. Robert Heinlein's PODKAYNE OF MARS includes a less drastic technological modification of the human reproductive cycle. Some couples (those who can afford the cost, I assume) choose to go through pregnancy and birth at the optimal physiological age for healthy reproduction but bring up the children at the optimal economic stage of the parents' life. They achieve this goal by having newborn infants placed into cryogenic suspended animation until parental career and income factors reach the desired point.

Would I want to have done this, if possible? I'm not sure. Getting through college and graduate school would have been easier without babies and toddlers. On the other hand, young parents probably have more energy for chasing after kids than they would in their thirties or forties, and there's something to be said for "growing up with" one's children. Having given birth four times over the span from age nineteen to age thirty-four, I've experienced both ends of that range.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Pregnant Males

Do you follow THE ORVILLE? This TV series begins as an affectionate parody of STAR TREK (even the uniforms look similar) but—as far as I can tell from reading about it and watching the first few episodes—gradually becomes more serious. One alien officer, who lives on board with his mate, belongs to an all-male species. In the second episode, he lays an egg, which hatches in the third episode. I'm not sure why he refuses to take a break from brooding the egg; doesn't his mate help? And what about an artificial incubator? Anyway, the baby turns out to be female, a rare abnormality in this species, for which the standard remedy is an immediate sex-change operation. The serious ramifications of this problem mesh incongruously with the premise of an all-male, oviparous species, which the writers apparently introduced in accordance with what the TV Tropes site calls "the Rule of Funny." In fact, an all-male species that reproduces by itself couldn't exist. The sex that produces ova is, by definition, female. To lay eggs, people of the species portrayed in THE ORVILLE would have to be either female (reproducing by parthenogenesis) or hermaphroditic. Members of an all-male species would have to breed with females of some closely related species (as some all-female types of fish can be fertilized by males of different but not too dissimilar species).

The vintage sitcom MORK AND MINDY gets away with the pregnant alien male motif by presenting it in a funny context with no attempt at a biological rationale. Mork not only becomes pregnant, he gives birth to a "baby" who looks like an old man and, conforming to the life cycle of Mork's species, ages backward.

Octavia Butler described her classic work "Bloodchild" as her "pregnant man story." Technically, the human men don't get pregnant, though. They serve as hosts for the eggs of the centipede-like aliens who've allowed the Terran colonists to settle on their planet. When the larvae hatch, the mother removes them from the host's body before they start to eat their way out—usually.

The TV program ALIEN NATION offers a serious portrayal of how a seahorse-like humanoid male pregnancy could work. The Newcomer aliens have three sexes, including a variant type of male who penetrates the female to catalyze her fertility in some unspecified process before the father inseminates her in the "usual" way. The embryo begins to develop in the female's uterus. Part-way through the pregnancy, the fetus is transferred (in a pool of water) from the female to the male, where it grows in a pouch on the man's abdomen. The baby comes out when the pouch splits open in the course of labor.

Here's a page of speculation about how a single-sex species (female) could work in terms of Earth biology:

Single-Sex Species

In Joanna Russ's classic story "When It Changed," members of the all-female population reproduce by combining ova from two different women.

In isogamy, displayed by some life-forms such as algae and fungi, all gametes have the same size and morphology and so can be considered of the "same sex," which can't technically be labeled either male or female:

Isogamy

Some Earth organisms switch reproductive methods in alternate generations between sexual and asexual reproduction (e.g., budding).

The heroine of Megan Lindholm's CLOVEN HOOVES falls in love with a satyr she thinks of as Pan. This highly unusual novel starts out as, apparently, fantasy, in which at first we can't even be sure the paranormal encounters are happening outside the heroine's mind. Eventually, however, the story becomes SF, when the satyr reveals that he belongs to an all-male species whose members reproduce by implanting clones of themselves into human women through sexual intercourse. Thus, when the heroine gives birth to her satyr baby son, he isn't biologically related to her at all.

The occasional birth of females among the alien race on THE ORVILLE suggests a possibility for the evolution of their alleged all-male species. Maybe they once reproduced alternately sexually (through ordinary mating between male and female) and asexually (by cloning). Maybe some genetic disorder caused the conception of females to cease except in rare cases. Asexual reproduction became the only remaining viable means of perpetuating the species and came to be considered the only normal way. So when the male character in that series lays an egg, he's producing a clone of himself.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Thought Floating on Different Blood

I've been rereading a couple of Mercedes Lackey's Elemental Masters novels. Magicians in this series work with one of the classic four elements (air, water, earth, fire). People with those powers can see and talk with elemental creatures (sylphs, salamanders, gnomes, fauns, and many others) invisible to non-magicians. Many elemental entities have human-level intelligence; some are more intelligent and powerful than human mages. Elemental magicians, able to communicate with nonhuman creatures, must surely have a different view of the world from us ordinary mortals. People in ancient times believed in a host of intelligent beings who populated the natural realm, such as nymphs, satyrs, dryads, minor gods of rivers and mountains, dwarfs, faerie folk, trolls, etc. I suspect, however, that few ordinary people ever expected to meet one of those creatures. How different our world would be if such entities existed openly, where any of us (not just magicians) might encounter them in our daily lives.

In C. S. Lewis's PERELANDRA, the protagonist, Professor Ransom, travels to Perelandra (Venus), where he finds three intelligent species (not counting the life-form of pure spirit who rules the planet). One of his Perelandran acquaintances expresses surprise upon learning that Earth's ecosystem has only one sapient species. How can we fully understand ourselves, he wonders, if we can't compare our thoughts to "thought that floats on a different blood"? How would our view of our own species and the world we inhabit change if we weren't alone on our planet?

Although I've often wondered about a hypothetical alternate history in which other human species or subspecies, such as Neanderthals and the "hobbits," had survived to the present day, I sadly suspect that the prevailing attitude toward other races wouldn't be very different. Neanderthals and other hominids, and maybe Yeti if they existed, would look too human. They might well get treated as inferior beings, similar to the way Europeans historically treated other races, only worse, because some anthropologists might classify such hominids as "animals"—a bridge between Homo sapiens and lower species, intelligent enough to be useful but inhuman-looking enough to justify enslaving them.

Demonstrably sapient but clearly nonhuman creatures, on the other hand, would probably evoke a different response. What if we shared Earth with centaurs, merfolk, or intelligent dragons? Or the semi-civilized talking animals of Narnia? Tolkien (in his essay on fairy tales) says animal fantasies satisfy the perennial human yearning to reestablish communication with the natural world from which we've been cut off. Would a common experience of living alongside other sapient species—or extraterrestrial visitors—make human racial differences seem insignificant, as STAR TREK optimistically postulates?

The TV series ALIEN NATION explored this question in thoughtful detail. It portrayed human-on-alien prejudice and hatred, human-alien friendships and love affairs, and the mind-expanding experience of exposure to another species' view of the universe. This series about a shipload of extraterrestrial refugees settling in California, all of whose broadcast seasons and follow-up TV movies are available in DVD format, deserves multiple viewings. Also, a number of tie-in novels were published, most of which I thought were quite good. If nothing else, the fact that the Newcomers have three sexes would give them a different outlook on life from ours. The body and the senses inevitably shape the mind's perceptions of reality. An intriguing spec-fic example of "thought that floats on a different blood."

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Depiction Part 24 - Depicting A Villain by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Depiction

Part 24

Depicting A Villain

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg 

Here we come to the main question a writer must answer if weaving a conflict between Hero and Villain: Why Does The Villain Want To Rule Forever?

Here is the index to the previous parts in the Depiction Series:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/index-to-depiction-series-by-jacqueline.html

By "depicting," I mean show don't tell -- create a visible consequence of what you want to say, instead of saying it.

Saying what you want to say is "telling" not "showing."  In screenwriting, that is called "on the nose" -- dialogue that is the author speaking to the viewer, not one character speaking to another.

Here is the index to Dialogue:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/10/dialogue-parts-1-4-listed.html

One reason we gravitate to Romance, go away and come back over and over, is that the two main characters are not "Hero" vs. "Villain."

The two main characters are both Hero Quality Material -- great novels start before the Hero Quality in either is fully in charge of their decision-making.

TV Fiction is gravitating toward the Ensemble Cast -- a rag-tag group of Hero and/or Apprentice Hero Characters striving to overcome impossible odds to achieve a worthwhile goal.

Star Trek: The Original Series (ST:ToS) did this using mostly the Kirk-Spock-McCoy triad, which Roddenberry told us ( in the many interviews we did with him to excerpt for the Bantam Paperback STAR TREK LIVES! ) that Kirk, Spock, and McCoy were three parts of his own personality.  This is actually a well known secret of fiction-writing, dating probably way back before the Ancient Greek plays.

It is how you "tell the story" -- "tell" being the operative word. A writer "tells" a story.  That is what it feels like while writing words, one after another.  When you get stuck, you ask yourself, "What Will The Other Characters Do?" and you don the role of that Character.  As all good Character Actors will explain, to don a role you must reach inside yourself for that trait, pair away all the rest of the real you, and bring that single aspect up to the surface where the audience can see it and recognize it.

That is the secret to "targeting a readership," -- find a fragment of a real person and depict that single trait so that a lot of people can understand it and find within themselves the laudable or reprehensible trait which is dominating the Character's decision making.

Here is the Index Post to the series on Targeting a Readership"

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/10/index-to-targeting-readership-series-by.html

Screenwriting manuals give a formula for creating Characters -- identify 3 Traits, specify them and then write that character ALWAYS showing one or two or all three of those traits.

When done mechanically, just following the formula, the procedure produces "cardboard  Characters" viewers do not believe.

This happens more in movies and TV Series than in novels -- which is why some people prefer reading novels to watching TV.

A good case in point is the TV Series, The Librarians,

which is a blatant copy of the TV Series Warehouse 13.

https://www.amazon.com/Warehouse-Pilot/dp/B002GJRP6A/

https://www.amazon.com/Librarians-Season-01-Matt-Frewer/dp/B01L00HWN6/

The Librarians is a TNT TV Series:
http://www.tntdrama.com/shows/the-librarians.html?sr=the%20librarians

Returning to the universe of TNT's hit movie franchise, The Librarian, this new series centers on an ancient organization hidden beneath the Metropolitan Public Library dedicated to protecting an unknowing world from the secret, magical reality hidden all around. This group solves impossible mysteries, fights supernatural threats and MORE...

In Season 3 - Episode 1 - The Librarians And the Rise of Chaos -
http://www.tv.com/shows/the-librarians-2015/and-the-rise-of-chaos-3425989/
we get that wondrous line from the Villain -- " ... and rule forever."

This is delivered (rather well, considering how corny it is) as "on the nose dialogue."

This is what this Villain (adversary, opponent, nemesis ... ) aims to achieve.  It is the statement of the goal.  By that choice of goal, the viewer can instantly identify the Villain as a really Bad Guy (especially because he has enough magical power to make it happen!)

The Librarians is designed to be comedic -- like Warehouse 13, it is very broad comedy, somewhat akin to the TV Classic My Favorite Martian -- which was the only real science fiction on TV for years.

http://www.tv.com/shows/my-favorite-martian/

And from TV.Com --
CATEGORIES
Comedy, Fantasy, Science Fiction
THEMES
witty remarks, planetary explorers, secrets and lies, space travel, outrageous situations

My Favorite Martian is actually a SitCom with Science Fiction elements (but in those days it was considered Fantasy).

In both cases, we have the adversary of the week -- and the team (the Martian and his host human on Earth) unites to defend -- the Guest Martian or The Library.)

From TV.Com
My Favorite Martian first aired in September of 1963 on CBS and was probably one of the first sitcoms with a "bizarre" or fantasy premise to emerge in the early to mid 1960's. It joined the ranks with Mister Ed which began in 1961.

Star Trek: ToS began in 1966.

My Favorite Martian paved the way for Star Trek - and all the Science Fiction Romance that has come out of the fanfic.

The Librarians is ensemble cast, like Star Trek - but has a "story-arc" like Babylon 5.  Star Trek was an "anthology" show - designed to be viewed in any order, with the adversary of the week (usually not very villainous).

So My Favorite Martian and Star Trek were stories about "How To Make Friends With Adversaries - who are quite Alien."  They begin the continuum which has resulted in Science Fiction Romance about "How To Marry An Alien."

One of my all time favorite novel series about marrying an alien (even having the Alien's kids!) is Gini Koch's Alien Series.  The 2016 entry in that series is Alien Nation (yes, the author knows all about the TV Series by that name.)

Gini Koch depicts her Hero, Kitty Kat, a woman with fiery determination to make things right, as having a knack for converting enemies into friends or at least allies against the monsters trying to kill everyone.

In Alien Nation, Kitty manages to convert some of the most voracious monsters into friends.  It sounds ridiculous -- but Gini Koch makes you believe every word.  The secret is in how she depicts what is going on inside Kitty Kat's head -- this great Hero that everyone trusts to avert disaster has no idea what she's doing, and no plan that she knows of.  She has a few clues from a super-being (not a god, but a Being who understands the universe as the creation of God), but Kitty Kat has to figure things out and take chances on the fly.

When things work out well, you believe it could actually happen that way, and it is not just that Kitty is married to an Alien and has acquired "powers" while having his children.

Gini Koch's novel series is not comedy -- it reads more like a well played video-game, with comedic moments, absurdities turned to opportunities, and drama writ large.  The target audience is familiar with Star Trek -- maybe not with My Favorite Martian -- and games.

In the 1960's, we were just beginning to launch orbital vehicles and dreaming of real space travel -- wondering if our ships would bring back Alien Diseases we could not contain.  We were focused on finding Alien Life Out There.

Hundreds if not thousands of novels and short stories had been published about First Contact. The film, The Day The Earth Stood Still, is classic because it addressed all those issues.

Here is the 1951 Classic:
https://www.amazon.com/Day-Earth-Stood-Still/dp/B000UL5YW8/

And here is the 2008 remake:
https://www.amazon.com/Day-Earth-Stood-Still/dp/B001THAS5K/

Again, the 1951 film focuses on how the fearsome, formidable, monstrous Alien is actually a nice guy having a hard day at work.

As with the 1984 classic film, Starman,
https://www.amazon.com/Starman-Karen-Allen/dp/B004ZCM2Q4/
we end up wanting to leave Earth with the Alien -- absolutely smitten with this valiant figure and torn up inside to lose him.

Much of the most famous science fiction of those decades depicts the Alien as a potential friend, lover, ally, advocate, even though the Alien may start out at odds with Earth, or perhaps Earth authorities order an all-out attack on the Alien.

The consensus seems to be that Aliens are not necessarily Villains.

Just like humans, Aliens have a variety of potentials within them.  Some are friends, some are stupid, some are silly, some are immature, some are powerful but inept, some are misinformed - the list goes on.

These very humanistic aliens were the most popular during those early decades.

Then came the pronouncement from unimpeachable experts that there just weren't going to be ANY planets around other stars "out there."  The solar system we are in is unique, and just is not going to have anything like a duplicate anywhere -- probabilities are absolutely against the idea of Alien Life Like Us.

The academic power behind this pronouncement, fraught with every mathematical proof you could name, believed and espoused by the Einsteins of the era, drained most of the funding from NASA, and nearly killed off the space program.

Along with it, went Star Trek and most of the Science Fiction Romance you might see made for large audiences (such as film, or TV).

Then funding was squeezed out for orbital telescopes, and other instrument packages to explore our solar system.  Meanwhile, physics and math marched on.  It takes a lot of very fancy math to slice and dice the information garnered by our orbital instruments, and even our mountain-top instruments.  It takes a lot of computing power to understand that data -- computing power we didn't have in the 1960's.

So recently, the unimpeachable experts are pointing at actual planets around stars so distant it makes no sense to quote distances in miles.

We have a whole new generation of unimpeachable experts publishing in peer reviewed journals, as prestigious as the ones that declared how improbable an Alien Civilization Out There was.  Now, the calculations are trending toward the inevitability of there having been Aliens somewhere.

Of course, we are looking at data that is millions of years old.  Light travels way too slowly for us to have any idea what is actually happening "now" (the very definition of "now" and "time" is changing as we figure out what gravity is.)

So, once again, films and TV depict interstellar civilizations -- but this time, the Aliens are not so friendly.  War is more fun, so we have Star Wars continuing.  And Star Trek has become more about War than Exploration of the Unknown.

But while Science Fiction's depiction of interstellar civilizations was relegated to the absurd, another branch of the Science Fiction genre called Adult Fantasy (Fantasy that is not morality plays for children) has formed and taken off.

Early among the Adult Fantasy entries was Katherine Kurtz's Deryni Series
https://www.amazon.com/Deryni-Rising-Chronicles-Katherine-Kurtz/dp/044101660X/

Reprinted many times over the decades, this series depicts an alternate universe -- set around our year 900 AD -- and involving Royalty.  Every book in this series is about "who shall be King" -- it is about who shall "rule."  One faction vying for rulership is purely human (with all the villainy that goes with human mindset), and the main opposing faction is Deryni, basically human but with "powers."

The worldbuilding behind the Deryni universe includes the existence of "gods" and "demons" and forces and powers both Dark and Light (as in Star Wars).  In the Deryni Universe, there is also competition between Deryni and humans for control of "The Church" -- which is pretty much depicted as if it is Christianity.

The humans are convinced Deryni and their "powers" (of telepathy, fireball throwing, teleportation, etc) are of the Devil.  Deryni understand their powers as being simply Power -- like any capability -- and the "Light" side of their force comes from the God worshiped by the humans in the Church.

So the whole "who shall be King" plot line is driven by the argument over the truth of Religion.

I do highly recommend this series -- it does have some hot Romance laced through it, but like any story of hereditary Aristocracy, pivots on arranged marriage.

This series was one of the earliest in the Adult Fantasy market and helped shape that market, define the sub-genre.

Later, whole series arose depicting Power without God, and God or gods without humans with Power.  For the most part, "The Church" as a governing body and institution commanding the culture was deleted from Adult Fantasy.  Aristocracy, Dukes, Kings and their necessary wars persisted, but the power of God was left out.

That deletion of God from fiction parallels the rise of the atheist movement in today's world.

People want fiction that seems realistic -- and the real world was systematically rejecting the concept of Religion (even though God persisted, the institutions designed to serve God's purposes became despised for hypocrisy and lack of tolerance and diversity).

Political Power became the sole bone of contention in the plots, even when magical power was "real" in the fictional world, and the special people who could wield magic were organized (Hedge Witches or as in Babylon 5, a Guild).

For a long time, ESP (telepathy, telekinesis) was accepted as a science fiction element while "magic" involving summoning demons or angels or praying for acts of God was relegated to Fantasy.

Most recently, though, the Fantasy Genre has emerged as the flip side of the Aliens of the 1950's and 1960's (The Day the Earth Stood Still, My Favorite Martian).  After a couple of decades of mixing and blending ESP and Magic, reinventing the premises behind why they work and who can work them, the Fantasy Genre has focused on angels, demons, djinn, sprites, brownies, fairies, vampires, were-creatures, shapeshifters, zombies, ghouls, all the mythical Supernatural creatures and peoples, to tell exactly the same stories we saw about Aliens From Outer Space.

In modern Fantasy, the Mythical Creatures perform the same role and function as the Aliens did in early Science Fiction -- friend or enemy, opposition, voracious attacker bent on stripping Earth of all its wealth, eating humans, or whatever their objective.

Some of these Mythical Creature adversaries want to "escape" from some other dimension, penetrate the barrier between dimensions, and "rule the earth."

Those are the Villain Aliens.

The friendly Aliens become allies using their power and knowledge to help the human hero vanquish the Evil Supernaturals.

In the 1950's and 1960's, Aliens from Outer Space were either bent on "ruling" Earth or were potential friends.  Potential friends were the most popular.  Gradually, the assumption that anything Alien out there just had to be Bad Guys - so Potential Rulers became the most popular.

Today, some Mythical Supernatural People are potentially friendly, but the prevailing assumption seems to be that Supernatural Creatures are bent on ruling Earth, and therefore any Supernatural that intrudes must be destroyed before it can "take over."

Remember when the Vampire Romance shot to the best sellar lists in mass market paperback?  That sub-genre grabbed enough market share to get spine-labels and logos so you could find them on the bookstore shelves.  It took a while for writers to gear up to produce a lot of Vampire Romance -- and meanwhile, the readership lost its taste for "The Vampire As Good Guy" novel.

As manuscripts flooded into publishers, publishers reduced the number of slots for Vampire Romance.  As the e-book market began to form, many of those unsold manuscripts went to e-book, but the sub-genre disappeared from mass market shelves.

Hot-steamy Vampire Romance still thrives in e-book, with every type of Vampire being the  Hero, and writers inventing new types.

Blending the Supernatural with the Scientific Alien, I did a Vampire-Alien-From-Outer-Space Romance in my St. Martin's hardcover release, Those of My Blood, which has had many reprints.

https://www.amazon.com/Those-My-Blood-Tales-Luren-ebook/dp/B00A7WQUIW/

So, among Aliens From Outer Space, and among Supernatural Aliens From Another Dimension, we find those who want to "rule forever" and we label those with the ambition to Rule as villains.

The blackest of bad guys are always bent on "ruling."

Those with "Powers" want to "be King."  We always create genres around Villains, Bad Guys, Malevolent Forces, Evil Masterminds that want to RULE as the Supernatural creature in Season 3 - Episode 1 - The Librarians And the Rise of Chaos -
http://www.tv.com/shows/the-librarians-2015/and-the-rise-of-chaos-3425989/.

Those who are driven "to rule" are Evil.  That's how you identify Evil - it is determined to "take over" and to "rule."

Good stories are about opposing Evil and thwarting its Rule.

Why is that?  Why do we depict Villains as wanting to Rule?

Why do we know that the Character who wants to Rule Forever is the Villain, the Evil that must be stopped at all costs?

If the Villain does not tell us, "...and I will rule, forever!" how do we figure out that this Character is the Villain?

There are thousands of right answers to that question.  To do Fantasy worldbuilding, a writer has to pick an answer (or generate a brand new one) to why the need to Rule is villainous.  Depict that reason without the on-the-nose dialogue line, "...and I will rule, forever!"  If you can do that, you will show-don't-tell the Villain of your piece.

Creating and depicting good Villains (who are dead set on Ruling) may require a writer to learn more about the inner workings of their own minds than they want to know.

Sometimes, bringing that knowledge to the conscious level creates "writer's block."  And sometimes getting hold of that knowledge breaks "writer's block."  So experiment carefully.

Live Long and Prosper,
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Cozy Science Fiction Part 3 - Point of View by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Cozy Science Fiction

Part 3

Point of View

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

In Part 1, we challenged Brian Aldiss's definition of Cozy Catastrophe Science Fiction
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/01/cozy-science-fiction-part-1-by.html

In Part 2, we attempted to provide easy, objective ways to identify Style and Voice
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/02/cozy-science-fiction-part-2-style-and.html

Now, in Part 3 we return to Brian Aldiss's definition and agree with it a little bit.

For the most part, Romance Genre tends to avoid catastrophe of the planetary kind.  Of course, today, we have Global Warming to figure into any novel set in the next century or so.  And NASA is using the threat of giant asteroids striking Earth to bring awareness of their space program's importance (which I think is even more important than that).  Meanwhile, we also hear about Earthquakes and Super Volcanoes (California's "Big One" seems more likely every day.)  And all of this ignores the prospects of a global war rooted in religion or political power struggles.

So there are plenty of catastrophe scenarios dangling over our heads -- yet Romance abounds.

Science Fiction often deals with a collapse of civilization due to catastrophe -- in the 1950's, science fiction focused on destruction of Earth by atomic bomb.  That threat is back again.

So how do you write Science Fiction Romance without embedding your characters in so much catastrophe that they appear stupid if they ignore the world because they're suddenly in love?

As I pointed out in the previous two posts in this Cozy Science Fiction series, Gini Koch has answered this question with an ever escalating galactic invasion of Earth and Earth as a political football in some game being played by her version of E. E. Smith's Arisians.  Gini Koch's characters find love, fulfillment, and produce children while defending Earth very effectively.

This is a formula worked out in Hollywood during the popularity of World War II movies, and we've seen it used in Viet Nam War movies -- the TV Series M.A.S.H. had plenty of "cozy" relationships among the medical team where it was not even Romantic Love but sincere friendship.

Brian Aldiss observed of British science fiction - in the recent aftermath of World War II which pounded England to rubble in spots - that the tendency was to write about characters who were more aware of each other than they were of the collapse of civilization around them.

We've seen this in many U.S.A. writer's takes on how things would go here after a total collapse of services.  You either tell a tale of striving to survive or a tale of Love Conquers All - can't do both.

Now, why is that?

Maybe if you add Romance to Science Fiction, telling the tale of catastrophe conquered by Love is just exactly what Cozy Science Fiction is best at?

If you want to tell the tale of the catastrophe, you generally have to use many points of view.  The "hero" or "protagonist" is the catastrophe or the response of civilization to that catastrophe (politics may enter into it, as well as the Media.)

When you divide your 100,000 words of novel space into a plethora of points of view, you lose the space needed to reveal the internal psychology of a Character that makes them prone to derive this (or that) lesson from the Events of the Plot.

In other words, even though each point of view character has a story - the plot becomes so overwhelming that you have no space to tell the story inside the most interesting character.  In fact, you have to space to convince the reader that the character is interesting.

So if the Catastrophe and its consequences to Humanity is your Protagonist or Antagonist, you don't have space to reveal enough story to make the Plot convincing.  In other words, "cozy" requires a lot more wordage than "action."

If the Protagonist is "saving the world" - their attention is wholly on the gigantic, overwhelming threat, not on the inside of their own minds and feelings, which is where Story resides.  In other words, the novel is all plot and the story is left to the reader's imagination.  War stories and Action fiction require that structure.

Today's modern science fiction trends are starting to include Love Stories, and in some cases, Romance.

Here are some examples of Action Science Fiction, written by men for men, which include Love Story -- and a hint of Romance -- and thus show us the direction in which Cozy Science Fiction (with or without catastrophe) might yet take.  These novels are not, in any way, shape or form "Cozy" -- but they illustrate how point of view can be used to create Cozy Science Fiction that can sell to the mass market.

Mike Shepherd's series I've reviewed here is still broadening a story of Galactic War And Politics -- even Invasion By Alien Species included.

Here's #14 in the Kris Longknife series, BOLD:

https://www.amazon.com/Kris-Longknife-Bold-Mike-Shepherd/dp/0425277380/

This series is so popular, it has a spinnoff about one of the minor antagonists of the Kris Longknife series -- Vicky Peterwald (a princess kid just growing up learning to run a galactic empire).

https://www.amazon.com/Vicky-Peterwald-Rebel-Novel/dp/0425266591/

 In both these novel series set in the same galactic-war universe, the protagonist and main point of view character is female, in charge of things, makes decisions that impel other Characters to do things and people to die, lives to regret and learn.  In both cases, this Protagonist Character is focused on the external Catastrophe, but does not ignore or neglect their love life and all the emotionally maturing lessons gained from it.

Note that this plot/story trick is possible only in a long series of long novels -- pay attention to how long the novels in Gini Koch's ALIEN series are, and compare to the more ordinary length of the Kris Longknife and Vicky Peterwald series novels.  The amount of "action" (fighting, space fleets maneuvering, politics) in Kris and Vicky's lives is emphasized more than the battle sequences in Gini Koch's novels.

One way to tie Characters to the Catastrophe (which they cause or avert or just suffer and survive) and still incorporate a cozy romance is to have a vast canvass and a lot of words is to feed the deciding Characters information from various farflung sources such as a spy network, a turncoat, hackers listening in to enemy communications, and the Media.

The Vast Canvass produces a lot of information during a catastrophe - as well as disinformation and just plain noise.  The writing techniques needed to keep this information stream both realistic and entertaining to the reader are the same techniques used in Mystery Genre -- Detective Fiction, Police Procedural, lucky amateur detective, and any Mystery subgenre.  It is a combination of active searching by the Protagonist and accidental discovery or incoming Media items where significance lies in the other information the Protagonist has.

If some of that incoming information shades, textures, explains or reveals details about the Romantic Interest, (maybe some embarrassing secrets, too), and if the Romantic Interest is involved in generating or averting the Catastrophe, you have a Love Conquers All novel in the making.

SAVE THE CAT! (the screenwriting book I keep referring you for clues about novel structure) warns us, "Keep The Press Out Of It."

But to tell a tale of catastrophe on a galactic size canvass, you need incoming information on developments far-far-away.  The main characters, Protagonist, Antagonist, Romantic Interest, will be choosing actions based on media reports that hear (or somehow do not hear, or get on their phone-alerts).

Writing contemporary or near-future settings today requires at least some of your characters to have the ALERTS enabled so they will be informed of local impending catastrophe (such as tornado, flood from a broken dam, etc.)

But to get those alerts, you need "location services" enabled so the alert knows where you are and gives you specific warnings.  Many techs advise against enabling location services (for good reasons!), so you may have some characters who get alerts and others who do not.

What a Character does (plot) depends a lot on what they know or don't know.  One major suspense technique using the "tight point of view" of just one character and what that character knows or does not know, is to let the reader know things their favorite protagonist does not know.  If you tease the information into the story at the right pace, the reader will be rooting for their Protagonist to find out the bit of information.

If the information is something that affects 'the public' -- such as "The Dam Broke! Run For High Ground!" or "There was a fatal 50 car pileup on I-5 half an hour ago just north of the Grapevine."  And the reader knows that the protagonist does not know that the romantic interest character was in that pileup.  "Location Services."

News media or social media, flash-mob, or opportunity to make $50 by carrying a protest sign in some march before media cameras, is information that a Character would use to determine an action.  All of this information may come to your single-point-of-view Protagonist via professional media sources (the New York Times) or via social media (Breaking News App, Snapchat).

So if the world starts falling apart around your Character's head, what does the Character do?  Check phone, Tweet?  Dash to the rescue of his brand new Romantic Interest?  Or maybe his ex-wife and kid?

Catastrophe and Romance seem utterly immiscible until you add Science Fiction.

Science Fiction is a kind of fiction-surfactant, a foaming, slippery soap that causes oil and water to mix easily.

This is also true of Paranormal, Fantasy, and all the sub-genres of science fiction.  With or without a catastrophe, the science fiction genres are all amenable to the "Cozy" treatment.

Here are two novels by Elise Hyatt
https://www.amazon.com/Elise-Hyatt/e/B003W3W9WO/

https://www.amazon.com/French-Polished-Murder-Elise-Hyatt/dp/0425233464/

in Mass Market paperback from Berkley Prime Crime Mystery

-- which I reviewed here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/05/should-you-make-up-pen-name-part-i.html

Elise Hyatt is a pen name -- when you adopt a distinctive "Styel or Voice" that is appropriate to one genre but not another - you need a pen name specific to that genre.

There are 3 novels in this series so far.  They illustrate how ugly, strange, twisted murder events can fit neatly, smoothly, warmly into a Cozy Mystery.

The style and voice are Cozy -- the world the protagonist is embedded in is challenging.  Other characters are inside the cozy warmth -- the nasty Events are outside.

The entire trick of taking an ugly, violent, sick-minded world and embedding a nice, clean, optimistic and bright Character into that world, producing a Cozy effect lies in how POINT OF VIEW is handled.

Point of View is one of the component elements in "Voice and Style" -- just as the worldbuilding is.

In our everyday reality, we can view our catastrophe-threatened world from one point of view or another.  Each point of view creates a different sort of atmosphere or impact, significance and meaning of the catastrophe.

Consider Star Trek's various Captains, but particularly Captain Kirk -- right in the midst of all plans going awry, of immense stakes in a game of pure chance, Kirk's attitude was bright, optimistic, zestful, even happy.  Jokes flew thicker in midst of disaster than at any other time.  That is not unrealistic.  It is how winners behave under pressure.

Kirk's point of view showed us a world that, though fraught with threats, was actually "Cozy."  Of course, he never really "got the girl" so broadcast Trek didn't qualify as Romance -- but it did spawn vast amounts of genuine Romance genre fanfic where Kirk, Spock and everyone else got a cozy love life.

To achieve the tight point of view that allows for Cozy stories, you set your 'camera' of the mind on the shoulder of a Character who sees opportunity where others see catastrophe.

It is that simple.  The single point of view narrative gives the most possible power to the "Cozy" dimension, sharing with the Reader a warm, smooth, easy, no-need-for-emotional-defenses approach to life, the universe and everything.

Take a huge, ugly threatening tsunami of Events destroying civilization, put a Character into that world who see, understands, comprehends, and fully credit's the destruction with all its due fear and awe, and tell the whole story through that single Character's eyes -- very tight point of view, not one single comment straying from it, -- and tell that story as a Cozy Science Fiction story.

Make the reader scared of the Events -- and assured of the Love Conquers All outcome.

If you can pull that Cozy effect off, you can motivate readers to approach their real life with more optimism, assurance, and even joy.  That kind of attitude toward handling grim realities attracts True Love.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Dialogue Part 6 - How to Write Bullshit Dialogue by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Dialogue Part 6 - How to Write Bullshit Dialogue  by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous parts in the Dialogue Series (yes, we'll get to "integration" of dialogue with other skills), can be found here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/dialogue-as-tool.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/12/dialogue-part-2-on-and-off-nose.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/03/dialogue-part-3-romance-erotica-vs-porn.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/08/dialogue-part-4-legal-weasel.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/11/dialogue-part-5-how-to-write-liar.html

That last one, Part 5, How to write liar dialogue, is most relevant to this post which is about something even worse than lies.

I was reading a newspaper (yeah, on paper, would you believe?) recently, in which I ran across two opinion pieces about diverse topics.  Each hung their main point on a non-fiction book.

I thought it interesting that one article pointed to the book, saying that there is something WORSE than lying, and that from the explanation I agreed! 

For the most part, you can't use this method to create dialogue because dialogue is not "speech" per se, not a simple transcription of the way people talk, but must be terse, to the point, off the nose, and  not be the author talking to the reader, but one character talking to another character.

However, when searching for a way to SHOW DON'T TELL a) the nature of a character and b) the gullibility of another character that will lead them into serious trouble, this method of dialogue generation will work very well.

Here's the book:



The thesis is that liars know the truth and are trying to cover it up, misdirect you, or otherwise convince you that the truth is not true.

Bullshitters, on the other hand, don't necessarily know the truth, and really couldn't care less what is true and what is not true.  Bullshitters are ramming their agenda into your head by saying whatever will make you do what they want you to do, regardless of whether it will benefit you, or even the bullshitter. 

The article also pointed out that the originator(s) of the bullshit dialogue may actually know it's not true, even if they don't know what the truth really is.  But those who have been bullshitted, and somehow absorb the message and become advocates of it, repeat the bullshit without fact-checking, without knowing the truth, and very possibly without knowing what agenda they are pushing!

Like gossip, bullshit takes on a life of its own.

As a result, a fiction writer can use this method of speech, discussed in the book above, to set up a plot involving character assassination.  Like a murder mystery, a character-assassination plot would have a FORM -- open form mystery, or closed form mystery.

In open form, the reader sees in the first scene who-done-it (if not how and why), and in closed form, the reader has to unravel the mystery with the detective.

Envision trying to use this "bullshit" method on Colombo -- or say, in current TV shows, Longmire.



I love Longmire's hat, and the way the camera director uses it.  But I love the underlying values of the heroic portrayal of this rural, 21st century, sheriff.  I love the modern Indian reservation and all their (rather authentic) modern day politics.  Longmire is a great show to watch -- and well written enough to learn dialogue writing by studying it, scene for scene.

So, no, a criminal is not going to get away with bullshitting Longmire!  (or Colombo).

You can also use this bullshit dialogue methodology to portray the various sides of the thematic issue you are using at the core of your composition. 

Use this blog's search-tool (on the right) to search for theme, and you'll get a lot of theme posts.  I have to make a long index of them eventually. 

The point I make in most of those posts on theme is that it is important to understand your theme, and to create characters who really believe (down to the core of their being) each side of the current arguments on that point in our current culture.

You can't fake it. 

You must actually understand where the people who loathe your own personal point of view are coming from, and for that little while that you are writing the dialogue of that character, you must be able to believe it.  Yes, it's kind of like "method acting."  You have to walk a mile in the moccasins of the characters who shun and despise your personal views, and argue their side of the matter with the character who is representing your view.

The best novels are the ones where there is no character who represents the author's personal views -- so there's no ax-grinding or polemics, no preaching, just good drama.

Which brings us to the second book I found mentioned in a printed on paper newspaper.

I wouldn't have noticed this book except for the roiling and embroiling issues raised by the SFWA Bulletin controversy, sparked by a hapless writer's blogpost (in ignorance of the SFWA issue), and then brought to sharp focus by Ann Aguirre's blog post which drew an instant splashback of several true "hate-speech" emails.  Yeah, Ann Aguirre drew hatespeech! 

Here's what I posted about this, which contains links so you can research this anti-SFR matter:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/08/theme-conflict-integration-part-1.html

So the following Friday, there was a #scifichat on twitter about the eruption of sexism in the science fiction community, and everyone was perfectly civil, used regular English, and tossed around some really thoughtful opinions.

It was astonishing how DIFFERENT the tone was.  The folks on #scifichat talk like the Science Fiction fans I grew up with and have known all my life.  The people directing hate at Ann Aguirre's blog post did not sound like anyone I'd ever met, and the stories the commenters brought to light of their own experiences likewise sounded like encounters out of the twilight zone.

So when I saw this article on an epidemic of hate online, and I remembered some of the nonsense language posts I've seen in comments on news articles (such as on Yahoo news, and other news posts that allow comments), I realized hate online could be viewed as an "epidemic."   These hate-language users represent one of those opinions I keep telling you that you need to include where appropriate in a story -- to use characters to present beliefs that you do not hold personally.

Here's the book on amazon:



Here's the blurb on Amazon:
Emboldened by anonymity, individuals and organizations from both left and right are freely spewing hateful vitriol on the Internet without worrying about repercussions. Lies, bullying, conspiracy theories, bigoted and racist rants, and calls for violence targeting the most vulnerable circulate openly on the web. And thanks to the guarantees of the First Amendment and the borderless nature of the Internet, governing bodies are largely helpless to control this massive assault on human dignity and safety. Abe Foxman and Christopher Wolf expose the threat that this unregulated flow of bigotry poses to the world. They explore how social media companies like Facebook and YouTube, as well as search engine giant Google, are struggling to reconcile the demands of business with freedom of speech and the disturbing threat posed by today’s purveyors of hate. And they explain the best tools available to citizens, parents, educators, law enforcement officers, and policy makers to protect the twin values of transparency and responsibility. As Foxman and Wolf show, only an aroused and engaged citizenry can stop the hate contagion before it spirals out of control—with potentially disastrous results. 

Note how many 1-star reviews it has pulled.  1-star is "I hate it." 

Look at Ann Aguirre's post (which has made her some new fans and readers!)

http://www.annaguirre.com/archives/2013/06/02/this-week-in-sf/

Look at the splashback emails she posted right at the end of her item. 

This newspaper article advanced the theory that the hatespeech you are seeing flood online venues is coming MOSTLY (not exclusively) from teenagers, and that parents need to police their teen's online behavior better to stop it.

I don't know if there's any value to that suggestion, or any truth at all to the allegation that it's teens -- but wouldn't it be (fictionally) interesting if the hate-email Ann Aguirre got wasn't from any professionals, active fans such as frequent #scifichat, or adults with considered opinions who are ticked off by the skyrocketing sales of SFR compared to the shrinking and shriveling sales of nuts-n-bolts SF?  What if she just hit a network of teens who love to "vandalize" blogposts with hatespeech and really have no idea what the subject actually is (and don't have the education to understand it even if someone explained it to them?)

Now that would make a CONFLICT for a novel -- and there's a theme integrated right into that conflict.  A Setting of Parenting -- especially single-parent parenting (the article I read pointed to single-parents who don't have TIME to police their kids)?

Can you see the various sides of the argument and how it fits into a Romance?

A woman struggling her way up in a traditionally mans' world profession, -- say widowed when her husband was killed in Iraq? -- and raising kids by herself.  Suitor #1 who has bought into the idea that single-parenting produces wayward kids.  Suitor #2 advocating casual live-together, but admiring her parenting skills - maybe more than her professional skills?  Which will she choose?  Or will she look for Suitor #3?  Or go the SINGLE route? 

Anyone watching THE GLADES?  Highly recommended -- not SF, but Detective Mystery -- Mystery-Romance.  Shows a man falling in love with a woman-single-parent-medical-student.



This issue - A Woman's Place In The World - and maybe even the very definition of woman and of "mother" - is under furious discussion in our world today, and criss-crosses the Religion borders like crazy.

This is a venue where you can set up any number of Romance Novels plotted around really hot screaming fights (Bullshit dialogue, Liar dialogue, Hatespeech dialogue) liberally laced with sex scenes.

In fact, such screaming fights would tend (in certain cultures) to skip from language to language.

Remember I LOVE LUCY, where Ricki shifts to Spanish when he gets mad?



Who are the really "hot" immigrants today?  What language to they shift into when exasperated? 

Remember, The Newcomers in Alien Nation?  There was Newcomer kid who as a teen became aculturated to Earth and joined a gang -- got himself in lots of trouble with his traditional parents for his LANGUAGE USE.




Now think about all this, and think about the hatespeech directed at Ann Aguirre not as anything to do with her work (those who HATE like that probably haven't read her books which are full of love overcoming the ugliest sides of our violent culture) -- but think of it as being a bigger problem that your readers are encountering in a lot of environments as they struggle to deal with things like being a single parent -- or dealing with kids of single parents who just aren't being properly parented, or some who are better parented than those from two-parent households.

Think of your broadest possible reach as a writer -- and see what you can do applying these dialogue techniques.

Try the classic exercise of putting two characters you know nothing about in a pitch black, can't see or touch each other, environment (a prison, a cave, an elevator in a blackout), and let them just TALK to each other.  All you have on your page is DIALOGUE - quotes, without description, just the names of the characters and all you can describe them with is what they say.

In fact, the classic-classic exercise is to write such a two-character dialogue without names, but just speech that is so distinctive the reader can tell who's talking without he-said, she-said.  In fact, one exercise is to write such an exchange in such a way that the reader can figure out which one is male and which female, without being told.

Read these books, look at these TV shows, all the while having in mind that you are going to use what you learn to construct such a "limbo set" dialogue exercise.

If you do this read/view/write exercise with enough determination, you may find yourself with the core scene of a dynamite novel.  But start first with the conversation in the dark exercise.  It's tough, but you'll learn a lot about the difference between dialogue and everyday talking.  This would work with a telephone conversation, too -- no videochat, just voice. 

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com