Leave Them Wanting More?

Here's an essay by Cory Doctorow about fiction, movies, and games giving audiences what they need instead of what they want, or think they want:

Against Lore

Writers hijack the reader's "empathic response. . . . A storyteller who has successfully captured the audience has done so by convincing their hindbrains to care about the tribulations of imaginary people." Part of accomplishing this trick consists of drawing the reader or viewer into collaborating with the creator, so to speak. Our minds ruminate on what might happen next, how the fictional crisis will be resolved, and how the writer will pull it off. The tension builds, to be released when the outcome fulfills, exceeds, or subverts our expectations in a satisfying way.

"Your mind wants the tension to be resolved ASAP, but the pleasure comes from having that desire thwarted. . . . You don't give the audience what it wants, you give it what it needs." What fun would a fantasy roleplaying game be if every monster could be killed in one blow? Who would want to know the killer in a murder mystery in advance (on first reading, at least -- I've read many detective novels with pleasure over and over, because the enjoyment of a well-written mystery lies in more than learning whodunit)? Readers of romance know the hero and heroine will find fulfillment in a happily-ever-after conclusion, since that's inherent in the definition of a romance, but we want to remain in suspense until the end as to how the writer will accomplish the seemingly impossible feat of getting them together.

On one level, according to Doctorow, writers, stage magicians, con artists, and cult leaders are all doing the same thing. "Getting us to care about things that don't matter is how novels and movies work, but it's also how cults and cons work." They "leave blanks" for the audience (or mark) to fill in. They don't tell us everything; rather, they privide gaps for our imaginations to work. Horror mavens often note that the monster in the reader's mind usually exceeds anything the writer or filmmaker can reveal on the page or screen.

According to Doctorow, the skilled creator or performer "delights in denying something to the audience, who, in turn, delights in the denial. Don't give the audience what they want, give them what they need. What your audience needs is their own imagination." As far as that statement goes, I agree with his analysis. He makes lots of cogent points. I emphatically part ways with him, however, when he presents an argument against supplying too much "lore." Why do "series tend to go downhill"? First off, he states this alleged problem like a universal truth. To the contrary, in my view, many series just keep getting better, as the format allows for expansion and exploration of the fictional world. Barbara Hambly's Benjamin January historical mystery novels offer only one example of several I could mention. He applauds the fact that, "The first volume in any series leaves so much to the imagination" and the background elements "are all just detailed enough that your mind automatically ascribes a level of detail to them, without knowing what that detail is." No real argument there. If the author does a good job, we're eager to learn more about the setting and characters, and our minds are "churning with all the different bits of elaborate lore that will fill in those lacunae and make them all fit together." But Doctorow proposes that an author's filling in those "lacunae" is usually a bad thing.

He insists, "A story whose loose ends have been tidily snipped away seems like it would be immensely satisfying, but it's not satisfying –- it's just resolved," and "Lore is always better as something to anticipate than it is to receive. The fans demand lore, but it should be doled out sparingly. Always leave 'em wanting more." Well, a fictional work literally following this principle would leave me feeling cheated. When I start a new Barbara Hambly mystery, the first thing I do is flip to the back looking for the author's afterword and am slightly let down if there isn't one. I've reread the appendices to S. M. Stirling's alternate history PESHAWAR LANCERS more often than I've reread the novel itself. I want the monster to be numinous and enigmatic for much of the story, sure, but by the end I want a clear look at it. I want to know its origin, strengths, and weaknesses. I enjoy the detailed description of Wilbur Whateley after his death in Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror." In an SF story, if there are aliens I want to know all about their biology and culture. Politics aside, my major gripe with J. K. Rowling is her failure to deliver that guidebook to the Harry Potter universe she kept promising. Her worldbuilding appears sloppily ad hoc, a problem the snippets on the Pottermore site didn't fix.

Maybe this tendency on my part comes from having begun my professional career in literary analysis rather than fiction? (I started writing, though, as an aspiring horror author. Does any teenager, no matter how bookish, aspire to be a literary critic? But I DID always want more backstory, more delving into the mind of the "monster.") Or it could be just a quirk of my personality. How do you feel about lore? Do you avidly read guidebooks to your favorite authors' series? Or do you prefer some facets of the stories to stay unexplained?

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Is Time Travel Impossible?

A character in C. S. Lewis's posthumously published novel fragment THE DARK TOWER asserts it is. (Granted, one faction within Lewis scholarship maintains THE DARK TOWER wasn't actually written by him, but I don't find that claim convincing. Anyway, the issue doesn't affect the point of the story.) He argues that physical travel to the past or future can't be done for a basic, irrefutable reason: A corporeal trip into a different time necessarily carries all the atoms in one's own body into that other time. But in the past, all those particles existed in other entities in the physical world, whether inanimate objects, living creatures, liquids, gasses, whatever. In the future, those same particles will again be distributed through the environment. The only way you could materialize in a different moment would be if duplicates of each of your atoms, molecules, etc. existed in the same place at the same time. According to the laws of physics as we know them, that's impossible. Therefore, physical time travel is forever, irrevocably ruled out, unless we invoke magic rather than science.

That story is the only place where I've encountered this argument, which strikes me as highly convincing. On this hypothesis, other temporal "locations" could be only viewed, never visited. Accordingly, Lewis's character has invented a device for viewing other times, although it turns out the true situation is more complicated than he believed.

While I've come across other stories of observing rather than traveling to some non-present time, I don't remember any that offer a theoretical grounding for the impossibility of temporal travel in the flesh. It's not unusual in time-travel fiction, however, for a traveler to be unable to exist in the same location more than once in the same moment. In Dean Koontz's LIGHTNING, a traveler can't visit a place/time where he already is/was. He's automatically shunted away from that point. In Connie Willis's series about time-traveling historians from a near-future Oxford University, the same prohibition applies, but it's not clear whether the simultaneous existence of two of the same person is outright impossible or would produce a catastrophic result if it accidentally happened. In such works as the Harry Potter series, THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE, and Robert Heinlein's "By His Bootstraps," on the other hand, any number of you can be in the same point in space/time at once.

To me, the former rule seems more plausible, because it makes the issue of the same material object being in two places at once less obvious, although I've enjoyed lots of fiction in the second category. One possible way to get around the problem raised in Lewis's DARK TOWER: Instead of a corporeal leap into a different time, travelers might project their consciousness and build temporary bodies in the other time by "borrowing" stray particles from the surrounding air, water, and earth. When the traveler released the borrowed matter to return to his or her point of origin, the particles would dissipate harmlessly into the environment. Another method of bypassing the problem shows up in the new QUANTUM LEAP series: The leaper's consciousness occupies the body of a person in the past, presumably suppressing the host's personality in a sort of temporary, benign possession. (The time-shift operated differently in the original series, while this version does leave unanswered the question of where the leaper's body is while his immaterial consciousness travels to multiple past eras.)

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Theme-Conflict Integration Part 3 Battle of the Generations

Theme-Conflict Integration

Part 3

Battle of the Generations

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous parts in this series:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/08/theme-conflict-integration-part-1.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/05/theme-conflict-integration-part-2.html

In addition we talked about the depiction of complex battle scenes in a galactic civilization consisting of various Aliens, one species of which was messing around with their own genetics, then applying what they knew to other species.  That is Chuck Gannon's work and it is discussed here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/06/depiction-part-11-depicting-complex.html --

Chuck Gannon's space battles are emblematic of domestic disputes.

My Tuesday blog entries are about writing Science Fiction and Fantasy (Paranormal etc) ROMANCE.  We focus on relationship driven plots where the core conflict occurs because of a Romantic entanglement.

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

We have mulled over what exactly constitutes "romance" -- what do we mean by that word?

I use the definition that "romance" is a higher state of conscious awareness of another person - a Soul hidden inside a body - and because that perception is not available to all humans at all times, it always seems the one "in love" is "crazy" because they are operating on information not available to others.  Astrologically, this is a state of consciousness induced by transits (or natal positions) of Neptune.

That perceptual mis-match is the core of what drives every science fiction story I love.  It is the core of HARRY POTTER - he can do things others can't, so he learns and acts on things others don't credit.

These kinds of stories are the essence of Romance - the one-eyed in the land of the blind.  Perception.

It is a sort of "cognitive dissonance" which is part intellectual (Mercury) and part spiritual (Neptune) often driven by extreme situations (Pluto) such as war, massive loss to flood, famine, misfortune.

The main survival trait of humanity as a species is LOVE, which is one component of Romance but not always the dominant one.  Sometimes Romance leads you astray.  Sometimes it leads to a path you would avoid at all costs, but which your soul desperately needs.

Romance, the "vision" of the impossible, the "what if.." and "if only .." and "if this goes on ..." of science fiction, is the main focus of the human adult in formation, the TEEN.

That is why science fiction first gained popularity among teens -- the conceptual essence of a science fiction story is the impossible made real.

That vision of the impossible made real is the essence of human progress in civilization on this planet -- and our ability to build civilizations and survive their collapse.

It will drive us to colonize space, and other planets, and survive the collapse and ruin of this planet (or the explosion of our star).

We find this vision of the impossible made real in teens.

It bursts into consciousness with sexual maturity, and ripens by age 30 (first Saturn Return), then the 40-somethings become dictators of what is real and true, while new teens burst out of those confines of stodgy, wrong-headed thought.

This is a cycle within generations, and also among generations -- it runs about 4 generations, 80 years, and has been known by many names over thousands of years and many civilizations (most unrecorded pre-history civilizations or even hunter-gatherer societies),.

Writers of science fiction romance, looking to target an audience, should take the age-cycled characteristics of fiction appetite into account.

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

And here is a key post explaining how to create a family argument among generations, as well as how to target specific age-groups with fiction themes that tickle their sensibilities.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/astrology-just-for-writers-pt-6.html

Here is the Index to posts about Astrology.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_30.html

Now, Pluto is the drama behind the Theme-Conflict Integration -- the show-don't-tell.  You can SHOW Pluto driven events - they are larger than life, soap opera sequences of "the worst thing that could happen to this character."

People deride soap opera simply because it's unbelievable that so many huge disasters could happen to this small group of people.  But the truth is, families are composed of people with Astrological Natal Chart features that are in relation to each other - so when Pluto transits one person's sensitive point, it simulataneously hits the others in the family.

But each age group in a family react to the stimulus of Pluto differently because of experience.  To a Teen, it is a life-ending disaster, to a parent it is a frustrating setback, but to the grandparent it is your just comeuppance.

To the Teen, an event (such as the family has to move for employment) is the first time ripping events have destroyed expectations.  The teen is a virgin to high-impact Pluto transits.

The princess and the pea story illustrates this.

Likewise, to the Teen a major Neptune transit opens a whole new perception of reality, and it is the end of the world when the elders in the family joke fatuously about "puppy love" and older siblings tease.

Older Humans (not maybe your aliens?) regard the way Teens experience reality as a false view of reality.

That happens because, over decades, humans learn how wrong they were (via divorce, being fired from a dream job, flunking out of favorite major) when they assessed life through the distorting lens of Neptune.

Some Souls can translate Neptune data into useful information.  Most can't.

Two ways you find out which type of Soul you have is to
a) act on what you think Neptune is telling you -- and see what happens years later.
b) read lots and lots of fiction, especially science fiction and/or Romance.

Marriages leading to divorce are like that.  Raising a kid you thought would be one thing who turns out to think he is another thing, likewise contains a Neptune (illusion, idealization) message.  Soap opera stories are good cautionary tales.

Fiction is the main source for Teens, but today that does not necessarily mean novels, stories, movies, games, and other "published" professional fiction.

Today's teens are imbibing "fiction" via "social networking.

People depict their real life in a fictional way on social media, creating an illusion.  The most skilled social media teens can tell the truth and make it seem better or worse than reality.

The less skilled copy them, but don't cast the illusion well, or it doesn't come out as planned.

Teens are teens.  With hormones roaring to life, and no experience to guide actions, they have only the proto-type of an ability to understand what they are seeing via the lens of Neptune or Pluto.

However, all humans (even teens) are individuals, and react to what they perceive in idiosyncratic ways.  Many are born with the Soul level skills to perceive through the lens of Neptune, Pluto (even Uranus), with piercing accuracy their parents do not have.

Humanity as a species is designed with this generational cycle.

See the part near the end of this post:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/astrology-just-for-writers-pt-6.html

where I list where Pluto is during which decades.

Where Pluto is in the natal chart is fixed to a sign by generation, but for each individual is in a different House with different aspects to the faster, inner Planets.
The pattern is unique to each individual, but powerfully similar to members born in a particular span of years.

A third variable is age.

The human species has certain age-specific body functions, and thus very specific epochs in life - lessons on the table before you because of your age.

The first ten years are the dawning of consciousness.  According to one model, the Soul "descends" into the body in stages, a year at a time and by 12 or 13 is ready to begin learning life's lessons.

How do your Aliens mature?  Gradually?  Suddenly?

Humans stumble into sexual maturity with legendary ineptitude, in growth spurts.

But one thing the Teen years always bring is the business of enlarging and cementing Relationships.

The child's world is the parents, siblings, cousins maybe, and the home environment.  The Teen's world is the surrounding village, maybe people from other villages.  The adult's world include's the King's Castle, the tax collectors, and the conscripting soldiers.

Today, the conscripting soldiers have invaded the nursery.

That is the changing world in which the current crop of teens (born in 2005) are adapting.

We have brain studies showing how experience changes the way our genes "express" and how our brains develop different synapse patterns according to different stimuli,

That is why kids could program VCRs that mystified adults.

That is why the current crop of teens really need phones and Facebook.

The teen years mold the brain and body, and create the network of support groups (and the ability to join and/or leave a support group or clique).

The business of the teen years, the vital and profitable activity of teens, is reaching out to the "village" and working with, learning to know and appreciate, people of different ages, interests, skills, and talents.

The teens are called the formative years, and referred to later as "I grew up here among them" -- the social connections are important not for who is connected to whom, but for the ability to form connections.

Humans need the ability to form connections (not just friendships or romance but all sorts of connections) and to break or out-grow those connections.

The teens are the time when the brain learns connecting, but to learn that, there has to be practice, real-world application.

It used to be that Parents knew every other family in the village and chose who their children could associate with.

An adult raised that way would not be successful in today's world on Earth.

I suspect the interstellar consortium of former Earth colonies would likewise not favor adults whose teens were spent knowing only a very few other humans.

Today's teens need to develop synapses of no use (or even perhaps toxic) to their Parent's generation.

That need arises from the world the current Teen's grandparents built.

These Teens' business is to develop a perception level, an intuition, that will allow them to select out the FEW THOUSAND other humans who are worthy and useful associates.

Watch the structure of LinkedIn grow.

Watch the toxic robot-repeated messages flood outwards on whatever topic Big Bucks are funding (via Press Releases etc).

Teens will be hurt - many will die, becoming examples to their peers of what not to do.  Teens will sort out, churning some to prominence and others to obscurity.  Teens will learn that the prominent are not the powerful, not the decision makers whose judgement prevails and creates a new world.

Teens always set out in life to change the world they were born into.  That is their business in their teens.

In their twenties, their business becomes finding "The One" partner for life, and then having kids, supporting kids, and so on -- should you survive all that, then comes grandchildren.

But as soon as the human leaves the Teen years behind, the disapproval of whatever the new crop of Teens are doing sets in.

Some twenty-somethings cling to the latest Teen jargon, others discard it like dirt.

The Thirty-somethings who have Teen children try to beat "teen-ness" out of their children - deny them cell phones or the toxic social networks, keep their Teens from making the same mistakes they did.

That's what Parents do -- prevent children from making mistakes.

But what if the children are correct and the parents wrong?

That "what-if" is the essence of Science Fiction -- the dream (Neptune) that "I know better than those who have power over me."  It's Harry Potter.

The only way today's crop of Teens being driven to suicide by cyber-bullying (or doing the cyber-bullying or hacking and stealing, or sabotaging other kids) will learn to handle the social networking world, develop brain synapses their parents do not have and can not understand, and be correct in their judgement calls, is to wander the Web and get into trouble.

Getting into trouble and being rescued is what children do.

Getting into trouble and rescuing yourself is what adults do.

How do you get to be an adult if you've never been a child?

Today's readership is freaked out by children getting "wet" on Facebook because the social networking tools appeared after these parents were teens.  These parents do not know how to rescue kids from cyberbullies.

The only remedy they know is to cut off acccess to the Web.  But "the Web" is the village these Teens must reach out to, embrace, and master.

This speed of change in society has never happened to humans before.

"Unprecedented, Captain" is Spock's response to the unknown.

Most humans do not welcome encounters with the unknown.  Fear paralyzes then causes aggressive strikes against what might be a threat -- long before real analysis can be completed.

In today's world of social networking, analysis will lag change by years - enough years to bring up a new crop of Teens.

The fact of social change is not a problem to humans (but might be to Aliens, thus Star Trek's Prime Directive).  The problem for humans now comes from (as Toffler indicated) the accelerating speed of change.

Parents can't rescue and train children because the parents have no experience of what the children are adapting to.

Adaptation has always been humanity's main survival trait.

Our Teens can adapt to this new and changing world -- forty-somethings are already losing the flexibility of youth.

So, the Battle of the Generations is built into our DNA.

Pliability, and the ability to create new brain configurations to deal with new kinds of threats, is the main characteristic of the human Teen.

Stability, strength, Will Power is the main characteristic of forty-somethings.

These two characteristics might make Humanity (Earthlings) a fearsome, creeping horror threat to the Aliens out there in the Galaxy who do not have such short generations (anymore).

Or, perhaps your Aliens may retain that Teen ability to form new Relationships well into age?

The perpetual Teens would have an inexorable thirst for novelty (as do our Teens).

Now, suppose humanity is now about to meet up with Aliens from out in the Galaxy. Suppose we opt to prevent all our Teens from experiencing raw social networking because of cyberbullying and suicide triggers.  We might end up without any thirty-somethings who are capable of forming Relationships with those Aliens, taking as good a beating as the Aliens can dish out, and come back swinging.

Our thirty-somethings who didn't grow up in the brutal world of social networking wouldn't be able to keep interstellar war from destroying Earth.

Or maybe, there would be no Alien Romance to create an epoch of peace and plenty on Earth?

Humanity's survival might depend on our willingness and ability to inflict brutality beyond measure upon our own.

The greatest brutality might be the natural, inevitable, built-in human tendency to "protect" our children from adventuring into a wider social world than they have been trained to navigate?

Maybe we need to train our 5 year olds to navigate hostile social territory -- and thereby create friendly territory (cliques?).

High school and college are the realm of cliques.  Should we expunge clique-formation?

If Aliens infiltrate Earth societies, would be force change on these social tendencies to form safe-associations (cliques) that turn on the loner, and bully them to death?

Or would the Aliens swoop in and rescue the targets of our bully-cliques?  Take them far away and raise them through their Teens with magic skills?

The business, purpose of existence, of the human Teen years is the forming of wider social circles (search for a mate) and forming solid Relationships with absolute strangers from alien backgrounds.

Would you let your bullied Teen be adopted by Aliens and taken away for 15 years?

Do you think that kid would ever come "home" voluntarily?

If the Teen years pass in isolation from other Teens, what sort of Adult results?

Human parents have always acculturated their Teens to the world the parents grew up in.  The difference today is that this natural process denudes the new adult of the skills needed to "make a living" and find a mate, make a home, raise children.

THEME: humans need other humans, Relationships and love to survive as humans.

CONFLICT: parents must keep their children from associating with other humans with the power to harm.

The generations have always been at odds, but never quite like this, at the survival level.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Finding The Story Opening Part 2: Avatar And The Day The Earth Stood Still

Two blockbuster classic SF films based on an essential child-fantasy (rescue me from this oppressive life; or "Get Me Out Of Here" -- or "Beam Me Up, Scotty!") are worth comparing because they are the obverse of each other.

When you add in Harry Potter, it's even more interesting.

Last week we discussed Finding the Opening of a story.

http://www.aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/06/finding-story-opening-part-1-action-vs.html

Avatar and The Day The Earth Stood Still have the same opening, while Harry Potter has a different opening. 

The "opening" moment of a story is when SOMETHING CHANGES.

In film, you "lay pipe" as Blake Snyder puts it in his Save The Cat! Series -- you orient the viewer within the life that is about to change, within the framework of the Hero's situation, or the society or civilization's situation. 

In a novel you CHANGE SOMETHING, then orient the reader. 

Each venue borrows the other venue's technique, just to keep people off balance and interested, but those are general rules.

If you're teaching yourself to write, first do 5 or 10 stories with one of those techniques, then another 5 or 10 with the other technique, master doing them, then interchanging them.  After you've fully internalized them and succeeded in placing stories using these techniques and analyzed your reader feedback, then venture into inventing variations.

But to start off, study why each of these works reliably with wide-wide-WIDE audiences. 

In Avatar, we meet Our Hero at the moment when he WAKES UP -- generally in text narrative storytelling that "Hero Wakes Up In Strange Place" is a recipe for failure to engage the reader.

But in film you have the two channels of communication with the viewer that you don't have in text.  In film you have VISUALS that contain information (we're on a space ship and the hero is waking from cryostorage is all conveyed by visuals in a space of time that narrative can't achieve), and you have SOUND that can carry information as well as mood and build suspense. 

With just words in front of a reader, you are much more limited.  In fact, in screenwriting you are limited to words and a lot of white-space on the page to engage a producer's imagination.  So in essence, a writer has the same problem in both media.

The question is, "What will interest the reader in this story?" 

You have two parameters to fit your imagination into so that what you're thinking will be couched in interesting terms for a readership/viewership:

a) Where is the origin of the conflict that will be resolved at the end of this story?
b) What is it about this story that this readership/viewership will find FASCINATING? 

In other words, the opening of the story has to presage, (technical term is FORESHADOW) the PUNCH you are going to deliver, but not deliver that punch at the opening.

If you open on a PUNCH (i.e. an action scene, army combat, explosions, destruction) then you have to keep PUNCHING with each punch coming harder, bigger, longer, more spectacular and with higher and higher and HIGHER stakes. 

In classic theater, there is the adage "less is more" -- and so the quiet, slow, creeping opening which is much LESS than what you will deliver, is actually MORE effective.

So look at the story of AVATAR.

The story actually has two beginnings that many writers might be tempted to write out in detail:
1) When the twin brother dies and how that grief hits Our Hero
2) When Our Hero becomes paralyzed, and all the usual angst/grief/remorse/shock/anger etc that goes with the story of such a physical loss for a physical person.

Note in AVATAR the combat-grunt-corporal loses use of his legs, but the intellectual-trained-knowledge-oriented twin loses his life, leaving the physically oriented twin a means of regaining the use of his legs.

What a potent story, what deep textured drama, what karmic questions and tormenting ethical decisions?

A novelist who "has the idea" for this story would be tempted to dive right into the tale where the two brothers have their conflicts over being physical or being intellectual, then race headlong into the major tragedies that spin off into the horrendous decisions regarding the extremely expensive Avatar body.

The film maker, however, STARTS way after the end of the novel and barely mentions in a couple of lines of dialogue the situations that "must have been" ever so dramatic.  Our Physical Hero barely mentions his Twin Brother The Genius, and we have no idea if there was resentment or strife between them! 

So AVATAR the film starts where Our Hero who will hurl himself into an artificial body for the rest of his life (which decision is never debated with all the angst it deserves) first wakes up at his new job -- driving an Avatar body on an alien planet where he can't breathe the atmosphere as a human. 

Think about that.  AVATAR starts not where the Hero DIVES INTO A NEW LIFE but where he actually hits the water.  The story doesn't start where he decides to take the job, or where he sets foot on the ship -- no, the story starts where he wakes up. 

Note after "pipe is laid" -- the first scene is Our Hero running free in his new Avatar body.  Think of the symbolism of that, and how we discussed icons on this blog.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/04/turning-action-into-romance.html -- see the two iconic images, the poster of Face/Off and the cover of  Gini Koch's novel TOUCHED BY AN ALIEN. 

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/01/constructing-opening-of-action-romance.html 

Avatar as a film takes off on the fantasy that sucks the young into videogames and creates the yearning to enter that alternate reality and stay there.  The very title of the film suggests gaming because plays choose an "avatar" (just as we do when creating a social network profile.)

So look again at a) and b) requirements for an opening.

a) conflict that will be resolved in AVATAR is "to walk or not to walk again."  It exists in this OPENING scene only as the inoperative legs of the Hero, which situation is not explained until we've already become fascinated. 

That conflict is not defined until Quaritch offers Our Hero (Jake Sully of the jarhead clan) the side-job of spying on his employers, the biologists studying the planet.  The "pay" for this side-job for the military against the scientists is to get his human body's legs fixed and walk again.  His background is military (jarhead) so he seemingly has no conflict about taking this side-job.  The resolution is that our Hero does walk again, but in his Avatar body which he now inhabits permanently. 

b) the conflict about Our Hero's legs is NOT what's fascinating to the target audience.  This film baits in the audience by a glimpse of the vast POWER of a huge corporate structure exploring space, gaining ownership of a whole PLANET and the "right" to mine that planet for "unobtainium" -- the most valuable substance known.  The real villains of the piece (as in real life) never appear on screen.  A "corporation" doesn't have a face.  You can't argue with it, you can only defeat it.  That vast power is glimpsed manipulating "the little people" who have their own life-agendas (pure science; getting legs back; proving military dominance).  Space exploration per se is not what's fascinating here.  POWER in the hands of the venal, short-sighted humans who would destroy life to strip-mine for wealth is fascinating. 

So the STORY OPENING for Avatar is where CORPORATE POWER resurrects LITTLE HERO to a NEW LIFE.  The ENDING is "little guy wins."  It's David vs. Goliath or Gulliver's Travels.  There's nothing original in this film except the special effects technologies (which were new then.)  Check out the writer/producer/director's career on imdb.com  You don't start a film  career with a script like this, nor will it work well to start a novelist's career. 

Now look at THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL.

The HERO is the plain, ordinary human woman with family, ordinary professor, ordinary but somewhat flaky minded dreamers on Earth. 

The Story Opening of THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL  is where THE UNKNOWN comes into the ORDINARY LIVES (space ship lands on White House Lawn).  The ending sees "ordinary life" changed forever, and as in Avatar "Love Conquers All." 

Notice how the ending of DAY is the story before the beginning of AVATAR?  In DAY our Hero hurls herself into The Unknown, into the spaceship.  DAY ends with the decision to seize the unknown, get on the ship.  AVATAR begins with what happens after seizing the unknown, getting off the ship.

Ends and Beginnings have something in common.  Study that.  Stories are circular, or at least sine waves.

Life is full of cycles and epicycles which is why the study of Astrology is useful to writers regardless of whether you "believe" any of it. 

One common error beginning writers make is to confuse the ending and the beginning of the story they are trying to tell.  The Opening and the Closing points are not necessarily the same as the beginning and the end.  Very often drama is better served by "closing" before the "ending" and letting the reader imagine their own ending. 
  
So compare DAY with AVATAR again.  In DAY, THE UNKNOWN comes into THE ORDINARY.  In AVATAR the Story Opening is where ORDINARY LIVES come into THE UNKNOWN. 

It is the same opening in obverse. 

And this is the mainstay of the "formula" for the opening of any story -- where two contrasting elements meet and conflict, changing both in the end.

A story does not necessary OPEN at the BEGINNING of the story, and it isn't always necessary to recount or dramatize the beginning if you have a good opening.

Now consider HARRY POTTER -- go back to the first novel.

Harry is ORDINARY BOY living in oppressive but ordinary circumstances it seems.  What's extraordinary about his home life is revealed as his history is peeled back, and most of the extraordinary part is in his distant family or deceased family, not the adults who are raising him or his intolerable cousin-in-residence whom we meet in Chapter One.

But many kids feel oppressed and out of place at the threshold of adolescence.  Part of the job of the YA category of fiction is to rationalize that formless fear/fascination of adulthood's confrontation with Identity. 

This is a biological process common to all humanity.  We all live with the conviction that who we really are is not who friends, family, employers etc think we are.  Hence the gamer's Avatar, the avatar on your profile, and some people's cherishing the ability to post online anonymously -- or the utter fascination with Second Life as a game - can be seen as the adult extension of that state of mind. 

So Harry Potter is growing up in a family that doesn't seem to him to "know" who he is, and he doesn't know who he is.  Worse, he has no clue (he discovers) who his parents were. 

Into his ordinary, dreary, intolerable life comes THE UNKNOWN -- the message carried by the Owl, sweeping him away to a boarding school where he can become a new person to himself. 

But it's not THE UNKNOWN from outside that comes into his life -- as in DAY where a UFO lands, or in AVATAR where a human lands.  With Harry the Unknown is inside him, unbeknownst to him.  The Unknown doesn't come from outside, and he isn't lured, bribed or injected into the Unknown -- he discovers it inside himself, as we all do at adolescence.  He doesn't get to leave his horrid life behind and emerge as a butterfly from a cocoon as in AVATAR.  And he doesn't get rescued from mundanity by Love as in DAY.  He meets himself in the legacy of his parents, a legacy in his genes but denied by those who raised him. 

Compare all three openings, and notice the similarities among the obvious differences.  When you've nailed that, you'll nail the opening of your own story, if not the beginning.    

Think about how, with the years, Harry learns of all the baggage left him by his parents and matures into the young man who can handle it all.

But the STORY OPENING occurs long after the STORY BEGINNING (where his parents die). 

Harry arrives at his new school and doesn't know he's starting a mad scramble to catch up with his life and learn the truth about what happened to his parents -- and prevent that from happening to him (and others).

Imagine what it would have been like for him to know what he was getting into before he first boarded the train (or spaceship, depending how you look at it) to his new school.  He would have been tied in knots with dread and terror.  He wouldn't have behaved as well, found his feet and begun to unfold into an adult able to handle Situations. 

Imagine what AVATAR'S Hero would have done if he'd known he was going to end up stuck in an alien body when he first woke from cryosleep. 

And what Earthwoman could really consider bonding to an Alien? 

Uh, wait a minute.... isn't that what we imagine on this blog?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Believing in Happily Ever After: Part 1, Stephen King on Potter VS Twilight

 In July, I was invited to Google+ by one of the Chat moderators on Twitter who runs #Litchat (which I recommend to readers and writers -- find times by following http://twitter.com/#!/LitChat )  Today, Google+ is open to anyone.  Back then you needed an invitation to beta-testing. 

Immediately, I had a whole raft of writer friends turning up on google+ via the #Litchat connection so I made a circle for those folks, and before I knew it, here came a marvelous post with a quote from Stephen King -- this was just before the weekend when the last Harry Potter film was released.

So I'm trying to learn how to construct links that will lead you to elements on Google+.  So far, no dice. 

So here's a link that might lead you to the jpg with the quoted words on it.  It works for me.

 https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-z_XZoXQ5ugw/Th8BjOHXwdI/AAAAAAAABlw/DlYX2rScJEo/w402/tumblr_llhraiIQ4v1qbqtzko1_500.jpg

This quote jpg of text is posted on:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/115660915549619552182/posts/fpQjLS9Rfy8

Brandon Withrow, who got this interesting post from someone else on google+ known as Adm Chrysler, posted that image linked above, which had apparently already "gone viral" and which is a quote attributed to Stephen King.  It says:

"Harry Potter is all about confronting fears, finding inner strength, and doing what is right in the face of adversity.  Twilight is about how important it is to have a boyfriend." -- Stephen King

I commented on Brandon's post, saying:

------quote---------
I admire Stephen King for his true professionalism. I met him once and learned he does what he does on purpose! However, I disagree with his summation here only because it leaves out some important words.

Twilight is about how "confronting fears, finding inner strength, and doing what is right in the face of diversity is necessary in order to have and maintain normal Relationships, even if you or your boyfriend aren't exactly normal people."

Potter is about dealing with the situation you are in through no fault of your own; Twilight is about choosing your situation and committing to see it through no matter what happens as a result of your choice."
---------end quote--------

Kate Shellnutt commented with another reference to what Stephen King has said, and Brandon Withrow answered:

------------quote----------
I suppose being a big HP fan skews his objectivity, where Jacqueline is giving a more even-handed take on the two. Not to geek out on it, but fan intensity for one or the other reminds me a bit of the Star Trek vs. Star Wars type of thing.
------------end quote---------

So of course I had to say:

--------quote---------
Oh, but I love my geeks! And of course you know I'm a very emphatic Trekker, having been primary author on the Bantam paperback STAR TREK LIVES! which outed ST fanfic (which I contributed to by creating the Kraith alternate universe for Trek fanfic). But actually, you're right, there's two takes on this, and I think it might be worth a blog post. I'll copy your quote and see what comes of it -- that would be late Sept/ early Oct for the topic on aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com where I post on Tuesdays on writing craft, and THIS quote is definitely a "craft" and "romance genre" related quote!
-------end quote-----------

Kraith is, as you know, posted for free reading on http://www.simegen.com/fandom/startrek/ 

Both Harry Potter and Twilight are Romance based.

Potter's parents were obviously deeply in love, and battling toward a Happily Ever After and didn't make it.

Potter then recapitulates their battle, and becomes involved at the teenage romance level with admirable women, and  then "notices" such an admirable girl his own age.  And presumably things will go to the HEA for Potter. 

Twilight is more star-crossed-lovers, possibly more like the story of Potter's parents in the no-win situation where only their descendents make it to the HEA.

As a matter of "taste" - I think your concept of Evil and where that fits in the overall universe you live in - determines which you like better, Potter or Twilight.  They're both seminal discussions of the plight of good swamped by Evil.

I suspect King seems to prefer Potter simply because Potter is battling Evil head-to-head, and in his world Evil is an accepted social element (studied in school as a magical discipline).

I don't "buy into" that concept, so I have to work to suspend my disbelief to 'get into' the Potterverse -- which I have no problem doing because that's what being a Science Fiction fan, reader, and writer is all about. 

I can buy into the Twilight universe a little more easily simply because it extends my own view of the whole Vampire mythos that I've been a devotee of since my teen years.

Both universes are rooted in the discussion of whether the HEA is "plausible" in real life.  Both have the HEA as "the stakes" in the plot, as King pointed out. 

But the Potterverse says graphically that HEA isn't a given.  Potter's parents got killed by Evil, and that proves the HEA is not a real element in that universe.  Yet Harry is set up to go for another try at it. 

King's assessment of Twilight is correct, too, because in the Twilight universe, the HEA is at least plausible, reachable, imaginable, and the most "Evil" creatures strive for it because it is apparently there.

So King has nailed (I'm not surprised) the philosophical nexus of the entire discussion you and I have been having on aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com for a few years now. 

The reason the Romance genre isn't widely respected as a genre is that the HEA is not seen by the general public as realistically plausible. 

The plausibility of the HEA is based on the philosophical concept that Love Conquers All - an absolute axiom of my existence for a huge variety of reasons.

When you believe (not "those who believe" but "when" you believe because it's mood-based for many) that Love Conquers All, then the HEA seems the inevitable if hard-won and high-priced result of the battle between "Good" and "Evil." 

When you don't - the HFN (Happily For Now) is the best you can hope for, and that's what Potter's parents had.

So the question becomes, "Why does it seem plausible that Love can't conquer Evil permanently?" 

Oh, this is a deep topic, and the richest source material for Romance writers looking for "conflict" building themes.

This is the main study of writers in all genres, but especially Science Fiction and Romance, PNR, writers.

Science Fiction is "The Literature of Ideas" and so requires a deep study of philosophy, and a system of relating that abstract subject to today's reality.

Romance is maybe "The Literature of Love" and so requires a very deep study of philosophy, and a system of relating that abstract subject to LIFE in today's world. 

These two, not at all disparate, subjects naturally crystallize into the thematic base of Science Fiction Romance, where as all good SF does, the story poses knotty questions about the value of "having a boyfriend/girlfriend" and how to acquire the character traits required to achieve a Happily Ever After union.

SF has long written of the process of acquiring those traits, as King points out -- though Potter is ostensibly Urban Fantasy.  King nails the process: Harry Potter is all about confronting fears, finding inner strength, and doing what is right in the face of adversity. 

And that's what every good Horror, SF, or Romance novel is always about, isn't it? 

Ah, but what is fearful?  Where does strength come from?  Which way or action is "right" and which "wrong?"  What really does adversity consist of, and what is just an annoyance?

We have a lot of work to do on the process of tossing all previous Romance genre work onto "the Potter's Wheel" and shaping it like wet clay into Science Fiction. 

That work is what leads to the skill sets needed to handle Theme.

See Part 2 of this BELIEVING IN HAPPILY EVER AFTER series here next Tuesday when we'll look at the power of Theme-Plot Integration.  

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Paranormal Romance

This post leads up to a workshop exercise in World Building.

A couple weeks ago, Linnea Sinclair asked on the Paranormal Romance forum at goodreads.com if SF Romance should be a subcategory under Paranormal Romance. I've been haunted by the topic ever since.

Opinions varied widely. People looking for "Paranormal" don't want any nuts-n-bolts mixed in with their ghosts, vampires and werewolves.

I can understand that. There are times I want my Paranormal straight up, no ice. But I always like my SF with some telepaths or other Scientific Law Breaking element.

That is one (of the many) things essential to a good SF story, the confounding of all expectations.

SF is about the effect of science on PEOPLE (human and not), about the approach to The Unknown, and about the way that Relationships affect what Science can and can't do.

SF was (not any more) about the maverick kid who solves adult problems by inventing something adults think is impossible. Today it's a much more adult and complex field, so it's much harder to define. Still, there is a unifying pattern in SF that joins it directly to Fantasy and thus Paranormal Romance.

So to set off the train of plot events leading to a unique Relationship, the SF story starts with an Idea.

The Idea has the form, "What if ..." or "If only ..." or "If This Goes On ..." And the idea that sparks the story leaps over all mental and emotional barriers. On internal emotional barriers: see my post from last week about The Tower Card and mental barriers
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/02/paradigm-shift.html

So SF relies on a story springboard that leaps over all mental and emotional barriers in the reader to suppose something that "simply can not be!" under the current understanding of reality. And right there, the reader is sucked into a world that can't exist. That's what's FUN about SF -- it violates the laws of reality as the reader knows them.

At core, SF is about breaking the rules that confine imagination.

Almost by definition, Science Fiction is about venturing outside your comfort zone.

But what's the difference between SF and Fantasy -- and between Fantasy and Romance?

Today, we're all looking to mix and match genres, to adventure where no woman has gone before, while most readers of Romance of any sub-genre don't want to be dragged outside their comfort zone. The comfort zone may enlarge or change, but the average Romance reader doesn't want to cross that borderline for fun.

Readers are looking for a good adventure into a unique but satisfying relationship, a story with an optimistic ending, HEA or better.

Part of the fun of the Paranormal Romance is finding that great story interwoven into a background that changes the story without distorting or marring it. (What if that hot new boyfriend is actually a Vampire?) The Romance has to grow out of the background, be caused by the background, but still be our own beloved story.

For years the Gothic satisfied that itch. Stories about inherited old houses with resident ghost, brooding mysterious neighbor, or spooky powers held endless fascination because they had endless variations.

And the Regency Romance delved into a period of history that twanged the fantasy nerve just as Western Romance did -- marvelously alien dress codes, women resisting or secretly thwarting the power men had over them, behavior and manners that could be an alien language. Regency England was indeed another planet! SF Fandom gravitated to the Regency Romance and to this day hold a Regency Ball at conventions -- The Regency Romance is SF.

Then the Vampire As Good Guy appeared, venturing over from the adult fantasy lines spun off of Science Fiction where the Vampire was usually a bad guy hero such as Linnea was talking about in her post
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/redemption-rake-and-reluctant-hero.html

Emma Bull's Hugo Award winning novel, War For The Oaks, launched an urban fantasy revolution, and before long we had Laurell K. Hamilton's genre busting Anita Blake urban fantasy. And of course Buffy. Now Harry Dresden in Butcher's THE DRESDEN FILES combines it all - bad guy hunk, angst, magic, even his ex who became a vampire. He's not a private eye. He's a private wizard! (that private wizard part is one of my oldest old time favorites)

But where did it all start? And what is the DIFFERENCE between SF and Fantasy and Romance?

How many of you remember the mid-1950's story which was Marion Zimmer Bradley's first sale, (I think to Vortex Magazine? 1952? Or Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1955?) called Centaurus Changeling which has been widely heralded as the very first SF story that had RELATIONSHIP in it at the plot level -- relationship beyond rescuing the damsel in distress.

Prior to publication of Centaurus Changeling, SF was "Neck Up Science Fiction" -- it was aimed at adolescent boys who didn't want to deal with emotions.

Marion Zimmer Bradley changed that aim of the genre and began to serve the interests of young women, too. But it didn't seem like it for yet another 20 years or so, though her Darkover novels were being published and scarfed up by an ever increasing fandom, mostly female.

So with Darkover as the thin sliver of a wedge, gradually SF with a relationship and emotion driven plot was introduced.

So what is Darkover? It's a story about telepaths who have all sorts of other ESP powers and with those powers on their far-away lost colony planet called Darkover, they do everything that Science does for us from heal the sick to mining and smelting metal, and even making atom bombs.

On Darkover, technology is driven by ethics. Morals. And passionate love affairs as well as passionless arranged marriages.

See my comment on Linnea Sinclair's post which is about Moral Hazard -
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/redemption-rake-and-reluctant-hero.html

So what is the Darkover series? Is it SF? Or is it Fantasy? World Wreckers is certainly one of the best Romances I've ever read and it's about ecological warfare. (she wrote it in response to Ursula LeGuin's Left Hand of Darkness which is SFRomance too -- or more exactly Alien Romance which is the topic of this blog. I expect all of you have studied and dissected Left Hand of Darkness -- the Worldbuilding she did with that won her both the Hugo and the Nebula with one book.)

In Science Fiction, the scientific laws that are challenged or broken by the story premise are from the physics, math and chemistry we all know and love. The plot mysteries are solved by applying laboratory science.

The Fantasy field split off from SF, and for decades the only Fantasy readers were SF readers too. But gradually it came to be that only women wrote Fantasy and mostly only women read it. Then that changed too. I think there may be more men writing adult Fantasy today then women. (by "adult" I don't mean sexually explicit).

But I'm still looking for the DIFFERENCE where the split between SF and Fantasy occurred.

I see a similarity so glaring it wipes out all differences.

In Fantasy -- Paranormal, Urban, whatever -- in Fantasy the scientific laws that are challenged or broken by the story premise are from parapsychology, mythology, archeology, anthropology.

The thinking that generates that Law Breaking story premise is precisely the same as the thinking that goes into an SF story premise.

From the writer's point of view, Fantasy and SF are identical.

"What if were-creatures had legal rights?" (Laurell K. Hamilton created what is called in Hollywood a High Concept with that one.) And all of a sudden, Earth becomes a galactic civilization in microcosm with dozens of sentient species co-existing.

Both SF and Fantasy do alternate history and parallel worlds and time travel.

I see no real difference except in the backgrounding that delineates what is "real" and what is "not real" -- what can and what can not exist in the story-universe.

Which brings me back to the Tarot posts and the Astrology posts I've done on this blog. I've shown how I see Science as a branch of Magic, or of Philosophy. Science studies 1/44th of the reality structured by the philosophy illustrated by the Tree of Life.

Science is a special case of the much larger subject of Philosophy in which you can account for the Soul and all kinds of ESP type powers.

Neck-Up Science Fiction, Science Fiction pre-Marion Zimmer Bradley, deals with 1/44th of the realm of storytelling.

And clearly, from the discussion Linnea Sinclair stirred up on goodreads.com, the largest coherent market for novels (Romance Readers) cares as much or more for the BACKGROUND (i.e. the rules of science or magic behind the story) as they do about the Romance itself.

BACKGROUND is what readers see. WORLDBUILDING is how writers put it there to be seen.

Readers see a distinction based on the setting and background. Enjoyment is at least as dependent on the background as on the story.

A distinction which I see as no distinction at all is of vital importance to a huge readership, Paranormal Romance readers.

I think I see a reason for this. It is often referred to as "accessibility" -- and I'm not entirely sure what exactly that means.

But here's a blog post from 2005 discussing the accessibility of science fiction today. This pertains directly to another issue we've discussed on this blog, how to elevate the reputation of Romance in general but Alien Romance or SFR or PNR in the eyes of the general population.

http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/003914.html

He makes the point that SF just isn't "accessible" the way say Harry Potter is.

And I don't think it's the STORY as such that isn't accessible. It's the background that isn't accessible to the typical Romance reader.

Romance Readers aren't uneducated. They just have a different education, one that emphasizes philosophy, mythology, literature, sociology, psychology (Marion Zimmer Bradley's education was in psychology) -- the soft sciences.

Reading for relaxation, you want to play with what you know, not stretch to learn something new which is what you do at work all day every day. When your brain is tired, you want to stop learning.

So the challenge in Scalzi's blog is to create SF that's accessible like Harry Potter.

The challenge for us then is to create Alien Romance or Paranormal Romance with a background that's "accessible" to the sort of reader who would like the story.

And as we've seen with Laurell K. Hamilton, what it takes to reach a large audience is a High Concept (a trick I'm not good at.)

So when you're not good at something, you practice. Let's practice.

On my writing workshop blog, I'll put up a story opening and a challenge to wrap WORLDBUILDING around the story to make it accessible. This will call for OUTLINING which is what Blake Snyder calls a BEAT SHEET.

The BS Beat Sheet works perfectly for novels, and at this stage of developing the Worldbuilding for a story, it doesn't matter if it's a novel or a movie or TV Series, the essence of the craft is the same.

You can download Snyder's Beat Sheet for free here

http://www.blakesnyder.com/tools/

If you're a writing student, consider this part of your million words for the garbage can. If you're a publishing writer, come play with us and see if you can do something you've never done before.
I will dare to predict that one of you will learn something from this exercise that will solve the acceptability problem for SFR.

http://www.editingcircle.blogspot.com/

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/

Is Harry Potter an Alien?

Whoo-hoo, the boy wonder is grown up!

I saw an interview with the actor on TV the other day -- in his real persona, he's scrumptious.

Teens everywhere have throbbing hearts. (so what else is new?)

I haven't read the final installment in the saga yet, though I will. I did see the Phoenix movie as I mentioned last week.

And I've been following all the hype in the media -- and the reporting on the hype.

Boiled down, the media sees the Harry Potter saga as "good vs. evil" and says that accounts for the popularity. (i.e. if it didn't have "good vs. evil" at the core, it wouldn't be popular - they say.)

So since today is Tisha B'Av (the 9th day of the Hebrew Month of Av), the anniversary of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, and subsequent to that, a day when major blows have fallen on the world, (not a superstition, but historical fact if you look at the dates via the Hebrew calendar) I wanted to explore this "good vs. evil" theme that is so very popular that it lies unquestioned as a model of the real universe we live in.

The premise is that there's more true "Evil" in the world than "Good" and it is the job of "Good" to fight "Evil" even though "Evil" is terrifyingly strong.

And it must be a fight to absolute destruction.

Where "Good" encounters "Evil" there must be combat to annihilation (not Love, not Romance, not persuasion, not understanding, not empathy, not compassion, not problem solving, but COMBAT TO THE DEATH.)

Good vs. Evil is the conflict in Dresden Files, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Supernatural -- maybe not Forever Knight so much -- but many Fantasy novels focus on the vision of the universe in which there is a thin crust of "good" over a seething cauldron of "evil" and it's the plight of a certain few humans to keep "evil" from breaking through.

Potter's fight gets personal, so does the fight of Harry Dresden (who jokes about having Potter's first name, then points out he was named for Houdini.)

Why is Harry Potter such a success when these other shows and novels (which many would say are better written, better crafted, or better backgrounded) have not had similar play?

And where does that view of the universe as floating on a seething cauldron of Evil come from?

Frankly, I don't know any answer to Potter's success exceeding that of other novels except publicity.

I saw an interview on the Lehrer News Hour with a top Children's Librarian and a publisher, and their consensus was that it's the MEDIA that made Harry Potter more successful than other equally good books about the same topics.

I read a statistic that readers who gobble up Harry Potter novels, still only increase the sale of other books by barely 10%. Potter is ALL they read. For the rest of their time it's computers, games, music downloads, text-messaging, maybe Potter fanfic.

Harry Potter is a tiny (itsy-teensy) fraction of Scholastic Publishing's annual gross sales (Scholastic is the US distributor). But those same interviewees mentioned above considered that this whole set of novels will become a classic that new crops of 11 year olds will be reading into the far future. They will continue to sell.

This "Good" must fight "Evil" is a general portrait of reality that is, I think, not "believed" so much as "assumed" by the general public. It's never challenged or discussed in grammar school where you learn your view of the universe.

Here the question of whether Harry Potter is an alien (and therefore a fit subject for "alien romance" (definitely of the djinn variety)) gets really abstract.

Harry Potter taps into a somewhat new twist on a very old mythology. The prevailing Group Mind, or general mindset in the world today (including among those without the education to know what the word "philosophy" actually refers to) has changed drastically in the last 50 years -- maybe 70 or so years.

We've never been so obsessed with "Evil" since maybe The Inquisition.

To see how it all fits together, we have to be able to step back from our Civlization -- way, way back -- and view ourselves as the result of the flowering of the Greek culture.

The Greeks took over from the huge world-conquering Egyptian culture that spread mathematics, science and learning throughout North Africa and the Middle East all the way around the top of the Mediterranean. According to some archeologists, there is an odd coincidence between the bare beginning of the fall of Egypt and the best guess date for the Parting Of The Red Sea.

That's just a theory, but we're fiction writers here and we play with history and pre-history all the time.

The Greeks invented "democracy" made mathematics even more useful than the Egyptians did for building big things, and worshipped gods whose family relationships have to be described today as "dysfunctional" -- the Greek ideals included naked games, homosexuality and even what today in America would be statutory rape of young boys.

The Greeks fell and the Romans ate up their culture and made it their own -- growing bigger than Greece ever had, reaching all the way to Britain (I've been reading the lastest of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Avalon series -- this one, Ravens of Avalon, by Diane Paxton).

Rome fell -- etc -- and after various invasions and so on, Britain erupted in fleeing Pilgrims who founded what eventually became the American Colonies - and then us.

Our modern Civilization is a direct descendent of Ancient Eqypt -- if you look at it like say, Francisco St. Germain (Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's vampire) might.

Ancient Egypt was ruled by "gods" who became incarnated and often produced the Heir Apparent mating with their closest sibling.

But Greek philosophy gave us a way of looking at the world which is now and always has been diametrically opposed to the MYSTICAL or MAGICAL way of looking at the world.

The Greeks laid the foundation for the later works in Britain by Bacon which promulgated the scientific method.

The notion is that the Universe is a mechanism -- a giant clock -- and nothing more. It's just a machine, and it runs by itself. There is no such thing as a "seething cauldron of Evil" and no Evil to fight. The "worst" behavior of their gods (Dyonisis comes to mind) was actually celebrated and lauded.

Almost all of science is based on this Helenistic Philosophy. Our civilization has had enormous success applying this philosophy (remember Science used to be called Natural Philosophy for a reason.)

Just skipping over the Assyrians and Babylonians -- we're looking at the invention of the Wheel as around 3,000 BCE, The Patriarch Abraham at around 2100 BCE (give or take), and Egypt invades Canaan at around 1950 BCE, and the Israelites being enslaved in Egypt around 1300 BCE -- with Moses leading the escape around 1250 (that can be argued vigorously on a lot of sides. The general figure for the length of the sojourne in Egypt is about 400 years, but slavery came at the end) And the fall of Egypt around 1065 BCE (they had a couple changes of "dynasty" in there, struggling to survive.)

First Olympic games in Greece around 776 BCE.

Founding of Rome about 753. About 509 BCE The Roman Republic is founded. 399 BCE Socrates is condemned to death for heretical teaching. 323 BCE birth of Euclid. Egypt still exists but it's not THE power in the ancient world. 170 Rome invades Egypt. (see Shakespear)

When one country invades and conquers another, the conquerer acquires a lot of the attitudes and valuable accomplishments of the conquered. The cultures blend with every intermarriage. Remember, the Romans didn't care what god you worshipped as long as you also worshipped the Roman gods and the Emperor got his due. That's cool, until it runs up against Monotheism, and the Egyptians had sun worshipping monotheists who were not a majority though.
In Israel, the monotheists were a majority.

So today's secular majority relying on a view of the universe that sees reality as an uncaring machine that can be manipulated by science if only we know enough -- that SHOULD be manipulated by science to subjugate the world to our Will -- is the direct descendent of the philosophy promulgated in Greece.

Why would the Greeks, Romans and their spiritual ancestors, the Egyptians, Babylonians and Assyrians, have wanted so very much to believe the universe is just a mechanism, and there is no such thing as "good" and "evil?"

Just read the mythology -- how their gods handled power and personal relationships (seduction but never romance.) Those powerful, unseen, Evil Entities who diced with human lives and had to be appeased with offerings are the contents of that "seething cauldron of Evil." They became the symbol of "Evil" because they had immense power over mortals, but no love for us.

Can't you see why the Greek Natural Philosophers would think it would be so much nicer if those gods didn't really exist? Or didn't have all the power? Pythagoras comes to mind.

Running counter to the development of our "Natural Philosophy" called modern science there was the philosophy of the line of the Patriarch Avraham and all the cultures and religions that sprang from him.

Now I can't give a reprise of the Qabalistic view of the universe here. You can get a lot of the "real thing" on chabad.org if you want it. If you google Kabbalah and variant spellings you'll get all kinds of kooky nonsense mixed in with the version I'm talking about, so start at chabad.org .

But the essence of the notion is that the Creator of the Universe not only Created the world -- but continues to do so moment to moment.

Existence itself is sustained by the deliberate application of Divine Will. Every single moment and every single event in your very personal life is a miracle. All of this is a Word being spoken by the Creator RIGHT NOW. And it's a song of love.

The essence of Qabalah lies within its notion of the purpose of human existence, the purpose of Life.

The premise is that all souls were created at the moment of creation -- there are no newer souls (unlike some other esoteric traditions). Souls reincarnate enough times to master all 613 Commandments in the first 5 Books Of Moses (the first 5 books of the Bible).

The purpose of mastering the Commandments is to use them to uncover the sparks of Godliness hidden within all the elements of our material reality.

The Creator Created the world twice (this is described in Genesis). The first time the blast of the pure essence of this Divine Being shattered the vessels that held creation. The pieces flew apart and fell "down" -- chaos -- the second time, we got Creation as we know it today.

But the Divine sparks of pure good attract the flotsam of the shattered vessels and become encrusted with this dross. The dross isn't Evil and it isn't bad, it's also a result of Creation and exists by the Will of the Divine which is Good and basically pure Love.

Our job is NOT to "battle evil" or to cram it back down under the thin crust of good, because there really is no such thing as "Evil" -- there is only this icky dross clinging to and smothering the light of Goodness.

Our task is not to destroy that dross but to TRANSFORM IT INTO GOOD --to peel away the dross and uncover the gold within and send those golden sparks of divine substance winging back upward, and thus elevate the dross.

The idea is to uncover the hidden goodness within every individual and situation and to elevate the not-so-good to be better. Life is not a punishment detail -- it's what our souls were created for.

We're designed for this world and this job. So it's FUN. It's joy in its purest form to find goodness and unleash it. (classic Romance writing lesson: what does she see in him? How do you know it's "love?" -- answer: each brings out the best in the other's personality.)

Philosophically, the Qabalistic notion has battled the two other notions down through the ages with first one then the other predominating.

So there are 3 major philosophies extant today (plus a zillion smaller ones).

The "seething cauldron" model of reality. The "just a mechanism" model of reality. And the "big mess to clean up" Qabalah model of reality. (the process of cleaning up that mess is called Tikun Olam, fixing the world. You do it by love, not combat.)

Everyone HAS a philosophy, though very few know what their own philsophy is, and most deny having one at all. But it's like breath - you can't live without it.

They say "there's no accounting for taste" but that's not true. Your "taste" comes from your philosophy which resides in your subconscious and jerks your life around unbeknownst to you -- i.e. creates such things as "love at first sight".

The "taste" for the Harry Potter tale wrapped in its FIGHT AGAINST EVIL is caused by the philosophy that the world REALLY IS a thin crust over a seething cauldron of Evil and all we can do is fight or run screaming.

I saw an interview on TV with people standing in line to get the last Potter book, and one young girl in costume told the camera "yes, magic is real" (and from the tone of voice it was clear she didn't mean that metaphorically - we're talking 12 year old girl here).

Something in our current civilization has convinced a huge number of people that Evil is real and the only righteous response to Evil is to Fight it.

And thus Harry Potter is a Hero to young children who have imbibed this subconscious assumption from parents, friends, teachers, books, movies, films, DVDs, and GAMES, maybe past lives too.

I mentioned "love at first sight" -- there is (in the magical view of the universe) a certain reality to the "recognition" and "attraction" to things and people from past lives -- and who represent a subconsciously held highest aspiration.

The world today is very much like Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover -- the world where there is an intransigent war between the technological civilization from Earth and the indigenous ESP based civilization of the planet Darkover. That war is on moral grounds.

Today we "believe in science" and look to our labs to produce solutions to every ill if we only throw enough money at them. But something inside says "no, that's not the whole truth" -- or "Wait! There's More! If you phone right now - " --

People reach back into prior lives (maybe from Atlantean times?) and find the dim etching of an almost memory of the Magical View of the universe -- and they want that view to be true.

Remember, in my blog entry about the Robert Heinlein Centennial, I said I learned that Heinlein had held memories of past lives even into his teens. It is common for young children of the Potter reading demographic to have echoing memories of past lives -- lived in a time when Magic was considered "real."

But that view of the universe also scares people terribly -- because in Greece and Rome, the most power over "reality" was wielded by insane entities called gods who did not know how to love.

Most of the people who are trying to learn Qabalah today don't understand the thousands of years of history that spawned these 3 major philosophies.

So they look at the world, see really BAD stuff all around, and accept the explanation that Evil has to be Fought. (to me that's like cutting starfish in half to get rid of them).

They want Magic to be REAL, so they can have a tool to Fight Evil (because Science can't Fight Evil, because Evil doesn't exist in the scientific view of the universe).

It appears, in our modern universe, those are your only choices, fight evil, condone it or foster it by ignoring its existence. (Qabalah teaches a fourth approach to the problem.)

So Harry Potter as an adult now becomes a really sexy attraction because he has acquired the Power to Fight Evil! He's become our Protector. And from the scientific view of reality, he truly is "alien" because of that Power -- and science is losing the battle against Evil because Science doesn't know it's in a battle.

You shouldn't have any trouble googling up some hot-sweaty-sexy Harry Potter fanfic on the web. Look it over and think about what these people are really writing about in their own lives. Then think about other ways to parse the problem so it can be solved.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/

Silly Season

Folks:

Well, here we are in the "silly season" -- and I just saw on TV a whole long feature on the "news" about UFO's! (Yeah, Roswell 60th anniversary, Buzz Aldrin's orbital sighting, the whole nine yards!)

Meanwhile, I had a run-in with the Medical Establishment. I have a very good doctor in a great group-practice. They have electronic records and state-of-the-art everything. But their front desk that does appointments is of a different order of being.

I had an appointment to have several routine screenings done -- so I finish the first part and go back to the desk, and they say "come back tomorrow".

I just moved heaven and earth to clear 4 hours for their convenience and they want me to come back tomorrow? Like I have nothing to do but dance to their drumbeat?

I said, loudly so everyone in the waiting room could hear, "Maybe I should get another doctor? When I miss an appointment, I have to pay a cash penalty. What do you pay me when YOU miss an appointment?" I said waving the letter they sent me demanding 4 hours of my time as if it were worthless.

I haven't seen Morehouse's film SICKO and I don't intend to. I have enough real-life experiences, thank-you.

Well, I got very loud and assertive -- and guess what? They had people standing around in back ready to run those tests and nobody in line!

So I got all my testing done.

Meanwhile, my husband had a run-in with the post office. One phone call to the Post Master revealed a new Post Man creed. It turns out that they now deliver the mail only if it's convenient for them.

If they're understaffed because of vacation or illness, they just skip some houses. If there's too much mail to sort, they just don't bother to do it all that day. This was said to him to explain why our grocery store flyers don't get delivered when they should even though the stores have mailed them on time. (also another local paper we subscribe to mails the issue -- but the post office can't be bothered to deliver.)

It's summer. Humanity estavates? Silliness erupts and takes over? Brains take a vacation?

I just met a new neighbor around the corner from me. Moved in last week. He was fixing a sprinkler pipe on the outside of his fence. Guess what? The real estate agent who sold him the house neglected to mention HE is responsible for the bushes and watering system between his fence and the sidewalk.

So I walked home thinking, "It's not just me!" It's not that somehow, suddenly I do everything wrong. There's something ELSE going on here.

It's the "Twilight Zone" feeling -- I don't recognize the world I live in.

Then I saw an episode of PAINKILLER JANE. (it's not a bad show -- on Sci Fi channel, and an original of theirs) In this episode a whole small town was under the mind-control of a "neuro" (the psychically talented people Jane's group hunts down and neutralizes by forcibly inserting a computer chip into them). The town was peaceful, happy, non-contentious, 0 crime rate, 0 homeless and so on. The picture perfect existence. (reminded me of a Star Trek episode where the whole planet was "happy" under a computer mind-controller.)

It was Jane's group that had to go to the mat (they actually lost a regular; killed her off!) to restore the town to it's "normal" degree of nastiness!

And I just read an article on how the American public seems finally to be sick of blood-on-the-walls movies!

Hollywood, movie fans shy away from "torture porn"
By Bob Tourtellotte Fri Jul 13, 4:19 PM ET
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Torture, it seems, doesn't pay at movie theater box offices like it used to.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070713/media_nm/horror_dc_1;_ylt=AsLWhhTjLmr93Gg9Zuc2DVQE1vAI
Today, I'm into setting up schedules and meetings at NASFIC.

Jean Lorrah and I are collaborating (yes, again!) on a new story, and we plan to workshop on it at the convention called NasFic (North American Science Fiction Convention) that replaces the World Science Fiction Convention when the Worldcon is elsewhere. This year WorldCon is in Japan (Jean's going and is on the program there). And this year NasFic is in St. Louis -- and on a really odd date (beginning of August instead of Labor Day weekend.)

Websites:
http://www.nasfic.org/ is the index page for NasFics -- this year's is ARCHON which is also known as TUCKERCON in honor of the famous SF writer and fan Wilson Tucker.

http://www.archonstl.org/31/index2.html is ARCHON

WorldCon index page is
http://www.worldcon.org/

To add to this "silly" mixture, I just finished reading Charlaine Harris's ALL TOGETHER DEAD - where she kills off a whole bunch of vampires and immerses us in vampire politics to the eyebrows. She's got a good series going there -- Sookie Stackhouse is a charming character who doesn't do much of anything except read minds and shrewdly apply what she learns.

In this one she meets a fellow telepath-human and they team up but they don't actually get along too well. She can't read vampire minds, though and that causes some complications.

And now I'm reading an e-book in the HOUSE OF THE ROSE series from awe-struck e-books (http://www.awe-struck.net/) (a historical vampire-rewritten gods-n-goddesses series). I do highly recommend this series -- it's kind of like Dark Soap Opera -- black-suds? All these immortals playing tricks on each other and trying to steal memories.

Here we have two characters, once male-and-female spouses, now reborn as both male, and one is freaked because "he" was a Knight Templar straight-arrow in this life before becoming a vampire.

I saw the new Harry Potter film (Order of the Phoenix). I noted the audience was utterly silent - no laughs, no gasps. The Potter theaters in the complex were not sold out, but TRANSFORMERS was sold out. Potter grossed more than other films that weekend.

Potter has a "parallel world" online -- check out this article:http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070717/tc_nm/arts_potter_internet_dc_1;_ylt=ArIU_GfXZV26BuNeM8AdKTIE1vAI
The mall was stuffed to overflowing and the theater complex was busier than usual on a Sunday afternoon but the Mall was fuller than the theaters. I don't see such crowds except at Christmas Shopping time - no parking places. Big sales, and a little "back to school" new stuff -- but not enough to account for that mob even on a 114 degree heat Sunday.

All this very "silly" mixture will no doubt color and "inform" the Sime~Gen story I'm working on with Jean!

The point of all this? There isn't one! Which is the point. This is the sort of "input" I gulp down all the time, and every once in a while it arranges itself into something that makes sense. This week - I don't see the connecting thread. Maybe you do?

The rest is left as homework for the student! (I do purely hate that phrase in textbooks!)

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/