The Trouble With Writing Sci-Fi Is That The World Catches Up

Apparently, one of the Tech companies has now invented a wearable computer that permits a person to check their significant other's pulse. The Japanese have invented toilets that announce a urinalysis of one's output. There are cellphones that double as credit card swipes and wallets, and I expect you could stash an eyeliner in there....

When I wrote FORCED MATE in 1993, I tried not to copy STAR TREK or STAR WARS, but I probably did so. According to FanFICtion (an excellent read), almost every work is inspired by previous works, and could be classed as someone's fan fiction. Be that as it may, anyone reading FM for the first time nowadays would not be at all impressed with my futuristic elements.

Alas. What do more experienced SFR or alien romance writers do about their backlist being overtaken?

All the best,
Rowena Cherry
SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/ 

Parallelism, Convergence, or something else

For the purposes of alien romance , tonight, I'm thinking about the three --or four-- reasons that romantically inclined aliens might look reasonably like us.

Convergence might be the most "fun". That is where a species evolves to look like another species, often a prey species, for a good and sufficient evolutionary reason. For instance, all the better to prey upon us.

Vampires might be a good example. The book "The Sparrow" had another cool example. Imagine a lion evolving to look a lot more like a wildebeest, so it could get really close to its prey without being noticed.

Parallelism is where different species evolve independently, but end up looking the same. We might like to think that this is because the design is the perfect adaptation.

Intelligent design, or divine intervention. One God --from outer space-- either liked the model so much that He --or She-- duplicated it. Or else, He --or She-- was not entirely satisfied, and created new and improved versions of the basic model.

Seeding... "gods from outer space" who were simply more technologically advanced, for whatever reason --not necessarily moral--, colonized, terraformed, performed cross-breeding experiments, and then went away (or didn't).

Of course, you could also have almost any combination of any of those, as in the case of the race of alien males whose own females have become sterile (or vice-versa) and therefore they abduct us, and as a result, evolve to look even more like us.

Have I missed anything out?

Happy Christmas!

Rowena Cherrry


alien romance

Chess-inspired ("mating") titles. Gods from outer space. Sexy SFR. Poking fun, (pun intended). Shameless word-play.

World-building. How off Earth do you tell time?

Have you ever thought of "Time" as a problem?
Maybe not.
If all your alien romance action takes place on one planetary body, or moon, you might start with the local sun or star, and measure time by the orbit.
But what if the orbit wobbles?

I suppose you could have Leap Years on a grand scale.

If the sun is a Cepheid Variable, (not recommended, too unstable) can you rely on light to predict time?

What if there are two suns? Suppose you have several moons?

And supposing your civilization is on a space ark, or a tora, or a space station --like Babylon 9-- populated in a democratic manner by peoples from many galaxies. How would they agree on what time "Standard Time" is? Whose moon --or watch-- would rule?

Would there be Time wars?

Why do the military use a 24 hour clock, and civilians use a 12 hour (plus am/pm)?

Even on our own little world, we've had different calendars and almanacs as current world rulers have dabbled, and named months after themselves, and got egotistically involved in whether or not "their" month is bigger and longer than their rivals' months.

If any super power ever elects a President named February, watch out!

Even if "we" all agree on Greenwich Mean Time (time is "mean" ?) we live in different time zones, and when we fly across an international date line, we travel in time. And if we leave one atomic clock at Greenwich, and whizz another identical one around the globe in orbit, they don't tell the same time. (Twin paradox).

So what would happen to fast-moving --but not equally fast-- spaceships? Do you think, instead of talking about the weather (as Englishmen are supposed to do), friendly spacefarers would chat about the time all the time?

In FORCED MATE, I decided to base time-telling in the Tigron Empire on a regular, predictable, reliable event: the alien female cycle. "The third thing females are good for."

That presupposes mammalian females, and reproductive cycles, and also that gravity, velocity, the space diet etc do not interfere with biology. What else is regular and reliable?

Heartbeats? Just imagine if time passed more quickly when we are frightened, or sexually active, or doing our gym-rat thing!

This week, Barbara Vey blogged on Thursday about a sex myth quiz. You can find a link to Barbara Vey's blog through the bloglinkhoppers link.

Spoiler alert!

Apparently, the average, healthy, human male (at least three loopholes, there) produces 300 million spermatoza every day. Imagine trying to tell time based on that reliable number! Of course, this is not a serious suggestion. It would be totally unmanageable and impracticable.

On that happy thought.... I'll leave you to go spoof something.

Best wishes,
Rowena

PS. Check out the Sampler of 10 current and former Dorchester FF&P authors' first chapters.

Rowena Cherrry

FORCED MATE --what's the book about

A reader on the Amazon Romance discussion thread (about what Readers wish Authors would put on their websites... good thread!), asked me why there is no unbiased information about what FORCED MATE is about.

In a small, but not unbiased, way, I'd like to rectify the omission.

FORCED MATE is a chess term (all my titles are chess terms). Basically, the Black King and the White King race to make a pawn their Queen. It seemed a great metaphor for a romance where two powerful world leaders want the same girl.

Persephone is abducted (from Earth) by Hades (dark god of the Underworld) ... and kicks his butt.

My heroine, Djinni-vera (Jinny) Persephone, is psychic and a mind reader, and an intergalactic warrior in training who is being kept hidden on Earth until the time is right for her to marry her betrothed, the White "King".

The "Black" King (I am using my inverted commas deliberately) sees a picture of the heroine, and decides --much as Hades did-- that he has to have her. He also wants to make her happy --in some versions of the myth, Hades also was willing to go to great lengths to please Persephone and he turned his underworld into a dark version of Earth for her, but with a double bed.

Since the "Black" King has never had to woo a woman to get her into his bed before, he's a bit out of his depth. He consults unreliable sources, such as old, pirated James Bond movies, and Romance novels, and an embittered English mercenary, and tries almost every stock "Romance" situation, and is astonished and baffled --and annoyed-- when his romance is not an instant, outrageous success.

Of course, the White "King" does not take the abduction of the perfect pawn Princess like a gentleman and a sportsman. He objects. He wants her back. He does not give up gracefully.

This is a complex romance with many levels and layers. It's full of puns, miniature spoofs, good jokes (and bad jokes!), bathroom humour (I-tell-your-alcohol level toilets), political intrigue, one explicit consensual sex (think of England) scene, and a whole starshipload of interesting characters with their own ideas of what is really important and whose side they are on.

Some commentators have said this book is about the ultimate hunk.
Others have said it is about the heroine and her relationships with other females. Others have said it is about the humor.

For me, it was the book of my heart.

Rowena Cherrry
alien romance

1. FORCED MATE (paperback, also e-book)
2. MATING NET (prequel, short story, e-book only)
3. INSUFFICIENT MATING MATERIAL(paperback, sequel/spin off... story of Djetth (Jeff) and Martia-Djulia (Marsh)

Coming in 2008: KNIGHT'S FORK

I beg pardon for the self-serving post. Today, I mean to finish KF (before it is 3 months late)

Looking below Orion's belt

At five this morning, I glanced up through a bathroom skylight, and saw stars.

"Oh, good," I thought. My view across the lake from the living room window wall had shown sullen, reddish cloud cover, but my aspect is toward the East and South. The sky is often very different at the front of the house.

Wrapped in an old duvet, I went to lie on the driveway, to make a few wishes on shooting stars.

Orion is the only constellation I am confident in recognizing.
I freely admit it.
It's the alignment of his kinky belt that draws my eye every time.

Anyway, oh joy! I was able to see the Orionids. Meteors ejaculating from the general region of Orion.
I wasn't able to wish fast enough --for romantic inspiration-- there were so many.

I wonder why we wish when we look up at a combusting grain of sand but not at a flash of lightning?
I wonder how or whether a meteor shower would mess with an alien spaceship's "cloaking" or "Virtual Invisibility".

Having wished, I now must get back to work, because wishes don't make word count, not even when one is writing an alien romance.

Best wishes,
Rowena Cherry

PS
I may edit this blog to unrecognizability in the coming days.
I'm working in Safari, so I cannot add links. However, my latest newsletter went live last Tuesday and can be found at
http://www.rowenacherry.com/newsletter/index.php

His Preposterously huge Highness (answers to Kimberley's questions)

What authors inspired the contributors the most?

I am by nature a contrarian. If you tell me I can't do something, I want to prove you wrong. If you tell me I am sure to like
someone (or her book), I'll bend over backwards not to do so..... (and vice-versa)

Contrarian is probably a banker's euphemism for a grumpy old woman!

I started writing in 1991. Without intending any offense to anyone, and with the obvious exceptions of Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Orson Scott Card, Tom Clancy, Arthur Hailey, Georgette Heyer, Terry Pratchett, Harry Harrison, Agatha Christie, Jo Beverley, George Orwell (aka Eric Blair), JRR Tolkein, William Shakespeare, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, and Jane Austen.... I don't think I'll name those thoroughly moderns who inspired me because they did so in the sense of "(expletive deleted) I could do better than that" to borrow a David Bowie line.

Of course, looking back on my unpublished self-confidence, I am appalled at myself, but I'd probably never have started if I didn't imagine that I could meet the standard.

By the way, I rather liked David Bowie's music and Ziggy Stardust persona. I also liked a great deal of what is now called Classic Rock, but which I might call Sci-Fi Romance rock... Fleetwood Mac, especially Stevie Nicks's music, Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, Cream, The Doors, the Rolling Stones, Jethro Tull, and many more.

My natural inclination might have been to write Historicals, but I went off that idea when my British respect for my betters rebelled at a few novels I encountered in which real historical figures were created villains, and in one notable case given yard-and-a-half long masculine genitalia and a penchant for misplacing it. Besides which, all the best titles of nobility which cunningly suggested that the hero had a perpetual hard-on had already been used... by several authors.

So, I created my own divided and dysfunctional ans sexually insatiable royal family and set them in outer space, and built a world for them starting with a sun, and an uninhabitable planet (a gas giant... because my sense of humor is low) and its moon.




definition of Science Fiction Romance and related sub-genres.

I prefer the term speculative romance, and I think of it as anything that comes under the Paranormal umbrella but which does not involve ghosts, vampires (unless they are aliens), zombies (ditto), Time Travel (unless to do with the Twin paradox), magic.... There must be an explanation for the happenings, even if it is highly creative, as in The Physics of Star Trek or The Science of Star Wars (or whatever the real titles were).

What are the absolute must-do conventions? Introduce the Hero before the Villain? Happily Ever After?


If you tell me there is a rule, I want to break it. In MATING NET, I introduced the villain first. He's an arrogant, sexy hunk. Maybe he isn't really the villain. He's the hero's identical twin, and he is the one who causes all the problems. Of course, that meant that New York was not ready for Djohn Kronos. I won't necessarily have sex on page 90, either, or whatever page it was once supposd to be. However, I will not mess with a happy ending, a happily ever after. Once my hero and heroine make a commitment to one another, they stay together... so far.


What do most have in common?

I think we all do more research than most readers might appreciate, we all respect our readers' intelligence, we all write thought-provoking material. We're all pretty enlightened and well read.


When did SFR become a recognized sub-genre?

I'm not a Historian of the genre. I'm not sure it is recognized. There still seems to be some confusion whether some of us are placed in the Romance or Sci Fi aisles. There's no confusion in my case. If my book is not certifiably Romance, I get to rewrite it until it is.


When did this happen and who led the way?

I think the way is still being led.


Who were the pioneers?

I like to think some of those on this blog are, also a number of the members of the SFWA chapter.


Thank you for some great questions, Kimberley!

The "gods of Tigron" trilogy (aka The Mating Books)

Cathy Clamp was one of the speakers on my Research workshop panel at the last RT. Her handout, and those of Jade Lee, Sandy Blair, Judith Laik, and my own can be found in the Useful Stuff area of my website

For me, the most memorable story Cathy told was of how she always takes every opportunity to see unusual things, and makes the effort to talk to strangers. So, last weekend, when I had the chance to go into a cockpit with the pilots of a plane, and to talk to them about how and where ground radar interrogates air traffic, I did.

Much to the consternation (I am sure) of the other passengers, I was in with the pilots for a long time. I learned about air ways and sea lanes, the trade winds and the jet stream, and solar winds!

There's nothing like talking with pilots (or any experts) about the right way to do this and that, in order to extrapolate how one might to the "wrong" thing, or get around the system.... which of course my aliens have to do.

Best wishes,
Rowena Cherry

(By the way, I take no responsibility for the "associated" links that youtube offers you once you have viewed the Mating Net video!)

Homesick and Flying Under False Colours

I'm writing my fourth, fifth, and sixth alien romances at the moment, with the greatest emphasis on the fourth, but with some awareness for the fact that I can't kill off the alien beefcake.

At some point, I'd like to explore homesickness, either as something a human abductee suffers, or else as an issue that an alien has to deal with. It's not something one grows out of... or is it? I'd love to know other bloggers' experiences.

The first time I was away from home, as a schoolgirl, for a sleepover at a friend's home, I remember being miserable. As time went on, I had to be away from home for longer and longer periods: a long weekend camping trip or two and a couple of fortnight-long residential courses for the Duke of Edinburgh's award; university term times; boarding school holidays when I taught in Dorset.

Over the subsequent years, my life became exciting and glamorous. I fell in love and set up a household of my own... and moved house three times within Germany, not counting months in hotels between moves, and a couple of times in the USA. My own final nesting place in an adopted land isn't what I think of as "home".

I'm not going "home" for the summer this year, for several very good reasons, some of them logistical. (The logistics of intergalactic space travel would also be a difficulty in my books... on a much grander scale than my own which have not a little to do with multiple food allergies and current restrictions on the food and drink that one may take through security.)

Suddenly, vague yearnings to make contact with friends I've hardly thought about, except to send a Christmas card to... maybe... have prompted time-consuming mini-quests to get back in touch, and I've realized that I am homesick. I think, but I'm not sure, that part of the problem is that I don't have the choice this year. Either that, or I'm getting sentimental in my second half-century.

I contacted my old college, Homerton, Cambridge, and discovered that I am "a lost sheep" as far as the Keeper of the Rolls is -or was- concerned. Funnily enough, the fund-raisers never lost touch with me.

I've joined Facebook.com . Today someone wondered aloud --because we write on a wall, like twittering at Twitters.com-- how many of the people on the "London" network did not actually live in London at all. I felt like I was flying under false colours by lurking, so I declared myself.

As for my writing, "homesickness" is quite a challenge. For instance, FORCED MATE was (and is) a futuristic take on the classical myth of Persephone who was swept up into Hades's chariot and carried off to his dark world.

Since Forced Mate is a romance, the heroine had to live happily ever after, so I couldn't deal with the pomegranate seeds and her homesickness, and the eventual joint custody ruling by Zeus so Persephone spent half the year with her dh and the other half with her mother.

I think I know which future heroine may end up being homesick.