Showing posts with label SimeGen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SimeGen. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 07, 2020

Sime~Gen Book 15 Now in Kindle, iBooks, and Paper

Sime~Gen Book 15
Now in Kindle, iBooks, and Paper 

Here we are now in 2020, and just at the end of 2019, the 15th volume of my Sime~Gen Series appeared on Amazon, Apple iBooks, and probably places I've never heard of.  It is in e-book and paper formats.

We have talked about Star Trek, and the impact a mere TV Show has had on the world.  Teens and college students were (and still are) inspired to create the devices and capabilities Gene Roddenberry built deep into the background of Star Trek.

And those tantalizing possibilities still lure young people into the sciences.  New Series set in the Star Trek Universe are now Streaming hits.

How did that happen? Why? Could someone do this on purpose?

The first non-fiction book I wrote, STAR TREK LIVES!

 is all about why young people were so inspired, driven to develop skills to manifest their creativity.

To demonstrate the validity of my theory, I wrote my first novel, HOUSE OF ZEOR,  https://www.amazon.com/House-Zeor-Sime-Gen-Book-Sime-Gen-ebook/dp/B004N3AZJG/


...to appeal to the Spock fans among Star Trek fans.  I sold the (at that time very expensive) hardcover with a money back guarantee - if you don't like it, mail it back to me and I'll refund your money.  I sold 60, and never had one returned. 

I targeted a readership.  A very small subset of a huge readership.

The first novel in the series drew heaps of fan mail with questions about the worldbuilding.  I answered by letter -- and the created the fanzine Ambrov Zeor to publish my answers as I kept getting the same ones over and over.

STAR TREK LIVES! blew the lid on Star Trek fan fiction.  For years, fans had been publishing their own original fiction (with original characters not seen on screen), in fanzines.  That explosion of creative fiction was replicated by HOUSE OF ZEOR and subsequent Sime~Gen Novels.

As soon as I established Ambrov Zeor as a fanzine, I began to get fiction submissions even from people I didn't know.  I handed editorship of the fanzine over to a fan so I could go on writing books. 

At a Star Trek Convention, Karen MacCloud and Katie Filipowicz (two I didn't know at the time, since become best friends for life), approached me to ask to found other Sime~Gen fanzines.  They did exactly that and never had too few submissions of fiction and articles to get an issue out for another Star Trek con. 

By the time the second Sime~Gen novel was in hardcover print from Doubleday, one fan who was already a professional writer, Jean Lorrah, had written for the Sime~Gen fanzines just as she had written Star Trek fanfic.  Then she submitted to me a novel about the first channel to discover how to channel selyn.  We sold her novel to Doubleday and went on to do more Sime~Gen together -- then she wrote independently in Sime~Gen and I went on to develop the story line. 

So just like Star Trek, Sime~Gen captured reader interest and jolted creativity into motion. At one point there were 5 Sime~Gen fanzines - replicating the phenomenon in microcosm.

Star Trek, meanwhile, went on to generate Animated TV Series, and then new Prime Time drama series (most of which we love). 

Years later, Sime~Gen fanfic writers, some of whom had meanwhile become professional writers, made new, original, contributions to main-line Sime~Gen, first with a professionally published anthology



.. and now Mary Lou Mendum has transformed some of her Sime~Gen fanfic into professionally published novels, the Clear Springs Chronicles - a series within a series.

Her second Clear Springs novel is now out, and she's well into drafting the 4rd.

Plot and story lines had to be added to blend the fanfic onto the timeline, and she has been tasked with inventing some scientific advancements that change the direction of Sime~Gen history.

In the Clear Springs Chronicles, we follow the spread of Sime Centers deeply into Gen Territory.  As the interface between Sime and Gen deepens, creativity sparked and NEW science emerges.

Mary Lou is a Ph.D. in plant genetics, so we tasked her with identifying the plant source of a staple drink, adding to the Worldbuilding both a new kind of organic battery, inventing heavier than air flight, and a new disease.

Jean Lorrah is working on more novels covering the industrial spread of the organic battery via the Entertainment Industry -- and in the process, incorporating Mary Lou's new disease, showing how the death of one person from this disease motivates a descendant to transform the world yet again.

These fans are working, and re-working, the Worldbuilding behind the novels I have written. 

It is up to readers to decide what there is about Sime~Gen that seems to echo the effect on fans that Star Trek has had.

Mary Lou first drafted these new novels, then I made changes, Mary Lou re-drafted, and Jean Lorrah did a final polish edit -- then I did a polish draft, and Karen MacCleod did a copyedit, then it was sent in to the publisher, and we got back the usual final-final-final check this again, draft.

So here is Sime~Gen Book 15:


E-book for Kindle
https://www.amazon.com/Shift-Means-Sime-Gen-Springs-Chronicles-ebook/dp/B07YYRBRSM/

Paper:
https://www.amazon.com/Shift-Means-Clear-Springs-Chronicles/dp/1479445053/

You can find it on iBooks by searching Sime~Gen.


Books 16, 17 and 18 are in the works, detailing the way human personalities blend and clash to produce the structure of science and technology which transforms humanity's lifestyles around the globe, and eventually into space.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, July 02, 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's all about the connections.

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

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

Hi Jacqueline,

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

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

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

Live Long and Prosper,
Sue Kisenwether

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

-----end quote----

Sunday, May 5 - 10:00 AM Arizona Time

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

______________________________


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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

Fiction Writing


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


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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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


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


Star Trek Lives!


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ooops, I answered that above.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Science fiction is scientists at play.

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

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


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

Tuesday, September 12, 2017

Reviews 33 - Sime~Gen Seen From Outside

 Reviews 33 - Sime~Gen Seen From Outside

I found this review of the first book in the Clear Springs Trilogy by Mary Lou Mendum -- a Sime~Gen Series trilogy - on Facebook and Amazon on June 29, 2017.

The second in the trilogy will likely be available soon, so I thought this review from the outside -- by someone who has not been writing Sime~Gen fanfic -- could be useful context for writers who have been following my commentary on what goes on inside a writer's mind.

We have explored how to take a news item, mull it over, turn it into questions, look at it from outside the framework of your own culture -- maybe from all human cultures -- and cast the resulting idea into a Theme you can use to build the World for an Alien Romance.

This thinking process is common to science fiction, and turns up in all the genres.  But it does not always produce something that resonates with a readership.  When you do hit a readership, sometimes you don't know it for decades to come.

We have also discussed how you know if you're writing a "classic"

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

When a work stands the test of time, it can become a Classic.  If you want to write a Classic, you need to study Classics, but also the writers and their processes that produced that "Idea."  You can't use another writer's process, but you can use your understanding of their process to invent a process of your own -- and test it in the marketplace of Ideas.

Here is a view of the end result of the Sime~Gen Process by someone who was not involved in it.

He has given permission to post this review here.

-----------Review By Joseph Baneth Allen----------

Just finished reading "A Change of Tactics: A Sime~Gen Novel -Clear Spring Chronicles #1" by Mary Lou Mendum, Jacqueline Lichtenberg, and Jean Lorrah released by Wildside Press.

 A Change of Tactics cover image
I was delighted when Wildeside Press began reprinting the classic [previously published] Sime-Gen novels by Jacqueline Lichtenberg, and Jean Lorrah. along with the previously unpublished ones that Jacqueline and Jean had written. Due to the success in sales of the reprints and previously unpublished Sime-Gen novels, Wildside Press has rather smartly decided to publish more new Sime-Gen novels, of which "A Change of Tactics: A Sime~Gen Novel -Clear Spring Chronicles #1" is hopefully the first in a long line of original Sime-Gen novels.

Mary Lou Mendum first began writing her Clear Springs Chronicles, which highlight the adventures of Tecton Donor Den Milnan and his cousin First Level Channel Rital Madz, in the Sime-Gen Fanzine AMBROV ZEOR back in 1990.

So when Wildeside Press wanted a new Sime-Gen Novel, Jacqueline asked Mary Lou if she wanted to expand her first two stories about how Den and Rital arrived in Clear Spring to expedite/herald a technology exchange of Selyn Batteries.

Now I may be wrong in this, but I do believe that it was Jacqueline Lichtenberg who first broke ground in the publishing industry by not only allowing fan fiction of her universe to thrive - but also allowing another writer, Jean Lorrah to co-write joint and solo novels in the Sime-Gen series. There is a strong argument to be made that shared-world novels and anthologies flourished because of her willingness to take a step, at that time, I don't recall any other author and/or publisher doing. Without Jacqueline Lichtenberg paving the way, I strongly suspect that the co-written novels of Andre Norton, Marion Zimmer Bradley, and other science fiction writers would have gotten off the drawing board. Success does tend to encourage more success.

"A Change of Tactics" examines who to adapt to the dual new situations of outright hatred and violence, and the willingness to chuck established procedure out the window when it doesn't work. It also challenges Den's and Rital's long traditional beliefs about how to reach out to people who have to worry about offending their neighbors. It also looks unflinching at religious prejudice and how to effectively combat it - something the Jacksonville Community Alliance could definitely benefit from.

How Den confronts and fights against the religious prejudice of Reverend Sinth and his followers is something rarely portrayed in science fiction - thought more in fantasy novels.

I am eagerly looking forward to the next Clear Spring Chronicle.
Highly Recommended!
Five Stars!

-----------end Review---------------

 Sime~Gen Series On Amazon

And don't forget, Book 13 in this Series is an anthology of stories by various writers, including Mary Lou Mendum.


Tuesday, May 16, 2017

Worldbuilding From Reality Part 7 - The Cord That Binds Our Hearts in Love

Worldbuilding From Reality
Part 7
The Cord That Binds Our Hearts in Love
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Here are previous posts in this series:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/04/worldbuilding-from-reality-part-6.html

Part 5 is the "Realistic Happily Ever After" post from November 2016.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/11/worldbuilding-from-reality-part-5.html

Part 4 - Creating a Story Canvas
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/03/worldbuilding-from-reality-part-4.html

Part 3 Creating Future History
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/07/worldbuilding-from-reality-part-3.html

Part 2 Advertising Video Writing
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/02/worldbuilding-from-reality-part-2.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/worldbuilding-from-reality.html

The silken tie that binds our hearts in love is probably a fiber optic co-ax cable wrapped in serious insulation.

What do I mean by serious insulation?  And why do we need such a thing?

Love is intense, the vibration that carries the divine voice, or maybe the divine voice itself.  Remember the story of Mount Sinai where the Ten Commandments were spoken by the divine Voice and the hills danced, souls flew out of bodies, and senses were scrambled -- rivers flowed backwards.

Just consider what that imagery means.  What are those words trying to "depict" -- as we depict Romance wrapped in science?

Here is the series on Depiction:

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

And in the series on Theme-Symbolism Integration we examined the issue of "Why Do We Cry At Weddings?"

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/08/theme-symbolism-integration-part-3-why.html

What happens inside you -- all the way from the purely animal body to the highest level of the divine soul -- when the tears just burst forth and flow down your cheeks?  Why is that effect so prevalent at weddings and when else in life is it common -- and why?  What exactly is happening in that moment?

We gave those questions microscopic examination and progressed to the use of symbolism.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/01/theme-symbolism-integration-part-4-how.html

So now let's glance back at everyday reality as a source of material your reader has in common with you -- the news headlines from which you rip your story.

As we are discussing Science Fiction Romance, the science of romance is a core source of story ideas.

The world you build around your characters has to include some real world science -- extrapolated just a bit, perhaps in defiance of a direction that the current science steadfastly endorses.

For example, a novel set in a Globally Warmed World - where everyone is fighting for their lives because of ocean rise and storms -- is not SCIENCE FICTION, but rather just science.  Science FICTION is produced by taking a theme such as A) aliens arrive and fix the climate for us (over our objections), or B) the science is all wrong and we're going into an ice age because of solar activity or C) the current science is correct but a genius arises who jiggers with the atmosphere (sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere) and for a while everything is fine -- except in the "now" of your story, his disastrous mistake is exposed.

And there are other possibilities -- but you get the idea. To write science fiction, you FICTIONALIZE the science.

Therefore, to write romance, you FICTIONALIZE the romance.

But to fictionalize, you must first grasp the real world version your reader lives with.

In our real world, it is very well accepted that the best, longest lasting and most inspiring marriages are based on trust.

Even when trust is betrayed a few times, the vast multitude of times it is faithfully upheld keeps a marriage together.

Over the last few years, lots of foundation grant money has been flowing into brain research - neuroscience.  So not only do we get an avalanche of papers in peer reviewed journals none of us read -- but they overflow into more widely distributed sources.

One such widely distributed source is the Harvard Business Review.

Yes, the Harvard Business Review published an article about LOVE CONQUERS ALL and the HAPPILY EVER AFTER -- though I seriously doubt anyone involved in the research or the publication had any idea at all what they actually said!  They thought they were writing about business.  I'm certain of that -- they really thought they were writing about corporate culture and business practices in managing employees.

Isn't it a marvelous world we live in?  They even illustrated the article with a LOVE CONQUERS ALL symbolism!

Here is the URL of the reality based article upon which you can easily build multiple fantasy worlds or fictionalized science based worlds for your characters to romp through.

https://hbr.org/2017/01/the-neuroscience-of-trust

The Neuroscience of Trust
Paul J. Zak
FROM THE JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2017 ISSUE

It says that employers are twisting themselves into knots to empower and challenge employees.

There are a number of wondrous fallacies embedded in the unconscious assumptions behind that opening sentence that are obvious to a science fiction writer and invisible to everyone else.  For example, nobody can "empower" someone else -- certainly not be "letting" somebody else do something!  If you "let" then you retain ALL the power, the power to set the agenda, to populate the dropdown from which the other must choose.  Employers and managers have to stop "letting" and start abolishing blocks.  Employees who are power-users will surge through the gap first chance they get (and terrify all the control freaks!).

Remember we discussed how a fiction writer can use fallacies in a sprawling discussion over many indexed topics.  Here are a few:

Theme-Plot-Character-Worldbuilding Integration  Part 6 Fallacy, Misnomer and the Contradiction
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/12/theme-plot-character-worldbuilding.html

  Here is the Fallacy of Safety
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/01/theme-plot-integration-part-6-fallacy.html

Here is the fallacy of trust
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/03/theme-plot-integration-part-7-fallacy.html

Always be on the lookout for fallacies embedded in culture, language, and even science itself, because "love conquers all" is not just a big theme envelope, but an actual fact of reality that connects you to your reader.

So neuroscience has been studying the human brain (and brains of various creatures) to explain how and why we respond to other people (or not) as we do.

I'm sure there are many objectives behind this, but be aware of the giant amounts of money directed into this research by Foundations championing a wild variety of political causes including things like proving that God does not exist, that there is no such thing as a soul (therefore no soul mates), or that there are many handy ways to control the behavior of humans.  Most of their activity is charitable or academic, so they are tax exempt foundations that occasionally lobby for or against political causes.

The gigantic sums (billions of dollars) involved in non-profit foundations and corporations, and the huge amounts of grant money for special activities is really the tail that wags the political dog.  Use the mysteries of "follow the money" accounting as a plot device to bring your couple together -- for ideas, watch the TV Series SUITS.

Oddly, SUITS is a TV Series that comes up on #scifichat on Twitter on Fridays, and like BURN NOTICE has garnered a science fiction romance fan following.  Watch how SUITS plots turn on forensic accounting.

Also on #scifichat on Twitter, we have discussed, in connection with SUITS,  George Orwell's 1984.

1984 is a novel with a vision of a future written in 1948 that presented what humans of the 1940's would do with the technology we have today (drones with internet connected cameras, every computer in your house able to see and hear you at all times, phones that track your whereabouts).

The Surveillance state is a reality waiting to happen...
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/report-on-secret-baltimore-aerial-surveillance-concludes-we-should-do-this-again-sometime
...and people will grab for it to feel safe from their neighbors who might turn into terrorists overnight.

Technology is both the enemy and the safety net.

Star Trek, in the 1960's discussed the dire threats of technology alongside the vast benefits -- a 3 year long contrast/compare essay on technological advancement.  Technology is just applied science -- commercialized uses for odd things discovered in laboratories.

Was George Orwell correct that the ability to spy on everyone would inevitably lead to government spying on everyone?

Why would anyone want to spy on someone else?

In a promising Romance, do the people spy on each other?  Well, in novels, yes -- if you are rich enough, you hire a private eye to do a background check on anyone approaching in a romance.  The rich don't stay rich by being stupid.

But where gold-digging is not the prevalent danger in a new relationship, do the really promising relationships proceed through spying on each other?  Sneaking into their phone, riffling through a pile of mail on the hall table, dropping into the place they say they work to see if they are really employed there, chatting up neighbors to see how well they care for their dogs?

Do we fact-check people we meet casually at parties before accepting a first date?

How distrustful of our information sources are we?  Yes, most of us have developed a distrust of commercial news sources, but has that distrust (yet) leaked into our everyday relationships?

According to this article in the Harvard Review, lots of money has gone into a study of business management practices and the results of TRUST in the workplace.

Alarmingly, a substantial fraction of the businesses the scientists studied do not exhibit trust to their employees.  Predictably, such businesses have a harder time holding onto good employees, and their productivity is not as high as businesses run on trust.  Thankfully, many businesses (largely tech related) do emphasize trust, assigning projects and encouraging creative problem solving.

Likewise in marriages, as we all know, good families run on trust, not fact-checking.

And likewise in Romances before marriage.  If you detect dis-trustfulness in someone you are dating, you generally consider dropping them, just as an untrusted employees starts cruising LinkedIn and Monster.com .

Trust is the bedrock of relationship.  It's not something that develops over time, but something that must be there right at the beginning.

Trust is the silken tie that binds, one of the fibers in the fiber-optic cable that carries the force of  Love to blast through any barrier and conquer any challenge.

Trust is only one of those fibers, but if it breaks the others will fray with time.

---------quote from Harvard Business Review article-----------

Leaders understand the stakes—at least in principle. In its 2016 global CEO survey, PwC reported that 55% of CEOs think that a lack of trust is a threat to their organization’s growth.

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

In previous posts on the Art of fiction writing, we discussed how the artist's eye finds symmetry that others don't see, and how the artist's job is to reveal the import of such symmetry to readers.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/06/writers-eye-finds-symmetry.html

Here's an example of such a symmetry -- all the political polls show the country divided on most issues 44% to 44% with the rest vacillating in the middle.  The most solid consensus you see these days is about 52% agreeing on an issue -- 55% is overwhelming agreement.  (that has not been the case in about a century -- consensus should be way up in the 60-70% range).

Note how this scientific study of corporate culture's usage of TRUST comes up with a mere 55% see lack of trust as inhibiting growth  -- while the science reveals lack of trust definitely inhibits growth.

The article is about the research involving a chemical, oxytocin, which we produce naturally (as do rats) and is abundant when trust is in play, and brain studies trace this neural activity.  This chemical, administered to humans via a nasal spray, inclines humans to exhibit more trusting behavior.

In other words, people can be forced to behave "properly" by introduction of a chemical agent.  The article is about managing trust by having managers adopt 8 behaviors.  It is a 7 page article, summarizing work done between 2001 and 2016, and it is quite dense but readable.

---------quote------------
CONCLUSION
Former Herman Miller CEO Max De Pree once said, “The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between the two, the leader must become a servant.”

The experiments I have run strongly support this view. Ultimately, you cultivate trust by setting a clear direction, giving people what they need to see it through, and getting out of their way.

It’s not about being easy on your employees or expecting less from them. High-trust companies hold people accountable but without micromanaging them. They treat people like responsible adults.
---------end quote---------

That quote from Max De Pree struck me as the perfect description of what a science fiction romance WRITER must do.  The way we say "thank you" to our readers is to deliver a plausible Happily Ever After.

But how can readers accept the plausibility of the HEA in today's world where distrust is rising?

Our media is fostering distrust, and our government appears to now run on distrust, alternative facts, fantasy reality.  It may not be a recent development but just a surfacing of an attitude shift that has been brewing for a generation.

Government is the last place you'd expect a trend to show up.  Family, and romance, is the first place a trend originates.

The silken cord that binds our culture -- trust -- going to shreds indicates a shift in the marketability of the idea that you shouldn't date someone who distrusts you.  And that you shouldn't distrust someone you're dating.

That prevalence (44%) of distrust in personal relationships could account for the divorce rate or the "living together" but never marrying rate.  Check the current numbers.  How can you marry someone you distrust?

If our modern culture has drifted as far as it can go into dis-trustfulness (letting fact become a matter of opinion, and your facts are as good as mine), then the science fiction romance writer has an opportunity to depict a future the exact opposite of what George Orwell depicted in 1984 -- a tech-surveillance culture where trust reigns supreme.

In other words, a tech surveillance culture in which everything is recorded, but those records are accessed only when the subject of the record demands it.  Build a world around that theme.

People could come to TRUST that dash-cam video etc would remain private and personal unless the subject wants it put into public record.

For example, in a car accident that isn't your fault, you can demand access to video proving it is not your fault but if it is your fault you can prevent access to the video proving that you are guilty of (whatever).  So the two people (or A.I.'s driving the cars) would end up head-to-head in court arguing over access to private records.

What kind of world would that be?  Maybe one where you have to prove your innocence but nobody has to prove your guilt?  That would be a science fiction premise because, as noted above, to fictionalize science you adopt a thematic stance opposite to the accepted reality.

Today, we still subscribe to the concept that nobody has to prove innocence because it is impossible to prove a negative.  The burden of proof lies with the accuser (or the government) not the accused.  The accuser must prove you are guilty.

Today, headlines scream "alleged" this or "accuses" that or so-and-so is "being investigated for" whatever.  The mere whiff of an accusation or investigation is immediately treated in the text of the article as presumed-guilty.  Surely nobody would waste taxpayer money investigating someone who is not guilty of something!

But with universal surveillance (1984 ) it could be possible to prove innocence but impossible to prove guilt.  And of course, what about hackers tampering with the recording?  There is so much for Love to conquer in these possibilities.

That leap to guilty until proven innocent ( and it is up to the accused to prove innocence) is rooted in that 45% of the people living in a distrustful world that mysteriously and inexplicably does not "grow."

It is not the kind of thinking employed by the 55% cited in the Harvard Business Review article as thinking that distrust inhibits growth.

To thrive humans must trust.

How can we repair trust in our culture when sworn enemies publicly threaten to put an invading army on our shores buried amidst refugees whose plight melts our hearts in love and whom we trust would make good Americans?

Consider the Romances currently happening among those millions of non-combatants fleeing explosions and starvation.  Babies are being born among them.  What sort of love-life will such children have after spending their formative years amidst such a ravaged culture?  Will they be able to trust?

Waft your answer to that question into the Galactic setting, and build a world where non-humans respond differently to trust, but meet up with humans who do trust (with certain glaring exceptions, of course.)

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com