Reviews 3 by Jacqueline Lichtenberg Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. - Finding Your "Voice"

Reviews 3 by Jacqueline Lichtenberg
Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Finding Your "Voice"

Previous posts in this series:

Here is the index of previous posts relevant to this discussion:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/index-post-to-art-and-craft-of-story.html

In Part 3 of this series on episodic plotting and story springboards,
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/story-springboards-part-3-art-of.html

we started sketching out the issues and topics relevant to constructing an Episodic Plot.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/story-springboards-part-4-art-of.html

In this "reviews" series we're exploring places you can find examples of what we are discussing:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/10/reviews-1-by-jacqueline-lichtenberg.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/reviews-2-by-jacqueline-lichtenberg.html

So here we are in the middle of Chanukah, a time of re-dedication, renewal -- what's called in the Comics world "An Origin Story."

This time of year is about beginnings, more than endings.

Marion Zimmer Bradley taught the oldest truth of storytelling -- "Every Ending Is A New Beginning."

Back in the Fall when I watched the first episode of the new ABC drama "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." -- I noticed how it used that line - the Origin Story - as what SAVE THE CAT! by Blake Snyder terms, "theme stated." 

Theme-stated is a line of dialogue that shows without telling the philosophical core question the work deals with, and states the question in such a way that you can "hear" the Author's Voice and know what the work is really about, regardless of what it is ostensibly about.

THEME-STATED is all about "Voice."

"Voice" is one of those elusive subjects new writers natter on about, obsess over, and just can't quite get a grip on.  It's like "style" - an intangible that can't really be taught or even learned, but must be discovered by the writer herself.

So the opening episode of this new TV drama (composed of characters and material that has been market tested in comics, film, and other media) told the "origin" of a new series.

The script provided the opening "beat" (to use another SAVE THE CAT! term) of the new series, hinting at a long series of episodes.

In November, we began an exploration of the necessary elements to construct an episodic story.  We looked at some previous posts on story-mechanics then began peeling away the masks of the element called "Springboard" (a term borrowed from TV Screenwriter's Marketing).

Story-Springboards are the mechanism that makes episodic structures work, that make Movie Serials (Flash Gordon) work, that make TV Series work, and yes, comics and novel-series too.

The elements of a series of novels are all present in, but invisible during, the first novel or episode. The universe the story will explore has to be in that first "hook" -- yes, even inside the first line of the first episode.

From there it "unfolds."

Note how the AGENT TV series opens with a guy and his kid looking into the window of a very geekish comic store with action figures -- a few lines of dialogue set up the subject of the theme (family relationships, a well-raised kid who doesn't throw a "Daddy-buy-me-that!" temper tantrum while knowing his Dad is "out of work.") The "universe" of this series is in that store window. 

Just as that quick set-up scene is in progress BOOM, an explosion high up in a building behind them -- and we do not know that the Dad has had business on the upper floor of that building. 

We just watch the Dad check to see the kid didn't get hit by debris, then TRUST the kid to stay put, and the Dad rushes across the street toward the fire while everyone else is fleeing. 

Then the Dad looks this way and that (like Superman about to change clothes and fly up from an alley -- really well acted!  My Geek-nerves thrilled no end!) drives his bare hands into the bricks of the building and climbs up into the fire.  He flinches from the flames, races into the burning room, and jumps out of a high window holding a woman draped over his extended arms.

That's an important visual -- he is NOT holding her in a "fireman's  carry" over his shoulders as he should be, but in the Superman/Lois Lane rescue position depicted on comic book covers.  It's also the position favored by Pulp Fiction covers with aliens kidnapping helpless human women (nobody explains why) and the position used by human Hero rescuing helpless human woman.

It's stupid and dangerous, but seems to be the "image" that telegraphs "strength" -- more strength and confidence than is necessary or wise.

The show progresses through explaining and demonstrating the modern tech (complete with James Bond allusions!  -- I'm gonna love this show!  It's a scream and a laugh between every commercial!) -- and ends with the inevitable showdown scene.

In that ending scene we get the REST OF THE THEME STATED ("voice" remember?).

Up until this final-showdown scene with an impending explosion that could take out half a city, (talk about the cliche stage-writing-trick of putting a "bomb under the chair.") we aren't really sure who are the "good guys" and who are the "bad guys" and whether this new guy belongs on the good-guy's roster.

Oh, yeah, you know because you know the universe and who owns the franchise, who wrote and produced -- I mean who hasn't been following all this on Google+ and Facebook? -- but the innocent audience hasn't been shown, so they are on the edge of their chairs wondering if they're going to like this new TV Series or not.

So we're in the showdown scene at the end of ep 1, and we learn that this building-climbing guy has a chemical in his system that will cause what amounts to an atomic explosion that could take out half a city.

This fellow, whom we met in scene 1 got fired from a low-level job because he got injured, found a doctor who was running an experiment (for an unknown nasty), got implanted with this material that will explode (just like the previous experimental subject exploded in scene 1 and took out a building top laboratory), and became a "super-hero" with a "crazy-streak" that is breaking out now.  So his inner resentments have been heated up artificially, and he is raging mad at the injustice of it all. 

Our sympathies are with this guy.,  This guy saved-the-cat by promising his kid, in scene 1, that they'd see what they could do for his birthday present, then rescued a woman from a fire!  This script is pure SAVE THE CAT! writing.  

But the SHIELD team that is supposed to be our "good guys" have decided they have to take this guy out (with a shot to the head) to save a good chunk of the city from annihilation.  (The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one, as Spock said.)

So the head of this SHIELD team is talking to the new guy while the marksman on the team is targeting the new guy's head.

The new guy gets dialogue lines that -- in lean, spare, precise, perfect dialogue! -- state one side of the political argument going on in America today, that will be the main subject of the elections of 2014. 

And right out loud, on TV, the new guy mentions GOD!!!  The source of his moral/ethical stance (which we've just seen him violating) is God.  Yet he states his resentment of the "Suits" -- the big money, ruling class, people who hire, destroy, and discard "workers" as he has been discarded -- he clearly states which "side" he's on -- what we recognize as the Good Guy Side.  Yet, just as clearly, he is not sane at that moment.  The team leader states that this new guy has expressed the philosophy that indicates he is just exactly the sort of person who should be on his team.

At that point the part of the audience which is clueless is deciding if they want to watch this show or not.

They are listening for the VOICE of the producer, but they don't know that's what they need to hear. 

They want to know what this series will be "about."

What the show is about is inside the timbre of the "Voice" of the producer, and it comes through clearly in the last few moments after all the suspenseful buildup.

The marksman makes his shot -- something is embedded in the new guy's skull, and he falls motionless.  (No blood.)

The audience sees the group they thought were the good guys apparently murder a good guy whom they liked.

Spirits plummet.  This is not a show for me.  These people are BAD, and not in a good way at all.  Yuck.


Last scene -- it is made clear that the new guy will survive and be OK.

And in that survival is the VOICE OF THE PRODUCER and the SPRINGBOARD for the series.

The "voice" is within the THEME STATED (this sub-set of that larger theme says "good guys don't murder good guys"), and the "springboard" is wound tight.  The viewers are ready to tune in next week (or DVR next week's show).  This set of Good Guys and their bags full of techie magic tricks captivate because they are "interesting."  They are "interesting" because they take risks and win -- which creates the suspense-line "what if they don't win?" 

As with The Dresden Files (long book series by Jim Butcher - 16 and counting)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bookseries/B00CKCWAEA/

... we have a classic character with 6 problems but in this case represented by the 6 members of the team.

This is from ABC's website: http://abc.go.com/shows/marvels-agents-of-shield/about-the-show

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

Clark Gregg reprises his role of Agent Phil Coulson from Marvel’s feature films, as he assembles a small, highly select group of Agents from the worldwide law-enforcement organization known as S.H.I.E.L.D. Together they investigate the new, the strange, and the unknown across the globe, protecting the ordinary from the extraordinary. Coulson's team consists of Agent Grant Ward (Brett Dalton), highly trained in combat and espionage; Agent Melinda May (Ming-Na Wen), expert pilot and martial artist; Agent Leo Fitz (Iain De Caestecker), brilliant engineer; and Agent Jemma Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge), genius bio-chemist. Joining them on their journey into mystery is new recruit and computer hacker, Skye (Chloe Bennet).

Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Marvel’s first television series, is from executive producers Joss Whedon (Marvel's The Avengers, Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Jed Whedon & Maurissa Tancharoen, who co-wrote the pilot (Dollhouse, Dr.Horrible's Sing-Along Blog). Jeffrey Bell (Angel, Alias) and Jeph Loeb (Smallville, Lost, Heroes) also serve as executive producers. Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is produced by ABC Studios and Marvel Television.

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

The nature of a character's character and the intricacies of the 6 problems (in this case the relationships among the 6 and the external problems they face together) are two of the essential elements in forming the "springboard."

The "springboard" has to be a "board" (character) that can BEND or DEFORM, and be made of a substance (such as a belief in God, or a disbelief, a cause, a dedication, a trusting relationship) that has the "potential energy" to make that deformed board SPRING back and hurl the character into a NEW LIFE. 

In this case, each of the six being assembled into a team are leaving what they had to become something new.

Every ending is a new beginning.

That in itself is a theme which is a component of larger themes.

The trick to understanding how theme becomes VOICE is to understand that theme is "what your story says" and that what your story says is very likely not what you set out to say, what you read it to say, what it seems to say to you. 

In fact, what your story really says is very likely not even what most of your readers think it says.

Worse -- not even academics or reviewers always nail the theme of a story.

But academics who study the whole body of a writer's work often do uncover a common thread among those works.  Sometimes they divide an author's work into "periods" -- sets of works that share something in common, and an appeal to specific audiences that are different from one another.

Authors, like people, grow and over a lifetime change, evolve different philosophical takes on the world and the meaning of life, as well as increasing skill producing text that reflects that meaning.

Every ending is a new beginning -- and as Gene Roddenberry taught, the purpose of fiction is to ASK QUESTIONS but not provide "answers." 

Themes frame those questions and begin explorations of all the related questions.

Now study up on SOUND -- and how digital sound analysis can "recognize" voices.

That's what a reader "hears" in the themes, sub-themes, and various "notes" present in the voices of the characters in a story.  It's a whole symphony of thematic-sounds -- of tones and pitches.

Every subject about human life has thousands of tones, just like "white-noise." 

The story-teller's job is to make "music" out of the "white-noise" of life by sorting tones out of the background and putting them together into something that harmonizes -- like the "voices" of the instruments of a symphony orchestra.

But the "quality" of an instrument or an orchestra lies in the "resonances" the playing of an instrument produces.  The violin you rent to give your kid his first lesson is not the same as the violin played by the lead violinist of the Philadelphia Philharmonic.

The difference in those instruments lies in the resonances of the wood and glues.

Each hand-made violin has a "voice" composed of such resonances.

Each writer has a "voice" composed of the resonances aroused within the author by handling the themes of life composing the story being told.  Note how a trained singer's voice differs from that of a person who has not exercised vocal chords and trained voice and ear.  Note the Drill Sergeant's Parade Ground voice is loud -- how does that happen?  It's not just innate -- it's training, practice, exercise, and technique. 

"Voice" is not just the strings or the bow, the touch of the violinist, the composition of the piece, the acoustics of the Hall (or recording studio), or the recording technology.

"Voice" is all of that and more.

For a work of fiction, "voice" is not any one of the craft techniques we've been studying in this blog.  It is the connections (glue) between those components, the parts of the writer's character as a person that the writer herself is not aware of -- that's the part that vibrates and produces an induced vibration in the reader.

The reader "hears" the vibration of their own body/soul combination -- not the writer's vibration! 

The "voice" the writer speaks in is not the "voice" the reader hears.

We say, as we grow up, that we've "out-grown" a particular genre or type of story.

Writers too out-grow their first stories and evolve a new voice. 

With music, as we age, our "ear" may lose acuity in certain tonal ranges.

With reading, (or TV etc) our ability to respond to certain "springboards" vibrating as they toss a character into story may change. 

As I've quoted Alma Hill saying, "Writing is a Performing Art." 

The stage upon which the writer performs is theme, which is composed of many "boards" and "nails" -- and may be hollow underneath and echo, or have trapdoors for magic tricks. 

Stages can be simple (a soapbox) or complex.  The only way to develop a "voice" is to stand up on the stage and perform just as a singer must sing to strengthen the voice's muscles. 

Here are some previous posts on THEME.

Here are 7 parts:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/index-to-theme-plot-integration.html

And with links to parts 8, 9 and 10:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/07/theme-plot-integration-part-12-tom.html

We've also been examining the integration of theme into other fundamental components of storytelling such as character:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/08/theme-character-integration-part-3-why.html

Until I have enough on a subject to post an Index, I generally list previous parts of a discussion at the top of a post -- and include links to other related subjects within a post, but often rely upon you to remember parts of a discussion.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Theme-Conflict Integration Part 1 Battle of the Sexes by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Theme-Conflict Integration Part 1 Battle of the Sexes

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Buzzing through the June 2013 kerfuffle started by a SFWA Bulletin cover (classic brass bras Warrior Woman image) and a blog post that ignited another explosion in the sexism wars, I've been surveying some of the blog entries by both men and women writers on the acceptance of SFR by SF writers. 

And of course, every day I spend a bit of time watching the TV news -- just for fun and inspiration.

And suddenly while watching the news after viewing an episode of NBC's J. J. Abrams REVOLUTION, the world flipped into a new focus. 

It was one of those "artist's eye" things I've been talking about here since I started discussing writing craft techniques one at a time.  (yes, we'll get to three at a time!). 

And I went, AHA!!! -- that's THEME-CONFLICT INTEGRATION!!! 

Trying to explain what I saw in a) our fictional environment b) our (allegedly) real world environment and c) our writer's marketing environment --- all three integrated, BANG in one 3-D vision -- is going to be a serious challenge.

But if you can grasp what I'm saying, then look at your world from your own personal point of view, you may become the one to launch this enormous breakthrough novel/film that we've been envisioning on this blog since I began the writing craft series here.

So you may want to review some of the elementary posts on structure, and where conflict fits into it all.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/09/verisimilitude-vs-reality-part-2-master.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/09/verisimilitude-vs-reality-part-3-game.html

There are hardly any posts I've done that don't involve the use of conflict to generate the plot (and everything else in a Romance Novel).

But you might want to review these:

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/06/finding-story-opening-part-2-avatar-and.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/plot-vs-story.html

Conflict is absolutely the hardest thing for writers to master.  Women have the hardest time with it, but I've seen men writers who just can't "get it" either.  It's a blind-spot common to both genders at the beginning of the learning curve.

Once you get conflict, you start selling even if your stuff is really bad, an embarrassment so bad that eventually you adopt another pen name because you don't want your current stuff associated with that old stuff.

Conflict is the essence of story, and has been since the beginning of story-telling as an art-form (think cave man fireside entertainment).

And yet, it is very hard to learn how to go about arranging the distinctive elements of your story around a core of a conflict to create a plot.

You know it when you see it in a novel or movie, and you love it, every time.  CONFLICT - WORKING OUT - RESOLUTION.  That is a highly commercial winning sequence every time, regardless of the content.

However, there is "throw away" entertainment -- what they once called "the pulps" -- cheaply produced magazines to read and toss, and there is classic literature.

The error that we, as Science Fiction Romance writers, have been trying to correct is the assumption that Romance is "pulp" and only pulp.  The assumption is that Romance is suitable only for lining bird cages and wrapping dead fish.  Oddly, that was always the assumption about science fiction.  Hmmm. 

It is an unconscious assumption, and our entire civilization is founded upon it. 

Once you see that manifesting in TV News, popular TV Series, and heated blog controversies over "sexism" you understand that we've been had.  Big time.

Like Science Fiction, Westerns, and many other genres so disparaged, Romance is not now and never has been "throw away" literature.  It is CLASSIC by it's very nature.

That fact is so terrifying that it is buried in the subconscious (Neptune, Pisces -- the best horror genre novels are fabricated out of NEPTUNE EVENTS (illusion) just as Romance Genre pivots on a Neptune Transit).  Buried in the collective subconscious, that fact about Romance being Classic Literature by its very nature is left to suppurate and rot us all out from the inside.

Do you see how I've taken a CONFLICT (the battle of the sexes over the prestige of Romance Genre) and edged it over into a THEME? 

Read the series of posts on Theme-Character Integration:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/06/theme-character-integration-part-1-what.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/07/theme-character-integration-part-2-fire.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/08/theme-character-integration-part-3-why.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/08/theme-character-integration-part-4.html

The process I just demonstrated, extracting a theme from a mishmosh of something else is discussed in those theme-character posts as is the crafting of the ending of a novel. 

The ending is the point in time where the theme is rammed down the character's throat and becomes totally assimilated, thus ending the story.  The ram is the Plot.  At the ending of a story, plot and story become indistinguishable.  That's how you know you are at an ending. 

One of the most often repeated errors beginning writers make is to start at the end.  And that's why beginners often can't grasp the difference between story and plot. 

To find the beginning of a story, you must train yourself to think backwards from an ending or a middle that first occurs to you to find the place in the story-arc where the story and the plot both begin.

And that same kind of backwards, inside-out thinking is useful in extracting a theme from "the world" as it exists in a mishmosh.

I had immediately noticed that the SFWA Bulletin cover controversy hit critical mass when the simple blog post
http://www.thestoryhub.ca/talking-sci-fi-romance/
ignited a firestorm.

And the firestorm was all about sexism -- in the SF community, and in the world in general.

Many horror stories emerged via comments on Ann Aguirre's simple and factual post about her experiences in associating with SF writers:
http://www.annaguirre.com/archives/2013/06/02/this-week-in-sf/

And the conversation became laced with outrage over sexism.  All the old tropes were trotted out for an aria or two center stage.  People complained that the same-old-same-old discussion was boring.

It is boring. 

As Theodore Sturgeon pointed out many decades ago, writing science fiction is all about training your mind to ASK THE NEXT QUESTION.  Don't just accept what is said.  Question everything.

That's how art (all fields) is done, and that is the drill that produces (a few times in a lifetime) those moments such as I described above where everything flipped into focus, AHA!  (such as when a character reaches THE END of the novel and the theme is rammed home by the plot events intruding into the story.)

People commented on the blogs with comparisons to 1953 -- saying that the women's movement had won in the 1970's so why are we fighting this battle over again?  And others commented on that view saying things like we just have to wait for the old guys to die off -- or we have to fire them. 

And others insisted this is a NEW WORLD.  Everything's changed (which I've been pointing out on this blog for a while now) and we won, we defeated the ugly monster of sexism, so therefore it is gone.  Why is it still here?

While reading commentary along those lines, I was thinking about J. J. Abrams (and the Star Trek movie, Star Trek: Into Darkness which I discussed here
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/07/theme-plot-integration-part-11-correct.html

And I was thinking of J. J. Abrams TV Series Revolution, and the news of the day (wall-to-wall-scandals lightly laced with murder trials and fresh new murders), and I was thinking of how we choose our (scandal prone) politicians for their sexy TV images rather than boring desk-jockey skills, and the next question occurred to me.

What if there is not now and never has been any such thing as a Battle of the Sexes?

That could explain why it is absolutely "un-winnable."  It does not exist.  It is an illusion of Neptune.

If you haven't read the posts on Astrology Just For Writers -- the whole Neptune and Pluto relevance is explained in these posts which are listed in this post:

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

Note the fellow who claimed responsibility for the NSA security leak involving data collection is a 29 year old.  That's the year of the Saturn Return (when Saturn gets back to the place it was when you were born -- happens to everyone at that age, and every 29 years thereafter).  The first Saturn Return is notorious for having certain kinds of dramatic effects (being an Ending and a Beginning just like in novels). 

Knowing the clues in those posts on Astrology makes character creation and plotting very easy.

This Question -- what if ...?  Is the core-essence of Science Fiction.  Thinking out of the box, daring to ask the un-askable, the un-thinkable. 

It is an unthinkable question because throughout recorded history, and as far as anyone can tell from pre-history, males and females have always been at war, and we all accept without question that sex and violence are related.  There must be dominance in sex, right?  Must! 

Throughout the Middle Ages (the model for so much Fantasy-Romance with Kings, Queens, handsome Dukes, etc.) The Church kept women subjugated because of the story of Adam and Eve, which (to them) clearly says Eve was a bitch who tricked Adam, and therefore all women are Evil.

In the USA, we had to fight (FIGHT!!!) for the right to vote, have a bank account in our own name, etc. etc. 

Now the fight is over abortion, equality in marriage, and equal pay for equal work.

Where does it end?  What does Victory actually look like? 

This Battle of the Sexes is like the wars in the Middle East where we hammered two countries to smitherines, then tried to get soldiers who specialize in killing people to "nation build."  And then we leave, unilaterally proclaiming victory.  Huh? 

They coined a phrase to describe this process that we see in The Battle Of The Sexes.  Mission Creep.  Politicians call it "Progressivism" -- and I call them scam artists (like guys who just want to get you into bed, and leave when they get bored).  Move on dot Sex! 

I discussed grifters a little bit here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/02/tv-shows-leverage-and-psych.html

It's a scam.  The Battle of the Sexes is a scam just like on the TV Series Leverage -- a 21st Century version of the old Mission: Impossible.   

One of the principles of running a game on a mark is that you must rivet the mark's attention AWAY FROM what you're doing -- like a stage magician, prestidigitation. 

To do this, you create a problem for them -- it's not real, it doesn't exist, so it can't be solved, but while they're busy trying to solve it with increasing urgency as you "play" them, you have a clear field to steal everything they have.

In the case of the Battle of the Sexes, what is being stolen is Identity. 

Your strength, your ability to cope with the world and stay alive in it, is based on your sense of individuality.  Take that away, and you are helpless - a mark ripe for the grifter's art.

If you want to understand the world: Follow The Money.

Or to solve a Murder Mystery, find out who benefits from the death.  Motive; Method; Opportunity.

Our mystery is Who Is Running This Scam? 

Apparently, both males and females are the Marks.  So who's the Identity Thief?

Who's playing "Let's You And Him Fight?" 



Someone is cleaning up, big time.  Bet on it.

Money, as I discussed in the Tarot Just For Writers posts, is a form of Power. 

Here are the Tarot posts in case you missed them.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_23.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me.html

To understand power intoxication, read this non-fiction book I reviewed in depth under DIALOGUE titled How To Write Liar Dialogue:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/11/dialogue-part-5-how-to-write-liar.html

The principle used by the best grifters is that the mark must never know he's being played until the coups.  Then he falls down to the mud, head spinning, utterly paralyzed with the realization that he's been had.

Are we there yet? 

Are we aware we been had? 

Because that's THE END of this novel -- that's the point where the theme is rammed home into the guts of the story by the ram of the plot events.

Or are we waking up in the middle of the scam, not yet had, not YET fleeced?  Do we have a chance to turn the tables?

There's a massive, blockbuster Romance theme in that idea of turning the tables on the grifter running The Battle of the Sexes, but if you try to write it outside SFR or Paranormal Romance, you will have a hard time selling it -- because it will be deemed implausible. 

If you don't think The Battle of the Sexes is a scam yet, find another explanation for the entire kerfuffle over that SFWA Bulletin cover and a reasonably innocent blog post by a guy who apparently is being played by the grifters behind this thing. 

Why is the Battle of the Sexes unwinnable if it is a battle at all and not a scam?

If it isn't a setup, if we're not being had, then what would the world be like after one side or the other WINS? 

Post-apocalyptic is very popular right now -- J. J. Abrams TV Series, REVOLUTION being only one of many examples.  Think of all the zombie stuff that nearly took over the world.  We are obsessed with "what will happen after all this falls apart?" 

What if the apocalypse is not vampires, zombies, werewolves, EM Pulse attacks, nano-whatevers?  What if the apocalypse is "we been had."  What happens after that?

Here are some comments I made online that convinced me to try to start this Theme-Conflict Integration series now instead of next year. 

http://www.facebook.com/groups/130939813657941/permalink/469377513147501/

Jacqueline Lichtenberg: If there really is no difference in capability and potential, in respect due for accomplishment, between male & female humans, then why is every comment on this issue based on the assumption that there is a difference? If we believe what we're preaching, we should behave accordingly. There IS NO SUCH THING as "sexism" because it's based on a false premise. So to "fight back" as if the enemy has a case is to legitimize that case. We shouldn't be fighting. We should be explaining, as Starla Huchton pointed out -- because THEY HAVE NO CLUE WHAT THEY'RE DOING WRONG.


Jacqueline Lichtenberg: Consider the 'glass houses' issue, and first ask yourself what WE are doing wrong. Certainly we can't be entirely correct on every underlying issue in the SF vs SFR confrontation? Find the hole in our argument, fix it, then explain to "them" where the hole is in their argument. We should do a workshop at a con where everyone has read the same pair of novels demonstrating the dichotomy, and explain where both sides are right, and where both sides are making errors.


Jacqueline Lichtenberg: Look on Ann Aguirre's blog entry comment 387 by Carole Ann. She is from the UK. CONSIDER women are proven just as capable of being techs, and we read the SF-war-stories just as avidly, love ACTION (there is such a thing as action-romance, I hope you've noticed!), and we have attracted a number of men into reading, writing and discussing SFR. Think about what Carole Ann told us in that comment -- How can you win a "war of the sexes" and it not be a Pyrrhic Victory? The whole point of Romance is men and women love each other, fit together, make dynamite teams. Somewhere in History someone suckered us into thinking in terms of War. Do we have to let "them" (whoever they were) set our agenda? http://www.annaguirre.com/archives/2013/06/02/this-week-in-sf/

And from Gini Koch's blog
http://www.sliceofscifi.com/2013/06/06/its-time/ 

Gini Koch says she has nothing to prove, and I think she's nailed it.  There is no controversy, there is no war of the sexes, there is NO CONFLICT here and thus NO STORY.

by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

WWW:WATCH by Robert J. Sawyer

Robert J. Sawyer is the author of the novel FLASHFORWARD upon which the TV Series FLASHFORWARD is based.

OK, FLASHFORWARD is not Romance at all - it's very mundane and very simplistic SF with a mystery plot.

That's why it got made into a TV show by a network, not even scifi channel. It's aimed at that broad audience we've been talking about luring into the Romance genre with mixing genres.

Sawyer is an excellent writer, a seasoned craftsman and major award winner in the spotlight, which is another reason he got a novel made into a TV show by a network.

He doesn't write ROMANCE, or even Intimate Adventure actually, but he has been starting to toy with adding Relationship genre motifs to his SF.

And that could be why his SF is thriving while many other brands are wilting.

Last week, Tuesday June 8, 2010, on aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com my post was about a question asked of me for an interview on SF Signal's mind-meld feature.

http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2010/06/mind-meld-what-science-fiction-series-is-underrated/

The question was about whether there is an inherent incompatibility between SF and Romance genres which causes a taboo response by SF readers to Romance elements.

My response was like this:

--------
Ten years from now, nobody will remember that it was ever possible to write SF or Romance as separate genres.

The reason for that is that both SF(including Fantasy) and Romance are "Wish Fulfillment Fantasy" genres.

We enjoy the stories that show us how to get our heart's desire.

SF delivers the heart's desire of someone who wants to be loved as the one person who actually understands what's going on and can solve the problem innovatively, thinking outside the box.

Romance delivers the heart's desire of someone who wants to be loved because they are more important than war, work, politics or sports - loved, admired and valued because they are understood completely (no matter how far outside the box the guy has to think in order to grasp the intricate complexities of who this very special person (me!) is.

Now you explain to me how those could possibly be incompatible objectives?
---------

Robert J. Sawyer has captured the essence of that blend of wishfulfillment in his WWW trilogy.

DISCLAIMER: the publisher sends me these novels free for my professional review column. But many publishers send me many novels, as I have discussed here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/12/glimpse-of-reviewers-life.html

I don't bring you all or even a substantial part of what I read.

Sawyer's work however is of interest in our analysis of how to raise the prestige level of mixed-genre-Romance in the eyes of the gatekeepers and the general public. Go to Amazon and read the customer (somewhat mixed) comments on these novels and think about the reader resistance to adding relationship threads.


WWW: Wake (WWW Trilogy)


and now

WWW: Watch


...soon be followed by WWW:WONDER

The worldbuilding premise is geekish wish fulfillment. The lost packets floating around the World Wide Web somehow reach critical mass and WAKE to become conscious, an AI personality, that is in the second book WATCHED by USA and other national intelligence agencies. A political decision is made to kill the AI.

The main human character is a blind, geekish (math whiz) girl of 16 who is given an implant behind one eye which allows her to see. The signal for her eye streams through the web, and she participates in the waking (and watching) of the AI.

She acquires a boyfriend who is also a math whiz, off the charts kind of guy, whose face is deformed by a birth defect and so he's also a social outsider in the teen world, not just for his brains.

WATCH is really the story of the AI learning to read everything floating on the Web (even private email) and interact with humans. The girl is his main tutor, and this project (bring up AI) becomes her main interest until she falls for the boyfriend.

So a boy and girl geek interact with an AI that emerges to consciousness and developes a personality -- while the Authorities of the world try to kill it. Pretty much a 1950's Heinlein plot.

There is a B-story that hasn't matured yet, about some scientists who have taught a Bonobo-Chimpanzee crossbreed American Sign Language, and had him sign via web-cam with an Orangutan. That thread seems intrusive and annoying at times, even though it's intrinsically interesting. Thematically, it's tightly related to the emerging AI because it's all about the definition of "person" of "consciousness" and "self-awareness." Very philosophical, symbolic, and scientific.

The AI does interact with the Bonobo-Chimp without humans knowing.

I expect that thread, along with some political actions from Japan and China to climax in the third novel.

But here in the second novel (which as you can see from Amazon didn't satisfy all readers expectations raised in the first novel) we have a very smooth integration of human sexual emergence (boy meets girl) with the geekish "raise an AI to self-awareness" story.

Thematically, the two are related, and there is an expository lump or two making sure the reader can see the relationship between genetics, evolution, survival of the fittest, survival of the species, and the survival value of consciousness itself.

As boy and girl start to make out in the girl's parents basement office, they discuss the reasons she doesn't want to have children, and how evolution has allowed self-aware consciousness to continue to exist because conscious decisions can over-ride genetic-survival of me-and-mine for the greater good.

There is also a tutorial on games theory included, all subjects of intrinsic fascination for geekish math types, but also philosophically integral with the artistic worldbuilding, not overly long, and not boring to the general reader.

However, that one kissing scene is cut strategically short when the AI tells them that "he" is under attack.

Yes, the girl chooses to regard Webmind (the AI) as a "he." And that is not properly discussed or explained.

But here's the thing. This very SF, very geekish novel has a pattern of RELATIONSHIPS rooted in deep characterization -- and that pattern actually resembles the pattern formed by the packets that are the substance of the AI's consciousness.

There is symmetry within symmetry.

And the whole, very sophisticated, very philosophical, very abstract, very geekish novel is set in an absolutely contemporary (Obama Administration - the Obama name as President is actually mentioned once in print) setting.

The worldbuilding is totally mundane, just like FLASHFORWARD, except for one thing that the ordinary science going on today MIGHT POSSIBLY produce.

Sawyer has created a formula for engaging the general, non-SF audience, in SF. Contemporary, mundane setting (just like many urban fantasies), plus detailed characterization -- and now adding just a hint of Relationship.

If you study these novels carefully, noting how Sawyer handles the geekish expository lumps, how long they are, what precedes them, what is built later on the knowledge imparted to the reader (the lumps include only the barest essence of what you need to know to understand what comes next) -- then in your mind substitute the typical ROMANCE GENRE passages of emotional introspection and speculation about others feelings, and the conversations about emotions -- you will come up with a pacing formula that could let Romance reach a broader general audience.

Sawyer's success is built on his firm grasp of this purely mechanical pacing technique together with the artistic and philosophical symmetry, and symbolism.

For example, our geek-girl heroine's father is an autistic Physicist at the very top of the field of Physics (works with Stephen Hawkings). Her mother is a Ph.D. in economics who specializes in games theory.

The geek-girl's mother and father exemplify an Alien Romance relationship. The geek-girl's relationship with the AI exemplifies an Alien Romance (but just in the way the girl's affections are engaged) that reminds me of Hal Clement's MISSION OF GRAVITY where a human male interacts with a very alien Alien developing an inter-dependency.

That kind of Relationship is exemplified on another level between the geek-girl and the geek-boy. While at another point, the Bonobo-Chimp hybrid declares he wants to be a father (he's being threatened with castration).

The loving, stable, emotional Relationship between the geek-girl's parents (which allows her to engage them in fostering the AI) mirrors all the other Relationships, and continues to probe the question of what is self-awareness and what has awareness of OTHERS to do with self-awareness.
What is the role of consciousness in Relationship?

Watch FLASHFORWARD (it's about to be cancelled, but I'm sure it will be on DVD, online, and rerun) and/or read the novel. Study the WWW Trilogy. Apply the lessons you learn to Alien Romance, and we may have the start of a formula for changing the perception of the genre.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com (current availability)
http://www.simegen.com/jl/ (complete biblio-bio)