A Fix For Publishing Business Model

I've hit on a new twist for fixing the Fiction Delivery System, and I don't think anyone has yet proposed this.

With imagination and dedication this idea could fix the broken business model of the freelance writer, artist, musician etc.

I also think that the USA would be the very last place it would be applied.

But I think this is the right concept to kick off a brainstorming session.

It would require inventing a totally new business and maybe inventing some professions and possibly some math, too. But the tools to do it all are "on the shelf" being ignored.

Business Model Problem

Let's start with an analysis of the problem as I see it (probably nobody else sees it this way, though).

I call the pipeline that brings us novels on bookstore shelves (or web pages), on paper or by download, on Kindle, Nook, or iPad, and films, TV shows, comics, animation, webisodes, and even fan fiction, the Fiction Delivery System.

Any method of delivering the storyteller's story to the mind of the fiction consumer is part of The Fiction Delivery System.

I have discussed on this blog various tech based developments and social evolutions that are bending, warping and re-inventing the Fiction Delivery System.

Web 2.0
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/12/worldbuilding-by-committee.html

And other topics a writer must pay attention to, such as the advent of Print on Demand, or Zero-Inventory, or Just In Time inventory, tax laws about inventory, ebook publishing, self-publishing, and all the rest you are familiar with because you read blogs.

If you've been following my analysis of changes in publishing, you are probably bored with it already. And everywhere you turn on the web, someone is bemoaning or embracing the changes which many young people just entering the field don't even see.

Publishers are going bankrupt (still). Distributors are going bankrupt. WRITERS are going bankrupt from "piracy" (iTunes, music torrents etc).

Recently, an article revealed that CD's are for sale on eBay containing ADVANCE REVIEW COPIES of books only in the submission or editing stage at major publishers. Pirated ARCs!

Amazon is fighting for control of ebook pricing, and just publically conceded to MacMillan -- yet, who knows where that will lead?

Meanwhile, at conventions around the country, I've been on many panels about the entire philosophical issue of Intellectual Property Rights.

This is a serious generation-gap abstract philosophical (maybe even Religious) issue that has financial repercussions, and worse reaches into the very foundation of the concept "business model."

Bewilderment and panic set in at the top of the Music Industry when pirated downloads via peer-to-peer networks first appeared.

The film industry soon followed as videos of pre-release or award-nominated films appeared everywhere. People recorded films off movie theater screens and hawked them on street corners. The Chinese and other countries grabbed feeds and distributed not just music and films, but software, complete with fancy imitation labels!

Some other countries do not share the USA's worship of Intellectual Property Rights (copyright, trademark, patent).

The older generations in the USA see "piracy" of books, DVD's, hardware, software as a crime.

Younger people and people in start-up countries with different philosophies see it as their Inalienable Right.

It's not "piracy" to them. It's "just business" and they are bewildered how anyone could object to what they do.

Worse yet, they are offended, horrified, repulsed, by the very impulse that makes us object to their behavior. How dare anyone restrict access to the product of anyone's imagination?

Really, philosophy does work like that. Emotionally, non-verbally. It really does.

A "philosophy" is not something you just espouse or learn. A philosophy is the very root of your personal Identity. It operates your emotions, motivates your actions, and provides the satisfaction when you achieve a concrete result.

Philosophy is what life is all about. But it only works when it's unconscious. Hence it is magically warded by a wall of boredom. You literally can not pay attention to a discussion of a philosophy that actually resides in your unconscious and does operate you.

Most Religions are Philosophies. What they teach you overtly is not necessarily what the religion is actually powered by. The real power (as in film scripts and books) is the subtext.

When the subtext is made into surface text, it becomes boring or ridiculous. Few people can focus the spotlight of consciousness on their personal philosophy and still espouse it consciously and subconsciously. Those few are generally regarded as "Philosophers."

After all the muttering and chattering I've done on this blog about the mechanisms within the Fiction Delivery System and about what the impact of technology and the social-networking phenomenon are changing, you can see that I like philosophy, I use it, and I inject it into fiction both on purpose and subconsciously.

If boredom didn't drive you away from all my posts on the Writer's Business Model, you should be able to see where I'm headed with this post. I didn't see it though until just last night.

We have the elements in place, we have the tools on the shelf, and we have the answer to what's wrong with the Fiction Delivery System and the writer's business model.

Pieces of this solution have been discussed all over the web on blogs, especially by Agents and publishers and writers. But pieces are now turning up in the major media (like Business Week, Forbes, The New York Times, and on and on).

Here is one article you should force your way through if you possibly can. The boredom wards are immense on this one, and I barely made it myself. Everything in me screams NO NO NO!!! But actually, this is a priceless opportunity to solve the real problem with the writer's business model.

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/01/ff_newrevolution

That's the top of a long feature article in Wired Magazine.

Skim fast through to page 5 of this article,

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/01/ff_newrevolution/5/

then dig in and think hard as you read the part that starts thusly:

---Quote from Wired---------
In the mid-1930s, Ronald Coase, then a recent London School of Economics graduate, was musing over what to many people might have seemed a silly question: Why do companies exist? Why do we pledge our allegiance to an institution and gather in the same building to get things done? His answer: to minimize “transaction costs.” When people share a purpose and have established roles, responsibilities, and modes of communication, it’s easy to make things happen. You simply turn to the person in the next cubicle and ask them to do their job.

But several years ago, Bill Joy, one of the cofounders of Sun Microsystems, revealed the flaw in Coase’s model. “No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else,” he rightly observed. Of course, that had always been true, but before, it hardly mattered if you were in Detroit and someone better was in Dakar; you were here and they were there, and that was the end of it. But Joy’s point was that this was changing. With the Internet, you didn’t have to settle for the next cubicle. You could tap the best person out there, even if they were in Dakar.

---End Quote From Wired--------

This is the SOLUTION to the writer's business model problem, and to the publisher's problem, and to the Cable TV Operator's problem, and to Film Studio's problem, and even the Music Publisher's problem. This is the solution to structuring the advertising supported business model to apply to FICTION, but it doesn't look like it on the surface.

If you've read all my previous columns, you may be able to get ahead of me here and see the solution instantly.

Read carefully down to where it says:

---Quote from Wired--------

Let me tell you my own story. Three years ago, out on a run, I started thinking about how cheap gyroscope sensors were getting. What could you do with them? For starters, I realized, you could turn a radio-controlled model airplane into an autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle, or drone. It turned out that there were plenty of commercial autopilot units you could buy, all based on this principle, but the more I looked into them, the worse they appeared. They were expensive ($800 to $5,000), hard to use, and proprietary. It was clear that this was a market desperate for competition and democratization — Moore’s law was at work, making all the components dirt cheap. The hardware for a good autopilot shouldn’t cost more than $300, even including a healthy profit. Everything else was intellectual property, and it seemed the time had come to open that up, trading high margins for open innovation.

----End Quote from Wired-----

Now you have to read very very carefully all the way to the end of the article, then scan the comments (look at how many and how vehement those comments are. The emotion expressed betrays the existence of a philosophical sore point).

The Philosophical Argument in our society is OVER.

Any futurologist worth her salt will see that instantly, and the best futurologists today work in Paranormal Romance, (believe it or not).

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

All fiction is nothing but intellectual property. It has no substance. There is nobody in the next cubicle. Physical location does not matter. Couple that to the idea that intellectual property is of no value in the marketplace, and you have your solution to the business model problem posed by loss of control of copying.

A long time ago, Fred Pohl and John Campbell, two Science Fiction magazine editors of gigantic intellect and far-ranging abilities, taught us a problem solving technique to use in plotting stories. Take two insoluble problems. Put them in the same story. Let them solve each other.

The principle comes from Engineering, not fiction, and is one of those patterns you see reflected between reality and fiction that makes fiction believable.

Engineering creates concrete objects, things you can sell. Fiction does not, and therein lies the problem with the writer's business model.

Fiction is ideas. Emotions. Philosophy. Fiction is reality fabricated, warp and woof, into a rich, deep but imaginary construct that can have the power of philosophy (or even Religion) to bend and shape people's real lives.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/01/worldbuilding-for-science-fiction.html
is the post where I describe theme, philosophy, and the warp and woof fabric of fiction.

Worse yet, what the writer imagines and crafts into that fabric, can't even be proprietary because it's constructed "off the shelf" -- out of archetypes that can be unshelved and used by anyone, out of philosophies, pantheons, and cosmologies rooted in the ancient histories of all peoples around the world.

That's why film producers will not and can not read unsolicited manuscripts.
Ideas can't be copyrighted. Even the details can't be owned, the whole construct can't be owned. Any well trained writer could have created exactly the novel you created. And if you admit to the mystical view of the universe, it's even likely you lifted your construct out of someone else's imagination on the astral plane.

I've explained how that works in previous columns. It does work. It's happened to me. It's real. The stuff we feel so proprietary about actually drifts around in some non-material dimension, a shelf, where anyone can access it.

In fact, the most lucrative fictional fabrics are the ones MORE people have already accessed, and have possession of in their dreams and imagination. Popularity happens because more people recognize their own dreams within the fiction being offered.

I've explained that Marion Zimmer Bradley taught me that the book the reader reads is not the book the writer wrote (which she learned from her forebears). Everyone who reads just uses the story as a template to enjoy themselves in their own dreamscape.

Not only is fiction nothing but "intellectual property" (which this article in Wired has declared worthless in monetary terms), it is not now and never has been proprietary.

Seen that way, from a mystical dimension of archetypes and human spiriit, the entire idea that your dreams already belong to me and therefore I don't have to pay you for them makes perfect sense.

So how can we, as writers, publishers, artists, musicians, film producers, duplicate what this man has done with his drone-piloting circuit board business?

For a couple of decades (long enough for a whole generation of entreprenuers to grow up and start businesses) we have seen "open source" software leading the way. You give away free the intellectual property component.

How can we do that if the intellectual property isn't a component but the entire creation?

Newspapers led the way giving away intellectual property, radio blazed the trail, TV followed, today Newspapers are trailing the pack getting onto the web with "editions."

It's the advertising model.

But remember BBC? It was tax revenue supported, not advertising supported for decades. The ultra-conservative British are only now edging into advertising.

The world doesn't move in lockstep, but though the USA led in the advertising-supported business model, it very well may trail in the Open Source business model.

Unless, that is, the right person or persons read this blog and grab my idea of how it can be done. (I freely give it to anyone who wants to make the world safe for fiction creators!)

Now that you've read that entire article in Wired, stop and think of all the other things about "e-book piracy" you've read lately (there's been a lot of discussion on the EPIC Lists recently, too).

We're fighting to stop piracy. Theft offends our philosophy-bone.

Look again what this fellow in Wired, Chris Anderson, accomplished.

You give away the intellectual property, but you SELL the "thing itself" - a physical object.

That's how you make money in the new world. Selling physical objects cleverly assembled from off the shelf bits and open source intellectual property.

Physical objects add value to the Annual Gross Human Product.

Intellectual inventions and ideas are no longer valuable in trade, no longer add to the quality of human life and therefore have no intrinsic value.

How can a writer apply that concept?

We don't make things; we make ideas. We just arrange "off-the-shelf" components known as words using public domain templates known as archetypes.

The Advertising Model

That's it. That's the solution. But the current method is backwards.

Currently, someone has a physical object to sell. They use fiction to attract eyes to their product pitch known as a commercial or web-advertisement.

"I Love Lucy" sells toothpaste, not laughs.

Like all TV shows, it was invented to glue eyeballs to the screen during commercials, to deliver an audience to toothpaste advertisers. That's what radio and TV fiction is for, and the tradition goes back to Charles Dickens with novels serialized in newspapers to glue subscribers to a newsfeed sold at a profit.

Now look at ad supported TV fiction and think "reverse video" (like what happens when you use your mouse to highlight some text and the background and text color switch places).

It becomes fiction-supported TV ads.

Now we're getting close to applying the thinking behind that Wired Magazine article.

At present, the bits of story are almost smaller than the commercial breaks.

It's getting so hard to follow a TV episode, what with all the long breaks, that people are willing to wait and buy the DVD of the whole season, sans commercials.

People willingly pay for premium channels - but those channels are in financial difficulty as are the cable operators.

People want whole movies, not sliced and diced to fit in commercials.

Already you can buy TV's and Blu-ray boxes that are internet ready and configured to deliver a specific brand of streaming movie service (Netflix, Blockbuster -- proprietary lock on the hardware just like phone companies and cell phones!) Read about it in Consumer Reports:

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/electronics-computers/tvs-services/tvs/index.htm

The October 2010 issue of Consumer Reports features BEST TVS, and has instructions how to connect your TV to the Internet.

This proprietary-lock business model is at odds with the Open Source business model, and a major armageddon is in progress right over our heads. Just let the problems solve each other, and don't forget "Love Conquers All" is always the solution to fear.

Just look at the magnitude of the storm of change and resistance to change sweeping through the fabric of our world when it comes to advertising.

A recent Federal Supreme Court ruling struck down a law preventing corporations from spending unlimited amounts of money in support of a political candidate or policy. That'll be fixed by a new law, but look at the TERROR that ruling evoked and remember philosophy drives our emotions.
You've never seen the like of this much terror at a Horror film's first showing!

Why? Because politicians know that the target of advertising is under 40, that we have a demographic bulge of voting age young people, and that those people will do whatever the most ads say they should. (they WILL).

The obvious solution escapes the politicians because it would prevent them from selling their own messages to those voters by being the most prevalent voice.

So nobody is even talking about training kids in how to make commercials, thereby immunizing them to flimflammery.

I know this works because I trained my children that way. Kids can be trained to be commercial-immune by age 7 or 8.

But that panic among politicians is very real. They'll make a law to fix the ridiculous imbalance again, don't worry about that. Our interest here is the whole advertising process, and especially the business model of fiction supported advertising. (not advertising supported fiction, you see?)

Look at the degree of panic among those politicians and you can see the whole philosophy-driven panic means more than is apparent on the surface.

Something is at the breaking point in advertising business model.

Politicians can see we've got an emergency on our hands and you should never waste a good emergency.

Already, it's been proven by scientific research and admitted by major advertisers and advertising creation firms that people over 40 don't change their behavior as a result of seeing an ad (no matter how many repetitions).

You can't "sell" to older people, but they're the ones with money (and credit). This even holds true online. I've filled out surveys time and again only to get to the last web page and be told they have nothing to advertise to me. Hard scientific research shows its a waste of money to advertise to a certain cut of the demographic (basically readers).

Suppose advertising could sell your product to over and under 40 demographic?

If we turn the advertising model to "reverse video" - or "negative" - we might see the solution, provided we understand the problem.

Think fiction supported advertising.

Reverse the business model. Get out of the way and let the problems solve each other. Love Conquers All.

That reversal makes our intellectual property of monetary value again.

But you'll understand this only if you understand "what" fiction is and what a person does when imbibing fiction.

Fiction is usually regarded as a luxury. It's not.

Fiction is a necessity of life.

Why is fiction a necessity?

Because fiction is the food that philosophy feeds upon. And as mentioned above and in other blog posts here, philosophy is the life's blood of fiction as it forms and shapes the theme of any story.

People need fiction to keep them in touch with their own philosophy and to keep their philosophy in touch with reality.

Fiction keeps you sane.

Fiction is never "escapist" as it is so often dismissed as. Many readers feel they are reading to "escape" but once you understand what you are escaping to, the exercise of reading a novel takes on a whole new meaning.

Life without fiction is like sleep without dreaming.

Dreaming is not an "escape" from sleeping.

Fiction is not an "escape" from life.

Dreaming completes the exercise of sleep just as fiction completes the exercise of living.

Fiction leads you to an operational and usable model of reality you can live by (or die by). Fiction does that by taking you far, far outside your own reality so you can look back on it and see it as a whole. Fiction can never let you "escape" your reality. It rubs your nose in your reality by revealing a truth you could never see while walking in your own moccasins.

However, the "advertising supported fiction" business model has distorted that process of fiction imbibing.

The very point of imbibing fiction has been blunted by the INTERRUPTIONS for ad pitches, and those ad pitches can only be worth the money it costs to deliver them if the audience is young, so TV fiction is watered down.

Films get watered down, too, because eventually they must be shown on TV with commercial interruptions.

Interruptions and distractions cause people to make mistakes.

Texting while driving can be fatal, remember, and recent studies show that making laws against it don't prevent accidents.

Studies have shown that multi-tasking workers are less efficient than those who do one thing at a time, concentrating. (I've lost the link to the most recent study but I recall that I did place it in one of my previous blog posts here.)

Distracted drivers kill themselves and others via mistakes.

Consider the psychological condition of people who are awakened from sleep each time they enter a REM sleep cycle. (Sleep apnea can do that to you.)

As you must not be distracted from your work or your dreams, likewise you must not be distracted from your fiction.

With distractions, you miss the nutrient value of the philosophy. And you miss the pleasure of imbibing your fiction.

What if you could come up with an advertising model that does not distract viewers or readers from the fiction?

What if you give up the idea of using fiction as bait for eyeballs?

What would you replace the advertising supported model with in order to prevent distractions?

What if you could train young people to be immune to commercials (so we don't need laws restricting the amounts anyone can spend on political ads -- more money circulating is good for the economy, more points argued is good for democracy) and still move product to consumers efficiently?

What if you abolished commercials totally?

How could people who create material products induce people to buy their products without commercials? Without web-ads? Without animations on YouTube? Without distracting drivers with billboards. Without intruding on one activity to induce people to engage in another activity?

Note that film producers who are swimming in pitches thrown at them from every direction become so pitch-deaf they hire interns out of school to read pitches and the interns soon become too jaded to see a great script among the dross.

Commercials are pitches. They are desperate, frantic attempts to make you do something you aren't of a mind to do, at the moment anyway.

What if pitching was to become obsolete?

The film industry is moving in that direction with online websites that vet film scripts and provide a marketplace for producers to go find the exact script they want to produce without being bombarded with irrelevant pitches.

What could possibly replace pitching toothpaste? How could the world of commerce function without commercials?

Turn that question around. Why are industries still clinging hysterically to the commercials model of advertising, even though the world has changed and advertising is less and less effective simply because people get used to it and tune it out? When was the last time you were reading a news story and clicked on a banner ad for makeup?

That frantic battering consumers are taking is why congress was considering a law to prevent cable stations and TV stations from raising the volume on the sound when commercials come on. It annoys and distracts -- but they need to raise the volume to retain your attention as everyone in the room moves and talks during the distraction of a commercial break. People just totally dismiss the commercials. But those commercial breaks are still distractions, interruptions to be endured with an ever-increasing pricetag on our health and well being.

Why are these companies with good things to sell, things we need and want, so insistent on alienating their customers?

And Here It Is -- A New Business Model

If manufacturers of goods to sell can understand that fiction is also a product, a commodity, of value to a customer only when properly assembled (as a car is of more value when all assembled than it is as a stack of boxes of parts), then they will adopt this model.

Fiction imbibing is all about emotion. Writers work hard to get the rhythm of variance of emotional pitch paced just right. Suppose you had to endure six commercial breaks during the hour you reserve for sex with your partner? There's a reason the highest praise for a book is "I couldn't put it down" or "It kept me up past bedtime."

Continuity is absolutely essential to a good fictional experience.

It's all about building an emotional reaction with depth and texture, and you can't achieve that with interruption.

Think what it's like to be adding a long column of numbers in your head, only to be interrupted by a phone call, and have to start over, to be interrupted by the doorbell, and start over, to be interrupted by having to go to the bathroom. Maybe you'll get that column of numbers added, true, but how much less time and effort would it take if there were no interruptions?

Commercial breaks cost our society more than they are worth.

Think about how "the arts" functioned before commercialization. Artists (painters, musicians, actors) had Patrons who supported them with room and board etc., then presented their Artistic Product to their closest friends, as a prestige point.

Use that old idea, together with new technology, and think about what the Wired article said that I quoted above. Here it is again:
----------Wired Quote--------
But several years ago, Bill Joy, one of the co-founders of Sun Microsystems, revealed the flaw in Coase’s model. “No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else,” he rightly observed. Of course, that had always been true, but before, it hardly mattered if you were in Detroit and someone better was in Dakar; you were here and they were there, and that was the end of it. But Joy’s point was that this was changing. With the Internet, you didn’t have to settle for the next cubicle. You could tap the best person out there, even if they were in Dakar.
--------END QUOTE-------------

Proximity no longer is an issue.

That is such a startling idea. Think about it.

In Radio, and at the beginning of TV broadcast, one company would sponsor an entire show and become identified with that show.

Today "product placement" is starting to retread that concept. A Hero would drive a certain type of car, use a brand of telephone, eat a certain breakfast food.

Proximity doesn't count any more. You don't have to have your commercial inserted between scenes of a TV show. You don't even have to have your product be seen onscreen with The Hero.

Look at how people actually shop for things they need and want.

People focus on getting the shopping done NOW, and reading a book LATER.

When you're ready to buy something, you go to the store or website, use a search engine to find the best price or read the comments to find the best brands. You survey all the alternatives on the supermarket shelf, and pick a package that is either familiar (a replacement for what you used up) or pick something that looks interesting (an alternative to what you used up).

Or you have a problem in your house, and go to Home Depot to search for a solution, not even knowing if one exists. At that moment, your mind is open to suggestions, and that's when you want to see pitches for products, but only for products that address your problem.

When you want to buy something, you want to buy it. Either enjoying a leisurly shopping spree or dash in and out to get the boring chore of buying over with.

When you want to "buy" fiction, you sit down in your favorite chair and flip on the TV, DVD, DVR, or pick up a book, or flip on your Kindle and download the latest in a series you're following - whatever source, doesn't matter. Your mindset is the same. "I need a good story."

SHOPPING: "let's see what they've got" --- or "get me out of here fast."

FICTION TIME: "Now, what's been going on with my favorite character" or "Now I get to read this new vampire novel all the TWILIGHT fans are raving about."

When you're shopping, you're shopping.

When you're imbibing, you're imbibing.

Distracting you from your purpose will not win your approval, loyalty, or public support.

When you are young, and just being socialized, the first thing your parents teach you after you learn to talk is "don't interrupt your elders" -- which eventually becomes the teenager's skill of joining a knot of kids standing around the recess yard and just talking. You have to learn to join that conversation without interrupting, without diverting attention to yourself, without distracting them from the subject, without changing the subject.

What advertisers on TV do today is CHANGE THE SUBJECT.

That shows a lack of basic socialization.

Here's a blog entry I did on what business people do wrong when they try to adopt a social networking strategy, and why they do it wrong.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/09/marketing-via-social-networking.html

Even netizens learn, first and foremost, when you join a List, you lurk for a while and find out who's who and what they're talking about. You don't post off-topic without profuse apology and explanation of why this item is important to these people.

Good grief, Romance Writers have been exemplifying this technique of how to open an acquaintance with a stranger you've fallen in love with at first sight for generations! You'd think advertisers would have learned that by now.

Don't interrupt. Don't distract. Don't change the subject.

There are some fancy multi-syllabic names for the kinds of mental abberations that cause people to be unable to learn those simple rules of behavior.

But to date, advertisers have steadfastly ignored those rules because it seems to make them a profit. Suppose they could make a bigger profit by obeying those basic social rules?

How could they possibly do it, though?

You can't answer that question. You can't solve that puzzle. There is no answer. Now. Yet.

There's no way to solve that problem now because we are missing an entire profession, an entire industry actually.

The reason we're missing this industry (that would connect fiction imbibers with companies who have concrete products to sell) is a basic American attitude -- the one the Supreme Court highlighted with the decision to allow unlimited advertising dollars to flow from corporate coffers in political campaigns.

Free Speech.

Why is Free Speech such a core value it had to be in the Bill of Rights?

Free Speech is one of the results of the dual-valued philosophy behind the Constitution -- The Majority Rules, but The Individual Has Rights that the majority can not take away.

You can say anything you want. But you can't exercise that right in my house, my private domain, without my permission.

PRIVACY is a right which manifests in the prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure of property, and the protection of intellectual property under the exact same terms as that of personal property (house, land, possessions).

That attitude toward individual privacy (no wiretapping etc), make the solution to the Fiction Writer's Business Model Problem totally impossible to think, nevermind actually do.

The solution requires invasion of privacy and something akin to wiretapping your phone.

But it's already happening in the inexorable push to make a profit in an internet based, Open Source world.

Everyone you deal with has electronic records on you, and the prospects for "Big Brother Is Watching You" are not looming ahead of us any more -- they are far behind in what seems Ancient History to today's 20 year olds.

Traffic cameras, security cameras, Airport Security screening, Google, medical records, court records, media outlet file tape, ATM transaction records, bank records, cell phone records, gps on cell phones, -- you are always under surveillance and it's getting tighter and more public.

Anonymity in public and personal privacy have not existed for decades already, and a whole generation has grown up with this technology. Younger people don't see it as a problem, so it's inevitable that this solution will be implemented at some point fairly soon, when enough old folks have died off.

And here it is.

Connect the grocery checkout counter record of what you bought, of your buying patterns assembled every time you use the store discount card tab on your key chain, or make a website purchase, to your TV set or Cable Box or Sat box, or e-reading device (Kindle, Smartphone, Nook, whatever).

That's it, the whole problem is solved.

One more link in our chain of electronic records, and BOOM - no more distractions, no more interruptions.

How does it work to sell product?

Simple.

When you're ready to buy something, you are "in a place" mentally and physically where you are receptive to suggestions and ads would not be interruptions or distractions.

You walk into a brick and mortar store or click into a website. There you search for products and actively pay attention to what's pitched at you. The data gathered on you in the past allows the ads pitched at you to be chosen by characteristics you've evidenced in the past.

Already Google and especially BING customize ads and re-arrange what choices are offered to you in answer to a query according to other websites you've visited (Google is now using what sites you click on via twitter to customize responses to you).

It's getting harder, but you can still break out of your mold and explore other options. We may need laws to prevent shutting you into too small a box.

Using this fiction supported advertising model, when you are receptive to finding products that solve your problem, you are presented with options that would actually be useful to you. No distractions. No pitches. Just solid, reliable, true information about the products that solve your problem "what's for dinner?" "what sort of shoes can I afford to wear with this dress?"

As you troll through the supermarket, local mall, or websites, you choose products that suit you at prices you agree to, and you know all the alternatives.

A record is kept of what you buy, from whom, when, at what intervals.

With each product you purchase, you earn "points." (like frequent flyer miles, or credit card points -- an account is kept of what you've earned).

These points are TV SHOW POINTS (or streaming, dvd, dvr, ebook, Kindle, or even hardcopy book points).

They are worth such-and-so-many hours of commercial free viewing or reading.

Your life is totally changed from it is today -- when you're shopping, you're shopping. When you're viewing, you're viewing.

Watching the Shopping Network on TV or internet would probably count as shopping - and what you buy adds points to your Fiction Points account.

I can see two ways for this to work.

Either large companies like Proctor and Gamble, Johnson and Johnson, Heinz, etc would award points for buying their products that you can use to see only certain TV shows that they sponsor by paying for production (or buy certain novels from certain publishers that they sponsor by paying for production).

Or a new kind of business would be founded to award points no matter what you buy -- but maybe apportion more points today for Tide than for Arm&Hammer depending on deals with sponsors?

The new business would be a clearing house. It would contract with Proctor and Gamble (etc) to get money, apportion money to fiction-creators, and contract with consumers who establish an account, like a credit-card account, and keep track of what you buy so it can award you access to fiction via points you earn by buying certain brands.

Both these concepts would probably fight it out in the marketplace, likely with other more "proprietary" based concepts.

The stand-alone (off the shelf) technologies to do this already exist. They just have to be linked up (as the fellow made new circuit boards to create his drone controllers).

a) Data about your buying habits from credit card, online sites, supermarket, mall, etc purchases, is all electronicized now.

b)Data about your viewing habits is available to your cable, sat, etc data supplier. Smartphone surfing, computer surfing, etc -- your IP address ID's you, as on social networks. You are tracked.

c) Companies that produce advertising (political organizations too) know how masses of people move -- they get that from a lot of data about individuals.

Connect the purchase-point activity to the DVR attached to your TV (or whatever new architecture we adopt).

Turn on your TV to watch, say SANCTUARY (as discussed last week

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/01/religion-in-science-fiction-romance.html )

..and you see it without commercials if you bought Tide, shopped a Toyota showroom, had your BMW serviced, or bought a Big Mac.

If you didn't buy the right product or brand of product, I'd guess you'd be interrupted with even more pitching commercials than now.

After enough of that punishment, you would start to pay attention to what brands provided you with commercial free versions of your favorite shows.

Since most of us time-shift using a recorder of some sort, the shows would be delivered to your automated recording device (or online library of shows) commercial free.

If you're reading ebooks (or even hardcover books) you would not pay money for them. You'd pay with points earned by buying whatever brands are connected to the fiction you want. The writers and publishers would be paid by the brand that sponsors the fiction.

It's not so different from the way film and TV gets produced. Production companies contract with networks and get money to create the show which the networks broadcast and sell commercial time during. Except, this way, there are no commercial breaks and no waste of money by advertisers.

Now how would you know, standing in the breakfast cereal aisle, which brand of cereal to buy to get the show you want commercial free?

Each package would carry a symbol showing what points you get for buying it.

That's why I think a new business is needed.

This would be an IT business that awards and redeems your purchase-points so seamlessly and automatically you don't know it's there.

You wouldn't have to know which show you want when choosing laundry detergent. You get points no matter what you buy, then you spend them to see whatever you want to see.

There might be several such competing IT businesses, each for a type of show (non-fiction, news, Science shows, Education shows you get college credit for, whatever categories shows fall into).

There might be several icons on a package indicating what credit you get for purchasing the product.

Commercials and pitches for products would be presented to you only while you're in the store, and could contain info on what shows you get for buying the product.

But they would be pitching at you while you're paying attention and deliberating over what to buy. They don't waste their money; you don't waste your time, and Congress doesn't need a law to prevent raising the sound volume during commercials.

TV channels, Cable providers, Sat providers, airwaves providers, even maybe production companies like Disney, would contract with these IT services to get money to make shows and deliver them to you. The IT service would get money from product makers that the product makers now waste on advertising to rooms full of people who went to the bathroom or hit fast-forward.

You buy your fiction (uninterrupted delivery) by buying a product.

Now there are two big holes in this idea.
1) Disparity of income creates disparity in buying habits
2) Niche fiction, things that aren't aimed at a mass market, might not get sponsored well enough to be cheap enough. Popularity would still govern availability of fiction.

The higher your income, the more you buy.

The people lower on the economic scale don't spend as much money. So they'd have less access to the very thing they need most to get higher on the economic scale -- fiction that inspires, non-fiction that instructs etc.

Those who spend a lot would have more viewing-credits than they need.

Those who spend little would have too few.

Free market forces would create a trading marketplace for these viewing-credits.

I would suggest the Free Public Library system should be the place to handle the trading since they already deal in fiction.

Most libraries are set up online already -- you can order or renew a book online at my library and the whole library system catalog is online so you can reserve a book your branch doesn't have. And most libraries now have computers set up for internet access via your library card (those that don't will soon have).

So a virtual or real visit to your local library could let you buy the viewing credits you didn't earn by purchasing advertised products.

So if you have no money, what would you buy viewing credits with?

What would people who have a lot of money, profligate spending habits, and a surplus of viewing credits want from you?

For that matter, what would advertisers want from you if you don't buy much?

Maybe some profligate spenders would donate their points to the library, as they now donate once-read books that are nearly new. The library would charge a few cents, as they now sell donated $30 books for $1.50 to sell them to you.

Or maybe the Library would use the points to provide you with access to the fiction of your choice (on-demand style).

Or other things might be bartered -- like filling out a survey, participating in a product trial, etc. I'm sure imagination will supply bartering tokens we could not possibly think of today. (maybe you could pay college tuition with viewing credits one day).

Uninterrupted viewing of the Superbowl could be worth something (though I know lots of people watch for the commercials).

This is a half-baked idea. But it could be applied to solve the publisher's problem, the warehouser's problem, the distributor's problem, the retail-bookstore's problem, the self-publisher's problem.

Writers, publishers, bookstores, etc are selling uninterrupted fictional experiences more than they are "intellectual property licenses".

Piracy is a problem only if your business model is to create and sell intellectual property.

If you get rid of the idea that intellectual property is personal property or proprietary property which you have a right to license (or not) as you choose, the whole picture shifts markedly.

If books, novels, e-books, stories of all sorts in all media could adapt to a "story-supported-advertising" business model, we might survive as writers.

A self-publisher could contract with one of these IT organizations so that people who buy manufactured products could use their fiction points to buy e-books, Print on Demand hardcopy, or other formats just as they would to view a TV show uninterrupted.

Writers wouldn't be selling their "intellectual property" at all. They'd give away their stories, and get paid for giving them away by manufacturers who see their products being bought in order to get access to the story.

The IT business wouldn't have to denominate the points in US$. The points would be like frequent flyer points, just points until you redeem them for Southwest flights or American Airlines flights. Thus they would become a de-facto international currency, and e-books in any language could be obtained using points earned buying groceries in any country.

Like the Wired article said, location doesn't matter any more.

The key points to this concept:

1) Intellectual Property is not personal or proprietary and is worthless

2) People want to do what they want to do when they want to do it and no distractions (sort of like courtship or even like sex). In other words, the driving is the distraction to the texting, so we need cars that drive themselves, which we almost have.

3) Fiction is a necessary nutrient, as vital as food, clothing, shelter, water, air, R.E.M. sleep, to sustaining life and sanity. Satisfaction requires no-distraction time-blocks.

4) Fiction is nothing but intellectual property and is therefore worthless

5) Uninterrupted TIME BLOCKS are of actual monetary value.

6) Given today's Information Technology based civilization, a lifestyle composed of uninterrupted time blocks is a commodity that can be monetized.

7) Connect point of sale information with point of fiction imbibing information and create a business model like the kind of "circuit boards" the fellow in the Wired article created -- don't charge for the intellectual property of fiction, but for the lack of distraction while imbibing it (i.e. charge for the circuit board not what it contains).

8) A new generation won't mind the violation of the basic notion upon which the USA was founded -- personal privacy and individual freedom. The new 40-year-olds in twenty years will be as vulnerable to this marketing technique as the 18 year olds are vulnerable to today's commercial-driven airwaves. But you won't need laws restricting how much money can be spent advocating a political position -- political ads belong in stores, not in stories.

I think that would fix the fiction delivery system and everything I see as wrong with it thusly:

a) it would provide a monetary base to produce and purvey fiction

b) it would provide direct feedback between fiction-imbiber and investor (manufacturer with something to sell).

c) it would stop the fragmentation of fiction into tiny chunks, forcing themes to be simpler and less satisfying than they could be. Thus fiction could become more effective as a lift to the spirits.

d) it would foster long-attention-span instead of the short-attention-span fostered in children who grew up on Sesame Street which has segments structured like commercials (or the TV Show HEROES).

but it would of course create new problems.

a) how do writers get readers to choose to read their books, spending points on them?

b) how do writers with a tiny audience survive the forces of mass marketing?

c) how do niche products attract sponsoring and keep their prices down since they can only reach a small market? How do you create these small markets? (social networking is the current best answer).

A host of other problems are inherent in this concept, but the current method is likewise fraught with flaws.

As Wired points out, this new economy is already revving up to full speed right alongside the old fogies clinging to the old economy.

My question is, "Has the old anything ever won out over the new anything?"

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Whole-world Government

Let us imagine....

The governments of Earth are desperate. They are thrashing around, grasping at straws, manufacturing crisis after crisis. Global warming. Banking. Manufacturing. Avian/swine flu. STDs. Terrorism. Deficits. Anything to increase government control over massive populations, to invoke war-powers acts, to oblige the public to accept 1984-like surveillance and also semi-mandatory mass injections of goodness-knows-what.

This isn't a whacky conspiracy theory. We're imagining. This is an alien romance blog, remember.

New, never before classified cloud formations are discovered. For instance, Asperatus. (I'm interested in clouds. It doesn't mean that they mean anything in particular, but they have potential as hiding places, and as delivery systems, and as shields.)

Meanwhile, UFOs are filmed over Ireland, and in other places. They move like nothing on earth. They're not configured like any super-power's secret aircraft or ABM.

The movie industry puts out movie after movie about aliens. Many are benign. Some are blue. Some have bony heads. Some are Messiah-like ie Klatuu (The Day The Earth Stood Still).... see a partial list of all the movies with aliens http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_featuring_extraterrestrials

Around 250 of them. Unfortunately, they are listed alphabetically. It would be really interesting to list them chronologically (with a synopsis) to see whether the portrayal of aliens has changed over time,  or whether there is any correlation between UFO sightings and subsequent sympathetic (or unsympathetic) alien characters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extraterrestrials_in_fiction

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extraterrestrials_in_fiction_by_type

I digressed. Those are really interesting lists, though.

Suppose there really are aliens, and suppose they are very much like us... only more advanced. I presume that aliens would wish to negotiate with us, and that they'd prefer to negotiate, say, with someone like Her Majesty, The Queen of England, rather with an ephemeral, quarrelsome rabble who might be voted out of office before any interstellar treaty could be ratified.

What would be the impact on all of us if these superbeings were all one racial type, and suppose that their one racial type was like our popular image of one of the three Magi?












This is a photograph of a lenticular cloud, but suppose it were a huge, god-like hologram. Imagine what would have happened if, at the same time that this appeared, a voice boomed from the clouds in which "he" is sitting. Suppose it did, maybe over some secluded part of Russia, where former President Putin was fishing, and over Crawford Texas where President Bush was clearing scrub. Or perhaps they appeared to Al Gore. Or Jeff Bezos!

Interesting article about contrails http://www.theozonehole.com/airtraffic.htm

Would international statesmen decide that it would be in Earth's best interests if our one-world leader looked as much as possible like the aliens? How would we achieve that?

How would we manage a one-world government or a one-world leader? It seems that every attempt at global domination by one tribe or another has eventually failed, no matter how benign in concept at the outset (or not!)  Plato's Republic, The Third Reich, the Roman Empire, Genghis Khan's Empire, the USSR all collapsed. Maybe Lord Acton's Dictum is all too accurate. "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

If we were to try again, (because we really need the aliens' help) how would we go about it?

The options would include an election from among world leaders similar to that of the Pope as shown in The Shoes Of The Fisherman  http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/44428/The-Shoes-of-the-Fisherman/overview

Another possibility would be the mystical elevation of a child, much the way a new Dalai Lama is found.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/27/tibet.china1

Would the election of a virtuous child as temporary Queen and figurehead, as in Star Wars, work?
http://www.starwars.com/databank/character/amidala/
Only, I guess, if the aliens were childlike --or hobbitlike-- in appearance.

One of the first issues to solve would be whether humans would want a temporary leader (elected, or rotating) or someone appointed for life (a monarch, a Caesar, a Protector, a Chairman, a Dictator, a Big Brother, an Emperor). This choice might be influenced by the longevity of the aliens, and the need for stability. Then, we'd have to decide whether the leadership would be heredity, and what legal and/or religious mechanisms might need to be in place to remove unsatisfactory leaders.

This isn't one, but it's interesting http://www.sacred-texts.com/bos/bos164.htm


If the aliens were cool with elected bodies, we'd need a global version of Articles of Confederation http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_arti.html

Otherwise, if they insisted on a one-world-leader, we'd want a global Magna Carta
http://www.middle-ages.org.uk/magna-carta.htm

If we look to literature, there's Machiavelli's model, and that of 1984 and of Brave New World. We see worlds ruled by consortia of business leaders, cartels, single imperial leaders; by parliaments, by oligarchies, theocracies... the Wiki list is comprehensive
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government

In Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow, the world is ruled by the Jesuits and the Japanese. In Jack Vance's Demon Princes worlds, distant planets were settled (much as North America was) by exiles and evangelists of various religious denominations.

Is there anything we haven't tried?

Should we try, anyway? If these imaginary aliens want us to have a one-world government, is that a good and sufficient reason to give it to them?

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

Heredity and Destiny

TIME magazine of January 18 contained an article on "Why Your DNA Isn't Your Destiny":

Time

It explains how, through the action of cell components called epigenetic markers, which tell genes when to switch on or off, an individual's environment, diet, and life experiences can shape the traits passed down to offspring. This is a huge departure from the long-established Darwinian belief than environment has no effect on heredity. It turns out that, to some extent, the discredited theory of Lamarck—who championed the notion of inheritance of acquired characteristics—might have been right.

This news should interest horror and fantasy writers because it provides a mechanism for a scientific explanation of vampirism, lycanthropy, or zombification (if you treat those conditions as contagious) as caused by a virus that creates a permanent, inheritable alteration in the victim's DNA.

Speaking of vampirism as disease, by the way, has anyone else read THE STRAIN, by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan? It's horror as well as SF, and very grim, but worth reading—the most ingenious treatment of that theme I've read in a long time.

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Religion In Science Fiction Romance

Oh, this is going to be a painful blog entry to write and to read.

But a woman has to do what a woman has to do if she's going to be a kickass heroine of the writing craft.

Below, I'm going to get to discussing the TV Series, Sanctuary on syfy network, and a chat thread on twitter hashtagged #scifichat which discussed Children's Science Fiction and Fantasy on Friday Jan. 22, 2010, and is slated to discuss Religion in Science Fiction on Friday Jan 29, 2010 because we danced all around Religion in the discussion of kid-lit.

So before we get to the pain and rage of Religion, let's take a moment to imbibe a photograph of a Character from Sanctuary, John Druit the Vampire who was Jack The Ripper but is Magnus's beloved and still fights a compulsive need to Rip people to bloody shreds (talk about overcoming prejudice!).
That photo is from
http://www.syfy.com/sanctuary/cast.php?id=5
where you will also find luscious episodes to watch and all the rest of the online stuff that's usual these days.

And I am ashamed to say I forgot to mention SANCTUARY as a case in point on the #scifichat about children's SF/F that blends religion and science -- (OK, the scripts are a little thin BUT! the worldbuilding is redolent of a theme at the core of many Religions).

On twitter I saw the following comment:
crside Our culture is composed of sequels, reruns, remakes, reissues, re-releases, recreations, re-enactments, adaptations, and anniversaries etc....

And that's just what Sanctuary is, a "re" -- while at the same time it's original.  For that alone, the TV show is worth studying.

If you're young enough, the oldest stuff seems startlingly original -- and Sanctuary falls into that category.  They've rearranged and re-slanted the pieces of older material until it's relevant to today's audiences. The show is a bundle of cliche's arranged in an artful composition, and probably seems original to a lot of viewers.  Others yawn and surf away. 

On twitter's #scifichat, we tossed around a few comments on how religion appears in SF/F, and @rixshep answered a few comments, echoing my thoughts even after the chat had officially ended.  The @jlichtenberg at the beginning of the comment indicates the tweet was from @rixshep in answer to a tweet of mine, or requires my direct attention because of what I'd said earlier:

@rixshep @JLichtenberg Re: Pagan, christian & other symbolism in "classics". IMO, yes & no & both. Not always intentional, but reflects soc. gestalt.
Friday, 22 January 2010, 4:27 pm -

@rixshep @JLichtenberg For example of what I mean, see this review I did some time ago of a christian book about The Matrix: http://bit.ly/712bHy
Friday, 22 January 2010, 4:30 pm - 

That shorted URL is actually:
http://www.christian-fandom.org/seay1.html
where @rixshep reviews a nonfiction book about the film THE MATRIX.

@rixshep really does know this field!  Here's more comments:

@rixshep @JLichtenberg RAH MAY have had religious symbolism, but knowing his conscious stance, it would be inadvertent, ingrained from culture.
Friday, 22 January 2010, 7:18 pm -

@rixshep @JLichtenberg Frank Herbert, otoh, could have put stuff in deliberately, just to yank chains of readers! Lol.
Friday, 22 January 2010, 7:20 pm

So Science Fiction has a grand tradition of enfolding the common religious contentions of the day into its most popular novels, both consciously and unconsciously on the part of writers.  And of course that continues.  

Now, what has Sanctuary the TV Show to do with Religion in Science Fiction and Science Fiction Romance, especially since SANCTUARY wasn't even mentioned on the kid-lit chat #scifichat ?

Here we go all around Robin Hood's Barn (and you all know what happens behind the barn).

Religion in Science Fiction is a perennial topic at Science Fiction Conventions for a good reason.  It interests, astounds, repells, fascinates, and enrages.  It is a topic which somehow touches everyone in the broadest communities.

Agnostics and atheists have firm and unwavering opinions to air on the topic of Religion in general, nevermind Religion that shows up in fiction that includes religion either "on-the-nose" or off!

So even people who don't practice a particular religion as part of their daily lives have an urgent need to be heard on the topic of Religion.

Parents have positions on religion that they want their children to absorb,and many religions harbor a conviction at the deepest level that the biggest favor they can do a friend, relative or acquaintance is to convey the primary message of their own religion. Some people feel that convincing others that what the other believes is totally wrong is the highest act of charity.

Religion is very important to people from every profession and social stratum. And maybe it's most important to those who wish it would just go away!

Red faced, explosive screaming matches erupt when Religion intrudes into a conversation.  And nothing is resolved, usually.  People lose friends over those fights, and rarely gain a lover via religious acrimony (now there's a challenge for a red-blooded Romance writer!).

Yet the fact is that many organized religious institutions are shrinking in America, while more and more people are "unaffiliated" and raise their children to be as neutral as possible on the topic.

Just google Religion In America Today for more data than you could ever want.

Here's a headline from USA Today important to writers because this is the demographic profile of the intended readership for most fiction:
Most religious groups in USA have lost ground, survey finds
http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2009-03-09-american-religion-ARIS_N.htm

That's a 2008 survey. Now it's 2010 and we're into a census year so in a while we may have more statistics, but I doubt such a huge trend will suddenly abate.

This article has links to explore and it says:
----------
"These dramatic shifts in just 18 years are detailed in the new American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), to be released today. It finds that, despite growth and immigration that has added nearly 50 million adults to the U.S. population, almost all religious denominations have lost ground since the first ARIS survey in 1990."
---------
Another quote from that same article:
---------
"Meanwhile, nearly 2.8 million people now identify with dozens of new religious movements, calling themselves Wiccan, pagan or "Spiritualist," which the survey does not define.

Wicca, a contemporary form of paganism that includes goddess worship and reverence for nature, has even made its way to Arlington National Cemetery, where the Pentagon now allows Wiccans' five-pointed-star symbol to be used on veterans' gravestones."
---------

In the USA it isn't politically correct to discriminate against someone because of their religion, even if they don't have one.

But somehow, it's not really too bad to try to sell your religion to someone else, especially if they don't have one.

Many who hold religion tightly to themselves feel a sudden sense of emergency when confronted with an unaffiliated person possibly because of the sense of shrinking community. To survive, any community must grow and propagate values to their children.  Having lost a child to virulent hatred of the parent's religion, a parent might attack any new acquaintance, driven by a need to replace that member of the community by converting someone new.

Some religions regard Science Fiction and Fantasy, even some Romance with blatant sex scenes, as dangerous sources of ideas, attitudes and values that can undermine a young person's faith.

They may have a point because it's been proven that the 18-40 year old demographic is most susceptible to having their behavior modified under the impact of commercials. Repeated messages from Authority (such as teachers in school, or even more influential, the young person's peer group), can alter behavior and perhaps eventually beliefs.

Ideas truly are "dangerous" because new ideas, the specialty of Science Fiction and SFR, can alter perception of reality. 

The panicked need to convert friends may not seem so irrational if you remember the sense older people may have of a shrinking community.

Friends, contemporaries, are dying off, children are leaving the community, and nobody really knows why this dynamic has taken hold since 1990's.  In those circumstances, a parent may see anything as a threat, even to their own life, secure retirement, support group, and long range prospects for their posterity.

Many communities regard higher education as the enemy of their religion, for it is on the university campus that children must encounter the whole wide world of all religions, and open armed acceptance of every faith and non-faith or anti-faith, unless the campus is specifically constructed for one single Religion.

At college age, youth is easily indoctrinated in anti-doctrine attitudes.  Rebellion is normal, a necessary part of growing up.  Youth reaches across all boundaries to find a true-soul-mate.  Any way of life that's inherently easier may seem to be founded on an ultimate truth.  (Sometimes it even is!)

A well rounded university education has to come with some survey of the world's religions and historically how religion has sparked so many wars, so much violence, so much truly ugly bloodshed, so much really important Literature, and is still churning and erupting today.

The roots of today's worst wars must be studied, and those roots go back thousands of years into --- yep, Religion. 

Remember, Conflict is the essence of story.  Also remember the point I made last week
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/01/competing-for-mate.html
about how visual violence and purely primal images are easily accessible across cultural gulfs and thus have a broader potential audience, and bigger profit margin, than more nuanced stories, more "adult" stories.

The nuances, ethics, morals and philosophies behind Religion don't make popular story material.  The violence and primal angst generated by Religion through history do indeed make popular story material.

The violence and bloodshed take front-center stage while romance due to religion sinks into the background -- mostly because real drama that sells big time has to have violence and bloodshed along with some raw sexuality.

In fact, in many Romance genres (Regency comes to mind, but many Fantasy Romance series too), "arranged marriage" is portrayed as the ultimate evil in society, victimizing women, possibly even men, in the name of Religion, Society, Inheritance, Political Power. The philosophy behind using arranged marriage is rately discussed "on-the-nose" though.  It relies on symbolism. 

Most religious symbolism taps into the over-arching, primal mythos of all humanity.

Please stop reading this blog right now if you haven't yet read The Golden Bough, a seminal work surveying religious practices around the world among the most ancient peoples.  Every writer needs to read that survey (or one like it) because it is a vast "show don't tell" on the nature of all the archetypes at the root of the human psyche.

If your religion forbids you to read about other religions, maybe you have to find another source for that over-view of world pre-history. If you know such a source, please drop a comment on this blog entry about it.

In many previous posts here, we've delved into "Worldbuilding" as a writer's primary tool for sweeping a reader into a story.

Most writers and readers think that it's "character" that grabs and holds a reader, but "character" isn't it.  Readers feel it's the character that sucks them in, but that's not it.

A character is the product of the world he/she is embedded inside of.

Readers are dragged kicking and screaming into stories they would probably not ever want to read because they see, hear, and feel a specific character who is a version of the reader's Self handling a world that is ostensibly not the reader's world.  It is that contrast, that conflict, that sucks the reader in.

The Reader's Self in the Reader's own world would be boring.

Someone totally not-Self in the Reader's own world would be bewildering.

The Reader's not-Self in a not-World would be irrelevant.

It is the Reader's Self in an oddly challenging World that creates the dramatic vortex that sucks a Reader into a story.

"What would I do?"  "How would I survive that?" "Who would I save, the mother or the baby?" Quandries, plights, challenges, adventures, circumstances, arrowing straight at the Reader's heart and soul make fascinating reading. 

Reading is all about what the reader would do in those circumstances.

"Who would I be if I were a Princess with Magical Power?"

We all know there are lots of versions of Self that we could manifest.  Which one we manifest is partly a product of choice, partly a product of what choices were on that menu of choices at birth, and partly a product of aspirations, visions, wishes, fantasies.

As I learned from Alma Hill, writing is a performing art. 

As with an actor, a writer's most penetratingly real characters are the ones that partake of some unmanifested potential within the writer, being someone they really are not.

"Who would I be if I were in that world?"

Think about stories of being tossed into The Witness Protection Program and leaving your whole Identity behind (and how hard that is if you stay in this world!) Enter another World and you could be someone else!

We all know "who" we are now, in this world.  The parameter that changes, from "here" to "in that book" is the world, not the reader. And in that World, the Reader can be someone else.

Many Religions consider it wrong to strive so hard to escape the plight that Divine Plan has dictated for you.

Here's a blog entry by a Professor of Spanish who has been pondering many esoteric philosophies, and pulled a quote from one of my Review Columns about the Soul entering manifestation through the dimension of Time.

http://professorparanormal.wordpress.com/2010/01/20/your-soul-is-split-you-are-of-many-minds-what-does-it-matter/

It is because of "dangerous" thinking like this that many Religions frown on frivolous pursuits such as reading fiction.

I, however, don't regard Fiction as a frivolous pursuit, nor do I believe that any form of fiction is "escapist" in nature.  The most "escapist" literature rubs your nose in the hardest facts of reality, such as Love Conquers All.

To create that kind of "escapist" literature, the writer's first job is to build a world for the reader, and the second is to build a character the reader can recognize as Self reshaped by that strange new world.

We've discussed many aspects of worldbuilding (here's a sparse selection of what there is posted on this blog):

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/01/worldbuilding-for-science-fiction.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/01/astrology-just-for-writers-part-9-high.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/12/thorium-real-hope-for-e-books.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/12/worldbuilding-by-committee.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/07/world-building-for-writers-politics.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/communicating-in-symbols.html

When it comes to Science Fiction or Fantasy, whether it's SFR or Nuts-n-bolts, it's all about worldbuilding.

The world causes the problem.  The world shapes the characters and their inner obstacles to solving the problem.  The world provides the raw material the characters must reshape into a solution to their problem.

Shaping our own world into solutions to our own problems is what life is all about, and practice makes perfect.  So we practice living by reading fiction.

The bold philosophical questions, such as those by Religion, embedded in the SF/F "World" makes our literature different from mundane literature.

In mundane literature (where the world is reality), certain things exist, and others do not, and the rules of our real world are never broken, just illustrated (ho-hum-yawn).

In SF, Fantasy, Paranormal, SFR, some one thing about our general reality is different.  The writer chooses to change that one thing because in our everyday reality, many other things are based on that one thing.  Change the one, and everything else must change, too. The writer's job is to let the Reader see that if you change this, then that must change too because of the way things are connected.

The point of reading SF/F with or without Romance is to find new ideas about how the things in our everyday reality are connected without ruining any real lives with our experimenting. 

By tracing out the connections among things in this fictional "model of reality" we learn to understand how our everyday reality is constructed around us, and to find the connections between the manifestation of our Self at the moment and the World we are embedded in.

"How has the world shaped me?"  Answer that, and you gain the power to change your life.  There are Religions that believe it wrong to allow followers to have that kind of power, and others that work hard to empower their followers.

Armed with that understanding of what we can change by choice and what we can not change but must adapt to, we can make a new Self to live our life.  Fiction, especially SFR, is the arsenal for such arms because the fabric from which SF is constructed is woven from the fibers of Religions -- all Religions.

I discussed fiction as a woven fabric here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/01/worldbuilding-for-science-fiction.html

One most common example of a "fiber" is The Hero Archetype and The Hero's Journey.

By living an "adventure" with a Hero in a novel, we can tap into the reservoir of heroism residing within ourselves and actualize that potential, becoming more heroic in our daily lives.  ("What would Captain Picard do in this situation?")

To create that effect for a reader, a writer must create a world, and know more about that world than is imparted to the reader.

So a writer may start with a story to tell (Heroism 101 for Dummies), and wrap a whole world around that story, making everything match by using Theme to select what to put into the world.  But once created, the world must make some kind of sense to the reader on an unconscious, subliminal level.

To achieve this sense for the reader, the world is built around The Theme, and the bits of the world that are imparted to the reader all have to illustrate The Theme.  The writer may know all kinds of things about the world that do not illustrate the theme, but the writer reveals only those bits that do.

The way those revealed bits are inserted into a narrative without yanking the reader's attention onto them (spoiling the effect the way seeing the wires in a flying scene spoils a movie) is to use SYMBOLISM.

Where do you get that symbolism?

Religion.

You can't beat it for a source of symbolism.  In fact, you can't avoid it.

Every symbol that means anything to human beings has been used by some Religion at some time.  In fact, some might say that Religion invented Symbolism (writing itself is a form of symbolism as is mathematics).

Symbols are a tool for thinking, especially about abstractions, non-concrete things, things that don't actually "exist." 

Your symbolism won't "work" if it's not somehow related to, derived from, echoing or shadowing some religion or another.  Even if you deliberately make something up, it will (inevitably) evoke some religion, possibly one you've never heard of.

Every well built "world" has to define the "truth" as well as the "fantasy" about Religion because every human culture we know anything about has a place for Myth, for cosmology and cosmogony, for epistemology.

Symbolism must be in the fictional world or the fiction just won't work.

If you don't put it in consciously (as @rixshep pointed out with Robert A. Heinlein and Frank Herbert's Dune ) it will slip in subconsciously, and possibly contradict your chosen theme.

All religious symbolism is old, public domain stuff.  Every archetype has been used in one or another religion because archetypes are really powerful psychological symbols that speak loudly even to (or especially to) those who have no formal education in them.

Everyone responds to these primal symbols.  It seems sometimes that the less education or intelligence someone has the more powerfully symbols speak to them.

But the real spooky thing is that even for those erudite few of the upper reaches of human intelligence, symbols ROAR their message and even control behavior while the scholar denies it emphatically in multi-syllabic rhetoric.

The more firmly denied the symbolism, the more powerful it is.  The harder you fight it, the more prevalent it becomes.

The writer who understands this and fabricates a world out of that raw material of religious symbolism can reach tender minds and reshape our reality.  The pen is indeed mightier than the sword.

In the USA recently, starting probably in the 1990's, we've seen a gathering wave of Fantasy becoming accepted mass market fare.  The most popular, best selling, books and the most predominant television thows such as BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, share a worldbuilding quirk in common.

I've written about this trend in this blog

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

and in my review column
http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/  from about 1995 on.

If you've seen the film Avatar you should be thinking about it right now.  The very title means symbol.

"Good" and "Evil" are actually symbols, or in the parlance of mathematics, they are "Variables" -- having different values in different circumstances.  Think about that.  All "Villains" are desperately fighting the terrible "Evil" of "Good" which so adamantly opposes their goals!  And most Religion is about how to be Good.

I've discussed the trend toward building worlds around the theme that reality is a thin film over a seething cauldron of Evil.  The Hero's job is to keep the lid on that cauldron, to keep a finger in the dike holding back the demons of hell, and not let the masses know what's going on (the giant conspiracy theory of reality).

The thematic statement that seems most popular today is that the real world is actually a horror movie where the best we can do is hold off Evil.

The huge generation gap between fiction written in say, the 1940s and fiction written in the 1990's separates two very distinctive world views among reader/viewers.  These distinct world views are reflected in the tidal wave of defections from organized Religion noted in the USA Today article cited above.

The model of the universe depicted by the mixed-genre fiction composed of SF, Fantasy, Romance, Horror and Religion is that Good can not win against Evil.  Evil is a necessary and legitimate (Harry Potter's Hogwarts) part of our world and must not be conquered, certainly not obliterated.

In the 1940's, the guy in the white hat always won.  GOOD always wins in the end.  EVIL is always vanquished.

Today, the best we can hope for is a draw, and in fact Good must not win because that would upset the balance.  Besides who are we to impose our own idea of what is "Good" and what is "Evil" on others.  We must not be judgmental!

If you've been reading my posts on Astrology and Tarot, you have developed a grasp of the underlying juncture between Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and modern Wicca as mentioned in the religion survey article.  That juncture is symbolized by the Tree of Life, the Kaballah.

The mystical view of the universe always depicts good and evil in balance, a dynamic equilibrium around a center pole.  Thesis, antithesis, synthesis.

But there is yet another view, and that view is embedded deep in the archetypes that depict the skeleton of the human psyche.

It is a view endemic to Science Fiction and exemplified to the mass market by Star Trek, and Sime~Gen.

MAKE A FRIEND OF YOUR ENEMY

Actually resolve the conflict of Good vs. Evil by understanding that, at a certain Soul level where Wisdom rules, there really is no such conflict at all.  Love does Conquer All.

Realize that the Horta is just a mother protecting her young.

Take the thorn out of the lion's paw so the lion can go home to the jungle.

Or the Biblical commandment that if you see your enemy's donkey foundered beside the road, you must stop and help unload that donkey. (In Kaballah it is understood that "donkey" is a symbol for the human body, the animal body that carries the Soul through life.)

Or the instant classic novella by Barry Longyear and later film, ENEMY MINE -- two fighter pilots from opposite sides of a war are stranded together beyond the edge of the fighting and must become allies -- then choose to become friends.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089092/

Making your most deadly natural enemy into your most valuable friend (lover, Soul Mate, Forever Partner, Alternate Self) is "Love Conquers All" in it's purest form, and has been an integral part of Science Fiction since my earliest memory.

That's why it's the central theme of my Sime~Gen Universe novels
http://www.simegen.net

And many of my novels involve a karmic plot, presupposing past life choices generate this life's plight. This is evident in my Dushau Trilogy, and you can find free chapters at
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Love Conquers All is a theme garnered from shared symbolisms embedded in our extremely diverse religions. Wherever you see a theme of Love Conquers All, you are looking at Religion manifest in the fiction, whatever the genre, even if the rest of the fictional work embodies an Atheist point of view.

Love has been appropriated by Religion since long before the Ancient Greek Mythology promulgated stories of the dysfunctional families of their gods.  Love was worshiped as a Goddess, remember.  Love is primarily a Religious issue, even when it's not.   

"Soul Mate" a key element or potential in Paranormal Romance, is at bedrock a Religious theme because it presupposed a Soul (whether that soul is actually immortal or not).

Again, I refer you to
http://professorparanormal.wordpress.com/2010/01/20/your-soul-is-split-you-are-of-many-minds-what-does-it-matter/

Most people might attribute the concept "Soul Mate" to more recent neopaganism and the modern practice of Magic.  Some might trace it back to Christianity's origins.

But it's also a Jewish concept, and integral to most Kaballistic thought on the origin and purpose of Souls, what life is and what marriage is about, and why traditionally only married men were allowed to study Kaballah. (Google Bashert)

So an element of the worldbuilding in a Soul Mate story needs to be (not necessarily revealed) how the Souls got into reality to begin with.

The Soul in jeopardy by Demons (from wherever) and the Soul Mate's rescue is a primal story that is always a winner if the worldbuilding is done well.  But the worldbuilder has to ponder whether Souls can be destroyed or fundamentally altered in any way.  What exactly is the jeopardy?  What horrible thing could happen if this other thing doesn't happen?

We have seen variations on that theme of Souls In Jeopardy in every sort of built fantasy world.  And all those worlds that I remember are built around the Aristotelian notion of the universe as a zero-sum-game (because it's hard to depict a war in a world where everyone always wins without making someone else lose).

I've discussed the philosophy of the universe based on a zero-sum-game (where if I win, that necessarily means you lose) in many posts here.  Here's an example:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2007/10/9-swords-nightmares.html

SANCTUARY The TV Show on the syfy channel does not take place in a zero-sum-game universe because Magnus (Amanda Tapping from Stargate: SG-1 )
 flat refuses to allow that premise (I win means you lose) to invade the Sanctuary.

The premise of Sanctuary blends Science with Magic into a seamless whole, where magic is just another natural occurrence of our everyday world, treated something like ESP.  The world of Sanctuary includes shapeshifters who can change mass during a shift, telepathy, empathy, levitation, and much more.

But all the magical looking effects are based in genetics.  Magnus is a geneticist with a tiny bit of Vampire blood (and a titch of immortality).

But none of those elements that I deem important or interesting are sited on the page "about" the show.  Here's their description pitching the show (study this all you writers who want to learn to pitch).

The following is from
http://www.syfy.com/sanctuary/about.php

------------
Sanctuary blazes a trail across the TV landscape with never-before-seen production technology. Starring Amanda Tapping, best known to fans as the brilliant Col. Samantha Carter on Stargate SG-1, Sanctuary is the first series to shoot extensively on green screen, using virtual sets and extraordinary visual effects.

Sanctuary follows the adventures of the beautiful, enigmatic and always surprising Dr. Helen Magnus (Tapping), a brilliant scientist who holds the secrets of a clandestine population — a group of strange and sometimes terrifying beings that hide among humans.

Along with her new recruit, forensic psychiatrist Dr. Will Zimmerman (Robin Dunne), her quirky tech wiz Henry (Ryan Robbins) and her fearless daughter Ashley (Emilie Ullerup), Magnus seeks to protect this threatened phenomena as well as unlock the mysteries behind their existence. The series also stars Christopher Heyerdahl as the sinister John Druitt.

Created by Damian Kindler (Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis), Sanctuary is produced in association with Syfy and is distributed by Tricon Films and Television. The show is executive produced by Damian Kindler, Sam Egan, Amanda Tapping, Martin Wood, Keith Beedie and N. John Smith.
-------------

Since that was written, they've killed off the daughter Ashley and replaced her with a stray girl Magnus picks up, Kate Freelander, played by Agam Darshi.

If I'd just read this description, I wouldn't bother to watch the show.

The interesting part of this show is the half-vampire in love with a Vampire who (we learn only this season) is possessed by an energy-being that is "Jack The Ripper."

That's right, they borrowed Jack The Ripper from Star Trek where Jack was a disembodied spirit that could possess the main computer A.I. of the Enterprise.  And this season, that entity possessed the computer system retrofitted in the Sanctuary building itself.  If you know, love and appreciate cliche, and know how to use it in writing, you can tap into the root power of all symbolism with it.  

See?  @crside was right -- everything is "re" this or that.

So why shouldn't our fiction be "re" too?

In fact, the best stuff is "re" because practice makes perfect.

So, now you see the Vampire Romance hidden in Sanctuary, where's the "religion" in the show?

It's in the worldbuilding, deeply buried inside the world that Magnus lives in and defends with her life.

None of the characters are especially "religious" and they don't talk about God or any transcendent Power that controls their lives.  When they're in deep trouble, they don't even pray (so you would notice, anyway).

Nothing that happens is attributed to God.  They haven't done a bunch of Star Trek like stories where they meet "God" and it turns out to be a powerful alien entity.

One can easily see why parents who want to impart their religion to their children would object to Star Trek which shrugs off God as an insane alien entity, a childish alien entity, a power-mad alien entity.  Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, was a Humanist as were many who worked on the show, and the show embodied that philosophy about the nature of divinity.

So, again where's the religion in Sanctuary?

And again, in the premise, in the worldbuilding and in the theme, where it belongs in a good story. Out of sight. 

Sanctuary depicts all the demonic forms and demonic forces you could ever ask for (they aren't kidding about the unique appearance of the visuals) but takes a Star Trek attitude toward them.

The "abnormals" that Magnus collects from the wild and brings to her Sanctuary often become friends and allies, but in any case she tries to provide them a secure home while preventing the mayhem they would visit upon our world (or our world would visit upon them).

These "abnormals" are genetic oddities, like her, not "supernatural" in origin.

But the things they can do are things we ordinarily attribute to the supernatural.

The Vampire John Druit can teleport and do most all the usual vampire things.  And he admits, in front of others, (when the Ripper entity is not inside him) that he loves Magnus. 

From their various encounters in different episodes, we can see that they are soul mates. They never use that term, of course.  Too religious.  Too "on the nose."  But if you know anything about Romance, you know what you're looking at with the Vampire and part-Vampire in this desperate alliance (that has produced a child between them, too). 

Yet Magnus has had to kill John to prevent him from killing her (and revive him in an act of desperation).

When the Ripper entity was not inside him, John chose to take that horror back inside himself and exile himself from the Sanctuary to protect Magnus (and the world).

This energy-being is not (apparently) genetic, and it's more "horrible" (and Magical) than anything else they've dealt with.  It's not a misunderstood but well meaning freak of nature, as far as we can tell. And they couldn't destroy it.

It's the force of destruction and death - it is the essence of pure glee feeding on human pain, blood and most of all suffering.  It torments and tortures.

It's a game-changer in understanding this TV Show's universe and a revelation about the nature of this world built out of a philosophy that says "It's all good."

Magnus's universe simply has nothing EVIL in it -- even the Ripper-entity, somehow, will have to turn out not to be Evil.  This is a universe where there is no such thing as supernatural evil.

Sanctuary depicts a universe in which the seething genetic soup of Earth's biosphere (the science element) has produced a completely integrated, harmonious whole composed of thesis, antithesis and synthesis.  That is GOOD and EVIL and the synthesis or half-way blend of the two in dynamic equilibrium have combined into ONE.

That's the Religion element embedded in the worldbuilding.  

Early in the 20th century we held that Good could and should win.

Today it seems the argument is that Good can and should hold back Evil, but never, ever actually win so that Evil disappears forever.

But Sanctuary shows us a world where it's all GOOD.  Not one conquering the other or one vanquishing the other or the two in tension.  No.  It is ALL good. 

I can think of one religion that looks at it that way.  Can you?

As I said above, it's possible that Friday Jan 29, 2010, #scifichat will be about Religion in SF/F.

You can attend the #scifichat (and contribute or just follow the moderator's questions and writer's answers) by going to http://twitter.com and filling out the signup (it's free).  You don't have to "follow" anyone or even complete your "profile" telling the world who you are.  You can just look on the right side of your home page, type #scifichat in the box labeled SEARCH, click the magnifying glass SYMBOL, and at the top of the page it shows you, click to save the search for the future.

Refresh your screen to watch comments scroll by.  If you see someone interesting, click on their name to see the screen with their profile displaying usually their personal website and a list of recent tweets.  You can "follow" that person by clicking "follow" in the upper left part of the screen.

Twitter is simple, but many use "clients" (free or paid downloads) that display the data differently, sometimes more handily.  I use hootsuite.com sometimes.

The #scifichat happens at 2-4 Eastern time on Fridays.

There are other chats on writing you can attend with or without participating.  Another is #litchat.

After you create your twitter account, you can follow me by going to
http://twitter.com/jlichtenberg and clicking FOLLOW.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com