Where Expert Romance Writers Fail

I often hang out at chats on twitter, especially those frequented by writers and fiction readers/viewers.

#scifichat is held at mid-day on Fridays (Eastern Time) and goes for 2 hours. Near the end of #scifichat on June 4th, 2010, the moderator asked the 7th of the 8 Questions in the format:

@scifichat #scifichat Q7: Can we envision a day when all disabilities are overcome? Utopia, or dystopia? #disability #progress #scifi #fantasy #books 12:31 PM Jun 4th via API

@PennyAsh Q7 I would say dystopia is more likely #scifichat 12:34 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck

All my inner alarm bells went off reading @PennyAsh's comment. She's a Romance Writer. She thinks dystopia is more likely.

I've found that she and I share a lot of interests in common, books, TV shows. She's been writing fantasy romance, vampires, steam punk, and other SF/F stories. She's well trained in how to cast a story into a plot line.

Yet, the moderator's question during a discussion of Disabilities in SF triggered a lazy reversion to a non-thinking, non-SF, non-imaginative answer.

True, in the reality we live in, dystopia seems to be the norm, and "more likely."

But this is #scifichat and that means it's about science fiction and fantasy and imagination.

The point of reading the literature of the fantastic is to learn to think "outside the box" - to break through cultural blinders -- to contemplate the impossible, the improbable, the unthinkable, the "unlikely" -- and to use those thoughts to change the world in such a way that those limits don't exist anymore.

In the 1950's, if you thought humans would actually walk on Earth's Moon, you were considered somewhere near the edge of sanity. Your opinion on everything else was automatically discounted. What was known to be impossible, was indeed impossible because it was known to be impossible (and disabled people were not treated well at all.)

In the 1960's - the decade of the first Star Trek TV series - not only was the idea that we could walk on the moon now considered possible and even do-able, but the idea that anything was actually impossible became suspect!

The 1970's was an era when even unfettered male dominance of everything important could be changed.

Science Fiction has been defined by an attitude, a "Sense of Wonder" that is deeply rooted in a philosophy that says:

What Humans Can Imagine; Humans Can Do

And the corollary is true. If you can't imagine it, you can't do it.

Science Fiction led the way out of the 1950's into a Golden Age for SF where more and more titles sold more and more copies - where real SF finally came to TV (not kiddie fare, and not comedy like My Favorite Martian, but Real SF like Star Trek).

The teens who grew up on SF novels that acknowledged no limits to the imagination, created the Internet, the World Wide Web, and many generations of computer chips, to wireless networks, and on and on into massive connectivity, not to mention GPS and Satellite weather reports (if you don't remember the 1950's, you don't appreciate today's weather reporting at all).

All that progress turned on just one tiny bit of philosophy.

If you've been reading my blogs here, you know that I place an inordinate emphasis on Philosophy.

Philosophy is far more important in human personal existence, cultural existence, societal existence and even the existence of our entire technological Civilization, than most people can imagine.

Writers, however, all have to be world class philosophers.

The entire art and craft of worldbuilding, and the whole power of the writer's knack of sucking a reader into a world not their own, rests on artistic manipulation of philosophy.

Philosophy turns up in every nook and cranny of a story, but dominates the THEME component.

There is one philosophical point that is the prime signature of the SF Genre, and it is bedrock basic to Romance Genre as well.

It's a very simple point, which means it's far more profound than most people would ever want to believe. Very personal.

It cuts to the quick. It twangs the heartstrings. It makes life worth while. It scares the shit out of most humans, so they won't think about it. I just said it above - do you remember or did you skip it?

What Humans Can Imagine; Humans Can Do

And the corollary. If you can't imagine it, you can't do it.

Now how does this apply to both SF and Romance?

Look at Star Trek: The Original Series. Captain Kirk was the only one to graduate the Academy having passed the Kobiyashi Maru exam.

How he did that is revealed. He cheated. He saw it was a no-win scenario, held in his heart the absolute conviction that there is no such thing as a no-win scenario, and he CHANGED THE RULES (hacked the computer and changed the program) so he could win.

That incident so defines Star Trek as PURE SF (despite all the compromises necessary to get it onto prime time TV where SF was totally disallowed) that the incident is recounted in the 2009 Star Trek movie.

In the movie, produced forty years after the first TV show, we see the young Kirk of an alternate universe rig the computer simulator and win the Kobiyashi Maru test.

It is made clear this is an alternate universe, so they could have just said this Kirk never cheated to win his commission. But they kept that incident intact because it defines the character. All Kirks in all universes think this way because it defines Kirk, and defines Star Trek as SF.

"Kirk" is the essence of science fiction because he does not accept limits on what is possible. If necessary, he'll change the structure of reality itself to actualize what he imagines.

Think hard about that attitude.

It's a very powerful philosophy, but it's also very dangerous. Scary.

Think about it, and see if it isn't the essence of what makes humans human, and that very essence is what scares (terrifies) many people, possibly to the point of being disabled in the ability to Love.

From the caveman inventing the wheel (which was independently invented, I think three times in different parts of the world) to some college students and professors inventing the internet -- just for fun, just to play computer games they programmed, toying with the stuff they worked on seriously in their day-jobs -- humans refuse to accept "impossible" for very long.

Now, think about the core essence of Romance.

Essentially, Romance is the pathway or open doorway to HAPPILY EVER AFTER, the HEA ending. You can't get to HEA without going through Romance.

What's the point of all the heart-rending, harrowing, emotional roller coaster plot if it does NOT produce an HEA ending?

Any sensible person will tell you that the HEA ending is a ridiculous cliche because in "real" life, it's impossible. Because! It's ridiculous because it's impossible.

Ho-ho!

We have found a juncture, a point of identity between SF and Romance as genres.

Both kinds of stories must end at achieving the IMPOSSIBLE -- and thereby changing the very definition of what is possible.

Once "the impossible" has been achieved, it becomes possible, and the boundaries that circumscribe our mental lives must expand to include this new achievement.

Philosophically, SF and Romance are identical.

So why is Romance still unworthy of vast public respect?

See my blog entry (also based on a Twitter conversation - this one on #scriptchat )
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/06/why-do-they-despise-romance.html

Read the comments on that blog entry and you'll find a comment about the HEA ending.

Note that if it's true that both SF and Romance must generate endings that violate the absolute boundaries of consensus reality, then the two genres are not now and never have been separate genres.

So there's no such thing as SFR.

You can't "mix" genres that are already identical.

If you mix two things that are identical, you end up with more of that one thing.

So SF has "proved itself" by having moved the boundaries of reality for many people now living. So they accept this new reality of iphones and thus most SF no longer seems ridiculous or crazy.

But apparently, no such "proof" yet exists for Romance.

Well, look at the state of the Family in the USA (maybe worldwide). Divorce is commonplace, over 50% in some demographics. And a famous couple ostensible happy for 40 years just announced a separation.

"Falling in Love" has led to bitter disappointment for many who married because of a romantic experience.

In their reality, there is no such thing as HEA.

And they've convinced all their friends and family there's no such thing as an HEA.

Anyone who believes there is such a thing as an HEA in real life is as "crazy" as those idiots in 1950 who kept writing stories about humans walking on other planets.

So, why do people accept "hard evidence" (the divorce rate) to "prove" their belief that something is impossible?

Hard evidence showed that people could not go into space because there was no material that could withstand the forces required to climb out of the gravity well of Earth. Not only that, but hard calculations showed clearly there was no fuel that could provide the thrust. The whole idea was stupid because it's impossible to do it.

So a generation got to work and produced materials and fuel, and political backing to get funding -- and we did it. We did the impossible. We did what had only been imagined by crazy people.

Do people today perhaps think that imagining the internet and making the Web happen is just about the Web, and not about human imagination?

Do they think the change in "reality" was just a fluke? Now we just adjust to a new reality, and it'll never change again -- certainly not as a result of crazy people imagining stuff?

Do they think "reality" is now fixed and you just have to live with it -- even if they are Star Trek fans, even Kirk fans?

How do people get such fixed notions about what is possible?

Do you suppose it's inculcated by the fiction they imbibe in youth?

And where does that fiction come from?

Writers.

We have a whole new generation of writers (and their near-cousins, editors) trying to find a way to make a living within the rules set down by a publishing industry now suddenly owned and operated by big corporations who think publishing should make a profit. (it never has in human history, but they're determined to do the impossible)

Therefore, in their pursuit of the impossibility of a profitable publishing industry, they have laid down the law about what is or is not possible in the fiction they've published.

Writers, accordingly, are trained by their editors to produce fiction that conforms to those rules of what is possible.

It's not so much the rules themselves that are sacred, but the entire attitude of conforming that has become untouchable.

I was astonished to run into that hard, fast, shiny, impenetrable barrier on (of all places!) #scifichat on twitter -- the one high-tech playground where one would suppose the philosophy of the internet founders (imagine the impossible; do it) would hold sway.

Of course the 140 character limit on twitter is not my native mode of expression, but I did my best and still had a hard time breaking a mental barrier composed of *EPIC FAIL* of writerly imagination.

You want to figure out why Romance doesn't get the respect it deserves as a genre - read this exchange I accidentally started in answer to @PennyAsh's comment on dystopia being more likely.

Think about the "impossible" HEA, where the HEA is a type of "Utopia" and think about how and why general readers reject all of romance because of the HEA while fans of romance read it because of the HEA.

Should we shrug and wall ourselves off into our own little corner of the universe? Or should we analyze what's really going on?

I had no intention probing for data to analyze when I made the following casual remark in answer @PennyAsh's response to the moderator's question about dystopia and utopia.

And I suspect few on #scifichat were thinking what I was thinking when I made this remark -- that the inability to "love," to fall in love, or to experience ROMANCE, is actually a very serious handicap, a disability of the most crippling kind. I said:

@JLichtenberg @PennyAsh #scifichat Frankly I'm more for utopia as a VISION -- but it's not the utopia that fails but the envisioner.

This started a long-long exchange with several people -- none of whom apparenly understood what I had meant (in 140 characters) by failure of the envisioner. All of these answers are (to me) clearly confined within a tiny box created by our culture's assumptions which must not be challenged.

So @MoonWolf95 commented back at me:

@MoonWolf95 @JLichtenberg One man's Utopia is another man's Nine Hells #scifichat

to which @PennyAsh answered

@PennyAsh @MoonWolf95 I agree, in a utopia we do not grow #scifichat

My hair stood on end. Writer's *EPIC FAIL* of imagination! How in the world can you discuss such abstract philosophical matters in 140 character bursts? So I said:

@JLichtenberg @PennyAsh #scifichat Naturally I disagree - at point of UTOPIA we actually finally START TO GROW (species infancy now) STARGATE ASCENSION
12:43 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to PennyAsh

@PennyAsh @JLichtenberg exactly, human nature will out. #scifichat
12:44 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to JLichtenberg

@JLichtenberg @PennyAsh #scifichat utopia concept - think Lensman Series, Arisians, visualization of the macrocosmic all. A utopia does growth starts
12:44 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to PennyAsh

The next question was dropped in by the moderator:

@scifichat #scifichat Q8: Can cybernetic interfaces be a #disability themselves? #scifi #cyberpunk #computers #robot #science
12:45 PM Jun 4th via API

I thought that was the end of that exchange on Utopia. Nope.

@GeneDoucette #scifichat Utopia for ALL would A: be boring, B: be impossible to believe. Utopia for some at the cost of many would be more believable.
12:46 PM Jun 4th via web

Gene Ducette is a writer I'm going to be reading soon. David Rozansky answered my comment.

@DavidRozansky @JLichtenberg Brave New World? #scifichat
12:45 PM Jun 4th via TweetGrid in reply to JLichtenberg

So I'm thinking the Romance genre HEA really is saying "you can have this too" - i.e. Utopia for all. Boring? Impossible to believe? Enforced like BRAVE NEW WORLD?

*EPIC FAIL* of writerly imagination. How to explain that in 140 characters? And I'm talking to the smartest, most imaginative people around. How could this be happening?

Another writer/artist I'd just met last week, @MoonWolf95 adds:

@MoonWolf95 @JLichtenberg One man's Utopia is another man's Nine Hells #scifichat
12:43 PM Jun 4th via TweetChat in reply to JLichtenberg

@MoonWolf95, as @PennyAsh, likes the same books, authors, TV, that I do.

So @PennyAsh answers:

@PennyAsh @JLichtenberg Utopia makes a wonderful vision problem is there's always someone who wants to enforce their vision on all #scifichat
12:47 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to JLichtenberg

And I'm thinking, "No, not in a real Utopia there isn't." But that's unimaginable, unthinkable, and probably unpublishable, right?

@JLichtenberg @MoonWolf95 @PennyAsh #scifichat "1's utopia; another's hell" - see, that's failure of writer's imagination! Stuck in past.
12:47 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to MoonWolf95

While the whole discussion veered into the next question and topic, I was stuck on this Utopia vision problem.

@JLichtenberg #scifichat 2 create NEW SF take unchallenged ancient truth and CHALLENGE IT (1 man's utopia; another's Hell)
12:48 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck

Remember, every post of mine goes to maybe 1200 people who aren't "listening" to #scifichat and so have no clue what I'm talking about. So I often RT (retweet) the comment I'm answering AND try to include the nucleus of the comment in my comment so it makes sense "out of the blue" to someone not interested in SF. Most of my followers are interested in writing and the whole entertainment industry from creation to business model.

So I said:

@JLichtenberg @PennyAsh #scifichat But what if NOBODY wanted to force their vision on others? THAT is essence of an SF question. WHAT IF...?
12:49 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to PennyAsh

@PennyAsh @JLichtenberg We need things to overcome otherwise we stagnate. It's a catch 22, utopia achieved breeds dissatisfaction #scifichat
12:49 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to JLichtenberg

@PennyAsh @JLichtenberg The cycle starts all over again #scifichat
12:49 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to JLichtenberg

David Rozandky caught up with this side-chatter while main discussion went on with Disabilities and technology.

@DavidRozansky @JLichtenberg So Utopia, like myopia, is a vision disabiltiy. #scifichat
12:49 PM Jun 4th via TweetGrid in reply to JLichtenberg

And another writer chimed in answering me:

@madpoet @JLichtenberg I wouldn't call that a failure of writer's imagination. I'd call it an acknowledgment of human nature. @PennyAsh #scifichat
12:49 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to JLichtenberg

But I was busy answering David Rozansky:

@JLichtenberg @DavidRozansky #scifichat Yes, a "vision disability" afflicts our readers, and SF writers job is to open their eyes to unthinkable possib
12:51 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to DavidRozansky

To which @PennyAsh replied:

@PennyAsh @JLichtenberg I'll have to ponder this more :) might fit in my Frankenstein story #scifichat
12:51 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to JLichtenberg

And I finally saw and responded to @madpoet

@JLichtenberg @madpoet #scifichat the whole point of SF/F is to NOT ACKNOWLEDGE LIMITS OF HUMAN NATURE - go where no man/person has gone b4
12:51 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to madpoet

And another writer chimed in (side-topic kept exploding)

@teresajusino @JLichtenberg #scifichat Not an ancient truth about SF so much as a truth about human nature. & yes, you can ignore that in SF, but why?
12:50 PM Jun 4th via web in reply to JLichtenberg

Why!!??? Ignore???? Oh, no, no -- but how to answer that?

@JLichtenberg @teresajusino #scifichat no, not "ignore" human nature, QUESTION OUR CONVICTION ABOUT WHAT IT IS. Always question!
12:52 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to teresajusino

And to @PennyAsh I finally answered:

@JLichtenberg @PennyAsh #scifichat Yes, it's definitely a Frankietein archetype challenge
12:52 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to PennyAsh

@GeneDoucette @JLichtenberg I think I'd like a definition of "utopia" before going on. #scifichat
12:53 PM Jun 4th via web in reply to JLichtenberg

The rest of the folks had been discussing disabilities created by technology, so I connected the two threads of discussion thusly:

@JLichtenberg #scifichat disability created by science - the scholarly conviction that we KNOW human nature
12:53 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck

Again I was challenging the entire concept of "the impossible" being set up by academics, experts, or "everyone knows."

Meanwhile MoonWolf95 has been thinking hard:

@MoonWolf95 @JLichtenberg But human nature can be considered a disability by itself too? #scifichat
12:53 PM Jun 4th via TweetChat in reply to JLichtenberg

But I was busy answering @GeneDoucette

@JLichtenberg @GeneDoucette #scifichat tweet-size defn of utopia is opp of dystopia, I'd guess
12:54 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to GeneDoucette

@madpoet is still pursuing another line of thought and everyone's talking at once:

@madpoet @JLichtenberg Then we're no longer writing about humans at all. One branch of SF is the exploration of human reaction to the new. #scifichat
12:54 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to JLichtenberg

@DavidRozansky @MoonWolf95 That's flawed thinking, don't you think? #scifichat
12:54 PM Jun 4th via TweetGrid in reply to MoonWolf95

@JLichtenberg @MoonWolf95 #scifichat human "nature" could be a LIMITATION which say, soul-spirit could fight to overcome. ESSENCE OF STORY IS CONFLICT
12:55 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to MoonWolf95

@GeneDoucette @JLichtenberg because if it's a variant of "everyone's happy and content" well... #scifichat
12:55 PM Jun 4th via web in reply to JLichtenberg

David Rozansky makes a brilliant remark

@DavidRozansky Utopia is world of no problems. Impossible to reach, yet we as humans always progress to solving problems. Paradox? #scifichat
12:55 PM Jun 4th via TweetGrid

@PennyAsh RT @JLichtenberg: @MoonWolf95 I see it more as a cycle moving society to the next level, either up or down #scifichat
12:56 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck

And I finally got back to @madpoet

@JLichtenberg @madpoet #scifichat this chat was about how disability is treated in SF/F which means not limited to "humans" no?
12:56 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to madpoet

@PennyAsh @MoonWolf95 Resistance to change and stagnation #scifichat
12:56 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to MoonWolf95

@PennyAsh @JLichtenberg Absolutely or what if no one wanted to rebel? What if no one wants to have a revolution? #scifichat
12:58 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to JLichtenberg

@MoonWolf95 @PennyAsh Oddly I finished a convo w/char in that very position this morning. #scifichat
12:58 PM Jun 4th via TweetChat in reply to PennyAsh

@JLichtenberg @PennyAsh #scifichat well, yes, "what if" there's no conflict -- crippled writer thinks "but must have; so can't be true" -- but WHAT IF???
12:59 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to PennyAsh

I was trying to jar everyone out of their writerly training (that I'd participated in drumming into them) - THERE MUST BE CONFLICT and there is a very short menu of where to find conflict.

I was trying to get them to imagine Utopia and some serious thinking was going on in some minds.

@PennyAsh @JLichtenberg I have my romance theme for Frankenstein, this will give a nice framework #scifichat
1:00 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to JLichtenberg

I was grinning as I answered @GeneDoucette

@JLichtenberg @GeneDoucette #scifichat I disagree. Utopia doesn't have to be boring. Can be huge challenges, projects, things to learn, levels to master
1:01 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to GeneDoucette

The moderator calls TIME! And I was way, way behind by this point.

@scifichat Tweet! That's the official end of #scifichat. But feel free to keep the conversation going.
1:01 PM Jun 4th via API

@JLichtenberg @madpoet #scifichat I got onto Utopia just being my usual abrasive, contrary, disagreeable self. Whatever "everyone" knows is untrue!
1:02 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to madpoet

@MoonWolf95 @JLichtenberg If you know this, by your own logic it too must be untrue :) #scifichat 1:03 PM Jun 4th via TweetChat in reply to JLichtenberg

Oho! I seem to have gotten a point across in 140 characters or less!

@JLichtenberg @MoonWolf95 #scifichat precisely - now you're getting it!
1:04 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to MoonWolf95

But, no, not yet as Gene has been thinking like a well trained writer who carefully stays within publishable bounds:

@Gene Doucette @JLichtenberg but where is your conflict? Heroes are nominally non-conformists. #scifichat
1:05 PM Jun 4th via web in reply to JLichtenberg

@JLichtenberg @GeneDoucette #scifichat mtlitudinous conflicts in utopia - think ARISIANS vs. BOSKONE
1:07 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to GeneDoucette

@PennyAsh @JLichtenberg Almost makes me want to write a utopian story :) #scifichat
1:08 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to JLichtenberg

Oho- SUCCESS! @PennyAsh is getting my point - thousands of novels about dystopia, not much about utopia except ones that reveal the flaw and destroy the Utopia or show it up for a sham. Utopia is Virgin territory (you should excuse the pun) for SF writers!

@madpoet @JLichtenberg @GeneDoucette Hang on - Boskone was a utopia? #scifichat
1:08 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to JLichtenberg

I do love talking to people who have read the books I've read!

@JLichtenberg @madpoet #scifichat -- no Arisians had evolved to a point where their lives were utopian (from our POV, not theirs)
1:10 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to madpoet

@PennyAsh @JLichtenberg My to be written list is getting longer #scifichat
1:11 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to JLichtenberg

@PennyAsh @JLichtenberg There's another good utopia/dystopia question, who's pov are we in? #scifichat
1:11 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to JLichtenberg

I also love talking to writers - whose point of view indeed! Love it!

@madpoet @JLichtenberg weren't they secretly manipulating humanity to develop the children of the lens? #scifichat
1:12 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to JLichtenberg

@JLichtenberg @madpoet #scifichat Yes, Arisians bred human (and other) Lensmen to combat Boskone which ALSO manip'd human history 1:13 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to madpoet

@GeneDoucette @MoonWolf95 Fair enuf. I find utopian societies inherently unrealistic, and so tend to look for proof of dystopian underpinnings #scifichat
1:14 PM Jun 4th via web in reply to MoonWolf95

@MoonWolf95 @GeneDoucette To be honest, I think a Utopian society would implode from within naturally #scifichat
1:15 PM Jun 4th via TweetChat in reply to GeneDoucette

@JLichtenberg @PennyAsh #scifichat yes, and idea human nature is unchangeable and inescapable is preconceived idea
1:15 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to PennyAsh

@MoonWolf95 @GeneDoucette But it comes back around to the potential causes, both of Utopia and its fall #scifichat
1:16 PM Jun 4th via TweetChat in reply to GeneDoucette

@JLichtenberg @PennyAsh #scifichat a real disability would be the 1 human whose "nature" was NOT what we learn in Lit classes frm Shakespear etc
1:16 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to PennyAsh

@MoonWolf95 @JLichtenberg Enough so that whatever breaks out of the cycle of human nature by definition will no longer be "human" #scifichat
1:17 PM Jun 4th via TweetChat in reply to JLichtenberg

@PennyAsh @JLichtenberg Good point :) How about utopia from the pov of those unhappy with it #scifichat
1:17 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to JLichtenberg

@GeneDoucette @MoonWolf95 yes. Being discontent is an important aspect of being human. Either human and not utopian, or vice versa. #scifichat
1:17 PM Jun 4th via web in reply to MoonWolf95

Now earlier, discussing how to pitch novels @GeneDoucette had answered something I said with this comment:

@GeneDoucette @JLichtenberg ..I did that when I started with "okay, my narrator is a 60,000 y/o man." But I HATE the delimiting nature of genre #scifichat

"hate the delimiting nature of genre" - you all know where I stand on that, but I didn't have any time to open that topic with @GeneDoucette. His comment stuck in my mind, but I mis-remembered and attributed it to @madpoet so addressed this comment to @madpoet.

@JLichtenberg @madpoet #scifichat U dislike "genre delimiters" so I led U OUTof a limit U didn't know U were in (I'm so mean)
1:19 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to madpoet

Then I went back to bugging @MoonWolf95 (who didn't deserve it)

@JLichtenberg @MoonWolf95 #scifichat Well, are we so parochial that whatever breaks out of cycle of human history is so OTHER to be non-human?
1:20 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to MoonWolf95

@PennyAsh @JLichtenberg Yes, not "normal" to be dissatisfied with your society/situation #scifichat
1:20 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to JLichtenberg

@MoonWolf95 @JLichtenberg To be honest - yes. Look at MacCaffrey's "Pegasus", or X-Men comix #scifichat
1:21 PM Jun 4th via TweetChat in reply to JLichtenberg

@JLichtenberg @PennyAsh #scifichat POV of those unhappy with utopia - THAT is failure of imagination
1:22 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to PennyAsh

@PennyAsh @JLichtenberg So far yep :) Still pondering :) #scifichat
1:23 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to JLichtenberg

@JLichtenberg @PennyAsh #scifichat "old us vs. them question" -- precisely my point OLD QUESTION. We need NEW QUESTION.
1:24 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to PennyAsh

Of course I was thinking of a Romance genre new question. But others were finally thinking.

@madpoet @JLichtenberg Would it be fair to say that the Utopians would regard that unhappiness as a disability? #BringinItBackAround #scifichat
1:24 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to JLichtenberg

@MoonWolf95 @JLichtenberg "We have met the enemy, and the enemy is us" - us vs us question :) #scifichat
1:25 PM Jun 4th via TweetChat in reply to JLichtenberg

@JLichtenberg @madpoet #BringinItBackAround #scifichat in a routine ho-hum SF story, Utopians wld regard unhappiness as disability.
1:25 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to madpoet

And more writers thinking hard-hard-HARD.

@Agiliste @JLichtenberg: @PennyAsh #scifichat "old us vs. them question" -- New Question: What if THEM is the way to go. Rampant individualism?
1:26 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to JLichtenberg

@MoonWolf95 So what if a Utopian considered their world/life to not be Utopia and it should go further? #scifichat
1:26 PM Jun 4th via TweetChat

@JLichtenberg @MoonWolf95 #scifichat "us vs. us" also been done to death and studied by academics. Give them something they can't understand
1:26 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to MoonWolf95

@PennyAsh @JLichtenberg The WHAT IFs are beginning to come together... #scifichat
1:26 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to JLichtenberg

@JLichtenberg @Agiliste #scifichat "What if THEM is the way to go?" now Ur thinking SF/F!!! Don't stop thinking. Say what has never been said.
1:27 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to Agiliste

@PennyAsh I like it RT @Agiliste: @JLichtenberg: @PennyAsh #scifichat New Question: What if THEM is the way to go. Rampant individualism?
1:28 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck

@GeneDoucette @MoonWolf95 Fair enuf. I find utopian societies inherently unrealistic, and so tend to look for proof of dystopian underpinnings #scifichat
1:14 PM Jun 4th via web in reply to MoonWolf95

@MoonWolf95 @PennyAsh That's what we *do* at the end of the day - we play "What if?" with the Universe. Better than dice :) #scifichat
1:28 PM Jun 4th via TweetChat in reply to PennyAsh

@JLichtenberg @GeneDoucette #scifichat YOU GOT IT - U find utopia unrealistic. NOW write what would convince U you're wrong
1:29 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to GeneDoucette

@PennyAsh @JLichtenberg Here's a WHAT IF: Utopia has achieved immortality. What if you don't want to live forever? #scifichat
1:30 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to JLichtenberg

@JLichtenberg @MoonWolf95 @GeneDoucette #scifichat MoonWolf shld then write what would PREVENT utopia from imploding, see my point?
1:30 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to MoonWolf95

@JLichtenberg @PennyAsh #scifichat "what if you don't want to live forever" -- that is routine, grind the crank, writer-ly thinking. Find a NEW QUESTION
1:31 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to PennyAsh

@GeneDoucette @MoonWolf95 yes. Being discontent is an important aspect of being human. Either human and not utopian, or vice versa. #scifichat
1:17 PM Jun 4th via web in reply to MoonWolf95

@JLichtenberg @GeneDoucette #scifichat what if human nature changed so that discontent was NOT necessarily integral (it is now - show us NEW)
1:32 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to GeneDoucette

@MoonWolf95 @JLichtenberg You'd only end up with a paradox discovery - anything you do to preserve Utopia only hastens its collapse :) #scifichat
1:33 PM Jun 4th via TweetChat in reply to JLichtenberg

@JLichtenberg @MoonWolf95 #scifichat SF thinking means to CHALLENGE that wall in Ur mind saying "only leads to collapse"
1:34 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to MoonWolf95

@DavidRozansky @JLichtenberg Human trait of needing to search for new things is vital part of us. So seeking unobtainable utopia is...utopia. #scifichat
1:35 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to JLichtenberg

@GeneDoucette @JLichtenberg Now that's a nice writing exercise. #scifichat "NOW write what would convince U you're wrong"
1:35 PM Jun 4th via web in reply to JLichtenberg

@PennyAsh @JLichtenberg The crank is grinding :) have a fledgeling plot in mind #scifichat
1:36 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to JLichtenberg

@Agiliste RT @JLichtenberg: @Agiliste #scifichat now Ur thinking SF/F!!! << The voices in my head are suggesting that may head towards Mad Max...
1:37 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck

@JLichtenberg @GeneDoucette #scifichat having new horizons could be utopia -- but WHAT IF UTOPIA IS ACTUALLY ATTAINABLE?
1:38 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to GeneDoucette

@GeneDoucette @JLichtenberg I think the Talking Heads said it best: "heaven is a place where nothing ever happens." #scifichat
1:38 PM Jun 4th via web in reply to JLichtenberg

@JLichtenberg @DavidRozansky #scifichat Here's a heretical thought - suppose our world 2day is actually utopia for humans? (been done, I think)
1:39 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to DavidRozansky

@MoonWolf95 @JLichtenberg Utopia is what you decide it is for you. The rest of the world can go find its own :) #scifichat
1:39 PM Jun 4th via TweetChat in reply to JLichtenberg

@DavidRozansky Can't wait to put #Dystopia on the list for #scifichat topics.
1:41 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck

@MoonWolf95 *wonders if @JLichtenberg is a clone of Jubal Harsaw* *grins* #scifichat
1:42 PM Jun 4th via TweetChat

(no, actually I'm just mean and relentless when I get into a writing brainstorming session)

@PennyAsh So does Utopia = Happy and Dystopia = Unhappy? Methinks not :) #scifichat
1:44 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck

@johndejordy Utopia is attainable for the individual, not a group because everyone's concept of what it might be differs. #scifichat
1:44 PM Jun 4th via web

@PennyAsh @johndejordy But what if it is attainable for a group? #scifichat
1:48 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to johndejordy

@PennyAsh @JLichtenberg So, what if the only people granted immortality are lifers. The general public isn't allowed it #scifichat
1:51 PM Jun 4th via TweetDeck in reply to JLichtenberg

@johndejordy That is why I say utopia would be for the individual. Mine would is simplistic, to live without any physical pain - and ice cream #scifichat
1:57 PM Jun 4th via web

We were all posting so hot and heavy that twitter blocked us out of posting more. The chat only went an hour or so beyond the stopping time!

Look over that discussion substituting "HEA" for Utopia.

As noted in the comments to my blog post on "Why Do "They" Hate Romance?"
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/06/why-do-they-despise-romance.html

--- the world out there puts the HEA outside of the bounds of the possible. HEA is impossible just like Utopia.

Even the most imaginative SF writers can't encompass the basic concept. How could you expect their readers to approach it?

Worse, it's not just the HEA concept that's outside the bounds of thinkable thoughts -- it's the very idea of thinking outside the bounds of the thinkable that's unthinkable.

Reverse your point of view to looking at the SFR field from the side of the Romance writer, and you'll find exactly the same problem.

The romance writer imagination *Epic Fail* comes in trying to imagine the world WITHOUT the HEA -- and at the same time can't even think of the possibility of a technological advance (an SF postulate) that might challenge or involve the HEA concept.

We can mash in the Horror genre with Romance and SF if we begin to think about the reason that the general readership rejects the HEA (it's implausible).

"What if ..." the inability to fall in love, to experience Romance, to navigate that blurry mental state into the safe haven of an HEA life (for real) using the force of Love is actually a very widespread inability.

"What if ..." a huge portion of today's people are suffering from this disability - a disability so widespread that it's considered the norm?

If that were the case, what could fiction writers do about it?

We'd have a big job ahead of us.

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

Discover: "Earth On Fire"

Science and politics seem to be inextricably entwined, don't they? Let's call them bedfellows.... if only to tie in with the alien Romances theme of this blog.

Why do politicians want to try, impeach, hold hearings and legislate when the sensible approach would be to put the fire out first?

Apparently, it is --or may be-- because we are led by lawyers.  (See "The Lawyers' Party" by Bruce Walker at the end of this post, if interested in my source for that assertion.) It would be interesting to analyse why we elect lawyers, when lawyers are said to be among the least liked, respected and trusted professions.

Possibly, eloquence has something to do with it.

Personally, I like lawyers (and politicians). I think they make fascinating alien heroes and alien villains for my speculative romances. But, I digress. Trustworthiness and likability are optional. It's effectiveness that counts.

You cannot put out a fire by talking about or at it.

There are fires to be put out, and our political and corporate leaders (some of whom say they are working 24/7) are holding hearings on weekdays and indulging in various, expensive and exclusive sporting activities on weekends, if one can believe the cameras. If one must be seen to play... maybe one should turn it into a fund-raiser for the less fortunate? Just a thought. One could multi-task. One the other hand, could one do it well?

As my character Grievous said (and he wasn't the first to say it) "It's hard to keep your mind on draining the swamp, when you're up to your arse in alligators."

According to the July/August 2010 issue of DISCOVER MAGAZINE Kristin Ohlson writes "Thousands of hidden fires smoulder and rage through the world's coal deposits, quietly releasing gases that can ruin health, devastate communities, and heat the planet."

So, let me recap that. Parts of the planet are on fire. And our leaders' solution is to tax us... not mind you, to pay for a task force to put out the coal fires in Mongolia, or in Centralia, Pennsylvania,  or in Hazard, Kentucky.

Nor do I imagine that Copenhagen mandated tax money would be used to buy up what's left of the rain forests so that local would-be farmers won't burn them to the ground.

We have to stop squandering.

Why don't we know about these fires? Apparently, one coal fire in Kentucky has been burning for the last three years. It's being studied. Measured. According to Ms Ohlson, there's a coal fire in Australia that has been burning for six millenia. Six millenia!

There are 112 underground fires in the USA, and the result is pollution in the air, and contamination in the ground water.

Allegedly, after spending $4 million on trying to put out the Centralia fire, the government has decided it's too expensive and too difficult. Compare that $4 million with BP's offer to put $20 billion into escrow.

Where's the compensation and clean up fund from big coal for their fires, then? Are the coal fires in the ground "man made"? Maybe not all of them, but if the fires are being fed because there's air in the mine shafts (as is alleged), maybe the mines need to be filled until there is no air.

We've got enough trash in the world. There's an island of floating plastic debris the size of a good-sized country suspended in the middle of the Pacific.

Not to rant too much, but why is a government take-over of the auto industry and the imposition of speed limits and fuel efficiency standards and taxes so much more essential to stop "climate change" than an effort to put out the fires?

Maybe we wouldn't be as sick (and in need of so much Health Care) if we had clean air to breathe and clean water to drink.... and fewer chemical additives in our food and in our cosmetics and toiletries.

All this doesn't sound very romantic, and it's too depressing to be the inspiration for whatever the 2012 equivalent of steam punk may be. "Eco- punk"??? But, it does have one ingredient that we writers do well to bear in mind.

Pollution arouses passions.

The Lawyers' Party 
By Bruce Walker 

The Democratic Party has become the Lawyers' Party .  
Barack Obama is a lawyer. 
Michelle Obama is a lawyer. 
Hillary Clinton is a lawyer.  
Bill Clinton is a lawyer. 
John Edwards is a lawyer.  
Elizabeth Edwards is a lawyer. 
Every Democrat nominee since 1984 went to law school (although Gore did not graduate). 
Every Democrat vice presidential nominee since 1976, except for Lloyd Bentsen, went to law school. 
Look at leaders of the Democrat Party in Congress:  
Harry Reid is a lawyer.  
Nancy Pelosi is a lawyer. 

The Republican Party is different.  
President Bush is a businessman.  
Vice President Cheney is a businessman. 
The leaders of the Republican Revolution:  
Newt Gingrich was a history professor. 
Tom Delay was an exterminator. Dick Armey was an economist.  
House Minority Leader Boehner was a plastic manufacturer.  
The former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is a heart surgeon. 
Who was the last Republican president who was a lawyer?  Gerald Ford, who left office 31 years ago and who barely won the Republican nomination as a sitting president, running against Ronald Reagan in 1976.  

The Republican Party is made up of real people doing real work, who are often the targets of lawyers. 

The Democrat Party is made up of lawyers.  Democrats mock and scorn men who create wealth, like Bush and Cheney, or who heal the sick, like Frist, or who immerse themselves in history, like Gingrich. 

The Lawyers' Party sees these sorts of people, who provide goods and services that people want, as the enemies of America .  And, so we have seen the procession of official enemies, in the eyes of the Lawyers' Party, grow.. 

Against whom do Hillary and Obama rail?  Pharmaceutical companies, oil companies, hospitals, manufacturers, fast food restaurant chains, large retail businesses, bankers, and anyone producing anything of value in our nation. 

This is the natural consequence of viewing everything through the eyes of lawyers.  
Lawyers solve problems by successfully representing their clients, in this case t he American people.  
Lawyers seek to have new laws passed, they seek to win lawsuits, they press appellate courts to overturn precedent, and lawyers always parse language to favor their side. 

Confined to the narrow practice of law, that is fine.  But it is an awful way to govern a great nation.  
When politicians as lawyers begin to view some Americans as clients and other Americans as opposing parties, then the role of the legal system in our life becomes all-consuming.  Some Americans become "adverse parties" of our very government.  We are not all litigants in some vast social class-action suit.  We are citizens of a republic that promises us a great deal of freedom from laws, from courts, and from lawyers. 

Today, we are drowning in laws; we are contorted by judicial decisions; we are driven to distraction by omnipresent lawyers in all parts of our once private lives.   America  has a place for law s and lawyers, but that place is modest and reasonable, not vast and unchecked.  When the most important decision for our next president is whom he will appoint to the Supreme Court, the role of lawyers and the law in  America  is too big.  When lawyers use criminal prosecution as a continuation of politics by other means, as happened in the lynching of Scooter Libby and Tom Delay, then the power of lawyers in America is too great.  When House Democrats sue  America  in order to hamstring our efforts to learn what our enemies are planning to do to us, then the role of litigation in  America  has become crushing. 

We cannot expect the Lawyers' Party to provide real change, real reform or real hope in America Most Americans know that a republic in which every major government action must be blessed by nine unelected judges is not what  Washington intended in 1789.  Most Americans grasp that we cannot fight a w ar when ACLU lawsuits snap at the heels of our defenders.  Most Americans intuit that more lawyers and judges will not restore declining moral values or spark the spirit of enterprise in our economy. 

Perhaps Americans will understand that change cannot be brought to our nation by those lawyers who already largely dictate American society and business.  Perhaps Americans will see that hope does not come from the mouths of lawyers but from personal dreams nourished by hard work.  Perhaps Americans will embrace the truth that more lawyers with more power will only make our problems worse. 

The  United States  has 5% of the world's population and 66% of the world's lawyers! Tort (Legal) reform legislation has been introduced in congress several times in the last several years to limit punitive damages in ridiculous lawsuits such as "spilling hot coffee on yourself and suing the establishment that sold it to you" and also to limit punitive damages in huge medical malpractice lawsuits. This legislation has continually been blocked from even being voted on by the Democrat Party. When you see that 97% of the political contributions from the American Trial Lawyers Association goes to the Democrat Party, then you realize who is responsible for our medical and product costs being so high! 

Aliens Within Us

(Warning: If you're more than normally squicked by multi-legged creatures, read no further.)

Have you heard of eyelash mites? Official name "Demodex folliculorum," they have a lifespan of 14 to 18 days, measure between 0.3 and 0.4 millimeters in length (visible only under high magnification), and live in human hair follicles. About one-third of all children, half of adults, and two-thirds of elderly people harbor eyelash mites. They're usually harmless. In fact, they perform a useful job, cleaning up fluids and dead skin cells that might otherwise cause pores to clog.

Here's a page with pictures. (Look at your own risk.):

Eyelash Mites

These tiny "bugs" are only one of the myriads of creatures that inhabit our bodies. Between 500 and 1000 species of bacteria live in the human digestive system. Some of them serve vital functions, while most have no effect on our health at all; they just find our entrails a suitable habitat, I guess. A similar number live on our skin, and human beings also host "microflora" in the mouth, nose, vagina, etc. (If a woman's vaginal ecosystem gets temporarily disrupted by antibiotics, she becomes more susceptible to yeast infections. So be thankful to your bacteria.) It's estimated that the human body contains at least ten times as many bacteria as human cells. We're a minority inside our own flesh!

This fact, by the way, undermines any assumption that intelligent extraterrestrials living on Earth-like planets will necessarily be humanoid. Not only do we share our external environment with thousands of animal species whose appearance and physiology differ from ours, millions of nonhumanoids happily inhabit our own bodies, and you couldn't get a much more compatible environment than that. (Still, I'd rather read and write about aliens who resemble us closely enough to have relationships with, so I'm happy to fall back on convergent evolution to justify human-sized and -shaped ETs.)

In Madeleine L'Engle's A WIND IN THE DOOR (the first sequel to her award-winning A WRINKLE IN TIME), heroine Meg becomes sub-microscopic and goes on an expedition into one of her sick little brother's cells to save his life. She meets a mouselike creature who lives inside one of his mitochondria. To this being, Meg's brother is not a person but a galaxy. Consider the millions and millions of living things for which each of us comprises the entire known universe.

This image brings to mind the opposite end of the scale, with the idea that our galaxy might be a sentient being. If it were, how would we know? Would a galactic mind, for that matter, have any notion that we're conscious and intelligent? Would any communication be possible? If our bodies' inhabitants included intelligent creatures like the nano-scale entities in A WIND IN THE DOOR, could we ever become aware of them or vice versa? And suppose one of them had a mystical revelation of its host "galaxy" as a sentient person. If that sub-microscopic prophet tried to share its insight with its companions, they might consider the "humanity hypothesis" as wacky as our mainstream culture considers the "Gaea hypothesis" (the idea that the Earth is a vast living organism).

When Walt Whitman wrote, "I am large, I contain multitudes," he probably had no idea he was stating fact, not metaphor.

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

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)

Bottom Seal, Earth Day Irony, and Ripping Sci-Fi

Can an ambitious writer rip stories from the headlines, and still be a person of good taste and discretion?

That question bothers me very much, and I'm sure it is one reason why a lot of really terrific tales go unwritten. There's also the fact that I write Romance and Humor (speculative romantic facetiae). It doesn't seem right to embark on a light weight, alien rom-hum project for commercial gain based on the real life misery and suffering of so many people and animals.

Conspiracy theories can be fun to read and write, but when does The Allowed Fool (a medieval concept best known in Shakespeare's plays involving European aristocracy) become a dangerous fool?

'That, of course, is the great secret of the successful fool - that he is no fool at all.'

Isaac Asimov, Guide to Shakespeare.^[4]

Having established that I don't plan to write hum-rom or rom-hum for profit and gain any time in the near future about political events of the last three years, I should like to comment on "Bottom Seal".

Who thinks of these names? I suppose we should be grateful that it did not occur to anyone to use "Plug" instead! (Until I came along, but I don't count. I don't have nuclear scientific chops.)

OK. An unfinished foreign war. An embattled President. A global company with a bullseye on its back. An accident waiting to happen (or be set off). Nuclear bombs. Suicide bombers. Secret swat teams. International Treaty violations. The worst environmental pollution catastrophe to date...

It all sounds like the ingredients for a novel by either Clive Cussler, Clive Cussler or Dan Brown or Jeffrey Archer. (That is two Clive Cussler links).

All one needs is a mad scientist, a way to tie in  Eyjafjallajokull, and some sex....

Here are links to some of the fascinating potential story-starters:

GunBroker.com Message Forums - Oil rig attack?(C&P)
http://www.helium.com/items/1822086-possible-north-korean-attack-on-deepwater-horizon-oil-rig
http://www.eutimes.net/2010/05/us-orders-blackout-over-north-korean-torpedoing-of-gulf-of-mexico-oil-rig/#comments


http://theweek.com/article/index/203645/nuke-the-oil-spill
http://www.ngoilgas.com/news/a-nuke-to-stop-the-gulf-oil-spill/
http://tetradyn.com/bottomseal/

Is this what the "relief well" is for?
It's due to be ready in August, but will the decision be so momentous that the bomb isn't detonated until 2012 and the world as we know it will end? Could end. You cannot write science fiction in which some hero doesn't save the day/Gulf/world.

Or maybe you could. I wonder what gender mix is on the International Space Station at the moment. "They" should put some young women astronauts up there, along with a desirable selection of the worlds' best deep frozen semen donations.

Gosh! If you were planning for 2012 and beyond, whose junk would you want to preserve for potential posterity? Who would you nominate for the "Adam 2" award?

Imagine the squabbles in high places. Would the current President of every nation insist that "some of his" should be sent up? (Too much, I think!) Sportsmen? Musicians? Famous investors and business genuises?

Would the frozen vials be labelled? If so, the female astronauts might be able to pick and choose. Morally, should they have that right?

Should we "flag"the vials by age of donor? By race? By blood type?

There might be practical reasons why they should. Genetics. The probability of a healthy outcome for both mother and child, remembering that medical intervention might not be possible.

One of the women astronauts needs a crash course in mid-wifery.

At this point, it becomes irrelevant whether North Korea, or Bin Laden, or BP, or an unfortunate planetary alignment, or a UFO caused the Deepwater Horizon to blow up. I've written off the Earth and found a way to offend everyone of importance anywhere on our planet.

I probably should not write this book. What do you think?

Furry Aliens in Our Homes

Reading Dean Koontz's A BIG LITTLE LIFE, the story of his first Golden Retriever, Trixie, I was struck by her almost preternatural level of intelligence and intuition. As described by Koontz, at least, Trixie was smarter than her master. If even half of the incidents are reported accurately, Trixie's behavior was often nothing short of uncanny. In one episode, this normally friendly dog shunned an acquaintance the Koontzes then had no reason to distrust. The man eventually proved himself to be downright creepy. This incident shows just one example of the way dogs (like all animals to varying degrees) see the world differently from us. Their extraordinary sense of smell, orders of magnitude keener than ours, must give them a very different picture of the environment. They also, of course, see colors differently from us and hear different pitches of sound, not to mention their lack of forward-looking binocular vision. And in the absence of verbal speech, they depend much more on body language for communication than we do. (Maybe that's how Trixie sensed the visitor's "wrongness.")

Yet dogs, as pack animals, understand us fairly well. They make the effort to bridge the communication gap, because they see human housemates as pack members and alphas. Cats, unlike dogs and Homo sapiens, aren't gregarious. Their view of the universe must lie further from ours than that of our canine companions. A cat with human-level intelligence would probably turn out like the feline Kzinti, among whom a father feels proud when his sons grow mature enough to try to kill him—or the completely solitary aliens of Jacqueline's pseudonymous novel HERO. Devoid of any pack instinct, they interpret "heroism" as "suicidal insanity" (if I remember correctly). Although I must admit I had trouble accepting this premise to its fullest extent—they're mammals! Infants must go through a period of helplessness while they're cared for by the mother. If females had no instinct to risk their lives to protect their young, the species would die out. Surely these aliens could understand the human protective impulse toward companions as an analogy with a mother-child relationship, even if they couldn't comprehend it emotionally.

Cats and dogs, of course, aren't the only nonhuman species we live with. The world-views of pet fish, birds, reptiles, and insects (e.g., the crickets kept for good luck in Asian cultures) must be even more alien to ours. Think of Granny in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series projecting her mind to "borrow" the bodies of animals and how strange it feels for her to share the hive consciousness of bees. We don't have far to go to find alien intelligence.

"To Converse with Dumb Beasts," a story in Vivian Vande Velde's collection CURSES, INC., questions whether we'd really want to know what our pets are thinking. A kindhearted peasant receives the gift of understanding the languages of animals. When birds and squirrels in the woods prove disappointingly one-track-minded, he goes home, sure the conversation of his cat and dog will be more interesting. The dog barks excited variations on the theme, "Welcome, Master, am I cute? Do you love me?" The cat wants to know only, "Is he here to feed us?" and "Do you really think he's sick? If he dies, do you think we should eat him?" Snoopy labels Charlie Brown "the round-headed kid." In the Garfield comic strip, Garfield thinks of his owner Jon as "the man who cleans my litter box." Maybe we're better off clinging to some of our illusions about the aliens in our houses.

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Is there a taboo against romance in science fiction?

SFSignals-Mindmeld-

http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2010/06/mind-meld-sfr

just did a Question which they asked me (among others) to answer.

Here's the Question they emailed me.
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[INTRO] From Star Wars to Avatar, stories blending science fiction and romance have persisted for decades in books, films, fan fiction, and even videogames. However, despite such evidence, there are those who believe the two genres can’t, or shouldn’t, be combined.

Q: Is there a taboo against romance in science fiction? What does romance bring to the SF genre? What are some good examples of romance in SF that illustrate this?
--------

So I emailed back and asked how much room do I have? And can I cheat by including links?

(they had NO IDEA of the size of this topic!!!!)

They emailed back and answered 1,000 words max and yes I can use links.

So I cheated my way through the answer, but I wanted to share it with you here because last week, my blog post here was titled: "Why do "they" despise Romance?"

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/06/why-do-they-despise-romance.html

That post is based on a discussion on a twitter chat #scriptchat (I also attend and often blog about #scifichat ) about the Romantic Comedy film subgenre. That post answers this SFSignals question at length.

Here's my brief answer.

For at least twenty years, Romance writers have sought to inject elements of SF and Fantasy into Romance novels.

Lately, SF writers have begun to blend Romance motifs into novels.

Certain editors and mass market publishers have found a receptive readership for this kind of mixed-genre product, and others have just bounced right out of the market entirely.

This is a marketing puzzle, a writer's business model puzzle, and a reader's dilemma. Why do these two fields repel each other?

Solve that puzzle and make a fortune because Romance is huge and SF is shrinking.

My exploration of this puzzle has caught the imagination of Heather Massey at http://www.thegalaxyexpress.net/ and she has compiled a pair of posts about how hard it is to mix SF and Romance.

http://www.thegalaxyexpress.net/2010/05/brief-history-of-science-fiction.html
followed by
http://www.thegalaxyexpress.net/2010/05/why-sf-fandom-is-full-of-romance-haterz.html

There she focused on my 1978 Award winning novel, UNTO ZEOR, FOREVER -- published when there was an absolute, blast-barrier wall between SF and Romance, a taboo stronger than the taboo against words like hell and damn in books sold to libraries (almost all of my fiction, so it doesn't contain much English invective).

In 2010, I found my name mentioned (via feeddemon search) in an Australian blog and discovered a woman who had read UNTO ZEOR, FOREVER years ago, and only now, on re-reading realized that it is indeed SCIENCE FICTION ROMANCE and belongs with the modern books she likes. That's why UNTO stood out to the point where she had obsessed over it. At that time, it was almost unique "Alien Romance" - and now it's a genre.

http://lovecatsdownunder.blogspot.com/2010/05/rachel-needs-book-advice.html

So in 1978, SF readers were starting to accept a romance driven plot.

By 1985, Romance readers started to accept an SF driven plot.

The first novel in my DUSHAU TRILOGY, DUSHAU (now available on Kindle) won the first Romantic Times Award for Science Fiction and shocked the socks off my agent who was marketing me as an SF writer.

Today, if you read the comments on Heather Massey's two posts cited above, you'll see that readers of SFR and Paranormal Romance are devouring novels by a writer who admired some of my novels and founded a career "writing like that" -- SF with a solid romance driving the plot and story, Linnea Sinclair (I adore her books!).

Linnea likes my Vampire Romances, THOSE OF MY BLOOD and DREAMSPY, too.

And there's a generation of writers (and readers) now working to replicate the magic Linnea Sinclair has created who have never heard of me.

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?

Here is a more complete explanation and a long list of examples in the early years of how to blend these two genres
http://www.simegen.com/jl/intimateadventure.html

For more examples in current novels:
http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/ (my prof review column archive)

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/ (full bio biblio)
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com (current availability & free chaps)
Can be followed on twitter.com/jlichtenberg
Or facebook.com/jacqueline.lichtenberg
Or friendfeed.com as jlichtenberg

---------
SHORT BIO:

Jacqueline Lichtenberg, a life member of the Science Fiction Writers of America, ( http://www.sfwa.org ). She is creator of the Sime~Gen Universe with a vibrant fan following ( http://www.simegen.com/writers/simegen/ ), primary author of the Bantam paperback Star Trek Lives! which blew the lid on Star Trek fandom, founder of the Star Trek Welcommittee, creator of the genre term Intimate Adventure, winner of the Galaxy Award for Spirituality in Science Fiction with her second novel, and the first Romantic Times Awards for Best Science Fiction Novel with her later novel Dushau, now in Kindle. Her fiction has been in audio-dramatization on XM Satellite Radio. She has been the sf/f reviewer for a professional magazine since 1993. She teaches sf/f writing online while turning to her first love, screenwriting focused on selling to the feature film market.
Screenwriting: http://www.slantedconcept.com

--------------

Pull out the genitalia...

Torquemadaesque? Not in this instance (unless you are a beetle). Romantic? Not really, especially if we're talking about beetles. Scientific? Yes!

"Pull out the genitalia, and often everything becomes clear," says Maxi Polihronakis, a beetle taxonomist in an interview with Richard Conniff of Discover Magazine. He's talking about ways to identify new species.

Apparently, "genitalia evolve more quickly and in more bizarre ways than any other animal trait."

I knew that! I have an M.I.T. poster of a diagram showing strange looking animal penises, and I've almost certainly blogged about that before.  I've also mentioned the weed-whacker-like design of a hippopotamus penis that I was privileged to see thrashing the grass on hot day at the Detroit zoo a few years ago.

Weird-looking genitals are a bit of a problem for a credible science fiction romance author. Like rotting royal teeth (or anyone's really) in fairy tale castles such as Neuschwanstein or sewage in Regency Romance streets, or the probability of serious body odor inside knightly armor, our editors would rather we glossed over the less attractive findings from our research.

One can have too much of a good thing when it comes to realism in romance.

Nevertheless, we could give the peculiar goolies to the alien villain... as long as he is not a close relative of the hero. This could be quite useful. The heroine doesn't have to see them. The gentle reader only has to hear about them. Yet, the point is made that aliens have evolved differently.

Especially in the insect world, but also among fish, different species can look almost exactly alike (also useful for an alien romance plot), but they may or may not be able to interbreed. Sometimes the similar appearance is a coincidence (parallelism) and sometimes it is deliberate (convergence) to make the stealthy approach of a predator less alarming to the prey.

Here's news the science fiction romance writer probably cannot use. The male Anopheles mosquito can be identified by the pattern of bristles on his genitals.

This same Discover Magazine article is quite the world-building treasure trove. There is a species of fish that is all-female. There are no males. However, the females need to have sex "to trigger the parthenogenic development of unfertilized eggs" (although the alien males do not fertilize the eggs).

I have no doubt that this evolutionary trick has been adapted by some of our male-sex-slave colleagues for their sfr/erotica plots.

Personally, I am a bit skeptical about those fish. It seems more likely to me that the species has funny-looking males, and our scientists haven't recognized that the males of the species look different. But, that's just my take.... and it certainly spoils sport.

Elitist and Proud of It

A couple of weeks ago, stuck in a car at the crack of dawn with my husband controlling the radio, I involuntarily listened to a few minutes of Rush Limbaugh. He was belaboring the fact that so many of the current President's advisers and appointees graduated from Harvard. Limbaugh framed this phenomenon as, not exactly a conspiracy, but an example of blatant favoritism and "it's who you know, not what you know." He seems to view the circle of Harvard alumni around this administration (and I haven't done any investigation to find out whether he's exaggerating their prevalence) as evidence of contempt for non-Ivy-League universities and, in general, for anybody who doesn't belong to what he considers the "intellectual elite" of this country.

Now, I concede that if it's true that the administration overwhelmingly favors alumni of Harvard over those of any other institution, a bit more diversity might be welcome. The element of Limbaugh's rant that really made my teeth gnash was his mockery of what he presented as an upper-crust, Ivy League accent. By implication, the entire shtick seemed to denigrate intellectual claims in general. The attempt to make precise speech funny in itself implied that any pretension to a superior educational background is, per se, laughable.

I'm too young to remember Dwight Eisenhower's presidential campaigns against Adlai Stevenson; I was only eight years old during the second one. I've read, though, that a major reason for Stevenson's defeat was that the public saw him as an "egghead," too intellectual, as opposed to Ike's folksy persona. American culture seems to have a persistent anti-intellectual streak that I find quite disheartening.

My idol, C. S. Lewis, discussed this subject in "Screwtape Proposes a Toast," an appendix to his THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS back in the 1950s. The senior demon Screwtape advises up-and-coming tempters to encourage the human tendency to be suspicious of any claim of superiority. When taken to the desirable (from the diabolical viewpoint) extreme, people can be taught to consider any mere difference a claim to superiority, therefore to be suppressed. Mediocrity will reign, fueled by people's desire to be "just like folks" and fear of being accused of thinking they're "better than" anybody else. Screwtape tells the story of a tyrant in ancient times who visited a fellow ruler and asked for advice in governing his realm. The other tyrant walked into a field of grain and snipped off the tips of any stalks that towered over the others. The clear message, "Allow no preeminence among your subjects," reaches its logical culmination in the twentieth century, when a would-be dictator doesn't have to trim the taller stalks. They'll bite off their own tips in a desperate attempt to "be like stalks." And Lewis wrote this in England over fifty years ago!

A chilling short story whose author and title I can't remember (I think it was called "The Examination" or something very similar) takes place in a future society where all adolescents have to take the government's exam at a certain age. We get indications that the teenage boy protagonist's parents are rather dull, ignorant, and incurious, but we don't make the larger connection until after his examination ends—and the authorities send condolences to his parents. He has been euthanized because his test score was too high. (If this had been a full-length novel, I'd hope the author would have explained who runs the country after all high-IQ citizens are killed off. But it's still chilling.)

Nowadays, many of our media spokespersons treat "elite" as a dirty word. Especially the "intellectual elite," supposedly out of touch with the needs and aspirations of ordinary people. (As if a certain level of education disqualifies one from belonging to the people.) During the last presidential election, a Baltimore SUN columnist lamented the common politicians' ploy of trying to demonstrate that they're just like the rest of us, "just folks," not part of that dreaded elite. The columnist said she didn't want people just like her in charge of the country. She wanted somebody a lot smarter. I'll drink to that!

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Why Do "They" Despise Romance?

I've been blogging here about how we can change the public perception into a respect for Romance in general, and the cross-genre Romance forms in particular.

In exploring that issue, we've examined the whole publishing field and much of the screenwriting world, the writer's business model, and even the esoteric roots of human emotion.  But we still haven't solved the problem.

On a #scriptchat focused on the difference between plot and story and how you as a writer can use that difference in screenwriting, there was a quick side-exchange among writers regarding why they are not enchanted with the "romcom" or Romantic Comedy in film.

Today, you can get Romance onto the Big Screen, but usually only in comedy form.  Once upon a time, the Adventure-Romance was popular (AFRICAN QUEEN and various WWII flicks, even ROMANCING THE STONE).

Once upon a time, you could get SF onto TV only in comedy form (MY FAVORITE MARTIAN, LOST IN SPACE).  Then came STAR TREK and changed all that, and then changed what kind of SF you could get onto the Big Screen and even get Oscar attention.

We're looking for the key to how to achieve that kind of shift in audience size for a serious Romance, dramatic, and preferably mixed-genre Romance.

As I pointed out many times,TV and Big Screen are big budget and therefore involve the whole business model of the fiction delivery system -- how much it costs to make vs. how much you can reap from the audience which depends entirely on audience size.

Today Romance is stuck in a very thick-walled ghetto of small-audience-size.  It's a very big audience in the printed-book market, and huge in the e-book market, but those markets are tiny compared to TV or Film markets.

To grab those larger markets we have to look closely at what elements in Romance are turning off folks we know would love this stuff if only they didn't bounce out of it because of some surface detail that annoys or repels a wide variety of people.

Love is universal.  Romance is the state of mind in which love first becomes possible -- First Love is a kind of loss of virginity, a baptism of fire. Romance is fun - love is infinitely rewarding, the very purpose of life. How could any living being refuse exposure to that?

The truth is, I don't know.  I've been writing SF-Romance since the beginning.  Recently, a woman who had read my first award winner, UNTO ZEOR, FOREVER when it came out and just recently read it again discovered that it is (and always has been) Science Fiction Romance -- but at that time, there was no such genre. Now she's looking for more books like that. 

Here's her blog post about it.
http://lovecatsdownunder.blogspot.com/2010/05/rachel-needs-book-advice.html 

See what you can recommend to her.

So I've been thinking about this genre for a long time.  I discussed why we love romance here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/11/why-we-love-romance.html

That short post is about how the differences between mundane Romance genre and SFR or PNR mixed genre actually open the genre to vast possibilities and a truly vast audience. 

But the marketing hasn't developed the reach the material merits.

So I continue to puzzle over it.  That's why this side-exchange about romcom on #scriptchat on twitter caught my attention.

SO WHAT IS #SCRIPTCHAT?

Here in the words of one of those who devised this weekly meeting on twitter, is a description of it #scriptchat.

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Scriptchat was created for the purpose of bringing new and seasoned screenwriters together to learn and grow. We have two chats every Sunday. Mina Zaher (@DreamsGrafter) leads the European chat at 8pm GMT, and Jeanne Veillette Bowerman (@jeannevb) moderates the USA chat at 8pm EST. The same topic is discussed at each chat, which provides an invaluable global network of ideas and philosophies on writing. Just since last October, we have gathered close to 400 screenwriters in our little circle of world domination.

The scriptchat "treefort" consists of Jeanne, Mina, Zac Sanford (@zacsanford), Jamie Livingston (@yeah_write) and Kim Garland (@KageyNYC). The behind-the-scenes details are almost as fun as the chat itself. The team relies greatly on each other to keep topics fresh and the ideas flowing as fast as the tequila. Speaking of, there's only one scriptchat rule: Leave your ego behind and bring your tequila.

Our blog is full of incredible resources for all levels of screenwriters: www.scriptchat.com

--------

You can read this whole #scriptchat posted as a web page here (along with links to all kinds of writer's resources.)

http://scriptchat.blogspot.com/2010/05/story-vs-plot-may-23-2010.html

As you may remember, I have done a long post on "plot vs. story" on this blog.  You can find my take on the subject here:

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

That post is about what part of a composition is plot and what part is story -- and how theme interacts with those parts -- and how to tell the difference.  

So while I was watching these excellent writers (about I think 400 people follow #scriptchat ) explain plot and story in 140 characters or less, I saw the following exchange flow by me.

---------------
Here's how to read this layout.

The top line is the twitter handle of the person posting, then it gives the time, date and the software used to post the comment.  The items with # in front are called hashtags - you use them in a search command to sort all the comments on the thread out of the general stream of tweets.  You can then see comments by people you do not follow, and they can see your comments in the hashtagged sort. Where @ precedes a word, that word is the twitter handle of someone who is being answered.  A comment without an @ in it is an original comment others may answer.  

jeannevb
12:55pm, May 23 from TweetChat the whole story vs plot concept I think is why I'm not a huge rom com fan. They're all so predictable #scriptchat

Bang2write
12:57pm, May 23 from web @jeannevb that's what I used to think... But the MANY variations of the same thing in the Rom Com - that's what's masterful. #scriptchat

DreamsGrafter
12:57pm, May 23 from web @jeannevb re rom com, that's a genre issue hon. Rom coms is one of the most prescriptive genres. #scriptchat

ambigfoot
12:59pm, May 23 from mobile web The whole mushy sentimentalized sick inducing slushiness is why I ain't a fan of the romcom @jeannevb oh and fucking hugh grant #scriptchat

jeannevb
1:01pm, May 23 from TweetDeck @ambigfoot mushy predictability makes me barf ;) #scriptchat

DREAMSGRAFTER clarified thusly in a series of tweets to me (@jlichtenberg) the following day:

@JLichtenberg my point was tht rom coms are most prescriptive of genres. room for variations in other genres but >>> (@jeannevb @ambigfoot)

@JLichtenberg w/ rom coms conventions r restricted boy meets girl etc. So it's difficult to find brand new storylines (@jeannevb @ambigfoot)

@JLichtenberg In a way the genre defines the storylines unlike horror/thriller for example. (@jeannevb @ambigfoot)

@JLichtenberg That's just my perception & looking @ history of rom com, there seems to be trends to reflect society (@jeannevb @ambigfoot).

@JLichtenberg There are exceptions such as Sleepless In Seattle and You've Got Mail but >>> (@jeannevb @ambigfoot)

@JLichtenberg How many other ways can you keep boy and girl apart? (@jeannevb @ambigfoot)

@JLichtenberg Whereas thriller/horror are about emotions: thrill/fear. More scope for storylines there. (@jeannevb @ambigfoot)

@JLichtenberg Hope that helps. We shld definitely discuss genres in #scriptchat. So important re selling script. (@jeannevb @ambigfoot)

DreamsGrafter
10:15am, May 24 from Web@Jonathan_Peace  @JLichtenberg Will work out w/ #scriptchat #treefort when we can do genre. (@jeannevb @zacsanford @KageyNYC @yeah_write)

------------

So eventually we'll probably have a #scriptchat where the subject is genres.  That should be interesting.

Go back to Bang2Write's comment above - and note that a mind was changed by studying the romcom genre.

Now remember my two posts on THE HURT LOCKER, about how the Indie Film industry unleashed by tech advances in recording devices and audience building services like YouTube is changing the face of film making.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/05/hurt-locker-indie-films-financing-tv.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/05/hurt-locker-indie-films-financing-tv_18.html

The Indies, with smaller audiences and lower budgets, are able to explore and invent genres, gather and build audiences - and today, even win major awards.  THE HURT LOCKER is very tightly focused war-drama, the story of the effect of war on one man's psyche.

Remember Blake Snyder's identification of classic film "genres" he defined in SAVE THE CAT GOES TO THE MOVIES - none of them identical to publishing genres.

http://www.blakesnyder.com/tools/ -- to find the list of genres and films that are examples of those genres get the pdf file at the top of the /tools/ page.  A glance through it will tell you all you need to know for the moment, but you really need Snyder's books if you want to learn to write blockbuster film scripts.

One thing you learn from scrutinizing that list of films divided into genres -- genre is not LIMITING, but LIBERATING

The beatsheet formula the genre formula does not limit a writer's ability to tell a story.

When you have a story in your mind that you want to tell, you want others to have as much fun with it as you are having.

Like a delicious buffet dazzles the eye with food-art and makes the mouth water, the genre formula art dazzles the emotions and raises the appetite for a repeat of a prior enjoyment, but all made new again.

Hollywood wants "the same but different" for that reason.

No two buffet displays with ice scuptures are alike, but if you've enjoyed previous buffets, the mere sight will set your stomach rumbling.

So the writer looks at the story inside the writer's mind and looks at the genres being enjoyed currently, and figures out which genre her story actually belongs to.

You don't change the story to fit the genre, you figure out what genre it is in.

They say, "write what you know" -- and this is how to apply that maxim.  Write the genre you read.

Of course, the problems then arise when the story in your head does not fit an extant genre - and you have to be one of the inventors or popularizers of that genre.

The Romance genre (along with many others) has reached a point in development where it is spinning off new sub-genres.

The cinematic RomCom, however, appears to the writers in #scriptchat to have stagnated.

The cinematic RomCom needs SFR and PNR to liberate the underlying message.

Now look at the tweet from @ambigfoot

ambigfoot
12:59pm, May 23 from mobile web The whole mushy sentimentalized sick inducing slushiness is why I ain't a fan of the romcom @jeannevb oh and fucking hugh grant #scriptchat

That reaction is very widespread.

So we have two objections to the cinematic romcom "formula"

1. "sick slushiness"
2. Limited # of ways to keep boy and girl apart

Both of those could apply equally well to most general Romance genre print fiction today.

Indie producers with budgets under one million dollars are still looking for RomCom scripts.  A HURT LOCKER success is possible with a Romance.

But to achieve that, the two major objections "slushiness" and "cliche plot" have to be solved in a very low budget way.

One innovative line of thinking may lead one of you to solve this problem and sell such a screenplay.

The basic theme of "Romance" produces both the slushiness and plot-cliche problem.

That theme is Love Conquers All

You can't change that theme and still have a Romance genre Work.

But the theme is the source of the problem.

"Slushiness" comes from Love not having a very hard time conquering All -- the two get together, and they just fall all over each other despite themselves, and then talk about their feelings as if nothing else in the world matters, their inattentiveness generating no consequences of note.

"Plot Cliche" comes from the genre requirement that the PLOT is the sequence of events leading Boy to Girl, and thus the only possible main conflict in a Romance is "Love vs. X" where X is whatever is keeping them apart.

So the THEME is what the major portion of the potential audience objects to, but you can't change it and still have a Romance.

So what do you do?  How can you possibly popularize Romance to Big Screen proportion audiences?

Marion Zimmer Bradley taught me the solution.

The solution is to challenge the theme, doubt the thematic statement.

Most themes that work for fiction are, for most reader/viewers, unconscious assumptions about life.  They are unexamined, taken for granted, "truths" about normal reality.

GREAT FICTION EXAMINES THE UNCONSCIOUS ASSUMPTIONS OF THE AUDIENCE

The Comedy forms have always been the thin edge of the wedge into commercialization of one of those challenges to the unconscious assumptions of a culture. The romcom, stradling the line between romance and comedy has powerful dramatic potential.

Marion Zimmer Bradley taught me (most especially while I was writing UNTO ZEOR, FOREVER) to use the plot, the characters, the story, and the worldbuilding (most especially the worldbuilding) to DISPROVE THE THEME and thus examine those unconscious assumptions of my readership -- the adolescent male SF reader the publishers market my adult-female fiction to.

Illustrate, she taught me - show don't tell - the opposite of what you are trying to say. 

In this case, "LOVE CONQUERS ALL" becomes "LOVE CAN NOT CONQUER ALL." That would knock it out of the genre, so keep working.

Gene Roddenberry taught me a technique that can work for TV and film too.

Most novels state the theme as a statement, as illustrated above. But stated themes lead to cliche plots and slushy characters, and they alienate the audience segment that holds the opposite unconscious assumption, as well as the segment that disagrees consciously.

So instead of merely stating the theme, Gene Roddenberry taught that you must formulate the theme as a QUESTION, and DO NOT ANSWER THAT QUESTION.  Force the viewer to wrestle with that question, but don't tell the answer. Show the question, don't tell the answer.

All audience segments - those that agree, those that disagree, those that hold unconscious assumptions, and the undecided, will feel that their viewpoint is represented fairly.

All segments will be engaged by the question.

And here we come to what @DreamsGrafter said:

@JLichtenberg Whereas thriller/horror are about emotions: thrill/fear. More scope for storylines there. (@jeannevb @ambigfoot)

Think about that.

The signature of the horror/thriller is the hairraising QUESTION raised and never totally answered about the nature of reality and the nature of Evil, all expressed in the worldbuilding.

@DreamsGrafter was simply saying that RomCom films DO NOT ASK QUESTIONS ABOUT THE THEME.

And that's true.  In Romance genre, the theme is sacrosanct.

And that's dramatically unsatisfying, and very limiting to the writer.

Interesting drama is generated by slaying the sacred cows.

Classic Literature always bears the hallmark of being "disturbing" on some level.  A good book, a memorable book, a quotable film, will always hang on or turn on a very disturbing image, motif, character, fate.

The antidote to "slushy" is poetic-justice, very disturbing poetic justice.

The antidote to "cliche plot" is the Thematic Question.

The key to all that is worldbuilding, which I've noted in many posts is the weakest skill in the Romance Writer's toolchest.

That weakness shows up in Romance writers only when they venture into SFR or PNR where they must build a world from scratch rather than research a historical period.

"Reality" comes pre-formulated with all the pieces already illustrating (fairly screaming) LOVE CONQUERS ALL -- because it does.  Gather enough historical datapoints and you can't help but see how Intimate Relationships (and hatreds) drive historical events.

Love causes the most collosal failures as well as the most spectacular successes.  That's reality.

But when you must build a world from scratch, it's much harder to get the bits and pieces you create in your imagination to fall together into a pattern that readers/viewers will recognize as "real" while it obviously isn't.

So the temptation is to borrow this bit from here and that bit from somewhere else, and the result is that the pattern does not come clear to the reader/viewer.

Interesting and dramatically useful background bits don't always go together to make a pattern, or an artistic whole, just because they're interesting.

We must find, or train, a Romance writing circle who can worldbuild with a proficiency that allows them to pose the LOVE CONQUERS ALL theme as the greatest challenging question, the most disturbing question, a question which is not articulated anywhere in the characters, story or plot but glares at the reader/viewer from the background.

That's essentially what I did in UNTO ZEOR, FOREVER - many conflicting loves, and a price to pay for the choice, but the question is entirely within the worldbuilding.  

"After you've lost so much, are you really so very sure that love has any value in life?"

Ask some of those questions yourself, the unthinkable questions, the insufferable questions, the not-quite-sane questions.

Find the right question to disturb the quiet certainty of that majority audience out there, and you may be on the way to formulating a High Concept film that is actually a Romance.

@DreamsGrafter read a draft of this post and elaborated on how the cinematic romcom has developed over decades in terms of asking those hard questions and provided this:

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- Re rom coms, this was a genre that pose thematic questions and also questioned the society around us. Looking back in history the rom coms of the 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's were defined by their decade and women's role in society. You just have to look at the difference between Katherine Hepburn and Doris Day ... very different on the surface but they both aggressively satisfied their sexual roles.

Actually, even in the 80's questions were being asked. But since the 90's and especially in this millenium, we don't have any questions. That might be more to do with women's role in society. On the surface, we don't have to fight as hard as women from previous decades. And that's why the slacker rom coms such as Knocked Up come in. Fact is we have stopped asking questions but so has music and art: apparently, the students coming out of art colleges don't aren't driven to ask questions such as Hirst or Emin.

- On a creative level, I've tried writing rom coms but they always turn out into horror. I think that's because I like to explore the darker side of human nature. But I think that's just a personal thing.

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THE HURT LOCKER move over, here comes something bigger and more powerful than war and bomb-squads. 

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Maybe you'll find your Thematic Question here.

Harlequinn has a new website devoted to Paranormal Romance - Once Bitten, Twice as Hungry

http://www.twiceashungry.com/paranormal/
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Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com -- current
http://www.simegen.com/jl/ full bio-biblio

WordShaping: Why I Write Fantasy - Rowena Cherry

WordShaping: Why I Write Fantasy - Rowena Cherry

Welcome Rowena Cherry, whose heroes are larger than life in every way.

Amber: Why do you write fantasy?

Rowena: I write Fantasy because... I want my heroes to be larger than life in every way. The "god-Princes of Tigron" are over seven feet tall, have seven shark-like senses and genie-like powers, all are physically attractive and highly sexed, they're wealthy and powerful and intelligent and courageous and supremely competent... and royal. And faithful.

You cannot find a series-worth of heroes in any other genre (other than Fantasy) without seriously messing with real History and/or Geography, or at the least, grafting a branch that does not belong onto British Lord's family tree. Therefore, I set my self-styled, high-tech "gods" in outer space.


A few examples of things I've researched include: whether or not a woman can really shave her legs with a "razor" shell (she cannot, and I had hairy scabs on my legs to prove it); what forms have to be filled out in Britain before a grave can be exhumed and the remains exported (if a loved one is buried on Church grounds, exhumation is much less likely to be permitted); under what circumstances a Magnum (gun) might jam; the top five ways that able-bodied people unintentionally offend people who are confined to wheelchairs; and the physics and chemistry that would have to be in place for a sky to turn green.

Strictly speaking, my novels are all classified by the publisher as "futuristic romance" but readers have termed them everything from fantasy to paranormal to sfr (science fiction romance). The trouble with "futuristic" is that many readers expect futuristics to be set "in the future", but romances fall into the "futuristic" category if space travel --involving spacecraft-- and/or more technologically advanced alien societies are central to the story.

Just because I claim to write Fantasy does not mean that I make everything up. I believe there is a limit to how far a reader should have to suspend disbelief. It seems only polite and responsible to give my readers a reason to trust me, therefore, if something can be researched, then I research it.

Here's a dilemma for a futuristic series writer. What happens if one book in a "futuristic" series has no scenes featuring advanced technology and spacecraft? It never occurred to me that this could be perceived as an outrage by review-writing readers until I read a chance remark on a GoodReads.com discussion.

If I had known, I should still have written Insufficient Mating Material pretty much the way it is. Would I have taken a critical scene and relocated it on a spaceship? I honestly don't know. If my editor had requested it, perhaps so. I can be flexible. At the eleventh hour, when I saw the cover art for Insufficient Mating Material, I decided that I had to take apart one third of the novel and re-work it because I believe passionately that what is on the cover should be an illustration of a scene in the book.

There was no "From Here To Eternity" scene in the original Insufficient Mating Material, but it was obvious after seeing the cover that there had to be one. An important chess-playing scene had to be removed (the word count was already set), a beach had to be cleared of dead bodies (LOL!!!), and the ending had to change... because the original ending would have been an anti-climax after the new sex in the surf scene. It follows that if the cover artist had illustrated a wonderfully sinister, looming spaceship reminiscent of Independence Day, I should have revised the text to go with it.

Amber: Why do readers love fantasy?

Rowena: I can only answer for myself. I love to read. (Full stop!) I love Fantasy, but I also love Mystery, Suspense, Historicals, History, Anthologies, Cat books, Science Fiction... As far as I am concerned, genre labels are a bit of a nuisance.

There are many aspects of Fantasy that I appreciate very much, particularly dragons and magic (which I don't have), psychic powers (which I do have), and the potential for unusual solutions to universal problems.

What I do not appreciate in Fantasy or any other genre is when the author stretches my credulity too far, or breaks the rules they have established for their own world.

Amber: Would you write fantasy even if no one read it?

Rowena: Hah! Yes, I would, but I'd package and market it as something else.

Rowena Cherry has played chess with a Grand Master and former President of the World Chess Federation (hence the chess-pun titles of her alien romances).

She has spent folly filled summers in a Spanish castle; dined on a sheikh's yacht with royalty; been serenaded (on a birthday) by a rockstar and an English nobleman; ridden in a pace car at the 1993 Indy 500; received the gold level of the Duke of Edinburgh's Award; and generally lived on the edge of the sort of life that inspires her romances about high-living alien gods.

Rowena's Mission Statement - My goal as a Romance author is to give good value. I expect to provide my readers with six to eight hours of amusement, a couple of really good laughs, a romantic frisson or two from the sensual scenes, a thoroughly satisfying HEA, and something to think –or talk-- about when the book is finished.

Heroines get more hero than they bargain for....

Rowena's Books

The "god-Princes of Tigron" series (also dubbed "The Mating Books") was basically "three royal weddings and a murder". In the first book, a bad-boy Prince abducted the mate of his dreams who happened to be from the black sheep branch of his royal family. Prince Tarrant-Arragon was so pleased with his stolen bride, and with married life, that he decided to trick or force his two greatest enemies into politically disastrous sexual liaisons with liability wives… in other words, to his own controversial sisters.

1. Forced Mate

Buy Forced Mate direct from Dorchester

2. Mating Net (a prequel, only available as an e-book) 

Buy Mating Net direct from New Concepts Publishing

3. Insufficient Mating Material

 Buy Insufficient Mating Material direct from Dorchester

4. Knight's Fork

Buy Knight's Fork direct from Dorchester
(When you buy directly from the publisher, the author receives a bigger royalty check)

Read Sample Chapters 

atEBook 2-for-1 special (Forced Mate + Mating Net)

Watchmen "The Incredibles Meet The Untouchables On Mars"

"Steampunk!" I thought when I saw "Nixon's Third Term" flash across the screen as I was watching "Watchmen" last night. I was expecting The Incredibles Meet The Untouchables.

"Whoa!!!"  was my reaction when I saw an actor who gave a whole new slant to the popular term for a computer, Big Blue. My husband commented that only because the guy was blue was so much full frontal male nudity allowed on television. If the character had been any other color, we would not have seen anything like it. Whoa, of course, is not a sub-genre of science fiction. Maybe it should be?

"Cool! Fantasy," was my reaction to Adrian's superhero costume. The guy who dressed up like a man-owl was certainly no Batman, and the superheroine costume was ludicrous. I find it hard to suspend disbelief when the heroine has long hair whipping around her head as she fights. (Which she did, often, in a series of superb Action sequences.) At least let her tie it up in a Lisa Shearin style, goblin battle braid. Even then, I am distracted by worry that a villain could grab the hair and use it against her. Moreover, unless she uses flame retardant hair care products, long tresses should be a liability when rescuing people from towering infernos. As for kicking butt in really high heels, okay. Be aware, though, that stiletto heels ought to get stuck in some villain's chest from time to time.

So much for wardrobe. No malfunctions.

Science Fiction! There was teleportation, not only of truly massive bits of equipment, but also of people. It was a nice gesture to sci-fi conventions that the heroine got queasy and threw up whenever Big Blue teleported her somewhere. There should always be some downside to magic or implausible technology.

With hindsight, it is a pity one of the Star Trek...  Oh well. If James T Kirk had blown chunks every time Scotty beamed him up, it probably wouldn't have been called "beaming", and it would be a cliché by now.

There was the superhero flying vehicle, reminiscent of Thunderbird Two, really, but on a smaller scale and garaged in a basement that gave onto an abandoned subway station which ran into a sewer outlet under some large body of water. Convenient, that. It could have been Fantasy or Science Fiction. A couple of odd things about it were that the general public never seemed particularly surprised to see it, and the members of the city's Finest never did get used to the idea that ordinary bullets were ineffective against it.

Science Fiction was the genre when the Blue Guy teleported himself to Mars and floated off the ground in a rather rude lotus position with his back to us, and even more so when he teleported the girl there and she had no trouble breathing or flying around on a very cool looking, red-gold glass, spiky, clock-like contraption.

It wasn't clear to me what she could eat, or drink, or do anything else that we all have to do from time to time but she was there to plead for life on Earth, but the effects were enjoyable and reminded me of Star Gate, and also of the clock theme in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

I should mention that there is a lot of really nasty, graphic, gratuitous, stomach-turning, Horrific violence in this movie, and no one really looks good (apart from Adrian in his costume, and his horned cat). On a scale of 1 - 10 for enjoyment, I gave it a 1. 1 being bad. However, I am still thinking about it today, and perhaps "enjoyment" isn't everything. Fascinating and deeply disturbing moral questions were raised.

Machiavellians should love it!

Did I give a nod to the Erotica? Apart from Big Blue's limp equipment, there was at least one lengthy sex scenes at a supremely inappropriate juncture in the action. There was also Murder, Mystery, Horror, Action, Tragedy...

So to my point. Here is a movie that appears to straddle a great many genres with a fair degree of comfort. I'm sure there are others that cannot be neatly boxed as this genre or that. That might be a good thing for those of us who write speculative fiction or alien romances.

As for my rating, I still give it a 1. I like happy endings, and I like my superheroes to be heroic.

Creation of Life?

You've probably seen news items about the synthetic DNA breakthrough that was announced last week. Here's one article:

Artificial Life

The short-term practical application of these artificial life forms, a development at least four years in the future according to the report I read in the local paper, may result in designer microorganisms bred to eat pollutants and clean up oil spills. (We could use a population of them right now.) We're still a long way from the android heroine of Heinlein's FRIDAY.

If our science could design and breed "artificial" humanoids from synthetic DNA, would they be recognized as people? Or would law and custom classify them as tools or pets? Until nearly the end of Heinlein's novel, Friday buys into her society's labeling of her as a sort of organic robot. Because her "mother was a test tube" and her "father was a knife" and she was brought up in a government creche, then trained for her highly specialized function as an assassin, she considers herself not truly human. Finally, another character makes it clear to her that she's undeniably human, because she has entirely human DNA.

A short story in the decades-old anthology HUMAN AND OTHER BEINGS features a female android protagonist with an origin and upbringing similar to Friday's, although in this story androids have been more or less assimilated into the general population, not reserved for specialized jobs as in Friday's world. A newlywed husband sues his wife for annulment because she concealed her android nature until after their marriage, thereby implicitly lying about her infertility. Androids in this society are universally believed to be sterile. Investigation demonstrates that this belief is mistaken, that in isolated cases android women have conceived and given birth. Thus, their ability to reproduce destroys the last vestige of insistence that artificial people aren't truly human. A clone or a person grown from an embryo produced by recombined DNA would be no less human and "natural" than a normally conceived identical twin (for a clone, of course, is basically an identical twin who's younger than his or her original "sibling").

The media's bedazzled references to the DNA breakthrough as "creation of life" are, of course, misguided. The synthetic DNA was modeled after "blueprints" occurring in nature. The artificially created nuclear material was implanted inside existing bacteria. And even if the bacteria themselves later come to be constructed completely from chemicals in a lab, life will not have been "created." In the strict sense of the word, creation means conjuring something from nothingness. As religious authorities responding to this milestone have rightly pointed out, finite human beings can't create anything *ex nihilo.* In our own field, writing, the author of even the most astonishingly "original" work of fiction draws upon elements already existing in the outside world and in the art of his or her predecessors. So the invention of synthetic life poses no *necessary* ethical or theological threat to the established order. On an abstract level, it's an extension of what human beings and their immediate evolutionary forebears have been doing ever since the making of the first tool.

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt