The Roots of Spec-Fic Genres

The Summer 2011 issue of WEIRD TALES includes an essay on Weird Cinema, titled "Through the Lens Darkly." A large percentage of the article, however, discusses the theory of the "weird" in general and the conditions that stimulated the rise of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. The author, Robert W. Kowal, quotes Vivian Sobchack that "all three [genres] 'realize' the imagination," i.e., they make the products of imagination real. Sobchack is further quoted as saying, "Horror is the appalling idea given sudden flesh; science fiction is the improbable made possible within the confines of a technological age; and fantasy adventure and romance is the appealing and the impossible personal wish concretely and objectively fulfilled." Each one has roots in mythology and folklore, but the genres as they achieved their separate identities in the nineteenth century, according to Kowal, possessed the "unifying characteristic of the 'weird'." He further says the "weird" could not have existed before this period because that concept "is predicated on a common and corroborated understanding of reality."

I don't fully buy the implication that fantasy literature equals wish fulfillment. Surely there is plenty of fiction legitimately defined as fantasy that portrays grim, dystopian, or even frightening imaginary worlds without slipping over into horror. The rest of Kowal's thesis, however, strikes me as fascinatingly plausible. He maintains that the "weird" dimension of speculative fiction couldn't have developed before the rise of science in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries established "a uniform reference of reality." Imaginative fiction flourishes at the boundary between consensus reality and the impossible phenomena excluded by it.

I'm not sure I accept his premise that through most of human history, "One could sincerely believe almost anything." Even though a formal system of natural laws wasn't constructed before the emergence of science as we know it, that doesn't mean people had no notion of how the natural world customarily behaved. The very idea of a miracle implies that NOT "almost anything" can normally happen. As C. S. Lewis points out, St. Joseph didn't know about sperm cells and ova, but he certainly knew women didn't become pregnant without sexual intercourse and intended to repudiate Mary accordingly. A man walking on water wouldn't impress any spectator who didn't know human bodies usually sink when stepping onto the surface of a lake.

Aside from that reservation, though, I think Kowal has an excellent point. Strangeness can't exist without a concept of the normal to measure it against. Moreover, he seems to me right on the mark when he discusses what literary theorists would call the "liminal" (threshold) quality of the weird: The "familiar tropes" of the weird tale typically "reside in a limbo state between the real and the unreal," e.g. the living dead, such as zombies, ghosts, and vampires, or beast-human hybrids, such as werewolves. He also remarks that Robbie the Robot has dated in a way the horrifying images in NOSFERATU haven't. That observation agrees with my memory of numerous TWILIGHT ZONE episodes. The futuristic SF programs in the series suffer from the "technology marches on" effect. Episodes such as the vignette of a woman waking up from a nightmare only to find she's still asleep—over and over and over—remain permanently disturbing.

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Source of the Expository Lump Part 2

 Last week we discussed two urban fantasy PNR writers, Amber Benson and Kathryn Leigh Scott, both from the acting profession, and both possessing a writing "voice" that is enchanting at least to me.

We'll have to discuss "voice" in detail at some point, but it is a quality composed of the mastery-levels of a plethora of skills we are exploring in these Tuesday posts on aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com.  Learning them one at a time, then practicing them by orchestrating all the skills, adding one at a time with each practice piece, will develop your unique "Voice."

Here's a post from Blake Snyder's blog from a screenwriter, Anne Lower, who is "making it" using the Beat Sheet Snyder outlined, but who has found her "voice" over and above those craft skills.

http://www.blakesnyder.com/2011/07/01/voice-%E2%80%93-a-writer%E2%80%99s-journey/ 

the % symbols in that link arise because of the dashes used in the title.  Don't use dashes in URLs or blog titles!

The link is http://www.blakesnyder.com/2011/07/01/voice---a-writer's-journey/ 

You will note that this writer mentions both a long journey of skills acquisition, and a period of working hard without her "voice."  Part of the process of finding your Voice is working without your own voice, imitating others' voices. 

But you can't stop there.  You must then re-engage your own personal voice.

Those who've read my posts on Tarot for writers may remember the 5 of Pentacles, the Dark Night Of The Soul concept. 

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2007/11/5-of-pentacles.html

That's the process Anne Lower describes in her post on Voice. 

"Voice" is a great analog for this combination skills-set because a singer must "train" the "voice" to be strong.  Voice is made up of muscles, vocal cords, that must be exercised to become strong enough to produce the exacting tones with enough volume to fill an opera hall.

Likewise a writer must practice exercises that aren't actually stories in order to strengthen that part of the mind that synthesizes "Voice."  It has to do with combining all the components of a story just like a musical chord, each note in the right volume relative to the other notes in the chord, the chord then juxtaposed to other chords in the right duration and relative loudness to create a composition that is pleasing. 

Eliminating the expository lump is one of those practice exercises like a pianist's scales that is no fun to do and not any fun at all to watch someone else do -- the result is not immediately entertaining either.

So why is it that beginning writers, and even those currently being published in Mass Market produce a "novel" that is laced with expository lumps?  What happens inside that writer's mind as they are worldbuilding and story-plotting?

An Expository Lump is a series of facts about the world in which the story occurs or about the characters.  It is what the writer knows that seems interesting and exciting to the writer, and the writer desperately wants the reader to understand it all BEFORE reading the story.  The writer feels "you need to know this in order to understand what happens next and get a kick out of the event."

Very often with beginning writers, those facts in the Lump are the real reason the writer wants to write the story, or wants you to read and understand it emotionally. 

Now let's switch to a Culinary Analogy -- salad.

What's a Chef's Salad?  It's a special concoction of ingredients which blend nicely as a meal in itself or prelude to a meal.

Think of a reader who wants desperately to write her own story for all to enjoy.  Now she's going to make a story of her very own.  Making a novel is just like making a salad for a dinner party. 

She has been to the store (i.e. read a lot of books, done some hard living) and now she arrives home with a couple of grocery bags filled to the brim with lovely ingredients for her salad. 

She has a head of lettuce (a world she's built), gorgeous colored green, yellow, orange, red bell peppers (characters with seeds inside), a fabulous ripe Tomato (villain?) and a great Cucumber (hero?),  lovely red onions, green onions, and carefully chosen virgin olive oil, apple cider vinegar, fresh basil and other fresh herbs etc with which to make the dressing (theme) that will bring the whole composition together. 

She's planning a dinner party (i.e. writing a book, maybe a series, for others to enjoy).  Oh, it's going to be wonderful and garner her great praise and admiration because she's chosen her ingredients with such knowledge and careful research.

With great pride and a broad smile, she plonks the two grocery bags on the linen draped table among the sparkling wine glasses, cloth napkins, polished sterling silver flatware, exquisite china (the publisher is the table setting, the presentation of the work of art, and those who come to dine are the readers.)

And there the two brown grocery bags sit in the middle of this exquisite setting (the publisher provides top drawer artwork for the cover, perfect printing, vast publicity budget), and the dinner guests arrive.

The dinner guests are all dressed up formally, hungry in anticipation of a great meal.  They swirl into the dining room and stop dead in their tracks staring at the brown grocery bags amidst the sparkling table setting.

Where did those grocery bags come from?

They came from the same place that many Great Writers have found their material -- Life.

But they aren't a meal.  They aren't a salad.  They aren't what the hungry people came for.

The new writer looks at her bags of magnificent ingredients and at the dinner guests and has no clue WHY they are dismayed and gathering their coats to leave.

Her writing is as good as anybody else's!  She has done all her research and globe-trotting for experience.  She's garnered the wisdom of the ages and the very best -- in fact better than most writers' -- ingredients.

Why don't they want to read her story, to eat her meal? 

This is the plight of many self-publishing writers.  They have truly great stuff, in fact better than most of what the big publishers spew out, fare not unlike what you might find at a typical McDonald's. 

But new writers have no clue why they can't gather an audience, why their dinner guests leave talking about McDonald's and settle on Chinese.

What is it they teach in Culinary school that makes the difference between a chef, a cook, or a great shopper?

They teach sharpening knives, good chopping blocks, fine-chopping -- these onions very fine, those in rings.  They teach the use of blenders to make dressing out of ingredients, how much of this, how little of that.  They teach the patience to put in the hard work in the hot kitchen.  They make you apprentice and clean up other people's messes, scrub vegetables for others to chop with finesse.  They make your hands strong, your ability to stand long hours and  heave heavy things reliable, and gradually you absorb the art of combining ingredients. 

Fresh ground pepper lightly sprinkled on top makes the dinner guests cling to the table.  A box of peppercorns does not, no matter if the peppercorns are of higher quality than the ground pepper.

So, to stretch my analogy out to a thin crust, the salad ingredients are expository lumps.  Because they are ingredients, in wrappers in a brown shopping bag, they aren't dinner yet.

The reader/ dinner guest expects the writer/chef to chop fine, mix thoroughly, dress perfectly, and create something unique from the same-old-same-old ingredients. 

It's the writer's job to stand at the sink and wash, core, chop, proportion, food-processor the carrots, just so but not too much.  The dinner guests don't come to work, they come to dine elegantly.  You sweat; they laugh. 

If you present your story to your reader still in the shopping bag, they won't appreciate it no matter how good the story is.  They're hungry, not ambitious. 

This is what is meant when Hollywood says they want "the same, but different" -- "the same" part is the ingredients, the same old bell peppers and lettuce, and the "but different" part is the chopping, proportioning, creating a chef's salad. 

And it is in the creative proportioning and combining spices into dressing that is the work of the writer. 

A writer isn't the farmer that grows the stuff, or the retailer who brings it to town from across the world, or the maker of the crystal and china on the table.  The writer is the chef in the kitchen making up new recipes to present the same old ingredients in new and unique ways, or at request in the same-old-same-old ways (Waldorf Salad is Waldorf Salad and when you want that, you don't want chopped egg and dill pickles).

The reason many readers have been disappointed in "self-published" books is not because they're "self-published" but because someone planning to self-publish may chintz on the chopping.  Someone who has chintzed on the chopping will not be hired (sell their novel) to work at McDonald's (big publishing.) 

But people buy self-published books because they want something different -- it's just it's got to be 'the same' too. 

The writer's job is to chop ideas up into bite-size pieces and toss the salad good to mix up all the chopped ingredients in appetizing proportions.  New writers, like kids learning their way around a kitchen, just don't have the knack of chopping fine enough, tossing two more minutes, or adding that last dash of oregano to the dressing.

"Is this small enough, Mommy?"  Ask your readers if your Big Ideas are Small Enough Now.

And remember, if you're fighting expository lumps, you're only learning to make the salad.  Entree and Dessert are even more work, and you don't have a meal until you've got all the parts chosen to go with the correct Wine Of Life.  Your "Voice as a Writer" is that whole, balanced, meal.  All the parts and components from nutrition to flavor and texture, combined in artistic proportions unique to you, create your Voice. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

The Importance Of Being.... Allergic?

I'm on vacation, so will have to rely on memory (which may or may not be fuzzy).

On my Facebook page today, I've had a wide ranging conversation with Elysa and Erin that started with the discrimination, bullying, exclusion, and contempt that children with very serious allergies face in school and in society today.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/17/kids-nut-allergy-teased-excluded_n_929809.html?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl7%7Csec3_lnk2%7C87417

From there, we touched on the possible effects on fantasy novel Vampires if they had the bad taste to
bite a person with allergies. Elysa's thoughts turned to a self-medicated allergy sufferer.

I did some research on the internet, and discovered that it might be very amusing to afflict the Vamp with uncontrollable itching. Unusual levels of histamine can do that, I read (I hasten to add).

http://www.allergyescape.com/allergy-medication.html

Now, here's my fuzzy bit. I know that I remember seeing somewhere that just as anti-histamines dull the brain, histamines sharpen it. 

Off topic thought, more suitable to be put into the minds of one of my arrogant aliens. Maybe there would be less AD if there were less self-medicating, and less use of Benadryl and its like by parents for their own social convenience.

I've also read that allergies happen when the body's defenses make a mistake, and preemptively attack something that is not a threat.

And, I'm sure I remember reading, probably in DISCOVER magazine, that we are constantly evolving and mutating, but not all mutations are timely or successful. However, there might come a time when a small group of people who have suffered and been sigmatized all their lives for one allergy or another might save the human race.

Maybe, like the appendix in our guts (which used to be cavaliery removed because doctors did not know what it was for) the allergic among us will be the source of a serum or antibody or antidote.

Meanwhile, it would be really nice to know that while FEMA is stockpiling supplies in the expectation of another disaster, that they have catered (literally) for the one in one hundred citizens who suffer serious, life-threatening food allergies.

The Writing Addiction

I've just finished the draft and revision of a new paranormal erotic romance novella. Soon I'll send it to one of my regular publishers, who I hope will accept it. What a great feeling.

To me, writing behaves almost literally like an addiction. I feel anxious and depressed if I'm unable to do it for too long. Yet I don't enjoy doing it. I like brainstorming and outlining a new project. I like reading the galley file of a book almost ready for publication. But not the process of first-draft composition. When I finish it, though, I feel euphoric (a lot of which probably comes from relief that the thing IS finished and off my mind).

However, the high doesn't last long. The allure of a new project beckons, this time a story that really WILL turn out as a faithful realization of the idealized, though vague, image in my head—unlike all my previous works. Each "fix" promises total fulfillment that none of the earlier ones delivered.

I wish I enjoyed the act of writing, like a few authors I've heard about, such as Isaac Asimov, who never willingly stopped even on vacations. When I started creating fiction, as a teenager, I couldn't wait to pour out my (mostly dreadful) tales onto the page. The typewriter (back when dinosaurs roamed the earth) barely kept up with the sentences in my brain. I wish that fluency would return, but I think knowing too much about what I'm doing impedes the flow, like the centipede stuck pondering which leg to move first. Do most of you enjoy writing? Or mainly enjoy having written?

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Amber Benson and Kathryn Leigh Scott Actresses and Writers

You may remember I discussed Amber Benson's first Calliope Reaper-Jones novel, Death's Daughter in August 2009.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/amber-benson-tara-on-buffy-vampire.html

Amber Benson played Tara on Buffy, a character who stole the show as layers of her background were peeled away to reveal startling and unexpected truths.

I met her on Twitter -- @Amber_Benson  -- check her out!

Since then she has had a second novel in her series published titled Cat's Claw-- and they're GOOD.

There are few writers whose novels pass all my technical craft tests (even Mass Market published writers), the attributes I talk about here in my posts about craft.  Amber Benson does. 

She has some prior books she's contributed to, which I haven't read yet, so take a look here:

Amber Benson

Amber Benson has a very distinctive writer's "voice" that is pleasant even when speaking (in the first person) for a tough-as-nails woman, or a woman who is soon to become as tough as nails.

See next week's entry here "Source of the Expository Lump Part 2" for more on Voice and how to find yours.

Benson handles the ugly truth of the world straight, with no compromises, but reading these stories doesn't make you feel ugly.  She makes her readers feel good about themselves.  It's an odd and very valuable talent, and to me that effect creates a dimension of realism indispensable in a Fantasy novel.

But it's also a rare talent.  Now I've found someone else who writes with that kind of a pleasant "voice" that is very easy to read even when confronting the ugliest aspects of the world.

She is, like Benson, also an actress with a TV series that has to be a favorite among readers of this blog, Dark Shadows.

Kathryn Leigh Scott played Barnabus Collins' bride on Dark Shadows.

Now Kathryn has done something unique that you should take note of if you are at all interested in PNR.

Kathryn created a new, original Urban Fantasy universe, a parallel world perhaps, where a young would-be actress (very different from herself) goes to New York to seek her fame and glory.

And she does two things Kathryn actually did.  She works as a Playboy Bunny serving drinks (giving us a glimpse of a real world as it was decades ago), and she lands a minor part in a startup afternoon soap opera TV show to be broadcast live.

This is both urban fantasy and historical novel, as the detail depicted of that era of live-TV afternoon soaps distributed by kinescope is extremely accurate but written without any expository lumps.

I will talk a bit about expository lumps again next week because it has a lot to do with Voice.

For now I want to point you to Dark Passages, this treasure of a novel about a parallel universe "Dark Shadows" TV show, and a young woman with Vampiric type supernatural powers she is determined not to use to 'get ahead' in The Industry.

Here is a link to a group of books by Kathryn Leigh Scott.  One is titled DARK SHADOWS.

Dark Passages leads to a list of some of her books.


But the one I'd like you to pay attention to is Dark Passages:

Dark Passages  this link leads to a single novel. 

Dark Passages is billed as a Romance, but it's not strictly speaking, PNR.  The plot is driven by personal Relationship, and it's definitely what I call Intimate Adventure Genre, but I think the real Romance part will develop in what I hope will be a number of sequels.

I found @Dark_Passages on twitter -- I think when they followed me ( @jlichtenberg ) and I looked at the little bio and followed back.  Or I may have gotten an email from the publicist.  I did get a two-page promo for the novel done as a pdf file which I read on my iPod Touch and wrote back and asked for the full novel.

You will note I've been blogging here about the place of social networking in a writer's modern life.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/04/social-networking-is-not-advertising.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/02/strange-benefit-of-social-networking.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/new-cb-radio-come-on-back.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/11/i-love-web-20.html

 Before I wrote this blog entry, I asked @Amber_Benson (whose byline is Amber Benson ) via public twitter post  if she knew Kathryn Leigh Scott personally.  Amber answered publicly that she knew someone who does know Kathryn and has a very high opinion of her work.  I hope this post will introduce these two extraordinary women.  They really should collaborate! 
 
You might also want to follow the twitter account @Dark_Passages which is how I encountered Kathryn Leigh Scott and ended up with her publisher sending me a review copy of this novel -- which I couldn't wait to read.  They sent me an ARC, I devoured it, and this post is only a few weeks after the publication date.

Dark Passages is written in that very pleasant "voice" that makes you feel good about yourself.  The characters are totally absorbing, the historical background sketched with elegantly chosen detail.

There are no boring sections to this novel.  But it's not an action novel.  It's a story about a very realistic supernatural person, young Meg, on a relentlessly logical karmic path to stardom.  It has one tiny gliche at the end which I won't discuss here because it would be a "spoiler."  But here's a clue -- one scene should have been moved to occur after another scene which should have been much longer and more complex.  Read this book and find that tiny glitch if you can.

Study Dark Passages, find the scenes that should have been in reverse order, and contrast/compare it to the Calliope Reaper-Jones novels which don't have a glitch like that.

Read my series on What's An Editor, and you will see that asking a writer to reverse two scenes is what Editors do for a living.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/09/what-exactly-is-editing-part-vii-how-do.html


is the final post in that sequence on Editing and has links to the prior ones in the series.

Here's what an editor would see comparing the Calliope Reaper-Jones novels to Dark Passages.

The Reaper-Jones novels have a stronger "action" structure and the action itself provides the plot-driving energy.

Dark Passages has a plot driven by the Relationships, the suspense provided by an enemy stalking the main character because of a generations long vendetta against her family, and by the main character's ability to evoke caring from those she meets.

The flinty, hardened, actors and seasoned Playboy Bunnies, care about Meg, even though they don't know she drinks blood from animals in the park and would suck them dry in a moment were her self-control to fail.

And it seemed to me Meg had no clue how much the people she meets care about her.

She comes from a small-town, growing up on an isolated farm with a warm, caring family.  In fact, her background profile is pretty much like Clark Kent's!

Dark Passages is a heart-melting historical Vampire novel.  You don't want to miss this one.

And if you've missed the Reaper-Jones novels, pick up a copy.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Robot Companions

Speaking of cyborgs, the August NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC contains an article on robots, with pictures:

Robots

The article explores robots designed for flexible behavior in uncontrolled environments, as opposed to the kind of factory robot that performs one job in a circumscribed, changeless setting. People are trying to teach machines to do things that are easy for us but hard for them, such as walk across a room or pick up a glass (or, as Steven Pinker discusses in THE LANGUAGE INSTINCT, carry on a natural conversation). A perfected robot of this kind would be able to serve as an aide to an infirm person, for example. In Japan a "cuddly baby seal" machine is already being used to entertain elderly nursing home residents.

Should humanoid robots try to pass for human? Do we want true androids, or would a housekeeping robot (for example) be more acceptable if purely functional instead of resembling an advanced version of the maid in THE JETSONS? The article introduces Yume (also built in Japan, not surprisingly), a feminine robot being developed for realism in both appearance and behavior. She's not there yet. The "uncanny valley," the visual space where a robot or a CGI character looks almost real but not quite and therefore inspires uneasiness in most people, hasn't been leaped over yet.

Years ago I saw a TV movie about a future in which childbearing has been banned for thirty years as a population-control measure. Couples can buy robot infants in baby stores. The artificial "babies" in this film look blatantly like talking dolls. I'm sure today's technology could do better, but how many people would want a robot child, even as a last resort? I haven't seen that movie about the robot boy rejected by his adopted parents, but from the reviews I gather the experience was traumatic. Robot pets, on the other hand—they already exist as toys, and even with today's technology a fairly convincing cybernetic dog or cat could be constructed. Compared to letting our St. Bernard out in the rain or snow and cleaning him up when he comes in, the idea of a walking-optional dog has its appeal. Still, I wouldn't want to live in a world like that of DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?, with all natural animals replaced by artificial ones.

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Big Love Sci-Fi Part VIII Unconditional Love and Science Fiction - c

This is the third part, part c,  of "Unconditional Love and Science Fiction" which is part of the Big Love Sci-Fi series of posts I've been doing. This one is #8 in the Big Love Sci-Fi series.

Here's the list of links to the previous posts in this Big Love Sci-Fi series:

Here's the first post in this series:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/06/big-love-sci-fi-part-i-sex-without.html

And here's Part II in this series:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/06/big-love-sci-fi-part-2-drama-of-illness.html

Part III in this series:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/07/big-love-sci-fi-part-iii-how-big-can.html

Part IV in the series:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/07/big-love-sci-fi-part-iv-mystery.html 

Part V in the series:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/07/big-love-sci-fi-part-v-modesty.html

Part VI in the series:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/07/big-love-sci-fi-part-vi-unconditional.html

Part VII
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/08/big-love-sci-fi-part-vii-unconditional.html

Today is Tisha B'av, a day that has lived in infamy for thousands of years. Many severe calamities that have befallen the Jewish People have happened on this date (by the Lunar Calendar -- by odd coincidence this year the Ninth of Av falls on the 9th of August!). Some great sages have thought that the Messiah will come on this day, and G-d's Love will become instantly evident to all the nations. It's a day for settling up scores, for taking consequences. 

So today is a great day to study Kaballah, Jewish mysticism, and see what we can learn about Love.

This time consider a famous work by a man known as The Rebbe, titled Tanya.
http://www.lessonsintanya.com/lit/

In Tanya, Chapter 33, The Rebbe wrote about happiness, about joy.

Two quotes from that chapter are in the list of 12 short sayings or paragraphs (The 12 Pesukim) that The Rebbe recommended every child should memorize (they've been made into little songs you can hear them all over the web if you google 12 Pesukim).

#10 of the twelve is the quote from Rabbi Akiva "To love your fellow as yourself, "is a great basic principle of the Torah. Rabbi Akiva taught (he had thousands of students) that we should love our fellow just like ourselves. So every good thing you do, share it with your friends, and help them do it too! This is an important part of keeping the Torah.

#11 of the twelve is a quote from The Rebbe's book on Kaballah, Tanya, Chapter 33. "The purpose of the creation of every Jew and of all the worlds is to make a dwelling place for G-d in this world." (the "worlds" referred to are the worlds of the Kaballah.)

The principle message I get from #11 is that each and every person is unique, created for a unique purpose, just like each level of reality is created for a unique purpose, and that purpose is to make this whole world into a dwelling place for G-d, just as the Holy Temple in Jerusalem was built to be a dwelling place for G-d, a place where humans could get close to the divine.

And that individual uniqueness is the bedrock principle behind the concept of Unconditional Love.

Each individual human being is unique. And each human has a unique purpose in this pattern we call "reality."

If you can't grasp that concept of uniqueness, there will always be something a person can do to become undeserving of your love, thus your love is not unconditional.

Because each individual is unique, there's no way to compare one person to another, or one person's achievements or behaviors to another's.

This is the essence of the concept "Soul Mate" -- you are unique, and your irregular edges fit exactly into the irregular edges of 1 other person. No other person is going to fit into your edges that exact way.

So when you find that one, unique, person that person is irreplaceable. You each help the other to fulfill the individual unique purpose for which you were created.

That awareness of the special precision in the way you "fit" into each other eliminates all thought of divorce, and there simply is nothing that can ever tempt either party to stray.

Nobody else is attractive once that unique bond is in place. That unique bond is your happiness, and it is a happiness which celebrates your Creator. Through that celebration you spread Joy into the world. That bond, that Love, truly can conquer all, and have a blast doing it, too!

If you haven't met your soul mate, and don't know anyone who has met one, and if you also have no confidence in the concept of a Creator who makes Souls, there's no way the idea of Happily Ever After can make any sense to you. It's fantasy, not reality. Happily For Now is the best you can hope for, and even that is probably an illusion.

That kind of perfect marriage and perfect family has always been rare, but it seems to me only recently has the very idea of the possibility been scoffed and scorned out of existence. It's still possible to re-ignite the vision, and with that to bring examples and role models to general attention. There is a lot of real-life material out there to work with, it's just that a lot of people don't believe it's real.

So the Science Fiction Romance writer's job becomes to re-create the icons of Unconditional Love based on the concept of unique individuals.

Remember the post I did here on this new icon of Romance.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/04/turning-action-into-romance.html

Scroll down that piece and look at the two images which are iconic.

Let's now ponder how the Creator of Souls, who leaves some of us without a Soul Mate in this life, can command us to Love.

This comes under the heading of Worldbuilding. There are a lot of different postulates that could form the foundation of a vision of Reality as Created by a Creator. Some of those visions might be brought to Earth by non-Humans from "out-there." For such non-humans to be a useful ingredient in an SFR novel, their notion of Reality needs to have some basis in our common assumptions.

So let's blend Kaballah with Quantum Mechanics.

What if the Creator of Souls doesn't stop creating? What if all of our Reality (all the galaxies like grains of sand) is actually re-created from scratch every nano-second?

That's actually a notion from Kaballah. But physics has found how, at ultra-small particle size, our universe is actually discontinuous. That's at the level of the particle/wave argument -- are electrons particles or waves? The answer is probably.

An electron doesn't "orbit" a nucleus, as once taught in the Bohr Atom model. An electron in an "orbital" is here and then sometimes probably there, and the zones of highest probability form a cloud around the nucleus.

This concept is the basis of Star Trek's transporter, or matter transmitter, which is now an actual laboratory toy that can transport an electron (sometimes.)

So if we visualize "reality" as a porous froth of probability being recreated in pulses, we can describe the fabric of "reality" as pure energy that appears crystalized from our point of view, but is really sizzling.

Or put another way, we can conceptualize the truth of Reality as a Song the Creator is singing -- all of reality is just energy vibrating, and isn't that what Music is?

So what is this energy of which matter is formed? We could postulate that the basic energy that forms all Reality is Love, the Creator's Love, Unconditional Love.

Our Free Will, harmonized with the Creator's Love, would then definitely conquer all.

How do we harmonize with the song of creation? By loving the Creator with all our heart, as Commanded.

If you love the Creator, then you love the creation -- all those unique humans, each with some problematic traits and deeds to their credit, are nevertheless miracles. The very existence of reality is a miracle.

So the "Icon" of Unconditional Love could be musical or based on color tones which are also vibrations.

So if the Action Genre has reached its peak of popularity through the Superhero (Superman first appearing in conjunction with World War II and today the Superhero is 3-D big screen fare) -- then perhaps the Superhero of the SFR genre will be someone who is capable of Big Love?

This new Icon would probably be a couple, Soul Mates who become role models of Love and Acceptance among those who can't conceptualize the Unique Human.

This Supercouple might be, say, be a human/non-human pair would have to deal with people involved in horrendously terrible things, and that would be the source of "conflict" for their story -- not conflict between them, but conflict among those they deal with.

But they would succeed (not without difficulty) in igniting unconditional love in those whose Souls had become dark and ashen.

Where they walk, miracles follow, because their love is Big Love Sci-Fi.

OK, you don't like using Kaballah, pick another mysticism -- Hinduism, Sufi, Zen, whatever provides you with a way to show readers that the Happily Ever After ending is real and possible, even if rare.  Do this exercise over with as many philosophies as you can. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Cyborg Love?

A few nights ago I had a dream about carrying on a long conversation with Darth Vader. In the dream he'd had his life support suit removed for maintenance and could survive for some time without it, given occasional hits from an oxygen mask. Wondering whether Vader ever did function without his advanced armor (given the conversation in RETURN OF THE JEDI when Luke protests that removing the mask would kill him), I checked the STAR WARS Wiki, Wookipedia. I was also wondering whether Darth Vader eats. The answers are here:

Vader's Armor

The details on Vader's suit and the interface between the equipment and what's left of his organic body are fascinating. Anakin Skywalker became a true cyborg, with very little functional human flesh remaining.

Could a man in that condition be used as the hero of a romance? Human-computer love stories have often been written, but the ones I've seen achieve their resolution by having the computer's mind transferred into a lifelike android body, as in Robert Heinlein's TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE and THE SHIP WHO SEARCHED, by Anne McCaffrey and Mercedes Lackey. (Of course, a ship's brain in McCaffrey's series is organic, not a computer, but functionally she's similar to a cybernetic brain.) A cyborg like Vader has presumably already been given as much of a new body as he's going to get.

The wiki entry on his life support suit highlighted for me how much physical as well as emotional pain he endures. If not completely lost to the Dark Side, a character like that could become an enthralling "wounded hero" for a romance. But what about the physical dimension of love?

It would be fascinating to read a story whose author has taken up this challenge.

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Big Love Sci-Fi Part VII Unconditional Love and Science Fiction - b

This is Part b of a discussion of the nature of Love, continued from July 26th post.

This is Part VII in Big Love Sci-Fi.

So here we are, trying again to probe the general audience psyche for where the rejection of the Soul Mate concept leading to a real HEA and the Love Conquers All theme originates.

Here's the list of links to the previous posts in this Big Love Sci-Fi series:

Here's the first post in this series:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/06/big-love-sci-fi-part-i-sex-without.html

And here's Part II in this series:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/06/big-love-sci-fi-part-2-drama-of-illness.html

Part III in this series:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/07/big-love-sci-fi-part-iii-how-big-can.html

Part IV in the series:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/07/big-love-sci-fi-part-iv-mystery.html 


Part V in the series:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/07/big-love-sci-fi-part-v-modesty.html

Part VI in the series:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/07/big-love-sci-fi-part-vi-unconditional.html
As I've noted before, the Soul Mate Hypothesis requires some kind of notion that Soul is a real thing, over and above and beyond the physical body.

Soul is the word we use to refer to the part of the Self that survives after death.

The notion of Soul doesn't necessarily require the notion that "God Is Real."  It might be possible to believe we generate our Soul from the material level somehow. 

But generally, in the USA today, people associate the word "Soul" with some kind of notion of God. 

So let's work from that assumption and see what we can find to solve our problem.

By going back to the 1st Century C.E. we might find one of the tap-roots that feeds the green-leaves of today's common heritage in our society. 

In the ancient literature, Rabbi Akiva, a great teacher who lived around the 1st Century, C.E., is quoted as having said the big thing in the Torah (the Five Books of Moses) is the Commandment Love Your Neighbor As Yourself. 

This is much easier said than done, and one wonders how it can be that the creator of Souls can then "Command" those Souls (imbued with Free Will to disobey that Commandment) to love one another.

Another famous Commandment is to Love The Lord Your God With All Your Heart

Here from Judaism:
http://www.jewfaq.org/prayer/shema.htm
And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

And accepted by Christianity - I'd suppose in most versions:
http://waters-of-life.org/YouShallLoveTheLord.htm
The most vital commandment in the Old Testament is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. We should examine ourselves: Do we love God indeed? Do we love him with all our heart, with all our soul and with all our strength?

I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised if Islam has something similar. 

So the creator of Souls commands us to use our Soul to Love -- to love Him and to love each other, but leaves us free to disobey (with consequences, but it's a free will choice we have).  And, according to Rabbi Akiva, one of the greatest teachers we've had, that Commandment to Love is the most important message He gave us at Mount Sinai! 

Yeah, right, and have you flipped on the TV lately?  What's to love?

How can any sane person think that such an endeavor is possible?  Or that such an order makes any sense?  You can't just decide to have an emotion then have it.  How can you go about doing this?  No wonder the general public scoffs at Romance Genre novels!  How can Love of anyone, least of all God, be possible in this pea-soup of horror we live in?

Well, Kaballah comes up with an answer that plays right into the basic requirements of a Romance Novel, especially one rooted in Science Fiction.

Science is a process of organizing knowledge obtained by empirical experience (experiment).  Science is the process of processing ideas from Hypothesis to Theory to Fact then organizing them neatly so others can learn them - and so they can be updated and revised.

Once accepted as a proven fact, a scientific fact can be tossed out with the next fact that comes to light.

Check out this interesting news item on revising the "facts" of static electricity:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/06/how-static-electricity-works/

That article will probably disappear soon.  The headline says
What You Learned About Static Electricity Is Wrong -- published June 25, 2011

And the article references a paper recently published:
------QUOTE FROM THAT WIRED ARTICLE ----
What You Learned About Static Electricity Is Wrong

    By Ars Technica Email Author
    June 25, 2011  |
    7:00 am  |
    Categories: Physics

By John Timmer, Ars Technica

For many of us, static electricity is one of the earliest encounters we have with electromagnetism, and it’s a staple of high school physics. Typically, it’s explained as a product of electrons transferred in one direction between unlike substances, like glass and wool, or a balloon and a cotton T-shirt (depending on whether the demo is in a high school class or a kids’ party). Different substances have a tendency to pick up either positive or negative charges, we’re often told, and the process doesn’t transfer a lot of charge, but it’s enough to cause a balloon to stick to the ceiling, or to give someone a shock on a cold, dry day.

Nearly all of that is wrong, according to a paper published in today’s issue of Science. Charges can be transferred between identical materials, all materials behave roughly the same, the charges are the product of chemical reactions, and each surface becomes a patchwork of positive and negative charges, which reach levels a thousand times higher than the surfaces’ average charge.

Where to begin? The authors start about 2,500 years ago, noting that the study of static began with a Greek named Thales of Miletus, who generated it using amber and wool. But it wasn’t until last year that some of the authors of the new paper published a surprising result: contact electrification (as this phenomenon is known among its technically oriented fans) can occur between two sheets of the same substance, even when they’re simply allowed to lie flat against each other. “According to the conventional view of contact electrification,” they note, “this should not happen since the chemical potentials of the two surfaces/materials are identical and there is apparently no thermodynamic force to drive charge transfer.”
--------END QUOTE--------- (read the article if you can reach it)

So if that's what Science does (toss out centuries old knowledge at the drop of a fact), isn't that what a Science Fiction Romance novel should do?

Pick a "fact" everyone knows, and toss it out.  Start over with a new hypothesis.

Pick a known fact about Love and treat it as science fiction treats a scientific fact.  Toss it out.  Start over.

Well, "everyone" who rejects the Romance Genre, "knows" perfectly well that Love is just chemistry of the physical body.  Most of the drama on TV and in film today reflects the general public's notion of what Love is -- and that portrait is a portrait of "Conditional Love."

People fall in love -- and then out of it at discovering something they don't like about their partner.

People get married, and divorced -- or just live together and move out anytime.  The percentages of breakups is up sharply since say, the 1940's.

Since everyone either has an "ex" or knows people who have an "ex" -- the fact is quite clear, proven and positive.  Love doesn't last.  There's no such thing as unconditional love.

But wait!  Even today, most parents love their children unconditionally.

Well, maybe that's actually not the case.  How many mass murderers or serial killers have turned up on the news with parents who don't believe their kid could ever do such a thing?

Do they love their child unconditionally -- or are they simply too self-centered to have noticed they love only the imaginary image of their child, not the person.  In fact, the miscreant's behavior might be explained as the result of the parents never getting to know that person, and thus never having loved their child.

Is there a generally accepted notion of "Unconditional Love" in our society any more (or was there ever?)
(google "unconditional love" -- that's an adventure.)

Do we have a role model for unconditional love among families?  We used to.  Just off the top of my head I can think of a number of TV shows that depicted families bonded with unconditional love.

The Waltons, The Brady Bunch, Leave It To Beaver, Little House On The Prairie.

What shows on TV depict such an ideal family now?  What brand new TV series depicts unconditional love bonding a family among generations? 

But just yesterday I was in a gossip session with some women who were talking about a family with 12 children who just adopted a Down's Syndrome child, in an "open adoption" because the family that had the special needs child literally could not handle a problem that size but loved that child.  For a couple of years, the birth parents have been involved as the adoptive parents nurtured this special child who is doing well.

Doesn't that sound like the concept for a TV Series - or at least a film?  Could it get made?  Hmmm, probably not.

We live in a world surrounded by people who love unconditionally -- but the cultural assumptions insist no such thing ever can happen! 

This is not a stable situation, and it might be possible for fiction writers to influence which way this cookie crumbles.

So next week we'll look for sources of dramatic material that might have that influence.  We need a "new fact" to replace the one we tossed out. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

The Alien Past

"The past is a foreign country" (from a 1953 novel, THE GO-BETWEEN, by British author L. P. Hartley).

Recently I felt struck by the reality of this now-proverbial remark when I read THE HELP, by Kathryn Stockett. Here's my summary of this novel from the mini-review that will be in my upcoming August newsletter:

"Stockett, writing about the time and place of her own childhood, tells a story of black maids and their employers in Mississippi of the early 1960s. Skeeter, a young, college-educated woman who wants to become a writer, gets her first job as a journalist writing a column of housekeeping tips. Since she knows nothing about cleaning or cooking, she composes answers to readers' letters by seeking advice from a friend's maid, Aibileen. Skeeter gradually has her eyes opened to the circumstances of the lives of colored 'help' to which she'd previously been oblivious. She gets the idea of compiling a book of interviews with maids, which she hopes to submit to a New York book editor who has written her a couple of blunt but slightly encouraging letters. With great difficulty, Skeeter persuades Aibileen to grant interviews, and Aibileen eventually manages to get other maids to participate. It takes a last-straw local incident of racial injustice to overcome their fears, though. All of them know, and Skeeter comes to realize, that if their pseudonyms and the concealment of the stories' location are penetrated, catastrophic results will probably ensue. Loss of jobs could be the least of reprisals. Stockett tells the story in first person through the voices of Skeeter, Aibileen, and Minny, a maid who has trouble keeping jobs because of her reputation for 'sass.' Skeeter, considered unattractive because of her height and unruly hair, gets constant nagging from her mother about her appearance and the possibility that she won't find a husband. Of course she has to conceal her work on the interviews from her family as well as her middle-class friends in the local women's League. In particular, everyone in the project is terrified of the probable reaction of Hilly, the overbearing, catty dictator of the League. A recurring plot motif focuses on Hilly's obsession with separate bathrooms for whites and blacks in the homes of white employers. Aibileen, for all the strength she displays in every other area, can't bring herself to leave the husband who intermittently beats her. Minny gets a job with a woman who not only doesn't know how to fit into local society but also has no clue about proper relations between white ladies and the 'help.' Her employer, Miss Celia, keeps a tragic secret from her husband, and secrets related to other characters come out as the story progresses. All these events happen against the background of the social and political turmoil of the civil rights movement."

How alien these characters' attitudes seem to me, and yet the story takes place during the period of my own teenage years. Of course, I grew up in Virginia, which probably makes a difference; not only is the past a different country, in reading this book I realized more strongly than before that Virginia and the true Deep South were also "different countries." In THE HELP almost every middle-class household has "help." Most of the people I knew didn't have maids coming in to clean!

Currently a list I subscribe to has an ongoing discussion about "the century with the greatest changes," contending whether the 19th or the 20th century saw the most radical changes in human society. There's also an argument about whether the changes we've experienced since 1970 have been mainly incremental or truly quantum shifts. C. S. Lewis, in his inaugural lecture upon taking up his chair at Cambridge, places "The Great Divide" in European culture somewhere in the 19th century, on scientific, technological, social, political, artistic, and religious grounds. This page summarizes the lecture lucidly with lots of direct quotes:

The Great Divide

What technological and social developments catalyzed truly radical change in the past century? In your lifetime? What elements of our society would seem strangest to a time traveler from 100 years ago? Fifty years ago? In some cases they might be things the traveler expects to find and doesn't. Edward Bellamy in LOOKING BACKWARD, at the end of the 19th century, portrayed the world of the year 2000 as a planet-wide socialist utopia. Robert Heinlein's early fiction predicted moon colonies by now. On the other hand, I don't think anybody looking at the first automobiles around 1900 foresaw the social changes widespread access to individual mobility would bring into existence.

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Big Love Sci-Fi Part VI: Unconditional Love and Science Fiction - a

Last week we looked at Love and Romance, using thumbnail definitions from Astrology for Venus and Neptune.

Here's a list of previous posts in the "Big Love Sci-Fi" blog post series:

Here's the first post in this series:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/06/big-love-sci-fi-part-i-sex-without.html

And here's Part II in this series:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/06/big-love-sci-fi-part-2-drama-of-illness.html

Part III in this series:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/07/big-love-sci-fi-part-iii-how-big-can.html

Part IV in the series:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/07/big-love-sci-fi-part-iv-mystery.html 


Part V in the series:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/07/big-love-sci-fi-part-v-modesty.html

We are turning the subject of Love and Romance this way and that, looking at it from all angles to find a way to create a blockbuster novel/film story that will convince those who scoff at the Romance Genre that they've been missing something important.  Some might then change their minds.

We can see clearly that this issue of respect of the general public is still very hot by noticing this item about the Romance Writers of America convention program:
----------------
http://www.thegalaxyexpress.net/2011/06/does-science-fiction-romance-label.html

Friday, June 17, 2011
Written on 7:55 PM Posted by Heather Massey
Does The “Science Fiction Romance” Label Marginalize Female Authors?
-------------------

Nobody with something to sell wants to be "marginalized" -- it's the horror-buzz-word these days.  The assumptions behind that choice of word could use some dissection, but that's not today's topic here. 

One of my suggestions for why Romance hasn't gained the respect of the general public, and why many Romance genre writers use pen names and neglect to mention their Romance genre credits when marketing work in other genres is that readers and writers of this genre (as with all other genres, almost by definition) share certain assumptions.

The assumptions underlying Romance Genre are simple: Love Conquers All, and the Happily Ever After ending is actually possible in real live.  There exists (for real) such a thing as a Soul Mate, and bonding with such a Soul Mate leads to the HEA ending. 

I discussed this at length here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/09/genre-root-of-all-evil.html

In that post, I wrote:
-----
Rarely is an author allowed to challenge the very premise of the genre within a story in that genre. Genre is based on ASSUMPTIONS that are not challenged. That's my definition. Things you leave OUT define the genre, and one of those things is the same in all genres -- don't challenge the genre premise in the plot.

In Romance, it's Love Conquers All that must not be challenged.

In SF it's Science Conquers All that must not be challenged.

In Crime it's Crime is Wrong that must not be challenged.

In Adventure, it's "the solution is not here but somewhere else" that can't be challenged. (home is not a fun place to be).

In Action, it's "There Is No Other Possible Solution Than To Kill The Bad Guys." You can't make friends with the bad guys and turn them into good guys in an Action genre story. (all the rules are changing, remember?)
------
Also think about this post:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/06/where-expert-romance-writers-fail.html

Where I wrote:
-------------
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.
--------------

Later in that long post, after quoting a long conversation on #scifichat on Twitter about Utopias in Science Fiction, I concluded:

--------------
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.
----------

Also in "Why Do They Despise Romance" I noted the core theme of the Romance genre Love Conquers All causes negative reactions in some readers who prefer other genres.

-------
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.
------------
And after that - (yes, I write long posts)
-------------
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.
------------End quoting myself---------

And I'm going to leave off there this week to give you time to reread those posts and really think about Love.  Yes, THINK about an emotion, intellectualize your gut feelings.  It's no way to live, but it's good exercise.

Next week we'll look at the Soul and the Creator of Souls.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Dog Training For Alien Characterization

My beach reads this summer included "It's Me Or The Dog" by Victoria Stilwell. I wasn't far into the book when I saw the potential for alien romance writing inspiration.

Dogs have different abilities and some of their senses are much better than ours. Take the sense of smell and the logic of sniffing, for instance. Dogs perceive events and behaviour differently. Just as a romance hero alien would.

In one passage of the book, Victoria Stilwell recounts what most humans think if they see a dog joyfully rolling in the grass. We (humans) anthropomorphise. We assume that the dog is enjoying the sort of experience that we would enjoy, if we rubbed our spines against fragrant, cool grass. In fact, wild dogs use scent the way human deer hunters dress up in camouflage. The dog is blending in, disguising his scent.

As I think about sniffing, and the useful social information dogs glean from where other dogs have "been", it occurs to me that a sexually lonely alien with dog-like senses would probably find the Ladies section of public toilets irresistible. What a great source of conflict!

One potentially hilarious part of the book discusses the qualities of leadership that are appreciated by dogs. These qualities include the ability (of the leader) to project happiness, also aloofness, also calm authority. What fun it would be to assess some of the world's most prominent politicians as if we were dogs!

Be warned, "It's Me Or The Dog" contains some very sad stories of how differently humans view dog behaviour and motivation, and how badly these misunderstandings can play out for the dog. It is certainly a thought-provoking tome, and I recommend it... not just to alien romance writers.

The Curse of Hyperconnectivity

Here's an article with some provocative cautionary remarks about multitasking and constant accessibility:

Creative Kryptonite

Hypotheses advanced by this author, Jonathan Fields: (1) Performing innumerable little tasks throughout the day gives the illusion of productivity through "busy-ness" but interferes with the real thing because these micro-tasks—reading and sometimes answering all the news bites and messages as they come along—fill the gaps that used to allow space for creative rumination. (2) The allure of intermittent reinforcement: Responding to the ringtone of the cell phone or the ding of incoming e-mail rewards the brain on a neuro-chemical level with constant dollops of positive reinforcement, "dopamine squirts" as he labels them. People used to this constant access can suffer literal physiological withdrawal when cut off from their electronic connections. (3) These frequent incoming demands on the user's attention open "loops" that never get satisfactorily closed, because a new iteration of the loop is continually being opened.

I use my cell phone only to make outgoing calls, a rather infrequent occurrence. I never keep it on unless I've made a specific agreement with someone to be available for a call at a designated time. I don't know how to text. And I don't work on writing projects and go on the Internet at the same time, so I never switch back and forth from my document file to answer the "you've got mail" ding. However, I notice my type is turning into a minority group. Fields makes some ominously plausible points. As a slow writer anyway, too prone to seizing any excuse to wander off task, I am glad I don't pursue the will-o-the-wisp of constant connectivity; that behavior would make me even slower to finish stuff. Would a fast, high-energy writer be able to handle the snares of intermittent reinforcement and infinitely opening loops better? Here's much worth pondering!

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Big Love Sci-Fi Part V: Modesty, The Scrimmage Line of Big Love

This series started with Part I Sex Without Borders and continued each Tuesday concluding with Part VIII on August 9th, though we may be back to this subject for additional entries later. 


Here's the first post in this series:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/06/big-love-sci-fi-part-i-sex-without.html

And here's Part II in this series:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/06/big-love-sci-fi-part-2-drama-of-illness.html

Part III in this series:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/07/big-love-sci-fi-part-iii-how-big-can.html

Part IV in the series:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/07/big-love-sci-fi-part-iv-mystery.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/06/big-love-sci-fi-part-i-sex-without.html
This Big Love Sci-Fi series is about how a Romance writer (any sub-genre) can create suspense, both romantic-suspense and action-suspense. 


The Love Story is an ingredient I've used in almost every bit of fiction that I've sold so far.  Romance isn't always my focus, but it's always there driving the personal issues of my characters whether they know it or not (yeah, past life karma adds "depth" to characters.)

The Love Story is my personal favorite thing, before, during or after the Romance, because in my life Love is what Makes The World Go Round.

I'm pretty much sure that "Love" is central to all human cultures, even those currently obsessing on teaching their children "Hate." 

Reading Romance is virtually a degree-course in human Psychology,  especially modern Romance, because the modern culture is furiously erasing the border between public and private.  So we're watching characters suffering through the problems that confusion creates.  That two-sides-of-the-coin relationship between Love and Hate is something I don't have to explain to Romance readers.  And today's Romance readers have an in-depth grasp of the relationship between Sex and Violence, too.  So no explanations needed. 

But, ah, "Modesty!" -- that became a political football (scrimmage line; get it?) in the 1970's.  Today it's almost a dirty word, a codeword for repression of women by men  (well, as a matter of pure fact, it was!). 

We're seeing an actual, violent, scrimmage line developing as more Muslim women adopt the veil for reasons most Western women either can't understand or actively despise.  Isn't that curious? 

Yeah, in this blog, I will tread where most would fear to go, and all of it in the name of Love. 

There's a thesis here for this "Big Love Sci-Fi" series of posts.  It could be (maybe) that the general public has little respect for Romance because the general public has no idea what Love is.

Now there's an unthinkable concept!  Unthinkable concepts are what it takes to create SF!  We're onto something Big here. 

 It's going to take a Romance writer, probably SFR writer, to explain that in a blockbuster feature film.  So we need to train up Romance writers to regard "Love" and "Romance" as the "science" in the SFR. 

The first thing a scientist needs to learn in order to become a scientist is to DOUBT EVERYTHING.  Question everything. 

You don't know anything you have not proved yourself.  Other people's proofs don't count.  You can't use a fact in your thinking until you, yourself, have proved it.  That's what you learn in your first Geometry course. 

To lead a readership on a Quest for facts that they can prove in their own lives, an SF writer must ask the kinds of questions the readership would never, ever, be able to pose.  Those are the questions that confound, confuse, mystify, disconcert, challenge the foundations of reality, and ultimately cause the reader to question all their own innermost unconscious assumptions.  The name of this process is "Philosophy" and it enters into fiction writing at the level of "Theme."   Philosophy can be the "science" in the "science fiction" of an SFR novel.  (I've done that many times.)  Philosophy is the source of all the best Themes writers use because Philosophy poses unanswerable questions, or questions that are unanswerable within the confines of the reader's culture. 

Our question today is, "What exactly is the place of Modesty in Love and Romance?"  (if any)

Maybe before we get into the examination of "Modesty" we should agree on a working definition of "Love" vs. "Romance."  (I figure we all know what "scrimmage" means, though we may disagree on what "Love" is.)

For definitions, let's hark back to my Astrology series here -- and assign the word "Love" to Venus and "Romance" to Neptune. 
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_30.html  is an index to the Astrology series. 

And here are my accompanying posts integrating Tarot and Astrology, all focused just on what a writer can learn from these disciplines (to create this dynamic suspense line for a Love story with or without hot Romance).

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

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

Venus forms bonds; Neptune dissolves them. 

Venus rules Taurus, the Natural Second House of material possessions (OK money).  It also rules the Natural 7th House, Libra, of  Relationships and the public sphere of functioning (i.e. not private -- the OTHER SIDE of that barrier we've been working with.)  Venus thus straddles the line between private (your personal possessions and philosophical Values) and public (your spouse, Others that you bond with. )

Neptune rules Pisces, the 12th House of Matters of Ultimate Concern (heaven, idealism here on Earth).  When you die, your ties to Earth and all the people living here dissolve (often gradually, but when not so gradual we find our beloved Paranormal Ghost Romances!)

Neptune blurs your sense of connectedness to "the world" so that your attention can drift to "higher matters" (i.e. Philosophy). 

In a Romance, both "lovers" are in a mental state ruled by Neptune (disconnected from "reality").

That mental state is usually caused by a Neptune transit to a sensitive and significant point in the Natal Charts of both members of the couple. 

Our prevailing, science hammered culture, regards that state of being "in the clouds" as, if not unhealthy at least unrealistic.

Very typically, a shared Neptune transit effect becomes an "Affair."  It can even trigger such an affair in a person who is married, because Neptune dissolves existing bonds and sets you free to drift through a world criss-crossed with anchoring bonds but not notice them.

That is Neptune alters your perception of your own "reality" -- it dissolves your perception of that "barrier" we've been talking about.  Thus in an affair situation, a person may blurt out all kinds of private things about their spouse that they'd never mention to a stranger ordinarily.

Neptune alters your perception of reality and sometimes replaces your personal Ideals or gives you a vision of new Ideals you will then lust after (for a time.) 

The odd thing to consider here is that many world-class Engineers and research scientists are Pisces dominated.  Neptune is art and inspiration, and that's the basis of good science.  Neptune is creativity, the visionary.

Which way Neptune manifests may have something to do with the individual's spiritual development as a Soul.  It is said more advanced Souls manifest Neptune in a useful and positive way. 

The idea is that Neptune alters your perception of "reality" -- and the Question the writer must ask is, "Does this character see reality more clearly under this transit, or less clearly?  Does this other character wax psychic enough to penetrate the illusion of reality and come back with actual knowledge that is really true, despite it defying all common sense?"

Saturn is "common sense."  Neptune is "idealism."

Which reality is true?  That's the kind of barrier-line across which a writer can draw a suspense-line and generate a plot based on a theme rooted in Neptune vs. Venus.

As an aside, President Obama was elected with Pluto transiting opposition his Venus and Neptune transiting his Ascendant (according to one guess at his natal chart).

OK so now Venus. 

One can bond with one's possessions, become a hoarder, a collector, a curator, or just filthy rich.

One can bond with one's "Significant Other"  -- that's the 7th House relationship.  It's social networking, too.

If ordinarily people don't like you, chances are under the right Venus transit (happens every year for a day or so) you might be elected to office, given an award, sell a novel, or get invited to a party (or have one thrown in your honor).

People born with Venus positioned just so are people who are just plain liked, who are popular, make friends easily, and everyone says they're "nice."

So, in today's world, girls who want to be the most popular girl in school (at least with the boys) adopt tight clothing, exposed cleavage (if they have one yet), and show as much skin as possible. In fact, it's a competition among the girls to see how much they can get away with.  (not like this is new)

They're on the market, telegraphing they're ready to put out (sometimes this starts so young they don't even know that's what they're doing.)

Now, fast-forward to her mid-Thirties and two or three kids later, and what do you see?  Assume she's married, has two or three kids, and still has a husband. 

You look at a High School girl or college girl and you know what they're doing.  So?  What else would you expect?  It's not immodest for a 16 year old to put the goods out there.  It is, however, for a 10 year old, or at least I think so, while other mothers might not.  (oh, yeah, domestic dispute scenes over teen dressing have a place in second-time-around Romance novels, where you can get in a lot of characterizing while moving the plot forward at blazing speed). 

You look at this mother of 3, and you judge her by how she's dressed.

If she dresses like a High School girl on the prowl, it's distasteful, and maybe the word hooker comes to mind.  Dressing twenty-years too young is not age-appropriate and invites assumptions.  You might have doubts about her character, intentions, maturity, trustworthiness, values, maybe suspect a mental handicap. 

But if she's 30-something in tight jeans, a low cut tight sweater, or sleeveless shirt, it's just battle-gear for kid-raising.  If she's in a short skirted business suit, it's battle-gear for feeding her kids.  In a business suit she might actually be showing cleavage and today's haircuts might be loose-hair seductively cupping the face.  But that wouldn't be considered "immodest" in the Western world.  Battle-gear is never immodest.

Notice how News Anchors (now almost 50% women!!!) covering hard news show cleavage and hips while men delivering the same information wear suit and tie securely closed?  For a while, female News Anchors wore business suits - started with pants suits, then skirts were a necessity -- now it's slinky-sexy dress.  Sex sells.  But the public perception is that such clothing is not immodest or demeaning of the Anchor's womanhood.  (well the female perception - not at all sure about the men)

If your thirty-year old mother of 3 is going out to a formal dinner, cleavage, sleeveless, clingy satin around the hips, heels to die in, would not be immodest.  If she dresses like that to mow the lawn or hit the supermarket, take the kids to soccer practice, you've telegraphed something totally else about this character. 

So how you dress your characters relative to their age and activity causes readers to judge the character's modesty, according to the customs of the segment of our culture they belong to.

But is "modesty" really about CLOTHING?  Isn't too much cloaking actually immodest because it draws attention, shouts "Look at me! I'm modest!" 

In fact, does modesty have anything at all to do with clothing, or is that a smokescreen to divert attention from the actual issue of "modest?"  (A good Romance theme might be "Modesty is not a Virtue.")

Or maybe clothing just a symbol for the dimension of modesty?

Previously in this Big Love Sci-Fi series of posts, I mentioned that our culture suffers from a blurring of the line between private&public which has led to a loss of definition (Neptune, idealism) of the difference between Private and Secret.  This makes the Romance writer's job much more difficult when developing Romantic Suspense. 

Private is something that's nobody else's business.

Secret is something that is everybody else's business but you are preventing them from knowing it.

Today, the TSA has had to revise their standards for body-searching 6 year olds.  There was a case of a child of that age group who moved during the scan, and was immediately sent for intrusive personal pat-down, which traumatized the child.  This tidbit of news may signal a renewed debate over the difference between private (as in body parts) and secret (as in carrying something harmful to others.)

Secrets make dandy plot devices, and create automatic suspense (when will they find out?)

In today's fiction market, "Private" is much harder to handle because the readers have no actual, concrete idea of what Private really is.

A society which did still have the notion of "Private" would never have allowed the TSA to come into existence, no matter the risk. 

It isn't about government intrusion into private space.  It's about any intrusion into private space.

The entire notion of "Privacy" has become political, and equated with "Secrecy" and thus "Dirty Secrecy."  (Yes, I'm thinking of Wiener and such similar revelations.)

If there's anything in your life that you wish nobody but you to know about BECAUSE it's not relevant to them, then in today's world you are basically taking an asocial stand! 

The public has a right to know (even if Google and Microsoft don't). 

Even if the public doesn't have a "right" to know, your reluctance to reveal is paranoid. 

Now you can argue against that statement.  The software companies, especially "security" companies, go through all kinds of gyrations to "protect" your privacy.

But notice the choice of words.  Security.  Protect. 

Implicit in that is the notion of external hostility (yes, I know there really are hostile hackers doing harm; this is about social philosophy useful to ROMANCE WRITERS, not about politics or reality.)

So why is the "exterior" world hostile?  Because you are keeping secrets.  Anything "private" is now considered "secret."

Here's another TSA anecdote taken from real life.

From this you might conclude that modesty is now illegal in the U.S.A.  (wonderful worldbuilding premise)

I know a family that made an international vacation trip recently. 

They are a middle-aged couple with a 12 year old son.  The husband is diabetic (diabetes I, really problematic on trips, very much life-threatening and developing heart disease which the wife knows about).  For traveling, the wife wore a long skirt and loose blouse, comfortable for sleeping on a long plane trip. 

On the way home, they went through "Security" and passed the screening machine.  But because the woman was not wearing tight jeans and a tight sweater, form fitting clothing, they were delayed for a physical pat-down of the wife, right in front of the eyes of the adolescent boy and the husband who was in distress from the diabetes.  They were racing to make a connection. 

The woman made an issue of the pat-down and demanded a private pat-down, which was provided, but by a man.  She then delayed things further by asking that her husband be present.  A big argument ensued with the TSA worker.  But there was nobody to watch the son.  So he was there while his mother was essentially violated (whether the TSA worker saw it that way or not, the mother experienced it that way.  She had recently encountered a TSA worker via her job who was not fired after being convicted of sex crimes.) 

With all the delay, they missed their connecting flight, a dire problem for a diabetic since food isn't served and with all kinds of food restrictions, there was nothing eatable available to buy on the concourse.  Stress like this takes years off a diabetic's life by deteriorating the organs. 

All travelers have seen this kind of thing happen, had it happen to them, and now a huge segment of the US population has "adjusted."  It's the price of security.  *shrug*

See last week's post about how Big can Love be in Science Fiction?  It was about the sensitivity level going down in our society. 

Subjecting such a wide swath of our society to this kind of intrusive search (and I'm not addressing the Constitutional angles here because that doesn't matter in this subject area) hits and hits on those sensitive areas of our collective psyche and forces us to adapt by become insensitive, coarsened, calloused to sexual intrusion.

Science Fiction writers have long accepted that humans are extremely adaptable.  Many build worlds where humans are altered to be able to live on other worlds where they must adapt or die.  And humans adapt.

We are adapting to this social fabric shift that erases the barrier between public and private, between privacy and secrecy.

But it's a scrimmage line.  Those who want "safety at all costs" are pushing the resisting and desperate line of those who wish to live a life where there exists such a thing as privacy which is not secrecy.

Eventually, it will come to a vote, and Public (Venus) Ideals (Neptune) will be established, probably permanently.  We bond with our Ideals. 

But while it is a battleground, Romance writers weaving Science into their fiction can exploit the tensions across that Public/Private barrier using philosophy as the science.  Just watch the headlines and read between the lines! 


This public debate over privacy may affect the generally accepted definition of "Love" because one of the essential elements of "Love" is Intimacy.  You can't have intimacy without private space that isn't secret.  Intimacy is the exploration (adventure into) the private space of another, sharing private space, melding two private spaces into one.  That which happens in the family stays in the family.

If we give up personal body privacy, we in essence destroy the "family" which is the group that shares private space.  Re-read my posts on astrology, then go learn more about "The Houses" in astrology, which divide the human psyche into 4 quadrants.  It's a graphic depiction of the definition of Privacy.   There's a whopping big Romance novel in this.


Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Self-Driving Cars

Nevada has passed legislation authorizing the development of regulations to allow driverless cars on that state's roads:

Driverless Cars

Google (surprise) has been experimenting with automated vehicles in California for a while. Proponents maintain that removing the factor of human error would actually make the highways safer, as well as allowing more cars to use the same amount of road mileage at one time and move along faster and more smoothly.

Who'd have guessed Heinlein's classic "The Roads Must Roll" would turn out to be so prophetic? (In general, not in detail; he postulated specially designed surfaces the cars would have to run on. Although his fiction foresaw many technological wonders that have come true, oddly he didn't anticipate the pocket calculator. HAVE SPACESUIT, WILL TRAVEL combines Moon colonies with slide rules.)

Welcome to the future!

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt