Theme-Plot Integration Part 13 - Superman: Man of Steel Action-Romance by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Theme-Plot Integration Part 13 - Superman: Man of Steel Action-Romance by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

This is actually a 3 or 4 way "integration" post, an advanced writing challenge that requires several skill sets in use at once.  Theme, Plot, Targeting a Readership, Worldbuilding, and even Character, Story and Conflict, to dissect and replicate Superman: Man of Steel.

We start, as usual, with THEME -- and of course without the foundation of Plot, you haven't got a story or anything else to hold an audience's attention -- but when you blow the "worldbuilding" element, the plot falls apart, the audience you've targeted is jarred out of the story, and nothing in what you've written makes sense to anyone but yourself.

Here are previous entries in the Theme-Plot Integration Series:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/07/theme-plot-integration-part-11-correct.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/theme-plot-integration-part-10-use-of.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/theme-plot-integration-part-8-use-of-co.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/theme-plot-integration-part-9-use-of-co.html

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

And here are the Theme-Worldbuilding discussions:


http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/09/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-1.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/09/theme-worldbuilding-integraton-part-2.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/09/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-3.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/09/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-4.html

http://www.aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/10/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-5.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/02/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-6.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/10/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-7.html


You can't accurately TARGET A READERSHIP (or audience) and hold their attention if the component elements of the Work are not wholly integrated with each other.

The previous parts of Targeting a Readership Series can be found in last week's Index Post:


http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/10/index-to-targeting-readership-series-by.html

By now, I'm assuming everyone reading this post who wants to see SUPERMAN: MAN OF STEEL has seen it, so I'm including "spoilers."

Here's a trailer for Man of Steel on YouTube:



This SUPERMAN film succeeds terrifically in ALL it's individual components, and fails utterly at the "integration" level. 

Before we consider the flaws I see (which are actually strengths from the Hollywood point of view), let's examine what it's done in the "real" world.

Firstly, this re-design of the entire myth of Superman is based on the DC Comics consolidation of the "Superhero" Vigilante genre into the Justice League.

That entire ploy was created to sell comic books, and has been an unqualified success, generating an entire genre of Superhero stories for every medium from print to TV Series, to theatrical releases. 

You can't fault the thinking from a commercial standpoint. 

All my posts on aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com since 2007 or so have been about replicating that kind of success that DC Comics has had but for the Science Fiction Romance genre, SFR.

Our objective in studying these writing skills individually and then studying how to integrate them is to replicate DC Comic's process, that Walt Disney Studios succeeded at, and that Glenn Beck has launched himself into (in another field, but it's the same process).  Beck is of little interest except in the business model transformation that he's experimenting with.  Today, his web-TV channel is filling up with a diversity of shows and has been picked up by a long list of Cable distributors including Satellite.

My thesis is that you can't argue with commercial success.

Romance genre itself is commercially successful to the absolute dismay of its opponents.

But so far the respect due because of that success is lacking.  Examine your respect for Glenn Beck and you will understand why Science Fiction Romance has its detractors.

Likewise 'comics" and comic fandom only gained grudging mention on TV news etc. with the advent of the commercially driven, gigantic Comic Con circuit where collectors bid up the prices of old comics to major investment decision ranges.

Money talks and money does get some respect, but not always the sort you and I are looking for.

Right now "Money" is not talking so much as it is gibbering in a panic.

The summer "blockbuster" films with Big Name Stars were flops at the Box Office.

But Superman wasn't a flop.  It's done respectably well. 

Here is a quote from imdb.com

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0770828/business

-------quote----------
As of MID JULY 2013 for Man of Steel June Release (as of mid-July it was still on several screens per multi-plex and pulling in audiences, which is success territory). 

Budget
$225,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend
$113,080,000 (USA) (16 June 2013) (4,207 Screens)
$116,619,362 (USA) (16 June 2013) (4,207 Screens)
HUF 56,995,608 (Hungary) (23 June 2013)
€900,007 (Netherlands) (23 June 2013) (118 Screens)
PHP 245,085,619 (Philippines) (16 June 2013) (469 Screens)

Gross
$271,188,450 (USA) (7 July 2013)
---------end quote-------

So you can see it made more than its costs, and will continue to earn on Netflix, Amazon, etc.  And all of that is gravy.

But is it worth our respect? 

Well, for me Man of Steel makes it in the HUNK FACTOR: Henry Cavill as Clark Kent/ Kal-El is terrific (but I prefer without the beard).  Russell Crowe made a lovely Jor-el, Kevin Costner's Jonathan Kent was thrilling, Amy Adams as Lois Lane worked well, and all the others were well cast, too.

The actors seemed to be aware they were playing characters, not that the characters were playing them (as seemed to be the case with Tonto in The Lone Ranger starring Johnny Depp as the sidekick.) 

Of course you've seen Cavill in THE TUDORS and IMMORTALS - not exactly a small name.  But  this movie does not look as if it is designed around what the Big Names in it are known for (unlike The Lone Ranger casting where Johnny Depp presented Tonto as if Tonto was Johnny Depp). 

Man of Steel didn't succeed at the box office because of the big name cast, but because it is Superman (and the release dates were cleverly orchestrated - check IMDB; there is a science behind that.)

It is a GREAT movie. 

So what's wrong with it?

For me, it isn't SUPERMAN. 

Part of that reaction is how I just don't think the Justice League approach works as well as the original (even though I'm endlessly fascinated with Justice League!)

The original Superman was, like the Lone Ranger, a champion of Truth, Justice and the American Way. 

All three elements of the Superman Character, truth, justice and the American Way, have been thrown out with this reworking of his past in Man of Steel.

What is inserted to hold up all 3 Pillars of Character is Defense of Earth -- not America, Earth.

America is left in cinders, and nobody cares. 

This Superman wears a dull bluish suit with a red cape, but it isn't the AMERICAN Blue and Red. 

One thing they did in re-designing Krypton actually cured some of the problems with the 1978-1980's series of films.

General Zod's motive in trashing Earth has been changed into the more honorable "Restore Krypton" motive. 

Jor-El's motive has been degraded into sending Kal-El to Earth for the purpose of "guiding" Earth -- instead of to learn to become more like an American, and less like those whose politics destroyed Krypton. 

In Man of Steel, Krypton implodes because the ruling council decreed they needed energy, so they mined the core of the planet, and the planet implodes while Zod attacks the ruling council.  This is an example of Hollywood ripping a theme (ecology) from the Headlines and throwing it into your face at any excuse. 

Another theme that coincidentally made headlines just as this film was being released is the Justice League theme of the Vigilante Justice which had America glued to the TV screens during the Treyvon Martin Murder trial.  That timeliness may have helped Man of Steel at the Box Office. 

But, the hook that has me glued to Superman is the Lois/Clark relationship -- and nothing was more satisfying than the TV Series Lois And Clark  (Lois, first, note!).  Not ecology, but Alien Romance.

The film SUPERMAN II definitely scratched the Alien Romance itch.

Here's that trailer:



Superman II has plenty of "action" to satisfy the action viewer, but it has the ROMANCE that makes the action make sense.  Kal El has to 'give up his powers' to marry Lois, and willingly does so - then the villains turn up (Zod and crew) (senselessly bent on destroying Earth and co-opting Superman to their own cause because of his noble birth) and to SAVE EARTH (not America: Earth) Kal El takes back his powers cutting himself off from nice, human sex with Lois. 

Notice how all the good stuff is missing from the Superman II trailer to sell it as pure action to Action audiences. 

In the end, Superman in Man of Steel does throw in with the Americans, but refuses to accede to American Law unless he agrees with the commands given him by a General. 

This ending seems NOBLE compared to the rest of the film, as if Kal El has values from Kansas.  In fact, it is antithetical to The American Way depicted in the original Superman as proceding from Truth and Justice. 

Note in Man of Steel, the S is cleverly redefined as an Alien Symbol of Peace. 

To remain thematically coherent, the S symbol should have been redefined as a symbol for Truth or Justice. 

The "America" Superman deals with (and this is where the original theme is massively changed) is General Swanwick -- not The President! 

This character (OK, it's a scripting efficiency problem, but it distorts the original Superman's thematic integrity) General Swanwick ends up unilaterally making live-or-die decisions for all Earth, not just the USA.

How insufferably presumptuous.  What do you suppose Iran would be saying in the U.N.?

In other words, Swanwick (without ever being challenged on it) institutes a military coups. 

Not one person in the audience that I saw the film with was groaning or booing about this.  It's acceptable for the USA to be taken over by the military.  Even Kansas farm boy, Clark, didn't seem to notice.

What has that to do with Romance?

Everything.

Hunk isn't just a matter of a square-jawed face.

Remember how I made the point about the crucial question that every Romance must answer:

"What does she see in him?  What does he see in her?"

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/what-does-she-see-in-him.html

A nice square jaw just isn't enough - helps a lot, but isn't enough! 

Strong character, with detail of what composes that strength, is necessary to ignite the flame of real Soul-Mate driven Romance. 

Lois and Clark have always been portrayed (from the 1930's radio shows) as Soul Mates, even when we didn't know Clark was from another planet.

Originally, they didn't emphasize the Science Fiction element of an Alien From Outer Space -- that wouldn't have been Romantic to people of the 1940's when Science Fiction itself had barely been invented.

What science fiction there was, then, was "neck up science fiction" -- without elements of Relationship other than adversarial. 

The B&W TV Series of the 1950's played Lois and Clark as foils, with Lois always trying to sleuth out the Secret Identity. 

SECRET IDENTITY (like the Lone Ranger) was the plot dynamic that drove the suspense, not Alien From Outer Space Falls In Love With Human.

The big reveal of Alien From Outer Space as the Secret (even from Clark, himself) came much later, because, given Clark's abilities, it was just logical.

Personally, I think Alien Romance is where it is at for Science Fiction and I always have, which is why it's always an element in my novels.

As Clark Kent's Alien origin was revealed, it was morphed and morphed to support various sorts of Superman Character definitions.

In other words, our Hero has been co-opted

Well, they did that on purpose.  They are risking huge amounts of money, so they want a known box office draw topic.  But Superman is old, worn, antique.  It's appeal was that it bespoke the yearnings of the audience of that day.  They needed to update it to speak to today's audience. 

And they did that!  They got everything in except the Alien Romance which needs a Kickass Lois.

And the reason the romance failed is a major gliche in the worldbuilding. 

Yes, Lois gets her moments, but she's relegated to fourth or fifth place in the B story, and doesn't even get to be the one who hammers home the key that stops the destruction of Earth.

Lois doesn't get to save Superman's Life -- doesn't get to Reveal His Past -- doesn't get to pass judgement on his moral fiber and trust him with Truth, Justice And The American Way, doesn't get to kick ass, doesn't even get to save Clark's human mom.

Clark doesn't act for Lois's sake.  Clark's father Jonathan Kent gives his life to maintain Clark's secret identity, and in his memory, Clark is moved to act -- not for Lois's sake, and not for the sake of his Relationship to Lois.  The action that Clark chooses for Jonathan Kent's sake is to adopt the guise of the mild mannered reporter and take a job at The Daily Planet where Lois gets to say "Welcome to the Planet."  And they share a secret smile, because she knows he's Kal-El.  But that's the ending. It should be the beginning. 

This movie is not the Romance you're looking for; move along.

If I'd been consulted (never likely to happen), on the script, I'd have pointed out that the entire composition falls to shreds because of a major gliche in the Worldbuilding. 

Fix the worldbuilding, and everything else, including the Romance, would fall into place.

I have this same issue with the DOCTOR WHO depiction of Gallifrey, and with the home planet of the aliens, the Tenctonese, in the TV Series ALIEN NATION. 

The Science Fails.

I'm an absolute, dedicated fan of both series.  And a lifelong Superman fan.  As a fan, I can and do "forgive" errors in the depiction. 

But such errors are the reason I wanted to be a writer with a published "voice" in the matter of how it should be done.  I've seen "it" done right in so many genres, which just etches my dissatisfaction in fire when I see the error in Science Fiction Romance, especially the Action Romance genre. 

And I believe that if Alien Romance is done "right" (i.e. with consistent worldbuilding, rigorous science), it will attain a position of respect as a Literature bespeaking the most valuable part of our 21st Century Culture.

So What Failed In The Worldbuilding?

It was a failure of imagination. And it was all the more glaring an error because we have occasionally seen it done right in film.

Here's Part 4 of Failure of Imagination, with links to prior parts:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/01/failure-of-imagination-part-4-teasing.html

The movie DUNE did pretty well at avoiding this particular failure of imagination, but came up a bit short as it tried to stay true to the book.

We've seen glimpses in the newest Star Trek movies where they got it right - particularly the nearly invisible space suits.

The failure is actually a failure to show rather than tell.

It's a failure to integrate the science, the technology, and the civilization it belongs to, using visual methods to ILLUSTRATE that the science is what it is.

Any technology sufficiently advanced will seem like magic. 

 Here it is from Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke's_three_laws

--------quote------------
Clarke's Three Laws are three "laws" of prediction formulated by the British writer Arthur C. Clarke. They are:

    1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
    2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
    3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

....The Third Law is the best known and most widely cited. Also appearing in Clarke's Essay "Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination". It may be an echo of a statement in a 1942 story by Leigh Brackett: "Witchcraft to the ignorant, .... Simple science to the learned".[2] Even earlier examples of this sentiment may be found in Wild Talents by author Charles Fort where he makes the statement: "...a performance that may some day be considered understandable, but that, in these primitive times, so transcends what is said to be the known that it is what I mean by magic."

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

FAILURE OF IMAGINATION. 

That is our greatest problem with science fiction today, the lack of the kind of futurology we saw in science fiction in the 1950's and 1960's.  Even Star Trek as a TV Series was able to visualize futuristic instruments that acted "magically."

So what did I expect from this Man of Steel that it did not deliver?

I went into the movie without expectations.

But a few scenes into it, I saw the very clever, very elegant, VERY IMAGINATIVE devices, instruments, methods of living, used by the Kryptonian civilization.  And it was indeed a very solid extrapolation of our current science/technology into a possible future.

So I was blown away by this vision of Krypton.  (then we got to the politics and I was disappointed as I had been when The Doctor first went back to Gallifrey.)

The technology was depicted amped up to the level of what we see as "magic."

Great work.

But ....

After we get to Earth, the entire premise just falls to shreds.

And in it's fall, it destroys Clark's character.

The premise is that Krypton has this technology that seems like magic. 

Now, look at our technology over the last few centuries.

Up to the 1940's, technological advances were always made by the triggering of a war.

World War II triggered the creation of the Atomic Bomb (and its use).

From the Middle Ages (knights in shining armor) through WWII, all our advances have been in ways to deliver more and MORE kinetic energy to a target and destroy bigger and bigger areas at a swipe.

We used the Atomic Bomb and spread collateral destruction over two (huge) cities when all we needed to do was destroy the war-making-capability of Japan, not the population. 

After that, The American Way judged America's use of that weapon to be a major tragedy.

Subsequent military weapons development concentrated on delivering pin-point destruction, making smaller explosions right on exactly hit targets.

Today, we have the new term "collateral damage" -- meaning failure.  When we strike a military target, ONLY that target gets destroyed.  If even one non-combatant is killed, we failed. 

It's a trend, and it probably won't be linear, but all our technology (cell phones being an example) use less energy, and target that usage more precisely.

All our energy-usage trends are down, not up, in terms of productivity.

And that's true of warfare as well - drones being another example. 

The Krypton depicted at the beginning of Superman: Man of Steel indicates they had gotten to where we are going -- small, precise, exact, easy to use, technology, like magic.   

But then General Zod arrives on Earth (out of the Phantom Zone which is not as well done as in the prior Superman film where it's a two-dimensional spinning patch in space, a portal to another dimension), and proceeds to "terraform" earth never mind it'll kill the inhabitants, Clark Kent included. 

Jor-el hid the database of all-Krypton inside Kal-el's body cells, but if Kal-el is dead Zod intends to extract it from Kal-el's dead body so he can recreate Krypton.  Noble goal, -- maybe that means the theme of this film is "The End Justifies The Means."  But during the film, Zod goes from not caring if Clark dies to actively pursuing his death. 

Remember, Lois doesn't get to save Clark and dispatch Zod.

Remember, a few weeks ago, I discussed the contretemps that erupted over a SFWA Bulletin Cover with the typical Brass Bras Babe image?

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/08/theme-conflict-integration-part-1.html

Man of Steel is a perfect example of what everyone is yelling about.  The Lois that we have seen raised from a 1940's "save me Superman" girl into a "Pullitzer Prize" chanting woman hanging under the elevator cage of the Eiffel Tower is back to being a GIRL.

Why?

Because of the epic fail in worldbuilding.

What should have happened when Zod got to Earth to retrieve the database in Clark's body cells and terraform Earth into a replica of Krypton?

If imagination had not failed, we would be seeing Kryptonians wearing ordinary looking clothing that acted like armor and contained all kinds of instrumentation, not the clunky-ugly lumps they wear in this film.

The costumes are supposed to look formidable and scary; instead they look ludicrous because we've seen what their technology can do. 

Remember the ST:ToS episode Squire of Gothos where the Alien we think is a malific adult alien turns out to be a kid-alien eventually scolded by Mom for tormenting humans for fun?

Remember the Organians?

Remember ST:TNG episode 9 "Hide and Q" which introduces the Q dimension beings?

All those Star Trek conflicts pitted hugely superior technology against humans who had technology superior to that of the audience (1960's and 1980's). 

And the superior technology, the "instrumentality" of the Squire of Gothos looked like an ordinary mirror.  The Q invoked effects by a wave of the hand (which was optional.)

In each case, the humans with the lesser technology won by being clever. 

The worldbuilding in those Star Trek depictions was superb (the production technology minimal).

What is the underlying principle that film makers must apply to get this tech worldbuilding consistent?

Kinetic Energy Diminishes As Power Increases

In the opening of Superman: Man of Steel we saw a Krypton vastly superior to any we've seen before.  It was superbly depicted.

Then we saw that technology deployed against a nearly defenseless planet (Earth).

Technology that superior has to be able to accomplish goals without:
a) wasted kinetic energy
b) obviously applied kinetic energy

Note our trend after the Atomic Bomb -- pinpoint accuracy.

Reduce that pinpoint further than we can today to produce the "indistinguishable from magic" effect.

And you have an enemy that takes us out by firing tiny black holes (or Higgs Bosons) or something very small that just tweaks the tiny few atoms necessary to achieve the goal.

No wasted kinetic energy.  No destroying whole cities to "get" one man, not even Superman.

Quiet, simplistic elegance achieves the goal with the barest twitch of a fingertip.

That's worldbuilding, Arthur C. Clarke style, folks.

The opening scenes on Krypton set up the audience to expect that kind of elegance.

Instead, we got messy, primitive, awkward, and pointlessly ridiculous nonsense that just didn't fit the opening scene.

Why?

Think again about the trailers and "Targeting a Readership." 

They took away the Romance (Superman hardly got a chance to do any really interesting rescues), they degraded the Lois character into a girl who says she won a Pulitzer but doesn't act like it, they designed the alien costumes to look more like fantasy Brass Bra outfits, and proceeded to wreak collateral damage with stray kinetic energy for no discernible reason. 

What readership prefers non-characters destroying things others have built with blood, sweat and tears?

What kind of person does not value the blood, sweat and tears of grown-ups?

What kind of person is recruited for Army service because of that trait? 

Teenage Boys. 

Not men.  (I do so love men.)  But boys. 

Boys hate Romance.  Too tedious.  Men love Romance. 

I believe that's why "they" did this to Superman, targeting the boy in every man.  Against the backdrop of the re-emergence of sexism in all areas, but especially in SFR, it certainly makes commercial sense.  The fact that this movie succeeded where others have failed this past summer will definitely give us more sexist films next year and the year after.

But the correction is not to add back the Lois character.  Then she'd just be pasted on top of something that does not showcase her properly.  She'd look awkward and artificial - not plausible.

In fact, isn't that what the HEA, the Happily Ever After, ending is ridiculed for?  Being implausible?  There's the reason why it gets ridiculed -- pasted on top of disintegrated worldbuilding. 

So how do you fix it?

You fix Krypton and the worldbuilding, and that fixes everything.  The fight scenes take less time, cause less disruption and destruction, and more screen-time is then available for a real story.

By fixing the worldbuilding so that the technology shown in the early scenes produces warfare that looks more magical, more precise (and reaches its goal faster, more elegantly), you can then spend the screen time on the underlying science.  Superman: Man of Steel runs over 2 1/2 hours.  That's long for any film. 

By definition science fiction integrates the scientific puzzles with the characters, plot, conflict and story.  Battle scenes do not a plot make.  Scientific puzzles that must be solved against a deadline of certain death -- ah, that makes a plot, a story, raises characters to heroic stature, and spurs the audience to learn more science because it's romantic and impresses the women and the men.

Lois, the investigative reporter, solves a scientific puzzle (Clark's genes), and beats Zod, would make a great movie.

Apparently, those with $225 million to spend on a movie thought that story wouldn't sell movie tickets.  And they do have a point.  Young boys, and immature uneducated young men, won't notice the disintegration of the connecting links between Theme and Plot, and will go away raving about this film.

That connecting link is the Worldbuilding.

The Worldbuilding destroyed so much when it came apart that I'm not entirely sure what the theme of Superman: Man of Steel was supposed to be. 

I think maybe it's Might Makes Right, or perhaps Peace At All Costs where the "all costs" contains the "might makes right" philosophy. 

The Justice League central issue is the vigilante justice argument (which is "better" for society, or more efficient, Hired Law Enforcement or Vigilantes that don't have to worry about legal methods of acquiring evidence or the train of custody of that evidence and just cut to the chase.)

The Boy Mentality that prefers sex to love will prefer the Vigilante method over the more tedious and cerebral Colombo Detective method.  

Peace At All Costs makes a good theme for Boys because it lets you solve the problem of roiling emotions by hitting and destroying anything in your path (regardless of whether it is the source of the roiling emotions or not). 

Reconnect the theme with the plot in Man of Steel by upping the elegance of the battle-tech, and you'd get rid of the Boy part and have to deal with the Man part of the Steel.

What does it take to make a Man out of a Boy?

That's a question our society has ducked since the 1980's (Superman II), and as a result, the movie-going audiences don't want to know the question exists, never mind the answer is not "battle."

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Bionic Limbs

The Bionic Man is almost here! In Chicago, an amputee is testing a prosthetic leg he controls with his thoughts, just as we move our biological limbs by thinking of the movement:

Bionic Leg

Granted, this patient has suffered only partial amputation. He still has most of an upper leg, whose nerves communicate with the artificial limb. Still, it’s a great start. Question: Could this mental control ever be made wireless? In the future, will we be able to move objects with our thoughts that are NOT physically connected to our bodies? If so, that technology would hardly be limited to people with missing parts.

Think of Captain Pike on the original STAR TREK, a prime example of “Technology Marches On.” With prosthetics already developed so far, it seems unlikely that in the century when the show takes place, Pike would be restricted to total immobility and non-communication aside from flashing “Yes” and “No” lights. Stephen Hawking already has more advanced assistive technology than that.

And consider the plight of the producers of STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE, a prequel made in an era when some of the "futuristic" equipment on the Enterprise in the original series had been superseded.

Many other examples of “Technology Marches On” with outdated fictional future technology in various media, on the TVTropes site. (See also “Science Marches On.”):

Technology Marches On

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Index to Targeting a Readership Series by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Index to Targeting a Readership Series
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

The Targeting a Readership Series can be found here:

Targeting Readership Part 1 is:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/09/targeting-readership-part-one.html

Part 2 is inside this post:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/astrology-just-for-writers-pt-6.html

Part 3 is inside and woven into the following post in my Astrology Just For Writers series which by mistake has the same number as the previous part but is really Part 7:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/11/astrology-just-for-writers-part-6.html

Targeting a Readership Part 4 is:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/06/targeting-readership-part-4.html

Targeting a Readership Part 5 is:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/07/targeting-readership-part-5-where-is.html

Targeting a Readership Part 6 is:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/04/targeting-readership-part-6.html

Targeting a Readership Part 7 is:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/04/targeting-readership-part-7-guest-post.html  A guest post by Valerie Valdes on use of setting

Targeting a Readership Part 8 is:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/06/targeting-readership-part-8-anne-pinzow.html

In which Anne Pinzow directs our attention to THEME via the difference between 1955 and 2013 in terms of the themes exemplified in film:

Fifty's movie glorifies honor.
2013 TV series glorifies, well, Machiavelli and the uselessness of honor.

Targeting a Readership Part 9 - about Creating a Market
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/07/targeting-readership-part-9-creating.html

Part 10 of Targeting a Readership about the Sad Puppy Hugo Controversy:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/08/targeting-readership-part-10-sad-puppy.html

Part 11 of Targeting a Readership, about noting and using the connection between SCOTUS decisions handed down at the end of June 2015.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/09/targeting-readership-part-11-futurology.html

Targeting a Readership Part 12 -- may be missing

Targeting a Readership Part 13 - Motivating Your Readers
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/11/targeting-readership-part-13-motivating.html And readers of this series on Targeting a Readership will probably want to look at:

Theme-Plot Integration Part 13, Superman: Man of Steel scheduled for October 15, 2013 discussing a 4-way skills integration.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/10/theme-plot-integration-part-13-superman.html

Targeting a Readership Part 14 - Readers Are A Moving Target (but so are you) (Aug 6, 2019)
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/08/targeting-readership-part-14-readers.html

Targeting a Readership Part 15 - Why Readers Feel They Have Outgrown a Genre (Aug 13, 2019)
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/08/targeting-readership-part-15-why.html

Targeting a Readership Part 16 - Plotters, Pantsers, and Game of Thrones
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/08/targeting-readership-part-16-plotters.html

Targeting a Readership Part 17 -  Original Production Wars (Nov 12, 2019)
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/11/targeting-readership-part-17-original.html

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Dog-shifting Librarians

Author Amber Polo enjoys incorporating serious issues, research, and humor into her fiction, and she was my guest on "Crazy Tuesday" (http://www.pwrtalkradio.com/page/r-cherry ) to talk about her Shapeshifters' Library series. The show can be heard "On Demand" for the rest of this year.

I put my foot in it immediately by asking what Amber Polo's extensive experience with doggy Obedience Training brings to her writing about romances between shapeshifters who happen to be part-time dogs. I was hoping that Amber might compare and contrast leash-and-collar wearing, and themes of dominance and submission.

Not so fast. Amber's dogs are closer to The Lady And The Tramp than to anything Dark Castle, and obedience training is more about understanding how dogs think than alpha/beta/top-dog machinations. Moreover, Amber hasn't (or hadn't) heard of the British dog trainer Victoria Stilwell and the series It's Me Or The Dog.... but no matter. The love affairs are all dog-on-dog (or dog-shifter on dog-shifter) so there is nothing to offend any gentle reader. However, Amber Polo offers interesting insights into how an author can build a plausible world where the shape-shifters retain human consciousness (at least in POV), even in dog form.

Once a librarian, Amber opines that dogs and librarians have a great many traits in common. They are smart, resourceful, persistent, and fun, for instance. Her villains, to date, are werewolves whose goal is to ban all anthropomorphic books. The werewolves' career paths are more varied, but still logical choices for bibliophobes.
Their day jobs include banking, demolition, armed forces, and architecture.

Apparently, according to Amber Polo, a librarian's greatest enemy is the person in charge of the purse strings.... funding.

We discussed guidelines for the suspension of disbelief. For instance, if an imaginary location is necessary to the plot, perhaps it can be based on a germ of truth, for example, a real Mississippi island further downstream. Location is important, especially real locations for anchoring the reader, and one of Amber Polo's favorite settings is the Chaco Canyon.

The third novel in the series, "Recovered" features a female greyhound. A couple of print copies are being offered in a GoodReads giveaway to members (membership is free) of Goodreads.com, as long as the members reside in the USA. The draw is Oct 15th. All authors who run giveaways hope very much that readers who enjoy the book will take a few moments to write a review.

All the best,
Rowena

Alien Microbes in the Stratosphere

British scientists claim to have discovered extraterrestrial microbes in the Earth’s upper atmosphere, too high to have originated on the surface:

Alien Bugs

If accurate, this claim is exciting news that should have been splashed all over the media. Life from beyond our world? Evidence that we aren’t alone in the universe?

One statement quoted in the article, though, goes too far. It doesn’t in any way follow from this discovery that life “almost certainly did not originate here.” The existence of alien organisms says nothing about whether life on this planet evolved here or drifted to Earth from outer space. It may have evolved separately on many different worlds (and probably did).

Of course, the premise of living matter’s being “seeded” in widely distant solar systems by alien super-intelligences has appeared in lots of science fiction. This concept can be very useful to a writer who wants to allow interbreeding between Earth-human people and ETs. If all planets’ inhabitants evolved separately, we’re left with the problem that (as Larry Niven says in “Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex”) Lois would have better luck producing offspring with an ear of corn than with Superman. And no Mr. Spock. Sigh.

Back to the reported discovery, the next question is: Do these alleged alien microbes have the same kind of DNA as organic entities known to us? If not, the difference would support the idea of their extraterrestrial origin—and open a whole new realm of exploration into the chemistry and biology of life as we know it and don’t know it.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Theme-Worldbuilding Integration Part 7 - Another Use of Media Headlines by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Theme-Worldbuilding Integration Part 7 -
Another Use of Media Headlines by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previously, we looked at how you can integrate current headlines into your writing by distilling the headline into a theme, then sinking it into the World you are building (e.g. creating objects, customs, Holidays, politics, in your world that illustrate your theme, so one single line of dialogue can crystallize that theme without belaboring it).

Below, we're going to discuss an example of that from the TV show Royal Pains and an illuminating article from Fortune Magazine on the famed 1% who are the subject of Royal Pains, and how to put the two together.

Here is Part 6 of this series with links to the previous parts. (Because I put lists of links in these posts, Google shuns them.  Google has a lot to learn.)

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/02/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-6.html

Before we get to this (hot) topic of Theme-Worldbuilding Integration, here's an annecdote about the Sime~Gen RPG AMBROV X the story-driven Science Fiction RPG that could become the thin edge of the wedge to change the way the general public looks at the Romance genre (and its writers!). 

Recently, I was at a doctor's office, and there was an intern following the doctor around. 

I mentioned the elements of this blog entry flying into my face that morning ( while watching Royal Pains via DVR), and how the following range of topics dovetails into the whole Ambrov X video game project.  The Fortune Magazine article I want to talk about here was in the magazine I'd been reading in the waiting room.

This intern was a twenties-something woman, thin, attractive, with eyes dancing with delight.  As I was leaving, she came up to me at the counter and mentioned that she loves science fiction. 

Oh? 

I handed her a flyer for the Sime~Gen novels and again mentioned that they are the foundation for a video game. She said SHE PLAYS VIDEOGAMES!

There is a huge prejudice (well known in gamer circles) against the women-gamers and women-game-writers.

Ambrov X has a woman in charge of the story writing (not me, and not Jean Lorrah). This splash-back against women in gaming is something I also found in an exchange on the Science Fiction Romance Brigade Group on Facebook.

So I handed this young doctor a flyer for Ambrov X.

http://ambrovx.com

Her smile lit the room.

I also mentioned that I had been watching the TV Series ROYAL PAINS.  Turns out that, too, is a favorite in that doctor's office.

On this one particular episode of Royal Pains that I had just viewed, there was a bit of dialogue writing that was placed and framed to perfection, and forms the basis of this topic on the integration of Theme and Worldbuilding with the current NEWS HEADLINES.

Hankmed (the concierge doctor practice on this TV Series) is under threat from two sources. 

On the one hand, the zoning regulations have been used to threaten to close down Hankmed because the local hospital had been closed and bought by a national chain of hospitals and Hankmed had picked up the slack by hiring more doctors and running a kind of mini-clinic in a residence not zoned for business.

On the other hand, the new hospital owners want to buy out Hankmed, hire the doctors, and run a concierge practice out of the hospital.  (eventually they do that, but this episode was part of the debate -- see "debate" as one of the "beats" identified by Blake Snyder in the SAVE THE CAT! trilogy on screenwriting.)

So Hankmed is fighting on two fronts.  The CFO (Hank's brother) wants to hire lawyers to fight the zoning board issue.  His wife knows a more efficient way to deal with it.  She delivers the THEME STATED (see SAVE THE CAT! Beat sheet) moment at exactly the right "beat" in the script.

"New Money hires lawyers to settle disputes; Old Money does it over cocktails." 

She proposes throwing a cocktail party gala/extravaganza. 

They try it - preparing swag to give away to make their case with the rich neighbors that Hankmed won't disrupt the neighborhood and should therefore get a zoning exemption.

As they are staging a speech to make this point, one of the older women of the neighborhood preempts the speech and declares that Hankmed can't help but disrupt because patients would be running in at all hours screaming for help. 

As that is being rebutted, a patient (carefully foreshadowed earlier) runs in crying in pain, disrupting the party.  Hankmed mobilizes to the emergency, thus making their opposition's point for them.

Crushed, Hank's brother insists he must hire some lawyers.  Just about then, flower arrangements arrive thanking them, and Hankmed gets some new contracts from the rich neighbors, BECAUSE they responded to the emergency.

Old Money settles things over cocktails. 

And that is a relevant point I want to make about our society today that points you to how to build a world and its society in such a way that it is totally alien to your reader, yet familiar enough to make sense.

We are, today, an extremely litigious society - we settle things with Lawyers at ever-increasing levels of fees for the lawyers.  And we keep settling things by making new complicated laws that will make more lawyers richer.  It used to be that to get rich, you became a doctor.  Now, you must get a law degree. 

---A side note:---

Decades ago, families raised their children to "follow in their father's footsteps" -- to go into the family business, etc.  I'm not talking Middle Ages guilds.  This was the early 20th  century strategy for a cohesive family.  ( Duck Dynasty meets The Waltons ) The strategy for beating a path out of poverty -- however grinding -- was to build a dynastic fortune.  Each generation was tasked to take the meager inheritance, double it, and pass it on, again and again until the entire family rose to the top 1% .

The actual vision was that by building dynastic fortunes this way, that "top 1%" would become the top 10%, 20% etc -- and eventually everyone would be very comfortably rich.

It was a war on poverty with a multi-generation strategy.  The current legal structure of Welfare, Food Stamps etc etc. was launched as "The War On Poverty" right after the tax laws were changed to PREVENT the building of dynastic wealth (e.g. the INHERITANCE TAX was one piece of that strategy.) 

Most of your readers will not be old enough to remember the dynastic-war-on-poverty that was launched after the Civil War freed the slaves and created that dynastic view of wealth building out of the old Plantation Owner model.  Most of your readers will believe that repealing an inheritance tax would destroy all hope of the poor person eeking out mere survival on government assistance programs.  Your current readers don't remember how well the dynastic approach succeeded (which it did), nor do they remember any of the pitfalls created by dynastic wealth (the ne'er-do-well of the Victorian Romance was believable because people knew them in real life). 

The Art of the Best Seller is founded on the writer's ability to articulate the beliefs, yearning desires, and wish fulfillment fantasies of the primary audience.  And that Art is now finding its way onto the TV Screen in such bits of dialogue as: "Old money settles matters over cocktails."  Memorize that line, and then go search your current world and create a bit of dialogue that encapsulates your theme.  

---End side note---

So right after watching that ROYAL PAINS episode, I was reading this article from a very old magazine in the doctor's office.

You'd probably do well to read the whole article, if it's still available, but I want to particularly point out that it cites statistics indicating that the 1% Big Money Fortunes belong to people who have made that money themselves (i.e. NEW MONEY -- within one lifetime, not inherited.)

There is a rapid churn in "who" owns those fortunes, so the "money" is always "new" not accumulated dynasticly.

Those are the people with the money to BUY books (rather than borrow from a library or pick up a pirated copy.)  OK, not maybe the 1% -- but the middle-class on the way up, or struggling to hold their own against the down-rushing tide of fortunes being shredded by the business cycle coupled to inheritance taxes that force the sale of businesses to pay the tax on capital transferred. 

So here is the link and an excerpt -- and while reading remember that we already have a detailed history of "lifting everyone up" on record between about 1865 and about 1910 - 1935.

http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2012/09/06/stop-bashing-rich/

SUBTITLE:  Instead of taking them down, shouldn't we figure out how to lift everyone up?

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

FORTUNE -- Alexis de Tocqueville famously chronicled American society's love of equality -- and its equally passionate pursuit of money. "The love of wealth," the French historian wrote in the 1840s, "is … at the bottom of all that the Americans do." America stands out among Western nations for its grudging, and often fawning, admiration for the wealthy classes it produces. With the road to riches seemingly wide open, Americans favor aspiration over resentment, envy over animus.

Except when they don't.

Rebellions against the rich are as much a part of the fabric of American life as the Horatio Alger myth. One year ago this month, that rebellion crystallized at lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park, with the start of a series of autumnal protests called Occupy Wall Street.

During summer organizing meetings, anthropologist and former Yale professor David Graeber had hit on a brilliant marketing formula for the rebels: "Why not call ourselves the 99%?" he recalled asking fellow plotters. "If 1% of the population have ended up with all the benefits of the last 10 years of economic growth, control the wealth, own the politicians … why not just say we're everybody else?"

In a hotly contested presidential election year, that formula found easy political resonance. The 99% doesn't just mean the poor or the unemployed or even the hardhat crowd. It includes the vast middle class of blue collar and white collar and pink collar -- even the upper middle class. It's the 99% that defined America's post-World War II economic might and remains the target of any serious aspirant to the Oval Office. With head-spinning speed, the 1%-99% divide entered the vocabulary of journalists, politicians, and voters. More than ever in recent memory, both a presidential election and critical policy debates in Washington are being fought through this prism.

Sadly, it is a confusing and flawed prism, marred by hyperbole, half-truths, and unnecessary pessimism about what it means to succeed in America. Yes, in politics, perceptions do matter. Reports of CEOs making 231 times the average worker's pay, news of fat Wall Street bonuses often unhinged from performance, and images of executives flying to Washington on private jets to beg for bailouts feed fears that the system is hopelessly rigged toward the rich and powerful. But it's wrong to lump the 1% into a monolithic group of greedy, tax-avoiding, selfish capitalists. They are a lot different from what you might think.

MORE: Obama - a president ready for a showdown
http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2012/08/16/obama-election-economy/

Most of the 1.4 million taxpayers who make up the top 1% gained their wealth through their own efforts rather than by inheritance. This group consists of a large number of doctors, lawyers, engineers, and small-time entrepreneurs, many of whom are working hard to create jobs. To vilify them is the wrong debate. It's a conversation that tends to cast blame on people who have made it to the top or anywhere near it, since Obama's tax proposal labels as "wealthy" households making more than $250,000 a year -- a comfortable income in Indianapolis (where the median home price is $102,000) but barely enough to afford a studio apartment in Manhattan, where tax rates easily hit 50%.

It's also a conversation that misses the point. Stirring resentment and pitting Americans against one another distracts from the harder and far more important conversation: how to jump-start the escalator for 23 million unemployed and underemployed -- and for those whose incomes were stagnating well before the 2008 recession. Diatribes against the 1% are provocative and ...

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


Referencing my "side note" -- we want SCIENCE FICTION ROMANCE novels to "enter the vocabulary" of journalists etc with "head-spinning speed" and need a coinage like that "1%" concept. So study this article's notation about the origin of the 99% phrasing.  

Here's an article I found via a tweet from Random House that claims half of the adults in the USA read a book for pleasure last year -- a book?  Harry Potter?  Shades of Gray?  Who knows, but half is the highest figure I've seen.

http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-american-adults-read-books-for-pleasure-in-2012-20130930,0,4379575.story

Usually, the figure I see (worldwide and including children) is that only about 5% of humanity (sometimes 10%) ever has read books for FUN -- or read "text stories" for fun.  But a much larger percentage will watch TV Series, movies,  videos, YouTube clips, and play videogames.  There's something about text as a delivery medium that just doesn't have the "reach" to get beyond that 10%.  And don't forget that is A BOOK, not "books" (as in every day spending 2 or 3 hours reading.)

Romance genre has a much bigger "reach" than the text medium can allow.  Our subject, here on this blog, for the last few years has been how to present Romance genre to that larger audience in such a way that the HEA ending seems plausible to those who have no real-life model for it (e.g. the Romantically Impoverished).

More reading on the Estate Tax:
http://american.com/archive/2010/december/the-roosevelts-would-be-appalled

So back to the FORTUNE article.
 
FORTUNE also covers the opposite side of the argument, as I keep telling you good fiction must. In Romance, that means any given novel or story must cover the inevitable plausibility of the HEA as well as the view that the most one can get out of life is a Happily For Now. 

http://money.cnn.com/2013/02/19/news/economy/top-income/index.html

Keep in mind, it's NEW MONEY that you are writing about and to. 

Since the advent of the Inheritance Tax laws (or Estate Tax or Death Tax), the entire concept of "ever after" has been erased from our purview (yes, it did dominate our views before 1910-1935).  Wealth, and thus worry-free living -- the feeling of stability, is gone, and we have only "for now."  

Your primary audience is probably lower-middle-class, flush enough to buy a book, but not to think of themselves as rich (yet.)

Your THEME to build into your WORLD can be fleshed out with the thought processes taught in the older book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad.



That book outlines how to answer the challenge in the sub-title of this Fortune Magazine article: 
SUBTITLE:  Instead of taking them down, shouldn't we figure out how to lift everyone up?

But I don't think that book highlights (it's not a Dad kind of thought) the principle illustrated by Hank's sister-in-law: Old Money Settles Things Over Cocktails.

That is a particularized statement of an even more abstract principle, or philosophical paradigm.  The theme element is behind that statement, while the statement is a particular application of that theme. 

Put another way: "There's more than one way to skin a cat."

That's to say that there are at least two ways to say the same thing.  The "same thing" you are saying is the theme, not the two different ways of saying it.  Get at the abstraction behind what you are saying with the way you arrange the history, architecture, laws, mythology and sexual mores of the world you are building.

Here we're discussing a theme about problem-solving that says there are many solutions to any one problem.

A "problem" is a PLOT-CONFLICT, a synthesis that arises from the main character's internal conflict and illustrates the philosophical lesson the character is learning because of the events of the plot.

I have often said here that the flaw in many books I read (well published ones, too) is that the Events of the Plot do not HAPPEN TO the main character.  The events happen, but not TO the character -- i.e. the character does not recoil under the impact of the event, then rebound along a different story-arc. 

To avoid that kind of failure, you take a character, and you present that character with a problem.  What the character does to solve the problem is the plot.  What the character learns from the mishaps along the way to success is the moral of the story, the thing that changes the character, matures that character and causes the character to "arc." That's what I mean by Events happening TO the Character.

So take a financially poor character, present him/her with a problem and a choice among solutions, then, via the events (and deeds of others in the story), teach your character to problem-solve like "Old Money." 

Consider the same Old Money/New Money dichotomy in another venue: the Martial Artist.

The beginner in Martial Arts, however fast-and-strong in a fight, goes into a fight with "something to prove" because his skills are New Skills.  The winner, the mature fighter goes into a fight with nothing to prove, just a problem (the younger fighter) to solve.  The mature fighter has Old Skills, and uses them differently.  The Old Skills allow the mature fighter to solve the problem more efficiently.  (remember the Karate Kid movies - or watch them again!)

Physical prowess, financial prowess, or romantic prowess, is all about how you apply power, not about how much power you have.  It's about cost-efficiency.  It's about elegance and strategy -- it's a video game RPG where you build a character who has Dynastic Prowess - training from the cradle in certain cultural attitudes. 

Another cliche I love: The Bigger They Are; The Harder They Fall. 

What Hank's sister-in-law (in the TV Series Royal Pains) said about how Old Money solves problems opened the possibility of solving the problem by a different (more cost-efficient) method than calling in the lawyers.  She found another way to skin the cat by saving the cat with cocktails.

The CFO of Hankmed loves cost-efficient.  In fact, your boss in any job will love cost-efficient because it's likely to get him (not you) a promotion. 

Which brings us back to the Romance element here. 

Common wisdom insists that what women want from their man is to be treasured for their personal, idiosyncratic, one-of-a-kind-among-all-humanity traits, not physical beauty which is an attribute of most adolescent girls, or barely post-adolescent women.

Physical "beauty" is generally speaking a trait that blossoms at puberty (called pulchritude for a reason), and fades with the fading of reproductive proclivities.  The flat stomach just begs a man to fill it with a baby.

But a marriage of Soul Mates can't be based on a trait that fades after a few years or few births.  "What worth am I after my beauty fades, if all you treasure in me is my appearance?"

Here is an article worth an in-depth discussion on the nature of sexuality in humans. 

http://news.discovery.com/human/smaller-testicles-linked-with-caring-fathers-130909.htm

One suggestion this article hints at is that male testicle size might be reduced by hands-on nurturing of their own children.  Smaller testicle size is associated with good fathering and faithfulness.  Maybe that's not true, but it's a dynamite plot thesis!  Which is the cause; which the effect?  A novelist can play that idea from every direction.

A science fiction romance novelist might conclude that all the cultural and religious systems created by and for humans are about domesticating the male of the species to fatherhood, and to that end, the building of dynasty is paramount.

Males must have a stake in their children, and their children's lives, so they won't run wild.  That could be a Worldbuilding thematic element.  A theme is a Philosophy, and Worldbuilding is the process by which a writer makes an abstract idea behind a Philosophy into something that the audience can SEE, something concrete, a symbol that has meaning. 

For example: 

If Life is all about offspring domesticating and taming the wild male, then the male of the species must build dynastic wealth ( create something to pass on to offspring ), so offspring will climb out of the inefficient beginner's mindset of New Money solutions and acquire the suave, smooth and efficient methods of the 1%'s  Old Money (or Old Martial Arts skills) method of problem solving.

A theme/worldbuilding structure could be built to argue that destroying Dynastic Wealth (shades of the TV Show DALLAS !!!) via the tax code has destroyed the nuclear family and increased the incidence of warfare or violence as a method of problem solving (violence being the preferred method of dispute settlement for the testosterone driven male, the victim of large testicles.) 

Read up on "performance enhancing drugs," which is a term I should add to the blog on misnomers. 
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/02/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-6.html

Here's a CNN article summarizing legal moves on steroids:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/06/us/performance-enhancing-drugs-in-sports-fast-facts/index.html

General theory is that such steroids in high doses have been responsible for uncharacteristic violent out-bursts. 

Just what kind of "performance" is being "enhanced" by the disproportionate elevation of male hormones?  If a little is good, does that always mean a lot is better?  Do they enhance a male's ability to be a good father?  Is being a good father what it really means to be a Man?  Is fatherhood manly?  These are questions that can become thematic statements in the hands of accomplished writers. 


Soul Mates mate not for "life" but for many "lifetimes."  Just as in Dynastic Wealth, the strategy is multi-generational, and you will remember the vast popularity of the multi-generation saga.  I expect that type of story to become very popular again, soon.  

Therefore the attraction between Soul Mates can't be based on something transitory and incidental such as appearance.

So a woman wants to ignite a man's ardor via physical beauty, but needs to ignite a man's loyalty because of a trait that becomes better with age.

And it should be a trait the man doesn't have in himself and never knew he needed in a woman.

Hank's brother and sister-in-law portray the potential for such a Relationship -- she is beautiful (now), and growing in stability and wisdom under the influence of the CFO view of the world in terms of cost-effectiveness.  And she is cultivating a career based on an interest in Art, and "now" works for an art auctioneering firm.

The TV Show Royal Pains is not a Romance per se, but it has Romances in it - one that seems to be succeeding after a rocky start, and another that has failed after a promising start. 

Royal Pains is a TV Series that is story-driven, and Relationship based, liberally decorated with bits of "science" (medicine).  Science, as a subject, is supposedly reserved for a 1% -- a tiny fraction of those who read. 

Royal Pains is not science fiction but has all the elements of science fiction (the science is sort-of real, the story fiction).  It has all the elements to intrigue and satisfy the Science Fiction Romance crowd without attracting the opprobrium we seem to be the target of these days, both in women writing Science Fiction and women in videogaming.

As I said above, thin edge of the wedge.  Easy Does It.  More Than One Way To Skin A Cat.  Old money does it at cocktail parties.

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Genetic Confusion

Does every cell in our body contain the identical genome we inherited from our parents at conception? Maybe not:

DNA Double Take

Chimeras—organisms with more than one genome—are now known to be more common than science used to believe. They can arise when the DNA of twins mingles in the womb. They don’t even have to be identical twins. The DNA of a fetus can migrate into the mother’s cells. Recipients of marrow donation have been found to have genetic traces of the donors in other parts of their bodies.

Mosaicism, in which mutations cause some cells to have different genomes from the rest of the body, can give rise to some diseases such as forms of cancer. However, it can also be harmless or beneficial.

Among other real-world implications, the NEW YORK TIMES article discusses how the presence of more than one genome in a single person could complicate the use of DNA profiling in criminal investigations.

Extrapolate to alien species, in which these phenomena might be normal and universal instead of anomalous, and we can imagine meeting “individuals” that are really two or more people in a single body.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Westercon 66 Con Report by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Westercon 66 Con Report by Jacqueline Lichtenberg


Westercon 66 (2013) was held (as with most all Westercons) over the 4th of July weekend, the weekend of the big plane crash in San Francisco, and several other disruptive bits of news.

But my trip from Phoenix to Sacramento was absolutely nominal.

Except for the addition of the TSA checkpoint hassle, and the chisseling away of passenger seat and overhead space, the trip could have been typical of the 1970's (during which I did a lot of flying, so, yes, disruptions were less of a problem then.)

The plane was full the whole way, and the Phoenix airport (both ways) was absolutely jammed to capacity -- yet staff was on hand and the passengers moved smoothly through the airport.  My rides to and from the airport on both ends were likewise on time and on light traffic moments.

By the time I was on the way back home, the problem at the San Francisco airport was being resolved, and only 3 of the 5 flights on the board from Sacramento to San Francisco were still showing cancelled.  You have to admire the emergency crews that worked through the disruption.  We have so many great folks in this world! 

I got the feeling that the world is waking up at last from the doldrums of the last few years.

The convention was filled with laughter, high spirits, good parties, and busy, lively crowds with the usual level of knowledge one finds at science fiction conventions.

In fact, it was so boisterous that there were people who took refuge on the party floor during a very loud concert held on the ground floor! 

Westercon is a "regional" con that moves from city to city throughout the West USA, each site bidding for the convention as with Worldcon.

http://westercon.org

2014 Westercon is in Utah, and 2015 will be in San Diego, CA. 

So wherever it is held, most of the attendees are local residents, old friends who come to the con to see each other, party, and exchange songs and books (lots of songs!).  And there is always a scattering of folks from around the country, bringing lots of party with them.

I connected with a twitter-friend @Robynmcintyre and had a blast getting to know her in person. 

I met a few people new at the con, one an SF writer with a post-global-warming book out postulating a 200 foot rise in the ocean levels (max at the point where she is writing her story.)  I met her in the Green Room and talked for a couple hours with her, and a fellow doing an academic book on the state-of-the-art in research about Mars.

Also still sitting in the Green Room, I met the moderator of a panel I was on about Star Trek (with John and Bjo Trimble and David Gerrold).  Turns out the moderator is into videogames, and was delighted to hear of the story-driven RPG approach of the crew working on Ambrov X (the Sime~Gen Videogame).

https://www.facebook.com/ambrovx

Consensus among those attending their first science fiction convention seemed to be that entering a group of people who already know each other seems difficult, as they all get chattering to each other about things they experienced in common, somehow forgetting to include the new folks in the conversation.

I've found that typical in other organizations, too, and for the most part organizational leaders remind members to turn around and welcome the new folks into the conversation.  But it takes much reminding!

This issue didn't really prevail at the original Star Trek Conventions where hardly anyone knew anyone else -- except maybe having read something about them or by them in a printed 'zine.  So everyone being strangers (at first), they all connected with each other on the common ground of Trek.

Later, though, the group dynamic shifted to "everyone knows everyone" and the new person, alone in the crowd, had difficulty joining in. 

It seems it's a human behavior thing, not a group-specific characteristic, so I'm not surprised to find it at Westercon or any other con.  But I am gleeful to report that those who found a hard time connecting with people at Westercon 66 are willing to try other conventions.  They will soon be feeling at home. 

Friday morning, I did my stint in Adrienne Foster's Writing Workshop.  The format is that 3 professionals and 3 beginners and a moderator all read all 3 manuscripts by the beginning writers.  Then we sit around a table and each person gives their commentary and analysis of the manuscript.  You get both the beginning writer's input, and the professional input which always contrast starkly. 

The author of the manuscript has to keep SILENT (very hard but accomplished by these 3) during the commentaries, then gets a few minutes to ask clarification questions but NOT DEFEND.

Unusual at this workshop was that we all joined in many uproarious bursts of laughter.  The general spirit of the convention was just that high!  And when the sense of humor is engaged, learning is much easier.

It usually turns out the three pros all pretty much agree on the problems, but sometimes take a different approach to possible solutions.

That's what happened this time, and it provided an interesting discussion.

This time (I've done Adrienne's workshop a number of times), we had three manuscripts that each demonstrated a DIFFERENT skills dearth.  That's unusual.  Ordinarily, we see three manuscripts that lack conflict.

This time we had one that I saw as lacking in conflict which could be cured by bringing forward the COMMON THEME between two disparate viewpoint characters, and adding a third (a villain) opposing the main character's attempt to solve the problem.

And we had one that needed to find a different opening scene, and finally one that proved the most interesting as its only flaw lay in scene structure issues (which is the foundation of information feed).

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/07/6-tricks-of-scene-structure-part-2.html

That final manuscript became the subject of an additional 2 hour conversation between the author, the moderator and me.  And I expect that story to sell one day not so long from now. 

After the workshop, I connected with another long-time Sime~Gen fan-writer friend from the area, Mary Lou Mendum who has several Sime~Gen novel-length works posted on simegen.com/sgfandom/, and then in the evening more fans brought together the elements of a Sime~Gen party.

So that evening I sat around in a hotel room holding various conversations against a total roar of sound that ebbed and flowed.  The party was on the party floor, so party-hoppers kept coming in asking "what's this?" and getting (from the hostess Kaires) the explanation of what is Sime~Gen, and all about the latest development, the Sime~Gen Videogame.

Of course, I'd be remiss not to ask for your support on the Ambrov X Kickstarter which is running Sept 3 to Oct 4, 2013.  And that might seem out of place to Romance Writers -- but actually, no, it's not.  You will learn a lot about the dynamics of the marketplace in this new and evolving environment and pick up many clues about how to gain more respect for the Romance field by supporting this Kickstarter and watching the way it unfolds.

Remember, you "donate" to a Kickstarter (using your Amazon or Paypal account, sometimes other means, always easy), but your account does NOT GET CHARGED at all unless the Kickstarter makes it's goal.  So supporting doesn't cost you anything unless you actually get something for it -- each level of support carries with it some tangible reward, and for most products, a copy of the product itself.

People are using this method of capitalizing projects ranging from BOOKS (yes, print and/or e-book) to Web-TV series, and feature films. 

Crowdsourcing capital is changing the face of fiction. 

Kickstarter and the other crowd-sourcing features of our new world indicate a type of change going on that is at least as signficant as the invention of the printing press (before movable type). 

We'll have to go into that in more detail, but today we're talking about Westercon which was a landmark for Sime~Gen, the debut of Ambrov X.  The Facebook Page and website (where you can sign up for a free newsletter if you're not on Facebook) --

http://ambrovx.com

So Friday afternoon, I stopped in to the Gaming room and found a group intent on a board game.  I waved the first Ambrov X flyer at them and immediate interest arose.  The person running the gaming room examined the back of the flyer and then asked if she could POST IT.  I gave her a front and a back (a few of the copies didn't get printed on both sides, so they got used for wall-postings), and a couple for the table.

So as I said, the Sime~Gen Party at Westercon 66 was such a ROAR (a lot of happy people is a good sign for fiction sales in general!) that I'm not sure how much of the facts of the game actually sank into people's minds. 

And the rest of the weekend was non-stop conversation, so as usual I came home hoarse and wonderfully tired.  The hotel wasn't as huge as a Worldcon hotel/convention center setting, so my feet weren't as sore, but my voice was.

I did learn a lot talking to first-timers: #1 that there are people attending their FIRST SF con, #2 that a bunch of them are WRITERS, #3 that there is an appetite for something new, #4 SFRomance has what they're looking for, but they have no clue that it does! 

We have our work cut out for us showing not telling the world that well read, well educated people will find the entertainment they're looking for in Science Fiction Romance.  That may be the conundrum of the century.

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Government Increases Support (albeit inadvertently) For Copyright Infringers

One of the few useful tools that authors and other copyright owners have if fighting the uphill battle to defend their copyrights is the WHOIS platform.

Often, owners of copyright-violating sites do not comply with the DMCA or Berne Treaties, and do not post the name and contact information of a copyright agent, whom copyright owners may contact in order to start the process of having copyrighted works removed from "sharing" sites.

Authors can visit WHOIS and discover either the information that should have been posted and wasn't, or else the contact information of the host of that site. Often, the host will take action and expedite matters.

Now, there is a proposal to deny access to WHOIS.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2049164/icann-plan-to-close-domain-database-called-disquieting.html

There may still be time to comment, for those who are interested.

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

Biological Possession

Twelve real parasites that control the life cycles and actions of their hosts:

Parasites That Control Their Hosts

Given these examples from earthly biology, maybe certain “puppet master” entities from science fiction don’t seem so far-fetched. The puppet masters in Heinlein’s novel of that title are essentially disembodied brains that attach themselves to the spinal columns of their victims and take control of the hosts’ bodies and brains. In STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION and DEEP SPACE NINE, we meet more benign symbionts from the Trill culture, which get surgically inserted into a humanoid body and merge their minds with those of their hosts. Joining with a symbiont is considered an honor. In this partnership, the personality of the host isn’t obliterated but blended with that of the possessing entity.

And then there’s THE HOST, by Stephenie Meyer. While I haven’t read it, it sounds very different from her Twilight series. The creatures that possess human hosts in this novel are disembodied intelligences, not physical entities like the other two species just mentioned. According to the blurb, the possessed protagonist doesn't lose her own personality as normally happens.

Most of the parasites listed in the article above infest invertebrates such as insects, worms, and snails. Imagine scaling up these phenomena to human size—producing, for example, a creature that uses us as incubators for its young and chemically inspires the human host with devoted love for the parasite babies. Willing human males become hosts for alien larvae in Octavia Butler’s “Bloodchild,” but they aren’t mind-controlled. Butler’s characters accept this arrangement in a rational bargain; imagine pheromones that emotionally compel people to embrace the status of incubator. Would chemically induced love for the parasitic (or symbiotic) infants be “real love”?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Videogame As Fan Fiction by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Videogame As Fan Fiction
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

As most of you know by now, there is a KICKSTARTER running to fund a videogame RPG which takes my Sime~Gen Universe novels into the Sime~Gen Space Age.

The AMBROV X Kickstarter added a reward level called an ALL DIGITAL TIER - and everyone who donates at or above that level gets a BUNDLE of all the Sime~Gen Novels extant in e-book (lots of formats). 
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aharon/ambrov-x-a-sime-gen-roleplaying-game

We haven't talked in depth yet about videogames, or gaming in general, as a fiction form.

But when the Videogame gets into the RPG (Role Playing Game) space, where the consumer gets to BECOME one of the characters in the fictional construct (e.g. Dungeons and Dragons ) you are getting into the world that I envisioned living in when I could barely read the three words under the picture.

As I've said many times on this blog, fiction is a necessity of human life.  We need our dreams and our daydreams to function rationally in our world.  But more than that, dreaming and daydreaming are magical acts, acts which form our world, that really change things (for better or worse). 

That's why Science Fiction (what science could do for us "if only...") and Romance (what life could be with the right person) are so vitally important to World Peace and other worthy causes.

I've been working on bringing together the various streams of fiction distribution for a long time.  I've talked often and at excruciating length on this blog about what I call The Fiction Distribution System, what it lacked (feedback from readers/viewers), and how the internet is curing that lack.

Here are some of my blog entries from 2006 and 2007:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2006/07/whats-missing-on-television.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2006/07/intimate-adventure-with-dragons.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2006/12/dungeons-dragons-wrath-of-dragon.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2006/12/world-is-changing-again.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2007/01/how-to-play-fiction-delivery-system.html

And here is a book on Fan Fiction that I did not contribute to, but which mentions me a number of times.  Use the LOOK INSIDE feature and search for Lichtenberg to see those quotes.  (the list of quotes comes up on the left). 



They even mention my coinage of the term Intimate Adventure. 

If you haven't seen me talk about that on this blog, here is the original source on it:

http://www.simegen.com/jl/intimateadventure.html

As you can see, I've been entering this general topic of FICTION as a necessity in life, from every angle I can think of.

From the mentions in that book on Fan Fiction, I'm beginning to think I've actually made the point to some people.

Note the books that Amazon brings up in other suggestions when you go to the Fan Fiction book's page. 

I'm not saying I invented fanfic!!  It was old when I got into Science Fiction fandom when I was in 7th grade!  That's why it was already my native language when I first encountered STAR TREK (before any fanzine published fanfic in the Star Trek unvierse). 

I wrote Kraith as Star Trek fanfic, but I wrote Sime~Gen to allow others to write fanfic in it (and they have!  see
http://simegen.com/sgfandom/rimonslibrary/

In 7th grade, it began to dawn on me what PUBLISHING lacked, and when I was in High School, I made a firm commitment to becoming a fiction writer because I knew I could make the field of fiction better if I could convince the right people that direct interaction between writers and readers, and between "readers/audience" and the direction and substance of the story was the missing ingredient in the industry.

That was long before computers brought GAMING to hand!

It was also long before Gene Roddenberry brought the Holodeck into existence.  That's where this is all headed, you know! 

Videogamers pioneered (with the shoot-em-all-dead approach to fun) the technology to make images REAL to you, and some were inspired by the Holodeck. 

Now they are pioneering the convergence of the characters who live inside your mind, your imaginary self that you strive to become, with the external conflicts of life, the problems set before you, using that interactive visual medium.

Here's another thing that's emerged to convince me that the world is accepting my point:

http://www.fullsail.edu/

That's a for-profit university that trains people to create videogames.

Most of the people on the Loreful team creating the Sime~Gen Videogame (now in Kickstarter - go donate a few bucks and they'll send you more information) have come out of that university. 

The Sime~Gen game, though, isn't of the "win by killing everything that moves" variety, except insofar as BANG-BANG is necessary to sell into the marketplace. 

These folks have the ambition to create an RPG where you win more points (and perqs) by establishing a non-lethal relationship with the other characters, and making friends not foes even of those trying to destroy you and yours.  This game is envisioned with roles and options that allow Intimate Adventure!  (yes, the creators read that material I pointed you to). 

So far, the Sime~Gen Game is not ROMANCE per se, but if it's successful, that is a definite possibility for some of the future plot-threads or episodes.  You want to see a Romance based videogame?  Support this kickstarter, if not with money then by distributing the information on it.  It runs only to the beginning of October, 2013.

Remember Sime~Gen is the universe I created specifically to have a novel from every genre written in it -- (and it has TO KISS OR TO KILL by Jean Lorrah as a Romance) -- to prove that Science Fiction is not a genre at all, but Literature.

So, while I was digging into Amazon looking for the book on FAN FICTION that I do have a contribution in (due out Dec. 2013), I ran across the very academic one linked above, Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet, which only mentions me and Intimate Adventure (and Star Trek Lives! but they could only find the Corgi edition; the original edition is Bantam, 1975. 

Here's the book I wrote for (now available for pre-order, paper or ebook):



I didn't say this in my article in FIC -- it would have taken the whole book, and I'm certain I'll be returning to this topic on this blog when I find a better way to convey this notion:

Videogaming is in its infancy (still!).  It is the precursor of the HOLODECK, the fully interactive novel you walk into and become a character, and can do things that the author of the novel never thought of, never included -- you can live in a novel or a fictional universe and create your reality, just as you create your own real-life reality.

Somewhere along that line of development, you will begin to see exploration of seriously deep Relationship Driven Games.

And that has to include Romance (as the paramount relationship among all human relationships).

Since we are now working at the very beginning of that line of development, our smallest action will have huge effects decades from now.

We might discover that this videogame company that has contracted Sime~Gen is run by the "Steve Jobs" of the videogame industry.

And he took onboard a writer who remembered (with favor) reading Sime~Gen as she was growing up, then reread it all with the new books, too, and took notes.  She's a Star Trek/ Star Wars fan, too. 

If you're serious about solving the problem pointed up recently by Ann Aguirre's post on the blowback she's gotten for being a Science Fiction Romance writer:

http://www.annaguirre.com/archives/2013/06/02/this-week-in-sf/

You may find the best way to fix this problem that she and so many of those commenting on that blog post have encountered, using the least effort on your part, is to support Loreful's Kickstarter for Sime~Gen.  Just go post the URL around your contacts. 

Remember, the Sime~Gen novel Unto Zeor, Forever



has been called (in various blogs on the Internet) one of the first, if not the first, Science Fiction Romance novel (1978, my first Award Winner, before I won the Romantic Times Award for Dushau).  There were a lot of daring Science Fiction novels with this kind of sidewise edging into dangerous waters, and eventually it all gave rise to what we have today.

It takes a lot of people to move the world.  Give this Kickstarter a nudge or two. 

As Sime~Gen moves into the galaxy, humans encounter aliens, and you KNOW what happens when humans encounter aliens.  After all, you read this blog regularly, don't you? 

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Libraries and E-Books; New Release

While I don’t always agree with Cory Doctorow’s opinions, I think this essay is right on:

Libraries and E-Books

I already knew about one publisher’s outrageous policy of designing its e-book files for the library market to self-destruct after a limited number of borrowings, but I wasn’t aware of the other ways major publishers rip off libraries in e-book purchases.

On an unrelated topic: My new shapeshifter erotic romance novella from Ellora’s Cave, “Bear Hugs,” was published yesterday. As the title hints, the hero is a were-bear. Lured into his private realm, a pocket of enchanted forest in a magically enclosed space, the heroine learns that he hopes she can break the curse upon him—but not the type of curse you’d probably expect.

Bear Hugs

I feel a little uneasy about the release date, even though twelve years have passed. How much time goes by before the anniversary of a shattering event becomes one more date in history? I wouldn’t have the same feeling if the publisher released a book on December 7 or the anniversary of D-Day.

Long before the Internet age, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, I wrote a short vampire tale called “Crimson Skies,” printed in chapbook format. Although I recently discovered (after an inquiry from a reader) that I have a few copies left, I’ll never feel free to sell them—because the story, which is fairly light in tone, involves a plane hijacking. Unlike the time when the story was written, post-9-11 the motif of “hijacking a plane to Cuba” can never be a joke or a mere plot device. Pearl Harbor and D-Day can form the background for adventurous or romantic novels and movies. When enough generations have passed since a catastrophic event, it can even be referenced in jokes. (“Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?”) I can’t imagine 9-11 reaching that point. A long-running TV series, HOGAN’S HEROES, turned a POW camp into a setting for comedy, but as far as I know, nobody has done that with the concentration camps of the same historical period.

Some authors have begun to transform 9-11 into art (Stephen King wrote a story called “The Things They Left Behind,” with a survivor as the protagonist), but that kind of work feels beyond my range.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt