Sunday, July 18, 2010

This week the Galaxy Express hosts "Parallel Universe"

Are you going to Orland for the RWA convention? (I am not.) If so, or if not, do you know about the online event at The Galaxy Express?
From July 20-31,The Galaxy Express will host Parallel Universe, a science fiction romance online event that will coincide with the Romance Writers of America’s 30th Annual National Conference (July 28-31 in Orlando, FL). It will be the virtual SFR gathering for those unable to attend the conference.

Parallel Universe will feature a series of guest posts from authors and bloggers on a variety of scintillating science fiction romance topics.

If you’re attending the RWA conference, the hotspot for SFR fans is The Gathering, hosted by the Fantasy, Futuristic, & Paranormal Chapter of RWA.
 
The theme of this year’s Parallel Universe is diversity. I was asked to write about diversity of genitalia --why do people assume that I am an expert in that fertile field?-- but in the end, I wrote about a great deal more than bifurcated manhood, and only lightly touched on hemipenes.

While I was refreshing my memory for the piece, a tapir penis crashed my computer. I had to think for all of 20 seconds about whether I wanted to report to Firefox what I'd been looking at when the problem occurred. I reported on my Facebook profile instead.

My piece should show up on the 29th, in the evening.

Provisional Schedule for Parallel Universe Blogs

Tuesday July 20
Lisa Paitz Spindler
Gini Koch

Wednesday July 21
Nancy Cohen
Ella Drake

Thursday July 22
Ann Somerville
Donna S. Frelick - Spacefreighters Lounge/SFR Brigade

Friday July 23
Rebecca Baumann – Dirty Sexy Books
Kim Knox

Saturday July 24 
Cathy Pegau – Queen of the Frozen North
J.C. Hay

Next Sunday July 25
Sheryl Nantus
Kimber An – Enduring Romance

Monday July 26
Lizzie Newell
Rae Lori

Tuesday July 27
Robert Appleton
Violet Hilton

Wednesday July 28
Jess Granger
Laurie Green – Spacefreighters Lounge/SFR Brigade

Thursday July 29
Pauline B. Jones
Rowena Cherry

Friday July 30
Katherine Allred
KS Augustin

Saturday July 31
Ellen Fisher
Marcella Burnard

Please leave a comment (SFR related) letting us know whether you'll be at RWA or at some other book signing or book promo event this summer.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Scotland and Northern Ireland

Last week I mentioned that we took a Loch Ness cruise. The portion of the loch we viewed was mostly undeveloped, consisting of green hillsides with few buildings. The trees grow right down to the water in many places, so there's no bank in a practical sense. Filker Dr. Jane Robinson's song about the Loch Ness Monster, I found, contains truth in advertising where she sings:

"Twenty-four miles by one short mile, and a hundred fathoms deep;
There's jagged rock at the bottom of the loch, and the water is thick with peat."

While I can't testify to the rocks at the bottom, we observed firsthand how the peat washing down from the shore turns the water almost black. It's not hard to imagine mysterious beasts hiding under the surface. Unfortunately, from what little I've read on the "sightings," the evidence for their existence seems sparse and dubious. It's a big lake but still a limited space to conceal a viable breeding population of large animals.

My favorite part of the stop in Edinburgh was an underground ghost tour. Many of the old streets in that city have been covered over, producing subterranean tunnels. The owner of a pub where the tour ends (with complimentary shortbread and a shot of whiskey) leases a stretch of the underground streets and offers the tours. The experience began with a room where medieval torture instruments (mostly claimed to be authentic, except for the perishable items made of rope or leather, which are replicas) were displayed behind glass. I kept my mouth shut about the chastity belt, having heard that its abuses have been much exaggerated in popular lore. (I've read that the device served more often to protect the lady from rape in case of an attack on the castle, rather than a forceful guarantee of her virtue, and she often kept the key herself.) Then, on to the underground streets and chambers. Definitely creepy. Aside from faint, blue emergency lights at regular intervals, the area wasn't "improved" at all. Because the structures consist mostly of limestone, water seeps in, creating puddles on the stone floors. My most immediate fear was of not of ghosts but of falling, since the guide's flashlight supplied the only source of light besides the emergency lamps. She dressed in Goth fashion and appeared quite earnest about her belief in the restless dead who supposedly haunt the tunnels. The area does contain one "improved" section, a Wiccan temple in current use, which has a gate to protect it from tourists. The guide showed us a chamber where the group used to hold services but abandoned it because of evil forces, now trapped within a protective stone circle. After mentioning scary incidents that had happened when people dared to step within the circle, she asked whether anyone in the group wanted to try. Naturally, not even the one person who'd claimed skepticism about the supernatural didn't make a move. I was tempted, but the trespass would have seemed rude, given the guide's apparently genuine fear (unless she was an excellent actress). Anyway, why take chances? :)

In past centuries homeless people lived down there, preyed upon by criminals who knew the police wouldn't enter the tunnels to interfere. The guide showed us the supposedly most haunted room, infested by poltergeists resulting from an episode when a large group of people, including women and children, died from being trapped in the room by a fire.

The second part of the trip took us to Northern Ireland. One of my favorite authors, C. S. Lewis, grew up in Belfast, but his family's home and church lay too far outside the city center for a visit. On the bus tour I did get a distant glimpse of Campbell College, where he and his brother attended briefly. I also got to see, if only for a minute from the bus window, a statue of Lewis standing outside an open wardrobe, emblematic of his classic THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE.

The walking tour of Derry (otherwise known as Londonderry) was emotionally wrenching, because the guide's deep feelings about the years of the Troubles came across so strongly. While checking the date of "Bloody Sunday" on Wikipedia, I discovered about a dozen entries by that title, three of them in Ireland. The event commemorated in Derry occurred on January 30, 1972, when British paratroopers shot into a crowd of demonstrators, wounding many and killing fourteen. This incident brought to mind our own civil rights movement occurring at the same period. In Ulster, however, the protests were on behalf of Catholic citizens deprived of housing and jobs by the Protestant majority. Coincidentally, on June 15 of this very year, shortly before our group arrived, a government inquiry finally came to the conclusion that the demonstrators were peaceful and the troops completely unjustified in shooting them. The British government apologized, and some surviving family members of victims expressed forgiveness. The guide showed us a memorial as well as political murals painted on the sides of buildings, which make the events of almost forty years ago seem very immediate.

It occurred to me once again that the most bitter hostility doesn't tend to exist between groups that are distant and very different. The most implacable hatreds on our planet seem to spring up between people who live as close neighbors and, to outsiders, look almost alike—French and English during the Napoleonic War era, French and Germans in the two World Wars, Israelis and Palestinians, branches of the same family in the border states of the U.S. during our Civil War, the Hatfields and the McCoys—and the Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants in Ulster. Our group was privileged to visit Derry at the moment of what the guide described as almost a miracle of reconciliation in the history of his home town. I was sad to read in the news about the violence that happened just a couple of days ago during the annual Orange Order march in Belfast.

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Toystory 3 Analyzed for "Beats"

Read this: 
http://www.blakesnyder.com/2010/06/25/toy-story-3-beat-sheet/ 

CAUTION: that analysis contains "spoilers"

I don't accept that any good story can be "spoiled" by knowing what will happen before you read/see it and I've discussed why in these posts:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/03/prologues-and-spoilers.html

And

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/06/writers-eye-finds-symmetry.html

The analysis of Toy Story 3 is where you'll find how the film fits neatly onto the Beat Sheet developed by the late, great, Blake Snyder.

http://www.blakesnyder.com/tools/ is where you can download the beat sheet to use.

It's explained in detail in Snyder's
Save The Cat! screenwriting series

Now what has this screenwriting trick to do with solving the problem of why Romance is not the most respected genre in publishing?

Where is the Nobel Prize for Best Romance Novel?

Blake Snyder's Beat Sheet - that's where.

What is that "beat sheet" and where did it come from?

Snyder tells in his books how he watched hundreds of films, over and over, and extracted the "beats" (at what elapsed time each story-development plot-point is reached).

He found that all the widely heralded, highly regarded, raved about, high box office grossing films all had the exact SAME STRUCTURE.

It isn't a "rule" some gate-keeper in Hollywood made up and imposed.

It's a habit evolved by producers from audience feedback.

They learn how to do it by doing it.

On Twitter, I recently exchanged notes with a producer who had posted a tweet of advice saying learn to please an audience. So I tweeted back, prodding with "how do you learn to please an audience?" and he retorted - by getting up on stage of course.

I didn't fling back my writerly response, "I'm a writer, not an actor!"

It wouldn't have done me any more good than it ever did Dr. McCoy.

But I thought about it until this morning I found the link to this Toy Story 3 blog post in my mailbox.

Also yesterday, my fanfic writing friend whom I used for this writing lesson on converting exposition to action -
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/05/tv-show-white-collar-fanfic-and-show.html

- mentioned that she has found her speed and facility with plotting increasing as she bats out tiny vignettes based on the TV show White Collar and gets reader feedback.

She can really TELL when she has done it correctly. The response to a well plotted piece is orders of magnitude greater than the response to an ordinary piece.

And that's exactly why I recommend fanfic writing as a way to learn this trade. It's how writers do what actors do in Little Theater. Learn to please an audience. What those producers whose blockbusters Blake Snyder studied have that we don't have - is just that, HOW TO PLEASE AN AUDIENCE.  And Snyder found and codified the secret.  The Beat Sheet, and his analysis of genres. 

As I've said before, writing is a performing art, an insight given me by the first professional writer to take me under her wing and pound some sense into me -- Alma Hill. I've discussed that here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/08/wrting-as-artform-performing-art.html

So what does it mean to "perform" a plot "well?"

Beats.

Rhythm, just like dancing, playing an instrument, acting onstage. 

The Beat is what gives a piece the exact pacing that reader/viewers expect.

You know how it throws you off if your dance partner, Yoga or Martial Arts partner, or sex partner, misses a "beat." Fun turns into not-fun, and it's all in expectations of the actions of another.

In storytelling, the writer is the dance-partner of the reader/viewer.  That's why writers who just want to do their Art their own way fail in the marketplace - because they're dancing solo with a partner who wants carnal contact. 

Why is Romance Genre so emphatically disqualified from the super-huge audiences commanded by blockbuster films like Toy Story 3?

Beats.

Pacing is the very important element that puts off the wider audiences and they don't even know it.

We've examined how "outsiders" explain their aversion to Romance Genre here:

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

and here

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/06/is-there-taboo-against-romance-in.html

That's what trained professional writers see (and what widely read readers feel) is "wrong" with Romance.

But I submit that the real problem is the PACING - the exact points at which the plot moves forward a notch and the exact direction in which it must move to satisfy reader/viewers used to productions aimed at the very wide audience.

In graphic Art, trainees spend years and years studying and perfecting the ability to perceive and execute what is called "Line" - an element of composition that is the connecting point between the interior artistic content the artist wants to convey and the viewer of the work who may know nothing of art.  "Line" guides the eye and commands the attention.  "Line" says it all.  (watch Olympic Figure Skating). 

"Line" is what causes you to gasp when you first see an object, pierced by it's beauty.

"Line" is what makes you remember a company logo, and it's why companies pay millions to artists to create such memorable logos.

"Line" is what blockbuster movie fans look for and respond to when they think they're actually focused on something else.

The Romance Genre, packed into a side-channel of paper publishing for so long, has developed its own "Line" and its own "Beat Sheet."

And those elements, as original and enjoyable as they are, clash horribly with what the general audiences expect.

Not, mind you, with what general audiences WANT -- but with what they EXPECT.

Having expectations dashed is painful, not entertaining.

If Romance Genre can take its distilled essence (Love Conquers All; Falling In Love clarifies reality rather than obscuring it) and re-cast that essence into the Beat Sheet and Line that larger audiences expect, it will not only be accepted, it will be more popular than anything else ever has been.

Now that seems to have nothing to do with Toy Story 3.

Well, folks, "Romance Genre" is our "Toys."

People are expected to "grow out of" reading Romance.

Read the analysis on blakesnyder.com (and maybe some of the comments, too) and you'll see the analogy holds better than you would expect.
http://www.blakesnyder.com/2010/06/25/toy-story-3-beat-sheet/

Just like the Toys, the Romance Genre clings to us, reaches for other readers, fights being discarded.

The "Debate" section describes where we are now in this Romance Story.

New "adult" motifs are injected to hold older attention. But just as with SF/F, the Romance readership cycles generation to generation -- just as with Toys. A new generation is reading Romance, a generation raised on visual media.

Also note how the blogger at blakesnyder.com keeps harping on how THEME carries Toy Story 3 to the wider audience. It's about toys - so it's for kids, right? But THEME is the most fun an adult can have with a story. So it hits both audiences.

Romance, like SF/F and all genres these days, has to change "Line" and "Beat" to sustain a "reach" into a readership broad enough to keep publishing profitable.

The world is changing. Novels have to become visual, structured like movies. Don't forget the as yet unrealized field of novels with text and video co-mingled. Only technology keeps that from Kindle distribution.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Human Evolution (Extrapolation)

Any author of alien romance would be fascinated to read Susanna Baird's July 8th article published on AOL. explaining that Tibetans Evolved at Fastest Pace Ever Measured

At least, I assume so. The more science that backs up whatever is convenient for the purposes of telling a great science fiction, the better. That's why I love books such as "The Physics of Star Trek" by Lawrence Krauss, and "The Science Of Star Wars" by Jeanne Cavelos.

A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about the interesting scientific assertion that genitalia (at least in beetles) evolve much more quickly than other parts. Apparently, it's a matter of what intrigues and pleases the female of the species.

It seems that blood and lungs and genes and DNA evolve in humans. That's a matter of survival in a harsh environment. Of course, we've heard about blood doping, and the suggestion that training at high altitudes can give endurance athletes a competitive advantage.

Aliens from harsher environments than ours could plausibly be considered supermen. If their gravity were heavier (as with my Great Djinn from Tigron) they could leap higher and further. If their air were thinner, they'd seem far more athletic in our rich air.

One has to remember the obverse of this. If these aliens are going to take a human wife home with them, she is going to have problems with their thin air and heavy gravity (as my Djinni-vera does in "Forced Mate".)

Another bit of useful trivia is the effect of weightlessness (space travel) on the human body. For instance, bones lose mass, everywhere except the skull, and some of that unnecessary calcium finds its way to the kidneys where it creates "stones". The Johnson space center in Houston has an astounding display of astronaut kidney stones.

For that reason, gymnasium scenes about spaceships make a lot of sense... and I do have a few of those. Exercise is very important if your alien or human interstellar traveler is going to stay in shape, and reasonably comfortable in the bathroom.

I'll just point out a couple of interesting features of the study of Himalayan Tibetans as reported by Susanna Baird. The Tibetans live almost 3 miles about sea level, but are otherwise closely related to the Han Chinese who live nearby as the crow flies (probably not a crow!) but 3 miles lower.

Time scale. This rapid evolution (of more than 30 genes) is estimated to have taken  "the evolutionarily brief span of 2,750 years."

If one has a premise that ones aliens are forgotten human colonists, they'd have had to have left Earth at least in 750 BC. (Or over 100 generations ago.)

Number of mutated genes necessary for a single functional adaptation.
 
Just as retaining e-book and POD rights requires about 23 changes to a boilerplate publishing contract, "Researchers found more than 30 mutated genes in the Tibetans, most of which were not mutated in the Chinese. More than half the mutated genes related to the body's processing of oxygen."
 
You'd think that one gene would suffice? Apparently, for plausibility, base any evolution on a lot more tiny mutations than that!

Does anyone know what the threshold would be, beyond which interbreeding ought to become impossible? 
 
Since I started writing in 1992, I "solved" that problem to my own satisfaction with the concept of "smart semen"....


Ooops. I just burned breakfast. Gotta go.

Rowena Cherry

Thursday, July 08, 2010

I'm Back

Yesterday we returned from a 12-day group tour of Scotland and Northern Ireland under the auspices of Irish singer Seamus Kennedy. A native of Belfast but now living a couple of towns over from us right here in Maryland, he performs traditional material as well as some funny pieces such as "The Unicorn Song" and the one about the Scotsman's kilt. Visit his website:

Seamus Kennedy

Buy his CDs! Read his book, a collection of true anecdotes about life in the Irish music business compiled by Seamus and a few of his friends.

The soccer World Cup games dominated public awareness while we were over there, not a topic that holds much interest for me, but it certainly added to the holiday atmosphere.

Among many other historic sites, we visited the places I was most eager to see, Culloden, Loch Ness, and the Ulster Folk Park (about the Scots-Irish immigration to North America, with a village of period-authentic cottages and other structures). I didn't see the monster. In fact, I was mildly disappointed in the Loch Ness cruise—great scenery, but the guide didn't talk at all about the history of the monster's legend and alleged sightings.

In Ulster the most memorable experience aside from the Folk Park was the walking tour of Derry, which focused on "Bloody Sunday," the Northern Ireland analog of our civil rights upheaval that was happening at the same time. The guide's narrative conveyed such gripping emotional immediacy; those events of almost 40 years ago are still like "only yesterday" there.

More about the trip next week.

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Tuesday, July 06, 2010

Failure of Imagination Part II: Society

I didn't label Part I as Part I because I didn't know I'd have more to say about failure of imagination. So here's Part I where I illustrated the failure of Imagination in the general populace regarding the HEA (which is identical to the Upbeat Ending), and a failure of expert writers to imagine the HEA.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/06/where-expert-romance-writers-fail.html

We looked at how the most imaginative people around can't imagine a real-life HEA - Happily Ever After ending to a Neptune transit (Romance is signified astrologically by Neptune). The context was Utopia vs Dystopia. Read the comments too.

For more on Astrology see:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_30.html

In the eye doctor's waiting room the other day, I accidentally read a very old Time Magazine article about how the under 30 age group sees marriage as superfluous.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,997804,00.html

Then I saw an interview on the Fox channel of Raqel Welch touring to tout her biography, (Raquel: Beyond the Cleavage) - she's almost 70 and done up to look maybe 35 except when she smiles. A pin-up icon, some might consider her the very image of Romance.

Her main point was that there's a serious social payoff to postponing sexual activity until after the teen years, and even more especially to reserve sexual activity for marriage only. You might want to look at some of the comments on her book on Amazon as part of surveying our current society.

Raquel: Beyond the Cleavage


So the next day I'm doing my early morning (I live in Phoenix, it's summer; VERY early morning) walk around the park for exercise, and I'm thinking about the HEA.

Why does Romance genre absolutely require it? And SF also has an ending-point formula -- called "upbeat."

These are actually identical requirements. It's all about where you start telling the story, and where (in time) you end it. Life is a sine-wave. It has high points and low points and neutral points but never stops waving. Storytellers just CUT a section out of that sine-wave to structure a plot.

The publisher's end-point requirement determines the starting point.

The general formula for finding The Beginning - the opening image and opening scene of a screenplay or novel - is to identify the conflict, identify the conflicting elements, glue them together with THEME as you define them, showing two sides of the thematic coin, then crash them into each other.

In a Romance, it's the two individuals who will fall in love caught at their first meeting. Sometimes you start with one, then the other, and show-don't-tell their initial states due to their backstory morass, all the complications explaining why now is the worst moment in life for a Romance to begin. The Romance is doomed by these details.

Then you smash them together and whirl them into an emotional tizzy that just totally destroys both lives (prelude to healing the whole mess because love conquers all).

In an adventure (which publishers still insist most SF must be) you define protagonist, antagonist, conflict, theme, and find the point where protagonist meets antagonist.

In both cases the meeting point is defined by the publisher's required ending.

The Romance must gel, the subconscious emotional cross-currents must surface and be dealt with consciously (I Love You is the usual confession point that resolves the conflict's tension - the rest is denoument).

The adventure must conclude with a return to homebase, to a non-peril situation in which something the protagonist sought has been gained -- and that too implies without stating "happily ever after." (though there can be a pricetag - a lost limb, a near-death experience threatening to reveal that God is real, the loss of a family heirloom - tragedy can be there, but triumph must be wrapped around it.

Think about it and you can see that these are BOTH identical endings - the emotional tension is released, the conflict is resolved, the best possible situation has been attained.

But SF exclusivists reject the emotional bonding HEA, and Romance purists won't tolerate tragedy, angst, perpetual darkness wrapped around the tunnel of light.

Each type of "fan" is looking for a validation of their worldview.

Each type of "fan" is rejecting any challenge to that worldview.

We tend to label this reader/viewer objective as "escapism" with a slight undercurrent of a suppressed snear.

I don't see either field as escapist literature. I don't believe that escapism per se is enjoyable, entertaining, or in any way uplifting.

If all you get out of a story is a confirmation of your current mood or worldview, you will very likely abandon that genre soon.

If you're depressed and you read depressing stories, you don't get a charge out of it.

If you're "high" and read a really rollicking upbeat story, you don't get "higher" or stay high. (Sometimes other's joys are depressing in and of themselves).

So in a few months or years you "grow out of" a genre and leave it behind, having achieved a more mature worldview.

Stories that both confirm and challenge your current (always transient) worldview will be stories you reread, and genres you stick with for a lifetime.

Stories that only challenge your worldview are serious turnoffs because nobody really enjoys being hammered with all the points where they are wrong about everything.

Not only that, but stories that only challenge your worldview are stories you can't get "into," peopled with characters who are "cardboard" or "unrealized" or "contrived" or "inconsistent" or "unbelievable."

Yes! Scathing criticism of your ability as a writer to characterize may actually originate in your handling of your own worldview - i.e. of the THEME of the story you are telling.

There may be nothing wrong with your writing, but your reader/viewer will assess the work as lacking because it violates their worldview!

So one of the skills of a professional writer is to acquire the ability to argue all sides of a question, to adopt all kinds of different worldviews, to imbue characters with distinctive worldviews and argue both for and against the reader's worldview.

Acquiring such a skill takes a lot of noggin' knocking!

One of the disciplines that helps in learning to bespeak varying worldviews is philosophy, and another is just plain IMAGINATION.

In order to imagine what the world looks like from the worldview opposite or athwart your own, you must know your own worldview.

Your worldview resides deep down inside your subconscious mind. (really deep where you really REALLY don't want to look).

Some writers should look consciously into their subconscious -- others go into writer's block when they do, and so shouldn't.

And no rule about writing applies to any given person at all points in life, or all times of the day -- or for every project.

Many beginning writers spend years trying to find "the" way to write stories by asking working writers how they do it.

Many genre writers write the same way all the time because they are actually writing the same book over and over, producing a totally uniform product (Romance, Mystery, and Juveniles require this).

But genres go in and out of fashion, and a fully functional professional writer must be able to switch genres -- which might mean being able to change "the way" you write.

Imagination resides mostly in the subconscious mind, deep down where the "you" that walks around the "real" world connects with the ineffable, the Soul, or the Divine - however you conceptualize it.

Imagination transcends what we call Reality.

Imagination is the stock in trade of the storyteller.

It's actually what we are selling - that's right, we sell IMAGINATION.

How in the world can that happen? Anyone can imagine that we sell the product of our imagination - but how is it that we could "sell" (get paid for) transferring the capacity to imagine to others?

But that is in fact what a "good" book does. That is what happens when the beginning and ending of a story match, and the tone, or note, or color, of beginning and end harmonize, strike a chord deep in the reader/viewer's subconscious.

When you have imbibed a really "good" story - you come out of the experience energized, refreshed, renewed in a way normally attributed to a perfect night's sleep after really great sex.

There's an energy that awakens, or sparks, or kindles inside us when we connect with that deepest level of imagination.

We do it in REM sleep - processing and digesting experiences of the day. Theory has it that in sleep the soul leaves the body and visits with the Divine, getting a whole new perspective on Life, returning to the confined level of vision with new confidence.

Note that often the prescription to break into the utter hysteria that follows a tremendous bereavement is a sedative and a deep, long sleep.

Very often the person awakens to work through the grieving process back to sanity -- but often as a different person.

The experience of imbibing a good story resembles that treatment or prescription of SLEEP. Reading can be very like REM sleep. Refreshing.

In that altered state of consciousness, we touch Imagination.

The fiction writer might then be described as a physician to the Imagination, a specialist.

But what happens if the writer's imagination fails?

There's a big market (bigger than any) for fiction that's just the same-old-same-old devoid of Imagination.

Contact with Imagination is dangerous and disturbing, even painful. After a long period without it, we flinch from exposure -- just as a long period of inactivity makes physical movement painful. (think physical therapy after having a cast on for months)

That's the condition the general public is in right now, atrophied Imagination. At some point, soon I think, it will be time to awaken Imagination again, but we're not there yet.

You might discover when that point approaches by watching TV news with a writer's eye, not seeing what they want you to see, and not believing what they want you to believe, but understanding the interaction between the sellers of "news" and the buyers of "news."

Here is an observation and discussion of the US government at work on the Healthcare Reform legislation that indicates where the Imagination failures are occurring at the highest levels of government.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/worldbuilding-from-reality.html

Read all the way down to the visual description of the conference room, the imagery.

What I saw was government still being run on paper. Executives who can't keyboard.

My Imagination then led to speculation about what's wrong with our government -- and a story premise emerged. "What if we've out-grown the form of government we're using?"

What if the "incompetence" we see in our Lawmakers, Executive and even now sometimes in the Judicial branch is not incompetence at all? What if these very intelligent people have been handed a job to do which is totally impossible to accomplish with the tools they have mastered?

What if computer illiteracy is destroying the effectiveness of our government?

That's a leap of imagination beyond the headlines.

That was in March of 2010, and here it is barely July and another image emerges onto the TV screen in the midst of flailing incompetence by our hired managers (Executive branch).

We have the Gulf Oil spill - a disaster beyond imagination! But it's made worse by "incompetence."

So Government steps in (to protect the people and the people's property - the coast). And they grab some money out of BP's pocket and take over responsibility for distributing that money to those whose livelihoods have been destroyed by BP's incompetence.

And what pops up on the TV news screen but a picture of people applying for reparations from BP.

What do we see? A folding table strewn with PAPER, and a lone person sitting there with a pen to write with. Not a computer screen, notebook, netbook, or database in sight.

Small wonder the cash isn't flowing to those who've been robbed of their livelihoods.

What SHOULD we see instead?

----IMAGINARY SCENE-----------

A table with maybe 10 computer workstations, some turned out for people to walk up to and fill in forms, some turned in with workers before them to verify claims data, a huge display screen behind the workers showing the "take a number - number this to station that," and an ATM machine where you can check your bank balance to see the BP deposit was made.

You walk in with your various proofs of loss (as posted on the BP website so everyone knows what to bring), you fill out a computer form on a workstation, wait for your number to be called, present your physical proofs to the clerk.

The clerk checks all the databases to verify you own this boat, the mortgage is that much with this bank, your IRS return last year showed what you made (and the year before the recession), your own database of client cancellations, your house mortgage data, and whatever else is relevant to what the oil spill has cost you.

Most of this is paperless. Whatever paper you had to bring, they scan it into the computer in a twinkling. The machine calculates the payment you should get today, and deposits it to your bank account.

You go to the ATM and check your balance, then walk out.

It took you maybe an hour or two to gather your proof of loss, maybe twenty minutes to present it, five minutes max for the deposit to show up on your bank account.

------END IMAGINARY SCENE-------

THAT is the service we deserve for our taxes.

Why don't we have it? Why isn't BP running the reparations like that?

In my opinion, none of that should be run by either BP or Government. There should be a private company whose main business is paying insurance claims that has all this set up for hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, acts of terrorism (yes, insurance should cover all that which it currently does not).

Actually, there are some private companies that pretty much have this kind of infrastructure set up - lacking of course the ability to verify your financial business - and that's companies like Paychex which outsource payroll payments.

Geico (my car insurance company) has a service that works pretty much like the one I described. I got a crunch in my car body. The fellow came by, looked it over, put the data into a portable (wireless) computer, and his portable printer cut the check while I was standing there, for very few minutes actually. It was the right amount to cover the repair, too.

So there really isn't a huge leap of imagination involved in the scene I constructed. It's an extrapolation - easily within an SF framework.

Why does it look so insanely ridiculous to us?

Because of a FAILURE OF IMAGINATION in both the general public and the government.

Every problem between our current state of affairs and the scene I constructed could easily be solved with "off the shelf" technology, provided the solution could be imagined.

It can't be, because the cognitive faculty called imagination has failed in the general populace.

We can't imagine an HEA and we can't imagine a law being crafted properly and we can't imagine a liability claim being paid properly.

Gene Roddenberry once developed a TV series pilot where "Inconvenient" became the equivalent of "Illogical." The series never caught on.

In the 1960's, society was being run by emotion (Free Love) - so "Logic" worked as an SF premise for aliens.

In the 1990's society was not being run "conveniently" so "Inconvenient" didn't work as an SF premise.

In 2010 society is becoming run by government, so a Corporation that government outsources financial matters to would work as an SF premise. It would solve the "scalability" problem highlighted in

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/worldbuilding-from-reality.html

And while solving the scalability problem, you might find some imagination stretchers about worldbuilding for a galactic government Romance here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2007/05/presidential-politics-alien-style.html

In the current state of affairs, hiring the government to pay out reparations funds seems to me somewhat like hiring a janitorial service to secure your computer network.

Now isn't that a premise for a galactic love affair? Just imagine a galactic government hiring an Earth janitorial service to pay reparations for a galactic industrial disaster - like maybe accidentally exploding a sun?

What if someone came here to mine our Sun and accidentally destablized it? Who better to move us all to another planet than a janitorial service.

Or what about Jupiter? It's almost a Sun already? Suppose some mining operation from out there somewhere was mining Jupiter and accidentally set it alight?

Or maybe not so accidentally, but just carelessly not investing the necessary resources to prevent Jupiter igniting? Then they just set up a pay-station to pay us money for the loss of our planet? Now we have to go buy galactic technology to move ourselves? Talk about a witness protection program!

The lack of scalability in our current governmental setup would turn that scenario into a nightmare -- but remember, love conquers all. It's a principle built into the very fabric of the universe and works whether you believe in it or not.

Such a story premise would easily lend itself to discussing all sides of any question. You could craft a single novel (or series) so that you get the HEA ending of a Romance and at the same time, in the same events, you have the ineffable tragic loss that wrings the heart out, and the glimpse of a bright future where the HEA could actually be more real than it is in our current world.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Sunday, July 04, 2010

The Declaration of Independence

Documents from the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention, 1774-1789

In Congress, July 4, 1776. The unanimous declaration of the thirteen United States of America.




IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776.
THE UNANIMOUS
DECLARATION
OF THE
THIRTEEN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
WHEN, in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's GOD entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the Causes which impel them to the Separation.
We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their CREATOR, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate, that Governments long established, should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security. Such has been the patient Sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the Necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The History of the present King of Great-Britain is a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid World.
HE has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public Good.
HE has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing Importance, unless suspended in their Operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
HE has refused to pass other Laws for the Accommodation of large Districts of People, unless those People would relinquish the Right of Representation in the Legislature, a Right inestimable to them, and formidable to Tyranny only.
HE has called together Legislative Bodies at Places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the Depository of their public Records, for the sole Purpose of fatiguing them into Compliance with his Measures.
HE has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly Firmness his Invasions on the Rights of the People.
HE has refused for a long Time, after such Dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining, in the mean Time, exposed to all the Dangers of Invasion from without, and Convulsions within.
HE has endeavoured to prevent the Population of these States; for that Purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their Migrations hither, and raising the Conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
HE has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
HE has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the Tenure of their Offices, and the Amount and Payment of their Salaries.
HE has erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harrass our People, and eat out their Substance.
HE has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies, without the Consent of our Legislatures.
HE has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
HE has combined with others to subject us to a Jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by our Laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
FOR quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us:
FOR protecting them, by a mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
FOR cutting off our Trade with all Parts of the World:
FOR imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
FOR depriving us, in many Cases, of the Benefits of Trial by Jury:
FOR transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended Offences:
FOR abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an arbitrary Government, and enlarging its Boundaries, so as to render it at once an Example and fit Instrument for introducing the same absolute Rule into these Colonies:
FOR taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
FOR suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with Power to legislate for us in all Cases whatsoever.
HE has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection, and waging War against us.
HE has plundered our Seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our Towns, and destroyed the Lives of our People.
HE is, at this Time, transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to complete the Works of Death, Desolation, and Tyranny, already begun with Circumstances of Cruelty and Perfidy, scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous Ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized Nation.
HE has constrained our Fellow-Citizens, taken Captive on the high Seas, to bear Arms against their Country, to become the Executioners of their Friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
HE has excited domestic Insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the Inhabitants of our Frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known Rule of Warfare, is an undistinguished Destruction, of all Ages, Sexes, and Conditions.
IN every Stage of these Oppressions we have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble Terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated Injury. A Prince, whose Character is thus marked by every Act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the Ruler of a free People.
NOR have we been wanting in Attentions to our British Brethren. We have warned them, from Time to Time, of Attempts by their Legislature to extend an unwarrantable Jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the Circumstances of our Emigration and Settlement here. We have appealed to their native Justice and Magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the Ties of our common Kindred to disavow these Usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our Connexions and Correspondence. They too have been deaf to the Voice of Justice and of Consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the Necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the Rest of Mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
WE, therefore, the Representatives of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in GENERAL CONGRESS Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our Intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly Publish and Declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; that they are absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political Connexion between them and the State of Great-Britain, is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; and that as FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which INDEPENDENT STATES may of Right do. And for the Support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of DIVINE PROVIDENCE, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honour.
John Hancock.
GEORGIA, Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, Geo. Walton.
NORTH-CAROLINA, Wm. Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn.
SOUTH-CAROLINA, Edward Rutledge, Thos Heyward, junr. Thomas Lynch, junr. Arthur Middleton.
MARYLAND, Samuel Chase, Wm. Paca, Thos. Stone, Charles Carroll, of Carrollton.
VIRGINIA, George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Ths. Jefferson, Benja. Harrison, Thos. Nelson, jr. Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton.
PENNSYLVANIA, Robt. Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benja. Franklin, John Morton, Geo. Clymer, Jas. Smith, Geo. Taylor, James Wilson, Geo. Ross.
DELAWARE, Caesar Rodney, Geo. Read.
NEW-YORK, Wm. Floyd, Phil. Livingston, Frank Lewis, Lewis Morris.
NEW-JERSEY, Richd. Stockton, Jno. Witherspoon, Fras. Hopkinson, John Hart, Abra. Clark.
NEW-HAMPSHIRE, Josiah Bartlett, Wm. Whipple, Matthew Thornton.
MASSACHUSETTS-BAY, Saml. Adams, John Adams, Robt. Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry.
RHODE-ISLAND AND PROVIDENCE, &c. Step. Hopkins, William Ellery.
CONNECTICUT, Roger Sherman, Saml. Huntington, Wm. Williams, Oliver Wolcott.
IN CONGRESS, JANUARY 18, 1777.
ORDERED,
THAT an authenticated Copy of the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCY, with the Names of the MEMBERS of CONGRESS, subscribing the same, be sent to each of the UNITED STATES, and that they be desired to have the same put on RECORD.
By Order of CONGRESS,
JOHN HANCOCK, President.
BALTIMORE, in MARYLAND: Printed by MARY KATHARINE GODDARD.

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Mutants as Aliens in Sime~Gen

As I mentioned in passing a few weeks ago, I recently stumbled upon a blog entry from a reader in Australia who reread Unto Zeor, Forever (my second Sime~Gen novel published and my first Award Winner) recently and she identified the reason she had been fascinated by this novel years ago upon first reading. 

Unto Zeor, Forever is actually SFR where mutation generates the Alien in Alien Romance. 

Here's the blog post that started me thinking: 

-------quote--------
This was before I found romance. And looking back, the only one on the list that’s really a romance (and probably the only one of all the books I read at the time) is Unto Zeor Forever. Interesting that it was the romance that I obsessed abut the most, yes?
------end quote-------
http://lovecatsdownunder.blogspot.com/2010/05/rachel-needs-book-advice.html

Unto Zeor, Forever is a novel that stands about among its contemporaries because the plot is relationship driven.  It's typical SF in that the plot puts the fate of the world in jeopardy and appoints one particular individual to exceed his personal limits of capability (to sacrifice himself to near destruction, and even beyond destruction of everything dear to him in life) in order to Save The World.

It's a "first contact" novel.  Two people from distant societies isolated from each other first learn about the other, find the "other" unbearably strange, and must adjust.

It's a "Mutant Novel" - in that it's set in the far future when humanity has mutated into two strains.  It's set beyond the point where they each intend to kill the other side off, and at the cusp of the point where they begin true acceptance instead of an uneasy truce.

Acceptance means destruction of social orders on each side of their borders, so it's sociological science fiction.

It's "hard SF" in the sense that the main plot problem is a scientific puzzle that can be solved only by scientific experiment, investigation, amassing statistics, understanding the inscrutible nature of the two kinds of human biology (Sime and Gen). 

The resolution of the plot happens only because of a scientific breakthrough.  But the "science" is entirely "made up" - totally imaginary.  It simply fills the spot in their society that our science fills in ours.

All of those kinds of SF novel were extant and very popular at the time Unto Zeor, Forever was first published in hardcover (1978).

What was unusual, perhaps even anti-commercial publishing, was that all these types of SF novel were jumbled together in one novel, a "cross-sub-genre" novel. 

What you see when you read this novel depends on what you expect to see, what you want to see, and maybe also on your ability to follow a complex piece of writing.  It simply would never make a movie.  It's way too "deep." 

Unto Zeor, Forever is also a trope-busting novel, another reason it was shoved aside and shunned by vast sections of the publisher's target readership.

What trope did it bust?  SCIENCE FICTION must never contain ROMANCE, and ROMANCE must never contant SCIENCE FICTION.

The structure of Unto Zeor, Forever is basically SFR, and the blend is crafted in such a way that, unless you're well practiced at analyzing novels, you will have a hard time deciding if it's SF that contains Romance or Romance that contains SF. 

Romance drives the plot, but not via sexuality.  (but some readers can't tell that).

Science drives the plot, but not via "real" science or even extrapolation of existing science. 

Because the science is totally made up, this novel published as SF then might today be published as FANTASY!  (the field of futuristic fantasy didn't exist at that time so publishers had no way to market such a misfit novel)

What is the science made up of, though?  The material underlying the made-up science of the Sime~Gen Universe is material no self-respecting SF writer (such as Robert J. Sawyer who had the grace to drop a very insightful comment on my post about his fabulous SF novel, WWW: WATCH
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/06/wwwwatch-by-robert-j-sawyer.html ) would touch.

As the success of STAR TREK (slow to start as it was) illustrated, one core value of SF decades ago was the total rejection of the model of the universe in which God runs things, up close and personal.

In STAR TREK, all divine beings turn out to be frauds. 

At the time the Sime~Gen Universe world was built, STAR TREK had not yet been conceived, at least not in the form we eventually saw it take.

Science Fiction which I surveyed and analyzed had left the entire realm of human psychology, the human spirit, and the yearning for real touch with the Divine out of every story.

The philosophical premise of the SF field was simply that science can explain everything about humans (and non-humans) simply by studying biology, biochemistry, physics, and hard sciences. 

The premise that there exists and Divine force, that souls are real, was discarded before the worldbuilding began.

The Sime~Gen premise is "real SF" because it takes that blind assumption of all the writers and readers of the field, and challenges it from the blind spot.

That's right, Sime~Gen was deliberately crafted to blindside readers, hit where no one had hit before.

The science and worldbuilding of Sime~Gen is rooted in psychic sciences, spiritual sciences (karma, reincarnation), anthropology, linguistics, social sciences, psychology, and even religion. 

But in order to sell it, none of that could be allowed to show on the surface in the early novels.  (and to date, one novel where it's tackled head-on, has not made it into publication, The Farris Channel).

As a result of hiding the premises, and deliberately blindsiding the readership, half the fans drawn to the books really dislike the whole psychic, ESP, other dimensional aspects of the worldbuilding. 

Two Sime~Gen Novels allow some of that "The Soul Is Real" premise to trickle through into reader consciousness. 

Unto Zeor, Forever by Jacqueline Lichtenberg, and First Channel by Jean Lorrah and Jacqueline Lichtenberg are both blatant "Soul Mate" stories. 

First Channel was recently singled out in this Romance blog:

http://likesbooks.com/cgi-bin/bookReview.pl?BookReviewId=7437

-----quote----
While First Channel is not a romance, the story is propelled by Rimon and Kadi's feelings for each other. Other characters fall in love as well, some with tragic consequences. Events unfold over several years, giving it a more realistic feeling than in so many stories where everything is resolved in a relationship in a week or two. The setting was so unique that I am planning to read some of the other books in the series to find out what the future holds for the Sime and Gen.
-----end quote-----

It's more than "the story" that's propelled by the young couple's feelings for one another.  It's the plot of the book, AND the fate of the entire human species, Sime and Gen alike, as love itself cracks a scientific puzzle that has locked humanity into a decline into primitive warfare where 30 years old is ancient. 

Both these novels detail the meeting and mating of two people who are Soul Mates, Destined for each other.  Their decisions actually change history, change the world, at a deeply personal cost.

Jean Lorrah, after analyzing and dissecting an early draft of Unto Zeor, Forever, penetrated to the core of the matter with her premise that ONLY LOVE could ever have taught a Sime how not-to-Kill Gens. 

Buried deep inside Unto Zeor, Forever is the Great Theme of all Romance, "Love Conquers All" but it's not revealed until Jean Lorrah came along and detailed it in First Channel. 

Each member of each couple makes certain independent free will choices, and the cascading results of those choices tumble them willy nilly into the annals of History. 

As mentioned above, "The Soul Is Real" concept leads directly to REINCARNATION IS REAL in the Sime~Gen Universe. 

So if you know how to read these novels, if you know the unpublished secrets behind what's really happening, you can see that you are reading a series of LIFETIMES lived by the same souls, taking different relationships to each other, learning from past errors, making up for the untoward results of their previous actions. 

And in some lifetimes, the souls are rewarded by finding their Soul Mates and achieving spiritual goals -- all without knowing it, just like in our real lives. 

None of these novels could ever have been published if all that "Fantasy stuff" and that "Romance stuff" had been blatantly displayed on the surface.  And in fact, the merest whiff of these matters disqualified these novels from becoming publisher's "Lead Title" (the only one ever put on book shelves in chain stores or supermarkets). 

So even though Unto Zeor, Forever ends in a tragedy of monumental proportions, and heads into a hiatus of spiritual progress for one of the souls, you can see that the tragedy had a past-life cause and will generate a future HEA when you reread the series of 8 novels in different orders. 

Making a spiritual premise (Human Nature can change, and for the better too -- all humans are Good at the core) into the "Science" in the Science part of Science Fiction challenges the very definition of what SF really is. 

That subliminal challenge offends some, and awakens others to the vast possibilities SF of previous decades left unconsidered.

That awakening is starting to explode into our world with Vampire Romance, with female lead characters in Urban Fantasy, with warfare against Evil led by women. 

Here is a collection of links to links to my previous posts on the "science" upon which Sime~Gen's worldbuilding rests, included here because someone just wrote to me saying she'd found my first non-fiction book on the Tarot and wanted the rest.

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

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

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/04/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me.html 

And here's an exchange from twitter:

@JLichtenberg: @Azrael52 Novels now come in serials just like TV shows "story arc" - everything pubs send me is bk#X in YYseries #scifichat

@michaelspence @JLichtenberg (And whose fault is that? YOU were the first writer I read who talked in terms of series rather than individual stories! :^) )

I always find it amazing when other professional writers say they've read some of my novels, or even just Star Trek Lives!

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

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Open letter to John Scalzi, Scott Turow, Allison Kelley.

Dear Scott Turow, Allison Kelley, John Scalzi,

Thank you very much for everything you do  on behalf of Authors' Guild, Romance Writers Of America, and Science Fiction Writers of America to defend authors' copyrights against copyright infringement. We very much appreciate having an address to which to send our complaints, and the comfort of knowing that you compile a database of the most egregious "pirates" and pirate sites.

Despite small triumphs, ignorance persists among honest readers; lies about the legality of "sharing" go unchallenged, and the problem is getting much worse.

Please Scott Turow (Authors' Guild), Allison Kelley (Romance Writers of America), John Scalzi (Science Fiction Writers Of America) will you talk to one another, set up one powerhouse task force, meet regularly, share resources, engage your members, give authors one central "Go To" address where we can submit complaints, report piracy sites, blogs and yahoogroups, cc our own individual take-down notices.

One forceful industry voice could shut down an entire infringing account and insist on a hosting site complying with their own TOS where their TOS has been repeatedly violated, instead of individual authors taking down one file at a time.

Thank you.

Rowena Cherry (for Authors Without A Yacht)
Friend of ePublishing Award 2010

Permission granted to forward, share, repost,

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Humanzees?

The other day I caught the last few minutes of a TV program about Oliver, an elderly chimpanzee now retired to a primate sanctuary, who spent many years as a freak show exhibit, labeled the world's only "humanzee," half human, half chimp. Here's an article about him:

Oliver

He does look strangely near-human for an ape, as you can see from the picture. Also, he chose to walk upright (until crippled by arthritis) and had many other human-like habits. He preferred the company of our species over his own and only recently started learning to get along with other chimps. DNA testing finally revealed that he has the same number of chromosomes as any other chimpanzee and definitely belongs to that species. Scientists quoted on the TV special, however, suggested that his genetic makeup contains some unique features that may indicate he's a mutant or a member of a very rare subspecies.

Interestingly, one reason he had to leave the home environment where he lived for a long time was that, not being exposed to the company of his own kind, he became sexually imprinted on human females. When he started trying to mate with women, he became dangerous.

The notion of a human-chimpanzee hybrid would have sounded much more plausible in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Some anthropologists of that era seriously proposed that non-white races were missing links between lower primates and Homo sapiens. Edgar Rice Burroughs, in the episodes of his Tarzan series set in the lost city of Opar, seemed to think his readers would have no trouble accepting that the degenerate inhabitants of the ruined city descended from interbreeding between human beings and great apes.

The plight of Oliver reminds me of Robert Heinlein's 1947 novella "Jerry Was a Man," set in a future when many kinds of genetically engineered animals are commercially available. A rich woman buys Jerry, a worn-out working chimpanzee with enhanced intelligence and some capacity for speech, to save him from being euthanized now that he has become economically useless. The TV anthology series MASTERS OF SCIENCE FICTION filmed an infuriatingly distorted adaptation of this story. To begin with, the script made Jerry an android, thus abandoning one of the story's major philosophical issues, the question of the boundary between animal and human. And the androids in the show didn't even make sense; the only job we actually saw them performing was walking a grid across a mine field in the role of animated explosive detectors. As if a society capable of constructing artificial human beings would waste them by letting them blow themselves up in a task equally doable by much simpler and cheaper robots! Worse, in Heinlein's novella Jerry the intelligent chimp proves his right to be classified as a "man" by demonstrating his desire for freedom and appreciation for music. In the film, the humanity of Jerry the android is demonstrated by his willingness to lie—where Jerry the chimp shows in court that he not only knows the difference between truth and falsehood but also prefers truth—and his readiness to shove one of his fellow workers into the path of a live mine so he can survive. Once again I wonder what, if anything, TV writers are thinking. (Yeah, okay, I can take a good guess: They think a cynical, fight-for-survival view of "humanity" will impress the audience as more credible than a sentimental, uplifting one. Haven't they ever heard of the altruistic behavior found even within societies of "lower" animals? Aargh.)

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Where Expert Romance Writers Fail

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Humans Can Imagine; Humans Can Do

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Humans Can Imagine; Humans Can Do

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

Now how does this apply to both SF and Romance?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Think hard about that attitude.

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

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

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

Now, think about the core essence of Romance.

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

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

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

Ho-ho!

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

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

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

Philosophically, SF and Romance are identical.

So why is Romance still unworthy of vast public respect?

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

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

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

So there's no such thing as SFR.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And where does that fiction come from?

Writers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So @MoonWolf95 commented back at me:

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

to which @PennyAsh answered

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

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

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

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

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

The next question was dropped in by the moderator:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So @PennyAsh answers:

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

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

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

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

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

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

So I said:

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

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

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

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

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

And another writer chimed in answering me:

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

But I was busy answering David Rozansky:

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

To which @PennyAsh replied:

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

And I finally saw and responded to @madpoet

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

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

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

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

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

And to @PennyAsh I finally answered:

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

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

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

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

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

Meanwhile MoonWolf95 has been thinking hard:

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

But I was busy answering @GeneDoucette

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Rozansky makes a brilliant remark

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

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

And I finally got back to @madpoet

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I was grinning as I answered @GeneDoucette

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And more writers thinking hard-hard-HARD.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Look over that discussion substituting "HEA" for Utopia.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We'd have a big job ahead of us.

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