In the December LOCUS, author Charles Stross pours ice water on a well-established SF trope, extraterrestrial colonization. In his view, colonization (as opposed to simple exploration) of other planets is almost impossible. After a comment about the lethal qualities of even the terrestrial environment for most of Earth’s history, he remarks, “Even now, if you dropped an unprotected human on Earth in a random location, then 90% of them would die. This is because you will have dropped them on an ice cap, or in the ocean. Only about 10% of our planet’s surface area in the current epoch is habitable—even with protective clothing, equipment, and techniques.” I’m reminded of the conversation in Heinlein’s FARMER IN THE SKY where the young narrator tells his father about skeptics who maintain that Ganymede shouldn’t be colonized because it’s not a natural habitat for human beings. His father replies that neither is Los Angeles. Without advanced technology, southern California would support only a tiny fraction of its present population.
Stross denies the common fictional assumption that a colony on another planet could support human life, even in an enclosed habitat, with only a source of oxygen and a way of growing food. He highlights the fact that the micronutrients in the plants and animals we eat depend on the nourishment those organisms absorb from the life forms they consume, and so on all the way down the food chain. To ensure our long-term survival, we couldn’t just raise a select group of plant and animal species in a greenhouse; we’d have to bring along their entire ecosystem. We don’t know enough about the micronutrients we need for life to take short cuts. He contrasts biosphere experiments that have run for a year or less with the demands of supporting a civilization for centuries.
I’d never thought of the colonization problem in these terms. Here’s one of his essays on the topic, although most of it deals with the sheer difficulty of getting people to habitable planets in any reasonable time span. There are lots of interesting comments below his post:
High Frontier Redux
What do you think? Is Stross’s pessimism justified?
Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Sizing Up The Competition Part 3 Romancing The Web
As you can see, from most of my blog entries here, but especially Parts 1 & 2 of this Sizing Up The Competition series:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/11/sizing-up-competition-part-1-tigress.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/12/sizing-up-competition-part-2-winning.html
...I obviously spend a lot of time thinking about Love and Romance and how they relate to each other. One place I study this relationship is on Amazon, among the reader commentaries.
On amazon, I see a generational divide gaping wider.
Now, please remember the essence of the science fiction/fantasy fan is the retention of the Child-like Sense of Wonder far into adulthood. That's CHILD-LIKE not childish. It's a canary attitude. Remember the canary from part 1 of this "Sizing up the Competition" series.
So we can't really parse this readership by age-group alone. The science fiction/Paranormal Romance reader can be any age -- and each age contains all the other ages.
Many SF/F fans are extremely mature even as pre-teens, and many middle aged fans love to read YA novels. They may not get the same charge out of it that they once did, but from an older perspective they get a different, equally potent, affirmation of life.
That demographic fact has confounded the major publishers ever since I can remember. As far as I can tell, they're more confounded now than ever, and amazon is just making it worse for them. Do read that "sleeping with the enemy" blog I linked in a previous part -- here it is again:.
http://kianadavenportdialogues.blogspot.com/2011/08/sleeping-with-enemy-cautionary-tale.html
On the other hand, there is a definite shift in the way huge numbers of people look at the world, at each other, and at the relationship among people.
Here is a blog entry that defines the generation gap in terms of age and experience of Relationship.
This marketer, John Carlton, asked a young friend how young people size each other up these days -- what they look at among a person's possessions and connections, their choices on how to spend money, and their preferences in music, to tell whether to establish a relationship with that person.
http://www.john-carlton.com/2011/09/cross-cultural-exam-9-boomer-v-xer-with-prize/?link1
The generational difference that the young consultant pinpointed was simply being "at home" on the web.
The internet, more even than the cell phone and texting, has caused a major shift in how people evaluate each other.
Your online footprint reveals as much, maybe more, about you as was once revealed by your book shelves and record collection.
I noted that in sizing people up before entering a relationship, there was little emphasis on how a person dresses, their physical attractiveness or ethnicity.
Now, the marketer was after a general impression, but here we're focused more on how people size up another person with respect to possible romantic, love-and-marriage, relationships and/or sexual potential.
"First impressions are lasting" as they say (which is very true) and apparently today's first impression is your web-presence, what sites you interact on, and who you "friend" or connect with in circles.
The consultant pointed out that the world has changed in such a way that young people don't have what I call a "universe of discourse" in common now. There are no particular songs or singers that "everyone who is anyone" follows. There are no books or authors that everyone knows. There's just nothing that "everyone" has in common to create an "everyone."
As I've pointed out in previous posts this lack of the common experience is a stealthy but major change that few are taking seriously enough.
I've been thinking that a lot of this fragmentation is not so much due just to the Web or Cable TV with hundreds of channels, plus games. I've begun to suspect it's simply a result of population growth. I recall a statistic from a study of Twitter that indicated that humans just can't solidify associations with more than about 1,000 people, and even that's a stretch. 500 or so is a real inflection point.
The world of 3-TV-networks that don't even broadcast all night, so that "everyone" watches one of the 3 eight-o'clock shows, is gone. Long ago, studies of rush-hour highway traffic and the cost of building more lanes or more roads caused businesses to "stagger" work hours so people don't all hit the road at the same minute. Even so, we still waste gas and health on traffic jams. Maybe that's just population growth.
Our entire economic system depends for its health on "growth" -- if the economy doesn't "grow" we are in dire straits. Why is that? Are we alligators or sharks that we never stop growing until we die? Statistics indicate the number of new jobs that must be created because of the number of new people entering the workforce, and so the economy must grow or there won't be enough jobs for everyone. But now we've reached an inflection point where the baby-boomers are retiring. Will the workforce shrink rather than grow despite the number of young people looking for jobs? Has our population (in the USA) topped out at 308,745,538 (census bureau as of 2010)?
That's double 1950's statistic of 1950 152,271,417
Here's a portrait of 1964 which I assembled while working on my Memoirs for a publisher who wants the book sooner rather than later.
Color television makes its way into U.S. homes.
April 24, 1964, Socorro UFO sighting by a Policeman makes folks wonder anew. Forgotten Roswell incident resurrected.
India Mourning Nehru, 74, Dead of a Heart Attack
June 1964 Civil Rights Bill Passed, 73-27
July 1964 Ranger Takes Close-Up Moon Photos gaining data on Landing Site for Man
Gal of gas costs 30 cents
USA Pop 191,888,791 (that's from a website http://www.npg.org/facts/us_historical_pops.htm )
More has changed than just the number of people crammed into the same USA borders. We now import about 60% of our food supply (I heard that on TV last year; it might not be accurate now).
Before World War II, we were net exporters of food and energy. When war hit, we invented nylon and other synthetics because we couldn't import enough rubber to field our war vehicles with tires and gaskets and provide silk stockings for the women who marched out to fill in the work force as the men left to be grunts for the military. So women wore nylons (with seams up the back and garter belts).
We invented synthetics (mostly made from our abundant oil) because the natural sources of materials couldn't keep up with demand. Then the baby boomer population continued to increase demand, so more synthetic materials (plastics in particular!) became marketable to fill the demand for buttons (formerly made of ivory or bone).
It's all about competition, the Tiger and the Canary. Tigers and Canaries are two different species, one living on the ground the other in the trees. They could get along fine. We humans are all one species and we all want the exact same living space, climate, easy abundant food and energy -- and materials for satin sheets and sexy clothing. And we're competing hard for jobs and mates!
Is the rise of infidelity (if there is a rise) due to that competition for a mate in close quarters, but in a teaming mass of people where it's hard to tell one from another? Is Romance being killed off by sexuality? If so, why? If not, why? (lots of novels in those essay questions)
Now go to imdb.com and look up the popular films from the 1960's, check out the way Romance was portrayed. See if you can find sales statistics and box office statistics on the Romance genre. And all the while, takes notes for your next novel.
The internet and the web 2.0 interactivity that I've discussed many times here is the real dividing line not just in the skills people bring to the workplace, not just in how people buy books or consume film and TV, but in how people actually choose a mate.
And I don't mean computerized dating services. As this young marketing consultant pointed out, people raised with Facebook and Twitter, with blogs and texting, and social networking aggregators, with "feeds" and google, look at each other differently.
That difference has to be affecting what seems plausible in a romantic encounter.
I wrote about the now classic film You've Got Mail here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/04/youve-got-mail-1998-award-winning-film.html
And there's more to come. In fact, it's happening as you read this. There is an explosion of creativity being unleashed by the web, connecting people, engaging people in cooperative endeavors during which they "hook up" one way or another.
The co-founders of twitter want to back a new web-based venture that they envision, according to an interview with them I saw on television during Worldcon 2011, will connect people in new ways that twitter could not.
Here's where to sign up to be notified when they launch this thing -- which they aren't discussing yet in detail.
http://lift.do/
Note that it's not a "dot-com" URL.
The biggest surge of life-altering, perception-altering change that I'm seeing now is in the online video community.
YouTube was the ground-breaker, like twitter, and it's still going big time. The most popular videos now approach professional quality production.
On twitter, and LinkedIn, and other social networks I've found a large number of folks "crowd-sourcing" the financing for low budget films. Yes, I know you know about all that, but the significance of this development is much bigger than anyone has guessed.
The significance for the romance and science fiction market is huge. This is the opportunity of a lifetime, and the young people who have grown up with this new method of assessing new associates from afar are the ones poised to exploit this opportunity.
There's a new application to all this as well. For five or even ten years there has been a growing presence on the web of video presentations. Now, though, we are seeing the launch of professional scale ventures using the web as a platform.
The 2008 and 2010 election cycles saw web-sourcing of funding and Facebook page "like" counts for candidates burgeoning. I expect the 2012 cycle will find the web even more significant. Already, the primary candidates are dueling on YouTube.
Every product imaginable (including novels) are now pitched with short YouTube video advertisements. They're on every commercial page you visit - just roll your mouse over and a little video pops up.
But here's the big development of major significance to Romance writers, especially those just starting out and enthusiastically mixing other genres into Romance.
WEB-BASED-NETWORKS.
Not just little videos or advertisements, not just a movie or TV type Star Trek episode. I'm talking about the genesis of an entire "network" -- or maybe "station" or "channel" -- but I think it's going to become a network with lots of channels carrying the network shows and presenting "local" shows.
I'm talking about gbtv.com -- yeah, the Glenn Beck exclusive subscription only channel.
Before you start jumping around and screaming, take a deep breath and dismiss the nature of the content from your mind.
We're business people here, and we're talking business model in a world where the 1964 writer's business model has collapsed (maybe because of population growth; maybe not). Nobody missed the collapse of Borders bookstore chain this year, did they? You've all bought a Kindle Fire or Color Nook? Now Amazon Prime (film/TV/fast-delivery) has added a free!!! ebook borrowing opportunity. Publishers have to opt-in and get an advertisement or two tossed into the package -- and authors get paid if their book is borrowed -- but free for an annual fee for Prime. Think business model, competition, and don't forget to think mating. Mating spawns new growth.
Publishing is poof-gone! The traditional publishers are dinosaurs and, judging by the major, pro-active discontent among widely published authors, the publishers are finally getting the message.
Amazon's growth, proliferation into publishing, diversification, and international footprint have made that insignificant little online bookstore called Amazon the worst enemy and darkest nightmare of Manhattan's paper-based establishment.
Think again about that change in the way younger people assess others for potential relationships. Amazon allows you to "share" wishlists and purchases, gossip in forums, every social tool there is!
Think hard about that generation gap and the economic woes as the baby boomers retire. The baby boomers didn't grow up on the web, they grew up with it. Heck, they invented it.
A new generation is finding uses for the Web that shatter the very foundations of society, maybe our entire civilization.
"When you have a tiger by the tail, there's only one thing to do. Swarm aboard and ride it."
Almost at the same time that Glenn Beck launched his gbtv.com venture (it's not only his show; he's doing children's programming, comedy, and a huge charity venture too!) the Oprah Winfrey cable network lost some major stars and reported dismal quarterly results. Beck now has a bigger audience that Oprah. When the goosebumps that idea gave you subside, think hard about what it means in terms of the mating game and competition.
Cable TV in general has been falling off drastically in the number of viewers who watch any given show. Cox Cable now provides (for no additional cost) access via the web for subscribers to watch TV episodes and movies -- pretty much trying to compete with Amazon Prime streaming TV, but only some content is available via the web.
Now think about the 16 year old's "Coming Out Party" from the Steampunk/Victorian era. Girls have traditionally been "marketed" on the "marriage market" and competition has always been fierce.
Re-read that young marketing consultant's comments. People who live on the web, just don't have any given piece of fiction or music in common -- there's too much, the audiences have scattered. Yet marketers continue to try to use "social networking" to get these loosely interlaced circles to tell each other about products, to create or unify a market.
The "Christian Mingle" online dating service advertises they gained more than a million subscribers last year.
Did you see Microsoft unveiling their Windows 8 platform, designed to compete with touchscreen Apple devices such as iPod, iPhone and iPad? It makes your desktop more like your hand-held. The iPhone 5 is reputed to be designed for a larger screen. Consumer's Reports feature article on Cell Phones indicated none of them are good at voice. Texting and Data is how people communicate now.
Did you see how schools are equiping kids with iPads? Schools are raising money for this technology upgrade by asking kids to solicit donations from friends and relatives.
You're a writer. Your task in this life is to connect the dots and make a picture of the world for your readers. In SF or Paranormal Romance, you need a dash of futurology. Extrapolate where these trends are going next. Keep an eye on that population statistic.
Connect the dots I've highlighted in these 3 parts of Sizing Up The Competition.
There are lots of dots, and no two writers will make the same connections, display the same picture.
Broadcast networks are GONE. Blockbuster Video is GONE. Borders bookstore chain is GONE. Large scale conglomerate-owned publishers are GONE or going. Mass market is GONE, sales shrinking while e-books sales grow (and I haven't even talked about audiobooks, which my novels are now entering).
Listen to that marketer's consultant -- young people will not now and probably never will, form a "mass" of anything.
Mass production may be GONE as Toffler predicted. We are moving to customized production, not mass production -- though the statistics don't show that yet. If you wait until they show it to write your novel, you'll be too late!
Mass EMPLOYMENT is likewise a dinosaur. This generation coming out of college this year is the second generation headed for a life where "career" is not "get a job, keep it, retire." This is a generation of job-hoppers raised by job-hoppers and ladder-climbers, and it will become the "self-employed" generation.
Remember "climbing the corporate ladder" meant moving your family from place to place for 20 years, so your kids had no continuity of associates, schools, or even state-requirements for graduation from high school. Those corporate kids are now raising kids.
So we have a second rootless generation now getting set to raise a generation that lives on the Web!
What do you want to bet "marrying the boy next door" will become "marrying my best Facebook bud?"
Homeschooled kids best friends are web-acquaintances -- oh, yeah, and iPhone now makes facetalk a generally available way to associate, though the sound isn't so good.
If you are going to write Romance with rich, deep, complex themes so that the novels you produce become cross-generation classics that last a hundred years and gain vast respect among non-Romance readers -- then you must write for this next rootless generation of Web-buddies, and for the kids they will raise, and for the next generation those kids will raise.
You must make the past of the Victorian era, the 1930's and the 1960's etc accessible, comprehensible, and respectable to those raised in the 21st century.
Even if you wrote such a masterpiece, or a series of them, how would you reach this fragmented generation?
Observe what happens with Glenn Beck's gbtv.com venture -- NOT the content, the business model. He's leaving Manhattan for the lower-tax, more business friendly Texas. Could it be Manhattan is too expensive for web-TV? Could that be the deathnell of the BIG CITY living-model?
Watch what works, what doesn't, what they're copying, what they're emulating, and how they make money at it. Especially watch where they advertise and how much they spend on that.
Watch what happens to Oprah's cable venture, and figure out why.
Watch for things like this:
http://webbeat.tv/
I met one of the fellows behind that one on Facebook through the actor who's reading the Sime~Gen novels for audible.com production -- whom I met on twitter. It's ALL social networking, folks!
Here's what I'm seeing right now.
Beck beat the drum on his Web TV launch for months, with a subscriber price of $100/year (about the same as Amazon Prime) for access to all he presents. ($50 for about half what he's doing online).
But as the launch date approached, all of a sudden he started offering a gadget to connect your TV to his show via the internet -- assuming you have high speed internet at home.
http://web.gbtv.com/roku/index.jsp -- he's pitching the Roku device.
I tried it. It's the same kind of deal as google-TV or Viera -- you see a screen full of little squares with logos of subscription services, click from your remote control, find a list of programs offered by that subscription service. Some are free with ads, some cost an additional annual fee (most all require a signup routine using a computer or suffering through a signup using the half-assed remote control). Netflix, as you've all heard, raised their fee and lost subscribers. Now it's tottering on the stock market. Find out where those subscribers went. (Amazon Prime is one possibility, Roku another, Hulu is on most of the services that Netflix is on). They're all "competing for a mate" now!
If you read the comments on the roku installation somewhere on that website, you'll see not everyone can master it, make it work -- a lot of people were disgusted with the tricky-tech. I didn't like it, but it only took me about an hour to make it work. It produces good HD, better than Sony's service.
I'm not ready to drop cable TV yet, but I can see the economic squeeze making people choose, and they will choose to maintain an internet connection rather than both TV and internet, if they must.
You have to understand the desperate fervor among Beck's followers. They are starving for more of the kind of show he put on Fox at 5PM eastern -- so he's now doing 2-hours instead of 1 hour, and he's starting at 5PM eastern, complete with studio audience, replicating the show that drew the largest cable audience and made everyone who follows audience-share statistics panic (which is why they attacked him, not really for his content, but because people listened to that content in preference to other advertising supported content -- business model, remember?)
So even this audience of younger people and older people who just can't cut the tech of installing Roku, want this content, but were not subscribing in sufficient numbers for computer-only apparently. (or why would he offer a headache like Roku?) Sales statistics last Christmas were showing "flatscreen tv" as a big item moving briskly and most of them have a plug to connect you to the internet via your household router.
I upgraded my household tech this year starting in January with my TV. I got a Panasonic Viera and hardwired it to my router (it's now on wireless to my router). I got a Sony google-tv blu-ray player, and plugged the HD DVR from Cox into one HDMI plug of the TV and the SONY into another of the 3 HDMI plugs on the TV. And I hardwired the Sony to my router separately from the TV. So now my router has a wireless connected computer and 2 wired-connected computers on it plus a blu-ray google-tv device plus a Viera TV. (Viera doesn't offer google TV - this is a hugely complex market but you need to understand it to solve our master puzzle subject here, raising the prestige of Romance genre among the general public.)
I now have a Roku plugged into the "Game" plug for my TV. This is called market-research for a reason -- you have to look at markets and figure out what flies where.
The Viera offers access to Netflix (as does the Sony and Roku) and some other things I don't use, but Viera's business model is to provide more kinds of online access with time -- I haven't seen any additions this year. Roku has a variety of offerings I don't see elsewhere.
Next week we'll explore the fragmentation of the "audience" and the way content providers (like you, the writer) are spinning in bewilderment but boldly and heroically chasing that audience, or attracting new audiences, out-building or maybe out-competing their forebears.
The Fiction Delivery System has changed.
You must understand those changes to take advantage of them to deliver your stories to your specific audience.
But better yet would be to anticipate (as in the science fiction writer's mainstay, futurology) the future changes, so you can position your fiction where it can't be missed by the evolving system.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/11/sizing-up-competition-part-1-tigress.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/12/sizing-up-competition-part-2-winning.html
...I obviously spend a lot of time thinking about Love and Romance and how they relate to each other. One place I study this relationship is on Amazon, among the reader commentaries.
On amazon, I see a generational divide gaping wider.
Now, please remember the essence of the science fiction/fantasy fan is the retention of the Child-like Sense of Wonder far into adulthood. That's CHILD-LIKE not childish. It's a canary attitude. Remember the canary from part 1 of this "Sizing up the Competition" series.
So we can't really parse this readership by age-group alone. The science fiction/Paranormal Romance reader can be any age -- and each age contains all the other ages.
Many SF/F fans are extremely mature even as pre-teens, and many middle aged fans love to read YA novels. They may not get the same charge out of it that they once did, but from an older perspective they get a different, equally potent, affirmation of life.
That demographic fact has confounded the major publishers ever since I can remember. As far as I can tell, they're more confounded now than ever, and amazon is just making it worse for them. Do read that "sleeping with the enemy" blog I linked in a previous part -- here it is again:.
http://kianadavenportdialogues.blogspot.com/2011/08/sleeping-with-enemy-cautionary-tale.html
On the other hand, there is a definite shift in the way huge numbers of people look at the world, at each other, and at the relationship among people.
Here is a blog entry that defines the generation gap in terms of age and experience of Relationship.
This marketer, John Carlton, asked a young friend how young people size each other up these days -- what they look at among a person's possessions and connections, their choices on how to spend money, and their preferences in music, to tell whether to establish a relationship with that person.
http://www.john-carlton.com/2011/09/cross-cultural-exam-9-boomer-v-xer-with-prize/?link1
The generational difference that the young consultant pinpointed was simply being "at home" on the web.
The internet, more even than the cell phone and texting, has caused a major shift in how people evaluate each other.
Your online footprint reveals as much, maybe more, about you as was once revealed by your book shelves and record collection.
I noted that in sizing people up before entering a relationship, there was little emphasis on how a person dresses, their physical attractiveness or ethnicity.
Now, the marketer was after a general impression, but here we're focused more on how people size up another person with respect to possible romantic, love-and-marriage, relationships and/or sexual potential.
"First impressions are lasting" as they say (which is very true) and apparently today's first impression is your web-presence, what sites you interact on, and who you "friend" or connect with in circles.
The consultant pointed out that the world has changed in such a way that young people don't have what I call a "universe of discourse" in common now. There are no particular songs or singers that "everyone who is anyone" follows. There are no books or authors that everyone knows. There's just nothing that "everyone" has in common to create an "everyone."
As I've pointed out in previous posts this lack of the common experience is a stealthy but major change that few are taking seriously enough.
I've been thinking that a lot of this fragmentation is not so much due just to the Web or Cable TV with hundreds of channels, plus games. I've begun to suspect it's simply a result of population growth. I recall a statistic from a study of Twitter that indicated that humans just can't solidify associations with more than about 1,000 people, and even that's a stretch. 500 or so is a real inflection point.
The world of 3-TV-networks that don't even broadcast all night, so that "everyone" watches one of the 3 eight-o'clock shows, is gone. Long ago, studies of rush-hour highway traffic and the cost of building more lanes or more roads caused businesses to "stagger" work hours so people don't all hit the road at the same minute. Even so, we still waste gas and health on traffic jams. Maybe that's just population growth.
Our entire economic system depends for its health on "growth" -- if the economy doesn't "grow" we are in dire straits. Why is that? Are we alligators or sharks that we never stop growing until we die? Statistics indicate the number of new jobs that must be created because of the number of new people entering the workforce, and so the economy must grow or there won't be enough jobs for everyone. But now we've reached an inflection point where the baby-boomers are retiring. Will the workforce shrink rather than grow despite the number of young people looking for jobs? Has our population (in the USA) topped out at 308,745,538 (census bureau as of 2010)?
That's double 1950's statistic of 1950 152,271,417
Here's a portrait of 1964 which I assembled while working on my Memoirs for a publisher who wants the book sooner rather than later.
Color television makes its way into U.S. homes.
April 24, 1964, Socorro UFO sighting by a Policeman makes folks wonder anew. Forgotten Roswell incident resurrected.
India Mourning Nehru, 74, Dead of a Heart Attack
June 1964 Civil Rights Bill Passed, 73-27
July 1964 Ranger Takes Close-Up Moon Photos gaining data on Landing Site for Man
Gal of gas costs 30 cents
USA Pop 191,888,791 (that's from a website http://www.npg.org/facts/us_historical_pops.htm )
More has changed than just the number of people crammed into the same USA borders. We now import about 60% of our food supply (I heard that on TV last year; it might not be accurate now).
Before World War II, we were net exporters of food and energy. When war hit, we invented nylon and other synthetics because we couldn't import enough rubber to field our war vehicles with tires and gaskets and provide silk stockings for the women who marched out to fill in the work force as the men left to be grunts for the military. So women wore nylons (with seams up the back and garter belts).
We invented synthetics (mostly made from our abundant oil) because the natural sources of materials couldn't keep up with demand. Then the baby boomer population continued to increase demand, so more synthetic materials (plastics in particular!) became marketable to fill the demand for buttons (formerly made of ivory or bone).
It's all about competition, the Tiger and the Canary. Tigers and Canaries are two different species, one living on the ground the other in the trees. They could get along fine. We humans are all one species and we all want the exact same living space, climate, easy abundant food and energy -- and materials for satin sheets and sexy clothing. And we're competing hard for jobs and mates!
Is the rise of infidelity (if there is a rise) due to that competition for a mate in close quarters, but in a teaming mass of people where it's hard to tell one from another? Is Romance being killed off by sexuality? If so, why? If not, why? (lots of novels in those essay questions)
Now go to imdb.com and look up the popular films from the 1960's, check out the way Romance was portrayed. See if you can find sales statistics and box office statistics on the Romance genre. And all the while, takes notes for your next novel.
The internet and the web 2.0 interactivity that I've discussed many times here is the real dividing line not just in the skills people bring to the workplace, not just in how people buy books or consume film and TV, but in how people actually choose a mate.
And I don't mean computerized dating services. As this young marketing consultant pointed out, people raised with Facebook and Twitter, with blogs and texting, and social networking aggregators, with "feeds" and google, look at each other differently.
That difference has to be affecting what seems plausible in a romantic encounter.
I wrote about the now classic film You've Got Mail here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/04/youve-got-mail-1998-award-winning-film.html
And there's more to come. In fact, it's happening as you read this. There is an explosion of creativity being unleashed by the web, connecting people, engaging people in cooperative endeavors during which they "hook up" one way or another.
The co-founders of twitter want to back a new web-based venture that they envision, according to an interview with them I saw on television during Worldcon 2011, will connect people in new ways that twitter could not.
Here's where to sign up to be notified when they launch this thing -- which they aren't discussing yet in detail.
http://lift.do/
Note that it's not a "dot-com" URL.
The biggest surge of life-altering, perception-altering change that I'm seeing now is in the online video community.
YouTube was the ground-breaker, like twitter, and it's still going big time. The most popular videos now approach professional quality production.
On twitter, and LinkedIn, and other social networks I've found a large number of folks "crowd-sourcing" the financing for low budget films. Yes, I know you know about all that, but the significance of this development is much bigger than anyone has guessed.
The significance for the romance and science fiction market is huge. This is the opportunity of a lifetime, and the young people who have grown up with this new method of assessing new associates from afar are the ones poised to exploit this opportunity.
There's a new application to all this as well. For five or even ten years there has been a growing presence on the web of video presentations. Now, though, we are seeing the launch of professional scale ventures using the web as a platform.
The 2008 and 2010 election cycles saw web-sourcing of funding and Facebook page "like" counts for candidates burgeoning. I expect the 2012 cycle will find the web even more significant. Already, the primary candidates are dueling on YouTube.
Every product imaginable (including novels) are now pitched with short YouTube video advertisements. They're on every commercial page you visit - just roll your mouse over and a little video pops up.
But here's the big development of major significance to Romance writers, especially those just starting out and enthusiastically mixing other genres into Romance.
WEB-BASED-NETWORKS.
Not just little videos or advertisements, not just a movie or TV type Star Trek episode. I'm talking about the genesis of an entire "network" -- or maybe "station" or "channel" -- but I think it's going to become a network with lots of channels carrying the network shows and presenting "local" shows.
I'm talking about gbtv.com -- yeah, the Glenn Beck exclusive subscription only channel.
Before you start jumping around and screaming, take a deep breath and dismiss the nature of the content from your mind.
We're business people here, and we're talking business model in a world where the 1964 writer's business model has collapsed (maybe because of population growth; maybe not). Nobody missed the collapse of Borders bookstore chain this year, did they? You've all bought a Kindle Fire or Color Nook? Now Amazon Prime (film/TV/fast-delivery) has added a free!!! ebook borrowing opportunity. Publishers have to opt-in and get an advertisement or two tossed into the package -- and authors get paid if their book is borrowed -- but free for an annual fee for Prime. Think business model, competition, and don't forget to think mating. Mating spawns new growth.
Publishing is poof-gone! The traditional publishers are dinosaurs and, judging by the major, pro-active discontent among widely published authors, the publishers are finally getting the message.
Amazon's growth, proliferation into publishing, diversification, and international footprint have made that insignificant little online bookstore called Amazon the worst enemy and darkest nightmare of Manhattan's paper-based establishment.
Think again about that change in the way younger people assess others for potential relationships. Amazon allows you to "share" wishlists and purchases, gossip in forums, every social tool there is!
Think hard about that generation gap and the economic woes as the baby boomers retire. The baby boomers didn't grow up on the web, they grew up with it. Heck, they invented it.
A new generation is finding uses for the Web that shatter the very foundations of society, maybe our entire civilization.
"When you have a tiger by the tail, there's only one thing to do. Swarm aboard and ride it."
Almost at the same time that Glenn Beck launched his gbtv.com venture (it's not only his show; he's doing children's programming, comedy, and a huge charity venture too!) the Oprah Winfrey cable network lost some major stars and reported dismal quarterly results. Beck now has a bigger audience that Oprah. When the goosebumps that idea gave you subside, think hard about what it means in terms of the mating game and competition.
Cable TV in general has been falling off drastically in the number of viewers who watch any given show. Cox Cable now provides (for no additional cost) access via the web for subscribers to watch TV episodes and movies -- pretty much trying to compete with Amazon Prime streaming TV, but only some content is available via the web.
Now think about the 16 year old's "Coming Out Party" from the Steampunk/Victorian era. Girls have traditionally been "marketed" on the "marriage market" and competition has always been fierce.
Re-read that young marketing consultant's comments. People who live on the web, just don't have any given piece of fiction or music in common -- there's too much, the audiences have scattered. Yet marketers continue to try to use "social networking" to get these loosely interlaced circles to tell each other about products, to create or unify a market.
The "Christian Mingle" online dating service advertises they gained more than a million subscribers last year.
Did you see Microsoft unveiling their Windows 8 platform, designed to compete with touchscreen Apple devices such as iPod, iPhone and iPad? It makes your desktop more like your hand-held. The iPhone 5 is reputed to be designed for a larger screen. Consumer's Reports feature article on Cell Phones indicated none of them are good at voice. Texting and Data is how people communicate now.
Did you see how schools are equiping kids with iPads? Schools are raising money for this technology upgrade by asking kids to solicit donations from friends and relatives.
You're a writer. Your task in this life is to connect the dots and make a picture of the world for your readers. In SF or Paranormal Romance, you need a dash of futurology. Extrapolate where these trends are going next. Keep an eye on that population statistic.
Connect the dots I've highlighted in these 3 parts of Sizing Up The Competition.
There are lots of dots, and no two writers will make the same connections, display the same picture.
Broadcast networks are GONE. Blockbuster Video is GONE. Borders bookstore chain is GONE. Large scale conglomerate-owned publishers are GONE or going. Mass market is GONE, sales shrinking while e-books sales grow (and I haven't even talked about audiobooks, which my novels are now entering).
Listen to that marketer's consultant -- young people will not now and probably never will, form a "mass" of anything.
Mass production may be GONE as Toffler predicted. We are moving to customized production, not mass production -- though the statistics don't show that yet. If you wait until they show it to write your novel, you'll be too late!
Mass EMPLOYMENT is likewise a dinosaur. This generation coming out of college this year is the second generation headed for a life where "career" is not "get a job, keep it, retire." This is a generation of job-hoppers raised by job-hoppers and ladder-climbers, and it will become the "self-employed" generation.
Remember "climbing the corporate ladder" meant moving your family from place to place for 20 years, so your kids had no continuity of associates, schools, or even state-requirements for graduation from high school. Those corporate kids are now raising kids.
So we have a second rootless generation now getting set to raise a generation that lives on the Web!
What do you want to bet "marrying the boy next door" will become "marrying my best Facebook bud?"
Homeschooled kids best friends are web-acquaintances -- oh, yeah, and iPhone now makes facetalk a generally available way to associate, though the sound isn't so good.
If you are going to write Romance with rich, deep, complex themes so that the novels you produce become cross-generation classics that last a hundred years and gain vast respect among non-Romance readers -- then you must write for this next rootless generation of Web-buddies, and for the kids they will raise, and for the next generation those kids will raise.
You must make the past of the Victorian era, the 1930's and the 1960's etc accessible, comprehensible, and respectable to those raised in the 21st century.
Even if you wrote such a masterpiece, or a series of them, how would you reach this fragmented generation?
Observe what happens with Glenn Beck's gbtv.com venture -- NOT the content, the business model. He's leaving Manhattan for the lower-tax, more business friendly Texas. Could it be Manhattan is too expensive for web-TV? Could that be the deathnell of the BIG CITY living-model?
Watch what works, what doesn't, what they're copying, what they're emulating, and how they make money at it. Especially watch where they advertise and how much they spend on that.
Watch what happens to Oprah's cable venture, and figure out why.
Watch for things like this:
http://webbeat.tv/
I met one of the fellows behind that one on Facebook through the actor who's reading the Sime~Gen novels for audible.com production -- whom I met on twitter. It's ALL social networking, folks!
Here's what I'm seeing right now.
Beck beat the drum on his Web TV launch for months, with a subscriber price of $100/year (about the same as Amazon Prime) for access to all he presents. ($50 for about half what he's doing online).
But as the launch date approached, all of a sudden he started offering a gadget to connect your TV to his show via the internet -- assuming you have high speed internet at home.
http://web.gbtv.com/roku/index.jsp -- he's pitching the Roku device.
I tried it. It's the same kind of deal as google-TV or Viera -- you see a screen full of little squares with logos of subscription services, click from your remote control, find a list of programs offered by that subscription service. Some are free with ads, some cost an additional annual fee (most all require a signup routine using a computer or suffering through a signup using the half-assed remote control). Netflix, as you've all heard, raised their fee and lost subscribers. Now it's tottering on the stock market. Find out where those subscribers went. (Amazon Prime is one possibility, Roku another, Hulu is on most of the services that Netflix is on). They're all "competing for a mate" now!
If you read the comments on the roku installation somewhere on that website, you'll see not everyone can master it, make it work -- a lot of people were disgusted with the tricky-tech. I didn't like it, but it only took me about an hour to make it work. It produces good HD, better than Sony's service.
I'm not ready to drop cable TV yet, but I can see the economic squeeze making people choose, and they will choose to maintain an internet connection rather than both TV and internet, if they must.
You have to understand the desperate fervor among Beck's followers. They are starving for more of the kind of show he put on Fox at 5PM eastern -- so he's now doing 2-hours instead of 1 hour, and he's starting at 5PM eastern, complete with studio audience, replicating the show that drew the largest cable audience and made everyone who follows audience-share statistics panic (which is why they attacked him, not really for his content, but because people listened to that content in preference to other advertising supported content -- business model, remember?)
So even this audience of younger people and older people who just can't cut the tech of installing Roku, want this content, but were not subscribing in sufficient numbers for computer-only apparently. (or why would he offer a headache like Roku?) Sales statistics last Christmas were showing "flatscreen tv" as a big item moving briskly and most of them have a plug to connect you to the internet via your household router.
I upgraded my household tech this year starting in January with my TV. I got a Panasonic Viera and hardwired it to my router (it's now on wireless to my router). I got a Sony google-tv blu-ray player, and plugged the HD DVR from Cox into one HDMI plug of the TV and the SONY into another of the 3 HDMI plugs on the TV. And I hardwired the Sony to my router separately from the TV. So now my router has a wireless connected computer and 2 wired-connected computers on it plus a blu-ray google-tv device plus a Viera TV. (Viera doesn't offer google TV - this is a hugely complex market but you need to understand it to solve our master puzzle subject here, raising the prestige of Romance genre among the general public.)
I now have a Roku plugged into the "Game" plug for my TV. This is called market-research for a reason -- you have to look at markets and figure out what flies where.
The Viera offers access to Netflix (as does the Sony and Roku) and some other things I don't use, but Viera's business model is to provide more kinds of online access with time -- I haven't seen any additions this year. Roku has a variety of offerings I don't see elsewhere.
Next week we'll explore the fragmentation of the "audience" and the way content providers (like you, the writer) are spinning in bewilderment but boldly and heroically chasing that audience, or attracting new audiences, out-building or maybe out-competing their forebears.
The Fiction Delivery System has changed.
You must understand those changes to take advantage of them to deliver your stories to your specific audience.
But better yet would be to anticipate (as in the science fiction writer's mainstay, futurology) the future changes, so you can position your fiction where it can't be missed by the evolving system.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Alien Romances Is In The SFR Holiday Blitz
Once again, the alien romances blog supports The Galaxy Express (.net) Science Fiction Romance
Holiday event which encourages lovers of science fiction romance to revisit favorite sites and discover new sites and authors in the genre who might be new to them.
This year, the emphasis is on e-books, and anyone who leaves a comment on any participating site has the change to win free science fiction romance e-books (choice of format).
Please note (and this is a personal comment), no one is going to win the copyright of the e-books. What is on offer, unless any author personally tells you otherwise, is a license to read the e-book.
HOW TO ENTER
Entering is free and easy: Just leave a comment here, and on every other blog that is participating.
By leaving a comment here, you’ll be entered for a chance to win one (1) of the ebooks seen here.
Then visit the other participating blogs, which are listed below for your convenience.
The deadline to enter (by leaving a comment) is midnight at EST on Friday, December 16, 2011.
By leaving a comment here, you’ll be entered for a chance to win one (1) of the ebooks seen here.
Then visit the other participating blogs, which are listed below for your convenience.
The deadline to enter (by leaving a comment) is midnight at EST on Friday, December 16, 2011.
Winners can choose from the following formats: PDF, Mobi, or ePub unless otherwise stated.
Event details:
*The contest will start at 3:00 pm EST on Sunday, December 11, 2011.
It will end at midnight EST on Friday, December 16, 2011.
It will end at midnight EST on Friday, December 16, 2011.
*After the contest ends, each blog host will pick the winners—1 winner per book.
Each blog will announce the winners for their blog by Monday, December 19, 2011.
Winners will provide their emails to the blog host, who will contact the authors who will then distribute their prize to their winner.
Each blog will announce the winners for their blog by Monday, December 19, 2011.
Winners will provide their emails to the blog host, who will contact the authors who will then distribute their prize to their winner.
*Winners can choose from the following formats: PDF, Mobi, or ePub except where otherwise stated.
E-book prizes being offered (1 randomly chosen winner per e-book) on this blog:
Hero and Border Dispute (Kindle format only) - Jacqueline Lichtenberg
Sealed in Blood (PDF format only) - Margaret L. Carter
The Slipstream Con (PDF, Mobi, ePub) - S. Reesa Herberth & Michelle Moore
The Limit of Desire (PDF, Mobi, ePub) – Nico Rosso
Participating blogs to visit, and comment on for a chance to win e-books.
Thursday, December 08, 2011
Shadow Work
According to this article, “shadow work” is unpaid, unrecognized labor that makes it possible for society to function:
Shadow Work
Examples: The “second shift,” as the chores around the house typically done by women have been called. The time required to commute to one’s paying job. The trend toward making the customer do the tasks traditionally performed by staff. We’ve been pumping our own gas and getting cash from ATMs for decades. Now the frequency of such practices as self-checkout in grocery stores is increasing. The article makes the cogent comment that “self-service” really means “no service.”
Particularly interesting from an SF viewpoint is the idea that instead of technology liberating us from work, as so many robot stories have predicted, our technology is forcing more work on us (without increasing our income).
Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt
Shadow Work
Examples: The “second shift,” as the chores around the house typically done by women have been called. The time required to commute to one’s paying job. The trend toward making the customer do the tasks traditionally performed by staff. We’ve been pumping our own gas and getting cash from ATMs for decades. Now the frequency of such practices as self-checkout in grocery stores is increasing. The article makes the cogent comment that “self-service” really means “no service.”
Particularly interesting from an SF viewpoint is the idea that instead of technology liberating us from work, as so many robot stories have predicted, our technology is forcing more work on us (without increasing our income).
Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt
Tuesday, December 06, 2011
Sizing Up The Competition Part 2 Winning A Mate
Last week http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/11/sizing-up-competition-part-1-tigress.html
we ended off with this observation:
It can be argued that the whole animal kingdom is at war, and it's all based on sexuality. OK, it's a stretch to blame microbe-wars on sexuality since they don't have any, but still they eat each other.
The thesis is that violence is inherent in primate nature. Violence is necessary to ensure that the strongest among us mate and proliferate the most.
This is exactly the sort of science-philosophy that science fiction (and by extension science fiction romance) exists to challenge, dissect, discuss, and speculate about.
But as we noted last week, we must practice the stagecraft adage Don't speak for the moment, let the moment speak for itself.
If you have characters expounding philosophy or beating their political drums at each other, baring their metaphorical fangs (or real ones), the reader will not be entertained.
The writer of science fiction or Paranormal Romance is the one who has to challenge, dissect, discuss, and speculate. The reader should not be aware that this happened offstage. The writer sets up a "moment" and then just stands silently and lets that "moment" speak to the reader who never knows all the work that went into defining and constructing that moment.
It is up to the writers of Romance novels to ask these difficult and unsavory questions -- not to find answers, but to engage readers in thinking and feeling, aspiring and finding peace, creating the Happily Ever After ending, the HEA.
So here's a question:
If this "violence-is-inherent" thesis about human nature and human reproduction is true for humans, does that mean it necessarily must be true for any non-humans we might come across in this galaxy -- or another galaxy?
Would this thesis hold true across time-lines or across "universes?" Would human ghosts exhibit the same tendency toward competition, violence, winning? Think paranormal romance.
What would humans who do not function along the lines of competition/winning/violence create in the way of civilization?
What would happen if one of "us" met one of "them?"
Perhaps "we" arose from such a cross-fertilization? Way back?
If we humans contain all the animal attributes of the creatures behind us on the evolutionary ladder, then we contain the canary as well as the tiger, don't we? How do they get along together?
It's hard to imagine Darwin's thesis holding validity without the concept of competing for mates, with the best and the strongest winning.
The drive to grow up strong, and the need to win at everything, really does seem to function as a mating game dynamic. But how much of that is cultural and how much inherent?
Is "winning a mate" actually related in any way to Romance? Or is "winning" antithetical to "romance?"
Is "winning a mate" about the tiger while Romance is about the canary?
Could that be the source of the Battle of the Sexes?
I recently read some reviews on amazon of modern Fantasy novels published by the Big 6 publishers mentioned in the blog article I sited in Part 1 last week:
http://kianadavenportdialogues.blogspot.com/2011/08/sleeping-with-enemy-cautionary-tale.html
These recent novels I've read have become heavily laced with violence (the kickass heroine falls in love). But they are marketed to romance readers.
Some veteran romance readers balk at the hatred and violence portrayed as a vision of the world through the first-person heroine's eyes.
I'm not talking about just one book here; there's a trend afoot though you may not have noticed it yet. I'm the canary in the coal mine when it comes to trends in fiction!
Some modern romance readers are disappointed at the lack of, or at the low-quality of, the sex scenes.
The consensus seemed to me to lean in the direction of "violence/hatred and Romance don't mix."
Hatred and the resultant savage violence somehow spoil the Romance mood (which is not news to me!)
But apparently there are some editors at the big publishing houses for whom the violence fulfills the Romance in some way, or their sales numbers are telling them that a growing segment of their customers look for the dark, ugly portrayals amidst the Romance.
We can all relate to the idea that the tiger-in-human-form is sexy. But is he sexy covered in the blood of the canary?
I have long had a screeching complaint against film makers, TV shows, and publishers for the way they present only what I term "upside down" or "inside out" fictional structures.
You can see this very clearly today in TV shows. The one that hit me between the eyes recently is a lovely show titled THE GLADES, about a detective relocated to Florida, who is ridiculously good at solving murders.
The reason I watch THE GLADES is the mixed-up love-story/romance between the detective and a nurse who wants to be a doctor. Her husband was in prison, and she was raising her kid alone working as a nurse, taking courses to become a doctor. The detective mentors the kid, really likes the boy just for his personality, falls in love (resisting all the way) with the mother, and the father gets out of prison. Trouble ensues, and now the story is progressing (well, I hope it'll return).
But this is also the reason I watch several other shows of that sort. I endure the murders and ugly side of human nature dealt with in order to follow the Romance.
But the Romance is always frustratingly secondary. The relationships or love story are just complications, while much more air time is spent on chase scenes, fight scenes, night club scenes, bleeding people, dead people, filthy alleys. Those are the "moments" left to "speak" to us.
Now, it's good to have some of that "reality" jazz for artistic contrast, for thematic high relief, and I always have that dimension in the stuff I write. But for me, as writer or reader, all that stuff is background.
The important thing is Love Conquers All, and the arduous path to the Happily Ever After (and yes, I do sometimes show how many novels worth of drama and how many lifetimes a soul must live to achieve that Happily Ever After, but it's the main point of the whole thing.)
In the modern TV show formula, (as in times past), the main point is the ugly death, the more violence the better, and love is just a complication.
You can find no better lesson in the difference between foreground and background than in studying the TV series (say ALPHAS for example) vs. a really nice Romance.
One of the reasons I like the TV Series WHITE COLLAR so much is that it is depicting the converging pathways of the life of crime vs. the life of a solid marriage. WHITE COLLAR is showing us the transformation of a fine upstanding criminal into a champion of law and order. Or maybe that's not the gameplan that the producers will eventually pursue. It depends on the ratings.
Fascinatingly, this transformation of character (called in screenwriting "arc") is from criminal to cop, while in Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series we're watching the transformation of a cop into a criminal. Anita's story involves a whole lot more sex of incredible variety, a considerable amount of loyalty, lust and even affection, but not a great deal of actual Love. Without Love I can't see an HEA in her future.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
Thursday, December 01, 2011
Darkover 2011
Over Thanksgiving weekend we attended the Darkover con, just north of Baltimore, as we have been doing for years. We got lucky with the weather, so we had a pleasant drive each way and didn’t shiver on the short walks between parking lot and hotel. The hotel had some problems this year. The elevator nearest our room didn’t work all weekend, the restaurant ran out of major food groups (notably shrimp and pasta) and never got restocked, and I heard outraged comments that the bar was closed for several hours Saturday afternoon. The con itself, though, was great, as always.
I appeared on two panels: One on the recent trends in vampire fiction and the other on the “two poles of SF,” Pygmalion and Frankenstein and “where are we now?” We all puzzled a bit over where that topic was supposed to go! The consensus emerged that we were meant to talk about whether technology is seen as good or bad, beneficial or threatening, in current literature. Not surprisingly, the panel came up with examples of both attitudes in today’s SF and fantasy.
I also participated in my first Broad Universe Rapid Fire Reading. Broad Universe exists to promote speculative fiction by women. At a Rapid Fire Reading, several members get the chance to read from their works for less than ten minutes each. It was a fun experience, which I hope will be repeated at future Darkovers.
Guests of honor were Delia Sherman and Ellen Kushner. I was thrilled to be able to get a new book by Sherman, THE FREEDOM MAZE. Several years ago I read a preview excerpt from it in an anthology and was disappointed to find out it didn’t have a publisher scheduled at that time. Now, at last, it’s in print. Sophie, a thirteen-year-old girl in 1960 Louisiana, wishes to have an adventure and gets sent through time to 1860, where she meets her own ancestors back when the family had wealth and a sugar cane plantation. However, because she’s deeply tanned, barefoot, and scruffy looking, with no sensible account to give of herself, she’s mistaken for a mixed-blood slave sent from the home of the master’s brother in New Orleans. Gradually she adjusts to this life and makes a few friends, as the magical Creature who sent her back decrees that the adventure won’t end until she does what she came for—whatever that is. Then Things Get Worse. Fascinating story, reminiscent of Jane Yolen’s THE DEVIL’S ARITHMETIC, although less dark.
The main thing I miss at present-day Darkover (well, in addition to the Sime-Gen celebrations we had back when Jacqueline attended) is the costume contest, which they abolished because participation had fallen so low. However, with the addition of a steampunk programming track, there are lots of costumed fans wandering the halls.
And of course the Clam Chowder concert on Saturday night continues to be the major highlight, followed by a midnight singing of the Hallelujah Chorus in the hotel atrium. I make a point of getting a room overlooking the lobby so I can listen to it in my nightie.
Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt
I appeared on two panels: One on the recent trends in vampire fiction and the other on the “two poles of SF,” Pygmalion and Frankenstein and “where are we now?” We all puzzled a bit over where that topic was supposed to go! The consensus emerged that we were meant to talk about whether technology is seen as good or bad, beneficial or threatening, in current literature. Not surprisingly, the panel came up with examples of both attitudes in today’s SF and fantasy.
I also participated in my first Broad Universe Rapid Fire Reading. Broad Universe exists to promote speculative fiction by women. At a Rapid Fire Reading, several members get the chance to read from their works for less than ten minutes each. It was a fun experience, which I hope will be repeated at future Darkovers.
Guests of honor were Delia Sherman and Ellen Kushner. I was thrilled to be able to get a new book by Sherman, THE FREEDOM MAZE. Several years ago I read a preview excerpt from it in an anthology and was disappointed to find out it didn’t have a publisher scheduled at that time. Now, at last, it’s in print. Sophie, a thirteen-year-old girl in 1960 Louisiana, wishes to have an adventure and gets sent through time to 1860, where she meets her own ancestors back when the family had wealth and a sugar cane plantation. However, because she’s deeply tanned, barefoot, and scruffy looking, with no sensible account to give of herself, she’s mistaken for a mixed-blood slave sent from the home of the master’s brother in New Orleans. Gradually she adjusts to this life and makes a few friends, as the magical Creature who sent her back decrees that the adventure won’t end until she does what she came for—whatever that is. Then Things Get Worse. Fascinating story, reminiscent of Jane Yolen’s THE DEVIL’S ARITHMETIC, although less dark.
The main thing I miss at present-day Darkover (well, in addition to the Sime-Gen celebrations we had back when Jacqueline attended) is the costume contest, which they abolished because participation had fallen so low. However, with the addition of a steampunk programming track, there are lots of costumed fans wandering the halls.
And of course the Clam Chowder concert on Saturday night continues to be the major highlight, followed by a midnight singing of the Hallelujah Chorus in the hotel atrium. I make a point of getting a room overlooking the lobby so I can listen to it in my nightie.
Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Sizing Up The Competition: Part 1 The Tigress And The Canary
Picking up on the previous topic of weaving deep, rich, complex themes for Romance Novels, I want to talk about the evolution of our fiction delivery system -- in particular, at the moment, the evolution of the e-book and web-tv (or podcasting).
It's all about cost, price, and competition. It's all about the tiny spot where the hard rubber of economics meets the even harder road of consumer demand.
This is where the business model of fiction writing and publishing actually becomes indistinguishable from the thematic substance of the work of fiction.
Consumers want their fiction-fix, but how much are they willing to pay for it? And how does a Romance writer make their fiction worth the price the Romance reader is willing to pay?
My answer: the monetary value of a piece of fiction lies inside the deep, rich complexity of the thematic structure -- of what the fiction says and shows, illustrates and iconisizes, about the meaning of life.
Here's a "show don't tell" from a famous commercial for financial services.
An elegantly dressed woman considers a china cabinet full of expensive looking pottery. She takes down a dish, turns to a table, picks up a hammer, and smashes the dish. She thoughtfully inspects the pieces, picks one out in the middle and takes off. Next scene, she's inserting the piece she extracted into a mosaic on the wall in another building. She admires the completed mosaic and the voice over tries to sell you their service.
Of all the nonsensical commercials I've seen lately, this one resonates. I can't recall what company it's for, and it didn't convince me to call their offices immediately. It just made me admire the writer for finding a show-don't-tell that is cheap to film and captivates the eye at least the first time you see it.
It's for financial services, and it's about completing your portfolio, making it make sense, making it strong and without a hole in it.
But the illustration could just as easily apply to a dating service offering a chance to complete your life.
Which is more fundamental, financial stability or a good marriage?
This commercial illustrates how the very simplest, clean, clear, short, penetrating IMAGE can open doorways into vast, dim, complex, roiling depths of philosophical muddles where the best high drama lurks.
A good novel opens with that sort of image, and ends with that sort of image. The image tells the story.
There's an adage in stagecraft that applies (remember: writing is a performing art) and that adage is "Don't speak for the moment, let the moment speak for itself."
Don't explain, don't tell, don't muddle the image or the moment with dialogue. Let the reader absorb the impact and ask themselves the question.
Does life have any meaning without Love? Without at least one experience of Romance?
I doubt it. But some people need a bit more convincing.
So we've recently been talking about sources for complex, multi-layered themes that lend themselves to Romance requirements.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/09/verisimilitude-vs-reality-part-2-master.html
And the 4 posts on Believing In Happily Ever After Plus the 3 posts on Poetic Justice.
Here's a post with the links to these prior posts in this discussion:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/10/believing-in-happily-ever-after-part-4.html
It's all about handling theme at a level that makes novels last for centuries, makes them be re-printable, re-readable, and something you would save to hand down to your children and grandchildren.
So let's consider the Tigress and the Canary.
I found this canary on talkstandards.com on an article about competing e-book formats.
http://www.talkstandards.com/canary-in-a-coal-mine-competing-e-reader-standards-herald-the-arrival-of-a-market/
We've been talking about e-books for a long time, of course, and in 2010, with Amazon's second Christmas push of the Kindle, it became clear that the e-book was a marketable commodity. In 2011 e-book sales are meeting and even topping tree-book sales. And here comes the big Christmas commerce-push again now with Kindle Fire etc etc.
Here's a blog post highlighting the kind of thinking Amazon is putting into fiction delivery:
http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/amazon-considers-ebook-rental-service_b37942
This is what all readers have been telling e-book publishers for at least 10 years. One of the most important things about buying a book is being able to lend it. Another, so far not addressed, is being able to trade it on the used book market for other used books. A third is the ability to collect the autograph of the author on the book, to increase its sales or sentimental value. They're working on all these problems, too! And the traditional publishers know that.
Here's a blog entry by a writer who's run into the teeth of the raging combat between tree publishers and e-publishers erupting into a lawyered-up contract dispute:
http://kianadavenportdialogues.blogspot.com/2011/08/sleeping-with-enemy-cautionary-tale.html
As with the beta vs vhs standards wars, and blu-ray vs dvd, and onwards into future proprietary rights wars, we have marketplace competition.
Most tigers wouldn't necessarily bother eating something as small as a canary, but your house cat might consider it fun to play with for a while. *CHOMP*
But consider the tiger personality and the canary personality. We worry about tigers being an endagered species while we breed canaries for fun (cage birds) and profit (coal miner's warning).
Tigers would eat our babies (i.e. compete with us), but we worry about a world without tigers.
Canaries might not be good to eat for humans -- mostly because they're too small. But their cousins, the chicken, we eat fried on a stick.
Canaries are a food source for other things that tigers might eat.
The tiger is an icon of violence, slow, smarmy, sudden violence.
The canary is an icon of sensitivity and beauty.
A woman of a certain age, aggressively after a man (or men, really) is often called a tigress. Or maybe cougar.
Can sensitivity and beauty be agressive? Can sensitivity hunt and pounce?
The canary's food doesn't tend to fight back - though it can be hard to find.
I'm talking plot/conflict here as it integrates with theme.
If the relational structure of life on this planet that Darwin revealed is looked at from a Romance writer's point of view, (with maybe some astrology tossed in) we can see how humans, who sit on top of this evolutionary ladder, contain all the attributes of the animals lower down that ladder. That's physical and psychological attributes.
However we got this way, we contain all life on this planet within us.
Every human is a walking habitat of microbes at war with each other for living space within us.
Many psychologists argue that such economic competition as we now see with e-book vs. tree-book is innate in humans and actually arises from or is based on sexual competition for a mate.
It can be argued that the whole animal kingdom is at war, and it's all based on sexuality. OK, it's a stretch to blame microbe-wars on sexuality since they don't have any, but still they eat each other.
The thesis is that violence is inherent in primate nature. Violence is necessary to ensure that the strongest among us mate and proliferate the most.
This is exactly the sort of science-philosophy that science fiction (and by extension science fiction romance) exists to challenge, dissect, discuss, and speculate about.
More about that in Part 2 next week. The fiction delivery system of this rapidly changing world is adapting, and in the process providing extraordinary opportunities for Romance writers to present the inspiration and vision of the Happily Ever After lifestyle to those who simply can not imagine it in any kind of reality.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
It's all about cost, price, and competition. It's all about the tiny spot where the hard rubber of economics meets the even harder road of consumer demand.
This is where the business model of fiction writing and publishing actually becomes indistinguishable from the thematic substance of the work of fiction.
Consumers want their fiction-fix, but how much are they willing to pay for it? And how does a Romance writer make their fiction worth the price the Romance reader is willing to pay?
My answer: the monetary value of a piece of fiction lies inside the deep, rich complexity of the thematic structure -- of what the fiction says and shows, illustrates and iconisizes, about the meaning of life.
Here's a "show don't tell" from a famous commercial for financial services.
An elegantly dressed woman considers a china cabinet full of expensive looking pottery. She takes down a dish, turns to a table, picks up a hammer, and smashes the dish. She thoughtfully inspects the pieces, picks one out in the middle and takes off. Next scene, she's inserting the piece she extracted into a mosaic on the wall in another building. She admires the completed mosaic and the voice over tries to sell you their service.
Of all the nonsensical commercials I've seen lately, this one resonates. I can't recall what company it's for, and it didn't convince me to call their offices immediately. It just made me admire the writer for finding a show-don't-tell that is cheap to film and captivates the eye at least the first time you see it.
It's for financial services, and it's about completing your portfolio, making it make sense, making it strong and without a hole in it.
But the illustration could just as easily apply to a dating service offering a chance to complete your life.
Which is more fundamental, financial stability or a good marriage?
This commercial illustrates how the very simplest, clean, clear, short, penetrating IMAGE can open doorways into vast, dim, complex, roiling depths of philosophical muddles where the best high drama lurks.
A good novel opens with that sort of image, and ends with that sort of image. The image tells the story.
There's an adage in stagecraft that applies (remember: writing is a performing art) and that adage is "Don't speak for the moment, let the moment speak for itself."
Don't explain, don't tell, don't muddle the image or the moment with dialogue. Let the reader absorb the impact and ask themselves the question.
Does life have any meaning without Love? Without at least one experience of Romance?
I doubt it. But some people need a bit more convincing.
So we've recently been talking about sources for complex, multi-layered themes that lend themselves to Romance requirements.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/09/verisimilitude-vs-reality-part-2-master.html
And the 4 posts on Believing In Happily Ever After Plus the 3 posts on Poetic Justice.
Here's a post with the links to these prior posts in this discussion:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/10/believing-in-happily-ever-after-part-4.html
It's all about handling theme at a level that makes novels last for centuries, makes them be re-printable, re-readable, and something you would save to hand down to your children and grandchildren. So let's consider the Tigress and the Canary.
I found this canary on talkstandards.com on an article about competing e-book formats.
http://www.talkstandards.com/canary-in-a-coal-mine-competing-e-reader-standards-herald-the-arrival-of-a-market/
We've been talking about e-books for a long time, of course, and in 2010, with Amazon's second Christmas push of the Kindle, it became clear that the e-book was a marketable commodity. In 2011 e-book sales are meeting and even topping tree-book sales. And here comes the big Christmas commerce-push again now with Kindle Fire etc etc.
Here's a blog post highlighting the kind of thinking Amazon is putting into fiction delivery:
http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/amazon-considers-ebook-rental-service_b37942
This is what all readers have been telling e-book publishers for at least 10 years. One of the most important things about buying a book is being able to lend it. Another, so far not addressed, is being able to trade it on the used book market for other used books. A third is the ability to collect the autograph of the author on the book, to increase its sales or sentimental value. They're working on all these problems, too! And the traditional publishers know that.
Here's a blog entry by a writer who's run into the teeth of the raging combat between tree publishers and e-publishers erupting into a lawyered-up contract dispute:
http://kianadavenportdialogues.blogspot.com/2011/08/sleeping-with-enemy-cautionary-tale.html
As with the beta vs vhs standards wars, and blu-ray vs dvd, and onwards into future proprietary rights wars, we have marketplace competition.
|
| http://www.free-extras.com/images/bengal_tiger-8893.htm |
Most tigers wouldn't necessarily bother eating something as small as a canary, but your house cat might consider it fun to play with for a while. *CHOMP*
But consider the tiger personality and the canary personality. We worry about tigers being an endagered species while we breed canaries for fun (cage birds) and profit (coal miner's warning).
Tigers would eat our babies (i.e. compete with us), but we worry about a world without tigers.
Canaries might not be good to eat for humans -- mostly because they're too small. But their cousins, the chicken, we eat fried on a stick.
Canaries are a food source for other things that tigers might eat.
The tiger is an icon of violence, slow, smarmy, sudden violence.
The canary is an icon of sensitivity and beauty.
A woman of a certain age, aggressively after a man (or men, really) is often called a tigress. Or maybe cougar.
Can sensitivity and beauty be agressive? Can sensitivity hunt and pounce?
The canary's food doesn't tend to fight back - though it can be hard to find.
I'm talking plot/conflict here as it integrates with theme.
If the relational structure of life on this planet that Darwin revealed is looked at from a Romance writer's point of view, (with maybe some astrology tossed in) we can see how humans, who sit on top of this evolutionary ladder, contain all the attributes of the animals lower down that ladder. That's physical and psychological attributes.
However we got this way, we contain all life on this planet within us.
Every human is a walking habitat of microbes at war with each other for living space within us.
Many psychologists argue that such economic competition as we now see with e-book vs. tree-book is innate in humans and actually arises from or is based on sexual competition for a mate.
It can be argued that the whole animal kingdom is at war, and it's all based on sexuality. OK, it's a stretch to blame microbe-wars on sexuality since they don't have any, but still they eat each other.
The thesis is that violence is inherent in primate nature. Violence is necessary to ensure that the strongest among us mate and proliferate the most.
This is exactly the sort of science-philosophy that science fiction (and by extension science fiction romance) exists to challenge, dissect, discuss, and speculate about.
More about that in Part 2 next week. The fiction delivery system of this rapidly changing world is adapting, and in the process providing extraordinary opportunities for Romance writers to present the inspiration and vision of the Happily Ever After lifestyle to those who simply can not imagine it in any kind of reality.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Visiting the Land of Ago
Happy Thanksgiving (in the U.S.)!
I’ve just read Stephen King’s latest novel, 11/22/63. The narrator, Jake Epping, a high school English teacher, goes back in time to prevent the assassination of President Kennedy. The time portal to which Jake is introduced by the dying man who first discovered it, who had to return to the present when his cancer became too advanced, leads to only one point, a particular day in September 1958. No matter how long you spend in the past, only two minutes elapse in 2011. Furthermore, each use of the portal creates a “reset,” a concept I hadn’t encountered in time travel fiction before. Doesn’t matter whether the same person or a different one makes the trip; every trip erases any previous changes. (Or so they believe until the end; the truth turns out to be a little more complicated.) So when Jake travels to 1958 to spend five years preparing to fulfill his friend’s aspiration to save Kennedy, he has to start over from scratch. It’s interesting to watch King work within these conditions he has set up.
Naturally, Jake tries to blend into the past and draw as little attention to himself as possible. He fears stirring up butterfly effects that might derail Lee Harvey Oswald’s destiny in unpredictable ways. Over the years, though, Jake gradually finds himself putting down roots in the “Land of Ago” and falls in love with a woman. The only way, finally, he can preserve their relationship in the face of her suspicions about him, after she finds out he has lied about his background, is to admit the truth.
But how do you tell someone you come from the future without having her think you’re either a con man or a lunatic?
If you traveled into the past and WANTED to reveal your origin to somebody, maybe to avert a disaster by warning people, how could you prove you’re from the future?
Your first thought might be to show off a piece of futuristic technology you’ve brought along. Jake deliberately avoided bringing anything that would arouse suspicion, so he couldn’t do that. Besides, flashy tech wouldn’t necessarily prove you’re a time traveler. You might be an alien or a mad genius pulling some kind of con. Spider Robinson uses that premise in one of his novels (LIFEHOUSE, I think); the supposed time traveler isn’t, and he’s tricking a pair of SF fans who are too eager to believe his story.
Documents reporting future events wouldn’t do much good. People in the past might reasonably suspect them of being faked.
You might make short-term predictions that astonishingly come true. That method would work if you’d prepared by memorizing lots of events from the historical record. Jake didn’t have time to prepare in that way. He has his friend’s exhaustive notes about Oswald but has to rely on his own sketchy memories for everything else, and he’s an English teacher, not a specialist in mid-20th-century history. He does have notes on sporting events, for use in gambling to replenish his financial cushion, and an uncannily accurate bet on a boxing long shot impresses his lady friend so that she’s prepared to believe the truth.
But what if the butterfly effect of your own presence in the past caused your predictions to come out wrong? Then nobody would have reason to believe you, and when it came to navigating the tides of history, you wouldn’t have much advantage over anybody else.
Jake mostly has the opposite problem. One of the novel’s themes is that “the past is obdurate.” It doesn’t want to be changed. The closer he gets to the major events of the era, the harder he’s swimming against the tide.
As far as bittersweet endings are concerned, this story is emotion-wringing. And the culmination of the time travel plotline wasn’t anything I expected.
Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt
I’ve just read Stephen King’s latest novel, 11/22/63. The narrator, Jake Epping, a high school English teacher, goes back in time to prevent the assassination of President Kennedy. The time portal to which Jake is introduced by the dying man who first discovered it, who had to return to the present when his cancer became too advanced, leads to only one point, a particular day in September 1958. No matter how long you spend in the past, only two minutes elapse in 2011. Furthermore, each use of the portal creates a “reset,” a concept I hadn’t encountered in time travel fiction before. Doesn’t matter whether the same person or a different one makes the trip; every trip erases any previous changes. (Or so they believe until the end; the truth turns out to be a little more complicated.) So when Jake travels to 1958 to spend five years preparing to fulfill his friend’s aspiration to save Kennedy, he has to start over from scratch. It’s interesting to watch King work within these conditions he has set up.
Naturally, Jake tries to blend into the past and draw as little attention to himself as possible. He fears stirring up butterfly effects that might derail Lee Harvey Oswald’s destiny in unpredictable ways. Over the years, though, Jake gradually finds himself putting down roots in the “Land of Ago” and falls in love with a woman. The only way, finally, he can preserve their relationship in the face of her suspicions about him, after she finds out he has lied about his background, is to admit the truth.
But how do you tell someone you come from the future without having her think you’re either a con man or a lunatic?
If you traveled into the past and WANTED to reveal your origin to somebody, maybe to avert a disaster by warning people, how could you prove you’re from the future?
Your first thought might be to show off a piece of futuristic technology you’ve brought along. Jake deliberately avoided bringing anything that would arouse suspicion, so he couldn’t do that. Besides, flashy tech wouldn’t necessarily prove you’re a time traveler. You might be an alien or a mad genius pulling some kind of con. Spider Robinson uses that premise in one of his novels (LIFEHOUSE, I think); the supposed time traveler isn’t, and he’s tricking a pair of SF fans who are too eager to believe his story.
Documents reporting future events wouldn’t do much good. People in the past might reasonably suspect them of being faked.
You might make short-term predictions that astonishingly come true. That method would work if you’d prepared by memorizing lots of events from the historical record. Jake didn’t have time to prepare in that way. He has his friend’s exhaustive notes about Oswald but has to rely on his own sketchy memories for everything else, and he’s an English teacher, not a specialist in mid-20th-century history. He does have notes on sporting events, for use in gambling to replenish his financial cushion, and an uncannily accurate bet on a boxing long shot impresses his lady friend so that she’s prepared to believe the truth.
But what if the butterfly effect of your own presence in the past caused your predictions to come out wrong? Then nobody would have reason to believe you, and when it came to navigating the tides of history, you wouldn’t have much advantage over anybody else.
Jake mostly has the opposite problem. One of the novel’s themes is that “the past is obdurate.” It doesn’t want to be changed. The closer he gets to the major events of the era, the harder he’s swimming against the tide.
As far as bittersweet endings are concerned, this story is emotion-wringing. And the culmination of the time travel plotline wasn’t anything I expected.
Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Legendary sci-fi author Anne McCaffrey has died - Celebrity Circuit - CBS News
Legendary sci-fi author Anne McCaffrey has died - Celebrity Circuit - CBS News
I can't put words to how this makes me feel, but I thought even though it's not my day to post, I just had to get this link up for you.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
I can't put words to how this makes me feel, but I thought even though it's not my day to post, I just had to get this link up for you.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Poetic Justice In Paranormal Romance Novels Part 3
Parts 1 and 2 of this series, were posted on aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com the previous 2 Tuesdays.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/11/poetic-justice-in-paranormal-romance.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/11/poetic-justice-in-paranormal-romance_15.html
We're looking at creating a working definition of Poetic Justice that will fit Paranormal Romance to enhance the believability of the Happily Ever After ending.
So far, we have the following axioms to build into the Paranormal world:
1) Free Will
2) The Reality of the Soul (otherwise no Soul Mates)
3) Uniqueness of the Individual
4) Love Conquers All
5) Happily Ever After is possible though not guaranteed
6) Poetic Justice is real
In creating the plot of the Paranormal Romance Novel, look for ways to challenge the postulates you use these axioms to prove. That will give your plotting a scintillating bizzaz that will glue the reader to the words.
If you didn't learn how to construct proofs in beginning Geometry, pick up some books and learn how to do that. Working through geometry proofs is one of the most powerful cognitive disciplines for plotting any story, but it is especially applicable to all kinds of fantasy novels, from elves and trolls to dragons and demons and all the way to Urban Fantasy magic realism.
The more fantasy there is in your constructed universe, the more essential is the cognitive procedure internalized in elementary geometry.
So, last week we worked out a definition of poetry in terms of the Western musical scale based on 7 full tones, (we didn't discuss the 5 half-notes which add depth and texture) and came to the following:
-------------------
7 is a biggie, so the Western musical scale is a great analogy to use in worldbuilding.
Poetry and music are different level manifestations of the same thing. Poetry is not just the sounds of the words, but the abstract meanings. Concepts can be mapped onto this system of 7 or 7X7.
One of those concepts is "Justice."
Poetry is not about rhyming, but it is about harmony.
Poetry is as much about the groups-of-7 as it is about the intervals between those 7 elements in a group.
Poetry is about how very distinctively different things interact with, blend with, meld with, unite with each other.
Poetry is about how two can become one.
Poetry is about the underlying unity of reality.
Poetry is about Love Conquers All.
-------------------
So we know that Poetry is how Love Conquers All -- through harmony, through resonance, through the way that the two G strings on a guitar are the same note, an octave apart, and when you pluck one of them, the other picks up that energy through the air and vibrates its own note.
Poetry is about resonance - about how one event in one place and time stirs the substrata of reality setting off a resonating note among other events, other souls, in other places and times.
In other words, poetry is about how two distinct Events in different places and times can both be manifestations of the same thing.
So what's Justice?
Most people would say Justice is an evening or balancing of the Scales -- one event weighing the same as another, keeping the universe in balance.
That would work fine if the goal of life were to remain static.
The statue of the goddess blindfolded holding the scales of Justice is Roman based on the older Greek concepts. Our whole modern civilization in the U. S. A. is from the Roman (via England) which came from the Greek, which grew from Ancient Egypt - Persia (which is now Iraq/Iran). Babylon (Syria) figures in there. The Code of Hammurabi. Assyrian roots.
Hey, look, they all kind of knew each other, married into each other's clans, bled ideas and propagated ideas down the ages.
But this current version of Western Civilization owes much to Ancient Egypt.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Justice
If you don't know about the Code of Hamurabi, it may be because you weren't a dedicated Star Trek fan looking up every Shakespeare and classical reference. Kirk loved Hammurabi -- saved his butt in a court of law.
Read this if you need a refresher:
http://public.wsu.edu/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_1/hammurabi.html
But note that the article admits the Hebrew Torah is more famous.
A lot of US Law is based on the Torah laws, or if not actually the Law itself, then the underlying concept of JUSTICE is what the US legal system lifted from these ancient documents. (I'm assuming you all know the elements and ingredients in the Magna Carta.)
So as a writer trying to convince a reader that some strange, made-up universe of yours would actually work in practice and is real (at least for the moment of the story), mine those ancient documents for the unused or abused, the disregarded or oddball interpretation that might sound strange to a reader, but would "ring true."
"Ring true" means poetry.
Pick up the resonance of ancient events, and harmonize modern fantasy events with them. It'll come out plausible.
So we're looking for poetic justice.
Does your universe need a portrait of the ideal state of human civilization as static? Or do you need, as most science fiction novels will, a sense of dynamic progress?
Are things, affairs of humans, wizards and elves, only "right" when they are in "balance" (i.e. static) -- or does your universe have a purpose, a goal that it hasn't reached yet?
If it is a universe which is progressing, what is it progressing from and to?
The reader doesn't need to know (doesn't want to) but you must have a notion of what your universe is about in order to select each detail to be consistent with that notion. Consistency builds verisimilitude.
Maybe you don't have this notion consciously -- maybe you have to write it to find out what it's about. Many great talented writers work that way. Others think they can and fail without knowing how disastrous their failure is.
So give the issue of Justice some conscious thought, then let it cook in your subconscious and see what worlds and universes you build.
The most fertile source of crazy ideas is the world around you and the ancient worlds from which it came.
The Romans as noted above, portrayed Justice as static, a balance, evil balanced against good. When you get the scales straight, one pan weighing the same as the other, you have achieved Justice.
But does your heart yearn for a world where Love Conquers All -- and I mean All. Shouldn't the Good outweigh the Bad? Shouldn't Justice mean there's more Good than Bad and the scales are tipped, skewed?
Does Justice mean "I win?"
Or does Justice mean "There is no right or wrong - just stalemate?"
Isn't that the formula for the Horror Genre novel? Evil can never be destroyed or transformed into Good - it can only be locked away, chained with sigils and signs, sealed with theSeal of Solomon and left sleeping for the next generation to deal with.
Can Love Conquer All in a universe where you can not destroy or transform Evil into Good?
Is that why elements of the Horror genre just totally ruin a good Romance novel? It's a "note" (tone, or sound) from a different scale. It isn't the same song Romance Novels are made of.
Think about my favorite Paranormal Romance genre - the Vampire Romance.
Until the advent of The Good Vampire - the vampire who was a decent human in life and who therefore fights the "curse" to behave decently (think of the TV Show Forever Knight and my Vampire Romance Those of My Blood) - any novel that had "a vampire" in it was automatically published under the Horror genre label.
Then all of a sudden, we had a slew of Romance novels about GOOD VAMPIRES - or vampires whose nature might be very "dark" but who were capable of love, affection, bonding.
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's St. Germain is one of the ground-breakers, and especially her novel which is more Historical Romance than Vampire Novel, Hotel Transylvania.
And now "vampire" does not automatically mean Horror genre.
There are panels at science fiction conventions about the Good Vampire.
What does it mean about the nature of our real reality -- and our culture's opinion about the existential nature of reality -- that we, as writers and readers, have transformed the darkest most evil mythological creature into a force for Good In The World????
That's only one example. Look around you. Good things are being transformed into bad (not actual evil; there really isn't much of that around, but there's plenty of dark stuff). But really awful things are being used for Good and transformed into Good.
Love, your ability to love, and your highest idealism is lighting up the farthest corners of this world -- often via the Internet, Web 2.0, and so on.
People help strangers in trouble on the other side of the world.
Is this a static world where the best we can hope for is a stalemate, a balance between Good and Evil?
Most Paranormal Romance novels today are about that age-old battle, armegeddon, between Good and Evil -- but in my reading, I've found that for the most part, writers are portraying the scales tilted with Good on the heavier side of the balance.
The static balance between Good and Evil is no longer the highest aspiration, the portrait of the ideal world, the Roman vision of the best we can do.
Today people live in a dynamic world where the scales of Justice are tilting toward the Good.
But in the real world of your reader's daily life, the scales actually are swaying wildly this way and that, averaging better maybe, but in any given life, swaying wildly.
So you can build your fictional Paranormal Romance world with a non-static portrait of Justice.
That means you must be able to portray your Good and your Evil in ways that the reader can distinguish one from the other and make an informed choice which side to root for.
If you, yourself, inside your own mind, are not able to define just what is Good -- in terms that don't simply mean "I win is good." then you won't be able to get your reader to ponder their own definition of good, and come away with an Aha! moment, or as I said in Part 1 of this series of posts, a religious experience.
So, in terms of the Paranormal Romance novel, what you're looking to deliver is the Happily Ever After moment portrayed as Poetic Justice.
That moment has to be when the Soul Mates come out of the Pluto transit which I discussed here on August 30, 2011, find the sun shining as the Neptune Transit of "falling in love" wanes, see that the honeymoon is over (even if they spent it in Jurassic Park running for their lives) and understand that they will live Happily Ever After.
The Poetry in that moment resides in Events previous to that moment that belong to the same "chord" made from the scale of 7 cardinal emotions.
If you've forgotten, here are some posts where I discussed the 7 cardinal emotions as depicted with the "Lower Face" of the Tree of Life.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2007/09/7-of-swords-conflict-avoidance.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2007/11/4-pentacles-almighty-cliche.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/10/astrology-just-for-writers-part-3-genre.html
The "Justice" of Poetic Justice resides in the Good that has resulted (and will likely yet result) because of the Soul Mates' survival, of what they did to survive, what they did to get themselves into that fix, in the whole backstory of how they were swept together by "fate" and events larger than themselves and could never have foreseen they'd arrive at this moment.
Poetic Justice is evidenced by a long, improbable, chain of Events on a " because line" (where each choice results in an event that causes another event which presents another choice etc in unbroken sequence) that finally results in the Soul Mates bonding and living Happily Ever After.
Poetic Justice says to the modern mind fostered by the scientific view of the universe that science doesn't know everything, that the universe makes sense, that life has a purpose, that it's not all random and haphazzard, that you can win if your heart is pure and your actions ethical. Poetic Justice says because you have lived the universe has changed in a significant way -- and changed to the Good.
Poetic Justice is how the writer says to the reader that life is meaningful, that there is a purpose, that your personal struggles are taking us closer to the goal.
It's not an easy thing to code into a novel's events without any expository lumps.
If you succeed, the payoff is huge in terms of reader loyalty to your brand.
The best way I know of to learn to do it is to analyze every movie you see and every book you read to see how others have done it for you. At the same time, you need to find ways in which the world out there, the "real" world, actually does behave poetically and justly. News stories, biographies, non-fiction, all that is fodder for the creative mind.
If you look for Poetic Justice in the real world, see it depicted in fictional worlds, can nail it consciously, eventually your subconscious will code it into the plots of your novels.
If you set out to write a novel, deliberately, to exemplify poetic justice, you will probably produce something so "on the nose" (so explicit) that it won't sell because it comes off "contrived."
If you see the world as poetic and just, that vision will resonate in the fictional events blasting into your consciousness as pure inspiration. Very likely, you won't even recognize that you've done it until years later. By then, you'll understand that the rigorous training you put yourself through paid off big time.
In fact, you may suddenly see the poetic justice in your own life.
Live Long and Prosper,
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/11/poetic-justice-in-paranormal-romance.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/11/poetic-justice-in-paranormal-romance_15.html
We're looking at creating a working definition of Poetic Justice that will fit Paranormal Romance to enhance the believability of the Happily Ever After ending.
So far, we have the following axioms to build into the Paranormal world:
1) Free Will
2) The Reality of the Soul (otherwise no Soul Mates)
3) Uniqueness of the Individual
4) Love Conquers All
5) Happily Ever After is possible though not guaranteed
6) Poetic Justice is real
In creating the plot of the Paranormal Romance Novel, look for ways to challenge the postulates you use these axioms to prove. That will give your plotting a scintillating bizzaz that will glue the reader to the words.
If you didn't learn how to construct proofs in beginning Geometry, pick up some books and learn how to do that. Working through geometry proofs is one of the most powerful cognitive disciplines for plotting any story, but it is especially applicable to all kinds of fantasy novels, from elves and trolls to dragons and demons and all the way to Urban Fantasy magic realism.
The more fantasy there is in your constructed universe, the more essential is the cognitive procedure internalized in elementary geometry.
So, last week we worked out a definition of poetry in terms of the Western musical scale based on 7 full tones, (we didn't discuss the 5 half-notes which add depth and texture) and came to the following:
-------------------
7 is a biggie, so the Western musical scale is a great analogy to use in worldbuilding.
Poetry and music are different level manifestations of the same thing. Poetry is not just the sounds of the words, but the abstract meanings. Concepts can be mapped onto this system of 7 or 7X7.
One of those concepts is "Justice."
Poetry is not about rhyming, but it is about harmony.
Poetry is as much about the groups-of-7 as it is about the intervals between those 7 elements in a group.
Poetry is about how very distinctively different things interact with, blend with, meld with, unite with each other.
Poetry is about how two can become one.
Poetry is about the underlying unity of reality.
Poetry is about Love Conquers All.
-------------------
So we know that Poetry is how Love Conquers All -- through harmony, through resonance, through the way that the two G strings on a guitar are the same note, an octave apart, and when you pluck one of them, the other picks up that energy through the air and vibrates its own note.
Poetry is about resonance - about how one event in one place and time stirs the substrata of reality setting off a resonating note among other events, other souls, in other places and times.
In other words, poetry is about how two distinct Events in different places and times can both be manifestations of the same thing.
So what's Justice?
Most people would say Justice is an evening or balancing of the Scales -- one event weighing the same as another, keeping the universe in balance.
That would work fine if the goal of life were to remain static.
The statue of the goddess blindfolded holding the scales of Justice is Roman based on the older Greek concepts. Our whole modern civilization in the U. S. A. is from the Roman (via England) which came from the Greek, which grew from Ancient Egypt - Persia (which is now Iraq/Iran). Babylon (Syria) figures in there. The Code of Hammurabi. Assyrian roots.
Hey, look, they all kind of knew each other, married into each other's clans, bled ideas and propagated ideas down the ages.
But this current version of Western Civilization owes much to Ancient Egypt.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Justice
If you don't know about the Code of Hamurabi, it may be because you weren't a dedicated Star Trek fan looking up every Shakespeare and classical reference. Kirk loved Hammurabi -- saved his butt in a court of law.
Read this if you need a refresher:
http://public.wsu.edu/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_1/hammurabi.html
But note that the article admits the Hebrew Torah is more famous.
A lot of US Law is based on the Torah laws, or if not actually the Law itself, then the underlying concept of JUSTICE is what the US legal system lifted from these ancient documents. (I'm assuming you all know the elements and ingredients in the Magna Carta.)
So as a writer trying to convince a reader that some strange, made-up universe of yours would actually work in practice and is real (at least for the moment of the story), mine those ancient documents for the unused or abused, the disregarded or oddball interpretation that might sound strange to a reader, but would "ring true."
"Ring true" means poetry.
Pick up the resonance of ancient events, and harmonize modern fantasy events with them. It'll come out plausible.
So we're looking for poetic justice.
Does your universe need a portrait of the ideal state of human civilization as static? Or do you need, as most science fiction novels will, a sense of dynamic progress?
Are things, affairs of humans, wizards and elves, only "right" when they are in "balance" (i.e. static) -- or does your universe have a purpose, a goal that it hasn't reached yet?
If it is a universe which is progressing, what is it progressing from and to?
The reader doesn't need to know (doesn't want to) but you must have a notion of what your universe is about in order to select each detail to be consistent with that notion. Consistency builds verisimilitude.
Maybe you don't have this notion consciously -- maybe you have to write it to find out what it's about. Many great talented writers work that way. Others think they can and fail without knowing how disastrous their failure is.
So give the issue of Justice some conscious thought, then let it cook in your subconscious and see what worlds and universes you build.
The most fertile source of crazy ideas is the world around you and the ancient worlds from which it came.
The Romans as noted above, portrayed Justice as static, a balance, evil balanced against good. When you get the scales straight, one pan weighing the same as the other, you have achieved Justice.
But does your heart yearn for a world where Love Conquers All -- and I mean All. Shouldn't the Good outweigh the Bad? Shouldn't Justice mean there's more Good than Bad and the scales are tipped, skewed?
Does Justice mean "I win?"
Or does Justice mean "There is no right or wrong - just stalemate?"
Isn't that the formula for the Horror Genre novel? Evil can never be destroyed or transformed into Good - it can only be locked away, chained with sigils and signs, sealed with theSeal of Solomon and left sleeping for the next generation to deal with.
Can Love Conquer All in a universe where you can not destroy or transform Evil into Good?
Is that why elements of the Horror genre just totally ruin a good Romance novel? It's a "note" (tone, or sound) from a different scale. It isn't the same song Romance Novels are made of.
Think about my favorite Paranormal Romance genre - the Vampire Romance.
Until the advent of The Good Vampire - the vampire who was a decent human in life and who therefore fights the "curse" to behave decently (think of the TV Show Forever Knight and my Vampire Romance Those of My Blood) - any novel that had "a vampire" in it was automatically published under the Horror genre label.
Then all of a sudden, we had a slew of Romance novels about GOOD VAMPIRES - or vampires whose nature might be very "dark" but who were capable of love, affection, bonding.
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's St. Germain is one of the ground-breakers, and especially her novel which is more Historical Romance than Vampire Novel, Hotel Transylvania.
And now "vampire" does not automatically mean Horror genre.
There are panels at science fiction conventions about the Good Vampire.
What does it mean about the nature of our real reality -- and our culture's opinion about the existential nature of reality -- that we, as writers and readers, have transformed the darkest most evil mythological creature into a force for Good In The World????
That's only one example. Look around you. Good things are being transformed into bad (not actual evil; there really isn't much of that around, but there's plenty of dark stuff). But really awful things are being used for Good and transformed into Good.
Love, your ability to love, and your highest idealism is lighting up the farthest corners of this world -- often via the Internet, Web 2.0, and so on.
People help strangers in trouble on the other side of the world.
Is this a static world where the best we can hope for is a stalemate, a balance between Good and Evil?
Most Paranormal Romance novels today are about that age-old battle, armegeddon, between Good and Evil -- but in my reading, I've found that for the most part, writers are portraying the scales tilted with Good on the heavier side of the balance.
The static balance between Good and Evil is no longer the highest aspiration, the portrait of the ideal world, the Roman vision of the best we can do.
Today people live in a dynamic world where the scales of Justice are tilting toward the Good.
But in the real world of your reader's daily life, the scales actually are swaying wildly this way and that, averaging better maybe, but in any given life, swaying wildly.
So you can build your fictional Paranormal Romance world with a non-static portrait of Justice.
That means you must be able to portray your Good and your Evil in ways that the reader can distinguish one from the other and make an informed choice which side to root for.
If you, yourself, inside your own mind, are not able to define just what is Good -- in terms that don't simply mean "I win is good." then you won't be able to get your reader to ponder their own definition of good, and come away with an Aha! moment, or as I said in Part 1 of this series of posts, a religious experience.
So, in terms of the Paranormal Romance novel, what you're looking to deliver is the Happily Ever After moment portrayed as Poetic Justice.
That moment has to be when the Soul Mates come out of the Pluto transit which I discussed here on August 30, 2011, find the sun shining as the Neptune Transit of "falling in love" wanes, see that the honeymoon is over (even if they spent it in Jurassic Park running for their lives) and understand that they will live Happily Ever After.
The Poetry in that moment resides in Events previous to that moment that belong to the same "chord" made from the scale of 7 cardinal emotions.
If you've forgotten, here are some posts where I discussed the 7 cardinal emotions as depicted with the "Lower Face" of the Tree of Life.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2007/09/7-of-swords-conflict-avoidance.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2007/11/4-pentacles-almighty-cliche.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/10/astrology-just-for-writers-part-3-genre.html
The "Justice" of Poetic Justice resides in the Good that has resulted (and will likely yet result) because of the Soul Mates' survival, of what they did to survive, what they did to get themselves into that fix, in the whole backstory of how they were swept together by "fate" and events larger than themselves and could never have foreseen they'd arrive at this moment.
Poetic Justice is evidenced by a long, improbable, chain of Events on a " because line" (where each choice results in an event that causes another event which presents another choice etc in unbroken sequence) that finally results in the Soul Mates bonding and living Happily Ever After.
Poetic Justice says to the modern mind fostered by the scientific view of the universe that science doesn't know everything, that the universe makes sense, that life has a purpose, that it's not all random and haphazzard, that you can win if your heart is pure and your actions ethical. Poetic Justice says because you have lived the universe has changed in a significant way -- and changed to the Good.
Poetic Justice is how the writer says to the reader that life is meaningful, that there is a purpose, that your personal struggles are taking us closer to the goal.
It's not an easy thing to code into a novel's events without any expository lumps.
If you succeed, the payoff is huge in terms of reader loyalty to your brand.
The best way I know of to learn to do it is to analyze every movie you see and every book you read to see how others have done it for you. At the same time, you need to find ways in which the world out there, the "real" world, actually does behave poetically and justly. News stories, biographies, non-fiction, all that is fodder for the creative mind.
If you look for Poetic Justice in the real world, see it depicted in fictional worlds, can nail it consciously, eventually your subconscious will code it into the plots of your novels.
If you set out to write a novel, deliberately, to exemplify poetic justice, you will probably produce something so "on the nose" (so explicit) that it won't sell because it comes off "contrived."
If you see the world as poetic and just, that vision will resonate in the fictional events blasting into your consciousness as pure inspiration. Very likely, you won't even recognize that you've done it until years later. By then, you'll understand that the rigorous training you put yourself through paid off big time.
In fact, you may suddenly see the poetic justice in your own life.
Live Long and Prosper,
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
