Thoughts on The Beverly Hillbillies

How much realism does comedy require? Personally, I find a TV sitcom or any other type of humorous fiction funnier if it's not downright silly. In other words, I prefer comedy—if it claims to be set in the world as we know it—to have some recognizable grounding in reality.

This topic came to mind because I recently borrowed the first few episodes of THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES from Netflix. This series embodies one of my favorite themes, "fish out of water." It admittedly contains many funny moments, and contrary to first impressions, its humor doesn't rely on holding the displaced rural mountain folk up to ridicule. The Clampett family more often than not gets the better of the Southern California city slickers; their family values show up favorably in contrast to the mercenary motives of the banker, Mr. Drysdale; and Miss Hathaway's mistaking the new millionaires for servants is a graver error than Jethro's mistaking a flamingo for a big, pink chicken. But too many unrealistic details keep wrecking my suspension of disbelief and jerking me out of the story.

Okay, Granny has never cooked with a stove that didn't burn wood and tries to start a fire in the electric oven. She doesn't know what a freezer is. I can stretch to accepting those assumptions. And I rather like the term "cement pond" for the swimming pool. As for Jed's qualms about going upstairs when they first enter their mansion, on the belief that the second floor must surely belong to somebody else, that's an almost poignantly believable detail. But the Clampetts don't recognize a refrigerator as a variation on an old-fashioned icebox? They drive a truck and have seen movies but have no clue what a television is? They've never heard the word "million" before (even though Jed's cousin, Jethro's mother, knows what it means)? The conversation in which they reveal their ignorance of telephones struck me as a particular wall-banger. Come on—the most remote rural areas of the country have had phone service since the early twentieth century. Despite not having a phone themselves, the Clampetts must surely have seen one. As for other technology, the Sears catalog has also been ubiquitous in rural culture for a long time. They must have seen pictures of many items they've never encountered in person.

Come to think of it, if they own a truck, why don't they know oil is valuable? Many such details can be justified only by what TVtropes.org calls "the Rule of Funny."

Of course, similar criticisms could be aimed at GILLIGAN'S ISLAND. They brought all their luggage along on a three-hour tour? (Maybe they planned to head directly to the airport from the dock?) That show, however, is clearly fantasy; there's obviously a curse on the island, given all the far-fetched incidents that prevent the castaways from escaping. And their endless supply of necessities and comforts must mean the boat contains an infinite-capacity bag of holding. Seriously, all GILLIGAN'S ISLAND needed to transform it from comedy into horror was a slight shift of perspective, as we saw with the airing of LOST.

Did you hear about the ill-advised attempt (at some point during the past couple of years, I don't remember when) to create a reality TV series on the same premise as THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES? Some network actually planned to transplant a real-life rural mountain family into an affluent suburb and film the resulting hijinks. It would be nice to think the better angels of their nature inspired them to abandon this degrading notion, but I suspect they dropped it because they realized how hard it would be nowadays to find an American family, even in a remote nook of Appalachia or the Ozarks, that doesn't have satellite TV and Internet (or at least a nodding acquaintance with same).

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

If The HEA is Implausible, How Come It Happens?

If The HEA is Implausible, How Come It Happens?
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

As I've mentioned many times, one of the hardest things about Romance gaining the respect it deserves is the firm conviction on the part of a huge segment of the potential audience that the Happily Ever After "ending" is impossible.

Life, they say, just does not go like that.  The Happily For Now ending is all you can ever expect.

Well, true, if life is long enough, there will be challenges, failures, ignominious defeats, many tears, and many-many funerals to attend.

This is all especially true if you marry and have children.  Children are the joy of life, but they are also the source of buckets of tears.

We all know that, yet STILL persist in understanding the world and our lives in it as heading toward an HEA.

Overcoming the initial obstacles to finding and hooking up with that one special Soul Mate should be the End Of The Story -- and from there on, you live the Happily Ever After.

Just get through the Wedding Day (a real challenge for most!) and it's clear sailing after that.

Those who scorn Romance feel that in reality there is no way that can ever happen. 

And yet, in actual reality -- the real reality we live in every day -- such long-long-stable-marriages actually do exist.

Here is an example that hit the Internet some months ago. 

 http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-dorset-28946521

---------quote------------
The pair say the secret of married life is kindness, love and tolerance

A couple who met as teenagers 10 years before the start of World War Two have celebrated 80 years of marriage.

Maurice and Helen Kaye, from Bournemouth, met in 1929 when they were 17 and 16 respectively.

They courted for four years because Mrs Kaye's mother wanted her older sister to be married first.

The couple, who are now 102 and 101, said the secret to a happy marriage was being tolerant of each other and being willing to "forgive and forget".

The pair, one of Britain's longest-married couples, plan to celebrate their oak wedding anniversary with children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
line break
-------------end quote-------

There's a lovely video on that page you should watch and think about.

This video and some of its images spread through the internet like wildfire.  But nevertheless, there are those who are still convinced such a thing never EVER happens in "reality."

Because we believe in such happenings, such lives, we are the unrealistic people. 

Personally, I don't think there's any great advantage to living within the confines of "reality" -- I think the ability to imagine what is impossible is the Human Trait responsible for all human progress.

But still, a reality-check every once in a while is absolutely necessary to keep progress on course. 

This couple is real, not fantasy.  They are the reality check that those who scorn Romance because of the HEA need to consider.

The HEA is not a fantasy.  It is the reality of real life, and the standard by which success should be measured.

Note this couple has great-grandchildren.  Don't for a moment suppose those 80 years were without challenges, tears, failures, ignominy, and defeat.  But such low-moments in life do not mar HAPPINESS.  Such moments are integral components to happiness.

The HEA is the major, envelope theme for all Romance genre stories, novels, videos, etc.  One sub-theme that should be a part of each HEA is that sadness, loss, grieving, failure, and even embarrassment are components of Happiness.

Live Long and Prosper,
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Authors' Guild vs HathiTrust Resolution

This is cut and pasted from an email sent out by Authors' Guild.

Court papers filed yesterday evening brought to an end the Guild’s copyright infringement lawsuit against the group of research libraries known as the HathiTrust. The Guild claimed the library group infringed by reproducing copyright-protected books for inclusion in its HathiTrust Digital Library, a searchable database.

The case arose in June 2011 when the HathiTrust announced its “Orphan Works Project,” which would begin freely distributing digital copies of “orphan works”—books that are still under copyright, but whose rightsholders cannot be found. HaithiTrust abandoned the Orphan Works Project shortly after the lawsuit was filed. The Guild had demonstrated that the copyright owners of most of the books were easily found, forcing HaithiTrust to acknowledge that its search methodology was flawed.

The resolution of the case follows a June 2014 decision by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which approved two limited uses of the HathiTrust Digital Library—full-text search and display to the print-disabled—but sent down to the district court the question of whether the copies made by HathiTrust for “preservation” or “replacement” purposes were done in accordance with the copyright law’s exceptions governing libraries, which require that libraries determine that the original was either damaged or lost and not obtainable at a reasonable price before making a copy to replace the original.

The agreement filed in the lower court should resolve that question. In it, the libraries represent that their copying complies with these requirements and will continue to do so unless and until they provide written notice to the Authors Guild. If the libraries change their copying practices, or if they unilaterally decide to distribute so-called orphan works under a new iteration of the abandoned Orphan Works Project, the Guild will have the right to bring a new lawsuit.

“Our pursuit of this claim was ultimately a success,” said Authors Guild Executive Director Mary Rasenberger. “It led directly to HathiTrust’s 2011 abandonment of the Orphan Works Project. Moreover, the stipulation filed today resolves one of our biggest concerns with the HathiTrust Digital Library—namely, that its copying wasn’t done in accordance with the rules for library copying laid out in the Copyright Act.”

A related case—Authors Guild v. Google—is currently under consideration by the Second Circuit, which heard oral argument from both parties on December 3. 

--------------------------------
Feel free to forward, post, or tweet.  Here is a short URL for linking: http://bit.ly/1HUQIuf

Describing Characters

I've just read a blog post about describing characters, which cautions against the static type of opening scene with the character examining herself in a mirror or doing something else equally dull that doesn't advance the story. The post discusses the importance of beginning with action and emotion as means of characterization. No argument there! The writer also says, however, that most readers don't really care about the character's appearance; they will happily visualize their own concept of his or her physical description.

I've seen this claim before, and I'm dubious about it. Maybe some readers do feel this way. I want to know what the major characters in a story look like, though, and therefore I like to describe my own hero, heroine, and supporting actors, if only (in the case of walk-on extras) with a brief reference to some identifying trait. I remember when I learned that Eunice in Heinlein's I WILL FEAR NO EVIL was intended to be black. The text NEVER reveals that fact. There's only one tiny hint one can recognize AFTER finding out, from external sources, what her skin tone is supposed to be. I reacted with annoyance that I'd been unnecessarily envisioning her all "wrong" in each prior reading of the novel.

Of course, as writing experts often advise, the author should avoid a "police blotter" description listing the character's height, body type, eye and hair color, and clothing the first time he or she appears. Description should be worked into the forward movement of the story. How does an author reveal what a viewpoint character looks like, then?

The mirror scene is obviously out, having long since become a cliche. I've occasionally planted a photo of the heroine with someone important in her life and had her contemplate the picture while reminiscing. Having used that trick at least twice, I won't be doing it again. Other possibilities: The heroine might have a reason to consider her clothes, fretting over the fit or whether the color clashes with her hair. She might reflect on her own appearance while worrying about whether the hero finds her attractive. Reaching for an item on a high shelf could hint at her height. The comfort or snugness of a chair or airplane seat could give information about her weight and build. How far up she has to look up to meet the hero's eyes can show approximately how tall both of them are. Accessories—glasses, jewelry, an ever-present cell phone, etc.—can suggest appearance and reveal character.

Lately I've been able to avoid viewpoint-character self-description in most of my fiction because I've narrated from the viewpoints of both hero and heroine. That technique solves the self-description problem by having each character notice the salient physical traits of the other.

Do you feel most readers want to know what the hero, heroine, and villain look like? And how do you handle character description?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Setting-Character Integration Part 1 by Jacqueline Lichtenberg - Mindspace Investigations

Setting-Character Integration
Part 1
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Mindspace Investigations

In Reviews 11, we looked at a number of science fiction novels and films that depict Artificial Intelligence (AI).

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/12/reviews-11-by-jacqueline-lichtenberg.html

Among them were the recent Mindspace Investigations novels and stories by Alex Hughes.

The most recent Mindspace Investigations novel came out in December 2014 in paper and e-book.



Here's the description from Amazon:
----------quote-----------
Nothing ruins a romantic evening like a brawl with lowlifes—especially when one of them later turns up dead and my date, Detective Isabella Cherabino, is the #1 suspect. My history with the Atlanta PD on both sides of the law makes me an unreliable witness, so while Cherabino is suspended, I’m paying my bills by taking an FBI gig.   

I’ve been hired to play telepathic bodyguard for Tommy, the ten-year-old son of a superior court judge in Savannah presiding over the murder trial of a mob-connected mogul. After an attempt on the kid’s life, the Feds believe he’s been targeted by the businessman’s “associates.”

Turns out, Tommy’s a nascent telepath, so I’m trying to help him get a handle on his Ability. But it doesn’t take a mind reader to see that there’s something going on with this kid’s parents that’s stressing him out more than a death threat…

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

So I'm hoping by now you've read at least one or two of these Mindspace Investigations novels. 

A couple of the titles on Amazon are shorter than novel length.  Here may be some spoilers -- but even if they are spoilers, they won't spoil your enjoyment of these novels.  This is the kind of writing that just can't be "spoiled" by knowing what will happen.

Now we want to discuss one of those structural questions Romance writers face when writing a science fiction novel.

How much space must I devote to science and action to make it science fiction?"

The Mindspace Investigations novels are an example of how to strike that balance using the same kind of apportionment that Star Trek used.

You all know how Science Fiction Romance exploded onto the commercial scene during the Star Trek fanzine boom.  There was the "Get Spock" story where a character had to capture Spock's romantic interest, or just sexual.  There were such stories devoted to every other character.  There were terrific triangle novels where Kirk and Spock vied for the same woman.

Variations were endless, and are still going online with the new characters.  From Trek, it all spread to other TV and film universes.  

This enthusiasm for adding the personal life story-arc to the action/adventure story arc of a set of characters is increasing.

So if you create a purely adventure setting -- an all male cast of soldiers for example -- and pit them against a nemesis to create a purely action novel or TV show (or film), someone will write about their love lives, even if you stringently leave it all out of your story.

If you create a pure Romance, or a story that happens entirely during a Romantic Interlude -- on a Cruise, or a vacation in Paris, etc. -- take the characters out of their normal everyday responsibilities and their lives, and toss them into a Romance, someone will write the action-adventure part of their story.

Whatever is missing, that is what fans will write fanfic about, just as Sime~Gen fans keep writing stories about how the Territories eventually crafted some kind of working relationship.  They also gravitate toward writing about how the Sime~Gen mutation happened.  Fans write the missing parts.

So how do you get ALL the parts into a novel? 

Apportionment -- a little of this, a bit of that, more of this other, a little and more.  As you change the apportionment of the parts of a story, you change the genre.

So the Romance writer attempting a science fiction novel does have a valid question to answer -- how much space must be devoted to science, and how much to romance? 

Here is a wry, humorous way of looking at that apportionment.

http://wronghands1.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/anatomy-of-films.jpg?w=450&h=719

I certainly don't expect writers to copy those apportionments, but there is a lot to be learned by the way it makes you laugh when you read the captions.

What the target audience loves most gets the most space devoted to it.

So if you're writing SCIENCE fiction ROMANCE, you need equal amounts of Science and Romance.

There is a way to accomplish this balance, and Mindspace Investigations does it gracefully.

The method is setting-character integration.

Every bit of description of the Setting also lends dimension to the Characters, to their motivations, their culture, their limitations, and their abilities (or Ability as Alex Hughes terms the various ESP function.)

Generally, Science Fiction does not encompass telepathy, but stories about telepaths (and other ESP functions) first arose inside science fiction during the years when ESP was being investigated using the best tools science could come up with at that time.

Today, telepathy etc is usually relegated to the Fantasy genre unless you can come up with a scientific explanation of how it works and why it works.  Of course, you can always rely on aliens from outer space to be your telepaths, (as Star Trek did introduce telepathy via Spock). 

The Science Fiction and Fantasy fields split several decades ago, and now they seem to be on a convergent path.

What is causing that convergence?

Character.

Just as Spock became a hugely dominant character - the very symbol of Star Trek - for his mind meld, so science fiction adventure novels are blending back into the fantasy field.

It is CHARACTER that integrates into the SETTING that permits the blurring of the genres.

Notice how Alex Hughes uses a telepath who investigates murders by "reading" "mindspace" -- which is far beyond mere telepathy, and close to clairvoyance. 

The origin of humans with Abilities is not explained in the Mindspace novels, but the origin of the Guild that gives them legal status is explained.

Artificial Intelligence was used by some really nasty people to attack and dominate humanity (very bad war), and AI went wild.  The humans with Ability came forth to do battle with AI and won.  Now AI and most computerization is legally forbidden, and The Guild virtually owns all those with powerful Ability.

All this deep history is clumsy to explain, but emerges naturally as we follow the main character through his desperate plights. 

He was a professor of high level telepathic tricks and has precognition that works very well (sometimes), but because of a Guild research program, he became hooked on an addictive drug.  Because he was addicted, he was thrown out of the Guild -- they expected him to die on the street. 

He survived, and we pick up his story as he has been "Clean" for a few years and has a job as a consultant for the police.  He does Interviews of accused perpetrators (and gets confessions), and helps with murder scene investigations by reading Mindspace to see who did what to whom. 

His personal history could not have happened in any other setting.

This setting could not HELP BUT generate a character such as this one.

The setting produces the character; the character produces the setting.

With these two crucial elements fully integrated, it takes very few WORDS (or screen time) to depict the action, the adventure, the characters, the science behind the ESP, or the absence of a functional Internet and other smart machines. 

So the setting is the somewhat near Future -- which makes it science fiction.  The setting is after a war to conquer Artificial Intelligence gone wild, which makes it relevant to today's world.  The setting is 1960's technology with a few bits and pieces of seriously advanced materials science that startles readers and depicts "the future." 

The Character is what SAVE THE CAT! terms "A Fish Out Of Water."   He was raised in the Guild, is used to dealing with people with Abilities, and has been thrown out among "normals." He is a highly educated, very respected individual who now is not even trusted to manage his own salary and expenditures.  When he needs new shoes, he has to ask his minder on the police force to take him to a store -- he can't even drive.  He can't buy food except where they have set up an account for him.

His self-esteem is in shreds.

SPOILER:  when he does have to deal directly with the Guild, their sense of him is contemptuous because he has lost at least one level of his Ability.

Even though the setting is a strongly developed science fiction scenario, and the Character faces unique fantasy-universe challenges, the underlying story is familiar, routine, easy to slip into and identify with.

The character is a typical Detective (in the process of becoming Hard Boiled, but very soft-boiled right now), and a typical recovering drug addict who fights that battle every day, and sometimes loses, and he's a typical Exile.

The Exile story is the dethroned king or prince.  The Detective story is the typical talented person using a hidden talent to rebuild his life.  The recovering drug Addict story is the typical 12 step program.

These 3 dimensions of Character would be enough, but because he's an Exile, he's ripe for an emotional relationship.  Now, to further his new career, he's working with a woman detective on murders -- and ROMANCE fills the air and the Mindspace.

Because of a battle they fought together, the telepath and police officer are now "Linked" -- with a mind-link that should fade provided they don't have sex.

She hates having her thoughts exposed to him.  He needs that mental contact until his mind heals -- and beyond.

In addition, they are falling for each other big time. 

Look at that Romance/Sex dynamic from the point of view of a Romance writer.

Love is an urgent must-do, and it meets an equally urgent can-not in these opening novels of the series.

That is CONFLICT -- the progenitor of STORY. 

As with Private Eye novel series, or Police Procedurals, there is the problem-of-the-week in the murder, and the opposition to solving the problem is usually the perpetrator.  That is one plot.  And at the same time, there is another plot driving the personal STORY of the detective (in this case the Telepath ), and his/her Relationships.

It was the relationship dynamic among the Bridge Crew of the Enterprise that drove fans to writing Star Trek Fan Fiction.

In the Mindspace Investigations series, the mystery-of-the-book is solved at the end of the book, but the Relationship Issue Of The Book is not resolved.

The Setting provides the element of Character that can not be resolved, just as it usually does in real life.  In real life, we have to keep this job (at least until another comes along), we have to keep up on the mortgage, we have to deal with people we don't like at work, in the community, and the general environment just can't be changed on a whim.

Our SETTING provides the ongoing problems, but one by one we do resolve our problem of the week or problem of the year.  We find people to establish Relationships with.  We find a lover.  We move in.  We get married.  We have kids, or adopt.  And sometimes we move to a completely new setting.

There is the Gothic Novel where the heroine inherits an old house, meets an irresistible Guy, has an adventure with a ghost and sells the house or gets an exorcism, then marries the "other guy" because the irresistible Guy turned out to be the Bad Guy.

The setting for the Gothic Novel is a creaky old house -- in an unknown locale, where the people are strange and different. 

The setting for the Mindspace Investigations is the near-future where everything is strange and different except the people who are just exactly who you would be, or want to be, if you had grown up in that world and been treated like that.

With Setting and Character fully integrated, the science and adventure (solving crimes, fighting Guild Politics or Police Department budgets) do not compete for space on the page. 

You don't have to worry about proportions.

You don't have to separate the action from the romance, the science from the relationship -- they are one and the same thing.  Each paragraph detailing entering or reading a murder scene also advances the Mental Link/Sex issues because Setting and Character are fully integrated.

Study Mindspace Investigations by Alex Hughes for the key to integrating the fictional elements so that it takes fewer words to convey the intricacies.

Setting and Character integration are not the only things done well in this series.

The fewer words it takes to advance the plot and the story, the more vivid the impression you leave on your readers.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Copyright Protection Evolves

IMHO, best round up of copyright changes in 2014.

Fair Use expands... more power to libraries, and to Google. Privacy is eroded, more power to Google.

http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=79a56326-c132-4cf6-8047-5fc40387d428&utm_source=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed&utm_medium=HTML+email+-+Body+-+Federal+section&utm_campaign=Lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed+2014-12-31&utm_term=

Google wins again.
http://thetrichordist.com/2014/12/27/andreworlowskis-must-read-post-at-theregister-exposes-googles-astroturf-attack-on-the-truth/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/12/23/googles_driveby_shooting_of_jim_hood_takes_out_key_critic/

Some of us remember - who? Wyden and the "Open" scheme? - that the litigant with the biggest money bags always wins, and plaintiffs of modest means have no chance of prevailing when their copyrights are infringed if a) the government or b) Big Tech or c) someone rich...  is involved.

Happy New Year!

Rowena Cherry

Vampire Bugs, Lion Men

The January 2015 issue of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC mentions a cricket-like insect called the hump-winged grig, which engages in a slightly gory mating ritual. The male allows the female to nibble on his hind wings during sex and drink his hemolymph, "the bug version of blood." The male hardly ever dies of this predation, although a grig who's successful with lots of females may end the mating season "chewed right down to the nub." A real-life example in nature of a vampiric seductress trading sex for blood—and her "victim" inviting it!

In the same issue, an article on prehistoric art shows a photo of a foot-high carving from Germany known as the Lowenmensch, which depicts a figure who's part man and part lion. The article calls this piece the first known representation of "a creature that was completely imaginary." From a fantasy and science fiction perspective, however, this artwork reminds me of Jack Williamson's DARKER THAN YOU THINK and S. M. Stirling's Shadowspawn trilogy, both featuring a shapeshifter-vampire-sorcerer race that co-evolved with humanity from the dawn of Homo sapiens. In the world of those novels, the lion-man would not be imaginary but would represent paleolithic man's quite rational horror of the superhuman predators who stalk the forests of the night.

Leaping to a totally different topic, how about New Year's resolutions? I've long since stopped making them as such, because the word "resolution" turns me off; for me, it has connotations of a potential set-up for failure. I do have goals, though. My short-term goal, in the next few weeks, is to revise a horror-erotic romance crossover novella I wrote before the holidays and send it to a publisher. Next, I'll try to work up a story to submit to this year's SWORD AND SORCERESS anthology. In the long term, I'm expecting to write a paranormal romance novel with Lovecraftian elements I've been outlining, the long-planned sequel to my horror novel FROM THE DARK PLACES:

From the Dark Places

Happy New Year!

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Depiction Part 4: Depicting Power in Culture by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Depiction
Part 4
Depicting Power in Culture
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

 

This post is about developing Rules of Engagement to depict a culture different from our own, yet thematically related in a way that allows the reader/viewer to walk into the story and see the whole thing as "real" even though the "world" you have built is truly alien. 

This skill-set of depiction arises out of the Theme-Worldbuilding Integration series.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/04/index-to-theme-worldbuilding.html

The previous posts on Depiction are:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/09/depiction-part-1-depicting-power-in.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/09/depiction-part-2-conflict-and-resolution.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/09/depiction-part-3-internal-conflict-by.html

In short: depiction is show-don't-tell brought into a high, subtle, "off-the-nose" artform. 

Depiction is the author being sneaky and not letting their own opinion leak through into the worldbuilding.  No two readers will assess what is depicted the same way.  But what they do assess is the part of the book they will remember longest.

That's why, when you go on social networks and try to get someone to help you remember the title or author of a book you halfway remember, and relate this vivid scene or starkly memorable character, what you get back is scattershot attempts to help, and not the book you are looking for.

The part you remember is the part you found in the depiction.

As a writer, you can't use depiction to make your point. 

But if you do not have a point, and you are not trying to make that point, most readers will get bored and drop the story in the trash. 

If you don't stick to the point you depicted on Page 1, and STOP once you've made that point (nail The End), if you let bits and pieces remain in the final draft that should have been deleted for use in another book with another point, you will get very angry readers giving you 1-star reviews on Amazon.

The clarity of "point" that most readers want has to be made off-the-nose.  It is via that point depicted that the reader enters this alternate Reality and rides with you to The End.

One of the issues that many readers have with Romance Novels is the HEA, the Happily Ever After ending that just is not plausible in their own everyday reality.  The lack of plausibility is often (not always) traceable to the depiction of the HEA. 

The HEA is the resolution to a problem that the reader believes can not be resolved.  The resolution of the conflict has its roots on Page 1, in the way the conflict is depicted.  Do Page 1 right, and the reader suspends disbelief and actually believes the HEA (at least for a few seconds). 

The Depiction series of posts on this blog is about mastering the techniques of depiction in order to create an HEA that is not a HFN (Happily For Now), and yet is absolutely believable by readers living in a harsh reality.

To that end, we are examining how to depict culture. 

Cultures are based on abstract ideas like religious ideas that the cultural pressures (peer pressure) make desirable. 

If you live the beliefs of the culture around you, you are taking the easiest path to developing Relationships.

In Science Fiction, we focus mostly on the individual who is an oddball, a maverick, an outcast, a 'drifter' type in a Western, a "First-In Scout" (an explorer with no ties to anyone).  We focus on the Loner who has no problem with being a loner.  And Science Fiction is mostly about depicting by stark illustration what value such loners have to society and ultimately to the culture.

The Loner is not always the person so unstable they are about to freak out and murder a mob of people just because they're angry.

The Loner is depicted as honorable, kind, just, and strong. 

Being a Loner is not the problem a Science Fiction Novel is written to solve.  The Main Character of a Science Fiction Novel does not experience being a Loner as a PROBLEM.  He/she is not "in conflict" with the situation of being alone. 

The Science Fiction hero's Loner situation usually comes about because of being at odds with the Establishment.  He's the Scientist who believes there really is life on Mars, or UFO's have visited Earth, or human activity really is not creating climate change, but natural forces of Earth itself are causing what we observe.

The Science Fiction Hero is the oddball, tin-hat crazy who turns out to be correct, and the plot-driving major conflict depicts his determined effort to prove he is correct -- or depicts his efforts to just get away from those who want to make sure he never proves he's correct.

His opposition has a "vested interest" (an emotional need) to know beyond doubt that this Science Fiction Hero's ideas are crazy, and thus untrue.

The HEA rejection mechanism is psychologically similar, so pay attention. 

The Powers That Be in our modern culture have that kind of "vested interest" in convincing the majority that the HEA is not possible.  The Universe structure which makes it obvious to us that the HEA is possible lies at odds with the Universe structure that gives the Powers That Be power over us.

Here are a few posts on the HEA.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/04/education-of-action-romance-hero.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/09/do-your-lovers-live-hea.html

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

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

So the typical Science Fiction Hero (this blog is about Science Fiction and/or Paranormal Romance, the hybrid genre), is alone, at least at or before the start of the story. 

What does it mean "alone?" 

It means not just having no family ties, or being free of obligations, debts, and other strings, but also it means being sovereign over your own mind, heart, body, and course in life. 

The Science Fiction hero is a person who has become a Strong Character because of being a Loner.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/10/strong-characters-defined-part-3-tit.html
Part 3 has links to previous parts in the Strong Character series.

So it is natural for the Science Fiction Hero to become the Most Desirable Hunk in the Romance heroine's world.  He's a REAL CATCH -- and unattached to boot. 

Why did it take so long for Romance to discover Science Fiction?  (it all started with Star Trek, you know, and the Vampire Romance)

So when you set out to build a world around your story, you hide the point deep inside the worldbuilding.  Your point, as a writer, is an unconscious assumption of your characters, and a given of their culture. 

You get to state your point baldly in a single sentence that takes up half a line at most -- and is placed near the end or actually at the end of the novel.  It is Blake Snyder's "theme-stated" beat (see SAVE THE CAT! trilogy of books on screenwriting.)  Your point is inside your theme and is depicted within the characters' culture.

In Science Fiction, you often have two or more cultures to play with, and usually they are at odds with one another creating the main external conflict.  That's how most science fiction turns out to be about wars.

So a culture that is the outgrowth of war has to have its most prominent identifying beliefs focused on the use and abuse of Power.

Remember Star Trek's Klingons.  A good day to die.  The relish of the fun of combat.  Social interactions based on dominance displays. 

The original depiction of the Klingons (designed to work in the tiny space allowed in a TV episode), was very comic-bookish, too cliche, too facile.

So as the popularity of the Klingons grew, we saw different foreheads, a more thoughtful explanation of their values, and development of the language by a fan, and the addition of culturally specific weapons depicting tradition.  The culture acquired a history, depth, and real people. 

And all of it is based on the combat stance in personal relationships.  So Klingon culture has a whole lot of rules about who can do what to whom, when and how much.

The unfolding of Klingon culture from a line-drawing sketch of something to oppose the Enterprise into a galactic dominating, swaggering, and mighty culture with real people, and a character named Worf who grew up in a human family is a good model to study for depiction of opposition, and for worldbuilding a culture in order to depict a "worthy opponent."

Note how as Star Trek developed, this formidable opponent was nearly destroyed, and was rescued by Kirk et. al., then became an ally of the Federation that Kirk represented.  That "arc" of development of the Relationship between the two cultures is DEPICTED, -- shown not told.

One could make the case that early Klingon versions were bullies, or the most admirable trait in Klingon culture was bullying. 

We discussed bullying in the Theme-Worldbuidding series:

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

The anti-bullying culture subscribes to some simple rules of them to detect bullying situations. 

"Don't hit below the belt"

"Don't pick on someone smaller than you" (in size, power, reach, ability)

This picking on someone smaller than you is what Israel is depicted as doing to the Palestinians especially in Gaza.

See how easily depiction can be used to paint a picture which remains indelible in the mind long after a conflict is over?

The USA culture despises the Bully and righteously rejects bullying.

But how many Americans actually know what Bullying is? 

Most people don't think philosophically, or theoretically.  In life as in fiction, people want concrete, clearly defined edges to the ideas that form the world.

So they know what bullying is because they've seen it in school yards, or on Gang dominated streets.  Maybe they've seen it in domestic abuse.  They know it when they see it, but they don't analyze it to figure out what it is, and how to "depict" it in a Alien Culture (non-human culture).

Lifting out the essence of a concept like Bullying and using that essence to generate a non-human fictional culture is Art.  It is what Artists do for a living -- depict the world from a different angle than the reader/viewer has ever seen.  The artist does this to reveal an inner, hidden truth.

So conspiracies and International Intrigue, subterfuge and obfuscation make wonderful raw material for the Artist.

Remember how Leonardo DaVinci would look at a slab of marble, and see the statue buried inside it, then free that statue by paring away the dross?

That's what artists do -- take away the dross to reveal something hidden inside. 

So take the Middle East situation as an example.

Most people look at that mess and say Israel is a Bully -- because clearly they have a strong economy, high tech weapons, and can fend off the worst that Gaza can throw at them.  A few Israelis died, and thousands of Gazans died, so who's the bully? 

Obviously tiny little Israel is a horrible bully for keeping the Palestinian borders closed, and policing every movement they make.

That's Leondardo DaVinci's view from outside the block of marble. 

What does the artist see looking at this mess?

The artist sees the Gazans as the bullies. 

Isn't that startling? 

You can make the case that the Palestinians are more powerful than Israel if you understand the hidden connections and the history.  If you don't believe the history, you can't see the Gazans or the Hamas infestation in Gaza as the bullies.

The Palestinians have been made into a political football, or hot potatoe, by the much larger countries and factions surrounding the area.  They are the boxing glove worn by Iran and bigger countries in order to punch Israel without being hurt themselves.  They have been armed, deprived, and ginned up with religious fervor to be used as a weapon against a tiny country. 

Or so the argument goes.

Those who argue that Israel is the bully, say that Israel threw the Palestinians out of their homeland. 

Those who argue that Hamas and Palestinians are the bully, say that when Israel was forming as a State under U.N. Mandate, the Jewish refugees had no problem accepting the residents of the area as citizens of the new state.

But the Powers That Be in the surrounding countries lied to the residents to make them flee the new Israelis.  And then those Powers That Be refused to accept the refugees they had made homeless. 

There are conspiracy theorists who hold that those same Powers That Be planned to use those refugee homeless to attack and destroy the fledgling country Israel, a pushover without an army, populated by shell-shocked, starved people rescued from concentration camps.

Artists, especially those writing novels, love conspiracy theorists.  Such Drama!!!

Regardless of the actual motives of those Powers That Be, or even which countries they were from, the net result is a population of Stateless People, people not protected by a government, and without a land franchise of their own.

That population has grown, but as it has grown, it has not produced world class universities, patents, trade goods, intellectual property, or anything to add to the world GDP.  Trillions of dollars of the world's wealth has been poured into the Palestinian populace, and nothing has been added to the world Gross Product, the wealth of humanity. 

They are poor, and make a profession of being poverty stricken. 

So obviously anyone who attacks them is a bully. 

So what is a bully to do when the weakest kids on the block are given powerful weapons and attack as a mob?  Is the bully required (by cultural rules of engagement) to refrain from fighting back?  To refrain from self-protection?  To refrain from pre-emptive strikes to disarm?

The Palestinian situation makes a wonderful Situation to study for an interstellar war simply because the actual war is all about something totally different than Israel vs Palestinians.

What exactly it's all about -- aha, that's a matter for the Artist to chip away and reveal.  If you're stumped, go look again at the Klingons and the Romulans. 

Take this Situation, set it out amidst the stars of this galaxy, create different species, religions, billions of years of history, ancient ruins, Great Shrines of sacred planets,

Observe the Middle East melting down, and observe the techniques used to cause that to happen.  Look deeply into the religious wars, the many religious factions within factions -- there are as many flavors of Muslims as there are flavors of Christians, and Jews are no slouches in the flavors department.  A new faction seems to arise every week or so.

Are you looking at a religious war, or is the religious war an excuse to hold a good war the way the Klingons love to do?

How would Klingons (or Romulans) react to finding out they were someone else's patsy, a tool to hammer an enemy and escape retribution?

Which side is the bully and which the victim is a question few readers are comfortable pondering.  The reader wants you to tell them the answer.

There's a basic human psychology principle behind that reader preference.

People who bully in other areas of life become truly upset when they see what they think is bullying happening before their eyes.  They become upset because they can't look at themselves and acknowledge their own bullying tendencies. 

The psychological principle behind this is rooted in the subconscious.  What we hate other people for is the very thing we loathe so much in ourselves that we bury it deep in the subconscious. 

The Artist knows that when you see a flaw in someone else, it is because you have that flaw in you.  It's a reliable principle.  If you don't have that flaw, it won't irk you in others even when it is there.

So human cultures establish rules-of-thumb to measure or judge behavior objectively. 

You can tell a busy-body "Mind Your Own Business" by citing that cultural rule of privacy without getting personal, insulting, or obnoxious.  It's a generally accepted principle, not something you just made up.

The Prize Fighter waits for the guy he decked to get back on his feet before attacking again.  There's an ethical reason for that, and a moral one, but a referee enforced cultural rule. 

"Pick on someone your own size."  -- yes, you must fight, but only people who are an even match. 

One time there was a strike in Football, and instead of the scheduled match they televised a match between a professional team and a college team -- the college team got creamed.  And spectators didn't enjoy the sight.  They never did that again.

Do we enjoy such sights of uneven matches these days?

Check YouTube. 

There are a lot of Video posts by teens are of uneven matches.  There is that "trend" of walking up behind someone and sucker-punching them to the deck -- and it is done to older, more frail, or less fit (even handicapped) people.  The objective is to deck the other person WITHOUT WARNING, and that's pretty much like the old American Indian idea of counting coups by sneaking into another tribe's camp and stealing or marking their horses, leaving trace that their defenses are porous.

The message from the more powerful to the less powerful is "I am BETTER than you, so don't mess with me."

The message is MIGHT MAKES RIGHT.

That is the bully's message to the weak.

Is that now the new cultural mantra we all must live by?

Or do we still know that the weakest contestant in such a transaction is the bully him/herself.

Yes, bullies are cowards.  That's one of the oldest principles, and the origin of the advice parents always gave kids beset by the class bully -- just punch him back good and hard.  Deck him in front of his cronies.  That's the end of him because he'll react with cowardice not heroism.

Bullies are all about their Pride, so they focus on Who Is Right. (see the illustration at the top of this blog).  They do that because they are afraid they are wrong.  The Hero, the Strong Character (or one getting stronger) is focused on What Is Right, and always curious to find any error, misconception, or mistake.  The Hero is about correcting mistakes, and takes joy from each mistake found and corrected.  That's a hero.

Both Science Fiction and Romance are about heroes.  But very often, a combination of SF and Romance depicts a coward becoming a hero.  Many World War II movies depicted that character arc showing the flinching coward becoming a "real man" by finding inner courage.

On the TV Series DEFIANCE,


where several species of aliens have landed on Earth, each with their own culture and customs.  There is an alien culture where males are unquestioned in their (brutal) dominance of females. 
Exposure to Earth's ideas has given the wife of one prominent businessman some ideas about just becoming the boss.

She has framed him for crimes, had him imprisoned, nearly killed him in the street, humiliated him before other males of his species, used his son by her as a patsy and commanded the business interests behind the screen of his son.  She wants dominance in a MIGHT MAKES RIGHT culture that attributes its strength to dominating its women absolutely.

Their religious leader opposes her, and she frames him for murder of several women (wives of the prominent and powerful) and he is publicly executed.  She does this right in front of her husband.  The acting is absolutely superb and makes the show worth watching all by itself.

Now these are not "real" aliens, you understand -- they are Hollywood Aliens created to DEPICT a THEME.

At the inter-cultural interfaces among the various species, ideas cross over.  Each culture has its own definition of bullying, and of the value of the bully to a culture.

And yes, just as humans have a zillion cultures, likewise each alien species has different cultures.

The location is the USA, vastly transformed by destruction at the arrival of these aliens, and continuing threats.  The various aliens and all the different kinds of humans clash, and form uneasy alliances, and in some cases get along quite well.

The entire series is about Power -- who has it, who doesn't, what to do with it.

In the sparse, superficial language of Television Series, this series depicts Power In Culture.

The devastation depicted wipes the whole Israel/Palestinian conflict off the map.  The series doesn't give much about what's going on in the rest of the world, but clearly nothing that was going on is still going on.  Nobody turns up from China or a new Caliphate to take over the US, Canada and Mexico.

The focus is close up on a group of people (and non-humans) just trying to survive long enough to learn to get along.

And it's very much a "Strong Man" and "Gang" dominated society, very much like the "failed state" scenario we saw in The Balkans, and are seeing now in Libya, Somalia, some African areas, and Iraq, etc.  But Iraq might yet pull together something.

Still, DEFIANCE is a science fiction series depicting the failed state pulling itself together -- sort of.  It takes a really big bully to pull such a mess together. 

Is that why humanity is so well supplied with bullies?  Do we need them?  Is humanity's need for the bully-personality (cowardice and all) the reason God created so many bullies?  Or was that just evolution speaking?  All that is raw material from which to craft themes you can depict by using the culture you create for your characters.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Right Of Publicity (The More Famous You Are, The Fewer Your Rights)

Authors are usually liable for what they write about living or deceased people, hence the disclaimers in the front matter of works of fiction, often saying something to the effect that "this is a work of fiction....names, characters, titles and incidents are the product of the author's imagination... any resemblance to any real person living or dead is purely coincidental..."

However, one cannot rely on ones own good taste and discretion, any more than one can rely on a front matter disclaimer to protect oneself. Know the law, and know that the law is not the same in every State or country.

I'd like to share a couple of links to some very enlightening legal analyses on the exploitation of the famous, with kudos to the Drye Wit blog, and lawyers Audrey Jing Faber and Lee S. Brenner

Part 1
Defenses and limitations of claims, and examples of successful Right of Publicity claims.
http://www.dryewit.com/2014/12/the-price-of-fame-an-overview-of-right-of-publicity-claims/

Part 2
"A person’s right to control the use of his or her name or likeness, however, has its limits. In the context of expressive works, a person’s right to control the use or portrayal of his likeness diminishes as the person’s celebrity or public figure status increases."

http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=b7aafc0f-3239-40c5-8bb0-4ebd16796cbf&utm_source=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed&utm_medium=HTML+email+-+Body+-+Federal+section&utm_campaign=Lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed+2014-12-23&utm_term=

Mr. Noriega lost his lawsuit against Activision-Blizzard for the use of his name and likeness in a game; some student athletes won a large settlement in their class action over a game maker's use of their likenesses; one wonders what would happen if a certain North Korean political leader were to sue Sony.

Happy New Year!

Rowena Cherry

The Many Faces of Scrooge

A CHRISTMAS CAROL is my favorite holiday story, and I "collect" (sort of) movie adaptations of it. Not that I systematically collect them, but I own lots of versions. This classic tale surely rates right up there with one of my other favorite books, DRACULA, in the number of different film versions that exist. It's fascinating to notice the differences among adaptations—what elements of the original text the movie-makers decide to include or omit, what newly created bits they insert.

Many film buffs seem to have a special fondness for the vintage Alistair Sim version. This movie adds a lot of material that isn't in the novella, especially in the past, exploring Scrooge's rise to wealth. My own favorite used to be the one starring George C. Scott, until the Patrick Stewart adaptation rose to the top of my list. George Scott's Scrooge, in my opinion, remains grumpy and cynical a bit too long into his supernatural ordeal. Both he and Patrick Stewart, however, embody the dry wit that characterizes Scrooge in the book. The Scott movie adds a bit of dialogue that isn't in the original, where Scrooge lectures Bob Cratchit about the advantages of coats (can be used for years) over coal (expensive and perishable) for warmth. The Stewart version is the only one I've seen that shows the reformed Scrooge attending a church service, as the book mentions in passing. It also features a voice-over epilogue, spoken by Scrooge's nephew Fred, that quotes a line from the book about how Scrooge's "own heart laughed" with joy, not included in any other film. This movie differs from most others by dramatizing Marley's funeral in a brief prologue, a scene only alluded to as back story by Dickens.

Two scenes often omitted from film adaptations come from the Christmas Present segment—the panoramic tour in which the Spirit shows Scrooge people from all walks of life celebrating Christmas and the nightmarish glimpse of the boy "Ignorance" and the girl "Want" under the Spirit's robe. In Christmas Past, I recall only one movie that includes the view of Belle as a happily married woman on the night of Marley's death. Several films, such as the musical SCROOGE, show Scrooge delivering the Christmas turkey to Bob's house personally instead of having it sent. This change saves time but either inserts a form of Scrooge's mock threat to Bob (for coming to work late on December 26) into the turkey delivery scene or omits it altogether.

One thing I always look for in a CHRISTMAS CAROL adaptation is plenty of dialogue from the book. MR. MAGOO'S CHRISTMAS CAROL, surprisingly good for a cartoon rendition, includes a lot of Dickens's wit. It also contains some lovely songs. Because of its short length, though, it leaves out all but the most pivotal scenes, deleting Scrooge's little sister, Fan, and her son, Fred, completely. Disney made an animated version starring Uncle Scrooge McDuck—of course!—with Donald as his nephew, Mickey Mouse as Bob Cratchit, and Jiminy Cricket as the Ghost of Christmas Past. It's fun to see Scrooge McDuck play his namesake, but this cartoon includes almost none of Dickens's prose beyond "Bah, humbug." The lively MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL, with Gonzo playing Dickens to supply metafictional commentary, has some nice songs and hits most of the familiar notes of the story. Kermit the Frog plays Bob with Miss Piggy (of course) as Mrs. Cratchit, who has the chance to tell off Scrooge at the finale. Viewers get an engaging blend of humor, terror, and pathos. However, it includes Fred but omits Fan, leaving the uninitiated to wonder how Scrooge ended up with a nephew. I don't like Disney's feature-length version with Jim Carrey as much as I want to. It's full of dazzling special effects but, in my opinion, carries the over-the-top visual spectacle too far at some points, at the expense of the story (probably to indulge lovers of 3-D).

Then there are the re-visionings of the story in different times and places. While SCROOGED isn't one of my top favorites, there are things about it I enjoy, such as the genre-savvy protagonist, who's actually filming a live-action CHRISTMAS CAROL TV show, and the fact that this version is one of the few, if not the only one, in which the protagonist receives a happy ending with his "Belle" analog. A DIVA'S CHRISTMAS CAROL, which I re-watch almost every year, may not be deep, but it ingeniously modernizes the original story with a female protagonist—Ebony Scrooge, a black superstar singer who came up from a broken home in poverty and trampled on all her human relationships along the way. Given her name and the fact that her assistant is called Bob Cratchit, with a sick little boy named Tim, the viewer has to suspend disbelief and accept that in the world of the movie Charles Dickens never wrote the book. There's at least one more female Scrooge version, starring Cicely Tyson as Ebenita, but I haven't seen it. I highly recommend AN AMERICAN CHRISTMAS CAROL, set in the Depression with Henry Winkler as a wealthy man made bitter by a hard life. Being a orphan when we first see him in the Christmas Past visions, he doesn't have even the tenuous family ties the original Scrooge tries to reject. In the flashbacks, he ends up turning his back on his father figure, the story's Fezziwig analog, who rescued him from the orphanage and taught him a craft. AN AMERICAN CHRISTMAS CAROL doesn't adapt the original so much as transform it through a fresh incarnation of the story in an American, early 20th-century setting.

Some films try to answer questions left unresolved by Dickens. Why does young Ebenezer's father banish him to boarding school? At least one movie proposes that Scrooge Senior hates the sight of his son because Ebenezer's mother died giving birth to him. That can't be true, because his sister Fan is clearly younger than he. (The original text explicitly says so.) It seems unlikely that Scrooge Senior remarried and had a daughter if he was so bitter about his wife's death that he rejected his son for it. How did Scrooge meet his fiancee, Belle? The movies that address this question always have them meet at Fezziwig's Christmas party. Why did young Scrooge have to struggle to make his fortune (as he and Belle discuss in a flashback) if his father had enough money to pay for boarding school, send a carriage to bring him home, and purchase his apprenticeship with old Fezziwig? Did Scrooge Senior lose his money somewhere along the way? Or did he disinherit Ebenezer and leave the estate to Fan? Then why does Fan's son, Fred, have less material wealth than Scrooge (even though Scrooge makes no use of it to buy himself a comfortable life)? Scrooge, by the way, labels Fred "poor," which he clearly isn't; that's just a reflection of Scrooge's deeply distorted world-view. Fred obviously has a pleasantly middle-class lifestyle (he throws a Christmas party and employs at least one servant). When Scrooge dies alone in the Christmas Yet to Come vision, where's Fred? Given his character as shown in the present, it's hard to imagine his abandoning the old man. Maybe Scrooge finally pushed him away once too often. Or maybe when Fred dropped by to invite him to dinner that year, Scrooge managed to conceal how sick he was. Above all, what's wrong with Tiny Tim? To fit the observed conditions, his disease has to be (1) chronic but not immediately fatal, (2) crippling, (3) ultimately though not inevitably fatal, but (4) able to be successfully treated by 19th-century medical science, otherwise Scrooge's money wouldn't save him. Here's an article exploring two theories:

What Was Ailing Tiny Tim?

And here's a discussion of another possibility:

Tiny Tim Diagnosis

Regardless, to recall his familiar line, "God bless us every one!" Merry Christmas and Happy Yule!

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Reviews 11 by Jacqueline Lichtenberg Artificial Intelligence

Reviews 11

Artificial Intelligence
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Robert Heinlein created the AI "Mike" who "runs" the Lunar Colony infrastructure.  He was absolutely adorable and readers just fell in love with him.

Mike wasn't the first AI in Science Fiction.  Heinlein had created smart cars and other writers added all kinds of AI scenarios.

Of course, the Horror writers grabbed that and ran with it.  The human phobia against things smarter than ourselves (or more powerful or ubiquitous -- lions or Army Ants, Ebola, West Nile Virus, ) is the main subject of Horror.  Frankenstein "monster" is another example of what we create being more powerful than ourselves.  Jekyl and Hide also show this problem in symbolic ways. 

Horror is about why you can never win.

Romance is about how you can always win.

Put the two "genres" together and you have an unbeatable combination.

That combination is symbolized by Artificial Intelligence.

Asimov created R. Daneel Olivaw -- a robot/android figure many female readers had a crush on.  Roddenberry modeled Data on that.

And of course Star Wars contributed AI examples.  Oddly, the less humanoid R2D2 is the most crush-worthy.

The trend continues as we get closer and closer to real AI.

Here is a grab bag of good reads to consider if you want to play with the story potential of Artificial Intelligence.

First we have a novel by the award winning, immensely popular writer Robert J. Sawyer (who is very justifyably famous). 

RED PLANET BLUES is a novel work that starts with the material of his Hugo and Nebula award nominated novella, "Identify Theft."



It's an odd read if you have read the novella.  The characters, setting, and mystery-plot (the main character is a Private Eye on Mars) are all so memorable you get disoriented, "I've read this before, haven't I?" 

But after you get beyond where the novella ended, the whole thing is just one whopping good read, filled with characters driven by their Relationships.  Romance is not the main factor here -- but you can see in the way they related to each other that pairings are in the thin Martian wind.

And the technology that drives an old space ship buried in the dunes of Mars is operated by the onboard A.I.  -- gotta meet that one to appreciate what we might be able to do. 

It's a Hard Boiled Detective On Mars story -- and there aren't many of those.  Maybe you want to write one.

Second comes some great humor in a Fantasy Universe.

Simon R. Green has been working two series of novels, two sets of characters, all set in one, huge Fantasy Universe complete with dimension travel, "forces" unknown, and massive amounts of politics.

I can't say which is my favorite - the Nightside or the Secret Histories series, but when you need to energize your sense of humor, try some of these novels.



This is one of those $10.99 Kindle e-books that Amazon fights publishers about -- with authors caught in the middle.

The "Secret Histories" are about a family of Guardians who wear magic-seeming armor (from another dimension) and fight Evil across dimensions, defending Earth. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_History_(book_series)

Should give you a list of the books in order.

Third we have a series by Laura E. Reeve that I find absolutely captivating.

And this one has a hot love-story -- well, actually there's good serious Romance threading through the whole series which is labeled A Major Ariane Kedros Novel.

Ariane Kedros is an alias this character wears.  She was in the armed services in an interstellar war and carried out a mission that ended the war -- but probably destroyed a Star and its inhabited planets.  When mustered out of the service, she was given a new Identity.

Now she is partners with a guy who owns a space ship and prospects for Alien Artifacts among the stars.  Together they found one, and it's being explored by the xenologists -- there's big money at stake.

Meanwhile, they ran afoul of the interstellar version of The Mob via a friend who was kind of in the gray area between law and crime.  This fellow bequeathed them an AI which now resides (illegally) on their space ship, but the law is after them, which will entail the discovery and perhaps destruction of this AI (who you will love).



4th is another new series discovery that I found to be a high-impact, refreshingly different, nice-old-fashioned, unique Universe, with great, tightly worded writing (hits all my requirements), and has made me a fan of the author, Alex Hughes.

The series is titled Mindspace Investigations (yes I love Private Eye novels).

This series has been likened to another favorite of mine, The Dresden Files, (the forensic wizard who is a Private Eye ) but though the plotting methodology is as intricate and brilliant, the tone and flavor is totally different.

Hughes captures a tone and flavor using details of her background world that just sizzle with possibilities.



The Dresden Series borders on "The Dark" but Mindspace Investigations has dark-horrible things in it yet (like reality) is basically a "Light" universe.

Dresden Files In Order

In Mindspace Investigations, people do nasty-bad things with horrendous Powers that Hughes calls "Ability" -- and the main character is pretty much beaten down to a bare shadow of his former self -- yet the total picture comes out with a Star Trek like optimism that is stronger than Jim Butcher creates with Dresden's universe.

Hughes' main character tells his story in First Person, and adroitly informs us of the history of his universe.

On Earth, we gott to the Internet of Things years before this series starts.  With all the smart-devices connected an AI is born.  The AI tries to take over the world.  The people with Ability (espers) fight the AI and win, and in the end (long ago) hacked out a treaty with Normals that allows the Guild of the Abled to have complete sovereignty over the Abled.

Our main character is a high level telepath who was a professor of telepathic skills until various political things happened at the Guild and he ended up expelled to die on the streets.  But he didn't die.  He got a job as a consultant for the police.

Now he is seconded to Homicide on occasion to "read" murder scenes for what exactly happened and who did it which is apparent in "Mindspace."

Because of budget cuts, he has to get a certification, and the only thing he can go for is a Private Eye license -- but he's a felon by technicality of the law, so he's having trouble there.

Now you see why I love Mindspace Investigations -- I get ESP, a Private Eye, oh, and a MENTAL LINK between the private eye and the homicide cop (a woman I can really admire who gets migraines), plus a Guild as interesting as the Telepath Guild in Babylon-5. 

Lots of emotional ebb and flow -- lots of intrigue, mystery, suspense. 



If you want to top that, give me a Romance WITH an AI who is, maybe a Private Eye.

Alex Hughes has compiled all my favorite things, and INCLUDED a history of AI impacting our real world to create this really odd future world with backwards seeming technology.

Really, you MUST catch up on Alex Hughes and then follow how this develops.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Back To The ConFusion (January 16th - 18th)

I (Rowena, the alien romances Sunday blogger) will be attending my first science fiction/fantasy convention in mid-January. It's the literature-focused "ConFusion" and will at the Hilton Doubletree in Dearborn, Michigan.

If any friends of this alien romances blog will be there, I'd love to meet you.

The Literarature tract Guest of Honor, is Karen Lord, multiple award-winning author of Redemption in Indigo and Best of All Possible Worlds.

The Music Guest of Honor is Canadian recording artist & touring musician Heather Dale.

The Gaming Guests of Honor are Shanna Germain (a writer for and the lead editor of both Numenera and The Strange) and Monte Cook (professional writer and award-winning game designer).

The Science Guest of Honor is Dr. Cynthia Chestek, a professor and researcher in the Biomedical Engineering Department at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

The Honored Fan Guest is Aaron Thul, who has served on the convention of committee of ConFusion for 8 years and the Ann Arbor Science Fiction Association board for 3 years. 

Subterranean Press is once again bringing Special Guests: Steven Erikson, author of the critically-acclaimed Malazan Book of the Fallen, Joe Abercrombie, author of the best-selling fantasy books The First Law Trilogy – The Blade Itself, Before They Are Hanged and Last Argument of Kings, and Ted Chiang, Nebula and Hugo-award winning short fiction writer.
This is my schedule

Friday 6pm: Every Creature (Real and Fantastical) Poops
"You may have read the book Everyone Poops, but it's so human-centric. What about mermaids, centaurs, and other fantastical creatures? Let's see if we can analogize from real species to arrive at a theory of fantastical pooping. (Caution: conversation may stray into food, sex and gestation.)"


Saturday 11am: Authors Who Game
Authors talk about their favorite games, of any type.


Saturday 12pm: Curing the Common Cold
Will we ever cure the common cold? What about the common cancer? 


Saturday 3pm: Mass Autograph Session


Saturday 5pm: Where the %*$# Are All My Bookstores?!
"Ah, the good old days when you could just drive down the street to pick up your favorite book. Or is it easier now to just click a "Buy" button? How has the book selling industry changed in the last 20 years, and are bookstores going to quietly disappear?"

It sounds like fun. Does anyone have any tips for me about sci-fi cons? Any thoughts about any of the topics? Does one wear costume?

Best wishes,
Rowena Cherry

Biology of Blood-Drinkers

From the author's note in a recent vampire novel, I discovered a book that would be fascinating and valuable to all writers who create vampires as well as anybody interested in the often "alien" weirdness of animal biology and behavior in our terrestrial ecosystems. DARK BANQUET (2008), by bat expert Bill Schutt, subtitled "Blood and the Curious Lives of Blood-Feeding Creatures," surveys the "obligate sanguivores" (creatures that feed exclusively on blood) of the animal kingdom. The animals discussed range from vampire bats (the only mammal in this category) to leeches, bedbugs, ticks, etc., with glances at a few creatures that sometimes consume blood but don't live on it, such as "vampire finches." Anticoagulants and anesthetics in the saliva of vampire bats and leeches have inspired similar features of the naturally evolved vampire species in my own fiction. It's intriguing that, because of the high volume of water to nutrients (mainly protein) in blood, vampire bats have to ingest a large percentage of their body weight every day, yet leeches and bedbugs can go for weeks or months without feeding. What makes the difference—the metabolic rate of mammals versus invertebrates? If so, my own vampires' ability to survive in a dormant state, without nourishment, theoretically forever must be a bit of a hand-wave, but after all, it's fiction. I've also postulated that my vampires' saliva has antiseptic properties that keep the bite wounds from getting infected; the saliva of human beings and some other animals does contain antibacterial chemicals, but this book doesn't mention any such qualities in bats or leeches.

One vampire bat trait I definitely did not adopt for my fictional species is the need to get rid of excess water to make themselves light enough to fly away after drinking from a victim. The bats often start urinating even while they're still feeding. Far from glamorous!

After the opening chapter on vampire bats, enlivened (like the rest of the book) with personal anecdotes and observations, Schutt devotes a section to the physiology and chemistry of blood in the context of the history of medical science. One topic I wish he'd covered more thoroughly, instead of briefly mentioning, is the nutritional content of blood and the digestive adaptations needed for an animal to survive on what his final chapter labels "A Tough Way to Make a Living." I've often wondered how many calories are in a pint of blood and have never been able to find a definitive answer.

For me, the most fascinating tidbit of information in the book is that vampire bats have been observed to snuggle up to the brood patches on hens' chests. The hen relaxes, contentedly settling down as if the predator is a chick, and allows the bat to feed. On other occasions, a hen may respond to a bat on her back by passively assuming the mating posture, as if mounted by a rooster. So my premise that members of my vampire species lull or seduce human victims into willingly surrendering their lifeblood has a factual basis in biology!

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Theme-Symbolism Integration Part 1: You Can't Fight City Hall by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Theme-Symbolism Integration
Part 1
You Can't Fight City Hall
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous post on Symbolism:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/communicating-in-symbols.html

Is fighting City Hall romantic?  You bet it is! 

But first I want to point you to a short post by Margaret L. Carter here on Alien Romance.  She surveys the effect of going back in Time by watching very old TV Series and how those series depict characters.

The dissonance she refers to measures the sudden change in social norms.  It's too sudden for humans to adjust without psychological stress, according to Alvin Toffler in FUTURE SHOCK change in social norms.  I think we are still in the midst of that change, and therefore Romance Writers can leverage the chaos into massive commercial success bigger than mere destruction-derby, action, raw sex, or violence.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/08/values-dissonance.html

So let's journey back in time, then apply what we can learn.

One of the hottest hunks of an era was the guy who brought down the mob-corruption in Chicago when the mob had total control of "City Hall."  And the actor who portrayed that sexiest guy was likewise a heart stealing, larger than life, ultimate target for any woman worth her salt.

Here is an Amazon Video page with some of the titles available for a refresher course in that era.


The Untouchables Instant Video

And here is a Kevin Costner remake of that story:

The background theme in the mob story is "corruption."  Corruption is the way to "do business" and/or "Corruption is Dishonorable" and/or "Corruption is a figment of the imagination of those who want to control you."

The themes of Corruption are a theme-bundle, a set of independent but related themes that can be used to drive the stories of a whole set of characters who are in external conflict (plot), but each learning different lessons from being opposed.

Outside of a mere dictionary, the term "corruption" will be defined in a myriad different ways.  "This is corrupt."  No, nonono! "THAT is corrupt!"  "No actually neither is corruption at all." 

"Corruption" is a term with a huge, negative semantic loading (like EVIL, and we all admire the kickass Heroine who fights EVIL and protects our world from invasion and domination by Evil), but unlike Evil Corruption doesn't doesn't come in "Black" vs. "White." 

So with the shift of Generations, as time marches on, we see our very language morphing, words taking on new connotations, new definitions, and being used in new ways. 

Compare that Kevin Costner remake of The Untouchables with the earlier version from 1959 and watch that difference:




Now, consider "Corruption" in the abstract.  The concept lends itself handily to Thematic Statement -- what particular action in which situation actually equals "corruption" and what action does not qualify.  This is potent stuff, and crazy-sexy stuff, too because it makes or breaks Relationships. 

A woman looks for a "strong" man, a man who will stand for what she believes in, fight to the death to protect her and his children, never break his promises. 

Marriages founder on such broken promises, even if "Oh, that's not what I meant" comes into play when accused of breaking a marriage vow.

You see this argument unfolding in today's headlines, all the dodging and weaving to redefine what an oath actually means, what the US Constitution actually means (nevermind meant long ago) and what that has to do with "reality." 

Nobody knows how to resolve such an argument.  The internal parameters are fuzzy, foggy, blurred, and there's no concrete definition of what's right and what's wrong, nevermind what's legal and what's illegal.

This befuddlement affects people of different ages differently and thus your Target Audience is divided by age group.  To capture more than one age-group, you need characters of different ages bespeaking the attitudes and values of their own generation.

Remember how we broke down the Generations among your target audience according to what Sign of the Zodiac Pluto was in at their birth? 
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/astrology-just-for-writers-pt-6.html

---------quote from that Part 6-----------
Gen Y came of age just as the possibility of video games emerged, and the home computer became financially feasible.

PLUTO IN SCORPIO kids -- only 10 years worth of kids -- grew up with computers in GRAMMAR SCHOOL classrooms and at home and became the market for the most violent video games. Pluto rules Scorpio, the Natural 8th House - when Pluto was in Scorpio it was its most POWERFUL. For the 1/12th of those kids born with Pluto in Scorpio in their own 8th House, Pluto issues are likely to rule the whole life.

There was a huge baby boom in the 1990's. Though it's only a 10 year span, 1985-1995 saw an unusual increase in the demographic significance of that generation who are now entering college and the lesser educated workforce.

That Pluto in Scorpio generation turned out the most young voters ever in this previous Presidential election, and you've all seen their vehemence (power) in political rallies (both sides of the issues!)

The generation reared on the most violent video games is determined to assert their right to their inheritance, their rightful possession by dint of the fact that they exist.

Employers have already noted that the current 18-20 year olds they hire are mortally offended by any workplace rule that prohibits texting during work hours. Employers have no right to restrict behavior or communication during work hours. (I saw a study about that posted online, and saw several interviews about it on TV, but didn't save any references, sorry. I may have referred to it in a previous post here.)

The Pluto in Scorpio generation (only 10 years long) has passed on their taste for video games to the Pluto in Sagittarius generation.

PLUTO IN SAGITTARIUS, 1995 - 2008, are still just babies, and their buying power is still mostly controlled by Gen Y parents.

But for us, it's interesting to note the success of TWILIGHT with the Pluto in Sagittarius teens.

Gen X acquired a real taste for the teen-vampire novel. The sex appeal of Vampires with the edgy connotations of risking death is soooo PLUTO!

YA shelves filled with vampires in the 1980's, which naturally gave rise to BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER a little later, and all sorts of vampire spinoffs for older people.

TWILIGHT and the urban-fantasy vision of reality as a thin film over a seething cauldron of evil is intensely popular with Pluto in Scorpio AND Pluto in Sagittarius.

Noel Tyl, an astrologer's astrologer, has identified the axis in the natal chart that describes one's deepest anxieties, fears, nightmares, repressed fears -- the kind of deep, inarticulate fears that rule our behavior and which we rationalize.

That axis is the 3rd House/ 9th House axis.

The Natural 3rd House is Gemini, ruled by Mercury (thought, communication, short trips, fast moves, and also indecisiveness and restlessness).

The Natural 9th House is Sagittarius, ruled by Jupiter, and all about Philosophy, Courts, Social Justice, the generous and magnanimous King, the kindness of the world, success by expansion, growth. Sagittarius is all about open-honesty as the adjacent sign of Scorpio is all about hidden realities. Sag is long trips, foreign countries, PUBLISHING!!!

Kids with Pluto in Sagittarius are the teens who gobbled up Harry Potter (foreign published) when they were 9 years old, TWILIGHT etc, in their teens. TWILIGHT treats the darker (Pluto is "dark") aspects of the vampire as "out there" and mostly ignorable, while the vampires that are "in here" are trustworthy and above all that dark stuff - probably. In TWILIGHT the nasty part is "hidden" (Pluto).

Marketers have noted a leveling off of the growth of computer games sales (not shrinking, just not growing as fast as there are no more Pluto in Scorpio kids coming to buying age)

The trend in films toward ever more exaggerated violence and destruction, spectacle for its own sake, (TRANSFORMERS?) pleasures and amuses Pluto in Scorpio folks in some way that mystifies the Pluto in Leo folks. And I don't think it's just because the Pluto in Leo folks are older. I think it's because the Pluto in Leo folks have an Amusement Button that's configured differently.

When the Pluto in Sagittarius kids are 18-25, what films will they be taking their girlfriends to? What games will they spend their money on? What will amuse them life-long? What songs will they popularize? (already, I see lyrics changing)

The dark, ugly subject matter of the first wave of popularized rap is giving way to something else, but it's gradual.

If the Pluto in Scorpio generation pushed the violence in video games beyond all previous taboos, what taboo will the Pluto in Sagittarius generation (the obese kid generation -- Jupiter, ruler of Sagittarius is famous for obesity, the JOLLY FAT WOMAN image is usually Jupiter on the Ascendant) what taboo will this new generation expand out of all sense and reason? What will obsess them as violence and destruction obsesses Pluto in Scorpio?
----------end quote-------

Yes, it's a long post, and that is a tiny slice out of the middle.  It was posted in 2009.

I still think understanding the generations, and the attitudes they have toward Government (what it should be used for, what it can do effectively, what it must never do, etc) is a vital key for writers who are aiming at a particular Demographic which is seen by publishers or producers as currently gobbling up a certain type of fiction.

The full effect of a generational obsession is not seen until that generation has a) money they earned, and b) power over others (e.g. getting promotions to management positions).  The effect is not seen in politics unless there is a significant portion of the total population born in that time-span.

For commercial purposes, industry (Public Relations Firms mostly) have named the generations and assigned them boundaries in years, then attempted to parse the statistics of the mass-behavior of these people.

Forbes Magazine did an article in July 2014 examining the breakdown of generations, and highlighting individual biographies to illustrate a point.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/samanthasharf/2014/07/30/the-recession-generation-how-millennials-are-changing-money-management-forever/

And it contains the key graphic writers can gain from, a chart defining the generations in percent of population, and their behavior at different life-stages.