Guy Stewart's Blog, page 117

WRITING ADVICE: What Went RIGHT With HEIRS OF THE SHATTERED SPHERES (MuseItUp Publishing) Guy Stewart #36 – Part 2

[image error]In September of 2007, I started this blog with a bit of writing advice. A little over a year later, I discovered how little I knew about writing after hearing children’s writer, Lin Oliver speak at a convention hosted by the Minnesota Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Since then, I have shared (with their permission) and applied the writing wisdom of Lin Oliver, Jack McDevitt, Nathan Bransford, Mike Duran, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, SL Veihl, Bruce Bethke, and Julie Czerneda. Together they write in genres broad and deep, and have acted as agents, editors, publishers, columnists, and teachers. Since then, I figured I’ve got enough publications now that I can share some of the things I did “right” and I’m busy sharing that with you.
While I don’t write full-time, nor do I make enough money with my writing to live off of it...neither do all of the professional writers above...someone pays for and publishes ten percent of what I write. When I started this blog, that was NOT true, so I may have reached a point where my own advice is reasonably good. We shall see! Hemingway’s quote above will now remain unchanged as I work to increase my writing output and sales! As always, your comments are welcome!
HEIRS has got to be the single greatest exercise in writing persistence  in my long and varied writing career (see “Writing and Air Quotes” for a discussion of my writing career: http://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2016/02/writing-advice-31-writing-and-air-quotes.html).
So picking up where I left off: “Once I started to understand Emerald, other things fell into place – things like answering the question, “What do teenagers DO on a spacecraft committed to a twelve year mission?”
“Next time, I’ll look at the development of ‘school for teens in space’…”
OK – it’s “next time”!
When it comes to school for teens in space, SF writers have lacked much imagination. From setting up desks and having a teacher, like on ST:NG and ST:DS9 to having teens just go to a “virtual school” that is identical to what we have here and now as in Michael’s Burstein’s award-winning short story, “Teleabsence”; to training young adults to just “be soldiers” like in Orson Scott Card’s ENDER’S GAME books; I think the genre has treated the future of educating teens as if we’d already reached the epitome of “educational technology” here in 21stCentury America…I don’t even see SF attempting to include educational theory and practice from other cultures! A quick Google search reveals only that there are lots of articles on how to use SF to teach about science or inspire girls to be scientists. This list http://sf.hackeducation.com/is a good start, but hardly complete – at least I hope it’s not complete.
At any rate, to create an educational system that made sense, I drew from my own experience. One thing I knew for certain was that I didn’t want my teens – and there are 130+ of them on SOLAR EXPLORER – just “going to school” and then “hanging out”.
As important as that activity is, and know that I’m not speaking tongue-in-cheek, these young people are not only going to be in space for twelve years, they are going to mature into adults who will in their own time take their places in the operation of the ship. Some will be “promoted” to apprenticeships or leadership positions; some will become menial laborers. Some perhaps will become philosophers, others still recorders, writers, and artisans.
But how do they get there and not just “hang out” on their cellphones and on social media all the time?
Education in classical literature, mathematics, social studies (including history as well as the social experiment they live in!), physical education, science (duh!), art, and practical skills like programming, global languages, welding, recycling technologies, particle physics, gravitational manipulation technologies, and mass communication and journalism – how do you cover all of these things without sitting the fat butts of these kids down?
First of all, SOLAREX is a tiny, closed society. You might consider it a microscopic section of countries like “Andorra, Luxembourg, Greenland, Norway, Liechtenstein” where “literacy reaches virtually 100 percent.” (http://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-highest-literacy-rates-in-the-world.html). Surveillance is practically universal (though I touch on the fact that it’s NOT!), so teens will only get into minimal trouble in the ways that they do. As well, there’s an “illicit” athletic outlet (pryzhok) as well as plenty of other things to do. Education is experiential as well as academic. They work on Intensive Training Teams as well as receive homework assignments in the “traditional subjects” we expect teens to study. They also receive tangible rewards as a result of inter-Team competition in both their vocational training and academics: “‘Vacation days, Leisure Study days and tours, credit chits to buy food at the alternate restaurants and hang outs, mostly.’” (from HEIRS OF THE SHATTERED SPHERES 2: ZECHARIAH OF VENUS (p 37).
In another novel I wrote, OUT OF THE DEBTOR STARS, I have instructors who design educational pathways for students – “He was willing to admit that he’d been a master query marker guide at one time. He’d figure out what someone needed to know then lead them there. After the suicides, he’d adjudged himself a stupid query marker guru, quit, and fled.” I’m trying to explore ways that we might educate our young people.
It SEEMS sometimes like it’s a lonely business. Comments anyone?
Next time, I’ll look at why I think leaping from Earth directly to “interstellar space exploration” is a BAD idea – and the basis of why I created the SOLAR EXPLORER…
Image: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/9f/22/3b/9f223b1e57a36e14db3eb13715fbe3f9.jpg

LOVE IN A TIME OF ALIEN INVASION -- Chapter 42

[image error]On Earth, there are three Triads intending to integrate not only the three peoples and stop the war that threatens to break loose and slaughter Humans and devastate their world; but to stop the war that consumes Kiiote economy and Yown’Hoo moral fiber. The Braiders accidentally created a resonance wave that will destroy the Milky Way and the only way to stop it is for the Yown’Hoo-Kiiote-Human Triads to build a physical wall. The merger of Human-Kiiote-Yown’Hoo into a van der Walls Society may produce the Membrane to stop the wave.
The young experimental Triads are made up of the smallest primate tribe of Humans – Oscar and Kashayla; the smallest canine pack of Kiiote – six, pack leaders Qap and Xurf; and the smallest camelid herd of Yown’Hoo – a prime eleven, Dao-hi the Herd mother. On nursery farms and ranches away from the TC cities, Humans have tended young Yown’Hoo and Kiiote in secret for decades, allowing the two warring people to reproduce and grow far from their home worlds.
“We had nearly fallen into stagnation when we encountered the Kiiote.”
“And we into internecine war when we encountered the Yown’Hoo.”
 “Yown’Hoo and Kiiote have been defending themselves for a thousand revolutions of our Sun.”
 “Together, we might do something none of us alone might have done…a destiny that included Yown’Hoo, Kiiote, and Human.” (2/19/2015)Banned from their Home World and congress with any Herd but their own; branded Human freaks!; their breeding line cut from the records, as good as Wilds; Retired, Lieutenant Commander Patrick Bakhsh (ret) who had been recalled by his Human military commander – now under the care of an android designed to look exactly like my Great Uncle, Timothy Orwell, all I could say, “We are one sorry ass bunch of saviors of the Universe.”

Retired shrugged, “I’ve ignored ‘cease and desist’ orders before. I’ve been decorated twice after ignoring the order.”
“Not one of those times, I think.” GUTim looked us over, adding, “I think there are going to be lots of people looking for you – Human, Yown’Hoo, and Kiiote alike. I say we move out right now. You may not have another time when you’re not surrounded by hostiles.”
Herd Mother Dao-hi, Qap and Xurf, and as the only Human third of the Triad, me – all looked to him. She said, “What is your plan of action, Protector of Hope?”
Tim shook his head, “I’m not the protector of anything, Mother.”
“You protected me when I first ran free.”
“You were freed here?” GU Tim said. I’d seen a Yown’Hoo birth – even though they looked like llamas, they were more like ‘possum. The young were delivered and crawled into small pouches on one of the herd mother’s backs. Every Yown’Hoo female is born with twenty or so potential pouches. Once in a pouch, the free embryos actually grew…I guess the best way to describe them are “roots” – though that’s not exactly the term. When they got too big or too numerous for the mother to carry any more, there was a solemn ceremony and the young were cut free and released. The pouches weren’t re-usable, so no female could ever have more than twenty cria(it’s a Spanish term for a baby llama. None of the Yown’Hoo ever objected to it, so it stuck).
Dao-hi said, “I was, so you are the Protector of this Herd.”
We all looked at Qap and Xurf. Xurf did his weird transformation from “runner” to “walker” – it never ceased to amaze me – as his bones and muscles rearranged themselves. He bowed in a weirdly Human way, and said, “My sire was raised here, so you are Protector for this Pack as well.”
Retired looked at GU Tim and nodded, “I guess it’s unanimous then, Mister OrwellAH.” He used the weird honorific some old folks used that made a name into a comment be noting that someone was an Artificial Human.
My Great Uncle, who I called Uncle Tim when I visited here looked startled. He took a deep breath and said, “All right then, I guess I get to lead our little clan.” The sun had started to wash the eastern sky with lavender bands against darker banks of clouds. “It looks like it may snow soon. We’ll go underground for now, but we can’t stay here. Your truck’s a burned out hulk by now, so they can’t track you with that any more. But walking seven hundred kilometers in the winter would be tough even for me. Trying to keep this tribe together, alive, and inconspicuous…” he sighed – even though I now knew he didn’t even need to breathe. He was an android. Weird. Continuing, “But I think we can do it. We’ll need a plan and some transportation.” He nodded, “We’re going into the tornado shelter.”
“The tornado shelter?” I said. “Doesn’t sound very safe.”
GU Tim said, “The shelter itself has kept us all safe four times in the last hundred years. But it’s got an underlevel that we’ll need access to if we all want to make it to Grendl alive.”
Qap said, “You have antigravity transportation there?”
He smiled then said, “No. Something quite a bit better.” He stepped to the door, opened it and leaned out into the cold air of morning. “We have to go now. I don’t hear the choppers anymore and there’s no other sign of ATVs, but I doubt that will last for long.” He held the door open and said, “Head for the outhouse.”
Retired scowled and said, “The outhouse?”
GU Tim nodded, “Nobody would think to look under there for an entrance.”
Sighing, Retired said, “I’m not even sure I would want to think about it.” He stepped past the Triad squatted and gently picked up Ked-sah-ti, and strode across the open grassland, stopping at the small, bleached wood shack. It was definitely leaning slightly to the left.
I sniffed then said, “Good thing it isn’t summer anymore,” and followed him to the outhouse.
Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Rhll_wire_rope.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 254

[image error]Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote, website, podcast, etc.) and then a thought or two that came to mind. These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes of them.
Fantasy Trope: Witchcraft For World Peace!!!Current Event:
http://wildhunt.org/2016/02/call-for-global-witchcraft-community-to-unite-against-terrorism.html
Saga Pai-Teles shook her head then said, “How much do you really expect us to accomplish?”
Djamel Vlach sighed, “I’m sure nothing, but what else can we do that might even conceivably make a difference? I’m not a soldier, and unless you enlisted in the Royal Marines or fought a stint with the Aegis Mercenaries in the past few months, I’m pretty sure you don’t have much experience with fighting, either.”
“But we’re not ‘fighting’ – not like that anyway. Our powers are of Earth, wind, ice, fire, and water.”
“Sounds like the name of an American band from the nineteen seventies.” She frowned at him and made a faint movement with her fingers. He laughed, “You think charms and wardings are going to be able to stave off the black market weaponry of Daesh, or Boko Haram, or the Taliban?”
“Shows how much YOU know! We’re not here to fight anger with anger. We’re here to fight anger with the power of nature and of the true spirit of Humanity. There are way more...”
Djamel wasn’t listening to her. His eyes had grown wide. “OK! Now you’re talking! Taking out Daesh with a hurricane or an earthquake or even a flood is totally cool! I could get into that and I even have a couple of spells that enhance water movement!”
“That’s not what I was talking about,” she stopped talking abruptly. “Then again, I have a couple of other spells that help anyone who’s got a gift for dowsing.”
“What’s that?”
She looked at him steadily and when she had his complete attention, she said, “Dowsing is all about FINDING water, Djamel. If I could find the water…”
“I could direct it.” Djamel scowled again. “My powers aren’t that…um…powerful.”
“Mine, neither. What we need is someone who can magnify or enhance our simple powers,” Saga said.
“I don’t have simple powers! They’re plenty strong enough!”
“That’s not what I meant! In order to deal world peace and muffle terrorism in our time, we have to overcome terror with peace. But it can’t be done if we’re weak.”
“We need, like, a talisman.”
“A crystal, or a…” Sag was saying.
Djamel cut her off, “The Vial of Trench!”
“What’s that?”
“A Vial of water collected from the bottom of the Marianas Trench.” He looked down at her, “Can you think of a more powerful talisman to increase our mission to bring peace on Earth than focusing our meager powers through a vial of water from the bottom of the Earth’s sea?”
“I can’t…”
“We’ll do it and it’ll start now?”
Names: ♀ Finland, Portugal; ♂ Algeria, HungaryImage: http://orig05.deviantart.net/021d/f/2011/115/1/4/green_circular_vial_earrings_by_ducktape_rose-d3euwis.jpg

Slice of PIE: How CHS Is Like DS9

[image error]How much is Deep Space Nine like my high school?
We both have a Commander – ours is called a Principal. DS9 actually HAD a school, and Sisko’s son, Jake was a student there. In his spare time, Jake also became friends with a Ferengi named Nog and there were several episodes involving the school, as well as one of its teachers, Keiko O’Brien, wife of the Chief Engineer, Miles O’Brien. The school was integral to several story lines.
So in what other ways is my school like DS9?
Perhaps the next most obvious way is the diversity of the school and how students and staff interact. This is, like on the show, where most of the drama comes from. Cross-cultural understanding, or rather MISunderstanding, drives half of the conflicts we see in the office. The other half is interpersonal engagement that has nothing to do with cultures and everything to do with the stubbornness of the Human condition.Examples, you ask?

Hmmm, examples are always helpful in lending evidence to a thesis or, as in this case, answering a question.
An example from my “student counseling”, then.
The leader of the Hispanic Culture group, a counselor at the school, abruptly left the school when he husband got a much better job in another state. As the counselor hired to temporarily fill her position, I was de facto, the leader of the Hispanic Culture group. I started my tenure by meeting with the group the first time and, holding out my arms, said, “I am obviously an old white guy. I know nothing of Hispanic, Latino, or Mexican culture. Teach me.”
Apparently that was exactly what I was supposed to say. The KIDS took ME under their wings and proceeded to educate me. It was a fascinating and glorious time!
Then came Cinco de Mayo.
A couple of the kids in the group hung a Mexican flag in the foyer of the building. An administrator told them to take it down. They got very upset. Who did they come to in order to solve the problem? I’ll give you ten guesses.
Got it in one, I’ll bet.
Let me educate you, then. Do you know the significance of Cinco de Mayo? It is emphatically NOT Mexican Independence Day (that’s September 16). It began…well, it began with the American Civil War, led to the French support of the Confederacy by Napoleon III, and sprang into the invasion of Mexico, which was to be the toehold of an expansionist French Empire. England and Spain had both sent small forces to collect taxes from the Mexican government, Napoleon sent an invasion force of over 5000 or his best soldiers. When they attacked, Napoleon was busy deciding who he would send to be Emperor of his new land. Once that was decided, he would fully back the South against the North...The Mexican defeat of the superior French forces took place on May 5, 1862.
I deescalated the situation by agreeing to drape the Mexican flag over my door…which was vetoed by another counselor as “not appropriate”. So I thumbtacked the flag NEXT to my office door. The parties were appeased and a crisis averted.
So, you have two major world powers (the US and Mexico) contending over a minor place (my school and students) in order to gain precedence over each other and join in a civil war to get rid of a THIRD major power (The District).
DS9 orbited the small, relatively weak world of Bajor. Recovering from an occupation by a Quadrant Power (the Cardassian Empire), it had become a fulcrum from which the Federation…
Hmmm. Let’s back up: It began with the Bajoran revolt against Cardassia, led by the Bajoran underground which was supported by the Federation Council, which led to the Cardassian withdrawal and the Federation takeover. The Founders of the Dominion, another superpower from the other side of the wormhole, sent an invasion force of their best soldiers – the Jem’Hadar. When they attacked, the Founders were busy deciding who they would send to be Emperor of their new land. Once that was decided, they would fully back the Cardassians against the Federation…
See? My high school is just like DS9.
The upshot here is that I should be mining the exploits of the teachers and staff there and using the incidents and conflicts to extend my reach as a writer. Which I will now do, because when I began this article, I thought the comparison was minor – and I now realize that there are a heckuvalot more parallels than I expected. In fact, I have an idea bubbling around in my thick head and I think I need to write it down before I forget it!
Anyone else see parallels?
Image: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/xSXzP9lB9GA/maxresdefault.jpg

MARTIAN HOLIDAY 81: Paolo At Burroughs

[image error]On a well-settled Mars, the five major city Council regimes struggle to meld into a stable, working government. Embracing an official Unified Faith In Humanity, the Councils are teetering on the verge of pogrom directed against Christians, Molesters, Jews, Rapists, Buddhists, Murderers, Muslims, Thieves, Hindu, Embezzlers and Artificial Humans – anyone who threatens the official Faith and the consolidating power of the Councils. It makes good sense, right – get rid of religion and Human divisiveness on a societal level will disappear? An instrument of such a pogrom might just be a Roman holiday...To see the rest of the chapters, go to SCIENCE FICTION: Martian Holiday on the right and scroll to the bottom for the first story.
Partially concealed by the base of an upthrust fault and aligned with a crack in a boulder resting at the base of the cliff, the man in the marsbug had a clear view of the second largest city on Mars. Burroughs Dome glittered at the center of the crater it called home. Thirty-five kilometers across, it was still dwarfed by the crater – as it was dwarfed in reputation by every other Dome on Mars. It had a bit of the reputation of an ancient Earth city called Calcutta…
It was home to one of the most notorious Humans ever to live on Mars.
Paolo Marcillon sat watching the empty air over the console. Natan Wallach, The Hero of the Faith Wars, was a powerful, charismatic man. His speech had been memorized by thousands of Martians, quoted in uncounted speeches, and made into hundreds of plaques, drinking vessels, and architectural epigraphs. It was a mesmerizing speech, powerful, and despite the fact that its spokesperson had vanished – assumed murdered by some religious zealot – was widely claimed to be the foundation of Martian civilization.
The truth was that it hadn’t been. Some underground believers – and antirevisionist historians – whispered that it had been written by Wallach’s father, a manipulative man whose embezzlement from the database of a small Dome had caused its financial collapse and eventual abandonment. The Ghost Dome was rarely visited, though the tale was often told…
Paolo’s pulse pounded in his ears. He had spent months in prayer. He had spent days in prayer. He had spent every moment he was awake on his way to this place in prayer. But the answer – the compulsion – had not lessened. He had to talk to Natan Wallach.
He had to talk to the Hero of the Faith Wars; a man who was a close to him as a brother. Because they WERE brothers and he hadn’t talked to Natan for years. Not blood-brothers, they’d been raised together from birth; Paolo’s parents had died the Blue Fever years. They’d been friends with the Wallach family and they’d taken the orphan four-year-old in. Their adolescence together had been very rocky.
Paolo took a deep breath. His brother looked to be barely twenty-five; though he was forty-six. Paolo was a year younger…and looked like he was in his late fifties. “Genetics,” he muttered. His parents hadn’t believed in gene-meddling. The mods were fine, eliminating cystic fibrosis, heart disease, near-sightedness, and the most common cancers – he’d been modified. But where that was all he’d had, Natan had had muscular enhancements, perception enhancements, and had a biological neural connect for digital data downloading, grown. A source of sore rivalry when they were kids; now a source of sadness.
 Paolo pursed his lips. He wasn’t getting any younger; his brother’s life wasn’t getting any less strange as far as he’d heard. His friends in Burroughs talked about a man calling himself Stepan…
With a sigh, Paolo suited up. He’d catch the inbound commuter lev-train from the outposts ranging along the heights of the crater ring, then try and discreetly snoop around to see what his big brother was really up to. He found himself hoping that the conversion was true.
He also found himself hoping that Natan – or Stepan, or whomever! – would also help him avoid their father…
Image: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_x2tsYqz5q3c/TFpRAD3RNyI/AAAAAAAAC70/ASN65Y_L4lQ/s1600/Astronauta+Marcos+C%C3%A9sar+Pontes.bmp

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 253

[image error]Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote, website, podcast, etc) and then a thought or two that came to mind. These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes of them.
SF Trope: Isaac Asimov’s Three Kinds Of Science Fiction: “Gadget sci-fi: Man invents car, holds lecture on how it works.”
Current Event: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/12/131210071936.htm
Khünbish Qureshi said, “Once we drill through the ice, we can begin extract the uranium. But we have to do it fast.” He tapped the wide pipe with his heavily armored hand. While there was no true atmosphere and the surface of the moon was exposed to the radiation sleet from Jupiter, they both wore flexible suits and had ridden to the surface on little more than a hovering plate.
“You think extracting a few metric tonnes of uranium from this moon would have any kind of effect at all?” asked Yelizavta Zaya. She bounced a few meters back after stomping her foot.
“I can’t say for sure.”
“Why not?”
“I’m a geologist...”
“You mean a Eurologist?”
“That makes me sound like a bladder specialist!”
“Well, it’s not Earth, so you can’t be a ‘geologist’.”
“There’s not a bladder in sight, either!”
Beneath their feet, the ice sang. On any other world, it would have been a quake, but here the ice vibrated, shifting, sliding along cracked edges. Immense crevasses sang bass that shook the world like a drum head; smaller ones sang faint hymns of joy; the smallest sang beyond the hearing of Humans.
Khünbish slapped the pipe again and said, “If there were living things under the surface, maybe my sucking the lifeblood from the water will make them sit up and take notice.”
“I doubt there’re sitting beings under our feet, Khun.”
He grimaced at the diminutive – Americans and Loonies made a habit of lopping parts of people’s names off willy-nilly – and said, “Whatever they’re doing, I’m hoping they notice.”
“And if there’s nothing under our feet but ice, water, uranium?”
“Then we stand to make a fortune and retire wherever we want to.” He bounced back as the ice began to sing again. As he fell to the surface, he grimaced and said, “Can you hear that?”
“Technically, I can’t hear anything. The vibrations from the ice are…”
“Literalist,” Khünbish said.
“I thought you Mongolians were literalists, but here I find you’re a pure romantic,” Yelizavta poked back. She sighed as the ice under her feet shook again.
Her partner froze in place and whispered, “I think I hear something…”
Names: ♀ Russia, Mongolian; ♂ Mongolian, Pakistan
Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/36/Cryobot.jpg

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS: How Do Writers Get Us To Slip Into An Alternate Reality? (Part 2)

[image error]Using the panel discussions of the most recent World Science Fiction Convention in Spokane, August 2015, I will jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. This is event #3678. The link is provided below…
Narrative Structure and Expectation
How do we enter stories? By what techniques do narratives pull us in? How do the expectations we have influence how we respond? I’ll break down some narrative techniques used in openings, and then go on to discuss how openings that match expectations can encourage us to keep reading while expectations that aren’t fulfilled can sometimes cause us to stop reading. How big a part does familiarity play in how well we can understand and adjust to a story? Finally, how do the things that we think we know but may be wrong about (as in history) make it easier or harder to be drawn into a book if our beliefs aren’t met? Kate Elliott
Author of plenty of books – though they all appear to be fantasy, which most of you know isn’t one of my favorite genres (I HAVE read the requisite classics by Lewis, Tolkien, LeGuin, Brooks, Card, Donaldson, Stroud, Clarke, Bull, Wynne Jones, and Nix)  – it’s obvious that Elliot must have a clear grasp of writing technique. In fact, looking at the questions above, I can’t imagine that she would have been able to cover more than ONE of them in the time apparently allotted for the session.
In another fact, I don’t know if you could ever definitively answer these…
As I’m approaching the end of the Sasquan Program Book, I think I’ll stretch it out a bit and jump off from each one of the questions posed by the programmers and look at what it means to me and possibly how I would answer it.
So: By what techniques do narratives pull us in?
I suppose the first one that comes to mind is point of view and/or tense that the story is written in.
First Person: “I asked Sam to help me with my Happy New Year mailing, and we somehow got the project done early during the last week of December in spite of our packed schedules. I’m quite proud of us and ended up calling the project ours instead of mine.”*
Second Person: “You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say that the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy.” (Opening lines of Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City (1984))
Third Person: “Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested”. [“He” is in the singular third-person masculine subjective case.]; “Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.” [“She” is in the singular third-person feminine subjective case.] “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” [“It” is in the singular third-person neuter subjective case.]*
*See more at: http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/first-second-and-third-person#sthash.hHYKZdLW.dpuf
There are arguments for every one of these points of view making the story seem more “immediate”. I could probably find arguments that would take down each POV as being clumsy and ineffective.
For ME however, I prefer third person. I’ll read first person, but the writer has to refrain from bending the rules. First person is SUPPOSED to be from the point of view of the narrator, so unless the narrator is on one of the moons of Saturn, they can’t know what’s going on there. This is the POV of how we live our own lives and frankly, I read to get away from this life.
Another technique is word choice – not in the sense that you have to pick the right words, that’s a “duh” statement – where the author chooses to write elaborately or simply.
Elaborate writing: “No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable.”
Simple: “The last gleaming sliver of Komarr’s true-sun melted out of sight behind the low hills on the western horizon. Lagging behind it in the vault of the heavens, the reflected fire of the solar mirror spring out in brilliant contrast to the darkening, purple-tinged blue. When Ekaterin had first viewed the hexagonal soletta-array from downside on Komarr’s surface, she’d immediately imagined it as a grand Winterfair ornament, hung in the sky like a snowflake made of stars, benign and consoling.”
Both paragraphs advance their story; both set up the world in which the story takes place.
But I’m drawn to one and *sigh* know that I “should” read the other. I even do the same with contemporary SF, one of my most recent “shoulds” begins this way: “We are barely past the orbit of Mars when Matjek figures out the truth about Narnia and helps me find Mieli’s trail.
"‘That can’t be the end!’ he says, holding up a book. It is a big, battered purple volume, with a circular window-like cover image that shows clashing armies. He has to lift it with both of his four-year-old hands. He struggles with its weight and finally slams it down onto the table in front of me.
"The Last Battle, by C.S. Lewis, I note with a sigh. That means difficult questions.
"For the past few subjective days, the tiny main vir of our ship, the Wardrobe, has been a calm place. I created it based on a dream Matjek told me about. It is an incense-scented labyrinth of high bookshelves full of haphazardly stacked books of all sizes and colours. Matjek and I usually sit at a rough wooden table in the small café area in the front, brightly lit by diffuse sunlight through the display windows.”
Aside from the fact that I tried to start the trilogy with the last book, I was instantly confused by the introduction of three characters: Matjek, Mieli, and the narrator. Then the author throws in a meaningless word without definition: “vir”.
And there I am: lost. I DID finish it, but it was as beyond the me of today, as JG Ballard’s book, VERMILLION SANDS was beyond me in 1972 when I was fourteen…
The lesson to myself:
1) Write in third person; it’s the tense I most enjoy and easiest to follow.
2) Write simply; it’s easier to follow the story line when you cut away the excess words.
3) Keep the point of view simple to begin with. I can add other POVs later, but to begin with, start with third person and a simple description.
Program Book: http://sasquan.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/ConGuide.toupload.pdf
Image: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/OnWqxg34rC4/hqdefault.jpg

JOURNEY TO THE PORTRAIT’S SECRET #85: August 1, 1946

[image error]This series is a little bit biographical and a little bit imaginary about my dad and a road trip he took in the summer of 1946, when he turned fifteen. He and a friend hitchhiked from Loring Park to Duluth, into Canada and back again. He was gone from home for a month. I was astonished and fascinated by the tale. So, I added some speculation about things I've always wondered about and this series is the result. To read earlier SHORT LONG JOURNEY NORTH clips, click on the label to the right, scroll down to and click OLDER ENTRIES seven or eight times. The FIRST entry is on the bottom of the last page.
Edwina Olds, most lately Lieutenant, WACS (ret.),  held out a hand to Tommy Hastings. They shook. She turned to Freddie Merrill and they shook.
She turned to Mr. Fairlaine, and instead of a handshake she snapped a salute. Startled, the old farmer returned it. He was breathing hard as she held her salute rigid until he dropped his hand. She dropped her. He whispered, “How did you know?”
She smiled, “I’d know an old soldier anywhere.”
His eyes widened as he said, “I was twenty-one when I got home.”
Nodding, she climbed up on the logging truck’s running board and lifted her chin to the boys. “Let’s go. We’ve got Socialists to catch before they commit a crime.”
Mr. Fairlaine said, “Thank you, ma’am.”
“Thank you, as well, Sir.” The truck rumbled, rattling as Ed gunned the engine. She slammed the door up just as a sliver of sunrise broke the horizon. She said, “Looks like it’s August the first, boys. Let’s get going.” They rolled out of the farmyard. Freddy stuck his arm out the window and waved wildly. Charlie waved back. Even Mr. Fairlaine lifted his hand in farewell.
Ed glanced at her watch. “Not quite six am yet. Three hours to the Cities. It won’t even be lunchtime.”
“But will we get there in time,” said Tommy, “to stop all those guys from hurting Mom?”
“What?” Freddie and Ed exclaimed in unison.
“The picture – the portrait thing – in the kitchen...”
Ed upshifted and the truck gathered speed. They passed through the tiny town of Glenn like it wasn’t even there. Pretty soon the road widened out, not quite two lanes either way, but not one single lane either. “Maybe it was J Edgar Hoover,” she said. Tommy looked at her, eyes bugging. But she laughed. “I’m kidding, kid!
Tommy said suddenly, “Arnie and Freddie said before though, that maybe Ma was with a man who was a socialist, and somebody took a picture of him shaking hands with a man who was a communist, right?” He looked at Freddie.Ed leaned forward as well. “That’s still the best idea I heard about this whole thing.”

“But it don’t help my ma! If they get there first...”
“They won’t get there first,” said Ed.
“How do you know that?”
The truck roared along the road and she nodded to a smaller truck parked off to the side, its hood propped open. “Because I think that’s their truck broke down on the road!” All three of them started laughing as they roared south. Tommy stopped first. Then Ed. Finally Freddie stopped laughing. Ed said, “I just thought of something.”
“If their truck’s broke down, where were they?” said Tommy.
The cab was silent as the miles rolled by. It wasn’t long before they slowed to pass through Isle. Freddie said, “You don’t really need to slow down here.” He looked out the window at the southern shore of Mille Lacs Lake. “We were about here when the Witch of Anoka,” he glanced at Ed, “You remember her – she tried to hex you.” Ed laughed, nodding.
“Why not slow down then?”"We seen here and some other witches here, plus there was people from the Mob here. A whole bunch of ‘em chased us out of one of the cabins!”

Ed shook her head, “Witches, mobsters, dairy farmers, me, Socialist Finns – everybody except me – chasing you from here to kingdom come! What a story this’ll be for your kids!”
“It ain’t a story!” Tommy exclaimed. “It’s all true!”
Ed shook her head, still grinning in the morning sunlight streaming through the truck window. “I know that and you know that, but when you try and tell someone about it they’ll think you’re crazy!”
“I don’t care about that! I just want to get home in time to save my mom from the Socialists!” The truck fell into silence again. Ed asked if they wanted to stop for breakfast in a little town called Page. She added, “I don’t think they’re going to be on the main road, Tommy. They don’t want to look like a mob – and they sure won’t get a ride if they all walk together! Even I wouldn’t pick them up.”
“They gotta be up to something!” he said. “Maybe they’re gonna steal a truck! Maybe they did last night and they’re already at my house, torturing Mom and Dad!”
“Tommy, calm down!” Ed said.
He sat back, scowling then finally said, “If I eat something, I’ll probably throw it up.” There was a long pause. “I just don’t want anything to happen to my mom.”
“I don’t, either,” she said.
“Why? You don’t even know her.”
Ed shrugged then let more miles pass before she said, “All I know that if she has such a great kid as you, she must be worth rescuing.”
The truck kept rolling in the bright light of day as a dark cloud descended inside the cab.
Image: http://cdn.c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000K6qGtnkwAJw/s/750/750/Delano-Terzani-Final-Art-page-08a.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 252

[image error]Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote, website, podcast, etc) and then a thought or two that came to mind. These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes of them. ? z Z
H Trope: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BarredFromTheAfterlife
Current Event: “…theorize that the nuclear war destroyed the afterlife…”, “…some people...have studied and manipulated The Dark to such an extent that they've become functionally immortal…”
Functional immortality: “Research suggests that lobsters may not slow down, weaken, or lose fertility with age, and that older lobsters may be more fertile than younger lobsters. This longevity may be due to telomerase, an enzyme that repairs long repetitive sections of DNA sequences at the ends of chromosomes, referred to as telomeres. Telomerase is expressed by most vertebrates during embryonic stages but is generally absent from adult stages of life. However, unlike vertebrates, lobsters express telomerase as adults through most tissue, which has been suggested to be related to their longevity. Despite internet memes, lobsters are not immortal. Lobsters grow by molting which needs a lot of energy and the larger the shell the more energy, eventually the lobster dies from exhaustion during a molt. Older lobsters are known to stop molting which means the shell will become damaged, infected, or fall apart and they die.”
Juana de Forlán shook herself hard, took a deep breath and said, “I can feel the synthetic lobster juice in me…”
Shaking his head, Koegathe Melamu, “You can’t possibly feel a hundred milliliters of a transparent liquid  in your...”
“I know that!” Juana exclaimed. She shook her arms, “My head knows it, but my body says otherwise.” She took a deep breath, shuddering. “I feel like I’m getting younger by the moment.”
“It’s not an elixir of youth! If it worked the way we thought it should, the telomerase will let your cells keep dividing – more or less forever. But it’s not going to make you younger.”
She held out both of her hands, palms up, and said, “Might as well. I’m gonna live forever!”
Koegathe shook his head, saying, “Maybe – but we have no idea what the long-term effects of living forever as a lobster might be.” They both laughed, but after a few minutes, Koegathe reigned his mirth in when he noticed the pitch of his voice had been climbing. He took a deep breath then said, “Maybe that wasn’t as funny as it sounded.”
She shrugged, suddenly feeling light-headed.
"What's wrong?" Koegathe said, stepping toward her.
"I think I'm going to..." It seemed like the world around her rushed into a single dot of focused, bright light. Everything else was dark around her. The point of light remained steady for some time -- she wasn't sure how long because her *-sense of time was abruptly gone. Then the light moved toward her. She might have been moving toward the light. It didn't make any difference. It might have taken time. It might have happened instantaneously, she had no idea.
Once the light grew around her, she found herself standing on solid ground of pearly white. In a throne of the same pearly substance, there sat a being. She knew that it was Death. There was certainly some kind of harvest implement laying on the ground beside the throne, though it looked more like a silver weed whacker. Death didn't wear a robe, it -- he? -- wore solid work clothes, more or less like a technician in a computer manufacturing plant, though he didn't have a mask or gloves. He did have protective goggles pushed up on his head. Black, well-trimmed, wavy hair made it look like he was wearing a cap. The name badge clipped to his collar read, "Greaper".
"Cute," Juana said. "You're the Grim Reaper?" She rolled her eyes as only  a young woman who grew up in the booming first two decades of the 21st Century could.
He lifted a leg to drape it over the arm of the throne and said, "You've presented me with a problem I've never faced before, young lady."
"What?"
"You're dying -- but you are functionally immortal -- and I have no idea what to do with you."
Names: ♀ Uruguay; ♂ Botswana
Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Telomere_caps.gif

WRITING ADVICE: What Went RIGHT With HEIRS OF THE SHATTERED SPHERES (MuseItUp Publishing) Guy Stewart #35 – Part 1

[image error]In September of 2007, I started this blog with a bit of writing advice. A little over a year later, I discovered how little I knew about writing after hearing children’s writer, Lin Oliver speak at a convention hosted by the Minnesota Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Since then, I have shared (with their permission) and applied the writing wisdom of Lin Oliver, Jack McDevitt, Nathan Bransford, Mike Duran, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, SL Veihl, Bruce Bethke, and Julie Czerneda. Together they write in genres broad and deep, and have acted as agents, editors, publishers, columnists, and teachers. Since then, I figured I’ve got enough publications now that I can share some of the things I did “right” and I’m busy sharing that with you.
While I don’t write full-time, nor do I make enough money with my writing to live off of it...neither do all of the professional writers above...someone pays for and publishes ten percent of what I write. When I started this blog, that was NOT true, so I may have reached a point where my own advice is reasonably good. We shall see! Hemingway’s quote above will now remain unchanged as I work to increase my writing output and sales! As always, your comments are welcome!
HEIRS has got to be the single greatest exercise in writing persistence  in my long and varied writing career (see “Writing and Air Quotes” for a discussion of my writing career: http://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2016/02/writing-advice-31-writing-and-air-quotes.html).
As my kids and wife will attest, I started HEIRS fifteen years ago in response to the wave of dystopian science fiction aimed at young adults. Of COURSE there has always been dSF – I was really and truly hooked on science fiction by the grim future in John Christopher’s THE WHITE MOUNTAINS books. Lois Lowry’s THE GIVER and Margaret Atwood’s THE HANDMAID’S TALE leaped back into popularity again.
But the current deluge brought us the “book-to-movie” best sellers like THE HUNGER GAMES and MAZE RUNNER following on the heels of what I think of as “teen carnage” novels where, like the Harry Potter series after GOBLET OF FIRE, teens slaughtering and being slaughtered became de rigueur for YA fiction.
So I started to look at a DIFFERENT future. Even so, I was compelled to give my novel a title that would draw in YA readers expecting carnage in their reading. HEIRS’ original title was simply “Emerald of Earth”. I wrote the novel and it took place in a future where Humans were going to explore the Solar System thoroughly and methodically. Using a hollowed out asteroid as a base, they would spend a year at each planet, probing, landing on, collecting samples, data, and answering questions without having to worry about shipping tiny amounts of material “home” to be analyzed by experts. The experts were right there.
But clearly the title was boring and would have had a hard time finding advocacy among the more exciting titles (except THE GIVER; that was hardly self-explanatory, nor was THE HANDMAID’S TALE or even Butler’s  1979 masterpiece, KINDRED). Flashy titles had replaced subtle, so I had to do the same. I came up with EARTH ATTACKED!
Ugh.
Then I tried LEGACY OF THE WOUNDED WORLDS…
Worser and worser!
Finally I resorted to something I’d never done: I sat down with a thesaurus and the “Legacy” title and found synonyms for all of the words and wrote them on slips of paper. Then I went to a table and began to rearrange them, speaking them out loud countless times until I found one title that held up under the stress of repetition.
HEIRS OF THE SHATTERED SPHERES.
I decided to keep Emerald’s story separate from the others, but hers needed to be part of a larger story. I wouldn’t have her defeating Inamma in one fell swoop. She needed to fight for her existence, so I made Inamma smarter than it had been before and more subtle.
Even more though, I needed Emerald to have “kid problems”. She needed to deal with issues every kid on Earth needed to deal with. So I gave her friend problems. She wanted them but couldn’t seem to keep them. But what began as a nebulous “I can’t get friends”, needed a firmer foundation.
As a guidance counselor, I’d started working closely with several autistic students and had come to understand them just a tiny bit. The ones I dealt with were brilliant – but challenged by the world they lived in. I realized that my growing understanding of these young people might be an aspect of Emerald that I hadn’t really developed.
Once I started to understand Emerald, other things fell into place – things like answering the question, “What do teenagers DO on a spacecraft committed to a twelve year mission?” Next time, I’ll look at the development of “school for teens in space”…
Image: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/9f/22/3b/9f223b1e57a36e14db3eb13715fbe3f9.jpg