Cary Neeper's Blog: Reviewing World-changing Nonfiction, page 15

Announcing THE WEBS OF VAROK, sequel to A Place Beyond Man to be launched December 4

Here's a hint at what the series is all about:

If you like Out of a Silent Planet, The Hobbit, Dragon Riders of Pern, A place Beyond Man or Oz, you'll love THE ARCHIVES OF VAROK.

LAUNCHING THE SECOND IN THE SERIES--THE WEBS OF VAROK
Set in an alternate 21st century
--where realistic solutions offer a promising future
--where human assumptions are challenged by aliens too close and too similar to ignore
--where Earth's species, driven by sexuality, are trumped by alien drives even stronger.


Two related websites have just gone online. Check out the series website at ArchivesofVarok.com and read the Prologue and Chapter 1 premiering there. Penscript-Publishing.com is offering ten free copies of A Place Beyond Man to those writing reviews there. Here is the link http://ow.ly/eLAGL I'm putting two more excerpts on My Writing, and will be doing a giveaway here on Goodreads of A Place Beyond Man so you can read the prequel to WEBS before it comes out. Enjoy!

Credibility in Fantasy and Scifi

What makes you put down a mystery or fantasy? When something is incredible? When some detail changes mid-story? When a thesis is too incredible to swallow?
Does the professional protagonist or the expert over-react too often to obvious situations or to situations she has been trained to handle? Can someone commute to a river in the Amazon, coming home on weekends to the states? (I can't get from the Arizona to Indianapolis in less than 12 hours.) Lack of credibility means I put a book down and never finish it. And there's the rub--why are Harry Potter, Alice In Wonderland and the Oz books among my favorites? I love strange new worlds, but they lose my interest if their structure is not clear, or something is not credible. I wonder what.

While preparing the setting and backstory for THE WEBS OF VAROK, the soon-to-be-released sequel to A PLACE BEYOND MAN, I had to face the problem of making Varok credible as an undiscovered, inhabited planet in "our" solar system. No way. Every year NASA discovers more tiny moons of this or that planet. Even the larger rocks, Pluto's companions, in the Kuiper Belt are being named or photographed.

Okay--so inhabiting our solar system with quirky, challenging aliens will have to lean on flimsy evidence, and, as an author, I will have to lean on human imagination and acceptance of my unlikely premise that Varok was missed by the cameras of Pioneer and Voyager. Other than that, the details of Varok's astrogeology, biology and culture had better be credible,since I'm exploring real problems. Harry Potter's world of magic worked because the details were so rich, and there were rules that made it all work--just like complex systems everywhere. Varok has plenty of rules, and my aliens have their own set of quirks--though they share the features I see in all life, which is one of the themes I like to explore.

I remember Roger Zelazny, a delightful acquaintance, but I didn't read many of his books because Anything seemed possible in his stories. You never knew what might happen because anything could. There seemed to be no rules, no reliable structure to get lost in. A different example--Voldemort was scary to me, not because he could zap things better than anyone, but because you never knew when or where or how he would appear. I like suspense. Harry's triumph worked because even Voldemort had to follow weird rules. I've been called the type who is more frightened by reality than made up horror, but that reality has to have a reliable structure. What do you think? What makes a fantasy work? Or not?

How the Hen House turns continues

Finally, after working on editing the sequel to A Place Beyond Man for two weeks, I will be continuing the social saga of forty years living with ducks, turkeys, hens, one rooster who lived 11 years, and the dogs who have watched over them--on my web site blog page. I'm not sure the connection is working here.
I would love to hear from you. Is this good book material? Or is it too off the cuff?
When I have more time, I'll check in and see what's happening. Soon, I'll be ready to share some new readings. Meanwhile, don't miss Liu's "Garden of Democracy."
Right up my scifi alley.

A Recent Review by Scifi Writer Tom King

Just finished reading tonight your reprint of A Place Beyond Man copy ... I really enjoyed it! You did both a fine multi-cultural, multi-species First Contact along with a siren call to stop 'trashing our planet" in pursuit of profit and status. Bravo! I enjoyed a lot Tandra's personality, including her microbiological research work on the Moon, and found her "culture shock" reactions to aliens as real alien animals to be well done and convincing. The sideline of Shawne's playful acceptance of the aliens adult and small was a fine and fun sideline to the main storyline. And I really liked the blend of musicality and motherhood in Tandra's personality.

On the techy side, your description of Ellason the planet sounds kind of like a Brown Dwarf star that retained lots of water even as it failed to grow to a real star. Anyway, either a brown dwarf star or a planetoid with a highly radioactive inner core would fit the ability to stay liquid water warm well out past Pluto's orbit.

Overall,, your book is a story of people coming to terms with life, love, survival and positive cooperation, versus selfishness and deceit. A very needed parable for our current times, as it was 30 years ago. Looking forward to the follow on book in this series!

Short Bibliography for New Economics

Add these two books:
for exploring the impact of diversity on complexity Scott E. Page's "Diversity and Complexity"
for exploring the saga of the Chacoans and Puebloans as an example of the staying power of efficiency and the role of complexity in the survival of a culture, add David E. Stuart's "Anasazi America."

Completing the Picture--Adding Ecological Economics and steadystate.org imperatives to Complexity Economics

A little late with a big Aha--it's time to put together a mini-Bibliography to review the new economical thinking that could save the future.

Start with a general overview of problems with classical economics, economics as a complex system, and the role of government, leaving the How of solving problems to citizens. Be sure to read The Gardens of Democracy by Eric Liu and Eric Hanauer, Seattle, WA: Sasquatch Books, 2011.

For tending the economic garden that has become overgrown, go to steadystate.org and see C.A.S.S.E.'s twelve steps to a no-growth economy--how to get over our obsession with growth and its cause, uncontrolled debt.

For the latter idea and a connection to complex systems, see Gaian Democracies by Roy Madron and John Jopling, Devon UK: Green Books Ltd., Schumacher Society Briefing #9, 2003.

Don't forget to stir into your reading Thomas L. Friedman's Hot, Flat and Crowded, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008 as a reminder that nothing can grow forever.

Related studies are found in Lester R. Brown's Eco-Economy, New York, WW Norton and Co., 2001 and Plan B, 2003.

The moral implications of all this and a scathing critique of classical economics is beautifully covered by Herman E. Daly and John B. Cobb Jr. in For The Common Good: Redirecting the Economy Toward Community, the Environment and A Sustainable Future, Boston: Beacon Press, 1994.

Eric D. Beinhocker's The Origin of Wealth, Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2006 covers such a critique and tells good stories that define economics as complex, giving us a huge bibliography and lots of useful notes. However, he fails to talk about how an overused planet is impacted, hugely, given the reality of economic complexity, with its tendency to do unpredictable amplification. Remember 2008.

Finally, for an understanding of complexity, first read Per Bak's How Nature Works: The Science of Self-organized Criticality, New York, Springer-Verlag, 1996, then Thinking In Systems --A Primer by Donella Meadows,VT: Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 2008. The newest recommended primers I've found are Deep Simplicity, John Gribbin, New York: Random House, 2004 and Diversity and Complexity, Scott E. Page, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011.

Let's do it.

The Archives of Varok is ready for prime-time.

The sequel to "A Place Beyond Man" is called "The Webs of Varok," the second in the series. It is finally available for perusal after forty years of my toying with its premise. At last the time is ripe for some scifi fun while exploring human dilemmas that need serious thought.
The friendly, attractive, too-close-to-ignore aliens (the ellls and varoks--and yes, it's 3 l's because they have very long tongues and can make deliciously various sounds with l and ll and lll, which us humans have no hope of imitating)return to their nearby home on Varok, determined to show us just how a steady state works. Too bad a nasty villainess has pulled some illegal shenanigans and started a snowballing growth spurt (to mix a metaphor). Our friends have a lot to do to plug the economic holes she has punched in the economy and the emotional holes she threatens to punch in the mixed family of humans, ellls and varoks.

What do you think. Can scifi be fun? Can aliens be charming or cute or a challenge because they are too much like us instead of too different from anything on Earth? Can fiction show us something about down-to-earth economics and still be entertaining? Stay tuned for news of the other 3 books in The Archives.

Quotes from reviews after the first release in 1975

A PLACE BEYOND MAN

"If you're a sci-fi fan who particularly relishes the genre when it reveals the human condition sharply and logically, you'll find yourself talking about this book for a long time to all who will listen. If you think you don't like science fiction but are concerned about the growing ecological crisis on planet earth, you'll find Cary Neeper, a ...Ph.D. in medical microbiology, presenting keen insight and pertinent directions. Her unusual device is obviously meant to bring the message of earth's economic and ecological problems to a wider audience. It should.
UU World, July 15, 1975.

"A Place Beyond Man" has much to offer: the aliens and their base...are fascinating. The story...centered on character interactions...is serious and dedicated to the highest values....Perhaps the best thing in the novel is Tandra's growing awareness that the froggy [ellls] are not human, not to be forced into her conventional mental categories, but are truly different in ways that must be respected....a far better than ordinary first novel. "Fantasy and Science Fiction Books" by Alexei and Cory Panskin, the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June, 1977, pp.73-74.

"Cary Neeper has created not one but two credible non-human species....It's an engrossing first novel by a microbiologist whose previous writing has been [on] pneumococcal polysaccharide."
Psychology Today, New York, July 1975, by E.H.

"The current concern[s]...are dealt with competently and lucidly....Tandra both learns and teaches emotional and intellectual integration, a painful but necessary step in the growing-up of mankind.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Sept.4, 1975.

"Science fiction has been the one literary form that frankly carries a "message" as an important component. In this sense, and in others, the new novel by our own Cary Neeper...is classical science fiction. It has all of these features including a good and exciting story."
"Of Books and Men" by Harry Schulte in the Voice of the Unitarian Church of Los Alamos, March 31, 1975 .

"Tandra becomes an interface between these two [aliens]....Interesting comparisons are made between the history and cultures of the three species, and Tandra's convoluted approach to acceptance of love from the ellls and the gift of her own to the varoks is interestingly documented.
Galaxy Bookshelf by Theodore Sturgeon, Galaxy, March 1975.

"...fine writing and down-to-earth story line, "A Place Beyond Man" is great escapism, and these days we really need it. Bravo."
"Friday Magazine, WCNY TV/24 FM/91.3, April 18, 1975, 7 pm.

A Setting Still Relevant After 35 Years.

Please look at the second paragraph of "A Place Beyond Man" excerpted in My Writing here on Goodreads. I doubt if I could improve on expressing how I feel about Earth and the human dilemma. It is indeed still relevant, maybe even more so. See my web site http://caryneeper.com if you are interested in exploring ways to think about where we go from here. I may be exploring the questions here soon, if anyone is interested. Meanwhile, I would recommend "The Necessary Revolution" for a nice summary of all the good things that are happening to change the way we do things.

A Change in Style

In "My Writing" I have posted excerpts from the original version of "A Place Beyond Man," and a revised version I wrote in 1999, where the introductory long poetic setting was dropped in favor of starting the action with a ... bear. I have to admit that I enjoy both styles. I love Tolkein for his use of English in "The Hobbit." And I soon tire of action when you don't know who to care about or where they are and why. Some authors find a happy balance, and I am trying as I revise for the last time the five novels related to "APBM."

The word "man" in the title A Place Beyond Man, meaning "human."

This was not considered politically incorrect in the early 1970's, but became questionable soon after the book was published. What about now? Seems that the problem is solved by changing between "him" and "her" within the same text. Perhaps the most important result is not the verbiage so much as the conscious-raising it does.