Michael C. Goodwin's Blog, page 2

Character and Plot

I went to college to learn the technical aspects of doing art, I had good instructors and I learned a lot, enough, and with the modest talent that I had, to stay employed full-time for 45 years. As for being a writer, I only had a couple of creative writing classes in high school, so I was not prepared as much as an artist, as I was for the writing thing. Over the years of being an artist I have learned how to learn. When computers and their drawing programs began to change the face of how to do art, I readily adapted, my drawing abilities changed from pencil, brush, pen and ink and the like, to the mouse. It was larger then a pencil but my artistic ability and dexterity transferred well enough to that ungainly blob of technology.

When I got around to writing, I had no idea of how to create characters that would drive my story line, especially female ones, so I had to learn. Having been married for some time, I knew a little about women, but to write actual characters, that was a challenge. I ended up using as a model, a young friend of mine from work, and another female character was the sum total of a lot of young Mormon women that I knew through high school and college. One male character was based on a Japanese family that sort of adopted us when my wife and I were newly married. A small group of football players I observed at a dinner in St. George once, with their easygoing, friendly camaraderie, inspired a Navajo character, and a lot of research did the rest. I used bits and pieces of myself for the main character but I actually became the basis for an alien artist in my third book. Names were taken from the whole of my life, past and present, here and there, all meaning something or other in the writing process. The aliens in the books were freely borrowed from my old friend, Alan Dean Foster, a master of writing alien races. (Borrow from the best, don’t hesitate about it).

The plot has, from the beginning, been based on a introduction by Arthur C. Clarke to a collection of his short stories. In it he talked about a alien technological civilization unchecked, chewing its way through the galaxy from one star system to the next. This was so long ago I do not recall the book or the entire gist of the introduction. It just made an impression on me and I added it to the future narrative of my stories. The original outline for my novel was good, but as I began to write I found ways to enhance the direction and of course, sometimes, the characters would do something different then I intended. But it turned out that they knew what they were doing much more then I knew and so we kept a friendly attitude about it all. There seems to be a lot of creative cooperation when writing, so I just went with along. If it works, go with the flow, a good lesson I have learned along the way to being a writer.

(Below, a black and white ink illustration that I did for an early version of the story line.)

The Idea

Having been a professional artist all my life, I am not sure what a writer is supposed to be. Most definitely a creative soul, which can apply to most any form, artist, writer, actor, singer, musician, storyteller and such. Being a writer was in the back of my mind ever since high school. It was just that I had an overwhelming drive to be an artist starting out. My junior high library was well stocked with all kinds of books, Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, the A B C’s of Science Fiction. The U.S. space program was at full speed heading towards the moon. And of course there was Star Trek, a few days before my 15 birthday, on TV, in my living room. Was it any wonder that I would choose SF as my art and writing inspiration? A painting of a Gemini space walk in my college art portfolio even landed me my first job after college at a planetarium in Salt Lake.

Those galactic empires that I read about in those SF books and explorations in Star Trek stayed with me as I conjured up my own ideas about alien civilizations and what would happen if we became part of that. Written ideas, small sketches, a page or two of an outline kept my brain engaged with the possibility of a larger story someday. Someday. Most creative people I know have talked about writing a novel. And, I can understand the daunting challenge of doing that. With wife, children, relatives, job, house, car, lawn, laundry, cooking and all the other distractions of living a regular life, how do you write if it is not actually part of your daily work? Well, you can’t, if you’re not willing to give up much of what you do normally every day.

As an older person with many of the problems of every day living behind me, I found time to write and began to produce a coherent timeline of stories that actually had a plot, direction, characters and a beginning and an end. As with most writers, I was writing the story for myself. But, I got to a point where I wondered if my story would be of interest to someone else. I know that I will never make much, if any money at it, (much like all these cartoon books I have done in the past). Still, I aspire to that exulted level of being a writer, one who has actually written and published a novel. So now, I have accomplished my secondary choice of lifelong desires and plans. I have become a writer.

(Not content to stop at one, I have actually written 3 complete novels and 2 more nearly completed ones. The story continues and hopefully I will get to the end of them, I really want to know how they turn out. Below, my first two completed novels, one out now and the second one this fall.)

The Plan

I am not sure if many people actually sit down and work out a plan for their lives. For some reason, I found it necessary to write down and set out to do a certain number of things in the lifespan that I was allotted. At the time, I really had no idea how long that would be, so I thought I had better get on with it. The first thing on the list was to go to college and learn how to do art. I had played around with it for a good part of my high school education and I was fairly good at it and I found it to be quite a bit of fun. I figured if I had to do something for the rest of my life it had better be fun. The second thing, of much less importance, was to write.

I had a bunch of pretty good English teachers in high school and a very good creative writing class which showed me that I wasn’t half bad at writing, and again, it was fun. Well, one fun thing at a time for now, let’s do the art stuff and see how that goes. Forty years later, I was running out of steam to keep up with the art. I needed a change of direction and a breather from the daily grind of my art job, (Graphics Art Director at the Standard-Examiner newspaper). So, after having done nothing but scribble down ideas, short outlines, make little sketches, and read for those 40 years since college, I started writing. And writing, it just came out, I finished one novel then started another. After that second one, which was a lot better then the first, having learned a considerable amount about writing by doing it, then I started another. Sudden job cuts found me without daily employment and so I kept writing, doing a cartoon book and finally trying to self-publish my first novel.

Of course, that didn’t turn out well. There are literally a million people out there publishing their own books. It is a very crowded field and much less then one percent get anywhere with it. Did I want to succeed, yes, of course. But there was the fun, creative aspect that I craved more then anything, so I mostly didn’t care that I was not professionally successful at it for the time being. Now 10 years later with 3 completed novels, one 3/4 finished and 3 more starts, I thought I had better do something more with this writing thing. I started by getting a good editing program and then re-writing and re-editing and then doing it again, then again. After sitting on my first book for the last couple of years, I pushed myself to once again try to publish and sell it. So now we will see what happens, I signed up for a publishing and distributing platform, if I sell something they get their cut, and I get a couple of bucks. Now, my first book, Field Trip, is out there again with the second novel to follow in a few months. Publishing world watch out, there is no stopping me now.

(A self portrait of me in my junior year at Utah State. I am on my way to L.A. for a school spring break trip to art studios, galleries, advertising agencies and such.)

D-Day

Most American families have a link to World War II, even after 80 years. With 16 million citizens who served from 1941 to 1945, we all knew about someone who was in uniform. Grandfathers and grandmothers, grand uncles and aunts, fathers and mothers, uncles, aunts, cousins or friends of the family. The remaining veterans of that war are very old now, mostly in their late nineties or even 100 years old. My father, a naval veteran, died six years ago and would have been 99 this November. I never really wondered about my families’ experiences in WW II until I was much older, when I started inquiring among my uncles and aunts. I didn’t even know of my father’s naval service until I was well over 20 myself. It seems like there was some sort of personal choice for everyone not to talk about it.

My father, Bernard, was drafted after he graduated from high school in June, 1944, a few weeks after the D-Day landings were taking place in Normandy, France. 1.5 million Americans were drafted or joined the military in 1944, a large percentage of them were high school graduates. He trained in various capacities, aviation ordnance, airborne radar and aerial gunnery for Navy TBM torpedo bombers. The TBM Avenger carried a crew of three and either a torpedo, bombs or depth charges in its bomb bay. After his training was completed, he remained on the East Coast, waiting for transfer to the Pacific until the war ended in August, 1945. He served until July, 1946.

My father’s older brother Samuel was in the military police in Europe. Of two uncles on my mother’s side, my uncle Francis was in the Army during the North African campaign in 1943 and my uncle George landed at Omaha Beach on D-Day. Of that, he only said it was the biggest mess he had ever seen. My father-in-law, Lynn, was badly wounded in France a month before the Battle of the Bulge. My mother Janet, and her sister worked as a secretaries for the Navy Department in Washington DC and two of my father’s sisters worked in various war industries. As you may have noticed, I am somewhat old to have parents who served during the war, but eventually I will be gone and all of the direct family connections to the war will be half-remembered or lost.

(Below, my father, Bernard, as a Navy Seaman 1st Class, TBM Avengers lined up and the USS Bennington, CV-20, an Essex Class aircraft carrier. I am still trying to find out about his association with that ship since it is clearly marked on his service record.)

The Tail of the Sphinx

On most days, the internet is a helpful and informative tool necessary for casual research. On other days, it is a terribly frustrating cesspool of disinformation, outright lies and stupidly foolish bull for all kinds of fraudsters and pseudo- scholars pushing their twisted, harebrained notions of reality. (And no, if someone says something is true, we do not have to consider it equally with other researched facts especially when it is easily proven false, and then we are free to ridicule and laugh at it all we want.) So when I came across an informational tidbit the other day about the Great Sphinx of Giza having a carved tail, I was just slightly skeptical.

Disclosure; I have nearly a dozen replica statues, carvings and papyrus depicting ancient Egypt artifacts, and I am a very amateur historian of early civilizations. To begin with, a Sphinx is a mythical creature, (Egyptian, not Greek version), with the head of a human and the body of a lion. Which I am sure that there were many lions in the area of Northern Africa, so the Egyptians were quite aware of what they looked like. So it follows that when they carved the actual Sphinx, probably out of an existing, eroded rock some time back about 2550 BC, they would have put a tail on the thing. And, of course, there actually is a tail.

And no, there is not a temple or treasure room inside the sphinx or even underneath the carving, of which I have seen elaborate illustrations depicting one. As to the sphinx’s broken nose, Napoleon’s troops did not shoot it off in 1798, a drawing of the sphinx from 60 years before Napoleon shows it already broken. There is however, evidence that it was broken in the 14th century. The Sphinx has been often buried by sand and uncovered several times throughout history and bits and pieces and other repairs have been completed and added to by various noble people and scholars throughout its existance. All in all it is a beautiful and brilliant piece of ancient monumental sculpture, and one for the ages.

(Because of the huge amounts of disinformation that propagates through the internet, I often distrust otherwise factual news, this has led to an unhealthy skeptical attitude for almost everything I read, and is an exceptional annoying thing to have to deal with in our modern enlightened times. Below, the tail of the Sphinx.)

Learning New Things

I learned a new word yesterday, and in a moment, it changed my thinking on what the future may possibly may hold for us. (Wait. What? Mr doom and gloom has had a change of heart?) I enjoy learning new things, and yes they can, on occasion, change your outlook on any number of things.

The word was “Protopia.” This word was coined by futurist writer Kevin Kelly in a 2010 book, “What Technology Wants.” The idea of a Protopia goes a little like this. Dystopias are bleak and downright horrifying, totally hopeless. Utopias, long discussed and debated by intellectuals are perfect. But, with imperfect humans trying to construct a perfect future, it is ultimately doomed to utter failure. Much the same for Pre-Dystopians, once we start down that road, you might as well throw in the towel. We have long been feeding on a steady diet of TV, movie and books of Dystopian possibilities, it is like we have given up on any thought of any kind of livable tomorrow. A Protopian idea is that better days are completely possible, it is not full of big thoughts and grand visions, it is just a simple idea of facing and of overcoming, through hard work, the myriad problems of our modern civilization and coming out the other side alive and well.

Accordingly, the last time we thought of a livable and progressive future was back in 1966 with the appearance of Star Trek. The premise was that we had overcome most of our earthly and human problems and had progressed to the point of exploring space and living peacefully, (mostly), with other species. As a young teenager I was fascinated with the idea that we could possibly make it to that Star Trek future. The American space program was in full flight in the sixties and we were all caught up with getting into space and to the moon. Here was a program set a couple of hundred years in the future and saying that we had actually succeeded in our human and space ambitions. I became a lifelong fan of Star Trek and have tried to live the dream of a better future.

I have to admit, it has been rough, and lately I have all but given up on the idea of a livable future. But the Star Trek vision has always been there to keep me hopeful. We don’t have to do big things to solve every problem. The best way to eat an elephant, it has been said, is one bite at a time. Little steps, small moves, and taking a bite out of the big problems when we can. We must do it this way, there are still too many that oppose and deny that there are problems, and actively work to prevent others from working on trying to fix things. They are busy looking to promote their Utopian vision of endless growth, complete control over society, wasting all of our resources and polluting our air, water and land for their greedy and selfish needs. Protopia is an idea whose time has come and I am completely on board this ship to the future.

(So, my Star Trek future is not completely dead yet, and I will hopefully continue to paint those visions like I have for the last 50 years.)

The Growing Irrelevance of Politics

I found this series of observations recently from Ted Gioia, who is an American jazz critic, music historian, and author. “Political agendas change so slowly nowadays. But the culture is shifting at warp speed. Here’s my outlook on the next four years:

Media and consumer tech will change much faster than legislative initiatives.A.I. will disrupt things more than any vote in the Senate.More conflict will happen at educational institutions than in Congress.Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and Tim Cook will have far more power over your life than the President’s cabinet appointees.Dysfunctional tech, manipulative platforms, misleading media reports, and false search engine results will hurt you more than your stupid governor.Humanistic values can make a more meaningful contribution to a healthy future than political rhetoric.”

So while our national legislatures are concerned over what kind of people are using our bathrooms and whether or not women are allowed to have abortions and if illegal aliens can vote or not, (which there is already a law against), but congress recently felt the overwhelming need to pass another law against it again. Is it any wonder that politics are going to become increasingly irreverent. Their ability to ignore the many very big problems that need addressing for our very survival is not encouraging. So what are we talking about? For one, nuclear war, it never really went away after the fall of communism and the end of the cold war. We are clearly at the beginnings of a new cold war. Russian aggression is still the biggest danger to the world’s democracies, (conservative fascists as well). Future pandemics. The last was a small one as pandemics go, but it had world altering consequences, what happens when a new black plague shows up and most everyone laughs it off like Covid? The way politicians mishandled the last pandemic was exceptionally frightening.

The bigger threats like artificial intelligence, which our elected representatives have exceptionally little knowledge of, is a great promise and an a massive threat. What happens when AI starts breaking down the cryptologies that underly our banking, internet, communications and personal finances? There is also the biggest issue of all, and one that will possibly become the only issue in 10 to 20 years, climate change. We can’t even get a majority of politicians to accept the fact that the world’s climate is changing. Scientists have warned about global climate threats by the end of the century, but it is clear, (even to them), that we don’t have that much time. Do we put out the fire in the garage? Or do we wait and see if the rest of the house catches fire and burns down? God save us from all politicians.

(I skipped a number of other risks and challenges from a dozen other future concerns, but that is enough misery for one day. Below, in this very old painting of mine, I feel my utopian Star Trek future continuing to slip away.)

Towers of Dawn

I have occasion to research odds and ends on the internet and I often find myself in places that I did not expect, particularly when it comes to information about me. I do not have a large social media signature, I have always kept it small and under my control, I certainly do not post a lot about what I am doing. However, I do find some interesting things once in a while. The other day for instance, I came across a reference that pointed me to a painting that I did back in 1980, that was for sale on e-bay. This painting was one that I had absolutely no memory of or record of doing. Back in the day, my wife, Lynne and I were regularly traveling around the country attending science fiction conventions. There we would sell our art and books in order to pay for our travels, and we had a great time doing it.

Before traveling to a new convention we would prepare our art by photographing and recording it carefully in ledgers. This particular painting had no reference or photographs in my files. But this piece was very typical of my style of that period in both technique and subject. It was also signed and dated with a business card and hand written name and address, (no longer valid, since we had moved quite some time ago). But, there it was, unmistakably one of my old paintings. Memory is quite a tricky thing, especially one from 44 years ago. I must say that I was at once delighted at seeing something I did from so long ago and also chagrined that I had absolutely no memory of having done it. And to add insult to injury, I quickly found another painting on another site for sale that I also did not recall having done.

Another eye-opening aspect was that both smallish paintings were listed for some $400 or so each. I certainly did not sell them originally for that price, but of course that was back in 1980 and costs of many things were somewhat more reasonable and wages were also very much lower as well. I guess I should be pleased that my work still commands a decent amount of money. However, I have only attended a couple of conventions in the last six years and hardly sold any art. Things are never going to be like they were 40 years ago. Modern conventions have changed considerably from what I experienced then and I now find them to be largely disappointing and completely unsatisfying in all aspects. Modern science fiction fandom has greatly changed and I have failed to keep up.

(This painting is called ‘Towers of Dawn’ for obvious reasons, and I kinda, sorta, maybe think it is not too bad for one of my paintings way back then.)

Intertidal Moment

One of the true joys in my life has been visits to the ocean shore. Standing on the beach and watching the waves roll in covering the sand and then fade away, is full of endless wonder to me. It is in that intertidal zone, the interface of the land and sea, that transitional edge of the land into the oceanic realm that I find fascinating.

I now see myself, (and the rest of the planet), in an intertidal moment. We are transiting from the old way of our lives, set in motion after the World War II, into an uncertain future full of dangers and challenges. The Covid-19 pandemic of 2020 to 2023 was a door-stop to the old era. The images are still with me, the empty cities devoid of all traffic, the overcrowded hospitals, masks, vaccines, isolation and the furious babble of political deniers. The pandemic has given us the opportunity to reevaluate the next future steps that we must make in order to survive and thrive in the next 50 years. The problem is that we are being told that our lives and the way we live are in considerable danger. If recent TV and movies are any indication, the full-blown horrors of our dystopian future are not very far away. Zombies, civil war, pandemics, infertility, famine, ecological collapse, economic and political chaos, global warfare, climate change, asteroids and even volcanic eruption will destroy us all.

I think we’re tougher than we look. After all, we survived millennia of continual pulses of an ecology-breaking ice age that shaped us in ways we are now only just beginning to understand. We also out-survived all of those huge ice age mammals and developed a massive global civilization, from scratch, in just 10,000 years. Not bad for small, hairy, mid-brained creatures. The proof is in the pudding, (as my mother used to say, and I didn’t understand it then, much less now), and we will continue to advance and hopefully make the future better. However, we must kiss our old lives goodbye, now. Do we need to transition from energy production that pollutes our atmosphere and pumps mind-numbing amounts of climate changing CO2 into the air we breathe? Yes, and right now. Do we need to stop depleting and mindlessly exploiting our very limited natural resources on the land and in the ocean? Yes, and right now. Do we need to take better care of our human population, adjusting for famine, homelessness, health, equality and education? Yes, and right now. We are in that intertidal moment, we must decide which of the many ways to go, for better or worse.

(Me on the intertidal beach at Seaside, Oregon, it is one of my favorite places. In fact, the whole Oregon coast is amazing, especially for someone like me who basically lives in a desert.)

Dimethyl Sulfide

As a casual reader of science news wherever I can find reliable stories, I recently came across some interesting bits and pieces. ‘NASA has so far confirmed the existence of 5,602 exoplanets in 4,166 different planetary systems. And 200 of those classify as “terrestrial” and possibly “earth-like” according to the Space Agency.’ (And another tidbit.) ‘The closest we have come to discovering a hint of life is on exoplanet K2-18b, where dimethyl sulfide is possibly present, which is only produced by living things.’ Okay, what?

‘On Earth, dimethyl sulfide is produced by marine planktonic microorganisms such as the coccolithophores and so is one of the main components responsible for the characteristic odor of sea water aerosols, which make up a part of sea air.’ So there is the organic connection, and one would need a water world for this bit of life indicators. And, ‘K2-18b orbits the cool dwarf star K2-18 in the stars’ habitable zone and lies 120 light-years from Earth in the constellation Leo. Exoplanets such as K2-18b, which have sizes between those of Earth and Neptune, are unlike anything in our solar system.’ K2-18b is one of those relatively unknown Earth-like planets that are much larger, (and in this case, 8.6 times larger then our Earth, these are called Hycean exoplanets). Observations show the abundance of methane and carbon dioxide, and the shortage of ammonia suggest that K2-18b may be a water world beneath a hydrogen-rich atmosphere. These super-earths are now the subject of closer observations along with looking at smaller rocky planets in orbit around nearby stars.

As Kb-18b transits in front of its star, light passes through the exoplanet’s atmosphere where astronomers can study the nature of those gasses around the planet. With the newer and more sensitive Webb telescope, better observations have now been made. The most troubling thing about Earth-like planets is that they have been almost always found to be larger then Earth. One of the most Earth-like planets discovered is Kepler-452b, and it is about 60% larger, giving it a gravity of 1.6 times Earth. At 1,400 light-years distant it is somewhat difficult to get good observations. One of the more interesting star systems is Kepler 62, it may contain 4 Earth-like planets, (all larger then Earth). Why this is so may be the subject of a future blog.

(Mathematically, there may be millions of Earth-like planets in our galaxy, understanding these worlds and how they work, may lead to the discovery of life beyond Earth. Below, a very old painting of mine showing an exploration of a massive water world.)