Sue Burke's Blog, page 58

Insufficient conflict – or, is this fight necessary?

I’ve been reading slush lately (God help me), and I’ve noticed a frequent pattern in bad stories: pointless interpersonal conflict.

Suppose – to use actual examples – some sort of horrible disaster has stranded a group of people in a church, convenience store, or hotel, who may or may not be strangers, and they need to cope with a clear and immediate threat to their survival, if not to the survival of the entire human race. What’s the first thing they do? Start to fight verbally or even violently among themselves over old disagreements or because one or more of them is racist, sexist, or otherwise abusive or mentally unstable, or wants to take advantage of the situation at the expense of others, or can’t control his or her sexual tension, or demands special treatment or non-existent information....

These stories fail in a variety of ways. The interpersonal conflicts bear no relationship to the actual conflict (death and disaster!) but merely attempt to inject “tension” to a plot that is unfolding too slowly or has too little tension on its own. Worse, these kinds of fights offer little suspense because people that stupid are bound to fail anyway, and I wind up hoping they die sooner rather than later because they bore me. Finally, these conflicts can feel forced because in real life, people tend to behave much more reasonably when death is looming. Despite what you might suspect if you’ve ever read comments on the internet, most people aren’t idiots.

In fact, I think this kind of story failure ranks as a subset of what the Turkey City Lexicon calls an Idiot Plot: “A plot which functions only because all the characters involved are idiots. They behave in a way that suits the author’s convenience, rather than through any rational motivation of their own. (Attributed to James Blish)”

By contrast, consider The Martian by Andy Weir. In it, an astronaut is accidentally left behind on Mars with insufficient food and no way to communicate. He does everything he can to survive. Meanwhile, on Earth, NASA discovers he’s there and sets about rescuing him. Do the people at NASA waste their time insulting and fighting with each other? No, all of them try to do their jobs as best they can. Even when they disagree, they do so professionally.

There’s enough tension and drama in The Martian to carry the plot without pointless bickering – as there would be if an alien invasion, zombie apocalypse, or WWIII had just begun. But the author needs the skill to move that drama forward. Not everyone has it, as I’m learning.

— Sue Burke

João Barreiros, Portuguese Writer, Editor, Translator and Critic

What is Portuguese science fiction like? Alas, it's not doing well, and Barreiros explains the many reasons:

http://scifiportal.eu/joao-barreiros-portuguese-writer-editor-translator-and-critic-interviewed-by-cristian-tamas/

Eagle Street, but not that bird

A ceramic plaque marks Eagle Street (Calle del Águila) in Madrid, but the bird it depicts is not an eagle – or even a Spanish bird.

The little street in the historic La Latina district of Madrid got its name around the year 1600 because a giant eagle emblem for use in religious processions was stored there. An eagle represents St. John the Evangelist – in honor of the soaring heights of his Gospel’s prose – specifically a black eagle with a red beak and feet, or at least red claws.

St. John’s eagle was also used in the coat of arms of Queen Isabel I and on the Spanish flag during the Franco regime, so it would be easy to find a historic example of that eagle, even a politically correct one. Obviously, the artist who created the ceramic plaque did not use the symbolic bird.

Perhaps it represents a real eagle. Spain is home to four species of eagles, most notably the majestic golden eagle. It cruises over the Iberian countryside preying on rabbits and partridges, clad head to tail in sleek golden-brown feathers. It is not the bird on the plaque.

The white ruff and bald head of the bird on the plaque are a clue that this is in fact a vulture. Spain is home to a black vulture, but it is solid dark brown or black with a bluish-gray bald head and neck – not this bird.

The only vulture with a white ruff and reddish combed head is the Andean condor. That’s what the artist chose to represent St. John’s eagle: a South American carrion-eating bird with a 10-foot/3-meter wingspan that deliberately poops on its own feet for some reason, which is why they look whitish.

Madrid does have a Condor Street, located in the Vista Alegre area, near streets named Goose (Oca), Toucan (Tucan), Albatross (Albatros), Finch (Pinzón), Falcon (Halcón), Turtledove (Tórtola), Seagull (Gaviota), Lark (Alondra), Thrush (Zorzal), and Nightingale (Ruiseñor). I hope the street signs aren’t illustrated. That might be insanely confusing.

— Sue Burke

Also posted at my professional website:

“The Thinkers,” by Liu Cixin

If you enjoyed The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin, the novel that won the 2015 Hugo award, you might enjoy this short story.

It was translated by Joel Martinsen at Paper Republic, a website dedicated to Chinese literature in translation. Martinsen has also translated The Dark Forest, the sequel to The Three Body Problem.

This is a story about the links between thinkers, and about the sun and stars:

https://paper-republic.org/pubs/read/the-thinkers/

— Sue Burke

Go Ahead — Write This Story: Unreliable Narrators

Authors including Chaucer, Edgar Allan Poe, and Agatha Christie have used unreliable narrators: a story told by someone who can’t be trusted. That person may be lying, mentally ill, excessively playful, boastful, forgetful, immature, naive, contradictory, drunk, drugged, confused, prone to misjudgement, or motivated by a hidden agenda. This kind of story can often end with a twist.

If you need an idea for an unreliable narrator, here are a few ideas:

• This is a wannabe heroic story about someone who is convinced that aliens have landed and infiltrated society, and who wants to force them to reveal themselves and take over the Earth, since humans have messed things up so badly.

• This is a reincarnation story about a child in a very troubled family; from time to time, memories of a normal life seem to rain down on her until it becomes a storm that drenches her with what seems like strength.

• This is a story told by a computer desperately trying to pass the Turing test by recounting the events of the previous day, but in some ways it is more intelligent than a human and has difficulty hiding that fact.

And now this monthly series, Go Ahead – Write This Story, will come to an end. Since 2011 I’ve been offering short writing tips and three ideas on every third Thursday. You now have 50 tips and 150 ideas, and that should keep you busy for a while.

— Sue Burke

Rejections: Don’t just say no

I have a post in the Red Sofa Literary Agency’s NaNoWriMo series. It's about rejections. Sometimes they’re fun.

http://redsofaliterary.com/2015/11/13/nanowrimo-day-13-dont-just-say-no/

It comes with a kitten -- just for you.



— Sue Burke

Why Cervantes claimed he didn't write Don Quixote

In front of Spain's National Library in Madrid, a statue of Miguel de Cervantes stands with one foot resting on a pair of books. One of them is spine-out, and we can read its title: Amadís de Gaula (Amadis of Gaul).

That book tells the story of Amadis, from the fictional kingdom of Gaul, who was the greatest knight in the world. This Spanish novel of chivalry, written by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo and published in 1508, became Europe's first best-seller. It was reprinted nineteen times, translated into seven languages, spawned forty-four direct sequels in several languages, and fueled an entire genre that lasted a century. Most notably, around 1600, it inspired Don Quixote of La Mancha. The second half of Don Quixote was published 400 years ago on November 5, 1615.

In many ways, Cervantes satirizes (or pays homage to) that tale, including a characteristic element of novels of chivalry that began with Amadis of Gaul. An earlier version of Amadis had existed since the 1300s in the form of a three-book novel, but Montalvo's edition was different, as he explains in his prologue:

"I corrected these three books of Amadis, such as they could be read, due to poor writers or very corrupt and dissolute scribes, and I translated and added a fourth book and a sequel, Sergas de Esplandián, which until now no one has seen. By great good fortune, a manuscript was discovered in a stone tomb beneath a hermitage near Constantinople, and it was brought by a Hungarian merchant to eastern Spain in such ancient script and old parchment that it could only be read with much difficulty by those who knew the language."

Of course, Montalvo himself wrote the fourth book and Sergas de Esplandián (Exploits of Espandian). Why lie about it? Because, as he himself put it, the novel "had been considered rank fiction rather than chronicles." By proclaiming it an ancient story and perhaps even forgotten history rather than fiction, it could obtain the status of works by Homer and Cicero.

He doesn't seem to have fooled anyone, but he did set a pattern. Supposedly, the manuscript for the sequel Lisuarte de Grecia (Lisuarte of Greece) by Juan Díaz (1514) had been written in Greek in Constantinople and taken to Rhodes when the city fell to the Ottomans. Amadis de Grecia (Amadis of Greece) by Feliciano de Silva (1530) had been found in a wooden box behind a wall in a cave in Spain, hidden during the Moslem invasion in 711. Silves de la Selva (Silves of the Jungle) by Pedro de Luján (1546) was encountered in the magical sepulcher of Amadis himself, written in Arabic.

And so on. Manuscripts were discovered in distant castles and during voyages to far-off lands. Some were written in Hungarian, Latin, Tuscan, German, Chaldean, and "Indian" (Sanskrit, perhaps). A few were even supposedly written by characters from earlier novels.

Among the many jokes in Don Quixote whose punchline we have forgotten today is the one in Chapter IX. It recounts how, in a market in Toledo, a boy was selling some old paper to be reused. Cervantes looked at one of the pieces of paper, a pamphlet, and it turned out to be part of the History of Don Quixote of La Mancha, written in Arabic by Cide Hamete Benengeli. He purchased a translation of the pamphlets for two pecks of raisins and two bushels of wheat. This discovered manuscript, Cervantes claimed, became the basis of the rest of the first part of his novel.

Rather than being found in some exotic place after a search filled with drama, difficulty, and great cost, Don Quixote was rescued from the garbage and translated on the cheap.

Besides that satire in Quixote, there's another joke based on one of Montalvo's books that we've forgotten to laugh at. An imaginary island described in Exploits of Esplandian overflowed with gold and was ruled by a califa. Spanish conquistadors had read many novels of chivalry and sometimes compared the wonders of the New World to the marvels in those books, but when they sailed up the western coast of what we now call Mexico, they found a place that offered little besides rocks and condors. To entertain themselves, they started calling that barren land after the fabulously rich island in the book: "California."

Despite being almost forgotten, Montalvo's books have made their mark on the world.

— Sue Burke

Also published at my professional website,

Spanish Women of Wonder Kickstarter - Funded!

The anthology Spanish Women of Wonder has met its Kickstarter goal. Spanish women destroy science fiction!

Now it's time for the stretch goals....

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1815756115/spanish-women-of-wonder

"Summer Home" at StarShipSofa

You can hear my short-short story "Summer Home" being read magnificiently by J. S. Arquin in today's StarShipSofa podcast:

http://www.starshipsofa.com/blog/2015/10/28/starshipsofa-no-408-ana-matronic-eric-james-stone-and-sue-burke/

Spanish Women of Wonder Kickstarter

Back in January, I reviewed the Spanish anthology Alucinadas and the reasons behind it. More women are writing science fiction in Spanish than ever, and it was a chance to show what they could do.

The result was an outstanding anthology. In fact, it’s been nominated for Best Anthology in the Ignotus Awards, which will be presented at Spain’s national science fiction convention this coming weekend in Granada. (I’ll be there.)

This great book is only available in Spanish, but that can change. A Kickstarter campaign is trying to collect enough money to translate it under the title Spanish Women of Wonder. If you back it, you’ll get ten original stories plus a delightful tale from the novel Trafalgar by Angélica Gorodischer.

Full disclosure: I’ll be the translator. I’m excited by the chance to bring these stories by women I know and admire to English-language readers. And now, with 10 days remaining, the project has raised €3,495 of its goal of €4000. Only €505 ($557 USD) to go!

Become a backer – and get some great rewards in addition to your copy of Spanish Women of Wonder.

— Sue Burke