Ryk E. Spoor's Blog, page 43

Just For Fun: My Top Ten Videogame Music Selections

As I have mentioned more than once, when writing I usually listen to music. I look for music that inspires and shapes my imagination, often becoming themes for events or characters or settings. As the technology has progressed, I have found that video games often provide some surprisingly inspirational themes. Here, then, are my top ten favorite pieces of music from various video games!

 

Silent the Universe: Star Ocean 2 Opening Theme. Composed by Motoi Sakuraba, this beautiful piece of music opens the game with a deep-space object crashing to a planet, then turns across empty space to a huge space station and the launch of a truly gorgeous starship. Sakuraba's name was given as the middle name of my scientific hero Simon Sakuraba Sandrisson in Grand Central Arena, and the starship shown at the end of the opening is, almost exactly, what I have envisioned as the general appearance of Atlantaean starships in the deep background of my main writing universe.


Into the Wilderness: Wild Arms Opening Theme. This main melody composed by Michika Naruke for the strangely Western-themed Japanese RPG Wild Arms is a wonderful piece of music for setting out on adventure; I've used it as a mood setter for multiple stories, to the point that I'm actually reluctant to assign it to a particular group; I like it too much to let it be attached to one set of heroes.


Time's Scar: Chrono Cross Opening Theme: Composed by Yasunori Mitsuda, this haunting, exciting opening is actually based to some extent on the original Chrono Trigger theme (see later) and has inspired many images for my writing. This is actually particularly associated with the mysterious figure called the Wanderer in the Balanced Sword trilogy (Phoenix Rising, Phoenix in Shadow, and Phoenix Ascendant), and particularly with his original adventures on Zarathan. As a game, Chrono Cross was quite good, although it was not, in my view, very good as a SEQUEL to Chrono Trigger itself.


Chrono Trigger Main Theme: Also by Yasunori Mitsuda, this theme (orchestral version given in the first link), and the opening associated with the original version, first swept me into the world of JRPGs. So popular was Chrono Trigger that it has been remade and reissued more than once, with a new and fully-animated opening. Even today it retains a power of excitement and adventure that few pieces of music match, no matter the source. Careful listeners can hear that Time's Scar is actually derived from this theme.


Primal Eyes: Opening theme for Parasite Eve. This is an eerie and fast-moving theme composed by Yoko Shimomura whose opening video riveted me when I first saw it. For my writing, however, it has become a theme I associate with Jason Wood; I can even envision an opening to a TV show for Jason using this music.


Durandal: Theme for the battleship in Xenosaga. This thrilling battle theme, composed by Yasunori Mitsuda, fits its purpose in the game, and works well for other combats, both space and elsewhere. In my own work, I actually mostly envision this as being used for particular scenes in two currently unpublished novels.


The Dawn of Wisdom: Opening theme from Star Ocean 3: 'Till the End of Time. One of the most beautiful openings, with some of the most perfect music, I've ever seen. Also composed by Motoi Sakuraba, this theme was meant to evoke the magnificence of the civilization of Earth in Star Ocean, and I use it when writing as the theme of Atlantaea, the greatest civilization ever to exist in my multiverse.


Trigger Situation: Dirge of Cerberus OST. This darkly contemplative piece suddenly turns into a dramatic combat theme; it was composed by Masashi Hamauzu. For me, it has come to represent one scene over all: the one I call "DuQuesne's Awakening" in Grand Central Arena. "Your problem, you pea-brained, pompous, overbearing crayfish, is that you think you have the faintest idea of what you're dealing with."


Dragonborn: Main theme for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Composed by Jeremy Soule. There is possibly no greater warrior theme composed, at least in the field of videogames, than this powerful chant, sung in a language invented solely for the game. I've used it as background for multiple sessions of writing, though I associate it with a particular scene I look forward to writing in the as-yet-unpublished Demons of the Past. Another interesting point is that it is the same basic theme/motif as was used in the prior game, Oblivion, but is much more powerful a piece.


Staff Credits: Final Fantasy Tactics. I could not complete this list without at least one selection from the immense and wonderful music produced for the most famous JRPG series of all. Composed by Hitoshi Sakimoto, this ending theme for Final Fantasy Tactics is, simply put, one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever made for a game, or just about anything else. As a general background to writing it's superb, and I've used it while writing pieces of just about every one of my series.

 

 

This is, of course, not even close to a comprehensive overview of videogame music that's worth listening to. In all honesty, I could probably change out four or five of these tunes with four or five others and be just as happy. A few would stay regardless – The Dawn of Wisdom, Time's Scar, and Silent the Universe, certainly – but I could probably stretch this to twenty or more pieces without even working hard. Still, this is a decent sampler of some of the wonderful music available from a medium that used to be considered secondary (or worse) to any other form of entertainment!

 

On My Shelves: Kill La Kill

 

"In Heaven's stead, we smite clothing!"

     A grim avenger appears at Honnouji Academy. Their father was murdered, the only clue the weapon embedded in Isshin Matoi's chest – half of an immense pair of red-metal scissors or shears, and whispers of a connection to the leader of the Absurdly Powerful Student Council of Honnouji, Satsuki Kiryūin. Armed with nothing but an unbendable will, the half-scissor as a sword, and startling combat skill, this lone mysterious figure swears they will confront the super-powered Council and tear the truth from Satsuki.

This sounds like the setup for any number of shonen (boy's) anime. But in Kill la Kill, absolutely nothing is as it seems.

Our grim avenger is a teenage girl, Ryoko Matoi – who happens to act exactly like the classic shonen hero, without a single concession to the tropes of female anime characters. Her opposite number, Satsuki Kiryūin, is similarly the classic bishonen arrogant opponent, just happening to be female but behaving precisely as their male counterpart would. This inversion of normal anime roles, however, does not even begin to scratch the surface.

     Why does Ryoko's absent-minded homeroom teacher suddenly turn bishonen and start shedding clothing the moment he gets Ryoko alone? (it's not the reason you expect). Why is the most powerful corporation on Earth the Revocs clothing conglomerate? Who murdered Isshin Matoi, and why? Why does the mysterious assassin wear hardly any clothes? And how does Satsuki manage that awesome glow whenever she gives a speech?

All right, we never get a real answer for the last one, except "it's awesome!". But the others all get answered in strangely consistent, yet totally psychedelic, ways.

Kill la Kill is, on the surface, a rather peculiar "fighting anime", with the typical progression of the hero first acquiring their superpowers (in Ryoko's case, a suit of living clothing called Senketsu), confronting increasingly powerful opponents on their way to a final showdown with their obvious and most powerful rival, and then – as many shows do – a reveal of the TRUE Big Bad behind the scenes and an Enemy Mine situation in which Ryoko and Satsuki must join forces to stop the ultimate enemy, which turns out to be Satsuki's mother and the head of the Revocs Corporation, Ragyō Kiryūin.

So many other standard tropes are present – best friend Mako, who's hyperkinetic and clueless and more than a bit besotted with Ryoko, the loyal warrior group (Elite Four) who serve as the Dragon to Satsuki's Big Bad, the posturing and monologuing between battles, the sudden increase or discovery of new powers in desperation, abrupt reversals of fortune in combat, abrupt revelations of key plot elements, vast conspiracies, alien invasions, the whole nine yards. Kill la Kill does not shy away from any of the most hackneyed, or glorious, elements of its obvious ancestry.

But it is the details that take this out of the ordinary oddities of anime and make it a tour de force of deconstruction. The superhuman powers of the characters are revealed to come from "Life Fibers" – living clothing, in essence – that can use and vastly amplify the capabilities of their wearers. But this is actually a trap, for the sinister secret of the Revocs Corporation and Ragyō in particular is that the Fibers are part of an alien lifeform which acts as a long-term parasite, arriving on a planet, encouraging the growth of appropriate hosts, and then after a period of dormancy emerging to consume the entire population and then reproduce, spreading more Life Fibers across space.

Sounds … odd but not entirely out of the ordinary. Except that author Kazuki Nakashima intends every single image and concept to be a direct attack against the fashion industry, the standard body and personal images of Japan (and much of the rest of the world). The true villain is a super-fashionista ("What is the world? The world is clothing!"); the incredibly Stripperiffic transformation sequences and battle configurations of the Kamui (100% Life-Fiber outfits like Senketsu) are not presented as titillation, but to emphasize the power of the wearers (watch the poses; they aren't showing off the bodies, but presenting the characters in the exact same poses that male heroes doing the "suit up" sequences use, not female shoujo transformations), and the idea of them being titillating or shameful is directly addressed by Satsuki:

 

"To unleash the most power, this is the form a Kamui must take! You cling to the puritanical views of the masses, proving just how inferior you are! But I won't be ashamed, if it means I can fulfill my ambitions, I will bare my breasts for all to see! I will do whatever it takes! For I know that my actions are utterly pure!"

 

This is underscored by the secret underground conspiracy to overthrow the Life Fibers, led by Aikurō Mikisugi, Ryoko's homeroom teacher – the revolutionary organization known as (overdramatic announcement) "NUDIST BEACH!". As the Life Fibers were the ones who encouraged the development of the human species – most definitely including the physical need for protection and cultural desire for clothing – "Nudist Beach" rejects all but the most necessary clothing as both symbolic of the enemy and a potential weapon of the enemy. While often played for comedy, their stance turns out to be all too correct when the Revocs Corporation is revealed to have incorporated Life Fibers in all the clothing in the world in preparation for converting all of humanity into food for the Fibers.

There are literally countless references to other anime, both shonen and shoujo, in Kill la Kill. To name just a few, Ragyō Kiryūin's appearance and style is directly patterned after Lady Gaga's; she also has seven scars like stars down her back, which are a direct reference to Kenshiro in Fist of the North Star (Hokuto no Ken); the clash of the female warrior student with a male demeanor against the leader of an Absurdly Powerful Student Council refers to the equally bizarre Revolutionary Girl Utena; she also does a "I am your father" (well, mother) to Ryoko (and she's not lying, impossible though it seems at first). The awakening of Senketsu is basically identical to the main character's acquisition of their living-weapon armor in B't X. Scattered in the background are signs referencing various anime and Western media – for instance, one scene has a sign that says, in katakana, "Pacific Rim". This list does not even scratch the surface.

Overall, this is one of the most frenetic, ridiculous, fascinating anime I have ever seen. It is well worth a look by anyone who can deal with a World of Ham where everything is Serious Business and the world's fate depends on a schoolgirl in a living sailor uniform!

 

 

 

 

On My Shelves: Secret Identity

 

Clark Kent is a teenage boy living in Picketsville, Kansas, a boy who has dreams of being a writer, and a well-developed ability to endure the constant teasing – both well-meaning and malicious – that comes with being named after the secret identity of the most famous superhero of all time. For he lives in our world, or one very like it, where there are no superhuman beings, only stories of them.

But one night, while camping alone, he awakens to find himself actually floating in midair. He can fly. He has super-strength, and super-speed, and invulnerability, and heat-vision, x-ray vision…

The powers of Superman.

Clark may not be a supergenius, but he is far from stupid; while he enjoys the powers, he's cautious about them, and doesn't tell anyone at first. A thousand questions surround him – where did these powers come from? Will they go away? Why did this happen? Does anyone else have them? – and he has none of the answers.

Clark Kent also, fortunately, shares one other characteristic with his fictional counterpart: he is one of the overall most decent human beings around. Others granted such powers could easily abuse them in ways ranging from the petty to the terrifying; Clark's abuse amounts to a couple of peeks into the girl's locker room before he decides it's not only wrong, he doesn't know if X-ray vision might be dangerous. He only uproots one tree because he thinks of it as rude.

This basic morality, of course, means that he has no hope of keeping it a complete secret forever. When a flood strikes another nearby town, Clark finds himself flying above it and just in time to rescue another boy from being dragged down under the floodwaters. He tries to fly fast enough so that he can't be seen, but underestimates just how well people can see even quite fast objects; there are witnesses now, though none that could recognize him.

The rumors and one blurry photo are not enough to uncover him, but a very curious reporter – tracking other reports of his activities – eventually becomes the first person he contacts. Clark does not reveal his identity, but does talk about what he can do, what he hopes to find, and so on. However, just as he is considering revealing himself, he finds a concealed low-light camera put there by the reporter; this betrayal of trust severs any connection he might have.

At the same time, he is tired of the double life, and resolves to reveal himself publicly. But on the night he has chosen, there is a sudden set of explosions – a gas main – and he finds himself rescuing people but still concealing his identity, and at the last moment chooses not to reveal himself. He also wonders whether the explosions themselves might not have been an accident… 

Kurt Busiek is a well-known comic book writer, probably best known for his own Astro City series (note: Kindle link there is, at least for the moment, free!), his work on Marvels (a series retelling various Marvel Universe events from the point of view of non-empowered witnesses), and his work on other books such as his several-year run of The Avengers that culminated in the Kang Dynasty arc. In Secret Identity, originally a four-issue limited series, Kurt – along with illustrator Stuart Immonen – explores the question of what a real-life Clark Kent might do – and encounter – when blessed or cursed with the very powers of his alter-ego.

This is in a way not all that far from some of the questions raised by Marvels, which examined the emotional, physical, and personal consequences and perceptions of people who, rather than being superheroes, were merely bystanders, the ordinary men and women who happened to be present when beings more like unto gods clashed in their midst. Both juxtapose the familiarity of life like ours with abilities and powers utterly impossible here.

 

But this is a single person's story, and an exploration of what it means to become special rather than being born that way. Busiek was originally inspired by the first Superboy-Prime story, but I think this story is stronger for having no connection to the "real" DC universe. Clark lives in a world that never had superbeings of any sort, where suddenly there is one (and later more than one), and that first one echoes the very first "true" superhero in so many ways.

As Clark gets older, he both parallels, and avoids parallels, with the fictional Clark Kent. He works for the New Yorker, but not as a reporter – just a staff writer. He ends up on a blind date with "Lois" – who is just as tired as he is of the Superman jokes. This is already something of a bond between them, and they quickly develop a romance.

But romance isn't the only thing new in his life. His writing begins to draw attention… and so do his heroics, which he has continued. He quite deliberately performs these acts in a Superman costume, figuring – correctly – that even if people see him, it will make their reports sound that much more ridiculous.

Unfortunately, Clark's vague suspicions about the explosions in his hometown were well-founded. One day the organization seeking him out manages to trap him, bombarding him with carefully-selected and designed weaponry, and bringing him to a concealed laboratory. Only great good fortune allows Clark to escape with his life and secret intact – but he is now very, very frightened, especially since in his escape he saw evidence that these people might have been experimenting – lethally – on others, including children.

It is in this sequence that it's made clear that while Clark has a package of powers that are very "Supermanny", they are neither identical with, nor as strong as, those of his namesake. This really isn't a surprise; anyone writing a Superman-analogue set in the real world, or a world very like the real world, would rather have to do so. Most versions of Superman can shrug off virtually any weapon with ease; in some ways, this version of Clark goes back to the roots of the concept, who could run faster than a locomotive and "nothing short of a bursting shell could penetrate his skin". He has what is now considered the classic package of powers, but their strength – while certainly very formidable – is not nearly the nigh-infinite level that the modern conception of Superman generally has.

I really enjoyed reading this; I've had conversations with Kurt online, off and on, but this was the first piece of his work that I've owned (I knew someone who had Marvels and read it once, long ago, but I'd actually forgotten that was Kurt's work until I got Secret Identity), and the first one I've read in a long, long time. It won't be the last.

I found it amusing that some scenes in Secret Identity echo a few in my own (not yet published) superhero novel Stuff of Legend, especially the hero startling the mundane he's about to talk to by speaking from outside her not-ground-floor window. I guess some images just are too obviously cool not to use.

Ultimately, Secret Identity is a positive story, one that doesn't end on a grim, but rather on a bright and hopeful note. For anyone who loves superheroes and stories that delve into their origins, their meaning, and their effects on their worlds, this is a must-read.

 

 

 

On My Shelves: The Shadow

"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!"

     In 1930, Street and Smith's Detective Story Hour began featuring a sinister-sounding narrator who identified himself only as "The Shadow". Somewhat to the publisher's surprise, The Shadow was so distinctive that listeners started asking for "The Shadow" magazine rather than "Detective Story". Not being foolish, they immediately began publication of such a magazine, featuring a fleshed-out version of the character who had previously been little more than a voice with an eerie laugh. The Shadow went on to become one of the most iconic pulp heroes of all time, and one of the ancestors of many modern superheroes such as Batman.

There were two early versions of The Shadow in terms of identity and capabilities. The pulp version is a skilled combatant without any particular special powers, who began as very much antihero, a noir hero-thief who would gun down the badder bad guys or arrange their deaths; his real name was Kent Allard, a former flying ace who used numerous identities, including that of the wealthy Lamont Cranston, in the pursuit of his avocation.

The radio play version – which is generally considered the second, even though technically the character first appeared on radio – is the one that became more famous and ultimately iconic, however – a man who, in the "far East", learned the power to "cloud men's minds", a superior and speedy form of hypnosis that could be used to confuse people into not seeing him, or believing he was elsewhere; this was apparently at least partially due to the demands of radio broadcast, since it was difficult to explain on radio where the Shadow was, how he moved from place to place, and so on. This version was, in fact, Lamont Cranston ("Wealthy young man about town") and disposed of the other identities.

I am most familiar with the Shadow through his comic-book and most recent movie incarnations, though I have read a couple of the pulp novels and heard a few episodes of the radio play, so my discussion will be much more focused on these sources, which are similar but separate.

Aside from having heard part of one of the radio plays in my youth, my first encounter with The Shadow was in the classic Batman #253 and #259 – why and how I ended up with those two Batman issues out of the maybe 5 total I had at that age, I do not know. But those two carried much of the impact of the Shadow, and let me know that he had a stature that was mythic even to the Batman himself.

 

My main comic exposure to The Shadow, however, did not occur until the late 1980s and early 1990s, with The Shadow Strikes, a relatively short-running (I think 3 years) comic which nonetheless had a number of excellent stories, the most impressive of which was a four-issue crossover with Doc Savage (starting in The Shadow Strikes #5) which was most amusing partly because of the contrasts between the two pulp superheroes and their teams (for instance, Doc's team never uses lethal force, while The Shadow and his men are often throwing lead around like confetti).

From this and my earlier two-comic exposure, and spotty encounters with the novels and radio plays, I developed quite a fondness for this dark avenger; the Batman is far more well-known today, but he would not have existed without The Shadow, and to my mind the Shadow is still a more impressive, more mythic, figure.

With this as my attitude, it can be easily understood that I awaited the 1994 release of the big-screen version of The Shadow with considerable trepidation; at the time, of course, comic-book adaptations had an… at best spotty history, with the recent experience including the abominable 1990 Captain America.

The Shadow starred Alec Baldwin as Lamont Cranston/The Shadow, Jonathan Winters as Cranston's uncle and the commissioner Wainwright Cranston, Penelope Ann Miller as Margo Lane, and John Lone as Shiwan Khan, with excellent secondary performances by none other than Sir Ian McKellen as Margo Lane's absent-minded father Rhinehart Lane and Tim Curry as the slimy Farley Claymore.

As a young man, Cranston traveled to the far East, but in this version of the modern myth, did not do so for high-minded reasons; he became an opium runner and a barely-civilized savage calling himself Yin Ko. One night, Yin Ko is abducted and brought to the temple of the Tulku, a childlike holy man who has seen something worth saving in Cranston. The Tulku forces Cranston to face the monster he has become, but also teaches him to master the abilities that lie within him – teaching him the power to "cloud men's minds", passing invisibly through the world, with the only trace of his passage being his own shadow. Eventually Cranston returns to New York, but brings with him his new identity as The Shadow, to atone for the evil he did as Yin Ko by bringing justice to the streets of New York.

We see some of the Shadow's work, including his apparently superhuman capabilities, and some interesting aspects of Cranston's life – including his first encounter with Margo Lane, who will turn out to be more important than Cranston suspects, and a discussion with his uncle Wainwright, who strongly disapproves of the Shadow's vigilantism.

But then a mysterious sarcophagus arrives at the New York Museum of Art… a sarcophagus linked to Temuchin, AKA Genghis Khan, and carrying a very dangerous passenger…

Critics didn't seem terribly enthused about this movie; I found it wonderful. It was a fantastic period piece with the pulp sensibilities added and brought to brilliant life, right down to the Shadow having a network of spies across the city in the form of people whom he had saved, and assuming his classic pulp appearance, materializing from darkness to bring vengeance with twin .45s, as well as being able to fight hand-to-hand against the best. Shiwan Khan was an excellent villain, a strangely civilized barbarian with a complete pulp-fiction plan for conquest and destruction that combined civility with savagery; inquiring after a tailor for the best suits on the one hand, and sending a taxi driver to a fiery death on a whim on the other hand.

The only real flaw in the film was towards the end, when Cranston manages to master a mystical and savage dagger called the Phurba which had previously never responded to him. I would have liked some lead-up showing how the Shadow managed to figure out how to gain control of this weapon earlier.

Other than that, the film captured precisely the power and mystery of this most classic of pulp heroes, and I very much recommend it.

As a character, the Shadow is one of the most influential of the pulp era. He is the direct ancestor of Batman and nearly any dark-themed hero, especially one with a wealthy secret identity, owes something to him. He was one of the first to use mystical martial arts powers, especially in the manner described, and could be considered an ancestor of the Jedi as well – for the "Jedi Mind Trick" is certainly very close in spirit to the power to "cloud men's minds".

And I do indeed get a chill down my spine when I hear the tagline and the echoing laugh: "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows…"

 

On My Shelves: The Phantom Tollbooth

"There was once a boy named Milo who didn't know what to do with himself – not just sometimes, but always."

     Milo is a boy who – in a later era – might be heading towards the clothing racks to find something darker than black to wear. He sees nothing of interest in his world; even the few things that he might care about he can't work up the energy to engage with. He stares at the pavement when he walks, seeing nothing around him. He waits desperately to get out of school, but finds himself so bored outside of it that he longs to be back in. His world is gray, colorless, and to Milo without meaning; he doesn't even understand how little he understands, nor has any grasp of what the point of seeking any knowledge or understanding would be. He is miserable without even recognizing it.

 

But then he comes home to discover an immense box in his room, with an attached envelope reading: "For Milo, who has plenty of time."

 

No matter what his other quirks, Milo is still a young boy, and discovering a gigantic surprise gift is enough to temporarily rouse him from his lethargy and unwrap it – to find it is a "Genuine Turnpike Tollbooth", complete with coins for paying tolls, a map, precautionary signs for approaching the booth, and a book of rules and regulations.

 

Milo finds this rather peculiar, and can't figure out what sort of a game this might be, but as he has nothing better to do and this has at least piqued his interest for the moment, Milo sets up the tollbooth as directed, gets in the small electric car he hasn't played with in months or longer, and drives through –

 

-- to find himself speeding down a real highway, with nary a sign of his room in sight.

 

Milo's ennui does, at least, insulate him from the shock of such a ridiculous transition; his reaction is simply to realize that this was a vastly more serious game than he had imagined.

 

But it is about to get stranger…

 

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster is one of the most whimsical and interesting children's books ever written. Milo has not simply crossed over into some ordinary fantasy land (if I can be excused for such a phrase) but into a conceptual land, where abstract concepts become very concrete indeed. There he will meet such concepts and phrases embodied as people – Tock, the Watchdog, the Whether Man, Canby (who is, of course, as strong as can be, and as weak as can be…), the awful DYNNE, and the more sinister creatures such as the Terrible Trivium and the Senses Taker. He will journey to Dictionopolis and the Valley of Sound and the realm of the Mathemagician.

 

And in his journey he will learn the value of understanding, of words, of numbers… of learning itself… and bring back the twin rulers of the realm, Rhyme and Reason.

 

For all its wordplay and whimsy, The Phantom Tollbooth is not a purely funny book, nor as light as it might appear. There are some very creepy and eerie sequences – I find the Terrible Trivium's trap to be possibly the most frightening, for he manages to catch our heroes in it without them even realizing, at first, that he is an enemy or that the tasks he sets them are, indeed, an almost inescapable trap of endless, mindless, and unimportant tasks that will distract them forever from their mission.

 

The entire plot of The Phantom Tollbooth is the development of Milo from the almost soul-dead boy we see in the beginning to a young man who has come to understand the joys of knowledge and exploration, the wonders available in the entire world around him if he only opens his eyes to see, and it is carried off beautifully. The gray, dull opening puts us into Milo's frighteningly apathetic state of mind, and as the fog of boredom and carelessness begins to lift, we ourselves begin to feel again the joys of wonder, and curiosity, and surprise, and perhaps even of real fear and dread as well as courage and triumph.

 

This was one of my favorite children's books when growing up; I am incredibly pleased to find that it holds up wonderfully now, decades later.

 

This is a book you should give – or perhaps even read – to your children. And if you don't have any children… well, why not read it for yourself?

 

 

On My Shelves: The Jennifer Morgue

Bob Howard is back. A hacker-turned-agent for the supernatural covert agency of the United Kingdom, The Laundry, Bob has recovered from his earlier encounters with a parallel-world Nazi plot to summon an energy-consuming "ice giant" into the world and an internal power struggle that revealed part of the government's plans for CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN (when the Stars are Right and Things emerge from beyond the realm of sanity).

But things are never quiet when you're one of the people on the front lines between the rest of humanity and someone who misuses the wrong mathematics and unleashes Yog-Sothoth or something equally monstrous on mankind. In between collaring gaming geeks who have modded one too many modules or mathematical researchers who've rediscovered the basic principles of probability-sheaf manipulation by calculation, Bob finds himself sent on assignment to deal with a plan by a multibillionaire to salvage – or perhaps steal would be the better word – JENNIFER MORGUE.

Unfortunately, "JENNIFER MORGUE" is a weapon – or something else – in the deep ocean, which is controlled by entities codenamed BLUE HADES, or in more Lovecraftian parlance, the Deep Ones and Cthonians. These beings have demonstrated that their powers are vastly beyond most, if not all, weapons humanity can wield, and any intrusion into their domain could trigger an apocalypse.

So Bob is sent out to deal with the problem – and immediately linked up, spiritually and mentally, to a drop-dead gorgeous assassin – where "drop-dead" is quite literal. The assassin, Ramona, isn't pure human; she's also a succubus, and contact with her can be lethal.

Being connected to her for too long could also be lethal.

So now Bob is in the Caribbean, his target a billionaire on a cruise ship with a mad plan to take over the world, and his only ally a beautiful woman who could kill him at any moment.

 

(spoilers for the rest of the book follow, so don't go farther if you don't want them!)

 

The Jennifer Morgue is Charlie Stross' Lovecraftian take on James Bond, and he does it well, arranging all of the standard Bond tropes and then dunking them in a wonderfully concentrated sauce of creeping eldritch horror and cynical snark from Bob and occasionally others around him.

The resemblance of the plot to a Bond novel turns out to be far from coincidence; the villain has consciously forced that trope to be active, using a magical binding that uses the power of the Bond mythos to direct the allowable events to follow the basic script of a Bond movie. This is actually quite clever, the way the villain has arranged it, because it means that nothing the governments and military can do can stop him; only one lone Hero, the selected James Bond stand-in, has any chance of doing so, and the villain plans to break the binding just before the climax, reducing his would-be nemesis to just one other civil servant he can kill off.

Of course, in true Bondian fashion, that very part of his plan is subject to the same tropes. His plan to break the binding cannot work – something that, alas, he probably couldn't see specifically because the villain in the plot isn't allowed to notice the gaping holes in his plan. Since the binding can't be destroyed, the book has to come to a Bondian climax… which it does, but in a very, very Strossian way that breaks our expectations even as it plays to them.

I do have to wonder about the end, though; they think they're breaking Bond tradition, but James Bond DID propose, and get married, to one of his Bond Girls. Once. And the ending was not good.

While this is billed as the second book, I have a feeling of having missed something, especially as regards Mo wielding the Music of Erich Zann, so to speak. It's not necessary for me to understand to read the novel, but it did make me feel as though something was left out.

As with The Atrocity Archives, there is a second short story at the end of The Jennifer Morgue, titled Pimpf (why, I'm not sure; the references I find are either Nazi or Depeche Mode, neither of which seem relevant to the story). This is a fairly straightforward if very well-done tale of what can happen if you cross the mystical mathematics that can manipulate reality with an MMORPG setting, and of Bob ending up with an intern he's responsible for.

Also included is an essay on the Golden Age of Spying, including "A Colder War?", which connects James Bond to the Lovecraftian mythos. For someone who read all of the Bond novels and saw most of the movies, like me, it wasn't as educational as it might be for someone younger or less well-read, but it's very well written all the same.

Overall, a strong follow-up to The Atrocity Archives, and I look forward to tackling The Fuller Memorandum.

 

On My Shelves: Relics of War

 

Young Garander's sister Ishta insists on going off into the woods by herself, even though there could be very dangerous things living there – monsters, remnants of the great war between the Northerners with their sorceries and Ethshar, a war that destroyed the Northern empire and, in the end, shattered Ethshar into multiple pieces.

This time, Ishta has found something strange and wonderful, a talisman that shows unknown, glowing shapes when touched. Such ancient devices could be harmless… or lethal. Garander makes her show it to their father, Grondar, who sends Garander off with the talisman to show it to the local Baron's magicians. They cannot identify it… and refuse to return it, something which makes Ishta so furious she won't speak with Garander for a long time.

And then Garander finds her in the woods again, but this time she has not found a talisman, but a person – a mysterious wanderer all in black who calls himself "Tesk". Tesk seems harmless, but frighteningly strange; he lives in the woods, under no roof, never staying in the same place, and moves with a superhuman speed and dexterity.

Garander remembers vague tales of a Northern weapon – a man fused with a demon, dressed all in black, the shatra. Grondar remembers more: that the shatra were so dangerous that only a very powerful wizard – or a full-grown dragon – could face one and live.

Is Ishta speaking with a living remnant of the war that shattered the world?

And if she is… what should Garander do?

 

As with all of Lawrence Watt-Evans' stories I've read, the tale draws you in quickly, giving you a grasp of the characters without seeming to spend time detailing them. By the time Garander's heading out into the world on his own, nervous about coming to the Baron's castle by himself, you already know him well enough to worry for him about what will happen. While reading other books set in Ethshar certainly won't hurt, the way Relics is written eliminates the need; all the information required to understand the plot and characters is included transparently in the prose without infodumps.

Relics of War is a good title; it doesn't just refer to the shatra Tesk, but to the talismans and weapons he carries and owns, and, more generally, to the broken and still-healing countries around him, as well as the people who have survived the war, and wish to avoid another.

Garander and Ishta are warm-hearted children (well, Garander's eighteen, so only a child from the point of view of someone like me, I suppose), with Ishta being somewhat more trusting, and Garander trying to be the rational, cautious one. But both of them are willing to give Tesk the benefit of the doubt – and, to their surprise, so is their father Grondar.

Tesk himself is a figure of considerable pathos, despite his potential power. He is, literally, a leftover weapon, a creation whose sole purpose was to be an almost indestructible force on the battlefield, striking terror into the Ethsharitic forces. With his entire country no longer in existence – even the cities ruined – he has no purpose, no home, and nowhere to go. After twenty years, he has discovered the true pain of loneliness, and wishes only a few friends.

But he represents both vast danger, and vast opportunity, to the other powers still present in Ethshar, and they will not leave him alone for long…

I really enjoyed this story. Despite the fact that the plot eventually involves high politics and great danger, Garander still manages to be a driving force in the plot, and the greatest power of all isn't the shatra's superhuman strength or the wizards of the lords who come to seek him out; it is kindness and trust.

I highly recommend Relics of War!

 

 

 

On My Shelves: Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Close Encounters of the First Kind:

A UFO is seen at close range.

Close Encounters of the Second Kind:

Physical evidence of visitation

Close Encounters of the Third Kind:

Unknown entities from the UFO are sighted

 

I have often said that in my view, Stephen Spielberg produced two masterpieces. One of them, reviewed earlier, is Jaws.

The other is Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

CE3K, as it is known, is a classic SF story: it takes one strange, out-there premise and then builds a story on it. For CE3K, the premise is: what if the tales of UFO encounters described in the literature of the time (up through the late 70s) were, at least in considerable part, true?

Spielberg did not do this "what-if" casually; among other consultants, he brought in J.Allen Hynek, perhaps the first somewhat respected "UFOlogist" to provide him with information on the common phenomena associated with UFO encounters, and particularly on the titular Close Encounters, and the then relatively new "abductee" phenomena.

Using this modern mythology, Spielberg constructs a dreamlike vision of bizarre events – decades-old aircraft found in a desert, a ship high and dry in the mountains, a crowd of people repeating a strange, haunting sequence of notes – and then takes us to the lives of two ordinary people who are about to encounter an extraordinary phenomenon: Roy Neary, an electrical worker with a nice family, a regular job, and only wistful regrets for things he hasn't seen or done, and Jillian Guiler, a single mother with a young son named Barry.

Jillian's encounter with the bizarre actually begins with her son, Barry, who is awakened by his electronic toys coming on by themselves. For an adult, this is a supremely eerie sequence, but for Barry it appears to be simply strange and magical; the little boy then wanders downstairs, seeming to see something or someone outside, and is about to leave the house when Jillian stops him, afraid of the lights that are outside of the house and without any known source.

Roy Neary is simply following reports of power outages when he suddenly finds himself spotlighted from above by some unknown object that also generates enough powerful magnetic fields to cause large roadsigns to wobble like tissue paper in the wind, and kills his truck's engine temporarily. As it finally moves off and the truck restarts, a terrified but curious Neary gives chase, a pursuit that ends up including three police cars as well. For a short while the objects stay just a little ahead, following the course of the road at high speed, but finally they simply shoot off the road and vanish into the sky.

Following the encounter, Roy becomes increasingly obsessed with UFOs and erratic in his behavior, with vague but repetitive visions of some tall, looming shape.

During the same time, Jillian begins to have the same visions, and the lights return with a vengeance, culminating in Barry being taken into the light.

Meanwhile, we also see scenes of a UN team led by Claude LaCombe (played by Francois Truffat) investigating the increasing surge of UFO activity around the world, including a repeating five-note motif associated with the apparitions and, eventually, a sequence of numbers that are interpreted to mean a specific location near Devil's Tower, Wyoming. The government proceeds to evacuate the area with a story of a spill of toxic gas.

Roy's obsession reached the breaking point for his family in the painfully poignant dinner scene, when he begins obsessively sculpting the mashed potatoes into a likeness of the mass he has been seeing in his head. His wife, now terrified of this apparently unbreakable obsession, leaves him. Freed of this last restraint on his behavior, Roy throws himself wholly into trying to re-create the image, building a tower of clay that nearly fills his living room, sculpting it with minute detail, and finally screaming "What does it mean!?"

Nearly broken with despair, he is sitting numbly in front of the TV when the news of the "gas leak" breaks, and one of the cameras tracks across Devil's Tower… an image-perfect mirror of the massive sculpture he has just completed. Some distance away, Jillian sees the same thing, reflected in the pictures she has found herself uncontrollably drawing.

The two know that they have no choice; both set off for Wyoming, to find out what awaits them at the enigmatic Devil's Tower…

Close Encounters of the Third Kind is an almost Van Vogtian story. It does not "hold together" in a rational fashion if examined at all closely, yet it has a great and almost hallucinatory power of imagery that makes thoughts of rationality almost inconsequential. The climactic scene, in which the alien vessels finally make contact and the impossibly huge mothership makes its staggering appearance are some of the most powerfully perfect distillations of "sense of wonder" ever filmed. The quest of the two tormented people to find their answers is conveyed through desperate emotion and conflict not just with other people but with themselves; it is clear that even when they realize that there really is meaning behind the obsessions they have been subjected to, they do not know if that meaning is one they want to find.

The imagery and concepts shown in CE3K are almost all drawn directly from UFO lore – the shaking signs and dying engines, the brilliant light that leaves an unexplained sunburn, strange nightmares or dreams, the impossible movements of the ships, and the alien visages, all of these and more are to be found in the reports of UFO witnesses around the world. Spielberg, as they say, "did do the research" and we see much of it on the screen.

The John Williams score for the movie has a great deal to do with its impact, a powerful, haunting, sometimes uplifting score that carries the same beauty and ethereal power as the shimmering crystal lights of the alien craft. Roy Neary's journey from terror and obsession to wonder is the core of the story, and the music reflects all of these moods.

To those who view the movie in a more critical light, it is not without flaws; the largest of these is probably the character of Neary himself. While the imagery and plotline drive us to sympathize with him, and to be uplifted by the ending of his journey, in cold fact he is leaving behind a family he has alienated and presumably disappears without a trace.

Similarly, while the ending paints them as wondrous and even benign creatures, the aliens' actions are as mysterious and often capricious and terrifying as those of the Old Testament God – channeling madness-inducing obsessions into Neary and Jillian's minds, kidnapping a child in full view of his mother, abducting countless people to return them decades later to a world they will hardly be able to understand; none of these actions make sense if we are to simultaneously accept the aliens as good creatures finally choosing to contact us.

Nonetheless, taken on the level it was intended and designed to be viewed, CE3K remains a masterpiece of cinema, a powerful visual symphony to the sense of wonder. It has had considerable influence on the imagery and presentation of UFO phenomena in media, ranging from other movies to books; Dean Koontz' Strangers strongly echoes many of the initial frightening themes and events in Close Encounters. The combination of terror and wonder is also one that has influenced my writing, although I have not attempted to directly copy any of the events or images therein. Yet, anyway!

If you have never seen this movie, I can highly recommend it!

Under the Influence: H. P. Lovecraft

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.

-- H. P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu

 

Howard Phillips Lovecraft was never well-known during his lifetime, and indeed died nearly completely destitute, having gone from a comfortable middle-to-upper-class upbringing to poverty. But following his death, the stories he had written for the various "pulp" magazines began to recirculate and gain recognition, a movement that gained power and legitimacy until, some decades later, Lovecraft was recognized as one of the premier masters of horror fiction – a man whose writing, and influence on his contemporaries and protégés, transformed American horror completely.

This was no small feat, as Lovecraft's writing circle included such luminaries as Frank Belknap Long, Robert Bloch, Clark Ashton Smith, and Robert E. Howard of Conan fame. Virtually all supernatural horror authors of the late 20th century acknowledged Lovecraft's prominence, and often his influence on their own works, including the most famous horror writer of modern times, Stephen King.

Lovecraft's unique contribution to horror stemmed from a focus on the horrific as being based, not merely in the unknown, but the unknowable, and not the supernatural per se; in many of his tales, the strange and monstrous creatures and beings are not depicted as mystical so much as simply alien – things from outside our space and time who are, from their point of view, no more peculiar than we are to each other, but which are to human eyes incomprehensible to the point of being mind-shattering. While he did not avoid the words and phrases associated with the supernatural, his descriptions of the research and approach was often tinged with the scientific, implying that the "magic" or supernatural forces were merely an aspect of the sciences humanity did not, and perhaps could not, grasp.

It is well-known now that Lovecraft had many prejudices that shaped and affected his perceptions; he was a known anti-Semite and racist against the "colored" peoples, as well as obviously ascribing to various aspects of social Darwinism in his distaste for the people inhabiting "backwater" areas of even his own states, let alone those living in distant lands very different from New England.

These fears and pressures were channeled into his writing, and I have no doubt that some of the intensity of Lovecraft's writing comes from him essentially distilling his fears and prejudices and extending them outward, to the huge, uncaring universe. In Lovecraft's universes, most of the powerful beings are uncaring as to humanity's fate, and in fact may not notice us at all; some others are malevolent. The few that may be benevolent still do not fully understand humanity, and are often weaker than the others.

I first encountered Lovecraft's work in my mid-teens, at about 15, in what I think was a Ballantine edition titled Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos. The atmospheric and antiquated language drew me in with a strange power. I recognized a kinship between this and the Conan novels when I began to read the latter, and indeed Robert Howard took some of Lovecraft's elements and incorporated them (although Lovecraftian entities seemed to have a rougher time dealing with Cimmerian barbarians than with 20th century types).

Lovecraft is best known for Cthulhu, the dead-yet-dreaming priest of the Great Old Ones who lies entombed in the sunken city of R'lyeh, and for the other terrifying and enigmatic entities that exist in that cosmos – Hastur the Unspeakable, the blind idiot god Azathoth, Nyarlathotep, nightgaunts, Shub-Niggurath, Yog-Sothoth, and many others. This is a universe filled with terrors that could, and would, destroy a man just for happening to see them, and Lovecraft was a master of painting the slow progression to madness of those foolish enough to try to delve into those secrets.

Lovecraft may not have invented, but he most certainly codified and popularized, the trope of the "book of forbidden lore" – an ancient tome written by some sorceror, alchemist, or other sage of bygone days that contains blasphemous and terrible secrets of lore about the Great Old Ones or other monstrous beings – how to summon them or derive power from them, and so on. While he and his circle mentioned many such – De Vermis Mysteriis, The Book of Eibon, the Pnakotic Manuscripts – one of these transcended the stories and became its own legend: The Necronomicon, "The Book of Dead Names", supposedly written by the "Mad Arab" Abdul Alhazred.

The Call of Cthulhu is probably his best-known single story, in which the narrator investigates tales of the titular entity and the facts behind the tales, but while it is good, I don't consider it to be the best of Lovecraft's work. That title I would give to one of three works: At The Mountains of Madness, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and The Colour Out of Space.

Of these three, one of them bears the distinction of being one of only two stories to scare me and give me the creeps long after I'd put the book down: The Colour Out of Space. This tale of a meteoroid that somehow contaminates a farm with a colour that corrupts and destroys everything with a slowly increasing monstrousness is told in a strangely lurid yet matter-of-fact manner by the narrator, until the climax brings us face-to-face with something alien and untouchable, perhaps literally impossible to fight. (As a side note, the only other story to really scare me was John W. Campbell's masterpiece Who Goes There?)

At the Mountains of Madness is the tale of a scientific expedition to a remote site in Antarctica which seems to fit a description of a location in the Necronomicon (at least in the view of the narrator). A simple excavation becomes stranger and stranger until the protagonists find themselves following traces of an alien creature into the titular mountains. The Case of Charles Dexter Ward tells the story of an evil man who finds a way to transcend time and mortality by careful arrangement and manipulation of his own descendants; it is a frightening and tragic tale.

Futility is one of Lovecraft's common themes – not surprising, given his life experiences. However, he was not incapable of writing a story that ended with a reasonably unambiguous victory for humanity, despite his reputation to the contrary. The Shunned House is one example; while the protagonist's uncle is killed, the two of them do succeed in challenging, and eventually destroying, the monstrous creature lurking in the house, and at the end of the story the house has become harmless and safe.

I do not, of course, tend to write stories so filled with bleak despair and futility as Lovecraft; yet his influence remains in the imagery and the mythology of horror that he crafted. The itrichel in Phoenix in Shadow certainly partakes of Lovecraftian elements, as does the corrupted forest surrounding Kaizatenzei; to an extent, the Demons themselves are associated with some Lovecraftian imagery, and there are certainly directly Chthulhoid entities present in Zarathan as a whole. If I write anything intending to evoke horror and fear, you can be sure that Lovecraft's work is never far from my mind.

Despite age and some unfortunate elements from Lovecraft's personal ideas and preferences, Lovecraft's work remains powerful and, to me at least, atmospherically readable in a way few other authors manage. For those who are fans of the horror genre, it is almost necessary to read at least some Lovecraft, just so that one can recognize where some of the common elements of modern horror came from.

Many modern popular works such as Hellboy, Babylon 5, the works of H. R. Giger, and others are strongly influenced by his words and images, and undoubtedly his influence will continue for at least several generations more. If you have never tried any of Lovecraft's work, I strongly recommend that you do.

Authorial Musings: Ideas Are Not Valuable

 

One of the most pernicious – and ultimately damaging – myths that newbie or would-be authors often buy into (and I do not exclude myself from this!) is that "my ideas are valuable!" Specifically, they think their ideas are so valuable that they must HIDE those ideas to keep other authors or publishers from stealing them.

In almost all circumstances, this is utterly untrue. Believing this myth severely constrains a prospective author (or other artist) because they look at other authors and editors as, at best, competitors, and at worst as potential enemies. They try to hide the best elements of their work, sometimes going so far as to insist that they should have a contract before they reveal the awesome plot twist or other idea that they believe is the key to their future success.

In truth? Most other authors are your potential allies. Make friends with other authors, they're likely to give you a leg up when you need it, talk up your stuff, maybe even help you in more material ways. The fact that I have a career at all is directly due to the fact that a fellow, and far more experienced and better placed, author – Eric Flint – took the time and energy to read my work and, having decided it was pretty good, put it in front of Jim Baen, his publisher. My self-published work Polychrome would have probably turned out a lot less impressive and professional without the help of another pro – Lawrence Watt-Evans – who had the experience and knowledge, and willingness, to assist me.

Editors and publishers may not be, strictly speaking, your allies, but they are the people you want to like you and your work. They're the people you want to impress. Holding back the most awesome and neato ideas and "elevator pitches" is shooting your potential career in the foot – and worse, if they get the idea that you are doing that, you've made an automatically bad impression by implying that they could be thieves.

HAS it ever happened that another author, or publisher, has stolen someone's work, published it as their own? Yes, of course it has. But it's rare. Unless you spend your life deathly afraid of being struck by lightning, you shouldn't be concerned about having your stuff stolen that way, because it's more likely – considering the number of stories submitted to publishers over the years and the number of actual thefts – that you'll be struck by lightning than be victim of theft of your story.

The latter phrase is important: theft of your story. Note that I did not say "theft of your ideas". Ideas are not copyrightable except in very limited cases. Another common result of the unfortunate "I must protect my ideas!" mindset is that the would-be or newbie author sees something similar to a story they submitted somewhere come out, and conclude "OMG, they stole my ideas!!"

No. Almost certainly no, they did not. Because – here's the thing – ideas are almost worthless. One of the most common painful things encountered by almost all established author is the earnest wannabe who comes up to the established author with a pitch that amounts to "I have this awesome idea! I tell you the idea, you write the book, we split the fortune 50/50!"

It's really hard to tell the earnest fan – especially without mortally offending them – that (A) their idea is probably not even vaguely as awesomely original as they think, and that (B) it's not the idea that makes the money, it's the solidification of the idea into a particular expression – the story – that takes the effort AND makes the money. The idea is just the start.

(A) is why, alas, I could not sue the various people like White Wolf and Buffy and other Urban Fantasy people for stealing my idea of the modern-day vampire/werewolf hunting hero, even though I invented Jason Wood and Verne Domingo and his people long before White Wolf was born and a decade and more before Buffy entered Sunnydale. On the positive side, it's also why Joss Whedon, Jim Butcher, and the producers of Underworld couldn't harass me.

In summary, point (A) is "It has ALL been done before. Probably before you would believe it was ever done." For example, the "awesome concept" of "The Matrix" was "the world you know is really just a projection from a machine". Not only was that also done at about the same time (better, in my view) by The Thirteenth Floor, but you could trace the idea itself back to The Machine Stops, by E.M. Forster in 1909, and in general concept all the way back to Plato's Cave (ancient Greece).

I had to accept that – in all likelihood – I would never have an "original" idea, in the sense of "wow, I've never heard of anything like that before". This is true of virtually all authors. I think I've encountered maybe two or three new ideas in my entire life, none of them mine.

We all build on those that came before us (one reason that the current stagnation of the public domain is a serious problem for writers), and what matters isn't the core idea; it's how we take that idea and connect it with this idea and then express it through these approaches to create our stories.

This is where point (B) really comes in. Ideas by themselves are WORTHLESS to an author. Not, obviously, because we don't have to get ideas for our stories, but because we already have waaaaayyyy too many of them. I don't need your ideas, I need time to write mine. Oh, there are exceptions – an author may have an idea that they can't actually write by themselves, and need someone else to write part of it (that's how I came to write Boundary and sequels with Eric) – but for the most part, authors literally are overflowing with ideas. I have enough ideas to support probably a dozen new series, let alone additional single works, just sitting on my hard drive in one file. That's without trying. They just pop into my head and I work at them for a bit and write them down, then get back to the paying work.

The other reason ideas themselves are worthless is that the interpretation of the idea changes almost limitlessly with different authors. There were editors that would demonstrate this directly: they would send three separate authors an identical prompt – a capsule story description, a painting, a quote – and then publish the three resulting stories. Rarely could a reader even notice that there was a commonality between them.

Seriously; if I had even told another author the key points of Grand Central Arena, with a lot more detail than just the most basic, the likelihood is that they would still have written a novel that had at best only a superficial resemblance to mine.

Thus, almost all of the cases of "that looks like my idea" are pure coincidence. As humans we're really good at seeing patterns, even when the patterns are just in random noise. As the various tropes used in fiction (and especially in specific areas of genre fiction) are pretty well defined, it's very easy to see a given pattern in a lot of works. Often, very similar works will show up almost at the same time – without there being any connection between them.

This happened with Arthur C. Clarke and Charles Sheffield – both of them published novels on the design and construction of the world's first space elevator or "beanstalk", with some rather surprising parallels – the main character was named Merlin in one and Morgan in the other, both main characters were the designers of the longest bridges in the world, both approached to tackle the ambitious project of constructing the space elevator, and both books featured a key device called "Spider". Yet neither author was aware of the other's work when they began their writing. Sometimes, it's just an idea's time and everyone starts writing books with that idea.

So – in conclusion – value your stories. Value what you put into it – the plot, the characters, the setting, the gestalt that makes it not an idea but a tale worth telling. Don't be afraid to tell it to the people who could help you. We don't want to steal your ideas. Really. We've got plenty of our own. But if your tales are worth reading, we just might be able to help you share them.