Jane Lindskold's Blog, page 98

Moving Along Now

Thanks to everyone who weighed in last week regarding branding as it applies to books and your awareness of them.  I’ll keep you posted on developments.  Please feel free to keep sending me comments, either on the post or to my work e-mail: jane2@janelindskold.com.

A Pile of Ongoing Projects.

Currently, I’m focusing in on the writing/editing side of things.  Last week, Jim finished reading the manuscript for a novel I wrote on spec.  The original manuscript was 54,000 words, but I recently expanded it to a tidy 72,000.  One of my jobs this week will be polishing the expanded version and getting it to a few beta-readers.

I’ve also selected which of my out-of-print Avon novels I’ll be getting ready for e-book publication.  Smoke and Mirrors, originally published in 1996, is a far future science fiction novel about what happens when a very unlikely person becomes among the few to realize that there just may be hostile aliens infiltrating human-inhabited worlds.  It’s more thriller than war story, because I prefer the small picture to massive troop movements.

If you can’t wait for the e-book, I still have some copies of the original mass market paperback of Smoke and Mirrors.  See my website bookstore for details.

I’m also writing a short story, because I’ve learned the hard way that if I’m not doing something creative, I get very, very grumpy.

This past weekend featured several fun and creatively stimulating events.  Friday, I read my yet-unpublished short story “A Familiar’s Predicament” at the monthly meeting of the Albuquerque Science Fiction Society.  I very much enjoyed the discussion afterwards.  Particular thanks to the lady who cheered at the story’s resolution.

Saturday, Jim and I went to the New Mexico Archeological Counsil’s annual conference.   Although Jim’s paper was the last of the day, we went early enough to listen to most of the other papers.   Even though this is technically outside of my “field,” I find such events very creatively stimulating precisely because the papers are outside of what I would usually be reading and thinking about.

Many of the papers we listened to had to do with the crossing of the various cultures that have settled the region now known as New Mexico.  In addition to the “alien invasions” represented by the incursion of peoples from Europe, there were culture clashes and cross fertilizations between the numerous indigenous peoples – many of whom spoke completely different languages and practiced widely varied religions.  By contrast, modern “America” looks positively homogeneous.  How many cultures have occupied this landmass is worth remembering, especially in these days when there is a rising myth that the United States was once a monoculture.

Sunday, I had a lovely time running my on-going roleplaying game.  Running a game is an entirely different type of storytelling.  I very much enjoy the stimulus of setting up a situation, then seeing how my players react as they discover something.  This week in particular was full of discoveries.  I can hardly wait for next time…

But, for now, I’m off to split my time between pen and paper and keyboard once more.  The stories are calling, and I must come!

TT: Special Edition!

Hi Folks,

I’ve had e-mail asking me if Alan is okay after the earthquake that hit the South Island in New Zealand.

Yesterday, Alan e-mailed me to let me know that although the South Island was hit by a 7.5 earthquake, he, his wife, their dog, and two cats are fine.

Jake Robson, Not an Earthquake Detectorre fine.

Obviously, there could be further problems from aftershocks, tsunami, and the like but, as of my latest report, Alan and family are well.

With typical Alan sense of importance, he noted that — contrary to folklore — none of their animals reacted to the quake.

Let’s all keep a good thought as the world does Shake, Rattle, and Roll…

 

FF: Reading Tonight and Always

Tonight I’m giving a reading of a yet unpublished short story at the meeting of ASFS, the Albuquerque Science Fiction Society.  Hope to see some of you there!

For those of you just discovering this feature, the Friday Fragments lists what I’ve read over the past week.  Most of the time I don’t include details of either short fiction (unless part of a book-length collection) or magazine articles.

Starlight Reads!

The Fragments are not meant to be a recommendation list.  If you’re interested in a not-at-all-inclusive recommendation list, you can look on my website under Neat Stuff.

Once again, this is not a book review column.  It’s just a list with, maybe, a bit of description or a few opinions tossed in.

Recently Completed:

The Man in the Tree by Sage Walker.  Advanced Bound Manuscript of forthcoming release.  Not your usual car chase murder mystery, but a thoughtful examination how murder impacts a closed community – in this case on a generation ship about to set off for the stars.

The Beasts of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs.  Audiobook.  Weaker than the prior two, with too much repetition and a plot that relies on both Tarzan and Jane being really dumb.

In Progress:

Goldenhand by Garth Nix.  The first novel to carry the excellent “Old Kingdom” series forward since Abhorsen.  So far an interesting journey.

The Golden Specific by S.E. Grove.  Audiobook.  Sequel to The Glass Sentence.

Also:

Almost done with the issues of The Wicked and the Divine graphic novel I have on hand.  I can’t help but think Roger Zelazny would have liked this, too.

TT: To Time Travel or…

JANE: So, before we fall into minutia, it’s time for the Big Question.  Is time travel as a trope still viable?  One of the articles I read suggested that, in fact, it was played out.  What do you think?

ALAN: Certainly the mainstream doesn’t think time travel is played out. They’ve adopted the idea wholeheartedly (after filing the serial numbers off it, of course).

Viable Time Travel

In Martin Amis’ 1991 novel Time’s Arrow, for example, people age backwards through time from death to birth. If you think that sounds like a similar plot to Philip K. Dick’s Counter-Clock World (1965), you’d be quite right. I think that Dick did it much better than Martin Amis did – indeed, I seriously doubt that Martin Amis even knew about the Dick novel (though I’ll guarantee that the book was well known to his father Kingsley!)

JANE: That’s right, as well as being a literary lion, Kingsley Amis wrote one of the first definitive works of SF/F criticism, New Maps of Hell.  I realize sons and fathers don’t always share each other’s tastes, but I wonder if Martin Amis could truly claim to be innocent of influence from earlier time travel works.  Ah, well, unless he chooses to tell, we’ll never know.

“Wholeheartedly” implies more than one example, and I’m betting you have one up your sleeve.

ALAN: Indeed I do. The best example is Audrey Niffenegger’s magnificent novel The Time Traveler’s Wife (2003). The title tells you all you need to know about the plot. It was marketed as a mainstream “literary” novel with no hint whatsoever that the author was slumming in the SF genre. It was a huge best seller. I thoroughly enjoyed it and I thought she handled the “Time Paradox” aspects brilliantly.

JANE: To be the grump…

Mainstream authors can have huge successes with an SF trope precisely because it’s new to their audience.  I haven’t read either of those novels, but I will admit that I’ve read other (not only time travel) ventures by “mainstream” authors into turf already well-tended by SF/F and been bored because what is new to them is far from new to me.

ALAN: That’s always a danger of course, and the Martin Amis novel is definitely rather disappointing for that very reason. But The Time Traveler’s Wife is, quite simply, superb no matter how you try and categorize it.

JANE: So, has anyone writing specifically in SF/F done anything fresh and interesting with the time travel theme recently?

ALAN: Well, in 1995, to celebrate the centenary of Wells’ novel, Stephen Baxter published The Time Ships, which is a brilliant sequel to Wells’ original story. But perhaps that doesn’t really count as an answer to your question.

JANE: Maybe not, but I’m curious as to what Baxter chose to focus on for his sequel.  Can you give me a non-spoiler thumbnail sketch?

ALAN: In 1891, the time traveller attempts to return to the year 802,701 in order to save Weena, the Eloi who died in a fire during the battle with the Morlocks. Unfortunately, he fails to reach his destination because, it turns out, there are multiple mutable futures. Complex cross-time adventures ensue…

JANE: I always felt bad about what happened to Weena…  Maybe I’ll need to find out if she gets saved this time.

ALAN: One problem with time travel stories is that there is a tendency to concentrate on well-known historical incidents and to examine them from the point of view of the time traveller, who acts purely as an observer or with the intention of trying to change the events so as to alter the course of history. This can lead to a certain sameness in the story lines. There’s a definite narrowness of focus enforced by the trope.

That’s probably the reason why the article that you read claimed that the idea was played out.

But in the hands of a skillful writer, even the hoariest old idea can take on a new life.  Stephen King’s novel 11/22/63 (2011) tells of a man who travels through time to try and stop Lee Harvey Oswald from assassinating John F. Kennedy. The book has received rave reviews from one and all. Indeed, some people have claimed that it is the best thing that Stephen King has ever written!

JANE: I’ll admit, I gave this one a pass because whether or not JFK was assassinated didn’t interest me enough.  If I want to read a story like that, I’ll re-read Day of the Jackal.

King’s novel may be among the best things he’s done, but he’s still using the trope in a familiar fashion. Is there anything new being done with the time travel trope?

ALAN: Yes, I think there is.  In a series of novels and stories published  between 1997 and 2013, Kage Baker tells the story of The Company which operates from the 24th century, and uses time travel to exploit the past for commercial gain by rescuing valuable artefacts just before the forces of history conspire to destroy them. As far as the continuity of the time stream is concerned, these things no longer exist and therefore no paradoxes can result by saving them. It’s a nice idea with lots of ramifications and Kage Baker explores them all. The stories are clever, witty, satirical and complex with a long story arc that gradually reveals that the eponymous Company is not quite what it seemed to be at first.

It’s a brilliant sequence and I find it hard to imagine how anyone could ever improve on it. So maybe Kage Baker has written the definitive time travel story and effectively killed the whole idea. But I doubt it…

JANE: You’ve mentioned the “Company” stories before and always with enthusiasm.  I keep forgetting to read them.  This time I vow I will!

Any other examples of creative uses of time travel?

ALAN: In 2007, Joe Haldeman came up with a nifty time travel idea in The Accidental Time Machine in which his hero invents a time machine while attempting to construct a calibrator to measure the relationships between gravity and light. The machine travels exponentially into the future, initially by seconds… Then by minutes… It isn’t long before the inexorable laws of arithmetic mean that every jump the traveller takes moves him forwards by centuries… And then by millennia.

The hero uses the device to leave his problems behind him, long forgotten in a dim and distant past; the statutes of limitation long expired. He also comes across and (superficially) investigates a lot of interesting and cleverly constructed future societies. The novel was nominated for a Nebula Award and a Locus Award, so it was certainly well received. But I suspect that, clever though it was, the future societies were not explored in sufficient depth to make the book a classic. Nevertheless it came very close!

JANE: So, here’s a novel where—unlike what you mentioned with space exploration – it might have benefited from being turned into a series.  Interesting!

ALAN: Much as I hate series, I’m forced to admit that you could well be right.

You might think that the paradoxical implications of time travel have been so thoroughly explored by now that nothing new remains to be said about them. But in 2009, Jack McDevitt found a clever little wrinkle that nobody else had ever thought of and he wrote a novel in which he assured us that Time Travelers Never Die.

So I think that, on balance, time travel stories really are alive and well and flourishing.

JANE: I think you’re right…  I also think that you just told me about a McDevitt novel I believe I somehow missed.  I’m off to check my bookshelves.

I don’t think we’ve exhausted all the perennial SF tropes.  Let’s choose another for next time!

What to Do?

Last week, I handed Jim a copy of the expanded manuscript of a novel I wrote on-spec, and then turned my mind to other projects.  One of these involved climbing up into the crawlspace over our library and moving boxes around until I found the copy-edited manuscripts of a couple of my earlier novels.

(Many thanks to Cale Mims who sacrificed part of his day off, got scruffy dirty, and helped me move boxes up and down and down and up so I could get to the boxes at the very back.)

Nix Example

In any case, the project I mentioned a few weeks ago is underway – getting some of my early novels released as e-books.

(By the way, I still have a few copies of some of these available in the original mass market paperbacks.  Chad Merkley scored the last one of Pipes of Orpheus.  Consider taking advantage of these while I still have them, either for yourself or as unique holiday gifts.  Unlike sports and movie stars, I don’t charge extra for signing and personalization.  Take a look at my website bookstore at www.janelindskold.com.  If you don’t see what you’re hoping to find, feel free to query.  I may be able to work with you.)

Preparing the manuscripts is only part of the job and the one I feel most equipped to do.  The one that I’d love to solicit your input on is the importance of cover art, branding, and other elements of the general “package.”  On and off over the years, we’ve chatted about cover art, so many of you know that I find the whole question of what goes into the visual presentation fascinating.

However, fascination doesn’t mean I consider myself an expert.  It’s more along the lines of “I know what I like when I see it.”

Anyhow, it’s been suggested to me that while I’m at it, I should consider “branding” my work.  What’s “branding,” you may ask?  (I did.)

Branding has a lot of different meanings, but the one that applies here is that of designing a visual presentation that simultaneously serves two purposes.  The first is presenting the work in a fashion that will convince the reader to at least take a look at the book.  The second is sending the message “This is by that writer you like.”

A good example of effective branding has been used by the publishers of Mercedes Lackey.  Whatever she’s writing, the same font is used for her name and the book title.

Another good example is when many years ago Roger Zelazny’s work was re-released with covers that played off the same theme: black background, “mandala” art, with the cover dominated overall by the author’s name and the book’s title is white.

Branding is very common for series.  It signals the reader “Here’s another book in that series you liked.”  The challenge with branding for an author’s work – especially when that author (like me) writes all sorts of different types of stories, even within the same genres – is finding an approach that can encompass a wide variety of types of stories.

It’s been very interesting to see the different approaches.  One that caught my eye was a relatively recent re-release of Agatha Christie’s work that used her signature for the author’s name, and a relatively simple font for the title.  The cover art was also minimal.

Cover art and font can be very important.  I can think of at least two authors I discovered because the cover art made me pause and pick up the book.  One of these was Tamora Pierce’s “Protector of the Small” series.

The other was Garth Nix’s “Old Kingdom” series.  I remember that one in particular because the cover of Sabriel literally made me stop in mid-step on my way down an aisle in the library and take a closer look.  When I picked up the book, I remembered that my friend Rowan Derrick had raved about this series.  But, even without that, I might have tried them anyhow.

Recently,  Nix restarted the series, first with the release of the prequel Clariel.  Then, this October, with Goldenhand, which carries the story that ended with Abhorsen forward.  When I bought Clariel, I was disappointed to see that the package had changed.  The same font was used, although in a slightly more cursive mode, but gone were the iconic depictions of the characters.  They’re dramatic covers, certainly, but would they have stopped me in mid-stride?

No.  In fact, to me, these are covers that are selling an established series to the established fans of the series.  If you know the “Old Kingdom” series (previously called “the Abhorsen trilogy”), then you know the enigmatic markings that dominate the covers are charter marks, the basis for the mysterious magic used by those who do not practice dangerous “free magic.”  If you don’t, they’re just doodles.  The tiny band of illustration at the bottom did nothing for me.

What is cool is how Garth Nix’s name has been turned into a sort of icon in a box, perfectly suited for a wax seal or branding iron.  I really like how it looks!

So what to do?   I’d like to come up with an interesting and provocative way to present my novels, works that range from science fiction to fantasy, and are all over the place within those two diverse genres.

Is author branding something that you find appealing?  What sort of branding approaches have worked for you?  Which haven’t?  Have any turned you off?

I’d love to hear!  Your answers will help me make some major decisions in the months to come.

FF: Embarrassment of Riches

I’m in the middle of four or five different fictional works and loving it!

For those of you just discovering this feature, the Friday Fragments lists what I’ve read over the past week.  Most of the time I don’t include details of either short fiction (unless part of a book-length collection) or magazine articles.

Kel Wonders Why a Man Would Be in a Tree

The Fragments are not meant to be a recommendation list.  If you’re interested in a not-at-all-inclusive recommendation list, you can look on my website under Neat Stuff.

Once again, this is not a book review column.  It’s just a list with, maybe, a bit of description or a few opinions tossed in.

Recently Completed:

The Long Earth by Stephen Baxter and Terry Pratchett.  Audiobook.  More a travelogue through possible worlds with short stories tossed in than a usual novel.  I’ll take a break but at least nibble the start of the next one.

Parsifal’s Page by Gerald Morris.  I enjoyed and will continue the series when time permits.

In Progress:

The Man in the Tree by Sage Walker.  Advanced Bound Manuscript of forthcoming release.

Goldenhand by Garth Nix.  The first novel to carry the excellent “Old Kingdom” series forward since Abhorsen.  Much anticipated.

The Beasts of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs.  Audiobook.  I haven’t read this one is decades so it’s going to almost be a like a new book.

Also:

Finished the “Commercial Suicide” story arc of The Wicked and the Divine graphic novel last week.  Now dipping in to material that will move the story forward, rather than do some (much enjoyed) fleshing out of characters.

TT: Time for a Change

JANE: So, we’ve been chattering away about perennial SF/F themes.  Last week we were talking about time travel and, of course, did not have sufficient time to do justice to a complex topic.

I believe you were going to tell me about your favorite accidental time travel story.

Time for Halloween

ALAN: The very best accidental time travel story is L. Sprague de Camp’s novel Lest Darkness Fall. Martin Padway, a twentieth century archeologist, is struck by lightning and transported back to the dying days of the Roman Empire. He survives by introducing (or in some cases failing to introduce) twentieth century ideas to the society. The story is similar to Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, but it hangs together much better and, despite having been published in 1939, it hasn’t dated at all. It’s still a marvellous story.

JANE: I’ve read it and enjoyed it.  It’s definitely more a “tech” story, while A Connecticut Yankee is more a social commentary story.  Can you think of other “accidental time travel” stories?  I’m drawing a blank.

ALAN: Yes – there’re quite a few. The Ship That Sailed the Time Stream by G. C. Edmondson tells the story of a US Navy battleship equipped with some complex electronics designed to detect submarines. After being caught in a freak storm, the next thing the crew notices is a Viking longboat off the port bow…

Gerald Kersh’s short story “The Brighton Monster” is the harrowing tale of a man caught in the blast of the Hiroshima atomic bomb who is transported 200 years into the past. In a similar vein, David I. Masson’s “A Two Timer” is the story of a 17th Century man’s revulsion at the modern, 20th Century world he is transported to. This story is a little linguistic gem – it is told entirely in the vocabulary and idiom of the late seventeenth century!

But probably the most famous is Eric Flint’s 1632 (and its many, many, many sequels by other writers) in which a modern American community is stranded lock, stock and barrel in seventeenth-century Germany during the Thirty Years’ War.

JANE: Sheesh!  How could I forget?  S.M. Stirling’s Island in the Sea of Time is an accidental time travel story, and one I really love.  In this case, the entire island of Nantucket and those boats close by end up in the exact same location, but in the Bronze Age.  Unlike the “Emberverse” series, to which it is related by shared disaster, this series only goes for three volumes, each of which packs a lot of punch.

ALAN: I’m glad I could jog your memory!

JANE: So, once travel in time becomes more than an experiment, tourism is a likely development – and, as I mentioned last time, that tourism may have vast ramifications.  Still, let’s start with those stories built around simple touring.

ALAN: Plundering other times or using them for tourism is best exemplified by Robert Silverberg’s Hawksbill Station, and his hilarious (and sometimes quite dirty) Up the Line. Rather more seriously, Michael Moorcock’s Behold the Man sends an observer to the crucifixion of Jesus with unexpected results…

JANE: I keep meaning to – and forgetting – to read Behold the Man.  I wonder if some time traveler is messing with my memory.

Once people start being about to tour in time, there will be those who will wish to exploit the past – no matter how dangerous their ventures will be to others, both in the past and present.  For that reason, “time police” were a logical development.  Do you have any favorites?

ALAN: The best “time police” stories are what is arguably Isaac Asimov’s finest novel, The End of Eternity and Poul Anderson’s Guardians of Time, a fix-up novel first published in 1955. I was addicted to the Anderson stories in my childhood and I read them countless times. Baen Books republished the book (and retitled it as Time Patrol) in 2006 with some extra stories added.  I was pleased to see that it still read very well.

JANE: I can’t remember if I’ve read The End of Eternity, but I’m very fond of the “Time Patrol” tales.  I’ve often thought that they would make a great framework for a role-playing game or theme anthology because different people could run the games or write the stories within the same framework, but without the awkward problems of shared terrain.

I wonder if anyone has ever done either of these?

ALAN: I don’t know. Certainly I can’t remember any such anthologies.  I’m not a gamer, so I’m not well informed about that aspect. I wonder if any of our readers know?

JANE: Hopefully, they’ll weigh in if they do.

Now, as I recall, you separated out “wars across time” from “time police.”   Can you explain why these are different?  After all, many a modern war has developed when police action is not enough.

ALAN: I agree that they do tend to merge into each other, but I think of “time police” stories as being concerned with efforts to maintain the “real” time stream (whatever that means – the reality that is being preserved may not always be one that we recognise as our own). In other words the time police are charged with preventing actions that may change the course of history. Time wars, on the other hand, have no such concerns. Indeed, changing history may well be a deliberate tactic used by the warring sides in order to obtain a strategic advantage.

JANE: That’s an excellent differentiation.  Of course, for any of these to work, the author needs to figure out a way around what has become a very common explanation as to what would actually happen if someone played around with time.  This is that the original timeline wouldn’t change, rather an alternate would be created.

ALAN: Once you start delving too deeply into that particular aspect of time travel, you are only a teensy, weensy step away from a full-blown Alternate History story. The one segues imperceptibly into the other. Indeed, you could argue that novels such as L. Sprague de Camp’s Lest Darkness Fall are just as much Alternate History stories as they are time travel stories, and if you did, I don’t think I’d disagree with you too strongly.

Mind you, these days Alternate History stories are largely moribund because Harry Turtledove bestrides the field like a colossus and so he has the whole theme to himself.

JANE: There is some truth to that…  Still, can you recommend Time War story?

ALAN: Absolutely, but first, I just thought of another great Time Police story. John Brunner’s Times Without Number features a Society of Time that struggles hard to preserve a historical framework in which the Spanish Armada successfully invaded and occupied England. I’ve often felt that the Spanish Armada is to British SF what the Battle of Gettysburg is to American SF…

Wars across time are perhaps best exemplified by Fritz Leiber’s Change War stories. Probably the most well-known of these is his novel The Big Time.

JANE: I’ve read The Big Time, but it’s been a while.  I don’t think I realized Lieber had done other stories within that framework.

ALAN: In addition to the novel, there’s a collection of linked short stories that was published as The Change War.

JANE: Thanks!  We’ve had a lot of fun with this, but I think it’s time we turned to the Big Question…  How about next time?

Bringing the Pieces Together

This past weekend, Jim and I went to a “Space Station” themed Halloween party.  Probably because I’ve written stories for so many theme anthologies, I couldn’t resist the challenge of coming up with a costume that would fit the theme.

Tatter D’MaLeon

What I didn’t realize was how much the process of designing my costume would be similar to how I write a story.  Since “Where Do You Get Your Ideas?” is the question writers get asked most frequently, I thought I’d take you through the journey.

When I started designing my costume, almost immediately I thought of a Chinese-style brocade tunic that my friend Kathy Hedges (wife of author Walter Jon Williams) had given to me some years ago.  The tunic is lovely, but the fabric is beginning to perish.  No sooner did I have the torn hem fixed than I noticed that the back of one shoulder was ripping out.  Still, damaged or not, I couldn’t bring myself to throw the tunic out.  Now it would provide the perfect foundation for my costume.

The tunic also gave me the beginnings of a theme.  I wouldn’t try to hide the tears or fraying elements.  I’d celebrate them.  “Tatterdemalion” is a word that means “ragged or disreputable.”  I adapted it, and my yet incomplete character became “Tatter D’MaLeon.”

Next I needed something to wear on my legs.  A trip to a thrift store supplied me with a magnificent pair of metallic bronze trousers.  Many years ago – possibly long enough ago that my hosts had not yet been born – I’d indulged in a pair a fringed leather moccasin boots.  The cats had chewed the laces, so I took this as inspiration to replace them with a silvery grey parachute cord that contrasted nicely with the pale, shimmery gold of the tunic.

I decided that this party was the excuse I’d been waiting for to decorate a mask.  I’d already purchased a form from a craft store.  Now I pulled out some permanent markers and started ornamenting the surface, beginning around the eyes and working outwards.  I deliberately went for asymmetry to further develop the evolving theme of mismatched elements.

As I was working on the mask and contemplating what jewelry might go with the costume, I remembered some charms I’d purchased on clearance at an arts and crafts store.  I sewed three of these onto the tunic, then carefully drew the same shapes onto one cheek of the mask.  I highlighted these with faux gemstones, placing just a few others here and there.  While the “gems” that ornamented the charms were colored, the others were in an aurora borealis finish that highlighted, without distracting from, the other decorations on the mask.

So, as is so often is the case when I’m writing a story, various elements – some completely unanticipated at the time – came together to create a working whole: an old tunic , an even older pair of boots, a set of charms picked up on impulse.  The desire to decorate a mask created a character who would inherently be mysterious.  My friends’ space station theme (itself owing not a little to hostess Rowan Derrick’s desire to wear a particularly fetching alien costume) gave me the setting.

Since my character was original, I provided myself with a badge announcing: “Tatter D’MaLeon.  Your problem isn’t mine… Unless you want me to make it so.”

Ah, but the final part was yet to come, the twist that can make or break a story.   As anyone who has ever worn a costume based around a full-face mask knows, there is a problem with such masks.  You can’t eat or drink without considerable effort.  (Cale Mims, who came as the Scarecrow of Batman comics notoriety, drank his wine through a straw for part of the evening.)   Full-faced masks can also get hot (something we amended with the judicious use of a drill to create a pattern of air holes) and make it hard to be heard when you talk.   However, if the mask is removed, much of the costume’s effectiveness is lost.

I really didn’t want to drink my coffee (provided by Melissa “Wonder Woman” Jackson) through a straw, so I planned ahead.  I found a set of temporary tattoos built around the “tribal” theme that is quite popular.  Most were a dark greenish-black, although a few were accented with color.  With these tattoos, I constructed a secondary mask directly on my face.  I very much liked the contrast of these dark tattoos to the bright colors on the original mask.

I wore the full-face mask until most of the guests had arrived.  Then, when Melissa reminded me she had made me coffee, I removed the first mask and revealed the second.  The response was more than I could have hoped.  The best part was having Kibeth (the family dog, named for the character from the Garth Nix “Old Kingdom” novels) sit and study my face, trying to find my eyes within the twisting patterns.

And, yes, a story is evolving, a story about a mysterious figure who can be found on certain space stations or even on the deserted decks of ships sailing the void.  If you have a problem you can’t solve, you may appeal to her.  But beware the consequences.  You may get more than you bargained for…

FF: What Could Be

A little more time to read this past week, although still not quite enough!  But then, is there ever?

For those of you just discovering this feature, the Friday Fragments lists what I’ve read over the past week.  Most of the time I don’t include details of either short fiction (unless part of a book-length collection) or magazine articles.

Kwahe’e Contemplates the Wild Man Motif

The Fragments are not meant to be a recommendation list.  If you’re interested in a not-at-all-inclusive recommendation list, you can look on my website under Neat Stuff.

Once again, this is not a book review column.  It’s just a list with, maybe, a bit of description or a few opinions tossed in.

Recently Completed:

Welcome to Golden by Rory McClannahan.  I sat next to Rory at the Albuquerque Museum Author Festival and heard him talk about this book.  Virtual reality meets retirement community meets murder mystery.  Good story marred by a need for editing, especially for tenses.

The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater.  Audiobook.  Held up very well to a second reading.  Very much enjoyed.

In Progress:

The Long Earth by Stephen Baxter and Terry Pratchett.  Audiobook.  Definitely more idea-driven than character-driven, but the ideas are interesting, especially the underplayed element of how life on Earth might have evolved without humans as a modifying factor.

Parsifal’s Page by Gerald Morris.  Continuation of his “Squire’s Tale” sequence, interesting in that for the first time the younger character has a great deal to learn, especially about the difference between image and reality.

Also:

Dipping into further issues of The Wicked and the Divine graphic novel.

TT: Time for Traveling

ALAN: This time we will have been decided to have spoken about time travel stories.

JANE: That’s the trouble with time travel. We don’t have the proper tenses for it in our language.

Stepping Out of the Time Machine…

ALAN: Maybe that’s a hint that time travellers haven’t visited us yet.

The appeal of time travel actually pre-dates the SF time travel story.  For example, Charles Dickens flirts with it in his 1843 story, A Christmas Carol.

JANE: Another good example of the pre-SF time travel story is Edgar Allan Poe’s “A Tale of the Ragged Mountains” (1844) which tells the story of a man who may or may not have travelled through time.  Poe (unlike Dickens) cops out and leaves it unclear whether this was a hallucination or a genuine time travel experience.

I’m sure there are many other examples, but what these two makes clear is that the idea of time travel has a fascination that pre-dates it becoming one of science fiction’s most perennial themes.

ALAN: I think time travel, in the traditional SF sense, probably originated with H. G. Wells in his 1895 novel The Time Machine. Here travel into the future is managed by an actual machine, not a ghost, not a vision.  The machine is as real and solid as a rocket ship or submarine, and so the reality of the experience is not left open to doubt.

JANE: Certainly Wells gets the credit for inventing time travel via machine, although many have imitated him since.  It’s been a long time since I read The Time Machine but its vision of the future of gradual degeneration remains haunting.

Time travel is an interesting theme because stories can take so many different forms.

I’d say the great divide is between those stories in which the possibility of time travel is being explored and the greater majority in which time travel is an established fact and the implications are being explored.

One of my favorite time travel stories, Time and Again by Jack Finney, provides a fascinating “device” for travel through time.

ALAN: Oh I love that book to bits. The hero travels back to 1882 where, among other exciting adventures, he falls in love. Finney captures the milieu so wonderfully that I actually found myself filled with a nostalgic longing to go there myself and I was mildly annoyed that I couldn’t…

Finney’s mechanism for taking his hero, Simon Morely, back to 1882 is actually rather similar to that involved in the stories by Poe and Dickens that we mentioned earlier. The hero is taken to a huge warehouse where people are acting out the daily lives of different eras. It is a project to test the feasibility of travelling to the past by self-hypnosis. Convincing yourself that you are in the past, rather than in the present, can actually make it so.

Simon rents a room in the Dakota apartment building and immerses himself in all aspects of 1882. And then he walks out of the door into the New York of a century ago…

Finney wrote a sequel called From Time to Time and it too is just as magical as the original novel. They truly are wonderful books.

JANE: I love both of Finney’s “Time” novels.  I will argue that the mechanism is more solid that than of Dickens or Poe.  Morely is awake, not dreaming, and there is no doubt that his experience is real.  The explanation the scientist involved gives as to why self-hypnosis would work is just as tantalizing and provocative as any machine.

ALAN: Time travel mechanisms themselves vary from the sublime to the ridiculous. Michael Moorcock had a lot of fun with the idea in his Dancers at the End of Time sequence. His hero Jherek Carnelian travels between Victorian London and the End of Time by using a variety of devices including a bicycle, a hangman’s noose and a robot nursery school teacher.

But of course, as everybody knows, the very best time travel device ever invented is a mid-twentieth century British police call box.

JANE: So I have heard, although I admit, I have never seen Dr. Who.  I’ve heard excellent things about it, but just haven’t found the… wait for it… Time.

ALAN: I just used the newly developed Time Travel add-on (TM) for my web browser to go and read this tangent next week after it has been published. And there I discovered that what I will say in response to that remark is:

Groan!

Clearly if I now say anything other than that, it will create a paradox that will destroy the universe. So I won’t.

JANE: Wise man.  It’s best to play it safe. You wouldn’t want to have the destruction of the universe on your conscience.

Once the idea that time travel might become possible (no matter how the mechanisms differ) was firmly established, SF became full of what I like to call “tourist in time” stories.  These go in all sorts of directions, but they often involve the implications of time travel, especially the question of what might change because people are travelling in time.

I’m blanking…  What’s the story in which someone steps on a butterfly and goes back to find everything has changed?

ALAN: It’s by Ray Bradbury. It’s called “A Sound of Thunder” and it’s an absolute classic. The killing of a single insect millions of years in the past drastically changes the world. It’s a very effective dramatisation of a mathematical concept known as the butterfly effect which was first formally defined by the mathematician Edward Lorenz. It describes an idea in chaos theory where very small changes in initial conditions can result in vastly different outcomes.

JANE:  That’s it!  So Lorenz is the one who talked about a butterfly flapping its wings and thereby generating a far-away hurricane or some such?

ALAN: Yes, that’s him.

JANE: Excellent!  But although Bradbury (and Lorenz) supplied the genre with a shorthand expression by which we still discuss the implications of time travel and the possibility of time paradoxes, there are many subgroups of “tourist stories.”

ALAN: I agree.  Let’s see how many I can come up with.

There are stories where the protagonist is accidentally transported through time (usually into the past); stories where the protagonist belongs to some kind of quasi-governmental organisation that is responsible for ensuring that history always follows the “proper” course so as to avoid paradoxes; stories where other times are plundered for resources or used for tourism. There are also stories where war and conflict take place across time rather than in space.

JANE: And it’s important to note – since we’re talking about time travel as a theme – that the police stories, war stories, and exploitation stories often overlap.  After all, exploitation of the past can be a reason for police to take action, war can follow from failed police action.

Basically, we don’t have a bunch of different themes here, we have ingredients for interesting recipes.

Next time maybe you can tell me about your favorite accidental time travel story?