Daniel M. Bensen's Blog, page 109
March 2, 2014
46 Criticism 1/3
I’m talking with Melissa Walshe, social media strategist and author of the young adult urban fantasy Autumn’s Daughter. We discuss the problem of giving and receiving criticism, as well as…
Writing is another way to improve your house
I’ve gotten some pretty negative comments
(it was on Tyrannosaur Queen, by the way)
The dinosaur freaking listserve!
The silence of not having read it
It’s about asking the right audience
The R-strategy of beta-reading
The serialization of my first story
I’m spending time with writers which pushes me to do my absolute best.
Facial cues and body language are important when you’re talking to another human being.
Lois McMaster Bujold’s ”relationship calibration”
February 25, 2014
The Singularity and the King 3
Dan: What war is this?
Michael: A vicious five year civil war. Imperialist forces defeated the Parliamentarians. Their holdings are annexed to the Imperial House and their titles are stripped. Their leaders are executed or exiled and the Krypteia (secret police, Inquisition) is formed to root out future sedition. What few Parliamentarians survived relatively unscathed or fled abroad have developed a hatred of the Imperial House . But they’re constantly watched. The Krypteia is everywhere. Anyone could be a traitor.
Dan: Krypteia. Love that name.
Michael: Ten years later, the plot begins. The Emperor lives in technological opulence, touring his estates, from rural manors to gleaming skyscrapers in luxurious horse-drawn train carriages, indifferent to common concerns. The Sidereal Eden Heresy may or may not be a Republican invention. The Krypteia is investigating a black-listed nobleman whose rival’s daughter has just been attacked by a band of southern brigands.
Dan: The Sidereal Eden Heresy. Another good name.
Michael: What would be cool is that the environmental controls are getting fritzy. There are places where lightning storms go on for weeks, destroying crop yields. Hurricanes, blizzards, localised earthquakes and suddenly active area denial weapons of all sorts. The aristocracy sees this but honestly can’t do anything about it.
Dan: Yes, some weird natural disasters would be fun to write about. Unnaturally long lightning storms. Varying gravity. Maybe a heavy conveyor system starts shuffling around huge chunks of real estate. Or if the biological environment is technologically mediated, you could get forests instructed to turn into grasslands or tundra, or set to kill encroaching humans ala Miyazaki’s Nausicaa and Princess Mononoke.
Michael: Yup. Walking through a shattered forest that fell on a small town and now people are salvaging what’s left. Or maybe it blew up like a fuel-air bomb because the plant life started emitting flammable gas and the grass is sparking in the wind. Or the water in a navigable lake becomes non-Newtonian. Or the geometry in a certain area becomes non-Euclidean with the gravity turning into an Escher drawing where down may be the wall or the ceiling.
Dan: There will be some lovely images there. Wonder and terrible danger. An excellent hook.
Michael: They’ve never been able to access regional climate controls and can’t account for the disassembler clouds even if some of them could call a particle beam down on your head.
Dan: Perhaps because the access port is located in a dangerous jungle (if you want a jungle-exploration story) or because you need several ports simultaneously and some of them are in enemy territory (if you want a war and conquest story).
Michael: That could work. I’m picturing more of a cloak-and-dagger story with some troop movements as well.
Dan: In that case, perhaps the McGuffins you need to fix the world are artifacts scattered in various temples, which the main characters must steal. They can see and fix crazy environment stuff as they travel from place to place, and then get mixed up in an army for the climactic ending.
February 23, 2014
45 Tiger Men! 2/2
Simon Roy and Matt Sheenan‘s Mars project is ongoing…
But now it’s time for Simon Roy to talk to me about my project!
New Frontiers (now finished and available for beta readers! Volunteer in the comments)
Making a list of cool things is a good way to outline a story
Brandon Graham’s shared-world coolness: 8HOUSE
“What about the Tiger-men, hippies? You didn’t plan on them did you?”
“My powers of smell tell me that food has been poisoned!”
The extremely tiresome Humans are Superior trope
“We should hope that humans don’t have a superpower because that would be an excellent reason to enslave us.”
1493 and slavery
Simon’s space-barbarian knife looks like this in case you were wondering
Protect against the Tigermen! Because they will come, brothers, they will come!
February 18, 2014
The King and the Post-Singularity 2
Michael: Maybe controlling certain places gives them direct access. That would help make feudalism or feudal-corporatism viable.
Dan: I like that a lot. Then politics becomes a board game, where you have to capture the “loci of power” (actually old maintenance hatches). Of course the maintenance interface is in the language of the habitats’ designers, so would-be magicians have to learn “the old language” in order to use them. That would make your aristocracy make sense without making magic itself hereditary, which has been done before.
Michael: Yes! And that sort of education (or different levels of it) is reserved for the nobility and individuals who won’t rock the boat. Everybody else is limited by the fact that agriculture is stalled just before the Industrial Revolution and they’re no longer computer literate. A revolt has been tried before and when it was put down a Secret Police/Inquisition was put in place to watch the upper classes because they would be the natural leaders for a revolution, a la France 1789.
Michael: Which would parallel nicely with the Albigensian Crusade, the Reformation, the Thirty Years War and the French Wars of Religion.
For Important Question Number 2, How to Fix the World and Why Bother:If it happened it would have to come from the middle and low nobility. Emperors and kings would rather keep the status quo as always. As to the how, I’m trying not to pull a Quest to the Mines of Techno-Moria. Maybe there’s security block in place and there’s no hope of that unless an upstart woos a lesser noble into a palace coup?
Dan: I think your theme will suggest the way you want to solve the problem, which in turn will suggest the technical nature of the problem. For example, you could say that in order to turn off the technology-suppressor, you have to control the majority of the loci of power. That would require the hero to build an empire. Or perhaps in order to rebuild damaged technology, you need an industrial base, in which case the hero has to bring the empire down, install a republic, and educate the population.
February 16, 2014
44 Cannibalism1/2
It’s Simon Roy again, telling us about his new project with Ed Brisson, the Field, out now!
The Field is a story shrouded in mystery, but I do have it from a reliable authority that it also bikers
Layouts (or “visual script” if you’re me)
Also Star Trek in Hell
Take a premise that you like and are comfortable with and try and make it not that.
Stories that are contained but not overly resolved
The Nausicaa manga (do I mention this is EVERY podcast I do?)
Simon Roy vows to “replace” Hayao Miyazaki
And then we just sort of start talking about cannibalism. Like you do.
Magical cannibalism FTW!
Marvin Harris’s Cannibals and Kings
Jared Diamond on cannibalism
Before the Dawn by Nicholas Wade
Kuru (the cannibal prion disease)
“Human…cannibalism…adaptation” types Simon into Google
February 13, 2014
The Night Land 2ndDraft 2
Back to the Beginning to the Original
III
THE QUIET CALLING
Somewhere out in the desolation of the Night Lands was a second Place of Refuge, where had gathered some last millions of the human race, to fight unto the end.
Of the reality of this foreign Refuge I never doubted, from the day I first heard of it from our Master Monstruwacan. He and I had always an affinity and close friendship, though he was full grown, and I a youth. Thus, when I had come to an age of 21 years of life, he opened to me a post within the Tower of Observation in the apex of the Pyramid, a most desired post.
Now, let me tell here also, lest it be thought that I was unduly favored because of my friendship with the Master Monstruwacan, that there was a sound justification for his choice. I had that strange gift we called Night-Hearing, and could hear the vibrations of the aether. Without harking to our recording instruments, I could take the messages which came continually through the eternal darkness. I listened for a voice that had not rung in my ears for an eternity, and yet which sang sweet and clear in my memory-dreams; so that it seemed to me that Mirdath the Beautiful slept within my soul, and whispered to me out of all the ages.
And then, one day, at the fifteenth hour, I thrilled suddenly, for out of all the everlasting night a whisper came upon my more subtle hearing. I answered by no name, but sent the Master-Word through the night and I knew that she who called would have the power to hear without instruments, if indeed it were she. If it were but one of the false callings of the Evil Forces, or more cunning monsters, or as was sometimes thought concerning these callings, the House of Silence, then they would have no power to say the Master-Word.
As I stood, trembling and striving not to be tense the Master-Word beat steadily in the night back to me. With all that was sweet in my spirit, I called with my brain elements: “Mirdath! Mirdath! Mirdath!” And at that instant the Master Monstruwacan entered and, seeing my face, stood very quiet. Although he did not have the power of Night-Hearing, he was wise and thoughtful, and took much account of my gift.
And to him I told something of my story and my thoughts and my memories, and of that awakening. He listened with sympathy for there, by the refinement of arts of mentality and the results of strange experiments, men were able to conceive of matters that in the past would have sounded like lunacy.
And all the while I told my story, I listened with my spirit. Save for a sense of faint, happy laughter that wrapped about me, I heard nothing.
***
But the Master Monstruwacan believed from the beginning, and was wise always to understand; so that I loved him for this, as for many another dear quality.
And so, as may be conceived, among all those millions I was singled out to be known; for the stories that I told went downward through a thousand cities; and, presently, in the lowest tier of the Underground Fields, an hundred miles deep in the earth below the Redoubt, I found that the very ploughboys knew something concerning my tellings; and gathered about me one time and another when the Master Monstruwacan and I had gone down, regarding some matter that dealt with the Earth-Current and our Instruments.
And of the Underground Fields (though in that age we called them no more than “The Fields”) I should set down a little; for they were the mightiest work of this world; so that even the Last Redoubt was but a small thing beside them. An hundred miles deep lay the lowest of the Underground Fields, and was an hundred miles from side to side, every way; and above it there were three hundred and six fields, each one less in area than that beneath; and in this wise they tapered, until the topmost field which lay direct beneath the lowermost floor of the Great Redoubt, was but four miles every way.
And thus it will be seen that these fields, lying one beneath the other, formed a mighty and incredible Pyramid of Country Lands in the deep earth, an hundred miles from the base unto the topmost field.
And the whole was sheathed-in at the sides with the grey metal of which the Redoubt was builded; and each field was pillared, and floored beneath the soil, with this same compound of wonder; and so was it secure, and the monsters could not dig into that mighty garden from without.
And all of that Underground Land was lit, where needed, by the Earth-Current, and that same life-stream fructified the soil, and gave life and blood to the plants and to the trees, and to every bush and natural thing.
And the making of those Fields had taken maybe a million years, and the “dump” thereof had been cast into the “Crack,” whence came the Earth-Current, and which had bottom beyond all soundings. And this Underground Country had its own winds and air-currents; so that, to my memory, it was in no ways connected to the monstrous air-shafts of the Pyramid; but in this I may be mistaken; for it has not been given to me to know all that is to be known concerning that vast Redoubt; nor by any one man could so much knowledge be achieved.
Yet that there were wise and justly promoted winds in that Underground Country, I do know; for healthful and sweet they were, and in the corn-fields there was the sweet rustle of grain, and the glad, silken laughter of poppies, all beneath a warm and happy light. And here, did the millions walk and take excursion, and go orderly or not, even as in these days.
And all this have I seen, and the talk of a thousand lovers in the gardens of that place, comes back to me; and with it all the memory of my dear one; and of a faint calling that would seem to whisper about me at times; but so faint and attenuated, that even I, who had the Night-Hearing, could not catch its import; and so went, listening ever the more intently. And oft times calling.
Now there was a Law in the Pyramid, tried and healthful, which held that no male should have freedom to adventure into the Night Land, before the age of twenty-two; and no female ever. Yet that, after such age, if a youth desired greatly to make the adventure, he should receive three lectures upon the dangers of which we had knowledge, and a strict account of the mutilatings and horrid deeds done to those who had so adventured. And if, after this had passed over him, he still desired, and if he were accounted healthful and sane; then should he be allowed to make the adventure; and it was accounted honour to the youth who should add to the knowledge of the Pyramid.
But to all such as went forth into the danger of the Night Land, there was set beneath the skin of the inner side of the left forearm, a small capsule, and when the wound had healed, then might the youth make the adventure.
And the wherefore of this, was that the spirit of the youth might be saved, if he were entrapped; for then, upon the honour of his soul, must he bite forth the capsule, and immediately his spirit would have safety in death. And by this shall you know somewhat the grim and horrid danger of the Dark Land.
And this I have set down because later I was to make huge adventure into those Lands; and even at this time, some thought of the same had come to me; for always I went listening for that quiet calling; and twice I sent the Master-Word throbbing solemnly through the everlasting night; yet this I did no more, without certainty; for the Word must not be used lightly. But often would I say with my brain-elements “Mirdath! Mirdath!”—sending the name out into the darkness; and sometimes would I seem to hear the faint thrilling of the aether around me; as though one answered; but weakly, as it were with a weakened spirit, or by instrument that lacked of its earth-force.
And thus, for a great while there was no certainty; but only a strange anxiousness and no clear answer.
Then, one day as I stood by the instruments in the Tower of Observation, at the thirteenth hour there came the thrilling of beaten aether all about me, as it were that all the void was disturbed. And I made the Sign for Silence; so that the men moved not in all the Tower; but bowed over their breathing-bells, that all disturbance might cease.
And again came the gentle thrilling, and broke out into a clear, low calling in my brain; and the calling was my name—the old-earth name of this day, and not the name of that age. And the name smote me, with a frightenedness of fresh awakening memories. And, immediately, I sent the Master-Word into the night; and all the aether was full of movement. And a silence came; and later a beat afar off in the void of night, which only I in all that great Redoubt could hear, until the heavier vibrations were come. And in a moment there was all about me the throbbing of the Master-Word, beating in the night a sure answer. Yet, before this I knew that Mirdath had called; but now had surety.
And immediately, I said “Mirdath,” making use of the instruments; and there came a swift and beautiful answer; for out of the dark there stole an old love-name, that she only had ever used to me.
And, presently, I minded me of the men, and signed to them that they should continue; for the Records must not be broken; and now I had the communication full established.
And by me stood the Master Monstruwacan, quietly as any young Monstruwacan, waiting with slips to make any notes that were needful; and keeping a strict eye upon those others; but not unkindly. And so, for a space of wonder, I had speech with that girl out in the darkness of the world, who had knowledge of my name, and of the old-earth love-name, and named herself Mirdath.
And much I questioned her, and presently to my sorrow; for it seemed that her name was not truly Mirdath; but Naani; neither had she known my name; but that in the library of that place where she abode, there had been a story of one named by my name, and called by that sweet love-name which she had sent out somewhat ruthless into the night; and the girl’s name had been Mirdath; and when first she, Naani had called, there had come back to her a cry of Mirdath, Mirdath; and this had minded her so strangely of that olden story which had stayed in her memory; that she had answered as the maid in that book might have answered.
And thus did it seem that the utter Romance of my Memory-love had vanished, and I stood strangely troubled for sorrow of a love of olden times. Yet, even then I marvelled that any book should have story so much like to mine; not heeding that the history of all love is writ with one pen.
Yet, even then in that hour of my strange, and quaintly foolish pain, there came a thing that set me thrilling; though more afterwards, when I came to think afresh upon it. For the girl who spoke to me through the night made some wonder that my voice were not deeper; yet in quiet fashion, and as one who says a thing, scarce wotting what they say. But even to me then, there came a sudden hope; for in the olden days of this Present Age my voice had been very deep. And I said to her that maybe the man in the book was said to have had a deep tone of speech; but she, seeming puzzled, said nay; and at that I questioned her the more; but only to the trouble of her memory and understanding.
And strange must it seem that we two should talk on so trivial a matter, when there was so much else that we had need to exchange thought upon; for were a man in this present day to have speech with those who may live within that red planet of Mars within the sky, scarce could the wonder of it exceed the wonder of a human voice coming through that night unto the Great Redoubt, out of all that lost darkness. For, indeed, this must have been the breaking of, maybe, a million years of silence. And already, as I came to know later, was the news passing downward from City to City through all the vast Pyramid; so that the Hour-Slips were full of the news; and every City eager and excited, and waiting. And I better known in that one moment, than in all my life before. For that previous calling, had been but vaguely put about; and then set to the count of a nature, blown upon over-easily by spirit-winds of the half-memory of dreams. Though it is indeed true, as I have set down before this, that my tales concerning the early days of the world, when the sun was visible, and full of light, had gone down through all the cities, and had much comment and setting forth in the Hour-Slips, and were a cause for speech and argument.
Now concerning the voice of this girl coming to us through the darkness of the world, I will set out that which she had to tell; and this, indeed, but verified the tellings of our most ancient Records, which had so long been treated over lightly: There was, it would seem, somewhere out in the lonesome dark of the Outer Lands, but at what distance none could ever discover, a second Redoubt; that was a three-sided Pyramid, and moderate small; being no more than a mile in height, and scarce three quarters of a mile along the bases.
When this Redoubt was first builded, it had been upon the far shore of a sea, where now was no sea; and it had been raised by those wandering humans who had grown weary of wandering, and weary of the danger of night attacks by the tribes of half-human monsters which began to inhabit the earth even so early as the days when the half-gloom was upon the world. And he that had made the plan upon which it was builded, was one who had seen the Great Redoubt, having lived there in the beginning, but escaped because of a correction set upon him for his spirit of irresponsibility, which had made him to cause disturbance among the orderly ones in the lowest city of the Great Redoubt.
Yet, in time, he too had come to be tamed by the weight of fear of the ever-growing hordes of monsters, and the Forces that were abroad. And so he, being a master-spirit, planned and builded the smaller Redoubt, being aided thereto by four millions, who also were weary of the harass of the monsters; but until then had been wanderers, because of the restlessness of their blood.
And they had chosen that place, because there they had discovered a sign of the Earth-Current in a great valley which led to the shore; for without the Earth-Current no Refuge could have existence. And whilst many builded and guarded, and cared for the Great Camp in which all lived, others worked within a great shaft; and in ten years had made this to a distance of many miles, and therewith they tapt the Earth-Current; but not a great stream; yet a sufficiency, as was believed.
And, presently, after many years, they had builded the Pyramid, and taken up their refuge there, and made them instruments, and ordained Monstruwacans; so that they had speech daily with the Great Pyramid; and thus for many long ages.
And the Earth-Current then to begin to fail; and though they laboured through many thousands of years, they came to no better resource. And so it was they ceased to have communication with the Great Redoubt; for the current had a lack of power to work the instruments; and the recording instruments ceased to be sensible of our messages.
And thereafter came a million years, maybe, of silence; with ever the birthing and marrying and dying of those lonesome humans. And they grew less; and some put this to the lack of the Earth-Current, which dwindled slowly through the centuries of that Eternity.
And once in a thousand years, maybe, one among them would be Sensitive, and abled to hear beyond ordinary; and to these, at times, there would seem to come the thrilling of the aether; so that such an one would go listening; and sometimes seem to catch half messages; and so awaken a great interest in all the Pyramid; and there would be turning up of old Records, and many words and writings, and attempts to send the Master-Word through the night; in which, doubtless sometimes they succeeded; for there was set down in the Records of the Great Redoubt certain occasions on which there had come the call of the Master-Word, which had been arranged and made holy between the two Redoubts in the early days of that second life of this world.
Yet, now for an hundred thousand years, there had been none Sensitive; and in that time the people of the Pyramid had become no more than ten thousand; and the Earth-Current was weak and powerless to put the joy of life into them; so that they went listlessly, but deemed it not strange, because of so many aeons of usage.
And then, to the wonder of all, the Earth-Current had put forth a new power; so that young people ceased to be old over-soon; and there was happiness and a certain joy in the living; and a strange birthing of children, such as had not been through half a million years.
And then came a new thing. Naani, the daughter of the Master Monstruwacan of that Redoubt had shown to all that she was Sensitive; for she had perceived odd vibrations afloat in the night; and concerning these she told her father; and presently, because their blood moved afresh in their bodies, they had heart to discover the plans of the ancient instruments; for the instruments had long rusted, and been forgotten.
And so they builded them a new instrument to send forth a message; for they had no memory at that time that the brain-elements had power to do thus; though, mayhap, their brain-elements were weakened, through so many ages of starvation of the Earth-Current, and could not have obeyed, even had their masters known all that we of the Great Redoubt knew.
And when the instrument was finished, to Naani was given the right to call first across the dark to discover whether indeed, after that million years of silence, they were yet companied upon this earth, or whether they were in truth lonely—the last poor thousands of the Humans.
And a great and painful excitement came upon the people of the lesser pyramid; for the loneliness of the world pressed upon them; and it was to them as though we in this age called to a star across the abyss of space.
And because of the excitement and pain of the moment, Naani called only vaguely with the instrument into the dark; and lo! in a moment, as it seemed, there came all about her in the night the solemn throb of the Master-Word, beating in the night. And Naani cried out that she was answered, and, as may be thought, many of the people wept, and some prayed, and some were silent; but others beseeched her that she call again and quickly to have further speech with those of their kind.
And Naani spoke the Master-Word into the night, and directly there came a calling all about her: “Mirdath! Mirdath!” and the strange wonder of it made her silent a moment; but when she would have made reply, the instrument had ceased to work, and she could have no further speech at that time.
This, as may be thought, occasioned much distress; and constant work they had between the instrument and the Earth-Current, to discover the reason for this failing; but could not for a great while. And in that time, oft did Naani hear the call of “Mirdath” thrilling about her; and twice there came the solemn beat of the Master-Word in the night. Yet never had she the power to answer. And all that while, as I learned in time, was she stirred with a quaint ache at heart by the voice that called “Mirdath!” as it might be the Spirit of Love, searching for its mate; for this is how she put it.
And thus it chanced, that the constant thrilling of this name about her, woke her to memory of a book she had read in early years, and but half understood; for it was ancient, and writ in an olden fashion, and it set out the love of a man and a maid, and the maid’s name was Mirdath. And so, because she was full of this great awakening of those ages of silence, and the calling of that name, she found the book again, and read it many times, and grew to a sound love of the beauty of that tale.
And, presently, when the instrument was made right, she called into the night the name of that man within the book; and so it came about that I had hoped too much; yet even now was I strangely unsure whether to cease from hoping.
And one other thing there is which I would make clear. Many and oft a time had I heard a thrilling of sweet, faint laughter about me, and the stirring of the aether by words too gentle to come clearly; and these I make no doubt came from Naani, using her brain-elements unwittingly and in ignorance; but very eager to answer my callings; and having no knowledge that, far off across the blackness of the world, they thrilled about me, constantly.
And after Naani had made clear all that I have set out concerning the Lesser Refuge, she told further how that food was not plentiful with them; though, until the reawakening of the Earth-Current, they had gone unknowing of this, being of small appetite, and caring little for aught; but now wakened, and newly hungry, they savoured a lack of taste in all that they ate; and this we could well conceive, from our reasonings and theory; but happily not from our knowledge.
And we said unto them, that the soil had lost its life, and the crops therefrom were not vital; and a great while it would take for the earth within their pyramid to receive back the life-elements. And we told them certain ways by which they might bring a more speedy life to the soil; and this they were eager to do, being freshly alive after so long a time of half-life.
And now, you must know that in all the great Redoubt the story went downwards swiftly, and was published in all the Hour-Sheets, with many comments; and the libraries were full of those who would look up the olden Records, which for so long had been forgotten, or taken, as we of this day would say, with a pinch of salt.
And all the time I was pestered with questions; so that, had I not been determined, I should scarce have been allowed to sleep; moreover, so much was writ about me, and my power to hear, and divers stories concerning tales of love, that I had been like to have grown mazed to take note of it all; yet some note I did take, and much I found pleasant; but some displeasing.
And, for the rest, I was not spoiled, as the saying goes; for I had my work to do; moreover, I was always busied Listening, and having speech through the darkness. Though if any saw me so, they would question; and because of this, I kept much to the Tower of Observation, where was the Master Monstruwacan, and a greater discipline.
And then began a fresh matter; though but an old enough trick; for I speak now of the days that followed that re-opening of the talk between the Pyramids. Oft would speech come to us out of the night; and there would be tales of the sore need of the Lesser Redoubt, and callings for help. Yet, when I sent the Master-Word abroad, there would be no answering. And so I feared that the Monsters and Forces of Evil knew.
Yet, at times, the Master-Word would answer to us, beating steadily in the night; and when we questioned afresh, we knew that they in the Lesser Redoubt had caught the beat of the Master-Word, and so made reply; though it had not been they who had made the previous talk, which we had sought to test by the Word. And then they would make contradiction of all that had been spoken so cunningly; so that we knew the Monsters and Forces had sought to tempt some from the safety of the Redoubt. Yet, was this no new thing, as I have made to hint; saving that it grew now to a greater persistence, and there was a loathsome cunning in the using of this new knowledge to the making of wicked and false messages by those evil things of the Night Land. And it told to us, as I have made remark, how that those Monsters and Forces had a full awaredness of the speech between the Pyramids; yet could they have no power to say the Master-Word; so had we some test left, and a way to sure knowledge of what made talk in the night.
And all that I have told should bring to those of this Age something of the yet unbegotten terror of that; and a quiet and sound thankfulness to God, that we suffer not as humanity shall yet suffer.
But, for all this, let it not be thought that they of that Age accounted it as suffering; but as no more than the usual of human existence. And by this may we know that we can meet all circumstances, and use ourselves to them and live through them wisely, if we be but prudent and consider means of invention.
And through all the Night Land there was an extraordinary awakening among the Monsters and Forces; so that the instruments made constant note of greater powers at work out there in the darkness; and the Monstruwacans were busied recording, and keeping a very strict watch. And so was there at all that time a sense of difference and awakening, and of wonders about, and to come.
And from The Country Whence Comes The Great Laughter, the Laughter sounded constant … as it were an uncomfortable and heart-shaking voice-thunder rolling thence over the Lands, out from the unknown East. And the Pit of the Red Smoke filled all the Deep Valley with redness, so that the smoke rose above the edge, and hid the bases of the Towers upon the far side.
And the Giants could be seen plentiful around the Kilns to the East; and from the Kilns great belches of fire; though the meaning of it, as of all else, we could not say; but only the cause.
And from the Mountain Of The Voice, which rose to the South-East of the South-East Watcher, and of which I have made no telling hitherto, in this faulty setting-out, I heard for the first time in that life, the calling of the Voice. And though the Records made mention of it; yet not often was it heard. And the calling was shrill, and very peculiar and distressful and horrible; as though a giant-woman, hungering strangely, shouted unknown words across the night. And this was how it seemed to me; and many thought this to describe the sound.
And, by all this, may you perceive how that Land was awakened.
And other tricks there were to entice us into the Night Land; and once a call came thrilling in the aether, and told to us that certain humans had escaped from the Lesser Redoubt, and drew nigh to us; but were faint for food, and craved succour. Yet, when we sent the Master-Word into the night, the creatures without could make no reply; which was a very happy thing for our souls; for we had been all mightily exercised in our hearts by this one message; and now had proof that it was but a trap.
And constantly, and at all hours, I would have speech with Naani of the Lesser Redoubt; for I had taught her how she might send her thoughts through the night, with her brain-elements; but not to over-use this power; for it exhausts the body and the powers of the mind, if it be abused by exceeding usage.
Yet, despite that I had taught her the use of her brain-elements, she sent her message always without strength, save when she had use of the instrument; and this I set to the cause that she had not the health force needful; but, apart from this, she had the Night-Hearing very keen; though less than mine.
And so, with many times of speech, and constant tellings of our doings and thoughts, we drew near in the spirit to one another; and had always a feeling in our hearts that we had been given previous acquaintance.
And this, as may be thought, thrilled my heart very strangely.
~~~
Fun fact, nearly every paragraph of the original of this chapter begins with the phrase “and then.”
And then, all the reported conversations, when we never actually hear anything the characters have to say to each other? No way.
February 11, 2014
Singularity and King 1
This month on Science Fiction Theater!
Turbo Fanatic, Michael Silva , and I all have the same goal: to derive an epic high fantasy setting from a post-Singularity civilization. You know, like most people.
The settings we came up with were interesting, and we talked about some good writing craft in the form of the interaction of theme and setting, characters and plot. Then things got weird.
Michael: I got to thinking about camping and Ren Fairs and how people always want to pretend to do things the old fashioned way until they get tired and go home to their modern appliances.
What if a sect of space-faring humans decided to play-act ancient cultures on what is essentially a planet-wide Renaissance Fair? An interdiction field would block certain laws of physics so that the technology level is stopped at the period you’re playing. But certain nanotech works if you have clearance for it.
But then what if something went wrong and you could never leave? Even worse, the tech level is reset at pre-XVII century Earth for everyone. Several generations pass and you have a techno-capable aristocracy living in palaces and castles with all of the information comfort they would ever need at their fingertips and… everyone else. But Da Vinci like mechanics work (except maybe that weird helicopter). So after several hundred years it becomes a mishmash of historical cultures on a world that was supposed to provide for vacationers who wanted to play cowboys and Indians, landsknechts and Benin-Romans, even up to 1920′s New York mobsters.
I’ve already got pages and pages of notes on African Empires and dryland agriculture and nanotech magi but I can’t figure a story arc that’s worth a damn.
Dan: Your story reminds me of Implied Spaces, Terminal World, The Book of the Long Sun, and of course Missile Gap and Singularity Sky by Charles Stross. Oh, there’s also the Virga books where a no-high-tech-zone is maintained as a means of protecting the culture of a pre-singularity civilization (like a nature refuge). Of course all this stuff hearkens back to Vernor Vinge and Fire Upon the Deep, in which different “zones” of technological potential segregate the galaxy.
As for making your world into a story, here are two questions:
(1) Why did some people keep the ability to use nanotechnology but not others? (it shouldn’t be an accident)
(2) How can they fix the world and let high technology work again? (and do they want to?)
Answering those questions will give you a conflict, and with people on each side of the conflict, you’ll get your characters. You even have a theme: should we set limits of technological development? And a climactic battle in which it turns out that : No, We Shouldn’t (or Yes, We Should depending on your opinion).
Does that help?
The King and the Post-Singularity
This month on Science Fiction Theater!
Turbo Fanatic, Michael Silva , and I all have the same goal: to derive an epic high fantasy setting from a post-Singularity civilization. You know, like most people.
The settings we came up with were interesting, and we talked about some good writing craft in the form of the interaction of theme and setting, characters and plot. Then things got weird.
Michael: I got to thinking about camping and Ren Fairs and how people always want to pretend to do things the old fashioned way until they get tired and go home to their modern appliances.
What if a sect of space-faring humans decided to play-act ancient cultures on what is essentially a planet-wide Renaissance Fair? An interdiction field would block certain laws of physics so that the technology level is stopped at the period you’re playing. But certain nanotech works if you have clearance for it.
But then what if something went wrong and you could never leave? Even worse, the tech level is reset at pre-XVII century Earth for everyone. Several generations pass and you have a techno-capable aristocracy living in palaces and castles with all of the information comfort they would ever need at their fingertips and… everyone else. But Da Vinci like mechanics work (except maybe that weird helicopter). So after several hundred years it becomes a mishmash of historical cultures on a world that was supposed to provide for vacationers who wanted to play cowboys and Indians, landsknechts and Benin-Romans, even up to 1920′s New York mobsters.
I’ve already got pages and pages of notes on African Empires and dryland agriculture and nanotech magi but I can’t figure a story arc that’s worth a damn.
Dan: Your story reminds me of Implied Spaces, Terminal World, The Book of the Long Sun, and of course Missile Gap and Singularity Sky by Charles Stross. Oh, there’s also the Virga books where a no-high-tech-zone is maintained as a means of protecting the culture of a pre-singularity civilization (like a nature refuge). Of course all this stuff hearkens back to Vernor Vinge and Fire Upon the Deep, in which different “zones” of technological potential segregate the galaxy.
As for making your world into a story, here are two questions:
(1) Why did some people keep the ability to use nanotechnology but not others? (it shouldn’t be an accident)
(2) How can they fix the world and let high technology work again? (and do they want to?)
Answering those questions will give you a conflict, and with people on each side of the conflict, you’ll get your characters. You even have a theme: should we set limits of technological development? And a climactic battle in which it turns out that : No, We Shouldn’t (or Yes, We Should depending on your opinion).
Does that help?
February 9, 2014
43 The Wandering Warrior 3/3
I’m back with Cory Trego-Erdner and his concept art for an epic fantasy project based on Japanese and Pacific-Northwest mythology.
The way that I arrived at the answers that ended my books was by cheating and seeing whether anyone else had solved those problems.
It all comes back to reading a lot more.
Seat of the pants writing
I almost worship a good climax after reading Steven King
Terry Pratchett is awesome (start with Guards! Guards!)
Kage Baker’s Novels of the Company
Into the Wild written by some guy
And then Dan gets sleepy
Awwww
February 7, 2014
The Night Land 2ndDraft 1
So here’s a thing. My buddy Paul and I are doing a project where we illustrate the mechanics of modern fiction by editing the classic (101 year old) The Night Land by treating the original as a first draft that needs polishing.
II
The Last Redoubt
I have suffered such as no words can ever tell.
Yet at night I have dreamed. I have felt once again the gladness of life, and visited in my dreams a place in the womb of Time where Mirdath and I will come together again, and part, and again come together; after strange ages reuniting in a glad and mighty wonder. I feel as though I awake, there in the dark, into the Future of this world.
The Sun had died. When I first opened my eyes upon the everlasting night that lapped against the world, I did not wake in ignorance, but in full knowledge of those things which lit the Night Land, even as a man wakes from sleep each morning remembering the names and knowledge of his own time.
I was a youth of seventeen, and my new memory told me that I was in one of the embrasures of the Last Redoubt – that great pyramid of grey metal that will one day protect the last millions of this world from the powers of darkness. In that earliest memory I stood high up in the side of the Pyramid and looked outward through a strange spy-glass to the north-west. I was full of youth then, and with an adventurous, half-fearful heart. I knew I had poured over this landscape all the years of my life, and I knew all the names of its features and their distance from the center point of the Pyramid in the Room of Mathematics, where I daily went to my studies.
Far to the North there stood the House of Silence upon a low hill. Always those steady lights in the House, yet no whisper of sound, even such as could be detected by our distance-microphones of an eternity of years.
Around the House wound the Road Where the Silent Ones Walk. It passed out of the Unknown Lands, near to the mist-shrouded Place of the Ab-humans. The Road alone, of all the works surrounding the Last Redoubt, was in ages past built by the labor of human hands. A thousand books on this point alone reposed in our libraries, and a million more had no doubt moldered into the forgotten dust of an earlier world.
As I stood there listening, while the whole of the Great Redoubt slept, I heard from the lightless East a strange, horrible laughter, deep as low thunder among the mountains. Though I had heard it many times, it was always with a thrilling of my heart, a sense of my own littleness, and a terror at what had beset the last millions of the world.
When in a while the Laughter died away, I turned my spy-glass upon the Giants’ Pit, which lay to the south of the Giants’ Kilns. These threw off a red and fitful light, showing through wavering shadows the forms of giants crawling up out of the pit.
By the Red Pit lay the long, sinuous glare of Vale of Red Fire, and beyond that for many dreary miles the blackness of the Night Land, cold in the light from the Plain of Blue Fire. And on the very borders of the Unknown Lands lay a range of low volcanoes, the Black Hills, where shone the Seven Lights, neither twinkling nor moving nor faltering. No adventurer from the Pyramid had ever come back to tell us of them, and the Great Library of the Redoubt was full of the histories of those who risked not only life, but the spirit of life out there in the Night Land.
The bright glare of the fire from the Red Pit shone against the underside of the vast chin of the Watching Thing. “That which has watched from the beginning, and until the opening of the gateway of eternity” came into my thoughts, the words of the ancient poet Aesworpth, ancient to that time though still in the distant future of our own.
But my dream-memories revealed to me Aesworpth’s ignorance, and those thoughts drew my mind back to the sunshine and splendor of my waking life, and I felt a keen longing for Mirdath, my wife, who had been mine in those faery days of light.
I turned from the hazy pain of my memory to the hideous, unfathomable mystery of the Night Land, that black monstrosity that held at bay the last refuge of humanity.
The Next Installment
~~~
You would be surprised how many beta-readers and editors respond to authors with the comment: “Cut the first chapter.” That’s not a bad thing. It wasn’t in this project.
If we got back such a drastically pruned text from one of my beta-readers, we might take that as a sign that in fact the beta-reader hated the whole passage and we ought to re-write everything from scratch. Here, however, we don’t recommend scrapping this scene (the beginning of chapter 2 of the original), because it does such a good job of establishing conflict, mystery, and atmosphere. It has plenty of hooks to pull the reader forward: suffering, lost love (Mirdath? Who’s that?), an interesting world and future history to discover (the Watching Thing? Awesome!), and an ominous existential threat to humanity and possibly the whole universe.
Most of our changes revolved around bringing these hooks into the forefront, usually by rearranging and trimming sentences so that the kernel of the hook is at the beginning or the end of the sentence or paragraph (that is, in a Position of Emphasis). There’s also the issue of logical progression and rising tension to consider. Plugging the paragraphs describing the Night Land before we get to the Watching Thing adds tension because it establishes (1) the Night Land is weird (2) it’s dangerous and (3) we have constructed defenses against it. Defenses that might fail? Oh, read on!
We also wielded the blade of Omit Needless Words. There is no need, for example, for the author to tell us that he is writing, or that we are reading. We know that. Likewise phrases such as “I saw”, “I felt”, “it seemed to me,” are needless, except when the author wants to evoke a sense of separation between observer and observed. See how we left in a few of those references to memory? Then of course you don’t need repetitive language. Derivations of “wake” appear 11 God-damned times in the original passage. Often the gist of entire sentences is repeated, which is what happens when you write flow-of-consciousness and then don’t go back and edit, Hodgson!
There are still some problems. Aside from Omit Needless Words and Control Readers’ Emotions, the third axiom we write by is Show Don’t Tell. That’s because what matters in a story is what the characters do, not what they look at, not how they feel, and not what they are. So we’ve been with the main character for a page so far and what has he done? He’s lost his wife and looked out a spyglass. Yes, we need scene description, world-building, and emotional context, but all of that should come at service to the story, and the story is about action. The next thing after the word “humanity” MUST be a conversation or a fight.
And will it be? Hodgson sure didn’t think so. To find out how we solved that problem, tune in next time for Paul and Dan’s The Night Land Second Draft.
