Daniel M. Bensen's Blog, page 111
December 1, 2013
38 Adventure Fiction 3/3
I’m talking again with artist, cartoonist, and writer Steve LeCouiliard, creator of Una the Blade. We continue our smarty-pants talk about such things as:
Steve’s multi-artist collaborative project in the Una-verse. (yes, I am going to keep calling it that)
Greg Rucka (Whiteout)
Leia Weathington (Bold Riley)
“You make rules in fiction specifically so you can break them.”
“By Golly I’m gonna make the awesome Africa-Inspired Sorcerer Culture that I can.”
November 29, 2013
New Frontiers is finished
It’s the day after Thanksgiving, my wife’s grandfather reading to my daughter, “I only want you gone” playing on iTunes. I finished New Frontiers.
“Right. Love. We can do that” I catch her hand and look up into the new frontier.
88,000 words. 201 pages. 16 chapters.
There’s still polishing and beta-reading and more polishing, so stay tuned for more news very soon.
November 26, 2013
5 steps to Dystopia
American Thanksgiving is just a day away, and I’m thankful I can take the day off and spend some time cooking and eating with my family. I am ALSO thankful I live in such a free and prosperous country as Bulgaria.
No, I’m not being sarcastic. Bulgaria isn’t perfect–and I’m sure your home country isn’t perfect either–but as far as all the basic rights and privileges go, I’m living way better than the vast majority of humans through history.
But what if that wasn’t so? What if we in the developed and developing world lost the life we have worked so hard to build and ended up in a dystopia? How would that happen? So in case you’re not feeling thankful enough, here are some 5-step scenarios to dystopia to remind you how much worse things could be.
Note: the purpose here is first to entertain ourselves, next to talk about writing, and maybe–if we’re being very pretentious–to discuss how to avoid these potential pitfalls as we all march together into a better future.
From Simon Roy: Canada
1: Abolition of environmental protections to allow development of Canada into a resource-exploitation superpower
2: With environmental and native opposition groups being marginalized, the opposition becoming more radicalized and violent as it gets pushed underground
3: Hard-headed government response to opposition leads to open low-level warfare in the regions of the country where resource exploitation industries clash with resistant locals.
4: The underground, untaxed economy booms, and the power of organized crime booms along with it.
5: A corrupt federal government sustains itself on oil revenues, backed by a scared, anti-native voting population.
There’s also this future: http://www.alternet.org/corporate-accountability-and-workplace/corporate-coup-disguise which flows pretty well into what I’ve been writing about. See also http://robot-blood.blogspot.ca/2012/05/after-oil-sands.html.
From Dissecting Worlds: the UK
1) encourage building on coastal flood plains
2) destroy coastal flood defenses
3) make a deal with the deep ones of the sunken city of Ahu-Y’hloa
4) replace the Church of England with the Esoteric Order of Dagon
5) Conquer the world as a new fishy super-race
From Me: the EU
1. Economic interests in free trade do not overcome voters’ nationalism and xenophobia
2. Restrictions on trade and movement between EU states increase until there are no incentives for members to remain members.
3. The EU disintegrates.
4. The gap between wealthy and poor European countries increases, along with nationalist tension.
5. Time for France and Germany to go to war again!
And finally, Bulgaria.
1. Join the Byzantine Empire, await its crushing defeat
2. Join the Ottoman Empire, await its crushing defeat
3. Join the Axis Powers, await its crushing defeat
4. Join the Warsaw Pact Countries, await its crushing defeat
5. Join the EU. Ha ha! Is joke!
So we’ve got some serious attempts at outlining possible bad futures (alright, one serious attempt. Thanks, Simon). What do YOU think?
I want COMMENTS, citizens! Submit them to me, or just submit to me. Either is good.
November 24, 2013
37 Adventure Fiction 2/3
I’m talking again with artist, cartoonist, and writer Steve LeCouiliard, creator of Una the Blade. We continue our smarty-pants talk about such things as:
Conan the Barbarian and the close versus omniscient third person
(In other words, imagine was Conan constantly thinking stuff like “Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand”?)
Groom of the Tyrannosaur Queen!
Ayn Rand’s self-made men
“I’m pretty sure Ayn Rand served Crom.”
“Conan never had to breast feed.”
Rebecca Dart’s Battle Kittens
Tony Cliff and his Delilah Dirk
Brandon Graham and Simon Roy‘s Prophet
Simon Roy’s take on the Unaverse
Zothique by Clark Ashton Smith
Jack Vance’s Dying Earth
Gene Wolf’s Book of the New Sun
November 19, 2013
Zainter
For this week’s science fiction theater, I welcome Zerraspace from the Speculative Evolution Forum and his world, Zainter. Zerraspace already has a story in mind for this world, but in this exercise, I figure out some possible stories I might set there. Watch how the setting informs the story.
ZERRASPACE:
My world is Zainter; it’s third of seven planets in the Beta Comae Berenices system (astronomical data regarding the planets can be found in the attached document, with that for Zainter on the sixth page), and although it orbits a considerably brighter star than our sun and holds a significantly thicker atmosphere than does our Earth, its greater distance makes it somewhat cooler, and the lower gravity (exactly 75% Earth’s) allows for higher mountains that help to give rise to an overall drier climate. Oceaniis created a climate map for it here, and I posted my own depiction of the planet within a later post on the same page.
DAN
So we have a rich world with a biosphere that can already support human colonists (and perhaps industry? Are there any organisms on Zainter that might be sold as food or drugs, jewelry, or something else? The economics of this will depend on your technology). That might give your characters something to want.
ZERRASPACE
The native biochemistry sufficiently resembles that of Earthly macrofauna for us to derive nutrition from it; this is one of the primary reasons for Zainter’s original habitation, as few Terran species had to be introduced and acclimatized to the planet prior to colonization efforts. A brief description of the chief animal phyla can be found here, with information regarding their evolution provided in the rest of the text, though only four of these have yet made it to land; the vertebrate-like Rigidia (whose members include both endo- and exoskeletal species), the somewhat arthropodal Hard Worms (defined by a keratin endoskeleton that simultaneously allows worm-like flexibility and enormous durability), the hexapodal Morningstars (possessing an inflatable hydrostatic skeleton that allows them to switch between flexibility and rigidity), and the plated Two-Flowers (who live a generally sessile existence and have yet to entirely shake off features of their aquatic heritage). All but the last of these four includes at least one pre-sapient, but because the setting is meant to explore an all-human universe these will not be explored in much detail – that being said, any of these could come to dominate and rival man in alternate continuities. The planet’s autotrophs use iron-based porphyrins in place of chlorophyll giving them red rather than green coloration
DAN
Here’s a place where the world-building might inform the plot: nitrogen is the limiting factor for plants using chlorophyll, but porphyrin might require an “iron-cycle” to keep the biosphere running. I can imagine environmental problems arising from the clash between Terran and Zainterian life, as well as problems growing Terran crops on Zainter, forcing colonists to eat native autotrophs. Some potential for conflict there.
ZERRASPACE
The chief departure from Earthly life lies in that there is no single group of advanced “plants”: autotrophs are instead assorted over three separate domains, represented by the once-animal Bone Trees (relatives of the Rigidia), the sponge-like Sheath Grass (which most closely resemble Earthly plants) and the ubiquitous Bushmats (colonies of unicellular algae and diatoms working together to create complex structures).
DAN
This difference from the familiar world is interesting and important, so it might be interesting to tie it to a theme. Perhaps you can make an analogy to how very different “plants” coexist in an ecosystem and how different groups of people work together to run a society. Tying in with agriculture, the theme could be progress versus conservationism (and conservation), as people force themselves to eat things they don’t recognize as food and come to grips with the changes they need to make to the native biosphere if they are to survive. Or perhaps one of these native plants turns out to be economically useful (perhaps bushmats are really good at terraforming Mars-like planets). Of course you can just let these plants grow in the background of a story about something else entirely, but I like books where the setting is intimately connected to the theme, plot, and characters.
Such welcoming conditions made Zainter a primary target for interstellar settlers; within only three to four centuries of settlement, it will reach a population of over 200 million, and at times it translates this relatively large population into political power over neighboring systems.
DAN
Here’s more story-fodder. If planets with Terran-compatible biospheres are rare, then this planet is enormously valuable as real-estate. One possible source of conflict is its potential to grow into a rival of its colonizer planets (the relationships of Britain versus the US and Portugal versus Brazil, however, show that big, prosperous daughter-states are usually more help than hindrance to their parent-states in the long run). A potential source of conflict, and therefore plot, might be a discussion among the Great Powers of the stellar neighborhood discussing how they plan to deal with Zainter in such a way as to produce a useful ally and partner.
Another idea (and I like this better because it ties in with the world more) is that humanity is starving. We don’t have enough arable land on our planets to grow food for ourselves and hydroponics in space or on planets like Mars is a net loss of resources. Zainter promises a vast increase in food production, but there’s a catch. The planet’s soil system won’t support chlorophyll-using plants without significant changes. Test farms that transplanted Terran soil ecology onto Zainter work, but produce catastrophic boundary effects with Zainter lifeforms that sterilize the soil around the test farm. The choice is to push forward with Terran crops and basically plow over native life-forms (dealing with ever-more-serious environmental calamities) or find some way to make native “plants” farmable.
Real-world parallels would be global agribusiness versus local produce, the way that global crops like wheat and potatoes compete with indigenous crops, environmentalism versus humanism, and the ethics and economics of GM crops. On the one hand, Monsanto might solve world hunger. On the other, they will ruthlessly drive any competitors out of business, including old man Zuckermann and his heirloom potatoes, who’ll starve come winter.
The characters suggest themselves as a farmer of native “plants.” Because they (he/she) are working in such a new field (literally and figuratively), they need a lot of education, and so this farmer is less old man Zuckermann and more explorer/naturalist with a biochemistry lab in the tool-shed. The farmer is trying to breed more productive strains of some native species, but their work is in danger because a big terraforming company is rolling across the landscape, evicting homesteaders and replacing the native ecology with something that feeds people back on Earth. The antagonist is the front-man (or woman) for this organization. “We don’t need food in a generation maybe, we need food right now. People are starving while you’re playing Johnny Appleseed.” Add in some extremists who want political sovereignty for Zainter (what do we care if people on Earth starve to death? Zainter for Zainterians!) and perhaps a mad genetics lab making microbes that mediate between nitrogen- and iron-cycles, as well as weaponized native organisms.
These real bad-guys descend on the native farm while the agribusiness rep is there, forcing him and the main character to cooperate in order to escape as well as exposing them to a compromise solution to their mutual problem of feeding people on Earth. During their escape, they’ll have lots of opportunity to come into contact with interesting native life forms, as well as illuminate the differences between urban and rural people. It would be nice if there was some romance between these characters as well.
That’s the story I might tell about this world. Notice I didn’t talk about non-human natives, but putting some in might be a good idea (a) because global agribuisness touches on indigenous rights in many places and (b) because previously domesticated plants makes the native-plant farmer’s job easier and more defensible as an alternative to terraforming.
ZERRASPACE
Efforts to populate mankind’s first colony were hampered not so much by the native conditions, but the difficulty of growing Earthly crops, largely due to competition with the better adapted local flora; though these could be weeded without much difficulty, little could be done to save nitrogen fixing bacteria in their roots from being run out by the native microbes, and without these all cultivated plots withered. Introducing artificially fixed nitrogen (via ammonia or nitrates) would have required industry beyond what the still fledgling colony could offer, requiring a relatively low effort solution; ultimately native nitrogen fixing species were discovered and introduced in the place of earthly ones, averting the problem and allowing colonization efforts to commence in earnest.
There are perhaps some twenty inhabited worlds by the time of my planned novel (the Earth being the most notable amongst them), but most of these are only marginally habitable (in particular, a few have oxygen atmospheres due to native microbes, but no multicellular terrestrial life as of yet, and hence no soil to grow our plants); those five that are more Earth-like host much greater populations and hence attain much greater power and development.
Hence, Zainter is as much a political player out of necessity as it is out of the desire for further influence and power, as its population naturally attracts the attention and influences of those seeking to expand their reach and capabilities. This is most heavily realized in its direction of interstellar trade routes, giving it some command over the distribution of resources and thereafter the economic welfare both of developed and developing worlds; moreover, by controlling colonization efforts it is effectively shaping its new allies and vassals. That being said its control is not sufficiently complete to shake off all attempts at manipulation – the Zainterian Civil War transpired largely due to foreign efforts to destabilize the planet’s government, and although the responsible body ultimately took the greater damage, Zainter’s recovery from the infighting would be decades in its realization.
Zainter’s soil is surprisingly poor in magnesium, though the ocean has some supply of it in various salts, requiring infusions of planetary sea water to irrigate Earthly plants (it’s a critical mineral in human nutrition, without which insanity-like symptoms transpire – I’ve seen it happen – and it’s the basis of chlorophyll, a magnesium-based porphyrin). This was not a problem once some infrastructure had been set in, but proved problematic during the civil war, when continental outposts no longer has access to salt water. The resulting mineral deficiencies and difficulty in growing Earthly crops resulted in almost total reliance on native foodstuff, expanding an already diverse Zainterian cuisine.
For another world (which I will currently call Mauvia, though it is not yet named) in the greater setting, difficulty in transplanting earthly crops has resulted in their accessibility to only the richest factions, creating a schism between those with the wealth to afford them and those forced to subsist off the much more meager native flora. It does not help that pigments in the local autotrophs accumulate in the skin (much like beta-carotine), coloring any regular browsers and immediately identifying them for castigation.
Its history I worked on through the eyes of multiple characters over the course of generations in one of my earlier writings. However, this has all come to pass by the time of my current story, Voice of the Virtual Phantom.
DAN
Great minds think alike 
The astro-politics would make an interesting backdrop to a personal story. I would caution you that a fertile country with a dependance on particular resources usually ends up under someone else’s thumb (see Poland, Ukraine, all those “federal republics” inside the Russian Federation, the aptly named Banana republics in Central America…) Turkey might be a notable exception: they held onto Great Power status by dint of a convenient stranglehold on the Bosporus and a genius in charge at the right time. The life of Attaturk might give you a good basis for a story, in fact.
Mauvia is close enough to Zainter that you might be able to merge them.
November 17, 2013
36 Adventure Fiction 1/3
This week I am talking with artist, cartoonist, and writer Steve LeCouiliard, creator of Una the Blade, a fantasy (or post-apocalyptic sci fi) about a travelling warrior and her two young children. We had an incredibly illuminating talk about adventure fiction in general, and specifically:
“It’s not even just a matter of being politically correct. Times have changed and people’s attitudes have changed.”
The Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson
“Every genre has grown up to some extent”
The Lies of Locke Lamora and the second one by Scott Lynch who had this to say about female characters
“We have this huge fertile ground of stories that are just being left untold.”
The real life Lone Ranger, Bass Reeves
Hollywood’s business versus artistic interests
Impresarios (in case, like me, you didn’t know what that means)
Star Trek’s multiracial cast
“Really effective science fiction isn’t really predicting the future, it’s talking about the present.”
Cell Phones and Star Trek communicators
Robert E. Howard’s Hyborian Age
November 14, 2013
Entheogenisis
It’s that time again: Scifi Theatre with Uncle Tom and Uncle Dan!
After AZTECH and A Head Like on Easter Island, Tom went all trippy with Entheogens.
Tom:
What if people used to see and interact with fairies, demons, mythological creatures not because they used to be around and are extinct, but because the humans were taking neuroactive drugs that were allowing them to interface with a slightly phase-shifted dimension where these things exist(ed)?
So it’s not like they’ve gone extinct or faded from our world, but that’s the impression we have because we’ve lost that pharmaceutical connection to their realm.
Dan:
The first thing that came to my mind reading this was entheogens. The second thing I thought was holy crap, Tom has solved the conceptual block in the urban fantasy story I want to write.
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about urban fantasies that take place in North America and the fact that they generally ignore Native American mythology in favor of European. Not that that’s a bad thing (write what you know), but what if mythological beings travel with colonists about as readily as animals and plants (or less readily, since we transplanted many natural organisms intentionally)? What if, as European Americans, all our stories prime us for dealing with supernatural creatures we will never meet, while we are left horribly vulnerable to native mythology. What if that native mythology is further thrown into disarray by introduced “species,” as well as the virtual disappearance of the humans who knew how to deal with them?
The main character of the story has trained himself to be a shaman by piecing together bits of family lore and guesswork, and, with the help of Tom’s entheogens, can negotiate with angry spirits. His work is largely unappreciated except by his buddy, the stray kami he collected from the former site of the Tsubaki Grand Shrine of America in Stockton, California.
Tom:
Sounds good, Dan! I’m glad I could provide a piece of the jigsaw to help solve your plot puzzle here…You know, I haven’t read them, but I guess Orson Scott Card did a fantasy series based on a similar premise of European-meets-North American supernatural….er….ness. I’m not sure to what extent the plot converges on what you’re doing here–from what I’ve seen and heard I don’t think it’s too similar. I guess this all overlaps a bit with the “noospheric seeding” concept.
I actually have quite a few regrets about that one, I mean about the way I presented the idea there…I was aiming for something at a higher level of abstraction, more like David Brin’s “memetic space” as depicted in that second Uplift series; but I was rushed for time when I wrote it and ended up falling back on more stereotypical mythological contrivances as a kind of shorthand to communicate the idea–to its detriment, I feel, based on the kind of discussion thus generated and the criticism I received regarding (~Nighzmarquls’ criticism stung especially because it struck so close to my own misgivings about the whole thing). Ah well, maybe I’ll revisit it one of these days.
–Anyway, tangent. The other thing I was thinking was Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles, where the human colonists living in the towns and cities founded by the extinct Martians begin to think like Martians, take on their cultural characteristics, speak in their language, etc.–to the point where their original identities and culture have been “overwritten” by the sort of psychic race-and-place memory of the original civilization.
Just to bring things full circle, I remember reading the suggestion once, somewhere, that a similar process was responsible for the Mormon religion–that it was the psychic overlay or residue of American Indian myth influencing the imported Christianity of the European colonists. But don’t quote me on that, because I can’t begin to remember where I read it, lo those many years ago. : p
As far as overwriting cultures go. Ooh. What if that started to happen in our world? Something (ghosts? aetheric resonance? vestigia?) makes people repeat actions or thoughts previously undertaken on the real-estate they inhabit. Whatever cultural practices were most common over the longest time in a particular area end up dominating. It would be an interesting way to discuss nativism and cultural purity, as well as the nature of culture and free will.
November 11, 2013
35 Pilgrim 3/3
The last segment of a conversation with Simon Roy and David Gaffney about Pilgrim, a story about the Holy Land during the Crusades when all gods are real.
S.M. Stirling’s In the Courts of the Crimson Kings
“Holy moly, H.P. Lovecraft was just an off dude.”
Hollow earth theory
Mother, a zmey loves me
The painting by the same name
Chao.
November 6, 2013
My Thule Love Letter
I’ve been following and loving Den Valdron’s Land of Ice and Mice for about a year now, and when the agricultural empire of para-Inuit called the Thule expanded to the doorstep of early Tokugawa Japan, I knew I needed to dust off some old skills and write an essay about the development of a novel Japanese art form. My thesis adviser would be proud.
Reflections on the Surface of Frigid Brine:
The rise and standardization of Japanese Sendou.
Extending from land and class reform to weapons technology, to food preparation, to rules governing the audience makeup of kabuki performances, Tokugawa consolidation and standardization extended through all aspects of 17th-century Japanese society (Takaba). The Bakufu “tent government” of Edo patronized and elevated to high art practices such as sadou and nou, previously the province of drunken warriors and peasants, but no new Japanese artform was so un-Japanese as sendou, the Way of Vessels or, as it is often called in early modern European sources, “the Japanese regatta.”
Unlike the other normative artforms that flourished under Tokugawa patronage, which had their roots in Chinese spectacle or Japanese folk-customs, sendou originated in the north, the so-called “Matsumae Frontier” (Matsuzakai) between the Kuril Islands and the Kamchatka Peninsula. Previously far beyond the pale of Edo society, the Frontier underwent a substantive transformation in the second half of the 17th century, as the Matsumae explored and expanded their mercantile interest in the lucrative Thule trade (Abuchi). With its wild fluctuations of luxury prices, the proliferation of gunpowder, and ominous foreign involvement, the Frontier well earned its contemporary sobriquet of “little Sengoku.” For at least half a century, however, the conservative, stability-oriented Edo Bakufu found itself intimately connected to the most rapidly changing society in the world, the Thule.
Matsumae no Takayoshi, Liaison with the Bakufu wrote: “The Hokkaijin (‘North Sea People.’ The modern Hokkokujin, ‘Northlander’ would not come into use until the Imperial Restoration reopened relations with Thule states in the 19th century) are a people entirely without higher culture, but have conquered all the northern seas with excess of personal energy. This vitality they draw from their stone tusks, maintain by means of roseroot, and demonstrate in the frequent races of the small skin ocean-going vessel known as ‘kayak.’ Many of the Ainu and even some members of our own crews partake in the races, despite the danger and admonitions from their superiors. Such is the nature of the sport.”
Such was the nature of the sport that within a generation, wealthy young men were building and racing their own kayaks in Edo Bay. The addition of official rules, fortune-disk tossing, handicap baffles, and of course, improvised verse, followed quickly and even spread back into Thule lands, where they are still practiced.
Although long regarded as purely Japanese innovations, the Thule origins of some core sendou practices have recently come to light. Aklaqov and Tulmak (1997) made definitive links between the syllabic stress rules of sendou and the rowing chants (claxons) used by the Bering Thule. Even the proscribed themes of sendou verse (frustrated desire, the elevation of physical discomfort, search for spiritual lessons in the profane) trace their roots to the Thule imperative to bringing back food from all kayak voyages, as can be seen in Kaikyaku’s most famous verse:
“With clarity all come to understand/ from the reflections on the surface of the frigid brine/ that I have caught nothing/ but the glimmering of light.”
These lines contain obvious allusions to Umiakai’s “My net sings like a lute in the gale/I have caught nothing/but a cold” (often translated as “I have pulled up nothing/but the wind”) a couplet that itself is a formalization of an early 18th century drinking song.
Sadly, no Thule sources from this time exist. If they did, it is tempting to imagine in them a good deal of good-natured teasing directed at amateur kayakers, returning from a voyage soaked with salt water, nets empty of fish, but eager to try again.
November 4, 2013
Baby Talks: 12 months
Happy birthday to baby!
My daughter is one year old today! I can’t believe it’s only been and now she’s talking all the time. Here are here new words this month, approximately from the beginning to the end of October.
Cow/Gao (cow)
Mau/Mauf (mouse)
Iglaya dapa. Blawo! (from Igrayat s’topka. Bravo! They play with a ball. Bravo!)
Eye
Blue
Play/pleiya
Hauf (house)
Hiss! (says the snake)
Maggie!
Belka (weasle)
Grukh (what the piggie says)
Cookie
kss (kisses)
Slide lai
batko (big brother)
Kaka (big sister)
ewo (yello)
Buggy
Moo
Lamp
Baby
Lepola (leopard)
Pak (again)
Kukuwa (from kukla, a doll)
Ele (elephant)
Block
Baa
Moo
Kukurigu (what the rooster says. The standard Bulgarian is Kokoriko)
Neigh
grass
Byal (white)
Kit (whale)
Wall
Girl
boy
na NA (from “na edna” I’m one!)
No
quiet
Nose
Mouth
Nice
Quacky (which is the name of her duck toy)
nama (animal)
potty
pshh (piss)
nana/nani (from nani nani, Bulgarian baby talk for “she sleeps”)
koawa (koala)
kuwa (from akula or shark)
plee/pleep (from pile or bird)
keys
glass (daddy’s glasses and ipod and other things we shouldn’t chew on)
lisa (Bulgarian for fox)
box
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