Daniel M. Bensen's Blog, page 71
October 20, 2016
Ergatinglish!
Ha ha, suckers! You thought you were going to get a short story today, but instead I’m going to lecture you about made-up future English.
Wait don’t go!
It’ll be a form of English that has evolved ergative-absolutive alignment!
Wait don’t go again!
Ergative-absolutive alignment is…cool?
I got this idea from The Art of Language Invention by David J. Peterson, and he explains it better than I could:
“The -ee suffix is usually associated with someone who does something, kind of, but we can do better than that. Let’s consider two -ee words: escapee and employee. What is an escapee? Someone who escapes. Now what is an employee? Someone who employs? No, that’s an employer. In fact, an employee is someone who is employed.”
In other words, these sentences all mean the same thing: Albert employs Betty and Betty is employed by Albert and Betty is Albert’s employee.
In the same way, Betty escapes and Betty is an escapee mean the same thing. However, *Betty is escaped is ungrammatical (in modern English) because escape is an intransitive verb (it has no object).
-ee, therefor, is an absolutive suffix. It works for the objects of transitive verbs and the subjects of intransitive verbs. In the same way, -er could be an ergative suffix as in Albert is Betty’s employer.
But wait, there’s more! Escape can become transitive with the addition of from. Betty escapes from Albert, Albert is escaped from by Betty, Betty is Albert’s escaper from, and Albert is Betty’s escapee from.
So that’s English (even if things get a bit sketchy at the end there). But imagine a dialect of English where Betty escapes came to be seen as quaint and funny-sounding, while Betty’s an employee of Albert became standard?
Now it’s just a matter of respelling the words to make the affixing clear:
Albert s-an-employ-er-of Betty=Albert employs Betty
Betty s-an-employ-ee-of Albert=Betty is employed by Albert
Betty s-an-employ-ee=Betty is employed. Betty works.
Pretty cool, huh?
Here’s a story I wrote for my ESL classes to show students how tenses work in English. Let’s whack the Ergatinglish system against the story and see what pops out. Do a bit of phonetic evolution and…
HeraverapeenaKeree? I mapeenTee only once. Thadza when zasEerov a shark.
ZaspeenaWimee, zasLookee downward, and zasTerov under me.
ZaspeenaFollowerov for ten minutes and I zaspeenaNoticerovital. So
I zasWimeerum as fast as zasebotaTee. RabeeTee fast too!
Every day people rAskeratu, “Why saverapeenKeree?” and this why: mabeenaThinkerabot sharks constantly.
MabeepeenaTeewov forever. 
October 18, 2016
Petrolea is out!
My diesel-punk dragon novella Petrolea is available from Alban Lake Publishing in both paper and ebook form. This is a big step: the first paid book-shaped thing that was all mine and no-one else’s. I’m over the (murky, mechanoid-infested) moon (of Saturn)! Here’s the back-of-the-book
Victor Toledo went to Titan for its oil reserves. Doctor Feroza Merchant has made it her mission to stop him. The wild robots of the petroleum jungle want to strip the flesh from their bones.
Stranded in the mechanical jungle, the engineer and the biologist must cooperate not only to survive, but to understand the alien ecosystem around them. Where did these self-replicating robots come from? Who created their ancestors, and why? What they discover could open space to humanity, or it could destroy our civilization.
For more about Petrolea (like pictures by none other than @simon-roy) check out its webpage.
October 17, 2016
Five Star Reviews: Habitat by Simon Roy
Habitat by Simon Roy. That’s Bulgaria in the background.
Yesterday I received two books with Warren Ellis endorsements. One was Pirate Utopia by Bruce Sterling, the other was Habitat, by Simon Roy. Looks like Ellis and I both have great taste.
I worked with Simon at the beginning, middle, an end of Habitat’s writing process, but yesterday was the first time I’d actually gotten to read the finished book all the way through.
And it’s so good, people.
There are all these little details I didn’t notice the first time around. Like the little boy who just lost a tooth, and then found a new one in a cannibal midden. The sinister way the phaser passes hands. And then there are the big things that look so great on real paper like the Neo-Sotz reliefs carved in red, white, and yellow. That cyclopean architecture! The environment suits flayed and restitched into tribal garb. It all fits together into an atmosphere as lucid and claustrophobic as the air of the doomed Habitat, itself.
The story is a tight little spin off of the familiar hero’s journey, where a boy flails his mystical weapon in blind panic from one crisis to the next, bouncing off of people qualified to make good decisions…except they don’t. They’re flailing too. Everyone is tumbling in a panicked free-fall freak-out in very fragile artificial world. It’s heartbreaking and quite human and oh man, I cannot wait for the sequel.
October 16, 2016
Some Writing Advice
(ahem)
1) rather than work until a job is “finished,” work for exactly an hour on one thing, then take a break and switch to something else, even if you have to stop working in the middle of a sentence. The next day when you pick the task up again, you don’t have to dither about where to dive in, because you have that half-finished sentence from yesterday waiting for you.
2) Rather than write the outline in outline form, write it as a synopsis (full sentences). It works way better for me, for some reason. Much easier to keep focused.
3) When you hit those dreaded halfway-point doldrums, consider the problems you introduced throughout the story so far. Make a list of them, then reverse the order of the list and figure out how your characters solve those problems in that reverse order. Usually the first problem you introduced in the story is the most important one, so it gets dealt with last.
October 13, 2016
Who’s a Good Chosen One? You are!
Eirling’gathel! Eirling’gathel! I found the dragon! Let’s go slay it! We’ll go on a quest together!
mmphWhah? Oh, by the sacred Elm of Whispers, it’s like 4am.
I found a dragon, Eirling’gathel! It’s just five leagues from here! It’s time for a quest!
No quests now, buddy. It’s still dark out. No quests now.
But I found a dragon!
Yes, Rolo, you did. Good Chosen One. Good…
Let’s slay the dragon, Eirling’gathel! A quest! Oh oh, a quest! Eirling’gathel!
Alright. Yes. I’m up. I’m up. Let’s slay that fucking dragon. Now where’s my Cloak of Shimmering Dreamstuff?
The Cloak, the Cloak! You’re getting the Cloak because it’s time to go a quest! A quest!
Yes, Rolo, a qu—fuck! Rolo! Did you piss on my Cloak again?
….I was drunk, Eirling’gathel.
October 9, 2016
20 Making plot with Simon Roy and C.M. Kosemen
Simon Roy, Memo Kosemen, and I have ganged up to construct “The Lords of the World” available now from Alternate History Fiction magazine. We’ve discussed the worldbuilding and characters, now let’s look at the plot.
Also:
The Crimean Tatars
Wildlife reintroduction
Quranic verse 42:29
Tay al-Arz (the folding of the earth)
not to be confused with Dabbet-ul-Arz (the beast of the earth)
Yeah it went to kind of a weird place.
19 Making Characters with Simon Roy and C. M. Kosemen
Martian Races
The second part of the conversation Simon Roy, Memo Kosemen, and I had about the idea that eventually became “The Lords of the Earth” (now available from Alternate History Magazine). Having discussed the worldbuilding of the story, now we’re on to characterization.
Also:
Caribbean syncretic religions
Agent of Byzantium by Harry Turtledove
Extreme cultural relativism
All the kids are into steampunk these days
Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
18 Worldbuilding with Simon Roy and C.M. Kosemen
To celebrate the publishing of my Martian Sherlock Holmes short story, “The Lords of the World,” this is a re-release of a conversation I had with Simon Roy and Memo Kosemen back in 2013. Today we’ve ganged up to talk about worldbuilding and to, you know, build a world.
It all goes back to a conversation I had with Memo back in 2009 and the wild speculation that resulted. Actually it goes back to a book called War of the Worlds, but nobody’s heard of that, I’m sure.
Themes discussed include:
The Balkans
The former Soviet Union
The Caucasus
The British Empire’s ethnic division funtimes
Proxies in the Cold War
Crazy Nationalist Mythology
Religious Martians who make pilgrimage to Mount Olympus or the Head Rock. You know the one I’m talking about.
The War Nerd on post-colonial Africa
Planet of Adventure! By Jack Vance.
Fallen Stars
And what conversation about post-colonial oppression would be complete without Slobodan Milošević and Robert Mugabe?
October 7, 2016
Lords of the World: First Lines
P.Q. Singh portrait by Ivy Cave AKA Thundercake
A little something to whet your appetite for “The Lords of the World” available now in Alternate History Fiction Magazine.
Someone to see you, Singh. I signed from the lavatory doorway.
“I am vast,” he replied, “I am cold, I am unsympathetic.” His fingers curled around the porcelain of the wash basin, his long back bent almost in two to bring his face before the mirror. “I am vast, I am cold, I am unsympathetic.”
I blew a sigh of exasperation through my siphon and extended a tentacle to prod him in the back while the others signed. She is at the door now. It will take some time for me to let her in.
We were on the second floor of our borrowed London townhouse, and my Martian limbs were not built for human stairs.
“I gaze down from the ellipse of reason, and fear is as distant and unimportant as the germs which congregate in a drop of water. I am vast, I am cold, I am unsympathetic.”
Percival Quincy Singh, my friend and partner and, I admit, personal project, stared into his own eyes. Hunched over as he was, and with the shoulder flanges of his exo-suit, his etoliated Moon-born body looked rather like a vulture.
It’s Mrs. Dunwitty. I got the impression you enjoyed her company.
His eyes shifted to mine and he broke off his mantra. “If only she enjoyed mine. If only she was not married to the dictator’s right-hand man.”
Read the rest here.
October 6, 2016
Gomi-san
“Oi! Gomi-san. Gomi-san da!”
This shift, Tomás Montalban was a gomishuushuusha, A garbage truck. He swiped the screen that swiveled his right-hand camera and surveyed the sidewalk. There was a little boy waving at him, smiling.
Tomás smiled back, although the kid couldn’t see him. Tomás was in Manila and and the boy was in Tokyo. Tomás needed some other way to express himself.
His pressed the “horn” button and tooted out “shave and a haircut.” The kid grinned and waved even harder. “Gomi-san saikou!”
Tomás wished his kids respected his job like that. Maybe he needed to fly them to Japan so they could see him in action. A gleaming, four-wheeled, three-armed teleoperated robot. Not a fat old man in a control booth.
A light over Tomás turned orange and his smile evaporated like cola on asphalt. He was running behind. A swipe of the thumb switched his view to the trashcans behind him. He jabbed at them with an index finger and the robot arms did the rest, grabbing and lifting the trashcans before dumping them into his central container.
The light turned green. Tomás switched his view back to forward and touched the center of the street. His garbage truck spun up its motor and slipped in with the rest of the robot traffic.
Swipe, jab, jab, swipe. More trashcans. All of the interesting parts of the job — driving, lifting the cans, and whatnot — that was all handled by the algorithms. Tomás had heard a rumor that the only reason Tokyo garbage collection wasn’t fully automated was that they needed a human somewhere in the loop to blame when things went wrong. He believed it.
Gomi-san’s home was a garage where they replaced the machine’s batteries and did repairs. The first job happened automatically as soon as Tomás parked in his spot, but the second took more finesse. And a human operator.
“Pst. You going to the union meeting?” That was over his private line, not external mics.
“No damage to…uh… to report?” Tomás blinked at his screens. What was this guy doing off script?
The repair robot robot dropped, spider-like, onto his hood. “I said,” whispered Tomás’s earphones, “are you going to the union meeting?”
“The meeting isn’t until June.”
“Not your meatspace union in bangladesh or wherever.”
“I live in the Philippines.”
“Right. No. I mean here. In Tokyo, where we spend most of our lives. Don’t you think we deserve to vote here too?”
