Charlie Jane Anders's Blog, page 38

Here’s another diagram I made while I was trying to figure out...

Here’s another diagram I made while I was trying to figure out the ending of my book. No, I don’t know what it means either. See another weird chart that I made while writing the book here.

"As for my stuff, how anybody can call it a Battle Between Good and Evil is beyond me. I don’t write..."

“As for my stuff, how anybody can call it a Battle Between Good and Evil is beyond me. I don’t write about battles or wars at all. It seems to me that what I write about — like most novelists — is people making mistakes and people — other people or the same people — trying to prevent or correct those mistakes, while inevitably making more mistakes.”

- Ursula K. Le Guin, “Some Assumptions About Fantasy”

Everything there is to know about Deedee, Patricia’s Roommate

As I mentioned the other day, I came upw ith origin stories/backstories for a ton of the characters in All the Birds in the Sky. Some of that stuff no longer quite holds up, because I changed some crucial stuff about some of the characters while I was writing the book. But a lot of it does. So I’m going to be posting some of the backstories I came up with for some of these characters.

Here’s everything I came up with about Deedee, who’s Patricia’s roommate when Patricia is living in San Francisco

Deedee is a punk
rocker who moved to SF after college in Indiana, because she thought this was a
place to be a rebel girl. Realized she got here 25 years too late, the city is
100 percent tech millionaires.

She forms a ska band and starts getting some pretty decent gigs around town, because people dig her old-school Kathleen Hanna vibe. But she also starts taking programming
classes in between her waitress job and her band gigs, because she wants to be
one of the masters of the universe. (At one point the book had a lot of references to Deedee studying computer science in her spare time, but that got dropped.)

Then Deedee comes up with a brand new app for the
Caddy, more or less by accident – almost as if the Caddy wants her to have a
little bite of success. She uses basic programming skills, plus a few shortcuts
she finds online, to create an app that lets you find lost items using the cam
on your Caddy to track up to 2000 objects in your physical space, so you can
figure out if you put something on top of your lost car keys or something.
Also, speaking of cars, Deedee comes up with a rideshare app that’s easier to
use than the existing ones out there, but still protects you from getting
mugged or hijacked.

Soon enough, weirdly, the person who kind of hated the tech
boom is a successful app proprammer and is quitting her waitress job. And then the
crash – which Deedee had been wishing for – happens, and Deedee is
kind of screwed. She joins a madrigal choir.

SURPRISING FACT ABOUT DEEDEE: She is
asexual.

Top picture: Publicity still of Kathleen Hanna

These are some of the books I would drag out of a burning...

These are some of the books I would drag out of a burning building before I worried about my clothes

Meet Charlie Jane Anders & Lisa Goldstein at the February SF IN SF

tachyonpub:

SF IN SF, in partnership with the American Bookbinders Museum, welcomes Charlie Jane Anders, who is celebrating the debut of her first novel ALL
THE BIRDS IN THE SKY, and Lisa Goldstein, author of WEIGHTING
SHADOWS. 

Charlie Jane Anders (Photo: Tristan Crane) and Lisa Goldstein (Photo: Liza Trombi, LOCUS)

Each author will read a selection from their work, followed by Q&A with the audience, moderated by incomparable Terry Bisson. Signing and schmoozing follows, with books available for sale courtesy of Borderlands Books. Feel free to bring books from home for signatures.

Sunday Feb. 21st
Doors open 5:30PM
Event begins 6:30 PM
The American Bookbinders Museum
355 Clementina
San Francisco, CA

This is going to be so much fun! There will be an All the Birds in the Sky cocktail! DRINKSOMEBIRDS!

Getting the science right is like getting anything else right

People keep asking me why I tried so hard to make the science in All the Birds in the Sky plausible, by talking to a ton of scientists. I mean, it’s mad science, it’s not regular science. But it’s still at least connected to real science and has some grounding in realistic stuff. It feels at least contiguous with the realm of real science.

My usual response to this is that the more realistic the science is, the better the contrast with the magic in the book. The magic kind of has to run contrary to what we know about the laws of physics, even if it has its own logic, so it stands out more if it’s placed alongside somewhat believable (but weird) science. And I totally believe that.

I also believe, though, that exploring real scientific ideas and facts is one of the things that science fiction does best, and it’s something that science fiction is uniquely good at. And you know, it’s worth doing more of that, both because it’s a cool thing to be able to do and because there’s always a slim chance someone will read your science fiction story and get nudged in the direction of studying science.

There’s a third reason, though – getting the science right is like getting anything else right. Like when you have your characters go out to eat, having them go to a real restaurant that actually exists (or one that you’ve really imagined super clearly) makes the scene more vivid and fun than if they’re just at a random fake-o restaurant that doesn’t have any realness to it. Like how you can describe what it’s like to ride on the bus you take every single day, way better than a tram in a city you’ve never been to. Even though I love making stuff up and being imaginative, fiction often gets a boost from having a huge dose of reality in the mix. And that includes having real science, just the same as other real stuff.

Deleted Scene: The Magicians Do Karaoke

I had a bunch of really fun stuff in All the Birds in the Sky that I had to cut, either for length reasons or because it didn’t fit for some reason. I’m going to be posting “deleted scenes” on here, over the next couple months. First up, here’s a scene where the witches of San Francisco do karaoke. It’s a good counterpart to the origin of Dorothea, which I posted on Monday… 

Please be aware that these deleted scenes were deleted for a reason – I encourage you to read the book first, or at least read the actual excerpts from the final book, because that’s a way better representation of what the book is actually like. I’m just posting these deleted snippets because they’re fun and add something if you’ve already read the book. With that out of the way…

Dorothea
performed a song by Led Zeppelin, except that nobody had ever heard it before,
and it wasn’t listed anywhere in the band’s discography. During the
instrumental breaks, Dorothea chattered about how she had shared an apartment
with Robert Plant and Jimmy Page for five years, and both men had snored. The
song itself was this orgy of guitars and breathy shrieking innuendos, with
lyrics that started carnal and slowly got more and more transcendent. Dorothea
whipped her long hair around and slid her cableknit sweater off first one
shoulder then the other, and it was like the hottest striptease ever, watching
that bulky wraparound sweater slide downward to reveal a crisp blouse. Patricia
could hear funny breathing in both her ears, and she was aware that she was
sweating and she’d lost a shoe and part of her shirt.

           "That
was… wow,“ Patricia told Dorothea when returned to the sofa. "I
mean, I think I’m going to need a cigarette, and I don’t even smoke.”

           Dorothea
leaned over and kissed Patricia on the cheek, leaving an impression of lavender
body lotion. “You should let your hair down more,” she breathed in
Patricia’s ear. “Priding yourself on being the good girl can be just
another form of Aggrandizement.”

           "Oh,“
Patricia stammered. "I mean, I didn’t mean to…” But Dorothea was
already back in her spot, two bodies away.

           The
magicians were doing karaoke in Japantown. There are two ways of doing karaoke,
just like there are two basic ways of doing magic: the bar, where you sing in
front of dozens of strangers, or the “karaoke box,” where you sing to
your friends. Some of the wizards had wanted to rock out at a bar, but the
group might be discussing secret wizard business, so the “box”
faction won. Picture half a dozen ultra-powerful magicians crammed into a
single couch, fighting over the remote control.

           After
Patricia did a spirited “I’m Every Woman,” including window-washing
hand movements, Kawashima muttered something about how Aggrandizement takes
many forms, including being a diva. Kawashima wasn’t smiling, but he had to be
kidding, right? Kawashima was usually a sweetie – he’d put Patricia up for a
week in his Castro loft when she’d gotten to town, while she found an
apartment.

           Patricia
started to suspect that the gang was messing with her on purpose, especially
after Taylor started getting on her case for her Aggrandizing habit of picking
out songs for other people to sing. She was trying not to drink too much,
because they were going back to the Green Wing after this, but everyone said
her refusal to pound a Rolling Rock with the group was – wait for it – a sign
of Aggrandizement.

Image via @JBetcom/Tumblr

Two more chances to hang out with me in San Francisco!

If you missed my appearances at Borderlands Books and the Make Out Room a while back, there are TWO more chances to hear me read from All the Birds in the Sky this week. First on Sunday, I’m reading at SF in SF at the American Bookbinders Museum, which is a super cool space. (Doors at 5:30, event at 6:30.)  They’re making a special cocktail in honor of my book!  That is the best thing EVER!

Then on Tuesday, I’m reading at Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave. @ Lincoln, in the old Le Video space. That’s going to be at 7:30 PM, and I’m going to be giving out free T-shirts to the anyone who asks a question in the Q&A (as long as supplies last!)

Hope to see you at one of these events! (Image by E. Stuart Hardy, via Sofi)

A while ago I was singing the praises of Miles Davis’ Complete...

A while ago I was singing the praises of Miles Davis’ Complete Bitches Brew Sessions. But you know what else is AWESOME for helping you get into a totally magical triptastic frame of mind, that nobody talks about enough? The early 70s albums by Santana. Like especially Santana 3 and Caravanserai. They will make you a super witch for real.

The difference between deceptively simple and deceptively complex

This is just something I’m noodling about. Sometimes you have a story that appears ridiculously simple when you first look at it, but then you peel back the layers and it suddenly has all this stuff going on and you could write a book about all the different things. And sometimes, you have a story that looks like it’s got a million bells and whistles and layers and wheels going around each other at odd angles – but when you look past all of the surface complication, you’ve actually got a super simple story.

I guess Ex Machina is an example of “deceptively simple.” It’s just two guys and an A.I., in a bunker, but wow there’s a lot going on. And Lost is an example of deceptively complex: It’s got the Others and the Dharma Initiative and a billion subplots and polar bears and everything, but in the end it’s just a story about the Smoke Monster’s sibling rivalry with Lucifer from Supernatural. Or maybe about Jack navigating the conflict between science and faith, I guess.

I have a feeling my stuff errs on the side of “deceptively complicated.” I write things that have a million things whizzing around, but they boil down to one or two simple ideas. Or at least, I hope that there’s one or two main ideas when you look past all the fancy whizzbangery on the surface, or else you are left with just a mickle of a muddle. Right?

I wish I knew how to create something deceptively simple. I have a feeling it’s a matter of keeping the obvious stuff in the story down to the minimum – only a few characters, relatively few locations, a simple plot, not a ton of random plot devices or whatnot. But then letting the characters have complex inner lives, and lots of interesting ideas among them, and a bunch of themes that come up in different ways.

But if something is deceptively complex, how do you keep it from becoming just straight-up overcomplicated and messy? I wish there was a magic bullet – but I think part of it is that if you want to be able to strip away all the layers of complexity and find something stark underneath it all – a single stark element – then that needs to be there the whole time. You have to have one idea that you keep coming back that underpins the whole thing.

So maybe the thing that makes complexity “deceptive” is a having a through-line – an idea, or a story element, that you follow from the very beginning of a work right until the end. At least, that’s one way to tell if it’s possibly working. Maybe.