Trudy Myers's Blog, page 50

When Science Catches Up with Science Fiction

When I was young and first started exploring the universe through reading, science fiction was considered far more fiction than science. In those stories, ships routinely traveled throughout our own solar system and to planets far away that were either colonized by humans, had its own intelligent population, or both.
By now, people are aware that cell phones were inspired - at least in part - by the communication devices portrayed on the original Star Trek series. We also now have a space station orbiting Earth, as imagined by so many sf authors last century. And thanks to the Kepler telescope, we are becoming aware that our planetary system is not the only one.
In fact, the Kepler telescope has only examined a tiny fraction of our galaxy, and has already discovered thousands of planets, including some that are possibly earth-like, of the proper size in the ‘Golden Zone’, within the distance range from their star to support liquid water. They could be suitable for colonization. Or they might already have an intelligent species we could trade with. Whether we trade artwork and merchandise or bullet-equivalents remains to be seen.
It appears that when we are ready to start exploring outside our own solar system, there will be plenty of places for us to go, just like there were in all those sf books I read as a kid. Science is catching up with science fiction.
At the same time, science has created new branches to explore, which today’s sf writers are using as a springboard to create their futuristic tales. In a few more decades, we get to see science catch up with some of those stories.
I can’t wait.

If it Walks Like a Duck...

I’ve been reading magazines like Archeologyand Popular Science, trying to learn The State of Science So Far. Many of the articles in these magazines are fascinating and could serve as a spring board for stories.
One article was about a group who were designing robot legs that could walk like a human. The legs don’t exactly look human; there’s a couple kevlar straps (used as muscles) in the back that - when contracted - are outside the thigh, connected to the calf by a plastic flange. But the results move much more like a human leg than other robots have managed.
I was very excited a few years back to hear about Asimo, a child-sized humanoid robot that could walk. But I was disappointed when I actually saw it in motion. Slow motion, that is. Asimo would lean to the right a bit, pick its left foot up straight for about an inch, move the left foot forward a couple inches and put it down, repeat for the other side. And at all times, the foot remained parallel to the floor. It was a strange gait, rather painful to watch.
Besides a different system of ‘muscles’, the new method of robot walking also makes use of something like a human’s subconscious. A human learns to walk, and then leaves the actual giving of instructions to a corner of the mind. We don’t have to actively think, ‘Lean, lift by bending, swing foot forward, lower, adjust balance...’ The people making this new robot gait removed such calculations from the robot main processor and gave this skill to a separate processor.
This particular robot only has legs and feet right now, but I am beginning to anticipate a real android - a robot made to look (and act?) like a human. Data of STNG, the androids in the Alien movies would be examples, although I swear I remember old tv comedies about robots paired with a human to see how well they ‘blended in’. Could that happen soon in a neighborhood near you?
I was also amused to read in this article that one problem the team had to solve was that the hard plastic of the feet’s soles could not grip the floor. They debated about other materials to use for the soles until somebody put a pair of Keds on the robot.
If it walks like a human, it deserves the right footwear, don’t you think?

What a Character

There was a point in my life when I read a lot of westerns. I read so many, I began to recognize authors I liked. And then I realized I had read a number of books by one particular author who had only one main character.Each protagonist had his own name, and the details of his existence differed (slightly) from all the other protagonists, but as far as the character of all these characters, they were the same person; taciturn, gentle, logical, intelligent, even-handed, knowledgeable, frugal, probably secretly rich, and when push came to shove, the best tracker, the best horseman, the best and fastest shot in the west. Reading about such a ‘superman’ once or twice is kind of fun. But I can’t relate to a superman protagonist, can you? I don’t want them as a solid diet; I’d rather read about people who are more like me – complex and not perfect.I try to keep this in mind when I’m working with my characters. Luckily, all my characters have different life histories, different things they want to accomplish, different problems to overcome. I even go so far as to figure out what their birth order was. I am well aware that a youngest child and only daughter will act differently than the eldest adopted daughter or the middle, unusual daughter who didn’t fit in.I have a lot of characters living in my mind. They move in before I start writing about them, tell me their story as I write it down, and then stick around, occasionally whispering a tidbit they ’forgot’ to tell me before. You’d think my mind would be housing a huge fight, it’s so crowded, or else a big party. Well, okay, each has happened, upon occasion. But one thing I haven’t been able to avoid is that all these characters have a little bit of me in them, so most of the time, they quietly get along.

Superhero Romances

Not too long ago, I was reading Publisher’s Weekly magazine when I came across an article about Marvel Entertainment and Hyperion Books are teaming up to produce 2 novels. They will be aimed at women readers by starring 2 of Marvel’s super heroines, She-Hulk and Rogue, who will not only fight villains, but also search for a decent guy they can date.
My first thought was, ‘They have got to be kidding!’ Why does that old myth still exist, that even the strongest, most independent women are really just looking for a man who will complete them as a person?
Then I remembered that this was Marvel, the company that almost went overboard (in my opinion) in showing that their super heroes had the same emotional overload as regular people. And most ‘regular’ women do enjoy having people – and a particular partner – with whom they can share their life; someone they can laugh with who will be there to help them get through the hard bits that sprinkle everyone’s life.
Romance is the largest genre of books sold. So I suppose I can’t be too surprised if Marvel – who originally aimed to entertain males with tales of super heroes – now wants to broaden their audience by whispering tales of romance. I have been known to put some romantic tones in what I write, too.
On the other hand, both Marvel Entertainment and Hyperion Books are owned by Disney. Disney has taken some of the grimmest fairy tales by the Grimm Brothers and cleaned them up into quintessential romances, where the young woman in question is rescued by her very own Prince Charming, and they live Happily Ever After.
This is not what I want to happen to She-Hulk and Rogue.

Planning Your Plan

When I was still working a day job, I managed to get some writing done during (most) lunch hours, and in the evenings, after supper, while the TV nattered in my ear with whatever show my husband and I was watching. I didn’t really plan when I write, I simply wrote in whatever time slots I could.Then I retired. You’d think I’d get a LOT of writing done, right? Now I had entire days I could devote to it!It didn’t happen like that. I’m not sure exactly what happened when, but somehow I seem to have less time for writing than I had when I was working full time.Once I retired, I expected myself to keep the house a little cleaner, to spend a little longer than half an hour to put supper together. Planning our vacations became my chore, as did income taxes, stocks, and any household errands that came along. I was supposed to go the gym several times a week. And then a long-time friend and I started MoonPhaze Publishing.Last week I considered how frustrating my ‘To Do’ list had become. The chores assigned to each day had no inkling how long that chore might take me to address it. Some days, just cleaning out my email took 2 ½ hours, yet this chore was jumbled together with 6 other similar chores in a 1 hr time slot.I studied my list and realized the whole thing was like that; In a 1-hour time slot for MoonPhaze, I had at least 6 chores listed, and the same for research, travel planning, ect. A hard day at the gym might take 2 – 3 hours, while a soft day might only take the 1 hour I had allotted.No wonder I was so frustrated!I rearranged my list. I divided my chores into 6 basic ‘types’, and slotted one day a week for each ‘type’. (The 7th day is for ME!) MoonPhaze, research, errands all have their own day of the week for me to concentrate on them. Some things, like the gym, cooking supper and doing the dishes are still listed daily, of course.And when do I concentrate on writing? In the evenings, after supper, while the TV natters in my ear. After all these years, that’s the time slot my brain is used to working with.

Trudy's Universes, Part 4

I’m going to try and wrap up this list this time. We’re getting into Universes that I don’t seem to visit very often.O is for Orange Witch. Another fantasy universe. The protagonist is a newly-graduated witch who likes to wear orange. I dreamed up this universe more than 3 decades ago, and haven’t done much with it since.S is for Spooks. This is where I keep any paranormal projects I might be working on. For me, paranormal includes ghosts, witches, vampires, werewolves, zombies and the like. I don’t write horror, so there isn’t much in this universe. And if I start a project here, and it really grabs hold of me, that project tends to emerge and form its own universe.T is for Tunad. Tunad is a planet that is secretly colonized by females from a sister planet, Danut. The society of Danut is male-centered, and the females are slaves. Some female individuals are taken off-world by enlightened aliens, taught to think for themselves, and to make use of their skills, and eventually, a number of these are deposited on Tunad to form their own colony. I haven’t written in this universe much, but I love playing with the background; the colonists, the layout of the colony…W&V is for Wolfie & Vamps. Okay, I’ve already listed one universe centered around a werewolf and vampire team, but actually, this werewolf & vampire universe has been around longer than that other one. This team is female, and their history goes a lot further back in history.X is for X-Files. Loved the TV show, didn’t find the books to have the same impact. I have a couple projects started here, but I’m just not sure I can do justice to this particular genre.There you go, my universes. I didn’t used to have this many. Some of these are probably on the path to fading out of existence. There’s always the possibility I will add new ones. But that’s my list right now, early in 2013.

Still More of Trudy's Universes

I think if I could sit here and work on my stories for 10-12 hours a day, 6 days a week, I would not need any ‘new’ ideas for at least a decade. Think I’m kidding? Here’s some more of my folders:G is for Gothic. 3 decades ago, ‘Gothic’ was a specific type of romance where the setting was some out-of-the-way household owned by a brooding but handsome bachelor who is obviously keeping some horrible secret from the heroine. I never read a lot of them, but I do have one story in this folder that I wrote and submitted to an anthology. I came )( this close to being accepted, but in the end, they chose other stories. So this story is currently sitting on a different editor’s desk, waiting for him to make a decision.H is for Halves. A few years ago, I was told by another author, “Everybody’s writing vampires and werewolves.” She was right, but I went ahead and created my own anyway. A vampire is neither alive nor dead, so he could be thought of as half of both. A werewolf is partly human and partly wolf, so he’s halfway both, too. And these guys have a friend who helps them do things, who is of mixed ancestry, so … also a half. Thus I named this trio ‘The Halves’. None of them talk very much, which makes getting a complete story out of them a long deal.K is for Kandi. Kandi is a member of the same alien race that produced the Atlans, but the crew of this ship was her parents, who had left home for their honeymoon and never went back. When their ship was punctured by a freak meteorite, baby Kandi was thrown into a lifeboat. The lifeboat landed in the Dakota badlands, and Kandi was adopted by a Native American couple, and raised as one of their own. Kandi joins the Space Fleet (precursor to the Fleet that Mac belongs to) and Kandi is kidnapped by a derelict ship her crew is exploring. Kandi spends the rest of her long life exploring the universe, gathering together a rag-tag crew of aliens.We’re over halfway through my universe folders now. Do you see any patterns in what I tend to write? I do. I’ve been aware of them for some time, and that knowledge has encouraged me to explore new universes. As we age, we have opportunities to grow, to adapt our outlook on life. I suspect my newer universes reflect that change in me and some of my universes may – eventually – be left to their own devices.

More of Trudy's Universes

Last week, I listed 3 of my ‘uiverses’, the ones where I seem to spend most of my time these days. I thought I would introduce more of my universes today, some I hope to explore more fully … ‘someday’. Here are a few more of the ‘universe names’ that occupy my main ‘writing’ file on my computer.D&D is for – no, not our Saturday night adventures written up as a story. This folder is for stories of a fantasy nature, set in a place that might resemble a D&D land, or a Tolkein-like setting. Probably this will be a home for shorts, because if I write an entire novel using a set of characters, I tend to give those characters their own universe, as shown in the next universe:FG is for Fantasy Gumshoe. I’m still in the planning stages with this one. I see a world rather similar to Glen Cook’s Garrett series, perhaps with a splash of Jim Butcher’s Dresden for a little different flavor. There are no stories in this folder, yet, just some maps, character thoughts, possible history.D is for Dohio. The Dohio are similar to the Atlans; a matriarchal society that does not think much of men. The differences are that the Dohio live on Earth after some holocaustic social & technological breakdown, and they do not have the mental abilities or Powers of the Atlans. As the holocaust hovered on the horizon, a collection of men in the Ohio Valley sent their wives and children to live in the caves that riddle the valley, along with all the supplies they could gather, including some livestock. The husbands were supposed to join the families, but they didn’t, and by the time the Dohio dare to venture out of the underground, the world is far different than the legends described.Well, that’s another 3 of my universes. We aren’t quite half done yet. See you next week!

Visiting Trudy’s Universes

I named this blog for my various universes where I place my stories, but I’ve seldom actually taken you – my readers – into any of those universes. So today, I thought I would at least introduce you to my universes.A is for Atlans. My first 3 shorts published on smashwords.com are about the Atlans, and the 4th is tangentially associated with them. The Atlans are a race of women who establish their own culture on a planet when their space-faring parents abandon them as infants. After centuries of thriving, their ‘home island erupted, sending small boats of Atlans out into the world. Separated, they land wherever they land, and shortly establish a village of their own. Each village wonders if any others survived, and eventually, when they feel their village is strong enough, individuals are sent out to see if they can find any hints of other Atlan villages.M is for Mac. Mac is the main character of my serialized space opera (MacOnFireball.blogspot.com). The SS Fireball is a large exploration/military ship in Space Fleet. Mac is short, shapely and very desirable. She’s a heavy worlder, a heavy drinker, and quite a brawler, having the strength of an Earth elephant. I’ve tried something different in the way of point of view. Mac is the main character, but the story is told from the point of view of the crew members who surround her. Therefore, each scene is colored by the expectations and beliefs of the observer.SE is for Space Exploration. In this universe, I try to imagine events that might happen as we Earthlings explore our own solar system in the next hundred years – or maybe two hundred, if our current rate of progress holds true. It is in this universe that my age thwarts me a bit, as all my science is old, having been learned over 40 years ago. I try to research my ideas, see if they will even hold up with modern science. Maybe, maybe not. I currently have a couple shorts done in this universe, 3 or 4 more that I’m trying to work up.Okay, that’s 3 of my universes. There are still a lot more, but we can talk about them another time.

To Format or Not?

There are basic formatting ‘rules’ for manuscripts that please almost all editors and publishers. When I first started writing, in the fourth grade, I paid no attention to them. I was a kid, writing for my own enjoyment.Through the decades, as I thought about sending my work out, I learned those formatting rules. They’re not difficult to employ; 1 inch margins, double-spaced, 12-pt Times New Roman, with contact information in the top left corner of page 1. I don’t start a project with those parameters. Rough draft requires imagination, which doesn’t like to be tethered. So my initial drafts have tiny margins, 20 pt font (whichever one I feel like using) in a different pale color for each day’s work, single spaced. To me, that lets the rough draft appear ethereal, not quite set firmly and easily changed.As I go through 3 rewrites and a polish, the margins get wider, the font gets smaller, a different type & color. When I’ve got most of the knots out of the story, my contact information is put in place, and by the end of the polish, the project is in ‘standard manuscript format’. I can send the project out to find a new home knowing that it will be judged on its merits, not on my inability to follow these standard rules.Over the years, I’ve wondered why so many market guidelines insist so vehemently that these rules be followed, to the point of spelling them out in their guidelines, possibly several times. Now that Tommee and I have opened our slush pile, I begin to understand.Our guidelines are minimal; all we list is ‘standard manuscript format’ sent in a .doc or .rtf file. Although we want to find new authors, we thought they would know what we meant, if they had any real interest in becoming publishedauthors. Perhaps we were giving them more credit than they deserved. Some of them, anyway. The 3rd or 4th submission came as a docx file, which meant we had to dig out the laptop to open it. (We normally only use the laptop when we are traveling, because we don’t like the keyboard.) We let that slide, and gave the submission due consideration.Since then, we’ve had submissions that don’t have any contact information in the file, that are only partially double-spaced, the paragraphs are not consistently indented…. But we want to encourage new authors, so we considered them and included the comments ‘Not in standard format’ and ‘Please include contact information within manuscript file, in case your email gets lost.’ We hope they will learn, otherwise, we are wasting our time making comments.But some of them are not interested in learning. One responded to our comments, breaking another guideline for new writers; “Do not respond to rejections to argue they made a mistake.” S/he did state that s/he didn’t care a fig about formatting, the fact we responded showed that her/his submitting email had not gotten lost, and that so-and-so liked her/his work. We are not so-and-so. But we may need to follow the example of so many other publishers and summarily dismiss any submissions that cannot follow our guidelines. We are pondering that idea now.