Ken Lizzi's Blog, page 59

Nothing to See Here, Folks. Move Along.

The web log is busy finishing up the third draft of “Warlord” and acting as Mr. Mom while MBW is out of the country. The regular nonsense will return next week.

Science Fiction 101 Reading List

What are the fundamental books a newcomer to science fiction should read in order to achieve a basic conversance with the genre? To keep this practicable for this notional novice, what ten books would suffice?

I am unqualified to answer this question. My list would necessarily displease everyone. Only an unjustifiably self-confident jackanapes, a grinning idiot embodying the Dunning-Kruger Effect would even attempt such a thing.

Right, I’m your man then.

I’ll start with Jules Verne. I could go back earlier to Mary Shelley, or even back to Cyrano de Bergerac. But this isn’t list isn’t intended as a historical overview but as a practical guide to the field. I’m going to offer Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea for its mechanical inventiveness and its elevation of the scientific hero. Journey to the Center of the Earth is entertaining as an adventure story, but the science is, at this remove, rather laughable and functions as little more than a travelogue.

Second is H.G. Wells. I’d like to include both The Time Machine and War of the Worlds. But my goal is to include ten different authors. So, Time Machine it is, with the time travel trope taking precedence over alien invasion.

Moving on to Isaac Asimov. If you thought picking one Wells novel was hard, welcome to hell. A prolific author and influential author such as Asimov could possibly fill all ten slots himself. But I’m going with the first book of the Foundation trilogy. (Sorry, robotics fans.) Instead of a mechanical contrivance, time travel, or alien civilizations we have a unique concept as the centerpiece: Psychohistory. Asimov’s proposition that large scale events could be predicted through mathematical models is one I find truly disturbing. I think the idea fit well in the optimism of the times, the sort of thinking that powered the New Frontier and Camelot. The idea that science, guided by smart, well-meaning people, could lead us to a sort of utopia. Utter rot, of course, and dangerous. Frightening to those of us who aren’t too sanguine about these supposedly well-meaning people.

Robert A. Heinlein makes for another difficult choice. But I think Stranger in a Strange Land must take the spot. As much as I’d rather re-read Starship Troopers or The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, the story of Valentine Michael Smith takes priority. The fish out of water examination of humanity from a supposedly objective outside observer is a subgenre in its own right and this is the prime exemplar. It even introduced the word “grok” into the vocabulary. How many science fiction books can make that claim?

Arthur C. Clarke is another writer who could lay claim to multiple spots on this list. Should it be 2001: A Space Odyssey or The Fountains of Paradise? Both good options, but I’m going with Rendezvous with Rama, the archetypal exploration of an alien artifact with no hand-holding from the author, no ultimate revelations spelling out exactly what it is. It’s alien, fundamentally unknowable. Why should humans be expected to understand something non-human?

Philip K. Dick has to make this list, right? Try to count up the number of films based on his works. The difficulty is that he was primarily a short story writer. So let’s go with Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the novel adapted as Blade Runner. Dick brings the paranoia. His works trade in deeply layered revelations and nothing is necessarily what it seems. Every unexpected twist in a sci-fi novel owes something to PKD.

Next up is Larry Niven’s Ringworld. Ringworld is the big idea explored, the cool scientific ‘what if’ taken off the shelf and examined from every angle. In this case it is truly a big idea, an annular word rotating about a central hub of a sun, with enough habitable space larger than millions of our little planet. Drop a bunch of different species and cultures there and enjoy. It’s adventure and travelogue (in some ways reminiscent of Jack Vance’s Big Planet) but the big idea is always central to the story. Ringworld also provides an introduction to the consistent future history concept. That is, an author’s books will be linked by a shared history stretching hundreds or thousand of years and spanning the galaxy. This gets you into Jerry Pournelle, A. Bertram Chandler, H. Beam Piper and others, one branch of this leading eventually to the role playing game Traveller.

Ursula K. Le Guin was the doyenne of sociological science fiction. The truth is I could probably pick any number of her novels to illustrate this subgenre. But we’ll go with The Dispossessed as it has the bonus of being the novel to introduce the ansible, a communications device that gets around lightspeed limitations. Other writers picked up the term and used it for narrative convenience. Dispossessed explores novel social systems, a theme that holds great currency in science fiction. The truth is, and I hesitate to say it, I’ve never been a great fan of Le Guin’s writing though I’ve been reading her stuff since the age of, oh, twelve. But this isn’t a survey of my favorites and Le Guin’s importance is undeniable.

Frank Herbert’s Dune is also an exploration of odd social structures. It also dives headfirst into ecological science, biosystems, theology, genetics, and philosophy. Dune is a major work, one to be taken both seriously and enjoyed.

Finally we come to William Gibson. Neuromancer may not have been the first cyberpunk novel but it is the most influential. Every book since that takes place at least in part within ‘cyberspace’ owes a debt to Neuromancer. The banal reality of the internet seems to have let some of the steam out of cyberpunk, but it remains an important branch of science fiction.

And there you have the list. That wasn’t easy. So many names could have made the cut. Jerry Pournelle, A.E. Van Vogt, Greg Bear, John Varley, Ben Bova. The list goes on. But that’s the problem; a short curriculum can’t go on or it wouldn’t be short.

What about more contemporary writers, you may ask. Well, I’m not the best source. My tastes run to older fiction. But if you are asking, I’d recommend picking anything and everything written by Neal Stephenson. The man’s good and seems interested in everything, including most of the subgenres mentioned above.

So, how did I do? Do you agree with any of the above? Disagree? What would be on your list?

Aftermath

I had a party at my house last night, a triple celebration: my fiftieth birthday, the tenth anniversary of my marriage to MBW, and MBW’s U.S. citizenship. The house echoed at times with the play of what seemed a hundred children, but couldn’t have been more than a half dozen. At the end of the night we discovered that a glutinous jar of pink slime, some sort of kid’s plaything, had been ground into the HA’s carpet. While a few remaining adults got down to cleaning that up (it turns out ice cubes are useful in that regard — helpful tip for you) I went back downstairs to pack up leftovers and load the dishwasher. The aftermath of the party.

Naturally, that got me thinking about war. Specifically the aftermath, the cleanup. And more specifically, how fantasy novels tend to deal with (or not deal with) the aftermath of the epic battles that fill their pages.

Tolkien certainly considered the aftermath. The orc bodies dealt with after the Battle of Helm’s Deep, the Huorns dealing with the remaining live ones. The various burial mounds. Treebeard cleaning up after the destruction of the Ring of Orthanc. The Scouring of the Shire. For Tolkien the aftermath is at least as important as the battle itself. How do the characters handle the devastation? How does it affect them?

Peter Jackson eschewed that narrative path. A bit shows up, at least in the extended cuts, but it amounts to little. The Scouring of the Shire didn’t make it into the film version of The Lord of the Rings. Why? I can imagine any number of reasons. Screen time spent on the clean up slows down the story. There is little action in such scenes. The films were already long enough. Of course, one could argue that had he not included extraneous material created for the movies he’d have had the time. But let’s not get into that again. The point is, the same source material, two different storytelling choices.

Narrative economy is an important consideration. A scene should accomplish more than one thing. If the aftermath contributes to character development, world building, and advances the story, then there is certainly a strong argument for including it. If it is merely that the author feels the need to explain what happened after, or feels uncomfortable that no time is spent putting out the fires, burying the dead, and rebuilding, then maybe not. Not if the reader is the primary consideration.

Cleaning up after a party isn’t a great deal of fun. Why would anyone want to read about it? It strikes me as superfluous in most fast paced, pulpy fiction. With an epic like LOTR, however, detailing the passing of an Age and the beginning of another, written by an author who lived through war and its aftermath, including the cleanup is not only understandable, it’s necessary.

Manly Wade Wellman. The Bard of Appendix N?

My series on Appendix N of the Dungeon Masters Guide nears its conclusion. Two more entries remain after this. This one presents a bit of a challenge for me. I come to praise Manly Wade Wellman, but I’m finding it difficult. Not Margaret St. Clair difficult. Far from it. But challenging.

Wellman is primarily known for his Silver John, or John the Balladeer stories. I’ve read several of those. Silver John is an highly educated hillbilly, an Appalachian folktale character roaming the countryside and involving himself with supernatural doings. He might have influenced the Bard player character class, though I have my doubts. I liked the stories somewhat, though they didn’t leave a strong impression. I much preferred his character John Thunstone though I’ve only read one of the novels. Thunstone seems to follow in the tradition of the Occult Detective character. He’s urbane, witty, and devious when needed. I’d be happy to read more of his doings and can unreservedly recommend at the very least “The School of Darkness.”

But I’m not writing today about Silver John or John Thunstone. Instead I’m writing about Hok the Mighty. I should enjoy “Battle in the Dawn: The Complete Hok the Mighty.”  I mean, look at that cover. There’s some Swords and Sorcery for you.

The problem is that the stories following that cover aren’t S&S. Hok the Mighty is a Cro-Magnon caveman. The stories are stone age adventure. Sorcery doesn’t enter into it (though of course Hok interprets certain phenomena as supernatural in origin.) Wellman is clearly interested in the subject matter. The stories are replete with firsts: the first kiss, the first bow, etc. All of these experienced or invented by the intrepid Hok. And the stories are densely footnoted, as Wellman explains the scientific evidence, research, or speculation behind particular details of the story. (It isn’t his fault that later research has since discredited some of these.)

The problem is that, following the first rather straightforward caveman tale, Wellman follows it with Hok encountering Atlantis. While this makes for a reasonably good story, it completely undermines Wellman’s project of presenting firsts. Having injected a sort of “deep time” concept, Hok’s discoveries are robbed of their novelty since the Atlanteans have necessarily discovered some or all of these long since.

Now, this touch of fantasy does lead the Hok stories into more — from my viewpoint — enjoyable territory. Wellman begins to toy with the idea of Hok as the prototype Hercules. Various of Hercules twelve labors appear. I personally think this would have been a more productive road to travel, with footnotes regarding the later mythological “retellings” of Hok’s exploits. These sort of Ur-myths could have branched out to other characters and, perhaps, Wellman could have indulged himself with a touch of the numinous, the unexplained, the outright supernatural. I’d have enjoyed that, I think.

Instead we get rather rote adventure stories, limited by paleolithic technologies, limited settings, limited scope. I understand that pulp-era adventure stories often rely upon coincidence and luck rather heavily and it is ungracious of me to complain about Wellman doing the same. But some of the stories of the era work better than others. In fact, I did quite enjoy the last complete story in “Battle in the Dawn.” Perhaps tellingly, it didn’t include Hok at all. It is, rather, an old fashioned science fiction tale. It hits all the notes you’d expect, but does it — in my opinion — much better than any of the Hok stories.

So, I’m reluctant to state that I can’t really recommend Hok the Mighty. Perhaps some of you might enjoy his tales. Your mileage, as they say, may vary. Gygax may well have liked him. If John the Balladeer did not inform the Bard class, perhaps Hok the Mighty suggested the Caveman entry in the Monster Manual. I couldn’t say; it’s the rankest speculation.

If my opinion carries any weight, go pick up a John Thunstone story. Leave Hok the Mighty in his cave.

San Antonio, Part Two

I’ve returned from vacation in San Antonio. I’d like to say rested and refreshed, but I’m not here to lie to you, dear reader. I came down with a cold during my trip and I’m far from either rested or refreshed. Friday, the first day back in the office was…unpleasant. Brutal would be an overstatement. But I was in poor condition to wade through the piles of work that had built up during my absence.

Still, I enjoyed my week away. San Antonio is more lush, more verdant than I’d anticipated. I was unaware it was so highly frequented, a major tourist destination.

About a half an hour north of town is the cave complex called Natural Bridge Caverns. MBW, the HA, and I took the casually paced spelunking tour. Worth the trip if you ask me, and who else is there here for you to ask?

Anyway, while I continue to suffer my head cold, I’ll leave some more pictures here for you.

San Antonio

The Alamo, as if you needed me to tell you that.

The web log is travelling. The HA is anxious to get to Six Flags. Who has time to write? So instead of my usual maunderings, here are some photos of San Antonio, Texas.

Lion Tamers

Butterfly day at the zoo, much to the delight of the HA.

Everything is bigger in Texas. Get a load of those pigeons.

The River Walk.

The Sniper Tree

Tower of the Americas.

Birthday taster at Blue Star Brewing.

Your safety is our number one priority.

St. Pat’s Brew Day

Today — Saint Patrick’s Day, 2019 — was brew day. And what a nice day for it. First warm, sunny day of the year as far as I can recall.

The brew is simple and, I imagine, sessionable. A quick and easy recipe. I didn’t have much time to consider something more elaborate or go on-line to order ingredients. MBW informed me that we are having a party, less than a month from now and I was to make beer. So, not a minute to lose — to the brewing supply store.

We are, it seems, going to celebrate multiple events after the fact. First, presumably, will be the citizenship of MBW. Her test is scheduled for a bit over a week prior to the party. Second, our tenth anniversary. Third, I believe, is my fiftieth birthday, mere days away from the date of this writing.

So, beer. Three and third pounds of amber malt extract. A pound of dry amber malt extract. A pound of brown sugar. An ounce of Centennial for bittering at the fifteen minute mark and an ounce of Mosaic right before flame out. Should be an uncomplicated, easy drinking brew.

Fingers crossed.

Editing

Editing hurts. If sculpting is removing all the bits of marble that aren’t the statue, then editing is cutting away all the words that aren’t the story. Except the sculptor didn’t create that block of marble first; someone else delivered it to his studio. When I’m editing I’m modifying something I’ve already gone to the trouble of creating.

Sometimes those modifications are easy. “What the hell was I thinking? That makes no sense and contradicts what something that comes later.” Slash, gone. Or revised to fit. Other times the process is more difficult. It might be a particularly good scene. Or it provides greater insight into a character. Or I happen to find it clever and amusing. But is it necessary?

That’s where it gets difficult. What is necessary? If you pare a story back far enough you’re left with no more than a bare recitation of events. Without character and motivation a story becomes no more than a police report. On the other hand, too much detail, too much delving into characters thoughts, too much banter detracts from the story. If the response from the reader is “get on with it already” instead of amusement then the balance is off.

So things have to go. A description I’m particularly proud of, a clever aside, a bit of background for a minor character, whatever — is it necessary? Is the reader likely to skim it, looking for the next section that moves the story forward? It’s hard to remove this stuff, though. The rationalizations for keeping it are always ready at hand.

I have it easier than many writers, I suppose. I tend to write lean to begin with. But perhaps that makes trimming the fat more difficult; with less fat to cut I’m in more danger of slicing away meat as well.

Well, enough. This is beginning to sound like whining and self-pity. I’ll sharpen my knife and get back to work in the morning.

Milestone Reflections

This March is replete with major life milestones. Maybe I ought to offer each a few moments of reflection before the fact rather than let the weight of the milestones drop on me unprepared.

The tenth anniversary of my marriage impends. Ten years married to MBW. A decade. Imagine that. All those who thought no one could endure my nonsense for more than a few months can suffer the ignominy of error. I can understand the surprise, though. I mean, I know me pretty well and I have trouble putting up with myself. And those skeptics were merely relying on past history. A perfectly justifiable metric.

So, MBW, thank you for ten incredible, eventful years. May the next ten be even more fulfilling.

A week before the anniversary I’ll pass one of the conventionally significant markers. My fiftieth birthday. Half a century of existence. Midway to one hundred years.

It doesn’t seem that long. I don’t feel any different than at thirty or forty. But given average life expectancies I suppose I should assume on the downhill slope. Coasting to the grave. Lovely.

This milestone provides a traditional opportunity for retrospection and self-evaluation. Have I used these fifty years to the best advantage? Have I squandered youth and time? Did I focus too much energy on having a good time? Have I achieved my goals? Those are some ponderous questions and I don’t care for them.

I imagine I’ve met the expectations for an American male born in 1969. Career, check. Wife, check. Child, check. Mortgage on a house in the suburbs, check. If there is a scoreboard somewhere, I’m keeping up with the default pace setter.

Perhaps in some respects I’ve exceeded the baseline. I’ve served in uniform. I’ve gotten my post-graduate degree. I’ve traveled.

And I’ve written. Now, I did not meet my childhood dream of an adulthood spent travelling about the country with a dog in a pickup truck, earning my living as a writer. That, I think is for the best; that was an absurd dream. How miserable and lonely I’d have been. And uncomfortable.

It’s good, I think, that I’ve yet to meet all of my goals. I’m only turning fifty, after all. There remains all the time in the world to continue striving, to continue writing, travelling, enjoying.

So, here’s to the next fifty years.

Life Does Not Care About Your Convenience

Shortly before noon yesterday I finally completed the first draft of Warlord. Needless to say, this pleased me. I looked forward to celebrating. But life does not give a damn about my desires. Instead of celebrating, I was laid low by whatever malady my daughter has been suffering since Thursday.

So, if you’ll forgive me, I’m going to stop writing this and crawl back into bed.