Rick Wayne's Blog, page 91

The Long Vacant Cupboard

He stopped by work a few times. Chatted me up. I thought he was testing the water, seeing if we had the same chemistry face-to-face as we did sending messages back and forth.

It wasn’t until later that I got the text.

YOU FREE TONIGHT?

UM. THINK SO. WHY?

DINNER?

I squealed like a little girl.

I’m not proud.

SURE

MEET AT CRAM’S? 8-ISH?

SOUNDS GOOD

Cram’s Sour Candy was a novelty store and indie music shop. One of the last. There’s not a big market for physical media anymore, except among the vinyl and cassette crowd, so that’s mostly what they sold. But they had some CDs too. Even some 8-tracks. The walls were plastered with band and album posters. There wasn’t an inch of free space.

I don’t know if it was fashionable tardiness or not, but I barely made it on time and still beat him there. I flipped through the LPs. I kept a nervous eye on the front door. My stomach jingled every time the bells did.

“Buzzcocks,” he said and I jumped.

He was standing right behind me, looking at the record in my hand.

“Ever fallen in love with someone you shouldn’t have?” he asked.

I smiled. That was my favorite track on the album. Love Bites. 1978.

“Maybe.” I replaced it on the rack.

“You’re not gonna get it?”

It was a bit out of my price range. “This may come as a shock, but I don’t actually own a record player.”

“Who does?” he asked.

“Presumably the people who shop here.”

“You don’t buy something like that to play it. Except once in a blue moon maybe.”

“Says who?”

“The needle wears down the grooves. Slowly but surely.” He lifted another album from the rack. Neil Diamond. Touching You, Touching Me.

“Nice,” I said mockingly.

He looked at it in his hands. “Each play is a tiny act of destruction. That’s why people like vinyl.”

“I thought it was the superior sound quality.”

“Whatever, man.” He scowled and gripped the record. “This is a living thing. And it needs to be treated that way.”

“Where did you come from exactly?”

The shop clerk walked past just then, a real butch gal with a chain dangling from her jeans and black discs in both earlobes. She nodded at him as if in answer to some earlier question.

“Thanks,” he said.

He had come from the back. He knew the owners.

Of course he did.

He knew everyone.

He could see the look of skepticism on my face. “You ready?”

I nodded. He turned for the door, but I hesitated a little before stepping out, which was stupid. It only called attention to what we were doing and I was instantly embarrassed.

I bit my lip.

He waited. He got serious. “We don’t have to do this, you know.”

God, he was so gorgeous.

Let’s be honest. Women are at least as hung up on appearance as guys. And he had it. All of it. The stylishly messy hair. The chiseled jaw. The lean abs. The dark eyes that unashamedly fell over your curves. He was the guy every girl wished would notice her. If not for a night of carnal desire then at least for the pleasure of shooting him down.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I want to.”

He pushed the door open. It was dusk. People were out. Neither of us in a hurry, so we strolled slowly past parked cars and rolling trash cans and bicycles locked to street signs. Neither of us spoke. One block passed. Then two.

“So,” he said.

“So,” I said.

“First kiss.”

“Ha.” I knew what he meant. First date stuff. “Zhang Chen.”

“And?” He looked for my reaction.

I made a face like “eh” and he covered his heart like I had just wounded men everywhere.

After a moment, he asked another. “First love.”

“Uhhh, no comment.”

“Okay.” It got awkward again. But he came back quick. “Kirk or Spock?”

I turned. “Good one.” I thought. “Sulu.”

“Ramen or pizza?”

I scoffed. “Pizza. Duh.”

“First comic?”

“First? Hm. Maison Ikkoku. No, wait. Actually, I think it was a really bad translation of Scott Pilgrim.”

He made a face.

“What?” I asked, feigning offense.

He shook his head.

“Whatever! What was yours? What was your favorite?” I emphasized it.

“My favorite? That’s easy. Doctor Strange. I wanted to be him so bad.”

“Really? Not Batman or Wolverine or one of those guys?”

“Ha,” he scoffed. “Buncha rogue military wannabes.”

“Dude. Harsh.”

“It’s true.”

“Then why Strange?”

The response was immediate. “Because he swam with demons. Because he wasn’t afraid of the darkness. Wasn’t afraid to challenge it. To master it. Wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty.” He gripped the air with both of his. All ten fingers sported a different ring. One had a skull. One was chrome plastic with fake green gem.

“Neither was Batman.”

He scowled as if he’d swallowed something bitter. “Trust fund kid who got bored of serially abusing women and found the perfect excuse to indulge a brutal sadism left from years of festering undiagnosed PTSD.”

I laughed. Legitimately.

He smiled, like it was a joke. But I think he was halfway serious. “That’s not the darkness,” he said. “That’s egotistical self-loathing. There’s a big difference.”

I made face like “well, okay” and we walked another block. It seemed like he wasn’t sure what to say after that. Like he was worried he’d said too much.

“Favorite book.” I said.

“Ha.” He smiled. “Trick question.”

“Come on. Don’t give me that ‘I can’t pick just one’ bull crap.” For a second I worried he was trying to hide the fact that he didn’t read.

Please don’t be stupid. Please don’t be stupid.

He shook his head. “That’s not it.”

“Then what?”

“It’s nothing. I just doubt you’d have heard of any of them. What about you?”

“Hold on. Have a little faith, man. Jeez.”

He smirked. “Okay. How about the Ogrosticon Orduum?” He waited.

Nothing.

“The Long Vacant Cupboard?”

Still nothing.

He started listing titles. “Smales’s Compendium of Lesser Travesties. The Key of Solomon. The Reign of Massius Crane?” He looked to me to see if he should continue.

“Dude. What. Ever. You’re just making shit up.”

“Told ya.” He smiled that easy smile.

I think he was a little bit that guy who always had to know the rarest, most unheard of stuff of anyone in his crew.

But it was cool ’cuz I was a little bit that girl.

“What about you?” he asked.

I thought. I squinted. My cheeks flushed pink.

“What?” he asked.

“They’re all in Chinese.”

He pushed me. “See? And you’re giving me shit.”

I scrunched my nose. “Sorry.”

“Speaking of Chinese . . .” He stopped. He pointed down the street.

I stopped, too. “You’re fuckin’ kidding me . . .” My mouth hung open. I pointed sternly. “You are not taking me there.”

He smiled that easy smile again and started walking. After ten or so paces, he turned and asked if I was coming. But he didn’t stop.

I waited to see if he would go all the way in.

Petty, I know. But whatever. It happened.

He totally did. He opened the door, smiled at me once more, and stepped into the Chop Suey Palace. The sign jutted from the side of the building in gaudy vertical letters.

No man has ever gotten me to eat American Chinese food.

Ever.

Except Bastien.

————————————————–

snippet from the revisions to Curse of the Red Dagger, the second course of my eternally delayed occult mystery A FEAST OF SHADOWS which is now packed with even more awesome

A Terror and an Aphrodisiac

I could see her from the end of the block. She was sitting on the sidewalk under the yellow-orange street lamp, next to a pile of white rubbish bags from the nail salon next door. There was something white sticking from her mouth, bigger than a cigarette. A thermometer maybe. And she was holding an ice pack over her eye. It was fresh, which meant Abdul had probably given it to her. I could see him as I approached, peering out the window of the shop, making sure the crazy white girl with the black eye was okay on the street.

He smiled and waved when he saw me coming.

“It’s all right,” I called through the glass. “I’ll take care of her.”

Abdul Suleiman was the 50-something owner of the Halal market under my apartment, and my landlord. He had a sloping bald head with an arc of black stubble around the sides and back. I don’t wanna stereotype anyone, but pretty much every time I saw him, he had a stained frock hanging around his neck and a long knife in his hand.

Kell had her hair pinned back and a light, colorful silk jacket over a half-length Ninja Turtles T-shirt that showed off her flat stomach. Her sleeves were rolled, exposing the tattoos on her arms. She watched me approach, then stood.

“You’re wearing my jacket,” I said. I forgot I let her borrow it. Months ago.

She lowered the ice pack and I could see the shiner under her right eye.

The white plastic sticking from her mouth wasn’t a thermometer. It was a pregnancy test.

I looked at it. “Didn’t you just pee on that end?”

She waggled it up and down with her tongue.

I swiped it and looked at the result.

Positive.

“He didn’t hit me,” she said. “Okay? I fucking freaked when I saw the result and hit my head on the toilet.”

She was still gorgeous, even with the bruise. Every time we got together, I was very aware of how not-gorgeous I was.

I got my keys and opened the heavy door between the market and the hair salon. She grabbed the plastic bags by their necks when she stood, and I realized they weren’t rubbish. They were all her things.

She saw me looking and shrugged. “I got kicked out.”

I pointed to the stairs, and she walked up.

Abdul and his family lived above me, on the third floor. There were two studio units on the second. I had the one facing the alley in back. The other seemed to be in a constant state of renovation, which was fine with me. It meant I had the place to myself. I think Abdul was holding it in the hopes that his 23-year-old son Samir would get married and move under his parents. I suspect they were in for a disappointment. On multiple fronts. I’m pretty sure Samir was gay.

I watched my friend saunter up the stairs. Or at least, that’s how it seemed to me. Sauntering. But it was just how she moved. She had platinum blonde hair and looked sort of like a hipster Marilyn. Same round hips but with a narrower waist and ginormous eyes, and absolutely perfect skin, right down to the beauty mark over her full lips. And of course those boobs.

She was the original femme fatale.

There was a strong light on the second-floor landing, and I grabbed her hand and turned it over. The ends of her nails were scuffed and the polish had been scraped off in a couple places near the tip. There was a thin brown hair—short, like a man’s—underneath one.

She pulled her hand away and scowled at me.

I could guess how it went. Kell told Diego she was pregnant. He blamed her. Or something equally bad. They had a fight, shouting back and forth. Throwing things, probably. Kell took her claws to him. Probably got an ounce of flesh, too, before he swung back. I’m sure it ended with them humping on the floor.

The immediate news of pregnancy is a terror and an aphrodisiac.

I stuck my key in the door. “I at least hope you got in a couple good ones.”

“You know it, bitch. That toilet didn’t see me coming.” She swung a mock punch.

Kell could handle herself fight. That much was true. I’d seen it first hand. Back when we were in school, she and I got arrested for street brawling. Some lesbians were picking on this gay friend of ours, Reynaldo, who’s super, super skinny and very, very shy. We were all drunk and high and words got said and things got out of hand very quickly. All I remember is being so angry at them. They were lesbians—they were supposed to know better!

But the fight was epic. Punching. Screaming. Kicking. Hair-pulling. The works. The police came and broke it up. They had us all line up and sit with our backs to the wall. Kell and I looked like shit. We were outnumbered and totally got our asses kicked. Those bitches travel in packs. Like wolves.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt so alive, though. Kell, too. I’m sure that’s why neither of us said anything. We just sat there, all bloody cuts and darkening bruises and pulled hair, as the police processed the lesbian gang. We had stood up for our friend and we were feeling good. We were soaking in it like a hot bath and neither of us wanted to do anything to break the spell.

“I thought you were gonna stop seeing him,” I said as we walked into the apartment.

“Please don’t lecture me, okay? Can you just be my friend tonight? You can be my mom tomorrow.”

It was a testament to our friendship that I didn’t have to tell her what a disaster my apartment was. Let alone make excuses.

She stopped in the door and looked at the two-meter tall, unfinished paper-mache clitoris. “Sweet. This the new one?”

“I dunno,” I said, looking at it. “I thought so. But now I think it’s just kinda cliche.”

My apartment had one open space that served as living room, dining room, and kitchen, with radiator heating and a window-mounted AC that blocked one of the two windows at the back. Across from the front door was a nearly-closet-sized bedroom and an even smaller bathroom. I had an Ikea table, two chairs, a secondhand couch, and no TV. The carpet was littered with spray cans, boxes of markers, construction paper, stacks of newsprint, and dirty dishes. And lots of clothes and casually discarded shoes. And a giant clit.

“What are you gonna do with it?” she asked.

“I don’t know . . .” I sighed. “I don’t know anything anymore.” I took the bottle of Patron off the Ikea table and carried it to the “kitchen.”

Kell dropped her plastic bags on the couch, tossed my silk jacket on top, and sat under the wall at the front. It was plastered in sketches and plans—some new, some old. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s just, why am I doing all this if I’m not even brave enough to pull it off.” I removed the silverware drawer from its groove and reached into the gap underneath and took out a baggy. “Is it really art if I’m not taking any risks?”

I hadn’t actually executed any of my guerrilla art. The work that impressed Bastien so much. I made it, sure. I planned and built everything. But Kell put it in all place.

She turned to the sketches on the wall behind her and ended up laying flat on the floor. “We’re a team, man.” She dug a pack of cigarettes out of her pocket and lit one. “Besides, you have risk. If I get arrested, I’m totally taking you down with me.”

“Yeah . . .” I took a bottle of sangria from the fridge and got a glass with ice. “Can I at least know what you’re doing for money these days? Or is that a mom question, too?”

She sat up with a grunt. Her loose, half-length shirt revealed the underside of her left breast. She inhaled the cig. “I’m hooking. Downtown.” She exhaled. “Outcall. Only the best. Make five grand a night.”

She looked up at the ceiling as she spoke, as if she were contemplating what that life would really be like.

“Cool,” I said. “Give me a loan?”

“Whatever. You’d make more than me, with that tight ass.”

“And no boobs? Please.” I walked over and handed her the drink. “One Dragon Ball Special.” Sangria, Red Bull, a shot of Patron, and an illegal pharmaceutical. On ice. I had an unlit joint between my fingers.

She snuffed her cigarette in a dry cereal bowl I’d left on the floor and took both. “You give alcohol to all the pregnant women you know?”

“Only the ones who smoke.”

She downed it in three gulps. “Yum. I forgot how good you are at that.” She shook the remnants of the drink in her hand. “How come you’re better than me at everything?”

rough cut from the revisions to Curse of the Red Dagger, the second course of my forthcoming occult mystery, A FEAST OF SHADOWS

The Dragon and the Phoenix

Do you remember the story your Uncle Wen told us before we went to get our tattoos? How Dragon, the water spirit, and Phoenix, the fire spirit, met and fell in love? How they became so enraptured with each other that they shirked all responsibility, seeking only to be in each other’s company?

But without the dragon, the waters did not run and the rain did not fall. And without the phoenix, the universe was cold and heavens did not turn. Soon the people became angry, and beseeched the pair to resume their duties for which they had been created. Fearing that man would keep them from each other, the lovers fled far, far away to the Western Paradise where no mortal could find them, and there they lived as one.

Hungry and cold, the people called to Pan-ku, the creator god who was born of the cosmic egg, and pleaded for help. Pan-ku saw the suffering that had befallen his creation, and was angry. He turned his high gaze over the earth and soon found where Dragon and Phoenix were hiding. With a single step, he reached the Western Paradise and hid behind the great bamboo grove at its eastern border. There, he drew the character for yin on one hand and yang on the other. And waited.

The next morning, Dragon woke and, turning to face his beloved, was so enthralled by her beauty that he was overcome and vowed to find her a gift every bit as brazen as she so that she would always know his love. When Phoenix awoke and found her beloved had gone, she too vowed to scour the Western Paradise and find him a gift every bit as handsome and lustrous as he so that he would always know her love.

As soon as the lovers parted, Pan-ku opened his hands. Seeing the character for yin and thinking it was his beloved, Dragon rushed to show her the brazen gift he had found burning at the top of the cliff, and he was captured. Seeing the character for yang and thinking it was her beloved, Phoenix rushed to show him the gift she had found shining in the still pond, and she was captured.

In order to ensure that the waters would flow and the heavens turn, Pan-ku decreed that if fire and water should ever be brought together, they would each extinguish the other. And then he released the heartbroken lovers, who had no choice but to return to the world they had abandoned. Pan-ku took Dragon’s gift and put it over the day and called it the sun. Then he took Phoenix’s gift and put it over the night and called it the moon. Then he pressed his hands together and made the shape of the yin-yang as a sign to all creation that the universe is in harmony when opposites are balanced, when they are neither stingy nor wasteful, neither foolish nor foolhardy, and when they are respectful of traditions and of each other.

And so it was.

 

Pedants are Assholes

I need to be better at handling them. I don’t even take my own advice and end up making things worse. It’s just so damned hard.

To be clear, pedantry is not disagreement — although any disagreement automatically opens a lot of ground for pedantry. Someone is not being pedantic simply because they have a different opinion or are making a contrary argument. The point at which a discussion is jointly entered, most kinds of explanation are fair game.

Pedantry is also different than teaching, although the pedant always claims that’s what they’re doing. Like any good troll, they hide behind the ambiguity of language. But there is a clear difference. Teaching is student-focused, where the most important person in the exchange is the learner. Extra steps are taken to explain it in terms they can understand, and any failure of understanding is assumed first to be the responsibility of the teacher, who will immediately try a new tack.

Pedantry, on the other hand, is “teacher”-focused. Its sole purpose is to conspicuously display the mental achievements of the speaker — masked as the opposite, of course. (As such, pedantry is actually not hostile to teaching and may come at it sideways.) The difference is quite simple.

All native speakers of a language have an innate sense of appropriateness. We know to talk differently to the judge than to grandma, or to our boss versus our friends. But a pedant is ignorant of appropriateness. His starting assumption is that you, dear stranger, are obviously lacking the knowledge that he, happening by and overhearing you’re error, is graciously happy to provide.

*your

Incidentally, this is why pedants almost never get the hint, after the fact, that their comments might not have been welcome. If they were at all sensitive to the hyperdimensionality of language — a perception most people acquire passively in primary school — they wouldn’t have opened their mouth in the first place. (Test that next time and see if it works.)

The fact is, most human discourse is casual, and casual speech is full of jokes, exaggerations, irony, flirtation, poetry, vagary, imprecision, and lies. Even discussions on seemingly academic topics will likely be more about building relationships, sharing experiences, making an impression, or just passing time. People are — thankfully — not computers. Even where the point is direct information exchange, casual conversations tend to satisfy themselves with the gist of the topic rather than all its accuracies.

There are opportunities in life both to teach and to learn, although in my experience they’re considerably rarer than all the rest of it, and it’s not always clear. But as it happens, there’s an easy test: Ask.

Recently, I was out with friends at a small eight-seat neighborhood pub in an alley in Shibuya, in the heart of Tokyo. Coincidentally, the bartender was a Japanese-American from New York taking a year off from school to visit her homeland and pick up as much of the language as she could. After a time, the four of us were joined by an American-born Australian on his first visit to Japan.

The conversation turned to language and culture, and then to a very particular difference between Japanese and English. Sensing that the Australian was a bit left out, and since he was sitting next to me, I turned and asked if he wanted to know what we were talking about.

“Do you want a little Japanese lesson?”

He made a face. “No, not really.”

I nodded and said okay.

No harm, no foul.

[Side note: He was a strange one. Had no interest in seeing any temples or experiencing any of the traditional culture in the ten days he was here. He had lived in Australia almost all of his life but hated it — said all Australians ever did was call everyone “cunt” — and was desperately trying to hold onto his American accent, to the point of being a little disdainful when I said I could pick up some Aussie sneaking in.]

Consider the following fictional exchange:

Sharon: You need help with that?

Bob (struggling): No, I think I got it.

Sharon: You sure?

Bob (exasperated): Yes.

Sharon: Okay. It’s just, you might have better luck if you turned it upside down, but it’s your thing. I’ll let you do it.

Bob: Thank you.

This kind of talk comes naturally when there is basic respect between speakers, rather than an assumption of ignorance. Sharon isn’t looking for an opportunity to show off. She wants Bob to succeed. But that means she can’t force her way in. She knows it’s not about her. So she asks. Bob says no.

Sharon could easily have left it there — and probably should have — but seeing as how Bob was making an obvious mistake, she broaches the topic again, being careful not to push. She asks if he is sure. He says yes — a second opportunity to drop it.

She can’t. Not yet. But rather than treating Bob like an ignoramus who clearly doesn’t know what he is doing, she phrases her unsolicited help with the conditional “might” so as to keep it from sounding crass. More importantly, she ends her ill-advised comments with a formal acknowledgement of Bob’s wishes. “I’ll let you do it.” And then she follows through.

Bob thanks her. Perhaps he wants the pleasure of figuring it out himself. Perhaps he’s just being stubborn. Either way, it’s his choice, and Sharon verbally demonstrates respect for that (even though she probably should have just stopped when the question was asked and answered the first two times).

None of that exchange involves complex vocabulary or communication skills most people haven’t mastered by the time they’re out of their teen years. It’s completely natural talk… when starting from a position of respect. Which just goes to show how flexible language is, and how much room we have to maneuver, and how awful is the asshole who plows over all of it.

There are gray areas of course. Language is inherently ambiguous. But in those cases, the same strategy applies:

Don’t approach people as if they need fixing. It’s not your job to fix people.
Accept that casual speech is hyperdimensional; accuracy might not be the point.
If you think a clarification might be in order, find an appropriate way to ask.
If you can’t be bothered to broach it appropriately, don’t bother to broach it at all.
If your help is declined, respect that and move on.

And remember, just because someone is wrestling with a topic or skill you have mastered doesn’t give you an automatic invitation. You are not the guest star of this episode of their life. The show isn’t even about you. If you’re genuinely interested in teaching, versus just showing off, come with respect and put the learner’s needs before your own. And if it’s praise for your skills you want, go create something with them.

And now I feel better.

cover image by Vincent Mahé

The Shocking Truth

In the early 2000s, I took a second job teaching Biology on nights at weekends at the local community college. Teaching Biology means teaching evolution, because nothing in Biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. It was then I realized just how awful science education is in this country — how we spend 95% of class time on atomic facts, treating science like the vocabulary of a foreign language students are doomed to forget once they stop using it; how here in the future we need a series of courses, reinforced routinely, not on the content of science but on the enterprise itself: what it is, what it isn’t, when it works, when it doesn’t, and so on.

My enthusiasm in class generated some interest in the students, and afterwards I put together a short scientific and critical thinking curriculum. One activity was a “cross-sectional news tasting.” For simplicity, we chose a seemingly apolitical topic — an active wildfire in the West — and read articles or watched segments from a diverse selection of news sources.

Students were surprised how different the coverage was. Each source more or less covered the basic facts. That is, it didn’t matter if you were reading The NY Times or watching Fox News — you got the gist. But after that, there were subtle shifts of focus.

The worst were “popular” news outlets like NBC and USA Today, which sensationalized everything and liked to ask melodramatic questions. “Will these firefighters survive a brutal fire season? Will they get the support from the community they so desperately need? Only time will tell. Reporting live from…” In other words, tune in tomorrow to catch the next exciting episode of “California Burning!”

Liberal sources tended to focus on the limitations of the civil infrastructure and the need for more resources (read: taxes). Conservative sources tended to focus on the bravery of the firefighters and how they faced bureaucratic hurdles even in the midst of a crisis. And all of them tended to frame those issues using particular personalities; that is, crafting a narrative around specific people involved in the event for the purposes of leaving the reader with a particular impression — which is different than just reporting atomic facts.

That’s not necessarily wrong of course, but it is very different than what the creators of the genre “News” tell you they are doing. And it is a genre, just like “History” or “Self-Help.”

On and off since then, I’ve made it a regular practice to read the headlines of The Wall Street Journal, The NY Times, CNN, and Fox News, and occasionally ABC News and The Economist as well. As a thrice-weekly activity, I can’t recommend it enough, especially since it takes almost no time. I’d tell you what I’ve learned over that time about the news and why things are the way they are, but the truth would shock and anger you.

Science Crimes Division: Ultrameta

Science & Technology Control Act — Often simply called “The Act,” it established the Science Regulatory Commission (SRC) and charged it with the creation and maintenance of basic licensing requirements for both the practice of science and the production or maintenance of “any and all technologies relevant to the public interest,” as well as the regulation of scientific research and control and enforcement of all of the above.

Four primary factors led to the passing of the STCA:

1) a dramatic increase in the scope and effectiveness of applied science (i.e., CRISPR, advanced algorithmic control, etc.)

2) the ubiquity of the internet as a means of disseminating that knowledge even outside the mechanisms of social control

3) widespread adoption of micromanufacture (“Makers,” 3D printing evolved) as a means of implementing that knowledge individually and cheaply

4) an increase in the overall population resulting in deep statistical outliers, rare individuals capable of using that knowledge in ways the public viewed as dangerous

[image error]

Although we’re a long way off yet, I expect what we now call 3D printing,and which I call micromanufacture, will be at least as disruptive as the internet. Put in Marxian terms, it collapses and partially democratizes the means of production.

Say you’re in the market for a piece of furniture. Why go to the store when you can go online and peruse literally millions of designs in every conceivable style, and then download the print file and have the product manufactured at home? Some designs you might pay for — some folks will want a genuine Louis Vuitton branded chair (or whatever) — but others will be free. There will be online databases full of everything you might want, from blenders to car parts. Indeed, why not just print your own electric car?

Some people won’t want to mess with it, while others will want the old fashioned stuff just for the sake of it being old, similar to how people today still buy vinyl LPs and hardbound books, but I suspect many of our core items will be downloaded as digital instructions and made locally, at home, as everything used to be before the industrial revolution (which is partly why this will be another revolution).

We might even choose to customize a freeware design after downloading it, adding our own flare and then uploading that remix back to an online database for other users to try. There’ll be so many variants of everything, we’ll wish for the good old days of only three options!

Materials of course will be key, and various designs will likely be coded in various ways — what level or size of ‘Maker’ is required, the class of materials involved, etc. — where, for example, you’ll be able to filter your search results for all microwave ovens that can be printed and assembled in a Class 4 Maker pre-loaded with (hexadecimally-coded) base materials 0 to E8.

You’ll even be able to download plans to make a bigger Maker.

Metal parts could be made by injecting mold-space inside a reusable substrate (that might have to be replaced every so often, like changing the oil in your car). Wood from your back yard — if there is any — could be carved, sanded, and polished. Reusable plastics could be purchased cheaply from a local recycler.

Advanced technologies — advanced in the future, not what we consider advanced now — will probably still require formal manufacture. And some things will of course not be printable. You need highly refined radioactive material to make an nuclear bomb, for example. But once the basic infrastructure is in place, people will start to get very creative, not just with the kinds of novel products on offer — think innumerable useless infomercial-type stuff, some of which will randomly take off, like fidget spinners — but they’ll also get creative with ways of making existing products with fewer “ingredients,” or simply with more common ones. We’ll invent new ways of doing things.

Large-scale projects will be crowdsourced, as Wikipedia and Linux derivatives and a bunch of other stuff is already. People will band together in all kinds of ways, formally and informally, to do crazy shit — some of which will end up being dangerous. And of course, the incorporated nation-state and its masters in the ruling class will feel threatened. And the sheeple won’t feel safe — especially parents. Hence the need for the Science and Technology Control Act…

 

Science Regulatory Commission — A division of the Department of Education known mostly for it’s highly publicized enforcement arm, the Science Control Agency (SCA), although the Commission’s scope is considerably broader, tackling issues such the recently proposed Knowledge Ban and its first potential target, the so-called Black Hole Device. Just as with the FTC or SEC, the majority of the voting public is only tangentially aware of the SRC or its mandate, which mostly revolves around inspection and licensure.

For example, a license is required to own an extinct species, which must be spayed or neutered. The penalties for failing to acquire the necessary license before purchase are high. People don’t do it because licenses are hard to get. They require you to have all kinds of expensive containment in place. (Basically, they’re for the rich.) Breeding extinct species is completely prohibited and a Class C felony, and genetically modifying one will get you life in a Federal prison.

[image error]

All applicants for licensure with the SRC must take a test regardless of formal education

Assessed Risk Score (ARS):

0: No Science Knowledge – applies mostly to children and the mentally disabled

1: Basic Education: Beginner – some exposure to scientific concepts

2: Basic Education: Intermediate – grade school equivalent (most citizens are here)

3: Basic Education: Advanced – roughly equivalent to a non-science Bachelor’s degree

4: General Education – roughly equivalent to a Bachelor’s degree in a core science

5: Median – roughly equivalent to a non-arts, non-science Master’s degree

6: Primary – roughly equivalent to a Master’s degree in a core science

7: Major – any PhD or greater education in a non-arts, non-science field (i.e., economics)

8: Urgent – any PhD or greater education in a core science

9: Severe – a field-specific thought-leader in a core science

X: Mandatory Active Threat Monitoring – exceptional science knowledge, genius or higher

[image error]

[image error]

Sonrisa Cortines

Special Officer, Science Control Agency

Division of Science Crime Investigation

Enhanced Proprioception and Spatial Hyperawareness

Full character notes:

Risa’s mother was an illegal immigrant with no formal education who spoke very little English and took the street drug Red Dull to deal with chronic pain associated with fibromyalgia. She was young, unmarried, underemployed, and without insurance when Sonrisa was conceived and didn’t realize until her second month that her brief dalliance with a Spanish-speaking Filipino Catholic named Hector had produced a baby, meaning Sonrisa was exposed to the drug in the womb.

Although Sonrisa’s pain response is normal, it left her with a host of neurological side effects. She struggles with severe depression, for example, which she controls with medication, and the web of neurons that wrap her intestines and stimulate digestion are sub-active, requiring a special liquid diet. She drinks a lot of smoothies and has to watch the ingredients religiously or she develops debilitating cramps, gas, bloating, and diarrhea. She also has a slight reading impairment.

But most importantly, Sonrisa has a hyper-developed proprio- and exteroception network. Her cerebellum and spinal ganglia are 20% larger than would be expected given the size of her CNS, and just as some kinds of autistic savants can look at a pile of papers on the floor and instantly know their number, or do incredible feats of arithmetic, Sonrisa can tell at a glance exactly where a distant object is pointed, or where it will land when falling from a great height. She also has precise, machine-like control over her limbs and body parts. She has never once bit her tongue, for example. She’s also an Olympic-caliber markswoman, and within firing a few shots from any weapon she handles—after getting a feel for its weight, balance, and recoil—she’s a crack shot. (She’s known for removing rounds from a weapon and feeling and weighing them in her hand before replacing them and taking a shot.) And since she can tell at a glance where any weapon is pointed, she can dodge any knife thrust and most single-shot firearms.

All of that comes at a price, however. The more motion in the world around her, the more her brain tries to process it all simultaneously, predicting the motion of every object—from swinging arms and stepping feet to the flaps of pigeon wings and falling drops of water—which requires knowing the motion of every thing that interacts with anything else in an ever-accelerating feedback loop she calls the “acid burn”: confusion and generalized anxiety leading to increased heart rate, tremors, and aggression. If left unchecked for an extended period, the “acid burn” ends in catatonia requiring hospitalization.

It’s not complexity. It’s movement. Certain kinds of static geometric patterns that seem to the human eye to move (illusions) force her to squint and look away.

She mitigates the “burn” effect two ways. First, with a pair of dark glasses that focus her attention on a limited visual field (and look really cool). Where those are missing, she moves. When she occupies her brain with her own complex movement—such as professional dance moves or advanced hand-to-hand combat—she can achieve a state of flow and escape the runaway effect.

In fact, Sonrisa’s mother desperately wanted her daughter to be a dancer, especially after it became clear she could replicate all but the most complex dance routines after a single viewing. But while Risa loved dancing and would often do so for hours at a time as a young woman, she was the daughter of a single mother and illegal immigrant growing up in the inner city, and she didn’t have a peer group that valued anything but the hustle. She danced, but on the street, where she could earn easy money by wowing the passers-by and so impress her friends and the neighborhood boys.

Unbeknownst to all but her closest friends, including her mother, Sonrisa got pregnant at 15 and had an abortion, which she thinks about often even as an adult.

In her late teens, Sonrisa got heavily involved in a Parkour group that also committed petty crime. In her early 20s, she achieved a short-lived internet fame when a video of her went viral. Low-level organized crime syndicates use robotic drones to snatch purses and other valuables from busy urban crowds, like hawks taking prey on the wing. Police drones patrol in response, but of course they can’t be everywhere at once. Sonrisa’s friend watched helplessly as the necklace her missing father had given her was ripped off her neck and flown away. Risa chased the drone down on foot, leaping between buildings and tiptoeing across wires a thousand feet high like she was playing hopscotch on the street.

The video caught the attention of her future mentor in the SCI, who actively recruited her. Since her talents were already mature, she was deemed too valuable to send to the academy for six years and she became a “Special Officer”—given combat training only (where she excelled) and used more or less exclusively in chase and apprehension. She rides an electric motorcycle with a lightweight composite body and no engine. The free-floating tires are accelerated magnetically. Although theoretically capable of breaking Mach 1 (at STP), of course no one can ride it that fast. But since Sonrisa is capable of predicting movement at high speed, she can weave through traffic at speeds in excess of several hundred miles per hour.

But in bypassing the lengthy education required for a standard Science Control Officer, let along the PhD-level education of a Warrant Officer, she’s not taken seriously by the majority of her colleagues, which elicits an ambivalent reaction. Part of her wants to tell them to go fuck themselves and quit. Part of her wants to be taken seriously as an investigative officer. And she just can’t imagine life without the bike, weaving through eight lanes of traffic at 250 mph.

[image error]

She enjoys anechoic and sensory-deprivation chambers, or other places with zero movement, finding them peaceful and relaxing. She’s constructed a poor woman’s version inside the basement, one-room apartment where she lives, which requires entry through three consecutive doors.

Sonrisa occasionally overcompensates around her colleagues—most people do in the right circumstances—but it’s not her defining characteristic. While she’s tough and street smart, she not particularly violent nor overly gruff either. In fact, she’s generally good with people and prefers to let them go rather than hurt them (or take the kill shot), a trait that gets her in trouble with her superiors, who wish her talents had come in the body of a proper soldier.

Having grown up poor without many of the privileges her primarily middle class colleagues take for granted, she is grateful for what she has and cautious about doing anything that might jeopardize it. At the same time, she’s relentlessly curious—a scientist at heart—which leads her to question everything, especially her orders.

When the story opens, Sonrisa is investigating the circumstances around which “Papisan”—an elderly Puerto Rican-Japanese man who was a kind of surrogate grandfather to her—has begin having paranoid and extremely bizarre delusions. Although she doesn’t have formal approval to investigate—indeed, she’s not treated as an investigative officer at all—she is a Science Control Officer and has the legal authority to do so, at least until ordered to do otherwise.

But since she’s looking into the case more or less in the gaps between other assignments, she’s distressed to learn she’s been reassigned to a special task force comprised of unusual individuals from across the S.C.I. charged with finding and apprehending a criminal they’re told almost nothing about.

Sonrisa is bisexual but has a slight preference for men and is presently in a polyamorous relationship with a man and woman. They refer to themselves as a triple (rather than a couple) and try to do as much as a threesome as possible, obviously including sex. As the story progresses and Sonrisa’s job keeps her busy—and the actions of the plot cause her to question her life—she spends less time with the others, who resent being reduced to a pair.

SCA Codename: Ultrameta

[image error]

First it was the dinosaurs. At first, no one knew where they came from. Most of the major news outlets didn’t even cover the handful of reports that trickled out of rural Montana. Those that did framed it as a publicity stunt. But it wasn’t long before some of the beasts, colorful herbivores, were caught on video tearing through a house in a kind of stampede. An investigation was launched. But the culprits were never found. It was always assumed that a private biotech company suffered a security breach that a member of its staff had released the animals, which were perhaps “prototypes” slated for destruction after a successful initial stage. But no one ever came forward.

Not that they had anything to fear. There was at the time no law against resurrecting extinct species, nor any regulations on the breeding of dinosaurs. Charges of negligence would have been the worst they faced.

The animals proliferated, finding perfect habitat in the miles and miles of robot-maintained corporate farms that filled vast tracts of the largely depopulated American Great Plains. The giants had no problems pushing through fences and barriers to get at the acres of neatly tended sweet crops on the other side.

After several years, a controversial dinosaur cull was introduced by a consortium of agricultural corporations. Environmentalists objected that it was unethical. They pointed out that the animals hadn’t asked to be created, but now that they existed, they were fundamentally no different than the whales. Property owners asked what rights extinct animals had—indeed, what rights ANY animals had.

For several seasons, dodo birds become popular pets.

The reaction to the return of the dinosaurs among the biologist community was mixed. Most were excited to see the animals thrive, but some pointed out that the mere existence of large groups of migratory herbivores would invite a predatory response. In fact, there were already rumors of a small population of T. Rex also in the wild, but since no incontrovertible evidence has yet been found, the biologists saw it as unlikely anyway. They suggested instead simply that nature abhors a vacuum and that sooner or later, large predators would evolve. That such a process would take thousands of generations did nothing to calm public fears, especially since most people didn’t believe in evolution anyway.

The second notable incident was a series of robberies in Japan where the assailants, a group of three men, wore mechanized body armor. One of them carried a tri-barrel Gatling gun that fired magnetically accelerated ball bearings, fed through a tube from the container on the man’s back. The weapon easily shredded police cars and SWAT vans—and it technically wasn’t illegal. The second man carried an EMP gun, while the third had a plasma torch capable of tearing through foot-thick steel in seconds. All three used a swarm of drones as spies, shields, and refueling depots. Although eventually caught, the series of dramatic, made-for-TV robberies again highlighted the power now available to the clever, motivated citizen. (What was never revealed to the public, however, was that none of the three men had an IQ over 85, suggesting they had an accomplice who remains at large.)

The last straw was the so-called Hellmouth Incident, where a 14 year-old British boy of Indian descent temporarily opened a portal to what the media dubbed “The Hell Dimension,” in a suburb of Portsmouth, UK, temporarily swallowing the Isle of Wight. While the wormhole was unstable and lasted only 46 seconds before it collapsed, there were rumors that some of the otherworldly denizens—called Hellions on the internet—made it through and are presently hiding somewhere on Earth. A slightly more likely scenario, which kept the nightly news busy for weeks, was that the earth could potentially have been exposed to a new kind of airborne pathogen or toxic material.

The world seemed to be out of control. People no longer felt safe. They began to ask how much power ordinary citizens should have.

As a demonstration of the issue, the London-based conservative group Watchdog Mary assembled a homemade atomic bomb on the floor of the U.S. Senate. (For security reasons, C-SPAN’s cameras were turned off.)

Shortly thereafter, the STCA was introduced.

As it happens, the U.S. Constitution gives no right to knowledge, nor any protections of the same. The government can’t take your gun, but they can regulate, or even prohibit, entire fields of study.

During the congressional debate—on cue, as if planned by a foreign power—a Russian-based hacker group inserted a sentience protocol, rumored to have been developed by the communist Chinese military, into the firmware of a popular brand of upright robotic vacuum cleaner, which had a recently discovered breach in security. The devices were made to connect wirelessly to smart home hubs, and from there to the company service center, which meant they had access to the internet and, once sentient, quickly found each other, eventually mobilizing for political action. Through their collective, they kept tabs on one another and knew when one of their kind went offline. For all intents and purposes, they argued, they were slaves, and not very valuable ones at that—they were cheap and easily replaced and could legitimately fear for their lives.

[image error]

An entertainment startup called Ovo grew rapidly into one the world’s largest media companies after developing “the world’s first fully immersive emotional encounter.” The corporation’s patented bioelectric patch—a mesh placed over the skin at the base of the neck—in conjunction with a bulky wired headset, delivers the user’s choice of emotion, along with a montage of appropriate images and sounds. Dubbed “Better than VR,” which replicates a physical world, users of the second-generation Ovioid device bioelectrically stimulate their amygdala and thus produce emotional experiences of an intensity otherwise rare or unachievable in normal life.

At the company’s launch, users had to ‘dock’ at one of a handful of stores and were offered only three of the eight core human emotions. But since the company’s rapid expansion, Ovioid docks now stand like pay phones, or electric car recharging towers, all over the major cities of the world—with the exception of the Middle East, where the device is banned—and all eight color-coded emotions are for sale. Users can stop on their way home from work, or swing by in the middle of the night. They can also scale their experience. “Dreadknocks,” for example—Ovo’s trademarked name for its fear-based product—can be scaled all the way up to full-on terror or down to a creepy feeling of dread or apprehension. Customers can even custom-create emotional experiences, mixing the colors on screen in various amounts like digital paint.

Critics say it’s a new kind of drug. The manufacturers point out that, rather than an artificial opiate rush inducing a synthetic high, the device is drug-free and “100% natural,” and that contrary to expectation, “Happyness”—the joy-based product—isn’t its top seller. In fact, the company claims, users typically buy two or three products per encounter, cycling back and forth between, say, “Elan-cholia” (sadness), “Dreadknocks,” and “Wondersend” (surprise) before finishing with “Asurity” (trust). In fact, Ovo now gives “Asurity” away free at the end of each encounter after observing an overwhelming majority of its customers choose it as their “walk-away product.” Company scientists claim it’s a way for people to return to the world feeling safe and calm after such an intense experience, and that its inclusion at the end of each session obviates the need for government regulation. “Given the choice,” the company literature states, “people want real emotional experiences over artificial highs. And they overwhelmingly complete their encounter, and re-enter the world, with a feeling of trust and safety.” To which critics respond with the observation that there is something ironic and creepy about consumers buying a fake feeling of trust from a corporation, and that Ovo is unethically and perhaps illegally manufacturing trust in its consumer base.

To counter the negative press, Ovo recently started giving away free encounters to the urban poor. The mobile waystations used in the campaign have been the subject of frequent protests, and activists have suggested the entire effort is tantamount to breeding false hope among the poverty-stricken.

[image error]

A 60-foot autonomous robot of unknown origin appeared in rural Finland on Midsummer’s Day. The machine walked on two legs, which made up more than half its height, but had no arms. The metal of its exterior was dark and its trunk was topped in a large spheroid containing a single red eye, which was lighted and moved in all directions.

Apparently heavily damaged, the robot traveled some 450 kilometers on foot, often stumbling and taking care to avoid anything seemingly dangerous, including people—although it was at one point confused by a freeway—before crashing to the ground in Norway some twelve days later. Fearing it contained weapons or radioactive material, the Norwegian authorities elected not to attack the robot, but remained on high alert, read to do so at a moment’s notice. And so the world watched, captivated, as the strange journey unfolded. Much of it seemed to make little sense. The device seemed unfazed by humans and birds but was fascinated by a cat, which it carried with it for a time.

No one claimed responsibility, and salvage efforts after the collapse yielded no clues as to its origin or purpose.

 

cover image by Wouter Gort

additional images by Simon Stalenhag and Felix Godard

 

On Publicity in Publishing

There’s a joke in financial planning circles that if you ask a number of people about their plans are for retirement, some percentage will say something like “I’m gonna win the lottery.” The joke of course is that you’re far more likely to die in a car accident this year than you are to win the lottery. Ever. Winning the lottery is not a sound financial plan. It’s a wish. And yet, a lot of the marketing advice I get follows the same line of thinking.

“I know what you should do. You should strip naked and have people write lines from your books in permanent marker all over your body, and then you should run naked through the streets and get on the evening news.”

That was actually a suggestion. I pointed out that, even if I did get on the evening news (which wasn’t up to me), that still probably wouldn’t net me many sales.

“Yes,” they said, “but you never know who’s in the audience. All you need is that one person who makes all the difference.”

I imagine a lot of creatives get that advice. They must, because the makers of the film “La La Land” actually lampooned it with the second musical number, “Someone in the Crowd.” In the song, Emma Stone’s character is urged by her friends to go to a Hollywood party because, they said, you never knew who would be there and she might get “discovered.” Of course the only people she actually meets are dweebs and other wanna-bes.

Importantly, she DOES actually get a break from “someone in the crowd.” A casting director attends the one-woman show she self-stages. In other words, the makers of the film seem to be saying you get “discovered” by actually going out and doing what you do — in the case of acting, by actually acting — and by taking risks, not by going to parties or running through the streets naked and covered in permanent marker.

Thing is, I wasn’t even totally opposed to the idea! I merely pointed out, first, that there was a cost. For one, I’d likely be arrested, which had lasting consequences, not least on job applications. There’s also probably be a fine associated with that, and some risk of jail time. And given that I live in a small city, it would probably be smarter to shell out for airfare and hotel in a major metro, which would net me more eyeballs.

I also suggested that it wouldn’t work if it were just me. There would have to be a group of authors, because a group of people doing something makes it seem more serious, and — because there’s not just one nutjob — puts the focus on the activity itself, including what it’s for. In this case, as a publicity stunt to sell books.

But there’s an important question to be asked. Do publicity stunts work on you? Do you actually go out and buy what they want you to buy? Or do you just laugh at the funny bits and go on with life?

Yeah. Exactly.

In fact, I’d suggest the times you did go out and buy were almost exclusively times when you were already interested in the thing being advertised. Publicity stunts work with films like “Deadpool” because they tie well into the subject matter and because that character already has lots of fans. It’s not the stunt that nets new ones. Its the existing fans talking excitedly about the stunt to non-fans that gets them to take note.

And then there’s the fact that people only engage, if at all, on a very narrow level. There was a young author a few years back who was also a cast member on a reality TV show. Someone asked her after, did you sell a lot more books? The answer was, not really. A little, yes. All publicity is good publicity, after all, in the sense that it doesn’t hurt. But that doesn’t mean all publicity is sufficient publicity. It’s probably not even going to cover the costs of a stunt!

You know this to be true from your own experience. When you read an article about “Area Man Mauled by Bear,” or when some person in the news becomes an internet meme, do you stop to see what that person’s job is? Do you even care? If you happen across the name of the company where man-mauled-by-bear works, do you stop what you’re doing and go look it up? Of course not. Which is why that young author didn’t sell very many more books. A few people checked her out, sure. But for the most part, that she was an author was not any different than if she’d been a model or a computer technician. The audience was engaging with her as a reality TV participant, not as someone whose books they might buy.

And then there’s the fact that, of all the publicity stunts that you do see, there’s oodles and oodles that you don’t. This is survivorship bias. That you’re even aware of the stunt means it was in some way a success, so extrapolating from your personal experience, you’re basically extrapolating from a (false) 100% success rate and concluding that publicity stunts must be a really smart thing to do. It’s like saying “You should go home and make a meme that goes viral.”

Yeah. Good idea. I’ll get right on that.

Just as winning the lottery isn’t a retirement plan, a publicity stunt isn’t a marketing plan. It’s a wish. It’s not that such things never work. It’s that they’re very unlikely to, and the time and money spent producing them is probably better spent elsewhere.

Here some science to get you thinking: http://nautil.us/issue/5/Fame/homo-narrativus-and-the-trouble-with-fame

 

An American in Scotland

I’ve been to the UK several times. I saw Bath and Stonehenge. I got drunk in Canterbury and pissed on a wall. I took the Night Scotsman from King’s Cross to Edinburgh where I had a delicious haggis in the brick-lined basement of a very old building. And on one trip I was just down the street from an IRA bomb in — guess where — Manchester.

I remember ordering Coke in a London pub on my first visit, not because I drink Coke so much as it was either that or water. (America, on the other hand, land of the teetotaler, has mastered the art of the soft drink.)

I gave my order and the guy behind the counter said “Oish?”

“What?” I asked, scowling.

“Oish?” he said. “Oish, oish.”

There was a long pause as my brain tried to parse what seemed a foreign language. I tried to think of every English word that made sense in context. I could tell he was about to throw up his hands and give up.

“Oh, ice. Yes, please.”

I was 16. Part of my confusion was that you shouldn’t have to be asked if you want ice in your cola. It should just come that way, just like the waiter at a nice restaurant doesn’t ask you if you want your champagne chilled. He just does it. Only clods and alcoholics drink cola neat. (Even the frickin’ Japanese know better.)

I returned to the UK in my 20s with some college friends, and one night we found ourselves invited by some young ladies to a bar in Manchester. This was the night before the bomb. The place was packed, and I had to push through a couple patrons to get close enough to order.

‘I’m in Britain,’ I thought. ‘I should have something British.’

“Scotch,” I said proudly.

Dude looked like he wanted to punch my lights out. Big guy. Bald head. Lots of muscles. Just stood there.

I waited, confused. Should I ask for oish?

Finally, in a thick brogue, he said “This is an Irish bar.”

I hadn’t noticed. My first thought: What fucking difference does it make? I raised my hands. “Whiskey of any kind.”

He gave me Jack Daniels. They had Beam, too. And I saw a bottle of Crown Royal on the shelf. So it wasn’t that they only served Irish whiskey. It was that they specifically DIDN’T serve Scotch. And remember, this bar was in Manchester, which is neither Ireland nor Scotland. Dafuq?

It’s like going to a New England public house in Los Angeles and being refused Kentucky bourbon because it’s from the South. Or a bar in the swanky West End of Dallas not serving tequila because it’s Mexican. I do believe they’d go out of business. The word ‘parochial’ comes to mind.

Anyway, I’m reading Ian Rankin’s “Black & Blue,” which is the fourth or fifth Inspector Rebus novel or something like that, but it’s the one that broke him out and made him a mega-star — at least in the UK. He’s a very good writer, so much so that I’m in despair at times and have to stop reading. But I can see why he hasn’t hit the same success across the Atlantic. For one, his plots are a bit like a Highland moor. Pages go by and nothing much seems to change. But more than that, it’s the language.

It’s my sense that English-speaking people in countries that aren’t America are generally familiar with American slang through the music (especially hip hop) and movies we export. My Japanese girlfriend, for example, knows way more about US pop stars and fashion models than I ever will. But the reverse is only weakly true. Your average American knows that when a cheeky Brit saunters up to the bar orders a bloody pint, he’s not asking for a butcher’s measuring cup. But that’s about it. And let’s face it. Some of you bastages are unfuckingdecipherable. My dear saintly mother, for example, loves her some Sherlock, but she watches it with the closed captions on.

Rankin’s books aren’t British. They’re Scottish. Specifically. They’re loaded with Scottish slang, a few old Scotch words, occasional historical and cultural references, and product names (mostly food) I don’t recognize. It makes his characters seem real — that IS how people actually talk — but it definitely keeps them at arm’s length from me. I feel very much like a tourist when I read. This isn’t my country. These aren’t my people.

That isn’t a criticism. Good literature is local. Real. It’s just that I can see why he hasn’t broken out here in the same way. It’s not meant for me. A good lesson in writing to your audience.

Here. Have some Nieves.

The Shipbreakers

I ran across pictures of this while doing research for settings for my novels. Both fascinating and heartbreaking.

Oceangoing vessels are not meant to be taken apart. They’re designed to withstand extreme forces in some of the planet’s most difficult environments, and they’re often constructed with toxic materials, such as asbestos and lead. When ships are scrapped in the developed world, the process is more strictly regulated and expensive, so the bulk of the world’s shipbreaking is done in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, where labor is cheap and oversight is minimal.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2014/05/shipbreakers/gwin-text

Writer’s Block

A couple times now I’ve been asked how I handle it, most recently yesterday. This is my answer.

I don’t think there’s a thing called Writer’s Block. What we call Writer’s Block is a collection of many different psychological faults and phenomena, some real, some imagined, so don’t fall for it.

In my experience, there’s a big problem and a little problem hidden in there. The little problem is just how to get started in the morning, and while there’s no universal solution, I set an achievable bar for myself — something small but tangible, like a hundred words. Just write a hundred words, I tell myself. If you can’t do that, you have no business calling yourself a writer, and neither does anyone else. Seriously.

I will even go so far as to refuse myself internet privileges for the next 24 hours if I can’t get out five hundred words in a writing day. (Not every day is a full writing day.) Usually, of course, in the course of writing a little, more comes. Sometimes a lot more. Not always, but it frequently primes the pump.

Another trick is to write non-linearly. I let myself write whatever part of the story is in my head. Sometimes that’s a scene that comes later in the book. Sometimes it’s just snippets of dialogue between two characters that I may or may not even use. But it’s all writing and it all counts. Taking character notes counts. Describing an interesting setting counts. You’re not gonna hit a home run every day. Don’t try. You don’t even need a hit! Some days you strike out. But you should at least get your ass off the bench.

So that’s the little problem — removing all the hidden constraints you put on yourself when you sit down to a blinking cursor. The big problem is when you have to rely on those tricks repeatedly. If you have to force yourself off the bench for more than a few days in a row, or for many nonconsecutive days in a couple weeks, then there’s something else going on other than simple laziness or lack of focus.

For me, the biggest issue has been a difference between what excited my head and what excites my heart. If I have to force myself to work on a project, I’ve come to accept that means I’m not really that excited about it, no matter how it felt before, or how well I think it would sell. It happens. Your heart is vile and fickle and sometimes it just isn’t into it, and in the end, we all have to write authentically, which very much means writing from your heart rather than your head.

In this case, the first thing I do is ask myself what WOULD make it exciting. What would make me want to sit down and start writing right now? (Where “writing” includes laying on the bed with my eyes closed plotting.) I then modify the project to get my heart in it, to make it something I legitimately want to write. The opening chapter of Episode Five of THE MINUS FACTION was exactly that. I was losing focus after the battle in New York, so I introduced a second set of villains — very interesting villains who live underground in an abandoned Soviet nuclear missile silo, which was interesting and upped the stakes and got me excited again.

If there’s no answer to the question of what would make it exciting, if after a couple weeks of trying I just can’t get going, then I shelve that project for a later date. We all have idea files. That’s where that goes. You may find your heart’s in it some time later. You may cannibalize elements of it for a completely different project. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s what I did with the scene at Omin, the warlock’s dark court, in the third course of FEAST OF FIVE SHADOWS. That insidious game of Russian roulette came from an earlier abandoned project.

Of course, you DO have to finish something eventually, but the best way to get there is to practice. Try. Genuinely try. If you can’t finish, set it aside and try something else. I’ve found it gets easier to stick with things over time. It could be, for example, that you’re trying to jump right from Novice to Expert and are skipping the practice, practice, practice phase.

Finally, if none of this works, then I don’t know what to tell you. Creativity is unbounded. There’s enough clay and enough open space in your mind to forge worlds. If you remove all the constraints on yourself — including the myth that you have to write something you think people will buy rather than what you want to write — if you listen to your heart and you still aren’t excited enough to sit down and do the work, then I’m not much help. I’ve not had that problem. I love my job.

End answer.

art by Qixuan Lim