Sable Aradia's Blog, page 57

Book Review: Ubik by Philip K. Dick

Ubik by Philip K. Dick

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Read for the SF Masterworks Reading Challenge and the Science Fiction Masterworks Book Club here on Goodreads.

So far, my acquaintance with PKD has been strictly through this determination of mine to read through the entirety of the SF Masterworks imprint, which has spawned the book club and three annual challenges. So far, for all the hype, I haven’t been as impressed as I hoped to be. Dick is a writer who happens to have become the darling of the literary world, who claim that he’s “so original.” What that tells me is that literary critics are too snobbish to read science fiction and have absolutely no understanding whatsoever of the field.

Because, part of my education in the course of reading this list was to read the only two novels that Alfred Bester gave to the world, The Stars My Destination and The Demolished Man; and it seems to me that Dick made a career mostly of rewriting and reworking ideas from those two novels.

This is not to say that I don’t think PKD is a brilliant writer, because he really is! His style is clever and engaging. His understanding of people is excellent! He does exactly what a good writer is supposed to do. One of my other favourite writers, Stephen King, is no different. He has made a career out of rewriting and reworking ideas from classic sci-fi novels. And I think he’s brilliant too.

No, it’s Dick’s critics and the snobbish fools who think that sci-fi is all about alien invasions that piss me off. Why are all the prestigious awards given out by these people, who continually award people for “originality” when they’re just putting out things that have been done before?

I mean, if they were being rewarded for damn good writing, I would have no problems with that. It’s damn good writing. It’s a pleasure, as someone who writes, to read such a master of the craft. I’m coming to like PKD for the same reasons I like Stephen King and Margaret Atwood; they can really turn a phrase and their acute understanding of people makes them tell a hell of a story.

But they’re not that original! All three of these writers have made a career of reworking stuff that’s been done before. Like this book, which is a reworking of ideas out of The Demolished Man, sprinkled liberally with a certain “70s future-cool” style that looked familiar after I read Stand on Zanzibar (which, incidentally, was written a year earlier than Ubik; I checked.) By that I mean that a lot of attention was paid to the dominion of the corporate ideal where absolutely nothing, not even opening the door, is free; drugs and sex of all kinds are available for liberal purchase almost anywhere, which sounds good but is especially jarring when blended with early 70s sexism; and a great deal of undue attention is paid to odd invented slang and the weird things people wore for fashion, which was clearly intended to be as outlandish as possible from 1969’s perspective. On that level, it was extremely clever satire! But yes, Stand on Zanzibar was doing that too.

This is not to say that I didn’t like the book, because I really did! I’m not even going to get into the plot because it’s too convoluted, and if I said anything that wasn’t in the blurb I’d just spoil it for you. You had no idea what was going on, right until the very end, and even then there are different ways to interpret it. It was a hell of a good read that kept me turning pages quickly, just to solve the mystery. I was deeply invested in the fate of the characters as well.

And speaking of Stephen King, I can tell that this was one of the sci-fi classics he’s read, because a lot of what was going on centered around a cleverly-rendered (and yes, in this case, original) sense of temporal decay that looks somewhat familiar to me from One Past Midnight: The Langoliers. Not identical, but there are enough similarities that I recognize its footprint.

I believe there is no such thing as an original idea, and every idea grows out of another one. Which is why I can say that I enjoyed Dick’s writing, even while I think many of his literary critics are either jerks or fools. And this is an example of PKD at his best. I see why it has earned its place in the SF Masterworks.  Other works of his have not done as well (see my review of Martian Time-Slip and my review of A Scanner Darkly for comparison.) So I do heartily recommend it!

All I ask is that people who claim to be literary critics give credit where credit is due, instead of denying credit that others deserve by giving it to other writers they like better.

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Humanitarian Hero Honoured in Google Doodle

A man known for exploring vast uncharted territories was the unlikely creator of a document that first allowed great numbers of stateless people to travel across international borders.

Today, in honor of his 156th birthday, the Google doodle is a celebration of Fridtjof Nansen—scientist, champion skier, Arctic explorer, oceanographer, and humanitarian.

Read the full article at Quartz.

Book Review: Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Read for the SF Masterworks Reading Challenge and Science Fiction Masterworks Book Club here on Goodreads, and also for the 12 Awards in 12 Months Challenge.

This novel won both the Hugo (1967) and Nebula (1966) Awards for Best Novel.

Did you read this novella in school? (There’s both a novella and a novel version). I remember it keenly as part of the curriculum, and it made a huge impression on me. In addition to being a fantastic science fiction tale that was part of the curriculum (something that made me jump for joy as a child,) its intensity left lasting marks. I learned so many things: how endings aren’t always happy, how people are sometimes cruel and there’s not much you can do about it, and how it’s important to treat everyone with dignity and respect. I took that lesson to heart and have never forgotten it. It has shaped much of my choice in actions and behaviour and, indeed, my personal ethics.

Which is why it shocked me to find out when I was researching this that this book was challenged for its sexual content by the Cranbrook school board in British Columbia. In Canada, schooling is the providence of the Provinces, and the BC Board of Education apparently removed Flowers for Algernon from its school library and curriculum! It was eventually restored to the library, but not the curriculum. I think this is a horrible thing. This seminal and important story is no longer taught to the children who go to the same schools that I went to. I think this is a mistake, and should anyone with influence on BC education read this review, I beg them to reconsider this.

Much of the rest of this review will involve spoilers, so don’t continue if you don’t want them.

I think that it’s clear from the blurb that this is not a happy ending. Charlie Gordon, a mentally disabled man, volunteers to be the subject of an experimental operation to “make him smart.” There is a loose scientific explanation of how this is done later in the book. It involves brain surgery and hormone treatment to encourage a damaged part of Charlie’s brain to redevelop normally, and even to develop a superior, genius-level intelligence. I imagine this surgery would only be applicable to certain types of intellectual disability. Algernon is a mouse who was a previous experimental subject, and their success with him is what encourages them to try human trials. Of course, it turns out that the results are only temporarily successful.

Why this book is so powerful and moving is because it is told entirely from Charlie’s perspective as “progress reports” (diary entries relevant to mental ability and the experiment). You start by seeing the world from the perspective of a man whose mind is in many ways child-like, who wants badly to please and who believes that getting smart will make people like him. He does not understand why people often get angry at him and isn’t sure what he’s doing wrong. And the fact is, often people are downright mocking and cruel, and it makes me angry to read about his treatment.

As he progresses, and is taught the skills he never before could grasp and retain, Charlie learns about grammar, spelling, punctuation, and also, about subtle emotional nuance. He begins to realize that people he thought were having fun with him are mocking him. He begins to understand that people have been cruel to him, not because he has done anything wrong, but because they like to feel superior to others. At one point, when he realizes that others are mistreating an intellectually disabled boy, whom he initially started laughing at himself, he cries to a restaurant full of people, “For God’s sake stop it! He can’t help what he is, but he’s a human being!” I wanted to yell with him.

I can’t help but identify. I suffer from a certain social awkwardness whose source has never been diagnosed. It could be mild autism (I have some of the symptoms of Asperger’s in particular) or it could be C-PTSD. I have often been mocked because something that seems perfectly obvious to everyone else is lost on me, and I don’t understand what I have done that’s wrong. It’s usually in the unintentional breaking of some unwritten social code.

This is one of many reasons I think children should read this novel. It makes you think about how we treat people who do not act the same as others; the mentally disabled, the physically disabled (especially those whose disability affects their verbal capabilities,) people with brain injuries and disorders, the neurodivergent. They need patience and sometimes, help, not condemnation, and they, too, have value as people on their own terms.

The initial results of the experiment are so successful that Charlie quickly surpasses his teachers and the scientists and psychologists conducting the experiment in his intelligence quotient. It rockets from his starting point of 68 to more than 180. Now he realizes other truths about life. These are things that often face intelligent people that do not face others, and they never get to discuss it, because claiming to be an intelligent person, even if it is a measurable thing, is strictly taboo in our culture. Why this is regarded any differently that someone who has a talent as an artist or an athlete or even as a charismatic person with presence baffles me. It’s just another way of knowing.

I also identified with this aspect strongly because I am one of those people who happens to score highly on IQ tests. One of the struggles that intelligent people have is that intelligence is alienating. People do not enjoy feeling that someone else might be smarter than they are. They treat them as arrogant and self-centered, even if they’re not — although becoming arrogant and self-centered can indeed be one of the pitfalls of intelligence, as Keyes so masterfully points out.

I learned as a child to speak deliberately with slang, because someone once told me that they honestly felt that people didn’t like me because I used big words that made them feel stupid. Similarly, Charlie’s newfound intellect is a threat to the people who conducted the experiment, especially the experiment’s head, who achieved his position in great part through nepotism, and therefore carries a great deal of self-doubt. I struggle to maintain ordinary jobs because I often come up with suggestions to try to improve efficiency, which middle management sorts tend to regard as a challenge to their authority. I should learn to just shut my mouth.

Now, before you tell me that this sounds arrogant, suppose that you were working with a bunch of teenagers. But one of the older teens is your boss. As a mature adult, you are aware of things that the teenagers are not, and sometimes that means knowing more efficient ways of doing things. But the older teen feels threatened by you when you suggest improvements, and so nothing you suggest is ever implemented, even as an experiment. You don’t want to be the boss, you just don’t want to waste time and energy when you know ways to improve the situation.

Charlie also faces this situation. He loses his job at a bakery because he makes a moral decision to stop one of the employees from skimming off the boss; though he doesn’t turn this long-time employee in, knowing that he wouldn’t have anywhere else to go. Said employee promptly works to turn the rest of the staff against Charlie, who has been acting strangely, and he is fired, not the thief.

Yeah, been there.

Conversely, however, just as older people can become stuck in their ways and refuse to see the merits in new ideas, intelligent people sometimes become enamoured of their own perceived “superiority,” and they don’t listen to insightful and practical ideas from people they have decided aren’t as “smart” as they are. Sometimes this sense of superiority extends itself into sociopathy or psychosis. For instance, schizophrenics are almost all geniuses. More simply put, there’s a fine line between genius and madness.

Or, intelligent people sometimes think they see through things that average people are “too stupid” to see past. For example, university graduates are more likely to be anti-vaccers than non-university graduates (shocking, right? But true!) Another example is that racism, colonialism, and sexism are firmly entrenched in intellectual circles, because many white male intellectuals educated in British or American-influenced schools have received the subconscious message that they are brighter than other races, cultures, or genders, and because they think they’re smarter than everyone else, you can’t tell them otherwise. Something that I, as a bright woman, find a constant source of rage.

Charlie doesn’t display any overt attitudes like that, but he does become convinced of his own superiority. He is frustrated when these educated university professors do not understand as many languages as he does, and therefore, miss a key piece of information that refutes their experimental results because it was written in Hindi. He is frustrated that these people, who seemed gods to him and who have so much control over his fate, are mere mortals; clever mortals, but mortals. He gets impatient with the subjects that the woman he falls in love with wants to discuss with him.

I’m not nearly as intelligent as Charlie at his genius level. But I do get bored of discussing job, sports, and kids at every party. I want to have debates (not arguments) about politics, culture, and literature. I want to discuss new scientific developments and their implications, not always be explaining them to people. As a result, I don’t make new friends easily. Neither does Charlie.

On the other hand, he simply cannot make the professor in charge of the experimental team, Dr. Nemur, see him as a genuine human being. He certainly did not regard Charlie as fully human when he was mentally disabled — he said as much — and now he regards him something like a particularly interesting lab rat. Which is poignantly compared to Algernon, the experimental mouse, who is kept in cages and must run complex mazes that challenge his newfound intelligence in order to be fed. This fact fills Charlie with rage as he identifies strongly with Algernon, who is sharing this otherwise unique journey.

This is not something I considered much as a child reader. Intelligent mice are a staple in children’s literature and I didn’t think much of it, other than I was happy and sad for the mouse at intervals. As an adult it’s worth pondering. At what point in this experiment did Algernon become a sentient, self-aware being? Because he certainly did; Charlie’s communications with him illustrate that. And at that point, did it not become absolutely immoral by anyone’s reckoning to experiment on him? Eventually, Charlie takes Algernon and goes AWOL from the experiment. I cheered for both of them.

Charlie’s intelligence is both a blessing and a curse because of the insights it gives him into people. The fact is that intelligent people usually have fewer friends than the average person (many studies back this up). Many of the reasons I think have already been suggested; impatience with ordinary conversation, a feeling of superiority that is all too common, others feeling that the intelligent person is lording things over them even when they’re not. But another factor is that intelligent people see the flaws in others more easily, and they also often become aware of secrets that others are trying to hide. Then they begin to recognize patterns of behaviour in others that they know will end badly, and so they become less likely to extend themselves. Intelligent people are often lonely and must content themselves with their own company.

But, it also allows them to extrapolate reasons for behaviour that are understandable. There are no studies I know of to back this up, but I think that while intelligent people have less close friendships, they also find it easier to empathize (at least, if they have not crossed over the sociopath threshold.) It is difficult to assign blame when you know that every choice of behaviour is the result of numerous extenuating circumstances, some that are beyond one’s control, and some that are not.

In particular, this dichotomy applies to Charlie’s analysis of his relationship with his family, which has been troubled for reasons he didn’t understand before the boost to his intellect. Charlie’s disability was a constant source of stress for his father, shame for his mother, and embarrassment for his sister. When we first meet him, we know he is isolated from his family but we don’t know why. As Charlie’s therapy begins to bring out memories he is now able to grasp and process, we learn that his mother, who wondered if Charlie’s disability was her fault, tried to force him to be normal as a young child, sometimes beating him for things he could not control or didn’t understand, and then she tried to get him put away and out of her life to protect the perfectly-normal daughter who was born after him. His father argued constantly with his mother about the way she chose to treat him, and worked like a dog at a job he loathed to pay for the expensive medical treatments, quackery or otherwise, his wife chose to try. Norma, his sister, saw him as a constant impediment that kept her from having the things she wanted.

And the truth is, Charlie’s disability did put such a strain on the family, and these feelings were not unjustified, as cruel to Charlie as they were. Even now, society often frowns on Mom when a child is not seen as “perfect,” and sometimes the pressure is too much. Siblings who are not disabled often sacrifice much to provide for the needs of their disabled sibling, and some resentment, especially as a child who does not yet understand, is normal. And especially in the United States, a child with a disability is a terrible financial burden that, in the 60s, was a father’s duty to struggle with.

We’ve come a long way in our care of the disabled, and we try to find supportive programs that aid parents and siblings in the home. But it’s by no means perfect yet. I know quite a few families who, in particular, are struggling with a teenager who is severely autistic and sometimes violent. There is no good support system. We need to do better.

Eventually, Charlie’s family succumbed to the pressure and sent him to a state-run care home. He chose to exist on the outside, however, and managed to get himself a job at a bakery through a friend of his dad’s, which he was capable of doing, and rent a simple room. This was Charlie at the beginning of the novel.

As Charlie begins to realize that the results of his improved intelligence are possibly not permanent, he tracks down his family. He finds that his mother and father have finally separated. He comes to see his father as a customer, but since he is not recognized, does not reveal his identity. His father has moved on and Charlie is no longer a part of his life.

The confrontation and discussion we might have hoped to have with Charlie’s sometimes-abusive mother is thwarted, ironically because she is now suffering from dementia, and no longer has the capacity to understand. She has a moment of lucidity in which Charlie tells her that he is no longer disabled, and he gives her an academic paper he has written, but that moment is brief. Furthermore, the result that he hoped for — that, in being smart, she would finally love him — does not materialize. She is concerned only of what people who no longer exist will think.

He does end up having a good, cleansing conversation with his sister, who is glad to see him, and does not remember resenting him in the way that he found so damaging. Kids do often accidentally hurt each other. However, this too is brief, because she asks him for help caring for their mother, and he knows that his condition will not last and he can’t fulfill the request.

In other words, though Charlie does not find the answers he hoped for, he does find closure.

Intense stuff. A powerful statement of the human condition.

Throughout the novel, emotional blocks prevent Charlie from pursuing a sexual/romantic relationship with the young teacher who originally encouraged him to sign up for the experiment. Here we confront the complex issue of sexuality in mentally disabled adults. Sometimes, because they do not understand complex emotional issues, sexuality is expressed inappropriately, possibly even as assault. This is a genuine concern, because we must carefully balance personal autonomy and the public good. Charlie has a block against sex that has been deliberately induced by his mother due to trauma. Working to overcome this, now that he is more self-aware, is a central issue, and I suppose that’s what upset the Cranbrook and Calgary school boards. I don’t have a good solution, but I think it’s something worth thinking about.

Not long after that, Algernon begins to deteriorate, and eventually, after clearly being horrified and frustrated by his deterioration, dies. Charlie digs him a grave and puts flowers on it, hence the title. It’s very emotional.

Then we witness Charlie’s own deterioration, and his horror at the experience. And now one confronts the existential horror of mortality and loss of identity. It is perhaps not unlike Alzheimer’s or dementia. The awareness that you are losing your mind, and knowing that you are powerless to stop it. Charlie uses his decline to find the fault in the original experiment, in the hopes it may be corrected, and to document his decline for future generations, thus, making his mark on the world.

Sad, poignant, yet powerful and ultimately heroic. Don’t read this novel if you can’t handle an emotional shock right now — but please, read it. And think about all of these things. And maybe learn how to be kinder to your fellow human beings, regardless of who you, or they, are. There, but for the grace of God, go I.

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Sci-Fi D&D FTW 2.0

Two of my favourite things: having my cake and eating it too!

Mephit James' Blog

After I posted my last thoughts about Sci-Fi adaptations, I got a few very helpful responses from people. In an effort to leave no moonrock unturned (see what I did there?) I’m back with a few more additions.

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Book Review: The Time Machine & The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells

The Time Machine & The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I read a combined edition of these two books for the SF Masterworks Reading Challenge and the Science Fiction Masterworks Book Club here on Goodreads.

The Time Machine

Read for the Need to Reread Challenge.

I have, of course, read most of H.G. Wells before. He was one of my early introductions to science fiction. After we did the radio play The Invisible Man in school (I was eight or nine) I asked my school librarian about that novel. We didn’t have The Invisible Man, but we did have The Time Machine, and he was only too happy to point me that way. And I, of course, devoured it.

From a retrospective, the Time Machine suffers from many of the problems that 19th century novels often do. The art form was new then, so no one really had an idea of how to do it, and thus, things that we would consider signs of poor writing now were a part of the landscape then. In particular, Wells uses long words and paragraphs when short ones would do, and he does not fully develop his one female character as anything more than a childlike figure that he must take care of. However, the book is action-packed and powerful, and it keeps you turning pages.

And obviously its images stay with you a long time. I remembered the Eloi and the Morlocks vividly (though I still have no idea where the Time Traveler learned their names). Strangely, I did not remember his brief sojourn to the end of the Earth at all. Perhaps that was just too big for me to grasp at such a young age. As an adult, it was both moving and terrifying. I see now that this book is, in part, an extended meditation on the futility of civilization and our efforts to immortalize ourselves. There was an extended scene in a museum that had gone to seed in the world of the Eloi that also drove home this message. Powerful stuff, and of course, a must read for every fan of science fiction, if not everyone in our culture, period.

The War of the Worlds

Read for the Need to Reread Challenge.

I’ve read this before, of course. It was one of my first introductions to the magical world of science fiction, and it helped to make me a lifelong convert. A lot of its images stayed in my mind, reinforced by the numerous adaptations in film and stage.

Rereading this as an adult was an experience I highly recommend for so many reasons!

First, it’s just damn good writing. I had forgotten (or maybe never appreciated, when I was about nine or so) what a masterful writer Wells was. I noticed vast improvements even between War of the Worlds (1898) and The Time Machine (1895). In those three years he managed to abandon a lot of the conventions of early novels that modern readers find bothersome and regard as bad writing. His sense of dramatic timing is outstanding. He gives us cutaways, leaving us in suspense about the fate of his protagonist while describing what his protagonist’s brother is experiencing in London. His pacing relaxes not in the least; it’s an excellent action piece, even by a modern standard! He writes the first real example that I know about of great disaster fiction. His imagining of the disaster of the Martian invasion is reminiscent of World War I, which, as you will recall, is still almost twenty years away.

Which is also interesting. His “Black Smoke” looks a lot like mustard gas in its effect, the difference being that the Black Smoke of the Martians was black, while mustard gas is a sickly puke yellow. I understand that mustard gas had indeed been used in a few small conflicts at this point, and he must have been one of the first to visualize its deadly and horrific effects when used on a civilian population.

And his turns of phrase and choice of words are truly outstanding. I was struck in particular by this example. He described how “the stars mustered” at twilight, which directly preceded the first Martian attack. It was an elegantly chosen phrase for its subtle foreshadowing. That’s good writing.

Finally, I know this line of critique has been advanced, and challenged, before, but it seems clear to me that Wells was doing what a good science fiction writer is supposed to do. He was looking at an aspect of technology, and another of sociology, that others may not have considered, and examining it in metaphor to a logical, if extreme, conclusion; asking us to confront “what if?” And one of the “what if’s?” I think he was asking was “what if England were on the receiving end of colonial warfare? How do you think we’d like it?”

I think it stands up pretty well to the test of time. There were only a couple of things that might create issues for the modern reader. Aside from the obvious anachronism of the idea of life on Mars, one more stood out to me. That was that the description of the Earth from a distance as “green and grey.” It struck me, because of course, no one would ever describe Earth that way, now that we’ve seen it as the “pale blue dot.”

And I have to ask: why do we have yet to experience a screen adaptation of this story that actually sets it in the original time period? Because, seriously, the idea of fighting an advanced technological alien civilization with horse-drawn cannons is just frickken cool.

I think it’s important that everyone read this book just because of the cultural influence that it’s had on us. For instance, it’s remarkable to me that Wells has the Martians land in an English village, and it’s largely ignored by the military for a whole day. We’ve all seen enough movies now, probably sparked by the famous radio play of this story in the thirties that caused such a panic, that if something like that happened in the modern world, the local National Guard or other militia force would have it surrounded, and, hopefully, contained, within thirty minutes. We’ve all taken note of this cautionary tale. And as Stephen King observed in Danse Macabre, the many movies on the theme that were used to encourage anti-Communist propaganda in the Cold War, have reinforced it.

But, read it just because it’s a a damn good book too.

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How to Actually Finish the Writing Projects You Start

Here’s a question I’ve gotten from Writing and Wellness readers recently…

How do I take a project from beginning to end without losing it somewhere in the middle?

So how do we do that, exactly?

Read the full article at Writing & Wellness.

Privilege and the Arts

I recently got into a bit of an altercation on Twitter.  I’m hoping I’ve smoothed it over, because I reacted poorly in the initial exchange, and the person I got into a conflict with kept inadvertently making it worse, even though I know he meant well!  He kept giving me advice that sounded to me like, “Let me explain how to tie your shoes.”

It got me to thinking about how economic privilege has always been the watchword of the arts.  We like to think that talent will triumph over economic circumstances, but the truth is, that’s only going to happen with a bit of luck. And thus far, my luck has been pretty poor. Or, maybe I suck.

It started like this:

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#WIPjoy is a fun writer’s hashtag game I just started playing. The rest of the month has been great!  But I groaned when I saw this. Maybe it’s the way I ask for help, because gods know I never learned how to do it well, but I never seem to get the help I ask for. But I thought, What the hell? And I took it seriously, and I asked a question that I seriously hoped for an answer to:

#WIPJoy D5 Anybody here broken into @sfwa market-level magazine publishing? I think I’m having trouble figuring out what they’re looking for

I’ve been getting a lot of “love your style, not for us at this time,” and I wanted to know what the next step was. Obviously I am on the right track but not breaking through. I often find for whatever reason (maybe it’s CPTSD, maybe it’s mild autism, not sure, but I know something’s wrong) there’s often a “next step” in life that’s obvious to most people but I’m oblivious to it.  I hoped someone would tell me what I was missing so I could do it.

To be fair, I got some great advice! Someone suggested I do First Reading at such a magazine (Apex is looking for people, just might do it!) A couple of the magazines responded to tell me what they were looking for (that’s really helpful!)  But there was also advice that struck me as patronizing. Here’s a small paraphrased example (identities left out to protect the guilty):

I shouldn’t worry about publishing, I should just write for its own sake.
I shouldn’t worry about making money, nobody makes money right away.
I should make sure I write every day.
I should write the best story I can and send it to them.

The last one sent me into a tizzy.  Because, you know, I make a habit of churning out any old crap and submitting it.  This was followed by an admission that said person had offered up something he didn’t think was working and they’d bought it.  So that means I suck then, right?  Since my best is not as good as his worst?

And I do write every day.  Minimum 1500 words, except in NaNo season. Sometimes it takes me an hour and sometimes it takes me six.  Stephen King says he does 2000 words a day but I wanted a more modest goal so I could make sure I did it.

Then there was the “I’m too lofty for money” crowd.  Well, this article is for you guys.

Everyone wants to think they’ve succeeded because of personal merit. But the truth is, nobody recognizes their own privilege. One of the people so advising me was a teacher so she worked for a living.

I’ll be the first to agree that teaching is a hard job that’s working for a living. But teachers don’t seem to realize that even they have privilege.  Because they got a scholarship, or a student loan, or someone paid for them to go to school.

When I was in high school, my mother was bipolar and it was untreated. I now recognize that living under those conditions screwed me up worse than I realized.  There’s something called CPTSD, and I think it fits my life pretty well.

About the time that other people were writing for scholarships, I was suffering from suicidal depression and an eating disorder. I had no spoons for scholarship writing; I was having enough trouble resisting the urge to draw a knife across my wrists on a daily basis. There was no one who encouraged me and my parents were hardly what you call “joiners,” so those options were limited anyway. There was no church, no Eagles club, nothing like that. I might have written for my dad’s union’s scholarship, and received $1000.

I left home the day before grade 12 started because my mother and I got into a fistfight.  There was no “youth agreement” available then like there is now.  I had to fight tooth and nail to get a basic stipend out of social services to live without quitting school. I had a 3.85 gpd, even with all my psychological struggles; damned if I was going to drop out!  Finally I wheedled something out of them by lying outright, and managed to stay in school. Calling myself in sick when I had the flu was a surreal experience.

I got a job right after high school. It was 1993; you know, the middle of the big Recession?  My partner says he started in Vancouver and drove across the country until he found a job. He ended up in Toronto.

So I worked at bullshit jobs for years, often under the table at less than minimum wage because that was all I could get. I spent so much time on the system that they made me do the Canadian Adult Achievement Test.  I scored well up in the post-secondary levels in every category, including things I had not studied (like physics.)  I was asked why I wasn’t in university.  I said, “Give me the money. I’ll go.”

I didn’t get a student loan because I knew I wanted to be a writer, and my English teacher had taught me that taking a course on writing was probably not the path for me, so why spend a whole bunch of money I had no idea if I could ever pay back to do something I didn’t really want to do anyway?  Everyone urged me to go into journalism; I didn’t want journalism. No one could seem to understand that this was nothing like writing the stories I wanted to write.

But I lost my way for a while, because all of a sudden my boyfriend had custody of his son, and he needed a mom.  Then my husband got sick and I needed to take care of him.  Then, when after many years I finally got a steady full-time minimum-wage job, just as I was starting to think seriously about having a baby, he (now my husband) was in a life-threatening car accident that left him disabled.

Eight months in the hospital. I left my job and everything because I didn’t know if he would live or die.  He lived.

But at first especially, he needed a care aide.  I had actually done that briefly in my long haul doing every bullshit job in the book.  So I took it on. But that limited the jobs I could take, so we invested some of our insurance money into a small retail business, a metaphysical store. I wrote a book on witchcraft and it actually did pretty well.

But I live in Western Canada, not the Bay Area, so the store folded, and unlike many other authors of witchcraft books with more fortuitous placements I couldn’t make any money on workshops or speaking fees.

I decided to concentrate hard on the fiction writing, once again reinventing myself.  I went back to my roots.  I read all the beginner stuff.  Took a course, this one with James Patterson, who might actually know something about writing commercially.  I got a part time job at a bookstore.

The job folded.  They tell me I’m a failure at retail.  Maybe so.  But I’m a damn good writer, and I’ve been taking this seriously for many years now.  I’m not expecting a million dollars.  I don’t expect to make a living at this unless I churn out stuff on Amazon (I’m slower than that) or sell the movie rights.  But you know, selling a story to a good-paying market would make a big difference to me, when my only regular income is the hubby’s disability cheque.

Why pursue publication when I’m already indie publishing?  Well, because I’m terrible at the hustle.  I’m an introvert.  Indie publishing is sales/sales/sales all the time, always pursuing new methods. I can’t do it.  It takes too many spoons.  I’m hoping that by doing both, they will feed into each other.

I don’t make a habit of being so personal.  I like to keep myself to myself.  But I’m speaking out because I know I’m not alone.  I have come to know a lot of writers in the community, the vast majority of whom are women.  Some have wealthy husbands who can pay for their hobby.  And some, like me, are struggling to find a real income out of limited options.  Many are disabled, or are taking care of disabled people, like me.  And all of them have moments of real despair because for them, like for me, it’s do or die.  It’s not realistic for them not to care about making money.  If you have that luxury, be grateful.

I’m a blue-collar, working-class writer.  Don’t tell me I should have a real job; I’ve tried that, in just about every form I can imagine.  I’m like Robert Heinlein. I have to make this pay.  I have no choice.  So please, be a bit more careful before you dispense your advice.  Try to check your privilege, and your judgment, at the door.

A Philip K. Dick Primer

By Sam Reader

In 1982, Ridley Scott loosely adapted Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? into the classic science fiction film Blade Runner, a detective story that kept the novel’s dark aesthetic, odd symbolism, and meditations on empathy. With sequel, Blade Runner 2049 on the horizon, there’s no better time to get acquainted with the author of the original. But where to start?

Read the full article at Barnes & Noble.

Famous Authors’ Bad Writing Advice

By C.S. Lakin

For this week’s Throwback Thursday, we’re looking at an excerpt from a previous post titled Words of Advice from Famous Authors That Are Just Wrong.

I imagine this post is bound to draw some criticism, but bring it on!

Maybe it’s just me, but when I read pithy statements from famous authors that are hailed as sage advice, I often scratch my head. Based on my experience as an author, sometimes the savvy advice is more rosemary or thyme than sage.

Read the full article at LiveWriteThrive.

Book Review: The Book of Skulls by Robert Silverberg

The Book of Skulls by Robert Silverberg

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Read for the Science Fiction Masterworks Challenge, the Second Best Challenge, and the LGBTQ Speculative Fiction Challenge. This novel was nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus in 72-73, but won none of them.

This book gave me a bit of a roller-coaster ride. I was excited about it to start with. The premise is awesome; four young men, college kids in the late 60s, go out to a desert cult in the wilds of Arizona. Their mission? To achieve immortality. To accomplish this, two must die and two will be rewarded with eternity. One must willingly sacrifice himself for the others; one must be sacrificed by the others. Dark stuff!

It would have been nice if I could have really liked any of the four main characters though (and that’s another thing; Silverberg treats all four as protagonists in their own story, cycling back and forth between each first person narrative.) All four of them are stereotypes of the college douchebag variety.

One of the major characters, Ned, is gay, or bisexual with a preference for men, and that’s significant to character relationship, character and plot, so it definitely counts for the LGBTQ challenge. But I have to admit, it was a little jarring to be looking at the gay experience through the eyes of the early 70s, because so much that was being said and assumed would be considered horribly inappropriate and homophobic now. Ned thought of himself as a degenerate and a pervert, although I assume Silverberg must at least have had a close gay friend, because he does seem to know far more about the psychology of it than most 1970s writers (namely, that you’re born gay or not, it’s not a choice and it’s not a result of deficiencies in your character or upbringing.)

It was also horribly jarring how blatantly racist and sexist the characters were! Really, if you think that the 70s were a time of women power and liberation, you need to read or watch some 1970s sci-fi. Women are objects that exist merely as they relate to men. The characters thought nothing of deliberately finding some girls to hook up with so that they would put them up for the night (though I suppose part of that is the sexual casuality of the 70s) and then leaving them in the morning without a word, and they casually rated each others’ conquests.

Also, in the process of heading to the girls’ place, a carload of Puerto Ricans gets into an accident in front of them. People are missing limbs and heads are cracked open while people are screaming. They just leave! Apparently because one of the girls is carrying hash on her and they don’t want to be hassled by the cops. Never mind that people are dying. They don’t even call an ambulance. Now, I understand the police were insane about even hash in the 70s, but I sincerely doubt they would have been searched while the police were trying to help a bunch of seriously injured and maybe dying people!

After that, even the ones who were growing on me the most – Ned, and Eli, the Jewish intellectual, who at least had a pang of conscience at this, but didn’t let it stop him – could die in horrible pain as far as I was concerned.

But I persisted, because now I was about a third of the way through the book. From then until the halfway mark was an extended character study of the four over the course of the journey. I won’t say they redeemed themselves to me in a GRRM kind of way, but you got to see a bit more about why they were all the douchebags that they were.

When they arrived at the monastery, things got interesting, and there’s a lot of good psychological stuff in there, and also a wonderful extended procedural for doing Shadow Work in most mystical traditions, one I might recommend future students to. There I re-developed some of the empathy for the characters that I had lost.

This led up to a fascinating but inevitable climax, like watching a car slide into the other lane of a highway in slow motion. I won’t reveal it to you, but I will say it was satisfying.

What stays with me most about the book, however, is that I’m not sure it’s science fiction. I’m not sure it’s fantasy either. Probably horror is its best category. Because just like in watching Pan’s Labyrinth, you cannot be sure that anything supernatural or preternatural happens at all. There is no way to tell if the characters who survive actually achieve the immortality they’ve worked so hard to achieve! And it’s a rather Pyrrhic victory.

Quite the ride! Very well written. Despite its glaring flaws, I would recommend it.

View all my reviews