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Nine Reasons I Read Science Fiction

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Nine Reasons I Read Science Fiction

1. Neophilia.

Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea intro­duced the idea of neophilia to me in their great con­spir­acy the­ory mag­num opus, The Illuminatus Trilogy. Hagbard Celine, the half-​​Atlantian Discordian sub­ma­rine cap­tain describes the world as being divided into two types of peo­ple– neophiles and neo­phobes; those who are attracted by the new, and those who are repelled by it. I read this book when I was six­teen. I imme­di­ately rec­og­nized myself as a neophile. Science fic­tion writ­ers gen­er­ally attempt to show things that have never been seen before in their work. There is a tra­di­tion of the orig­i­nal within it. If there is a genre of fic­tion that can be described as neophillic, it is sci­ence fic­tion.

2. To chal­lenge my preconceptions.

I grew up in Kansas, which if you read the news at all, is a state where peo­ple are gen­er­ally very con­ser­v­a­tive. Racism is ram­pant. Homophobia was, at least when I was a child, the gen­eral rule. And if you weren’t Christian, then you were going to Hell. It is easy to accept all of these beliefs as fact when you are immersed in them. Even if you don’t agree with them, they find a way to seep into your mind. In that envi­ron­ment, sci­ence fic­tion, with it’s unusual and pro­gres­sive views about gen­der, race, sex, and reli­gion pro­vides an escape, and an alter­nate view point. Ursula K. LeGuin alone chal­lenged much of my pre­con­cep­tions in her work. Whether it was the peo­ple of color in the Earthsea books, or chal­leng­ing the idea of gen­der in The Left Hand of Darkness, her work opened up my mind to a world where cul­tural ideas are not hegemonic.

3. To travel to exotic places with­out leav­ing the house.

Science fic­tion is often set in places that no human being has ever vis­ited before. I love to travel, and with enough time, I could one day see much of what Earth has to offer. And I don’t think there is any sub­sti­tute for get­ting up and actu­ally going to the places. But some places are beyond the reach of a jet plane. Without sci­ence fic­tion, I would never know or imag­ine what the skies of Venus are like, never feel the breeze of an alien wind across my skin, or feel the dread as a small alien space­craft full of humans slips over the event hori­zon of a black hole. Science fic­tion inspires us to push this bound­ary of the lim­its of travel. I know more now about the sur­face of Mars than I could have expected to, ten years ago. I would bet that it was partly sci­ence fic­tion that inspired the NASA sci­en­tists to build the Mars rovers that gave me this knowledge.

4. To be pre­pared for pos­si­ble future.

1984. Fahrenheit 451. These are no longer fic­tion, they’re prac­ti­cally mod­ern day sur­vival guides. Science fic­tion pre­pares us for the “what ifs” of the future. Science fic­tion read­ers as a group are more pre­pared for what comes. We’ve been con­sid­er­ing the chal­lenges and moral dilem­mas of stem cells and cloning long before any­one else. The Singularity may be com­ing, and if any­one will be pre­pared for it, it will be the read­ers and writ­ers of sci­ence fiction.

5. To escape the mundane.

Because I need adven­ture and excite­ment and stim­u­la­tion! I work a desk job. I spend 48+ weeks a year in the same 100 mile square area. I see the same peo­ple, do the same tasks, and walk or drive the same streets day in, day out. Life is repet­i­tive. Science fic­tion allows me to escape that. I don’t want to read about peo­ple who have bor­ing jobs and rela­tion­ship prob­lems with their spouses. I want to read about things that stir sur­prise and amaze­ment in me–what we call sen­sawunda. I don’t get sen­sawunda from my day to day life very often. When I do, it’s a bless­ing. But I know that if I turn to my book shelf, I can get a hefty dose of it any time I want.

6. Because I care about plot.

Science fic­tion sto­ries often deal with Big Things. Saving the world. Saving the uni­verse, even. Plot seems to be more empha­sized in sci­ence fic­tion than it is in other gen­res, and it tends to have a larger scope. The stakes are higher. In the pro­to­typ­i­cal lit­er­ary story, the stakes are a col­lege professor’s mar­riage. Yawn. I want some­thing big on the line. I want schemes from my vil­lains, where the stake is noth­ing less than every­thing the pro­tag­o­nists hold dear. Little sto­ries are nice, from time to time, but its the big sto­ries that hold my atten­tion the best. And sci­ence fic­tion offers those.

7. To learn science.

Reading isn’t just about fun. I like it best when I read fic­tion that teaches me some­thing use­ful along with enter­tain­ing me. I find two gen­res par­tic­u­larly excel at this; his­tor­i­cal fic­tion and sci­ence fic­tion. I love sci­ence for the way it makes sense of the world in a log­i­cal man­ner. And you could argue that some sci­ence fic­tion is really just his­tor­i­cal fic­tion about the future. Both can occa­sion­ally pro­vide life lessons. One is from pre­vi­ous exam­ples and the other from theoretical.

8. Because it’s dan­ger­ous to like it.

Everybody has their way of being dif­fer­ent. For me, it’s being a SF nut. This got me picked on more than a few times in my child­hood. It gets me sneered upon by lit­er­ary writ­ers who hang out at the cof­fee shops around town. To some peo­ple, being a sci­ence fic­tion writer means I am lower on the totem pole than a garbage man. I like that. I don’t have much rebel in me, but I like tak­ing plea­sure in things that those kinds of peo­ple hate.

9. Because it offers hope.

Not all sci­ence fic­tion, but a great deal of it, has offered hope. Hope that the future can be bet­ter than the present. At times, it has fetishized the idea of progress, but when it is at its best, it can give hope to the lowli­est soul that their life, or their children’s lives could be bet­ter than it is today. Yes, there is a great tra­di­tion of dystopia fic­tion in the genre, but I would argue that dystopias are writ­ten from a posi­tion of optimism–that per­haps, if the author lays out their dystopian vision, the world can avoid it. Dystopian writ­ers see some­thing that could go wrong and warn against it. Even this is opti­mistic to me and offers hope.

I am not usu­ally a cheer­leader for sci­ence fic­tion. I think there can be some very bad things about it and its fan­dom. I do not believe that sci­ence fic­tion fans are bet­ter than any­one else. That is not what this post is about. It is about why I per­son­ally con­tinue to read sci­ence fic­tion today, twenty years after I dis­cov­ered my first Anne McCaffery book. I encour­age you to think about why you read sci­ence fic­tion too. Sometimes, we all need a reminder. I know that I did.

10 Things Your Website Should Have if You Are An Author

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

1. Your own domain name.

In this day an age, a domain costs almost noth­ing, and host­ing, not much more. I charge $15 a year for a domain and $20 a year for host­ing for my clients, and there might be cheaper (but less feature-​​rich) host­ing avail­able out there. Sff​.net might have been cool a decade ago, but it’s not now. It just looks unpro­fes­sional. Buy a domain, and if you can, make it your full pub­lish­ing name. If you can’t, don’t get too clever, by which I mean don’t pick some­thing you’re going to hate 10 years from now. Domain names can be changed, but you should really try to avoid it, to pre­serve your rat­ings in the search engines.

2. A biog­ra­phy and bib­li­og­ra­phy with lots and lots of links.

If some­one is com­ing to your web­site, it is likely that they want to know who you are, and what else you’ve done. Don’t be stingy here. Don’t pub­li­cize any­thing you’re embar­rassed of, such as that mpreg slash fic that you wrote late one night while drunk, but def­i­nitely include your bib­li­og­ra­phy, and if your story is avail­able online, for free in a webzine or for sale in some form, link to it. If you don’t, you’re miss­ing a chance for a sale to a poten­tial fan.

3. A News Blog with an RSS feed. Or a newslet­ter. Or both.

Note that I said a News Blog. Writer blogs are great enter­tain­ment, but they are noto­ri­ously clut­tered with non­sense quizzes, word counts, whin­ing, and so much other crap that find­ing out when an author you like has a story com­ing out can be harder than it should. Maintain a clean weblog that is sim­ply for announc­ing your sales, appear­ances, and other pro­fes­sional items of inter­est. Don’t use it to post pic­tures of your cats. I’m an RSS feed man myself, and I think they are the future, but per­haps you should do an email mail­ing list as well. Post the same con­tent to both, but make sure it’s clear that they are the same infor­ma­tion, so your fans don’t sign up for both and get irri­tated for receiv­ing dupli­cate information.

4. A pro­fes­sional design

This isn’t cheap, but if you are a pro­fes­sional author, you owe it to your­self to hire a designer who can build you some­thing nice and main­tain­able. Tony Greer does great work. Tobias Buckell’s web­site is a model exam­ple of this list. I work fairly afford­ably myself, and you may inquire for rates if you’re inter­ested. But seri­ously, your nephew who has a copy of Front Page 2000 isn’t going to be good enough. Spend a lit­tle money on it, and you’re going to have bet­ter results. People buy books based on cov­ers, and they’re going to judge you by how pro­fes­sional and fresh your design is as well.

5. Full sto­ries and/​or nov­els. Possibly excerpts.

Free sam­ples have been used in mar­ket­ing since the inven­tion of cap­i­tal­ism. Writers and other intel­lec­tual prop­erty cre­ators are often ter­ri­fied of this, and admit­tedly, there’s a risk that all your stuff will be stolen and you will be left pen­ni­less. If you’re lucky! Someone who comes to your web­site may not have read any­thing you have writ­ten. Post a story from a year or two. If you’re brave, put it in the Creative Commons as soon as you can. That might limit resale rights, but chalk it up as a mar­ket­ing expense. I’m not going to go into the Creative Commons too much here, as Cory Doctorow does it bet­ter than any­one else. Let me just say that I agree with him, but I under­stand those who don’t, and I don’t think this will make or break you. But try it out, and see what hap­pens. It worked for Peter Watts!

6. A way to buy your work.

Post links to Amazon, Fictionwise, what­ever. Make them promi­nent. If you have work in print for sale, it should be easy for me to buy it. Somebody really has to make this as easy as iTunes. But that’s a topic for another issue. Link, link, and link again.

7. A way to con­tact you.

Boo, spam! Nobody likes spam, but if you don’t have a way for fans or poten­tial pub­lish­ers to con­tact you, you’re miss­ing out on fan mail, hate mail, and pos­si­ble sales. There are javascript tricks you can use, or you can set up a spe­cific email address that you check on a reg­u­lar basis. You really should have this email address be at your domain above, too. Even if it for­wards to your gmail account. It’s a mat­ter of per­cep­tion. If you own a domain, and you should, use it for your email.

8. A Press Kit

I was run­ning out of ideas, so I stole this one from Tobias Buckell’s page. Short story authors prob­a­bly don’t need press kits, but nov­el­ists might. Photos, book cov­ers, and any­thing else that makes a reporter’s job eas­ier when he wants to report on your work is a very good thing.

9. A Goodies Section

I have seri­ous doubts about peo­ple lov­ing books so much that they want desk­top wall­pa­per, icons, and such, but hey, if it doesn’t cost you any­thing to make them or have them made by a designer, why not? Little rewards like this don’t cost much, but they might be just the edge you need to start a buzz about your lat­est work.Think out­side the box here. I’m hes­i­tant to give this idea away, but if your read­er­ship is young and nerdy, con­sider pub­lish­ing D&D gam­ing stats for your char­ac­ters and cre­ations. Make it easy and allow­able for your fans to play in your world. They’re not going to make any money off of it, so don’t worry. It stopped being yours when you pub­lished it.

10. Something nobody else has tried.

See the idea about about D&D stats. Do some­thing like that. Do some­thing wild and new. It’s a tough world out there for writ­ers. There are a lot of us, and I wish I could say that the best writ­ers win. But mar­ket­ing money has a direct effect on sales. If you’re read­ing this and giv­ing it seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion, then there’s a good chance that your pub­lisher doesn’t have any mar­ket­ing bucks for you. That means you need to take mat­ters into your own hands. A web­site with all the fea­tures I’ve described above costs any­where from $300-$500 from me. It could cost you thou­sands from other, equally qual­i­fied design­ers, but no mat­ter what, if you do it right, and you give it time, you’re going to make your money back. I won’t guar­an­tee it, but it’s bet­ter than noth­ing at all!

5 Things I don’t rec­om­mend doing:

  1. Featuring your photo promi­nently in the design.
  2. Posting your daily word counts and/​or in-​​depth analy­sis of your daily work. This is inter­est­ing to other writ­ers. Probably not so much to fans, unless they want to be a writer too. Keep a sep­a­rate blog for this.
  3. Your rejec­tions. I’ve ranted about this before. Posting about your rejec­tions is some­thing you should stop doing. I can under­stand why you might do it, but keep it pri­vate. You might say some­thing you regret. Editors read web­sites too.
  4. Excerpts of unpub­lished work. Sorry, nobody cares unless you’re super-​​established and semi-​​famous.  That’s not to say you shouldn’t release the whole thing online if you want.
  5. Bad reviews. I’ve not read books because of the bad reviews their own authors have pub­li­cized. If you don’t link them, I won’t hear about them. This is con­tentious, but I just don’t rec­om­mend it personally.

One last thing. I haven’t been fol­low­ing my own advice here, but you can be sure that after this, I will be, both for myself and for any future clients.

SF Magazines: Financial Models

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

For my own ben­e­fit as much as any­thing else, I’d like to run through the mod­els that I am aware of that can be used to finan­cially sup­port a magazine–whether it is a print or an elec­tronic mag­a­zine. Here’s what I got. If I miss any, please let me know and I will con­tinue to update this. These are not mutu­ally exclu­sive. Many mag­a­zines use a com­bi­na­tion of these.

Subscription/​Pay Model

Giving the con­tent in return for a sub­scrip­tion fee or a cover price. Generally sell­ing a bun­dle of stories/​content. Example: tra­di­tional print magazines.

Advertising Model

Selling access to your read­ers to adver­tis­ers, and plac­ing their adver­tis­ing among your con­tent. Example: most tra­di­tional print mag­a­zines sell adver­tis­ing as well.

Patron Model

Supported by a sin­gle per­son or small pri­vate group of peo­ple from pri­vate funds. Example: The Fortean Bureau was pri­mar­ily our pri­vate money. (If you ever donated? You are my hero).

Donation/​Fund Drive model

The NPR model, as I’ve heard it referred to. Regular requests for funds from read­ers, with no set amount. Example: Strange Horizons is the most suc­cess­ful exam­ple of this. I believe Escape Pod does this as well, but I haven’t seen any fund dri­ves from them.

Full Site Sponsorship

A sin­gle cor­po­rate entity, for what­ever rea­son, sub­si­dizes the mag­a­zine. Example: SCIFICTION. I seem to think Chizine as well?

Premium Content

Special access to spe­cial con­tent. A kind of sub­scrip­tion model. I’m not sure about this one, what do you guys think? Is it dif­fer­ent enough? Example: Salon used to do this, but I am not sure if they do anymore.These mod­els are irrel­e­vant as to whether a mag­a­zine is non­profit, hobby, or for-​​profit. Many of these mod­els are con­sid­ered fail­ures. Which ones do you think work or don’t? Perhaps the best solu­tion for a sus­tain­able mag­a­zine (online or off) would be a com­bi­na­tion of 3 or more?

I am not sure that the sub­scrip­tion model is work­ing very well any­more. As Chance pointed out in the com­ments of the Triad post yes­ter­day, com­par­ing Escape Pod to the Triad isn’t a good com­par­i­son because Escape Pod doesn’t have a cost to sub­scribe. I argued that just because the one has a dif­fer­ent model for sup­port than the other doesn’t mean that they can’t be com­pared as “mag­a­zines” with readerships.

Steve, I know you some­times read this– could you tell me or pro­vide me a link to where you might talk more about the fund­ing model behind Escape Pod? Chance argues that Escape Pod is your hobby, as another rea­son that the sub­scriber num­bers can’t be com­pared. I’d like to know more about how Escape Pod affords to func­tion, if you’re com­fort­able talk­ing about it.

When my Dad killed The Family Dog

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

My dad died two years ago. It’s been hard to get over. We had a year from his can­cer diag­no­sis until he passed away, and I never wanted to admit what was hap­pen­ing and I’m only just admit­ting it now. I didn’t want to see him on his death bed in the end, because I knew that if I didn’t see it, part of me could deny it had ever hap­pened. He was 44 years old. In case you’re won­der­ing, I am 29. My par­ents were young when I was born, and I’ve always banked on that to avoid those tragedies that we all face some day. Life is strange that way. All of my friends with par­ents in their 50s and 60s still have theirs, and I’m down one already.

You focus on the happy mem­o­ries at first, but some­times, there are less pleas­ant mem­o­ries that repeat­edly rise up like angry ghosts, demand­ing to be accounted for. They spring on you in the mid­dle of the night, take grip on your mind, and refuse to let go. Lately, I can’t stop think­ing about how my father killed his dog when I was eight.

My par­ents had recently divorced. To this day, I’m not sure what the cir­cum­stances were. As part of attempt­ing to make it up to myself, my sis­ter, and my lit­tle brother, our par­ents each got a puppy. That dog that lived with my mother was Beauty. I can­not remem­ber the name of the dog that lived with my father.

The two were sis­ters, mutts, small­ish dogs, but not pun­ters like poo­dles or chi­huahuas. They were lov­ing, but hard to train. And my father’s dog liked to chew things.

I did not see him kill the dog. I am not sure how I know what hap­pened, but I can pic­ture it like I was there. My father was liv­ing in the base­ment of his old­est sister’s house on the east side of Topeka. During the day, he worked as a meter man. He wore a blue uni­form that was often mis­taken for a policeman’s uni­form with black shoes that he kept well-​​polished. I think he had a spe­cial affec­tion for shoes then, given that he walked miles and miles every day as part of his beat. This was before the scoot­ers meter peo­ple use now.

He came home from some­where, I imag­ine it was to buy what few gro­ceries he could afford after giv­ing most of his money to my mother to feed us, and his dog, the one whose name I can­not remem­ber, had chewed one of his work shoes to pieces and was start­ing in on the other. It was then, in a fit of anger, that he threw the remain­ing shoe at his cow­er­ing dog, strik­ing her in the head. She whim­pered, fell onto her side, and died.

I know this story. Someone told it to me, but it was not my father. He never spoke of it. I saw tears in my father’s eyes sev­eral times over my life– he was not the kind of touchy-​​feely mod­ern man that some fathers are, but he was not so stoic either. But I can remem­ber ask­ing my father about his dog, and see­ing him shake his head and turn away to keep me from see­ing his tears.

My mother gave Beauty to my father. Despite all the trou­ble they had, despite the fact that he had killed his own dog a week before, she gave him the dog. If he were alive, he would prob­a­bly tell me that the rea­son was that my mother couldn’t han­dle the dog, that Beauty was con­stantly mak­ing messes and she gave him the dog in frus­tra­tion. I’m not so sure about that.

A year later, she was remar­ried, and we moved in with my father. Beauty became the fam­ily dog, and at some point, I for­got the other dog. We gave Beauty away to my mother’s sis­ter when my father remar­ried and we moved from Topeka to Lawrence. She’s long dead now. She was a good dog. Gentle and for­giv­ing of children.

I wish I could remem­ber the dog’s name. I think that some small part of me should honor her like I honor my father. He wasn’t per­fect, but I know he never meant to hurt his dog.