Posts Tagged ‘SF’

10 Ways to Have a More “Interesting” Convention Experience

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I am not attend­ing WorldCon (AKA Anticipation)  this year.  Last year was great, and I met a lot of really inter­est­ing new peo­ple, and got to meet some peo­ple in the flesh for the first time like John Joseph Adams (whose col­lec­tion The Living Dead was nom­i­nated for a World Fantasy Award this week!  Congratulations are in order).   Why am I not going?  Well, there’s the finan­cial rea­sons of course, but there’s also a lit­tle dis­pute I had with the Canadian Border Control back in 1986 involv­ing the ille­gal impor­ta­tion of furry porn.  I’m not allowed to talk about it, but suf­fice to say, I can only travel to Canada under pseu­do­nyms such as Harrison T. Merriweather.  And now I can’t use that one.  Canada’s agents are everywhere.

It’s rather  too easy for the sea­soned con vet­eran to end up in a bit of a rut when it comes to cons.  “Find a seat in the bar and leave only for your pan­els” seems to be the writer/editor/publisher’s way.  I think they some­times actu­ally take in food in a solid form over the course of the con­ven­tion, but I have no evi­dence of this.

I’ve decided, as a ser­vice to the con­ven­tion goer, to pro­vide this help­ful list of activ­i­ties you can  par­tic­i­pate in to make your convention-​​going expe­ri­ence that much more interesting.

  1. In a very pub­lic space, ask Gord Sellar to imi­tate his Quebec-​​born mother.  (The result­ing mob will give you all the exer­cise you need for the week).
  2. Dress up as a polyp and jump out at Jay Lake every time you see him, yelling “Boo!”
  3. Squeeze Harlan Ellison’s boob.
  4. Walk up to Tempest, and whis­per, in a ner­vous voice.  “I see black people.”
  5. Go to a Gordon van Gelder panel and stand up to ask a ques­tion.  Congratulate him on finally break­ing down and accept­ing elec­tronic sub­mis­sions and start a stand­ing ova­tion.  Then flee. (Also, scratch F&SF off your sub­mis­sions list)
  6. Treat every­one in cos­play as you would treat their actual char­ac­ter.  Run in ter­ror from stormtroop­ers.  Try to res­cue Slave Girl Leia.  Laugh and point at Klingons.
  7. Ask Ted Chiang to tell you about the cover of his col­lec­tion.  (Only do this if you have 4 hours of time you need to kill).
  8. Find Cory Doctorow.  Secretly replace his iPod with a Zune.
  9. Dress up as the ghost of Robert Heinlein and demand roy­al­ties from John Scalzi all weekend.
  10. When they announce the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer, race to the podium, snatch the award, and smug­gle it home to ME.

Anyone else have any ideas to make those lucky folks attend­ing WorldCon have a more “fun” time?

On Richness

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Lately, I’ve been try­ing to iden­tify where my writ­ing really dif­fers from the stuff that’s great, great writ­ing. There are a hell of a lot of places, but I’ve fix­ated for a while now on this con­cept of richness.

The sto­ries that *really* blow me away exude infor­ma­tion and con­fi­dence. They are full of a rich­ness of detail that is bog­gling. Telling details show up in nearly every sen­tence. The entire story works to con­vince you of this place, these char­ac­ters, these events.

A great exam­ple of a story with amaz­ing rich­ness was David Moles’ “Finnisterra.” I think China Mieville’s nov­els demon­strate it pretty well too. I see it in many of the sto­ries I have read by Gord Sellar as well. Basically, I see rich­ness as one of the defin­ing qual­i­ties of award-​​winning writing.

The rich telling details are rarely fab­ri­cated whole cloth. They’re believ­able because they draw from some real world knowl­edge. David uses mul­ti­ple lan­guages and cul­tures effort­lessly because he knows them inti­mately. China writes about cities because he dwells in them com­pletely. London is not so dif­fer­ent from his fan­tas­ti­cal cities. And Gord is so immersed in Korean cul­ture it can’t help but ooze onto the page in a totally engag­ing way.

I strug­gle with rich­ness in par­tic­u­lar because I’m not sure there’s any way to learn rich­ness other than to immerse your­self in a sub­ject like they do. I think the rea­son many new writ­ers work fall flat for me is because the only thing they are immers­ing them­selves in is writ­ing and SF/​F. The mark of some­one who really wants to get out there seems to be some­one who takes pas­sion for some­thing else and really dri­ves that home in a story.

There may be veins of rich­ness to tap into from my life, but I’m not sure. It leaves me wish­ing I could pack up and do some for­eign travel for six months all while read­ing trav­el­ogues and his­tory books. I feel like I just don’t have enough packed into my brain that isn’t about com­put­ers and web design that can be used to enrich my work.

So that’s the next big thing I’m work­ing on in improv­ing my writ­ing. What’s yours?

Keeping an Ideas File

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

When I first started writ­ing seri­ously, I kept a lit­tle text file on my desk­top where I would rapidly jot down ideas for the premises of sto­ries. Eventually, this turned into a note­book that I tried and failed to carry around. Then it turned into a col­lec­tion of ran­dom doc­u­ments on Google Docs. It’s cur­rent incar­na­tion is a folder on my EverNote account.

With ever­note, I can record voice notes, type ideas in on the com­puter or my phone, include pho­tos, and more. Pretty much any­thing I want to remem­ber and have acces­si­ble from any­where, I throw into Evernote these days, and that includes story ideas.

But I wanted to talk about the impor­tance of cap­tur­ing more than just the premise for sto­ries. I’ve started try­ing to cap­ture any kind of fas­ci­nat­ing tid­bit that I think might be use­ful at some point. When I see a per­son with a trait that I think would make an inter­est­ing con­cept for a char­ac­ter, I put it in. Collect every­thing, because I am find­ing that when inspi­ra­tion is run­ning a lit­tle low, these notes can be the ker­nel of cre­ative energy I need to steam­roll through a project.

I also carry around a flexible-​​cover Moleskine note­book, and I do jot down story ideas in here, but I also use that for web­site thumb­nail sketches, doo­dles, and more. Because I do all my writ­ing on a com­puter, it works very well for me to have this cen­tral, search­able tool for my ran­dom bits of ideas.

Somtimes, writ­ing a story is like play­ing Katamari Damacy. You just keep rolling the sticky ball of your brain around until it accu­mu­lates enough junk to let you go to the next level.

Revising Short Fiction is for Suckers

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I’ve heard a lot of dif­fer­ent opin­ions on the sub­ject of revi­sion over the years. The one that has stuck with me was the opin­ion of, I think it was Heinlein. This author wrote one draft, dropped it in the mail, and never looked back. I don’t know what his rea­sons for this were, but I know what a mod­ern writer’s rea­sons would be, espe­cially when it comes to short fiction.

It’s all about time man­age­ment and cost/​benefit analy­sis. Because sto­ries are pur­chased not based on the time it took to write them but how many words they con­tain, the actual hourly wage you make varies depend­ing on how much time you spend on a story. And the more time you spend, the less money you’re making.

For exam­ple, I gen­er­ally write first drafts at a speed of 1000–2000 words an hour. At a mod­er­ately decent payrate of 5 cents a word, that puts me at $50 an hour, if I were to sell my first draft. That’s a very nice hourly wage. Each draft you do, and each hour you spend rework­ing your draft, is reduc­ing your poten­tial hourly income. Spend as much time revis­ing as you did writ­ing the story, and now you’ve cut your hourly in half. Spend three times as long revis­ing the story as you did writ­ing it and now we’re talk­ing work­ing at McDonalds wages. I guess it’s bet­ter than dig­ging ditches.

However, I per­son­ally am not a writer who can churn out a sell­able first draft. I find the story in revi­sion, much like Pixar does. Partly this is because I often start writ­ing a story before the idea has fully fer­mented. Partly this is because I write so fast when I am on the first draft that I miss good oppor­tu­ni­ties. It’s only in sub­se­quent drafts that I can tweak the machin­ery of story into a form that actu­ally runs.

When I first started out writ­ing, I was with Heinlein all the way. One draft, and be done with it. And I sold a cou­ple. I also never sold dozens. When you think about it, was that really mak­ing me any more money as a writer? Almost cer­tainly not. It’s prob­a­bly a wash, if I sat down to fig­ure it out.

These days, I not only redraft and redraft, I also sit on sto­ries for months or years. Yesterday, I broke out a story that I wrote almost 2 years ago and began revis­ing. It’s prob­a­bly now on draft 5 or 6. And it’s most likely still not there.

These days, I’m much more con­cerned with mak­ing money from my writ­ing than I was before. That’s because I have no reg­u­lar source of income. So I’m look­ing at the Heinlein way again. It’s wish­ful think­ing though. I’m not a first draft writer, and that’s okay. Even if my hourly wage works out to be some­thing akin to min­i­mum wage, it’s still bet­ter work than just about any job that actu­ally pays min­i­mum wage. Unless that job has health insurance.

What’s your approach to revis­ing? What’s the longest you’ve ever tin­kered with a piece before send­ing it out?

Similo: An SF Short Film

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

This is snurched straight from Irene Gallo’s excel­lent blog Tor​.com.  It starts out a lit­tle slow, but I think the pay­off is worth it.  And fan­tas­tic pro­duc­tion val­ues all around.

Diamonds in the Sky: Free Hard SF Anthology

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

The anthol­ogy of astron­omy sto­ries I’ve been work­ing on for the last year or two, off and on, is finally com­pleted and avail­able: Diamonds in the Sky.

The anthol­ogy is free and you can go there now and read the sto­ries, most of which are orig­i­nal but a few of which are reprints from Analog or Asimov’s. Contributors include Hugo and Nebula award win­ning authors. Each story focuses on one or two key ideas from astron­omy and should have some edu­ca­tional value, but are hope­fully first and fore­most sim­ply enter­tain­ing and good qual­ity sto­ries. The project was funded by the National Science Foundation as a pub­lic edu­ca­tion and out­reach effort, and I’d like to reach as many read­ers as pos­si­ble so please spread the word!

via Mike Brotherton: SF Writer.

I did the web­site for Diamonds over a year ago.  This one has been a long time in the works, but it’s now finally live!

iPhones and SF

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Has any­one thought about try­ing to build an iPhone appli­ca­tion that is a deliv­ery method for an e-​​zine? Solely dis­trib­uted as an iPhone/​iTouch app?  What kind of fic­tion would work best when read solely on an iPhone/​Touch?  What kind of fea­tures would an app need to be an effec­tive e-​​reader for short fic­tion?  These are ques­tions I am ask­ing myself tonight.

I’ve spent some time this week­end think­ing about writer/​photographer use­ful appli­ca­tions that I could develop for the iPhone.  I’ve got a slowly grow­ing list. Now I just need to learn Objective C.  Well, and C in gen­eral.  And pro­gram­ming in general.

Okay, so I am not the best guy for this.  I should find a devel­oper and go into busi­ness with them.

Book 2009 #3: Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I can’t help but think this book would have had a big­ger impact on me if I had read it before Obama was elected.  It’s a great overblown rant against all the hor­ri­ble things DHS has done in the name of pro­tect­ing us.  It’s a decently writ­ten book with mod­er­ately inter­est­ing geek char­ac­ters fight­ing the good fight and using wire­less to do it (sound­ing sus­pi­ciously famil­iar?).  So Cory’s hot­but­ton issues show more than a lot of other writers–I don’t really mind because I share most of those inter­ests myself.  I wanted to like this book more than I did, and I liked it quite a bit, but the res­o­lu­tion is what even­tu­ally made me put it in the “not sure” pile.  I’m going behind a cut to talk about more in case you don’t want the end­ing spoiled. Continue read­ing ›

Book 2009 #2: The Devil You Know by Mike Carey

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I’ve been aware of Mike Carey for some time now, as the writer of a good run on the Hellblazer comic (which you prob­a­bly only know of as that abor­tion of a movie Constantine) as well as the writer of Lucifer (which I wasn’t a big fan of.  Nothing wrong with it really, just not my bag).  As far as I know, this is Carey’s first novel, and it’s a very good one.

Felix Castor is an exor­cist liv­ing in London.  In his world, it’s just some­thing you’re born to do, or not.  And he was born with the capac­ity.  Felix has some friends, some bad his­tory, and no money.  Sound famil­iar?  Felix is your arche­typ­i­cal down-​​on-​​his luck pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor, only he gets rid of ghosts instead of solve mys­ter­ies.  At least at first, but even­tu­ally you know he’s gonna solve a mys­tery.  And he does, and it’s quite satisfying.

I often gripe about the mem­o­ra­bil­ity of SF/​F char­ac­ters by chal­leng­ing peo­ple to name ten mem­o­rable SF/​F char­ac­ters by name.  Then I ask them to name ten char­ac­ters from the works fo Charles Dickens.  It’s an exercise–in what, I’m not sure, and I’m pretty sure John Joseph Adams put me onto it.  In any case, Felix Castor has an inter­est­ing name, so he’s got one foot out of the “for­get­table char­ac­ters” grave already.  Through the course of the book, you come to like this schmuck.  He means well. He screws up a lot, he gets the everlov­ing shit beaten out of him (then he gets laid–the gumshoe karmic bal­ance restored), and even­tu­ally he solves the mys­tery and every­one is happy.  Sort of.

If you like hard­boiled detec­tive sto­ries, then you will like The Devil You Know.  If you like super­nat­ural thrillers that don’t nec­es­sar­ily involve peppy blonde women with super­nat­ural tat­toos on their lower backs (per­fect for the book cover), then you’ll prob­a­bly like this as well.  It’s out in paper­back, and a sec­ond book in the series is cur­rently out in hard­back. I don’t think I’m going to be able to make the wait.

Book 2009 #1: Liberation by Brian Francis Slattery

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

The first book I have read for 2009  prob­a­bly shouldn’t count.  I started it in 2008.  But I set the rules and I have decided that it is books fin­ished in 2009 that count.  Maybe  I will finally get through War and Peace after all this time.  Unlikely.  The Russian authors have rarely done much for me.  Although, now that I think about it, Crime and Punishment gave me some nasty night­mares in high school.  Something about a bloody ham­mer. No bloody ham­mers here, but there sure was a lot of blood in general.

So I read the rather long titled Liberation: Being the Adventures of the Slick Six After the Collapse of the United States of America by Brian Francis Slattery. I picked this one up after hav­ing seen the really inter­est­ing cover a cou­ple of times at the book store and read­ing the back copy.  I wasn’t quite sold, but then Cory over at BoingBoing posted a glow­ing Doctorowian review and­con­vinced me to give it a shot.  Speaking of  Cory, I think I’ll put Little Brother up on the chop­ping block next.  I’ve been mean­ing to get to that for a while and I sus­pect the­mat­i­cally it’ll go down well after the six course meal of this book.

Sheesh, that’s a lot of words with­out actu­ally talk­ing about the book itself isn’t it?  I was talk­ing with Nick Mamatas about this one and he said he thought it read like bud­get Pynchon.  I’ve never read any Pynchon but I trust Nick knows what he’s talk­ing about.  I’m actu­ally look­ing for­ward to read­ing some Pynchon now based on that com­par­i­son.    (Finally, I address the book itself, eh?)

Yeah, I liked this one for a lot of rea­sons.  The prose is wan­der­ing and wild and full of words that go together like choco­late and peanut but­ter.  Just some great writ­ing here, and it breaks rules of POV and such in lovely ways that just make every­thing slightly sur­real, and yet still grounded.  This is sci­ence fic­tion, but there are ghosts.  Are they metaphor­i­cal? I guess you could say that.  If this weren’t genre, you wouldn’t even ask that ques­tion though.

Post eco­nomic col­lapse America sounds a hell of a lot more ghoul­ish than I imag­ined it per­son­ally.  For one, Slattery sees slav­ery com­ing back.  I had a hard time buy­ing that at first but it does make a kind of grue­some sense.  I hope he’s wrong if things ome to that.

The main char­ac­ter here is really America (post col­lapse, but our his­tory as well).  Everyone else, espe­cially the pro­tag­o­nists, are just sup­port­ing cast.  That’s not to say they aren’t well-​​characterized.  I’ll prob­a­bly remem­ber Marco in par­tic­u­lar for years to come. But I like a book with a broad char­ac­ter like that once and a while.  It’s some­thing I would love to pull off some day, as I work to grow as a writer.

And every­thing here is so fuck­ing cool.  It’s almost Beats cool.  The Slick Six are very slick, very suave and I think there’s almost a comic book atmos­phere at play here.  They’re larger than life in some ways, par­tic­u­larly Marco (espe­cially Marco).   It’s so weird to me that Slattery has made his post-​​collapse America seem cool, but it really is.  Bursting with weird­ness and cool.  There’s a scene in par­tic­u­lar that I am think­ing of, involv­ing a con­fronta­tion between Marco and an assas­sin that is just great and so so cool.

Also, the villain’s name is the Aardvark which may be more ridicu­lous than cool, but I liked that.  What kind of vil­lain goes by that istead of the Hammerhead or the Wolf or some­thing suit­ably fright­en­ing?  Aardvark is not a word that strikes fear in any­one unless you hap­pen to be an ant.

This book will stick with me for a while, I think.  I am def­i­nitely look­ing for­ward to the next one by Slattery.  I may even read this one again, more care­fully this time, to enjoy the prose at my leisure.  I rec­om­mend this one if you like post-​​apocalyptic fic­tion, gonzo style road trip nov­els, or ninjas.