The Self-Taught Immagineer

[phantasm]

Hello, World.

This is something new I'd like to try out. Everybody and their cat seems to be blogging these days so I thought I'd give it a shot.

Right now, this is just for practice, to get a hang of the sorts of things people do in their blogs.

[phantasm]

The appetite grows for what it feeds on.

Reality can be boring.

I grew up in a big house with a big backyard in suburbia and went to school in the public school system. My dad tried to turn me on to baseball, but for some reason it just didn’t stick. Most TV shows set in the real world were boring. Stuff like 90210 or Magnum, P.I. I quickly developed a low tolerance for sitcoms. I find the vast majority of sitcoms banal, shallow, and mostly predictable. The stuff we’re surrounded with in normal reality couldn’t hold my attention.

What I did find attractive when I was a child:
* Science fiction: books, TV shows, movies; sf-themed Atari and Nintendo games
* The Bible
* Mythology
* Ancient history
* The sciences-- esp. the hard sciences I learned about in school; school also broadened my palate into the soft sciences as well

I was especially attracted to anything that had the label ‘science fiction’ on the label or the spine of the book. I went so far, I would only consider reading or watching a piece of fiction if it had the label ‘science fiction’ on it somewhere. I didn’t discriminate much, either. It didn’t matter to me if it was superhero stories like Superman or Batman, or if it was about humans enhanced with cybernetic body parts. It could have been set in the ancient city of Atlantis or on a planet hundreds of light-years away from Earth. The further away from our lived reality, the better.

I do not recall the first time I saw a Star Trek episode. I do remember watching an episode when I was 4 years old: “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield.” I have the impression I was familiar with Star Trek by that age, although the social commentary was lost on me. The thing I really cared about was that humans were traveling among the stars in the far future.

I was mildly disappointed with Dr. Who in the 1980s.

I had an intense spiritual experience watching ST:TNG “Encounter At Farpoint” when I was 8 years old.

Shortly thereafter, I went absolutely nuts over anything classified as science fiction. I became a really big reader. I was checking out sf books from the local library constantly. A lot of those books were forgettable and I only read the vast majority of them once. But every book that I read fed my craving for sf and taught me where sf could go and what it was capable of. I sought out as much sf on TV as I could, too. My parents never chose to buy a VCR, so any movies I caught I had to see when a cable channel ran an sf movie.
When I was 10 years old, I was given carte blanche for a writing assignment in school. What did I choose to write about? You guessed it, sf. I created a spacecraft about 4 times the size of a typical station wagon, maybe somewhat bigger than that. Then, after I designed the ship in my imagination, I invented a guy named Ace and sent him across the stars to have endless adventures.

I didn’t stop when the writing assignment in school ended, though. I kept on writing that story straight through summer of 4th grade. And then I kept going, through 5th grade and for many years to come.

After going at it for several consecutive years, I gave Ace a traveling companion named Starr, a girl. Except, she wasn’t really a girl. Well, she started out that way, she was born human but then she met an alien species that enslaved her and downloaded her consciousness into a swarm of nanites so she would be a more efficient slave but then she met Ace and they managed to escape her alien overlords and ran away to--

Oh, excuse me.

The point is that one school project from way back when was the start of me becoming a writer. It became my creative outlet. Eventually, as I grew older I decided to take on other projects as well. Every writing project I have ever taken on has given me a great deal of joy, one way or another. It gave me enough hope to envision myself one day becoming a published writer myself.

And so here I am today, self-teaching myself to become a science fiction writer, bootstrapping myself into becoming a better, more rigorous writer. I am nowhere near perfect. I have a lot to learn. I am progressing into becoming a more creative person.
So here’s a stepping stone on my journey-- a snippet of one of my works-in-progress. I’m nowhere near done with the story, but I think it’s off to a halfway decent start.


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The stars shine bright and steady in the deep dark, cold forever of deep space, unwinking. The stars endure, epoch after epoch, until they die as nova or collapse and become black holes. As for the human eye, they seem to never change, indomitable, immovable, consuming their fuel so slowly that they seem to be eternal. Living things gaze on light that has traveled for countless ages and they marvel.

At least, that’s what Captain Jeffrey Ea/Seiden tells himself as he looks out his private view port. Even after spending years in space, the scene never gets old. He has seen much and traveled far in his ship, the UESV 121 Trailblazer. The sleek arrowhead-shaped vessel has only seen a few star systems so far, but he and his crew have seen a great deal more than most people do in their entire lifetimes.

In truth, there isn’t much life in the universe, at least not the kind they want to find, not close to Earth. Precious few forms of life have anything more than a simplistic brain. Life is beautiful and life is ubiquitous, but almost all of it is primitive, at best. The life he and his crew have found so far in their journeys inspires awe and wonder, but they do not inspire it back in the objects of their study. Right now, that fact makes Jeffrey feel hollow on the inside. He gazes out on the universe, the smell of coffee wafting up into his nostrils. He gazes at the stars, wondering if there’s anything out there staring back at him. Perhaps somewhere, out there, in another galaxy, impossible for them to ever reach. A seemingly simple journey from one star to another within our own sector is fraught with more than enough difficulty.
Jeffrey goes through the motions of powering down and cleaning his cryogenic suspension bed. He does it absentmindedly. He memorized the procedures long ago. As he finishes up, he feels the entire room shudder for about 12 seconds. He clenches his jaw. He hates the rough transition his ship goes through as it makes or unmakes a gravitational warp bubble. The last few times have been rougher than they had to be. No matter how well they keep the ship’s systems tuned, popping the warp bubble has become fraught with difficulty.

Jeffrey gets over his brief flash of anger. He looks up and as he closes the lid on the cryogenic bed. He can’t wait to get to the bridge and see the Teegarden star system. If all has gone well, they will be in orbit around Teegarden b in about 45 minutes. That’s when the real fun begins.

The P.A. system cuts open. “Captain to the bridge. We’re approaching Teegarden’s Star.”

Absentmindedly, Captain Jeffrey Ea/Seiden touches a button on his ear piece. “Thank you, Alon. I’ll be right there.” Fifteen footfalls between his quarters and the door to the bridge. That’s more than enough time to summon command presence to project around him on the bridge.

He slides the door open and strides onto the bridge. “Thanks, Alon. You’re relieved.”
“I stand relieved.” With that, Jeffrey’s first officer gets out of his chair and walks off the bridge. Jeffrey takes the seat. As he eases himself into the chair, his lieutenant gives him a status report before he he asks for one.

Lieutenant Fenis says, “Warp bubble is degrading at the rate we calculated it ought to when we set course for Teegarden, sir. The bubble will be weak enough to pop in a few minutes. I’ll take us out of warp between the orbits of Teegarden b and c so we don’t accidentally smash into either planet. I’m going to try to time it to minimize travel time to planet b, though.”

“Good. Pop the warp bubble whenever you’re ready, Fennis.” After serving together all these years, Jeffrey has become accustomed to his crew anticipating his orders. It makes his crew work like the well-oiled machine they’ve become. Jeffrey touches the button on his ear piece and speaks to the ship’s crew. He can hear his voice echoing in the halls just outside the bridge. “Now hear this: Science division, prepare for your first good look at Teegarden b. You all know what to do, people. We’re about to pop the warp bubble.” There’s just one problem: he can hear static and his voice warble all over the place over the P.A. system. He mutes his ear piece, drops his hand, and sighs. “Damn it, not now.”
He strides over to a panel on his left, embedded into the wall of the bridge. He taps it lightly with the palm of his hand four times, then gives it a quick, hard slap. The panel seems to hum and come alive. Some of the lights stop flickering. As he paces back and forth behind the pilot’s console, he repeats his message and this time it comes through loud and clear. He turns off his connection to the P.A. system.

“Goddamn flea trap,”Jeffrey growls. “Almost every system on this ship has been becoming more and more buggy over the last few years.”
“Hey!” Fennis shouts. He turns his chair around to face his captain and speaks candidly. “This flea trap of yours has brought us this far, and it’s going to take us all home. You have no right, sir. Jackson keeps this ship in as good a condition as he humanly can and you know that.”
Jeffrey sighs. “I’m sorry, Fennis. I am just sick of that damn comm system going on the fritz. Seems it always works, except for when I need it the most. May we have better luck popping the warp bubble.”

“Everything will work out just fine, sir. The old girl’s not going to let us down now. Okay. Initiating breaking maneuver. And… popping the warp bubble— now.”

The entire ship shakes. The deck under their feet rattles for ten seconds, then 20, then 30. After the 30 second mark several alarms go off on the pilot’s console. The captain stares at his pilot intently.

“Fennis, what was that you were saying about our old girl?”
“I don’t understand it, we should’ve popped the warp bubble by now!”
“Yeah well, we haven’t!”

About eight seconds after Jeffrey says this, the ship’s artificial intelligence, Mother, automatically turns on the display screen. They’re out of the warp bubble and hurtling towards the planet. It looms extremely large on the display. A marble of blue ocean and brown continents is beneath them. Already, Mother is dropping the magnetic shield and making certain the deadly radiation created from popping the warp bubble is shot past the planet and into deep space,dissipating the radiation and avoiding the destruction of all life on the planet.

The captain says, “Fennis, what the hell just happened?”
“No idea, sir. Oh, shit. We’re coming in too fast. It took too much time to pop the warp bubble. We’re too close to Teegarden b. We’re going to hit her atmosphere in ten seconds, sir!”
“Tip our nose up! Now!”
“Trying, but there’s no guarent—”

With that, the Trailblazer enters the atmosphere of Teegarden b. It strikes the atmosphere with the fore-point of the arrowhead
at a 45-degree angle, pointed towards the surface.

The ship’s A.I., Mother, tries to adjust the ship’s SmartArmor to deflect as much heat as possible, but the atmosphere is too thick. Already, the heat is damaging the armor and raising the cabin’s ambient temperature.

“Shit,” Jeffrey says. He turns on his ear piece. “All hands, the ship is traveling through Teegarden b’s atmosphere. Brace for impact, I repeat, brace for impact!” But it is not enough warning and he knows it. He immediately sits down in the captain’s seat and braces himself. At least his message got out to the crew crisp and clear.
Jeffrey says, “Just tell me we’ll exit the atmosphere and get back into orbit!”

“I can’t do that sir. We’re going in and I can’t do much about it. We’re already supercharging the atmosphere with heat. There’s some serious ionization going on out there. I’m performing an S-curve to regulate our descent, but I can only do so much.”

Jeffrey gets on the ship’s intercom. “Now hear this: we are going in for a crash landing. I repeat, we are steering the ship for a crash landing.” He can hear his voice warble outside the bridge, but the crew should’ve picked up on all the most important words.

The heat is propagating through the hull into all the ship’s systems, and no one can do a thing about it. The ship’s insulation, designed to capture the internal heat their equipment generates and convert it into electrical power, is overloading all of the ship’s systems. Everything the ship needs that runs on electricity is being fried. The Pathfinder is engulfed in flames, headed deeper into the atmosphere.

The arrowhead fore of the ship is practically glowing white hot. Jeffrey pities anyone who has a window-seat view of this moment in their lives. It looks like hell out there, and that’s with the view screen at his disposal. The ship is hurtling towards the surface of the planet, a spear head being thrust towards the surface like an ancient weapon, a relic of a shape, yet cutting edge of humanity’s knowledge when the Pathfinder was launched. They are about to crash-land on an alien world. They’re about to find themselves in an alien environment and they didn’t even get to survey the whole surface of the planet before they crash-landed. That is going to become a problem.
Even as chaos roils outside the ship, the captain is considering how he’s going to hold the crew together in this current disaster. He wishes he could feel the confidence they’ll need to survive whatever might be waiting for them on the surface. Because captains are only human, but at the end of the day their crews expect them to be more than human. Captain Jeffrey Ea/Seiden wonders what awaits them on the surface of this world.

[darkness0within]

Hi Phantasm.

First to your story. That has a lot of promise. it reads well to me, and certainly peeked my interest whilst reading.

I too love Science fiction in its many forms. One of my many favourite films is Forbidden planet. A 1950's classic in my book. and one I'm surprised has not been remade to date. If anyone has not seen it I recommend you take a look. the story line is taken out of a Shakespeare play. A young Leslie Nielsen plays the ships captain in a strait role. and not forgetting Robbie the robot in his first role. Actually a morality tale of sorts.

I saw Star Trek TOS at the time of release in the sixties in the UK.

Anyway good luck with your blog.

[phantasm]

Thanks for the comment, darkness0within.

It's good to know there are other people out there who like a wide variety of sf, and not just stick to one or two writers they know and love.
(btw, I think the word you were reaching for is 'piqued,' not 'peeked.')

[phantasm]

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

Scientists spend their lives analyzing the minute detail of bark on trees.
SF writers spend their lives dreaming in the woods.

Within my lifetime, American culture seems to have always valued feelings and emotions a great deal. It's hard to say how much people valued our present day values, say, 150 years ago. Traveling down that path will lead to constant, vehement argumentation. A wide variety of people will go to extreme lengths to protect their sense of ownership over the past, that our ancestors thought and felt precisely the same way we do today. But we can say our current language is riven with feelings and emotions.

We Americans are more likely to say, "I feel like the boss is being unfair to me." We say, "I think the boss is being unfair to me" far less often.
Many of our best pop and rock songs are about being in love, or about unrequited love, or about the singer processing his or her feelings about being in love.
Much of this language is justified. As human beings, part of our nature is emotional. However, some people are more emotional than others, and allow their emotions to rule their lives. Some of us seem to manage to cultivate a relatively even keel. Enthusiasm can be an extremely powerful tool for shaping the life you want to live. Sometimes it is even necessary.

However.

I personally have a problem with the shape modern American culture has taken. We lean far too heavily on our emotional states to get work done. The culture of artistic expression seems to be an accurate reflection of the wider culture. All this language of passionate feeling doesn't leave much room for calm thinking.

There is a time for all things under heaven.
There is a time to allow your heart to lead the way.
There is also a time for the mind to be in charge.

Sometimes, enthusiasm sputters and gets throttled by circumstances beyond your control. Or the emotion naturally fades with time. If enthusiasm is your fuel, there will be times when you run out of gas. It is inevitable. Sometimes, the cold light of rationality can lead you out of the dark places you will occasionally find yourself stumbling through.
In my own creative work, I have found that enthusiasm alone is not enough. The heart is a fickle instrument. A rationally constructed plan can be a far better instrument, especially when you find your enthusiasm for a project waning. All you have to do is take the next sensible step, whatever that step might be. No matter how you’re feeling about the project at the moment, you just do the next item on your list. If I used enthusiasm as rocket fuel to live my life, as American culture seems to tell me I should, I would have abandoned my writing long ago. I don’t know where I would be at this point in my life if I had listened to that advice.

Rationality helps you to stick with a project when your emotions fail you.

[phantasm]

One thing I wonder about is how I write my stories. Specifically, the piece of a chapter I offered above was written in the present tense.

Most fiction is written in the past tense. It is the traditional way to get the job done. However, when I was growing up, from time to time I read books that were written in the present tense.

I liked reading those stories. I remember the joy those stories gave me at the time. Those books were a lot of fun, even if I don't recall the names of writers or the titles of the books anymore. It showed me that there was more than one way a novelist could write books.

Past tense dominates the fiction market. These works of fiction stand in a vein of tradition that goes back a few centuries by now. The narrator, weather they're standing outside the story or inhabit the story along with the other characters, are usually reflecting on an event that is in the past from the narrator's perspective.

Present tense delighted me when I was a child, to the extent that I noticed it when it was happening. I liked the sensation that the events I was reading about were in the process of happening, not already happened in the past. I had the sense of the eternal now-- that whatever page I was reading, the events and the dialogue were/are happening now. I didn't have a preference for present tense over past tense. I liked reading both equally.

However.

In my own writing, I have a strong tendency to write in the present tense, especially for my first drafts. I'm not sure what I want to do about that. When writing your first draft, your first duty is to yourself and to the ideas in the story you're writing. Then you can edit to your heart's content. That's when I start wondering. Should I keep the present tense tone of the story, or should I try to "translate" it into past tense? If I do the latter, it's just one more thing I have to do to get the story into shape. If I do the former, some people may get frustrated with my choice, toss my books and walk away. They will never really know what the story is like.

First and foremost, I write for myself. I need to find my own work satisfactory.

But my goal to be a published writer is important to me. I want people to read my books. I want to be known and read. Maybe even liked for the fiction I produce.

It's hard to know how to balance my wants and desires with the way the world is and how my work might be received by the world. The world I'm really talking about isn't Earth generally; the word is more like a shorthand for America and the (post) modern West, and more or less anyone who speaks English as a first language.

To be honest, the world is full of a wide variety of people. I have no doubt that at least a small number of people will like my work. I also have no doubt that I will face haters, loudmouths, bigots, and people who love to criticize anyone they judge as deficient. Some people will speak up about my work. They might love it. They might hate it. Other people will read quietly in their nooks and corners and moderately like my work, and say nothing online about my books one way or another.

All I know is, I want to write books.

[heartfelt7]

I think you already are a writer, Phantasm. Have you submitted any of your work or ideas or short stories to any publishers? Go for it. You want to write books? That's your Heart talking. 😊

[phantasm]

Thanks, Heartfelt. Actually, getting some kind of published is one of my ultimate goals.

I strongly suspect getting traditionally published by one of the major New York firms is not for me. I don't consciously have a 'target market' in mind.

I'm more or less writing for people, in general. Not explicitly for children or teenagers. Just people. Adults, more or less. And the science fiction label will attract certain kinds of readers, sure.

I may well try to find some other route to get my stuff out there. Maybe a small time press. Maybe Amazon.com. Maybe I won't publish paperback books right out of the gate. Considering the cost of paper for publishing a hard copy book that's a sensible route, probably.

[phantasm]

“Unless you are educated in metaphor, you are not safe to be let loose in the world.”
 — Robert Frost

    The world is a peculiar place, and I think it has been for as long as I can remember. I think it's been a peculiar place since beyond living memory.

    People have always wanted to tell stories, it seems. People have told stories to entertain and amuse one another, to put their children to bed, to express deeply felt and perceived spiritual truths.

    There was a revolution in storytelling when people invented writing. It was invented in a few different places, but Egypt, Babylon and China are probably the most notable examples, although something like writing also eventually arose in the Americas.

    There was another revolution in storytelling when the printing press was invented. Actually, it was invented twice. Apparently, the Chinese got there first. And then it showed up in Europe as well. Maybe the Europeans borrowed the idea of the thing from the East; maybe they invented it from whole cloth independently. Who knows? The point is, we have printing now.

    For easily a couple hundred years now in the modern West, people have been creating these new things called novels. It seems every year more novels are being put out into the world. Also, some novels fall out of print. These novels are documents concerning people and places that do not exist in reality. Some forms of fiction are adjacent to our current lived reality. Others describe stuff in the past, or far away from where we live. Yet others are more fantastical, describing worlds where wild and crazy things are possible.

    So..........

    There were chiefly two things that turned me on to reading. The first was the Bible, and my mother's beliefs about reading the Bible. The second was children's fiction books. Once I started reading, I loved it. I craved it. I couldn't get enough of it.

    Go to a Christian bookstore, or to any secular bookstore for that matter. There's usually a table or someplace in the stacks where you can find the vast majority of Bible translations. This is a most peculiar phenomenon. A group of people called Christians regard this one collection of stories, The Holy Bible, as a sacred gift of God. But they translate it and re-translate it ad infinitum. Well, the thing is, the Bible wasn't originally composed in English so you need a team of translators, yes, a team of people, to translate the thing into modern English.

    Then, weather you're in a Christian or secular bookshop, there is another section of books classified as fiction. There are also innumerable other kinds of books to be had in these institutions, as well, from biography to travelogues to history to narrative nonfiction. But, I am partial to novels, to books that exist in worlds that in some ways are very different from our world, especially stories set far in the future.

    So-- what's the point of all this?

    Were the hell am I going with these lines of thought? What the hell is all this stuff, anyway? It's just thinly sliced pieces of trees with ink printed on them.

    It seems like there is a major market for these collections of thinly sliced trees covered in ink.

    What's been happening since sometime in the early 20th Century is some people are attracted to certain books, and other people are attracted to other kinds of books. Now we're getting into a phenomenon called genre. As copies of books multiply, and as more books are written, there seems to be a need to classify books by their content. There sure are certain benefits to a classification system. It helps you find what you're looking for a heck of a lot faster than you would if you had to cast about in a room full of books piled high with every kind of book you can imagine.

    And wherever there are markets, there is money involved.

    So to maximize profits, we classify books and chop up the entire corpus of written material produced thus far into different territories. The vast forest of books, standing tall and proud in the world, has been almost completely colonized by profit-seekers.

    But the world of ideas is not like the surface of the Earth. The world of ideas is almost limitless. There is always more territory to explore, to settle, to... exploit.

What's been happening in the world of books, as well as in other media, is a lot of people see new territory discovered and then there's a land grab for ideas. A book about werewolves and sexy vampires gets published? All of a sudden that book gets several dozen imitators. A movie made in 1977 featuring space craft, cyborgs and artificial intelligence gets made, and before you know what's hit you there are imitators and knock-offs galore. Oh, and that original '77 movie spawns more movies that are more or less a coherent continuation of the original story.

    All this mad scrambling for intellectual territory has created a certain atmosphere. People write books specifically for a certain market. For a certain demographic. For people with a certain interest. That means giving people what they want, or at least, what a producer of a book thinks a certain group of people want. They're imitating whatever already exists out in the world of books.

    To some extent, I sympathize with people who are imitating a current literary trend. They wish they had thought of that book or movie and now they're butt-hurt.

    However. It bothers me that there is so much out there that's imitative of other stories that have gone before. There isn't a lot of innovation. Some, but not much. A lot of tinkering with other people's ideas, making their own ideas different enough to avoid copyright violations. There are more books in the world than ever before, true. Absolutely. Our culture is so enriched by having all these stories at our fingertips. But. A lot of people are playing it safe. Too safe. Commercial concerns have, it seems, taken over completely. There are too many trilogies out there. Too many series. A lot of books are sequels of other books. There are sequels of sequels. There are also prequels. There are alternate universes.

    No one wants to take a risk on a new story anymore. No one seems to want to write a stand-alone novel that needs no sequels. No one ever wants a 'good thing' to come to an end. That's normal, that's human. but we're also going around in circles, going over similar material over and over again.

    As much as I would like to be commercially successful, I am not 'writing to market.' First and foremost, I am writing for myself, although one of my goals is for my work to be available to the general public. I want to be read by other people.

    But, first and foremost, I am writing stories that interest me. Bearing that in mind, here is another story I'm working on..............

   

[phantasm]

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    For 3000 years, the Ancient city of Anash Vai has stood tall and proud, standing against an alien rain forest on an alien world, the planet Onadeias. A yellow sun shines down on the city, softly illuminating it. A wind blows in from the East, gently swaying the branches of the plants and passing through the streets of the city. There is a faint scent of the ocean on the wind, saturated with the sweetness of two hundred varieties of flowers of the rain forest, flowers blooming a hundred different shades of every imaginable color. There is a cacophony of the buzz of a thousand insects filling the air, insects preying on the plants or each other.
    In the afternoon heat of a midsummer’s day, five great skyscrapers rise from the center of the city. Four of them surround a much taller central superstructure, each of them to its north, south, east and west. The five hexagonal great towers of light grey metal and clear glass glisten in the humid air of blue skies and white, puffy clouds. Each face of the polished panes of glass faces out. Each facet of the hexagons provides the occupants with either a stunning vista of the city, or an equally impressive scene of their sister towers. Together, they dominate the skyline. They are the Crown of Anash Vai.
    Each of the hexagon towers are separated by a good deal of space, surrounded on all sides by private homes, shops, street vendors, and public services.
Many of these buildings have persisted for generations, and are perfectly square or rectangular, no more than one or two stories tall. Other structures, built in the last 150 years or so, are hexagonal. These buildings are usually three to six stories tall, the shops and homes reaching for the sky, aspiring to be just like their taller siblings. The architects were deliberately imitating the crown of Anash Vai. Some homes and businesses built in this style are still under construction, surrounded by cranes and day laborers, and building materials like lightweight wood, glass, brick and steel.
    A wide road cuts through the forest, connecting Anash Vai with other nearby cities. The road and the city have seen eons of traffic, and yet they endure. People of all ages and walks of life travel the road that has carved a way through the rain forest, on foot or riding on bicycles. Most of them come from the next town over, hauling their wares to sell in the city. Insects swoop down on the passers-by, biting them or sucking their blood from time immemorial.
Far above the heads of the people on the road, great air ships come and go, ponderously and majestically. Giant grey ovals made of canvas and thin bands of aluminum float on the wind, lighter than air, carrying vast loads of produce and product from one city to another, from one nation to another. And the people below take it all for granted. Only the youngest children gaze up at the airships, pointing and gawking, trying to get the attention of their mothers as the dock workers load and unload crates from the airships, down the pylons and onto the city streets.
    The streets of Anash Vai are full of activity, commotion and chatter. Entertainers juggle and perform tricks for their audiences. Musicians stand at street corners, playing their instruments and singing their songs. Troupes of actors perform their plays in the open air. People are constantly headed for restaurants or hitting the streets after a good meal. Street merchants raise their voices, advertising their fruit, fish, clothing, scarves, jewelry, art, photographs, and other products. All around, coins change hands, playing out a scene as old as civilization itself. And all over the city, there are soldiers on patrol traveling in teams of two, on the lookout for the smallest sign of criminal activity.

    One of those street merchants, Ayan Soltis, is energized by the crowds of people swarming in the streets, A.V. Credits passing through his hands. Ever since he begged his father to not give everything in the family business to his brother Liden, he and his brother have been running stationary booths in the streets, at opposite ends of the city. That was a fortuitous negotiation. Liden is three years older than he is, and he still got more than half of their father’s old business contacts. Sometimes, thinking about it still makes Ayan angry. But Ayan’s booth is doing better than he ever thought it would do.
    The sights and smells of the day are invigorating him. The day is beautiful. That is always good for business. The streets are choked with shoppers and merchants, shoulders sometimes rubbing against other shoulders as people stroll, saunter or jog down the streets, some of them pushing their babies in bamboo baby strollers. The chatter of the crowd sounds like a dull roar. Most people prefer to shop when the sky is bright and clear like it is now. Every time A.V. Credits exchange hands, his heart pumps a little bit faster. His profits are pretty decent. It’s more than enough to put money in his pocket.
    For a brief moment, he finds his mind wandering. He finds himself thinking of Nair and her perfect, golden smile. His life is looking pretty good right about now. Good enough to make plans for the near future. Good enough to start thinking about marrying Nair, buying a home, having a family. He can see himself spending the rest of his life with her.
    A customer comes up to his booth and says, smiling, “You better keep an eye on your money, my friend. Someone’s bound to steal from the till!”
    “Oh, Ichan, hi,” Ayan says, a bit embarrassed. He can feel his mind being pulled back down to the ground as he focuses his attention on the man. “Just a bit distracted. Picking up your usual?”
    “Yeah, that’s all I need for today.” Ayan hands over a box of nine pens and Ichan hands him the money. “See you next week,” Ichanat says.
As Ichan leaves, a mother navigating through the crowd pushes her four-year-old son on a stroller, passing by his booth. The child sees a pad of PermaPaper boasting bright colors of green, blue, red and orange. He grabs it off of Ayan’s booth. Ayan purposely keeps those products at just the right height to catch the eyes of children. His mother says, “No, Entis, you can’t have that.” The child flies into a petulant rage, crying and thrashing in his stroller chair. She tries to take the pad from her son, but he’s holding on too tight, it’s impossible to make him let it go. The mother sighs. She asks, “How much?”
    “It’s only ten steel pennies, ma’am.” She thinks about it for a brief moment. She looks down at her son and sighs reluctantly, “Okay, you can have it.” The child squeals with delight. The mother pays the price for her son’s impulsive behavior. Ayan adds the coins to his till. He gives a big, genuine smile to the child.
Ayan almost feels sorry for her. Almost, but not quite. He purposefully sells that product at only a few pennies for occasions like this one. As the steel pennies land in the palm of Ayan’s outstretched hand, he hears one of his friends shouting. “Hey Ayan, how’s business going?” Ayan looks down the street and smiles. He sees his good friend Sarnis Kania about ten paces away, making his way through the crowd, waving and walking towards him. Sarnis always has to do that to get Ayan’s attention somehow— he’s a bit shorter than most men.
    Ayan says, “Hi, Sarnis. Business is brisk, I’d say. Need anything from me today?”
    “Actually, while it’s on my mind, I do need a new pad of paper. I don’t need it to be high quality. All I need is some cheap, pulpy paper.” He selects a pad about the size of the palm of his hand and holds it up. “5 A.V. credits, right?”
“Right.”
    Sarnis immediately drops C* 5 into Ayan’s hand.
    “Mostly, though, I decided I’d drop by and see you,” Sarnis says. “I saw Nair earlier today in the fruits and vegetables market. Seeing her made me think of you.”
“Thanks for dropping by,” Ayan says, nodding his head appreciably. Sarnis waves his hand ‘good bye’ as he walks away.
As Sarnis walks away, Ayan’s mind wanders back to planning his future with Nair. As he thinks about her, he feels as if reality itself is more vivid. The spirits of the Ancestors are with him, he can feel them all around him. The power of the Ancients runs through his body like nothing he has ever felt before. He feels more alive now than he ever has before in his life. The future is so palpable. He feels like the future is within his grasp. He is in love with Nair, yes; he is also in envy with his brother Liden. He is thrilled at the possibility of pulling his life together before his brother does. He can feel the possibility and the power flowing through him and it’s exhilarating.
Nair. He loves Nair. He’s loved her more than any woman he’s met, any woman he’s thought about wanting. Something about her is so perfect. His love for her grows like a plant in the wild— its roots run all over the dirt, it raises its leaves like hands to the sun, worshipful of the light and warmth. The sun in the sky sustains it, gives it purpose, shooting up and growing like a weed. Life is an adventure, and he wants to live that adventure with Nair, no matter the cost, no matter what he has to do to keep her by his side.
    There is just one dark cloud looming on the proverbial horizon, and it’s a big one. Kyr Atran, the Great and Mighty Mayor of Anash Vai, leader of the Anash Dominion, is agitating for war against their neighbor, the Nation of Serenna. That is not good. At least Kyr Atran maintains an all-volunteer army. He and his brother are in no danger of being drafted. For the moment, at least.

[anirbas]

I've been reading through this blog of yours and I am quite enjoying both of the story excerpts!
As well as your thoughts on the craft of writing.

You know me, I am a half-assed sci-fi fan. I adore Robert H. Heinlein's work. Firefly, Serenity, the original Star Trek
and all its many off-shoots; love the first Star Wars efforts. Except for the inclusion of the teddy bear characters;
and Jar Jar Binks. Boring and silly. In my humble opinion.

Really got into the Raised by Wolves series on HBO. I have watched it twice, thus far.

Do you remember the one you shared years ago at an alternate universe of poetry? The storyline contained characters
that were angelic beings.

Well, mi compadre, I need to go catch some ZZZZZZZZ's with any luck.

[phantasm]

You're thinking of Armageddon Rising. Yeah I remember that thing.
I have it saved someplace, either a thumbdrive or on my computer. I'd have to do some digging to find it.

[phantasm]

If a thousand people tell you it's a rule, but if a thousand novels break this rule, it is not, and never was, a rule.

    I have lost count of the number of novels I have read since I first learned to read and read my first novels. Most of them fired up my imagination in some way. Even titles or cover art were evocative enough to spark my imagination and make me want to have that particular novel. The number of fiction books I have read at least once has got to be in the range of oh, perhaps 500? That's a guesstimate, and doesn't account for me re-reading books I liked enough to acquire and hold on to.

    Some people might point and say, "Only 500? I've read way more books than that and I'm half that guy's age!"

    Others might say, "Oh wow, you think you've read 500 books? That's incredible. I haven't read anywhere near that many in my entire life."

    However, the lion's share of those novels were sought out and read after I decided I wanted to be a novelist. That desire colors everything I have done with my life. While not entirely conscious, some of the time, I have pursued an artistic self-education. I (sometimes) asked myself questions like, "How would I write this scene differently? Does this sentence need 15 words, or could it be said in 12, 0r 10? Couldn't that paragraph be moved up towards the top of the page?" And other questions of that nature.

    It's the questioning that matters the most. Most ordinary readers simply allow themselves to fall into the slipstream of the story, to be carried forward by narrative momentum. For most people, the more they question the story in front of them, the worse the story is. I however have wanted more. I can enjoy a story as-is, sure. But I also have a tendency to question what I'm reading, on a semi-automatic basis. Even if it's a good story by a good writer, like Frank Herbert or J.R.R. Tolkien. It doesn't 'ruin' the story for me to see how the story is put together, how the story works.

    For my entire childhood and a good chunk of my adulthood, this was the one main tool in my toolbox to teach myself how novels worked and learn to write my own. I've struggled mightily to notice the invisibilia of good writing, the invisible substrate that makes a fictional story hum like a machine and flow like a river.

    Truly abysmal writers are actually quite hard to track down. In one way this is a really good thing for readers. There are a lot of relatively high-quality stories to be had out there in the culture. The gatekeepers running the publishing industry from New York and London and elsewhere have done a good job of screening out the less-than-stellar narratives and keeping them out of the public eye.

    However.

    This has created a difficult situation for me, however. Much of the fiction I read over the summers as a child was forgettable. Good enough, more or less, but not anything to gush to anyone about. Much of it was perfectly serviceable writing, just not anything that really soared, certainly not in a literary sense. Very few books were actually poorly written or constructed. This made it hard for me to figure out what good writing was composed of.

    Consider this situation in other professions.

   

    A surgeon studies only the best surgeries by the best surgeons. He never sees or hears about what a poorly-executed cut looks like.

    A cop only studies how to make an arrest. He never gets exposed to the possible social situations a crime is most likely to arise in.

    Does this make any sense to you? It sure doesn't make sense to me.

    In the last ten years, I can count on one hand the number of stories I've read that were  kind of "genuinely bad." Good ideas incompletely explored. Good ideas incompletely executed. Interesting situations that weren't quite painted right. I actually learned a great deal from reading those stories. And, by the way, each and every one of those stories was self-published in some way. I am also glad I read them. I learned a lot about the craft by reading those bad stories.

    Slowly but surely, I am learning, a little bit, what you need to do to write at least a halfway decent story. I am becoming a self-taught imagineer. I also know I have a long way to go before I can honestly say I've mastered the elements of fiction writing.

   

[anirbas]

Armageddon Rising. Bingo!

There are several of my older poems and stories I can no longer find at BNet U. They were archived in some dusty out reach bin. Haha.
A lot of it was shite. But, I remember certain pieces I'd like to revisit and tweak a bit more. Especially my "poetical epicals".

[phantasm]

An optimist expects his dreams to come true; a pessimist expects his nightmares to.

— Laurence J Peter, 1919-1990, Canadian writer & educator

A good deal of science fiction deals with the future. Sometimes it is simply taking trends the writer sees in the world and extrapolates a few years into the future, creating a context for the story the reader will readily accept. Other times it is projecting far into the future, anywhere from a few hundred years to a few thousand years.

In science fiction, specifically, we have a unique chance to create some vision of the future, no matter how grounded or outlandish it might be. SF is uniquely about the future. Every other genre of literature is about either the writer's present or some point in the past from the point the writer is writing.

However, when writers write their stories, they bring their ideas about the present they're living in with them. At the risk of sounding over-simplistic, there are two kinds of people in the world: optimists and pessimists.

There are many moods or flavors of SF.

More than any other single franchise, I love Star Trek. One of the many reasons I latched on to it is the optimistic vision of the future, that humanity will learn to solve all our problems as we head to the stars and make contact with other star-faring civilizations. The idea that our problems will not last forever and are solvable is a compelling one. I would argue this is the heart of good Star Trek. If and when Star Trek deviates from its' optimistic core, it ceases to be Gene Roddenberry's creation.

Ian M. Bank's Culture series of novels is a lot like Star Trek in spirit. I've read several books in this series. Both franchises depict a post-scarcity future.

Walter M. Miller, Jr's A Canticle for Leibowitz takes a cyclical approach to history, from the 26th Century, to 3174, to 3781. It occilates between optimism and pessimism, although pessimism seems to achieve the upper hand... eventually... at least until another cycle starts again.

H.G. Well's The Time Machine is ultimately ambivalent, considering the relationship between the Eloi and the Morlocks in the year 802,701 A.D.

Logan's Run, first a book and then made into a movie, has a pessimistic streak due to the artificially imposed law that everyone over 30 is fated to die at the hands of the state.

Alien, the movie made in 1979 that spawned a franchise, is famously pessimistic in the face of humanity being dominated by corporations.

A good deal of SF is pessimistic. I believe we need to take a stand against excessive, unwarranted pessimism. We need to preserve, protect, and cultivate optimistic views of the future in our literature. A dash of pessimism can bring us down to Earth and ground us; however we must also learn to imagine and create an optimistic future for ourselves and the human race.

Optimism and pessimism are both self-fulfilling prophecies. Optimism believes mankind's future will be brilliant. Pessimism believes mankind's future is inadequate.

Tell me, which kind of future would you rather live in?

[phantasm]

Be original. That's my best advice. You're going to find that there's something that you do well, and try to do it with as much originality as you can, and don't skimp on the words. Work on the words.

~ Bob Seger

    For about the last two to three years, I have been reading craft books about how to write novels. This is a relatively new habit for me, in the grand scheme of things. I've acquired some 30 or so craft books over this time period. A few of them are ebooks. The vast majority are physical books. A handful of them specifically target issues in writing sf. Most are geared for more generalized problems that most any fictional story faces: Point-of-view problems, characterization, plot, setting, world-building, etc.

    That's a heck of a lot of craft books.

    Everyone takes terms like "story," "book" and "narrative" and give these words their own proprietary definitions. I appreciate that. You have to define your terms before you can talk about problems. But no two writers give the same definitions for the same words. Especially for slippery terms such as:

Explication: Undesirable information for the reader.

Scene: A unit of writing with a beginning and an end that in itself is not isolable as a story.

Marker: Signals that that identify a character's gender, social class, heredity, or upbringing.

    I have taken the above terms from How To Grow A Novel by Sol Stein, an extremely well-known literary writer. Each of these above terms could take on a different definition if another writer was charged with defining them. Some definitions would no doubt be similar; other writers may use these terms in extremely different contexts.

    Also, a good deal of the advice floating around out there is for literary work, not genre work. Some of my books are of a genre bent. Most of the others are of a more literary bent. A lot of literary advice is geared towards the central characters of a story, and presume plot is an outgrowth of the character's strengths and flaws.

    After reading all these books, I find myself in a peculiar state:

    * I am becoming increasingly more educated to the nuances of writing fiction. I feel like I have learned a heck of a lot in the process.

    * I am getting a lot of different kinds of opinions as to what constitutes good writing. Some of these opinions are diametrically opposed to one another.

    * As a result, it is hard to determine which advice to listen to and which advice I should ignore.

    I find myself wishing there was one and only one book of advice for writers, a writer's "Bible" that everyone has to square with one way or another. I find my mind cluttered with too many different kinds of advice. There are too many different kinds of writing. It's hard to decide who I am supposed to listen to. It's hard to decide whose rule-book to follow.

     I have forced myself to mentally cull my collection, to set aside most of these craft books, and figure out on my own how to solve the problems I'm facing in the books I'm writing. I'm glad I am at the mental maturity level I'm at physically and neurologically-- it's helping me sort out everything I've been reading. The field would have utterly confused me when I was a teenager. Although there are probably a vast number of craft books on the market now, compared to when I was a teenager in the mid-90s.

    Ultimately, I have to do what I think is right for me and for the books I am writing. That's the only thing any writer can do.

[phantasm]

I am somewhat concerned about the future, generally. I have a raft of stories I'm interested in writing. But will anyone want to read what I've written?

I feel like I am behind, extremely behind. There are so many books I haven't read yet. Hell, so many that I haven't even heard of. My reading habits cast a wide net. I read a wide variety of books from several different time periods. I have read Well's The Time Traveler and War of the Worlds. I have read L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, Bank's Consider Phlebas, and Liu's The Third Body Problem.

I have been reading some fiction published since the turn of the millennium. Sadly, nowhere near enough. There are too many books. The culture moves too fast. There is no way I can keep up. Yes, I try to read a lot. But it never seems to be enough. I much prefer to own books than borrow from the local public library-- I may want to read that book again in the future, especially if it was a good book. Also, I prefer hard copy books over e-books. But, I don't have a lot of disposable income at this point in my life right now.

For getting my work out there, I am considering creating a website called weirdfiction.com or oddfiction.com, or some domain name in that vein. But is my work really THAT weird? In comparison to all the other work that's out there? I want to write about the far future, travel among the stars, settings on different planets. But that's a dime a dozen in the world of sf. That assessment is more than figurative.

There's a lot of stuff out there with genderfluid characteristics for characters. Relationships structured in weird ways. Characters that are transhuman, or post-human. And do you notice something? A lot of these trends are character-driven.

And here I am. I tend to build scenarios first, and then populate those scenarios with characters afterwards. Our environments shape us more than we know. So, that is where I prefer to begin the creative process.

I would like to break the mold on how we tell stories.

I want to see stories that don't conform to our usual expectations as to what a story "ought to be like."

I want to break the cookie-cutters that much of our fiction properties are mass-produced with.

I just don't know if the scenarios I create and the characters I populate them with will really be that unique. I don't know how far my stories will reach. As much as I would like to be well-read and well-known by other people, I'm not exactly counting on it. Mostly, I've been focused on writing the stories I am interested in writing, on creating stories I myself would like to read, not on filling an ecological niche in the literary environment that's being neglected.

Yes, the market helps create our work. It is also true that our work creates the market. We want what we want because we see it in the market of our consumer-driven society. Weather it's shoes, or a jacket, or a coffee mug; weather it's a painting or a photograph; or weather it's a pervasive idea like a religion or philosophy-- our thoughts, emotions and desires are influenced by whatever is floating around in the culture we're surrounded by.

What would it be like to live in a creator-driven society?

[phantasm]

A FEW IDEAS FROM MY IDEA BOX:

I have a file on my computer called my idea box. This is where I put all manner of deliberate thinking, random musings, and flashes in the brain pan. These are files, bits of files or ideas that I have come up with over about the last 10-15 years. Some are pretty old. Others are more recent. This is just a small sampling of ideas that have come to me over the years that I decided I'd like to share on this blog. Each of them is a different file, a different idea. The ideas below are not connected at all. They each exist in their own little worlds.

#1) Idea for an alien species: High Gravity Stocky Tripod
In general, their anatomy is a blocky/stocky build. Easily twice as tall as humans, on average 800 pounds of flesh and bone. Three arms to correspond with its’ three legs. Entire build is low and stocky. No long lankiness in its’ arms or legs. Sits on its’ legs like its’ built like a stool. Minimally jointed. Damn strong. Grew up on a Mega-Earth type of planet, just under 2 g gravity in comparison to Earth. Its’ torso looks like blocks stacked on one another, each module holds a cache of organs. Each module could also be home to a particular sense organ(s). Nice, solid unity. Anaerobic-- does not need oxygen. Mouths are in/on the hands. Not as prone to movement as we are.

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#2) Idea for a planet:

Former gas giant, now totally frozen, may not even have an atmosphere. It has planets and moons orbiting it like they have for millennia.

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#3) Idea for a story:

Gods and Men-- Humans and seemingly supernatural beings that look a lot like Humans live together in harmony, living their ordinary lives, in an integrated society. Humans and Gods perfectly capable of dealing with each other despite their differences. The Gods are the progeny of Humans who've chosen a path of bootstrapping their anatomy into super-human capabilities.

Possibilities for villains: A God who gets fed up with Humans and gets pushed over the edge

                                        A God who bootstraps himself into a state that he is so far above all others he can no longer relate

                                        A secret society of Humans who seek to destroy the Gods

[artolmaeus]

the flow, for me, you have bridged train of thought, especially here, with fully traveled and reasoned and felt arrivals.. you have aged them and worked them not in a distilled way, rather though in an influential way...as I read, it is not the things you have written, it is what they are writing in my imagination and much of that is far more feeling than word..well, it is worth reading....I am far more guarded and for the most I am no writer...David has this massive efficiency in his writings and his poems have left me for months trying to express what they ignite in me...well, as I read, I can feel the energy of your flow...whatever it is that I do, I have to say, Nir has a playful work with words and a well tended garden of vocabulary and this group has had affect on me...Aims is just earnest and willing to express feelings well ... the draw that I get from what I call my "principle" suppliers of writing has moved me to work through the forms I deal with in way too much train of thought....I always want to be able to hold my cognitive dissonance and get something more therapeutic than actual writing....you have a very good vulnerability in much of your writings as well, so much the urge to just throw out large blocks of rough marble on here, hoping someone would put a chisel to...
Dr. Who, I got initiated with Tom Baker, so of all, he is my Dr. Who for the most....but Rose, the sidekick, when they did the Bad Wolf, that was amazing...David Tenant drew me in powerfully as did Christopher Eccleston, for a one season guy, he had the most gravitas for me...I have tried to watch others and I just was never drawn by the others...I want to see Ncuti Gatwa as the 14th(14 is my number)not because he is the first of, but how the writers may pull it off. Oddly though, it was Rose who I miss her role and chemistry she added to the 9th....

I reflect on that because of some inner resistance I experience with this show, it kinda flows into everything else, in a good definition of the engagement I have had with life...Last night I wrote in about 3 minutes the one autowriting burst and I feel I see that it may be something I am connected or my subconsciousness giving me messages that it wants me to read. So I read that and late on a work night, I was only able to sleep, once I both wrote and read it, I feel it was all my symbology and train of thought that more than likely, is what I am documenting with these writings of mine, however, too much of what I do is my own train of thought that is rather inclusive with only me as a target audience.

Your writing, relates to me, it draws..but more than that, I get closer to just feeling rather than reasoning my own train ...like an inception...well, enough gushing and blathering mate, thank you for this particular work here.

[phantasm]

Wow. Thanks, artolmaeus. I appreciate everything you've said.