Creating a playlist for Weed season 1

Posted on by
Reply

I write to music. Sometimes instrumental, sometimes one particular song that I so associate with some aspect of the story, perhaps just the mood I want to create in myself as a write it, that I play that song to death, using “repeat item” in iTunes, sometimes listening to a single song a hundred times or more, which would be torture to anyone listening in, but which works for me.

A lot of authors create playlists to write to. My friend J.A. Pitts, author of the Sarah Beuhall urban fantasy series, diligently puts together a fresh playlist for each novel in the series. He’s now working on the fourth book, and has a new playlist created specifically for that novel. Playlists can give you an emotional arc, and also give your writing a musical score.

In the case of Weed, I’ve had a sprawling playlist that I’m trimming down to size. It started with Joan Jett, because my hero Jo was a rebel (and is still one at heart). Joan Jett and the Blackhearts’ Greatest Hits has some great tunes, but the problem is, as much as I love the driving guitars, her raw voice, and the overall punk attitude, it doesn’t really work for Weed.

Tori Amos, on the other hand, has music that fits the story so well, it’s hard not to just listen to a bunch of her albums over and over again, but I want the musical feel of a movie or television show soundtrack playing in the background as I write, so I want to pick a few songs. I had simply loaded “Scarlett’s Walk,” but am now trimming it down to songs like “Carbon,” “Wednesdays”, etc. The journey is still out on the powerful “Sorta Fairytale”, I love that song, but I’m not sure that it feels right for this playlist. It’s hard to put into words, but feeling right is what I shoot for when I select a song. This falls on the intangible, artistic side of my writing process rather than the craft side. (The craft side acknowledges the need for a musical score and creates the playlist.)

“Time,” Tori’s cover of the Tom Waits song, is the highlight tune for Episode 1, which sees Jo released from ‘supervillain’ prison and return home to Portland, to discover things have changed. A perfect song for that.

“Walk Away Renee” is a song I first heard when I was five years old, sung by the Left Banke. It’s haunted me ever since. Ricki Lee Jones did a very quiet, evocative cover for her EP “Girl At Her Volcano,” which I used to own on vinyl. I needed a new version, one that sounded a bit more modern. I stumbled across Somerdale’s cover, done for a film I haven’t seen. It was perfect.

Another song that is perfect for Season 1 is “Suspicious Minds,” performed of course by the late great Elvis. I discovered not one but three different covers by female vocalists which work perfect. I especially like “No Doubt’s” cover done for an Elvis Tribute on CBS a few years ago. One thing that works for me is having several different covers for a song that especially resonates with me, and “Suspicious Minds” is that song for Season 1, because of the particular dangers and potential traps that Jo faces during those six novella-sized episodes.

My list is still a work in progress. Coming up with one for Season 2 will be interesting—I may use some of the same artists, but the emotional feel will be different.

How I find songs really comes down to serendipity—there are certain artists, Tori Amos especially, that really work for me. There are songs that I find by accident, like R.E.M.’s “Walk Unafraid,” which I stumbled across last New Year’s at a site that had listed a playlist for implementing personal change. It worked.

YouTube is a gold mine for checking out a song, and then I turn to Amazon and their MP3 store, if I don’t already own the CD. Another trick I use is to check Wikipedia for covers of a song I like. I favor female artists for Weed, and this is a great way to locate singers that might work. Either way, it’s then a simple matter of loading the song into iTunes and creating a playlist by dragging and dropping songs I want to add.

As for Joan Jett’s “Bad Reputation,” it may well return in a playlist for a future season.

If you write, do you write to a playlist? Any tips you would like to share? Tell us in comments.

What makes someone a superhero and another a supervillain?

Posted on by
Reply

I have been pondering this as I work on Weed season 1. This serial novel features Sure, the obvious thing is that the super hero does good, while the super villain commits evil acts. The same could be said of “normal” heroes and villains, but here I’m thinking about the super-powered variety. To be a superhero or supervillain, you must have extraordinary ability, power, and talent, something that sets you above and apart from humanity.

How super is super? Batman is a millionaire billionaire equipped with some very fancy gadgets and gizmos, some amazing martial arts abilities, and able to absorb punishment that would kill or at least hospitalize for a very long time the average normal. But he’s no Superman, who is nearly indestructible as long as you keep kryptonite and the rays of the red sun out of the picture. He can fly, move mountains, and perform world beating physical feats.

As far as I’m concerned, being a superhero or supervillain does mean being at least a step beyond the normal, and probably a decent leap beyond. Possessing such extraordinary power, be it super strength, super speed, incredible intelligence, or any of a host of other super abilities automatically puts actions into a difference context.

Okay, back to the question of what makes a superhero or a supervillain. The first issue is behavior. Choice is central. You can choose to stop a crime. You can choose to commit a crime. You can choose to avoid the choice. But is that all there is to distinguishing between a super hero and a super villain?

In a word, no, at least not to this writer. It’s also perception. Actions have consequences—by the rules of our society, super heroes are vigilantes. A number of real world super hero organizations have sprung up in the last few years, populated with well-intentioned folks who want to stop crime. Perhaps some are glory hounds. For certain the police often regard these self-described super heroes as dangerous, because their actions might harm others, might escalate a situation into a dangerous encounter. The law is about rules and consequences for breaking those rules. The police are about enforcing the law and also making sure that order is maintained. When a police officer responds to a possible crime or a dangerous situation, along with assessing the situation the officer is trained to gain control over what is going on, in order to end any danger to others.

Superheroes lay outside the law and are themselves dangerous, and destabilizing. But imagine a world where they are part of the force used to maintain order. The Justice League and the Avengers would be two officially sanctioned examples. Take it a step further, and imagine a situation where the super heroes are actually calling the shots of government from behind the scenes, using their abilities, amassed influence, wealth, and power to direct policy and law. They would of course say it was for the good of humanity, but that wouldn’t make it right.

So part of the distinction between superhero and supervillain, at least in some circumstances, is a matter of perception. They would see themselves as heroic, but others might see them as villains. And here we come to an important aspect of the Weed serial. How society sees you, how others see you, and how you see yourself.

Motive is also important, but the ends do not, in the end, justify the means. Or do they? Traveling the slippery slope is a dangerous route, leading to shades of gray and moral conundrums. Then again, reality is not often simple. I do believe in some moral absolutes, and I also believe that the end does not justify the means. But discerning what is correct isn’t always easy.

So, in the end what makes a superhero distinct from a supervillain depends on how they choose to behave, and use their extraordinary abilities, but it is also can be a matter of perception and motive.

Update: In response to this post my friend and collaborator K.C. Ball mentioned Agent Coulson in the Avengers telling Loki that he would fail because he lacked “commitment.” K.C. felt that might be the distinction between a hero and a villain. That got me to wondering–is another mark of a villain not having commitment to anything other than himself?  I have to say, no. Commitment can mean dedication, and many supervillains are quite dedicated to their purpose, even if that is only greed and self-aggrandizement. However, in terms of being committed to others, while I could see scenarios where a supervillain is committed to another, they often seem not to be, and this might well be a crucial distinction.

What do you think? Let me know in comments.

Coming up with a cover for Persisting

Posted on by
3

When I wrote Persisting, my military SF story about a lonely tech op sent to a former Earth colony, I had a vision in my mind of the story. Many drafts and much feedback from perceptive first readers later, the story had come together on the page. When I decided to publish it, I had to decide upon a cover. EBooks need a good cover as much as a print title. Covers give the reader their first impression of what the story may be about.

I am not an artist, but I am interested in cover art, and really feel that nailing the story’s essence on a cover is vital. It is also important that a cover art look professional.  Furthermore, creating cover art is even more challenging in thumbnail format for eBooks. There are beautiful full size covers that would look too cluttered in thumbnail form. Most readers surfing Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords etc. will be seeing thumbnails of an eBook’s cover, either in a category or best seller list, a simple author or title search, or in a list of books that readers who bought a particular title also purchased or looked at (which is how I often find eBooks on Amazon for instance.) You also must keep in mind that many readers are using an e-ink reader, which means the cover comes out in gray scale.

The first thing I did was look for places to find art, either free or cheaply. There are a number of websites selling image licenses. I settled on shutterstock.com, I liked their selection, and their prices were reasonable. After creating an account there, I began searching for suitable images, using keywords evoked Persisting‘s elements: powered armor, battle armor, star field, night sky, alien landscape, helmet visor and so on. After a lot of searching I ended up with several images of a warrior in battle armor, including a really cool one showing a space marine in a battle suit standing on a precipice gazing out at an alien city. It was a very striking image, but far too busy for an eBook cover. It also didn’t quite get at the essence of the story, a hard thing for me to articulate, but something that I felt was really important to bring across in the cover art.

I downloaded samples by the simple technique of going to a particular image’s page, and then right clicking and choosing to save the image as a .jpg. This let me play around with it with my software before settling on an image to buy.

I also had to find the right piece of software. I started with having virtually no image manipulation software on my computers, just Google Picasa and MS Paint for my Windows PC and iPhoto for my aging MacBook. I had used Irfanview at my day job for years, but wanted something that had more options. My friend, author Mary Rosenblum, suggested Adobe Photoshop, but the price was steep. She was right though, I needed something similar to help with whatever cover art I settled on. Another friend, Anthony Pryor, recommended paint.net, as a decent Photoshop clone. I checked it out, downloaded it, and found that it had a lot of options.

Back to images. I finally settled on two that Mary, my wife LeAnn, and another author friend, Tammy Salyer, all liked:

This was a striking 3D computer artwork. Not only did it represent Laurel Obi after a crucial point in the story, her expression evoked the sense of release I wanted.

But I needed a background. Originally, I had thought I’d like to see this image reflected on Matsura’s polarized helmet visor, but realized that would be very hard to pull off. Anthony pointed out, too, that it would not render well in thumbnail fashion.

Superimposing the female head on a star field was an image I kept returning to, so I finally bit the bullet and found a suitable image: 

 

 

 

After downloading both, I began to learn that layers aren’t just for cakes, and are a very important part of image manipulation. Essentially I made the first image the first layer, then pasted in the second image as a new layer, and then lowered the opacity of the first image, which also washed out the star field, giving it an almost “negative space” look: I had done my original cover mock-up in Microsoft PowerPoint, treating the cover as a slide but was unhappy with the borders.

I think you will strongly agree that just does not work.

 

 

 

 

So I then went to Microsoft Publisher, and came up a better version.

The problem was, especially in thumbnail form, that it all looked washed out. Anthony helped by showing me how to isolate the first image, removing all the white space around the head with a simple command in paint.net, which then revealed the star field in all its brilliant glory.

He also showed how to easily insert and manipulate text in paint.net. I simply hadn’t had the time to learn all the ins and outs.

I still needed to find a suitable font. Arial, as Tammy Salyer pointed out, looks bland on a cover. She came to the rescue with a list of websites that had all sorts of free fonts available, and I ended up settling on one at urbanfonts.com called “adventure subtitles,” listed under the only-too-appropriate category of futuristic.

The result ended up pleasing myself and the friends I shared it with.

I am still not an artist, but I have found I enjoy putting together a cover from artwork. How about you? If you are a writer who has published your own work, have you done your own cover art? If, so, how did you develop it? If you are a reader, how important is the cover to you when deciding what to buy? Please let me know in comments.

Coming attractions

Posted on by
Reply

My next short story publication is “The Water Singer”, a novelette about a teenaged girl in a post-apocalyptic world where she faces a choice to either leave the village she has grown up in, or remain and embrace a destiny that frightens her.

My big project for this year and the next is my Weed serial, conceived in the style of television serials like Lost and Babylon 5, two favorites of mine. Weed is planned to run four “seasons”, with each season having six novella-length episodes (roughly twenty five thousand words a piece). A new episode will be released each month, beginning in July. The challenge of writing a serial narrative has really stimulated my creativity, and I’m looking forward to telling the story of former teenaged super villain Jolene Jacobs. I’ll be sharing excerpts and behind the scenes looks at the story. And after the first season ends in December I’ll be running outtakes.

I also have a series of Weed prequel and side stories planned for publication. The first one, “On the Vine,” should appear next month, and features an especially tough moment after Jolene was first sent to prison.

I also plan on writing posts on the serial format, and looking at Babylon 5 and Lost, and perhaps other serial shows and novels.

Persisting is up at Amazon and Smashwords

Posted on by
Reply

Persisting, my first self-published story, is now live on Amazon and Smashwords. I have had a number of other stories published at online magazines, but my first indie publication is special.  Persisting is a 5800 word science fiction short story, set in a future where Humanity is at war with the implacable alien Hive. Daniel Matsura, a tech operative from Earth, arrives on the former colony of Eridani Prime, bringing a new piece of technology that could win the war that humanity is losing. Then the Hive attacks Prime. Will Matsura survive? Can he save the woman he loves?

It proved a challenging but very rewarding story to write. I had a lot to tell in just under 6000 words. The core story was there in the first draft, but it took a number of rewrites and feedback to bring it to life. The story made the rounds of my critique group, and also received feedback from my friend and sometimes writing collaborator author K.C. Ball. She looked at it not once, but twice, and offered considerable help on the story’s structuring.

Of course, for an indie story, making it as good as I could was only part of the task. I learned how to convert the story from Word to e-book format. I struggled with Calibre, and wound up following Amazon’s directions for the Kindle version, and Smashwords for their version. Smashwords has honed a piece of conversion software they call “the meatgrinder”, which, if you’ve followed their instructions for formatting the Word version properly, works like a charm, and takes only an hour or two to complete through their website. Amazon’s publishing process took closer to forty eight hours.

I goofed when I originally uploaded the story– failing to include my middle name under the contributor category, and then had to wait for the story to finish publishing before I could add “Ivan” and resubmit. Fortunately, republishing took far less time than the original publishing did.

I put a lot of thought into creating the cover art—I bought two images I liked, and had to learn how to meld them together to form a whole. I plan on blogging about that soon—it was an eye-opening experience. For my upcoming Weed serial I plan on having a professional artist create art the cover art, but for short stories I need to keep the costs down. I had help from my friend and fellow writer Anthony Pryor in learning how to use software to create my cover. I also vetted the cover with several readers and two other authors. I’m pleased with the result—it’s eye catching and works well as a thumbnail.

I’ve learned a lot in this process that will help me when Episode 1 of Weed goes live in July, and also had a great deal of fun amidst all the blood, sweat and tears.

The backlist lives again

Posted on by
Reply

When I dreamed of owning a cyber book years ago, I imagined something that looked like a book, with a computer screen. I imagined being able to read whatever I wanted on it. Even more, I imagined being able to read out of print books by favorite authors on it. I hadn’t imagined the new opportunities for self-publishing, it was barely on my personal radar back in the 1990s.

What got me going was the thought that the backlist of a beloved author could suddenly see the light of day. Back then, publishers routinely let books stay out of print, so that we had to scour Powell’s, Jan’s paperbacks, and anywhere we could to find a book that was “out of print”—not available new from the publisher.

We went to SF conventions and heard from authors we loved that the publisher wasn’t reprinting a book, and it would drive us crazy—avid readers want to read, and especially read authors they love.

I didn’t understand the business of publishing back then, I only knew that I couldn’t easily get my hands on the older work of authors I enjoyed.

My how things have changed, especially for the author who controls the rights to their backlist. SF legend Mike Resnick, for instance, has put up an enormous amount of older work. Mystery master Lawrence Block turned to self-publishing his backlist recently, and has been very pleased with the result.

No physical inventory is required, just access to a computer and the Internet.

Legacy New York publishers are well aware of this gold mine, and try and hang onto reprint rights, e-rights etc. Understandable from their standpoint—from mine, as both an avid reader and an indie writer, I want authors to be able to hold those rights.

It’s one reason I decided to self-publish my upcoming novels.

Some see a catch, a sore spot. What if an e-book distributor like Amazon, Barnes or Noble or Smashwords decides to pull the books? What if the format changes? Didn’t Amazon pull copies of books people purchased a few years ago?

The license agreement with Amazon (and I suspect B&N, Apple and Smashwords licensing is similar) gives the buyer access to books they have purchased under a particular account. I’ve bought books for my Kindle that have stopped being available for sale, yet they remain in my archive. Format is a more sticky issue right now, the major distributors all have their own particular formats; most use the EPUB format, but it depends on the device as to whether or not it can read a rival’s books. The Nook can read Sony and Kobo books, but at this writing, they can’t read the Nook format. Kindle can’t read any others.

When you buy an eReader, you’re really buying access to a particular format. That’s one advantage of the iPad or a smart phone; you can install apps for each major format. But the real difference between print and digital is that the digital books exist in the cloud, stored on a collection of servers at Amazon and elsewhere. Your eReader and eReader app gives you access to books stored under your name. Backing up locally on your computer what’s stored on an eReader won’t do you any good if that eReader dies—you’ll have to re-download the books to your device. All the e-Book distributors allow multiple devices to access a single account, letting family and friends share a book through that single account.

The digital rights management protocol is part of the reason, but that will have to be fodder for a future post.

As for a distributor going out of business, yes, that’s possibility.

My answer, to myself, to LeAnn, to friends concerned about having access to their books, and to library patrons, is that if you really want to own a book that will last regardless, you are better off with a print copy. Except that even print isn’t forever if you have a house fire, if the book is water soaked, or falls apart from use. Some people would answer that with print, they can go out and buy a new copy, but as I’ve pointed out, that isn’t always the case. Especially today. Legacy publishers want all rights, but it doesn’t mean they will always exercise all rights. They may choose not to reprint an author’s backlist and yet hang on to it with the expectation that they could, in the future, “print” the books in e-format.

Things will continue to change, and many more traditionally published authors will see their backlists become available as e-books.

Most books I buy I won’t read more than once. For the few that I will, print is always an option.

But just as the spreading popularity of e-books has given myriad writers the opportunity to self-publish their work, and also diminished the stigma associated with that self-publishing, it’s also given out of print work a second lease on life, and on readers.

I’d call that a good thing.

Longing for an eReader

Posted on by
6

I’ve wanted eBooks for years. LeAnn and I are both big time bibliophiles—and we ran out of room in our small house a long time ago, even with the floor to ceiling custom-built paperback bookshelves. We dreamed of being able to read books on a handheld device. I think it was at the first Worldcon we attended, ConFrancisco back in 1993, where we heard Ben Bova talk about “cyber books.” Our imaginations were fired with the idea of being able to hold a library in the palm of our hands. We also wanted our favorite authors out of print books available, and in the 90s, publishers were becoming increasingly frugal about reprinting books, given the costs involved in printing and inventory.

Later I heard about the Rocketbook reader, but never saw one in a store. It sounded like the sort of device we wanted, but expensive. LeAnn did a little reading on her Palm Tungsten, but we still waited for an actual eReader. Fictionwise, an eBook store went online in 2000 but I only bought a couple of titles for my computer. Choices were limited, and eBook prices were high, and the only other option, reading on a laptop or desktop computer, didn’t appeal all that much.

Enter Sony.

Sony entered the nascent eReader market in 2006 with their Sony Reader, which used E ink, a new display technology that uses charged pigment particles rearranged by an electric field to appear as text on a gray scale background, as opposed to the LCD display used by computer monitors. The result looks much like a printed page. Amazon also introduced an online eBook store. We almost bought a Sony Reader a half dozen times, but held off because of the cost and because we wanted to make sure that the product endured. They tempted us several times with their classics bundle, which gave the purchasers of a Sony Reader 100 classic books. Electronic retailers and Borders books both offered the Sony Reader, giving us a chance to actually see one “in the wild.” But we still held off. The readers cost nearly $400 in 2007.

 

Amazon “Kindles” interest in eBooks

Then, in the fall of 2007, Amazon released the Kindle an e-ink reader with a keyboard and built in 3G wireless, which allowed you to buy and download books directly to the device.

That sold us. We bought our first Kindle in September 2008 and our second a month later. Like other couples who are both avid readers, we thought we could “share” a single Kindle, but the fact is they are almost a single user device. You could share, certainly, but with different tastes and the ability to carry your personal library around in your pocket, it just works better if each person owns their own.

With the Kindle, eReaders entered the mass market and within three years had become a hot item on Christmas wish lists. Kindle went international in 2009, and now there is a mini-tablet Kindle (the Fire) along with several e-ink models. Barnes and Noble followed with their first Nook in late 2009, and the Canadian company Kobo makes a reader popular overseas. There are a number of other readers available, but in the U.S., Amazon’s Kindle, B&N’s Nook, Sony’s Reader and Kobo’s reader are the big names.

Apple’s iPad tablet computer brought color to eReaders. Amazon has Kindle software for the PC and Mac, a Kindle app for iOS devices like the iPad and iPhone, as well as Android, Blackberry, and even a Cloud Reader.

Amazon has the only eReaders with a 3G option—most use either Wi-Fi to download books directly to the device or to a computer first and then transfer via a USB cable. While Fictionwise and some publishers such as Baen Books allow you to download a non-DRM (meaning a version not copy protected) most track the download to a specific device that you have authorized to access your account. What many people don’t realize is that these devices are really ways to access digital books you’ve purchased from a company, and that those purchases “live” in the cloud, a collection of servers that store data.

In essence, Amazon, Barnes and Noble etc. store your copies and give your device the ability to download a copy specifically to that device. Usually you can authorize more than one device—six is a typical number, including smart phones, tablet, laptops and desktop computers.

Ten of millions of readers worldwide now own either an eReader or a tablet, or both. Many find reading on a Kindle or Nook easy and convenient. Buying new books is a snap. You can usually download a sample to read first, the devices bookmark where you left off, and if you left your Kindle at home you could read your book at work on your iPhone, using the Kindle app.

LeAnn and I are both in reader heaven, along with millions of others. We still love print, but eReaders are another way to get our reading in.

 

Norwescon and conventions

Posted on by
3

I spent last weekend at Norwescon, a science fiction and fantasy convention held every year near Seattle. Conventions are one of the great things about fantasy and science fiction. Fans, writers, artists, musicians, celebrities gather in shared interests, meet, network, and celebrate the genre they so love, the films, the games, and especially the novels and stories and artwork.

Conventions can be invigorating and exhausting at the same time. They range from tiny literary affairs like Potlatch and ReaderCon, both focusing on books, writers and readers and attendance running 300 or less, up to the massive San Diego Comic-con, which tops out at 130,000 people over four days, and which has become a Hollywood affair, showcasing new movies, current television shows, and celebrities past and present, as well as comic artists, with a side of best-selling fantasy and SF authors.

SDCC is one of several comic book conventions. Next year I hope to attend Emerald City Comic-con for the first time, Seattle’s comic book convention which is hitting well over 30,000 in attendance. Portland is starting its own comic-con this year.

The premiere SF convention is the World Science Fiction Convention, which is always on the road, in a different city each year. Worldcon has been in Japan, Australia, Canada, England and Scotland, but more often than not is held in the United States. Despite the name attendance is lower than Emerald City Comic-con even, well under 10,000 people, often half that. Still it’s a very packed convention; with up to nine or ten panel tracks an hour at the height of the five day convention’s run. The Hugo Awards, Science Fiction’s People’s choice awards are presented there. Attendees vote beforehand on works of SF and fantasy released last year—books, movies, TV, related works etc.—nominated by attendees of the previous year’s Worldcon (the Nebula’s are SF’s version of the Oscars, awarded by members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America).

This year it will be held in Chicago, and thus is called Chi-con. I went to Renovation last year (the 2011 Worldcon was held in Reno) and am attending Chi-con this year. Norwescon is a warm-up of sorts for me, and also has become, since 2008, one of my two annual SF conventions—Portland’s Orycon, held in November, is the other.

Norwescon has been running since 1977, and is a multi-track literary SF convention, featuring panels on a wide variety of topics, each related in some way to fantasy or science fiction, even if only tangentially: writing, fantasy and science fiction genres, science topics, music, artwork, gaming, costuming, tons of author readings etc. Around three thousand people attend Norwescon each year, including a large number of author and artist guests, making it large for a literary SF convention. There are also presentations such as this year’s Artist Guest of Honor John Picacio’s on how he made the 2012 Game of Thrones calendar, and demonstrations of practice combat, as well as music concerts, video programming, gaming, and an art show. There’s also a dealer’s room, with book vendors, game sellers, costume and jewelry merchants, and music sellers.

In short, there’s something for everyone who has any sort of interest in fantasy and science fiction.

Norwescon’s a four day convention, starting on Thursday and running until Sunday afternoon. This year we left early on Sunday to make a family Easter gathering. Probably because of cheaper hotel rates, Norwescon always takes place over Easter weekend.

For writers, Norwescon has a very robust writing track, with panels on submitting to publishers, editing, getting ideas, characters etc. Authors and editors—usually four to six on a panel—discuss a writing topic and engage in conversation with each other, as well as take questions from the audience. This is a great way to learn about an aspect of writing craft or publishing, and all for the price of a convention membership.

Norwescon also has great other programming tracks—discussions on adventure fiction, romance in fantasy, etc. I used to attend a great many writing panels, but this convention I went for other topics. The artist GoH John Picacio gave a terrific presentation on how he put together the art for the 2012 Game of Thrones calendar. As a writer, I love hearing how artists in other mediums engage their creative processes, and Picacio is very thoughtful about his. Trained as an architect, he has a sharp eye, working to capture the essence of a character or a scene visually, using real-life models to pose as characters, and combining sketching with digital manipulation to produce some amazing images. His observation that a big part of the artistic process is subtraction is as true for writers as it is for artists—part of focusing your vision is knowing what to cut, to “kill your darlings” if need be. Picacio’s presentation is one example of how a writer can find inspiration and information at a convention.

I also feed my inner fan—I attended NASA engineer and Science GoH Bridget Landry’s presentation on the Cassini probe’s findings from Saturn. The images from the south pole of the moon Enceladus were incredible—plumes of water vapor backlit. I had a chance to talk with her later that day while meeting with a couple of other author friends, and we chatted briefly about the ion drive the Dawn probe uses, the mission she is currently working on. Then there was a late night panel on the reworking of classic fairy tales for television and film.

And writers can also get feedback on their work—Fairwood writers offers a long running set of critique sessions where you can get feedback on a short story or novel chapter from professional writers. I attended an excellent two hour Q&A workshop on writing craft, publishing, and life balance given by author (and friend) John A. Pitts. Originally started by my friend the author Ken Scholes, this workshop used John’s own experiences as an example of how a writer writes, breaks into publishing, and keeps balance in their life, with lots of answers by John to any questions we might have—how to outline, using deadlines, dealing with negativity, you name it. Ken and John have been giving this workshop together for the past couple of years and it’s worth the price of a con membership all by itself.

Conventions are great places to refill your creative well—all the costumes, the art show, the books in the dealers’ room, these can all inspire you. Ken talks about connecting with story—allusions to story are everywhere at a convention.

Meeting new friends and reuniting with old ones is another wonderful part of attending a con. The hospitality suite, the dealer’s room, the hotel bar, even waiting in line for an event to begin, these are all places where you can meet people and catch up with friends. For a writer there are many opportunities to make connections. It can be hard enough to meet folks, having a shared interest is a helpful icebreaker

Music is also a big part of Norwescon—both concerts and open filking. Filk music is a play on folk music, a kind of fantasy and science fiction riff on musical styles and songs. I try and attend at least one concert—this year I hit four. Listening to musicians play soaring, emotional music never fails to stir my imagination.

I have only scratched the surface of what you can do and see at a science fiction convention. Conventions are held somewhere in the U.S. nearly every week of the year—Google “SF convention” or “comic-con” or “media con” to get a list, and add in the nearest city to where you are to find your local convention.

Additional information about conventions for writers

Cat Rambo has a great post on the pros and cons of attending conventions for pro and aspiring pro writers that is well worth a read:

http://www.kittywumpus.net/blog/2012/04/05/thoughts-on-the-cons-and-pros-of-cons-and-pros-pre-norwescon/

My favorite podcast, Writing excuses, did a two part podcast back in 2009 on attending conventions for writers that:

http://www.writingexcuses.com/2009/07/26/writing-excuses-season-3-episode-9-attending-conventions-part-i/

http://www.writingexcuses.com/2009/08/02/writing-excuses-season-3-episode-10-the-dos-and-donts-of-attending-cons/

Wikipedia entry for Worldcon:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldcon

 

 

Wonder and Magic—a look at fantasy and science fiction. Part 2—Science Fiction, the early years.

Posted on by
1

In part 1 I gave an overview of fantasy and science fiction, along with a little history. Fantasy is the older literary sibling, while science fiction as a distinct genre came into being sooner, beginning in the 1920s. Personally, I happened to discover science fiction first, with Star Trek and Time Tunnel on television and The Planet of the Apes, Silent Running and Soylent Green before reading Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant and seeing Ralph Bakshi’s Wizards.

Voltaire’s story, Micromegas, about a two aliens visiting Earth, is the 18th century precursor to Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, the fathers of science fiction in many ways. Verne began writing before Wells, and his From the Earth to the Moon and Journey to the Center of the Earth are two classics that have introduced generations of young readers to space travel and hidden worlds. Wells’ War of the Worlds and The Time Machine introduced alien invasion and time travel to a broad audience. Edward Bellamy’s 1887 Looking Backward is an early utopian SF novel featuring a young man who falls into a deep, hypnotically induced sleep in the late 19th century and wakes up in 2000. The novel became a best seller and spanned a host of imitators.

And then Edgar Rice Burroughs burst onto the literary scene with his first published story, Under the Moons of Mars, featuring Civil War veteran John Carter being transported astrally to Mars (called “Barsoom), a dying planet of canals, ancient cities, alien races and almost magical technology. This became a series of wildly popular novels.

In 1926 Hugo Gernsback began publishing Amazing Stories and coined the term “scientification” to describe stories featuring science and technology. Soon other magazines followed, including Astounding Science Fiction, which later became Analog in the 1960s.

While Bellamy, Verne and Wells had success in book form, and Burroughs’s works were reprinted as books, the magazine market was the market for the new “genre” of “science fiction” before 1960. Many of the “greats” of SF such as Jack Williamson, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, A.E. Van Vogt, Clifford Simak, and Theodore Sturgeon wrote for the magazines, being paid anywhere from a cent to a nickel or more a word, a good rate in the 1930’s and 40’s. Isaac Asimov’s classic Foundation trilogy was actually published as nine stories in Astounding in the 1940s. Asimov was inspired by Gibbon’s Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire and wanted to write a grand fictional future history. His Robot stories looked that the challenges robots would pose for human society, and his “Three Laws of Robotics” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics) remains a touchstone for how to give an artificial intelligence parameters for non-destructive behavior.

Heinlein wrote many classic tales of his own. He broke into hard cover books (there wasn’t a real paperback market until the 1960s) with juvenile SF novels, novels, even more than Verne and Wells’ works, introduced many young readers to science fiction, to space travel and other worlds. Books like Red Planet, Have Spacesuit-Will Travel, Podkayne of Mars, and Tunnel in the Sky, have become classics in their own right.

Science fiction has often been considered a literature of ideas. While many of the magazines were filled with adventure stories, the more ambitious tales penned by writers like Heinlein, Asimov, Williamson, Fred Pohl, C.L. Moore, Henry Kuttner, Cyril Kornbluth, and Cordwainer Smith dealt in grand ideas and their outcomes. What would happen if immortality were possible? What if the Axis had one the Second World War? What would it be like to be the sole pilot of an interstellar flight?

Many if not most of the tropes of science fiction were established during the so-called “Golden Age” of the 1930s and 40s. Much of the early magazine science fiction looked at space travel, interstellar or even intergalactic conflict, humans unlocking new powers such as psionics, robots, aliens, new technologies that changed human civilization, and so on. E.E. “Doc” Smith became known for his galaxy spanning Lensman saga, which dealt with the struggle against an alien conspiracy and psi abilities in humans. His earlier Skylark of Space series is more typical of the 1920s and 30s pulp magazine adventure—a scientist essentially builds a space ship in his garage and gets embroiled in all kinds of adventures, including defeating space pirates.

On the other hand, Theodore Sturgeon was writing touching tales of humanity like A Saucer Full of Loneliness very much focused on the emotion of the science fictional situation.  His stories, along with Kornbluth, Smith, and other talented writers, especially in Galaxy and Fantasy and Science Fiction,  two of the new magazines of the 1950s, and the most influential, signaled a shift of sorts in science fiction in the 1950s, into finer writing, a focus on society and not just ideas and adventure, though both those strains were still very much alive.

At least two women were writing science fiction during the “Golden Age”—C.L Moore and Leigh Brackett. Moore also wrote with her husband Henry Kuttner as Lewis Padgett–“Mimsy were the Borogroves,” is a classic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimsy_Were_the_Borogoves), while Brackett, though married to SF author Edmond Hamilton (a favorite of my younger self), wrote primarily solo. She also went into screen writing, and later in life, co-scripted The Empire Strikes Back.

Science fiction survived the magazine distribution collapse of the late 1950s and found new life in mass market paperbacks, which saw such classics as Heinlein’s Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Stranger in a Strange Land, and Frank Herbert’s hugely influential Dune.

This post has been the barest of overviews of modern science fiction’s inception. For those wanting to know more, The New Encyclopedia of Science Fiction is a good place to start. Age of Wonder by David Hartwell is also informative.

I have to finish by quoting Peter Graham, who observed that “the golden age of science fiction is 12,” meaning that the classic science fiction for a reader was what he or she discovered when they started reading SF, often at or near the age of 12.

How about you, when did you discover science fiction? Was it some of the authors mentioned above? Let me know in comments.

 

Wonder and Magic–A look at fantasy and science fiction. Part 1–Definitions

Posted on by
2

Fantasy and science fiction are popular genres, both in print and in the movies and on television. Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Star Wars, A Game of Thrones, The Matrix, The Hunger Games, and many more are read and watched by millions. Magic, dragons, androids, time travel, all these and many more have been concepts driving popular books and film.

Tales of the fantastic very likely date back to the beginnings of humanity, hundreds of thousands of years ago, told around campfires in paleolithic times. And tales of the fantastic, such as Homer’s Odyssey or The Argonautica and the Chinese epic Journey to the West, were written down thousands of years ago. By the late 19th century fantastic stories were appearing in print for the magazines and dime novels of the day. In 1911, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ first Barsoom story, Under the Moons of Mars, was published in All-Story Magazine. H.G. Wells had already written a story of alien invasion in The War of the Worlds, while Jules Verne had written about an expedition to the moon and a voyage beneath the sea. Authors like George Griffiths and others in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods in Great Britain and North America also wrote tales of space travel, future war, and incredible inventions. (I’m confining myself to English language fantasy and science fiction in this instance, but fantasy in particular is universal.)

One of the very first movies was a French film adaptation of Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon. In the century since Burroughs and Wells published their classic stories, fantasy and science fiction books and movies have become popular entertainment.

In 1926 Hugo Gernsback began publishing Amazing Stories, and coined the term “scientifiction” which soon became science fiction, or even sci-fi. A whole legion of pulp magazines with names like Astounding Science Fiction, Weird Tales and Thrilling Wonder could be bought on newsstands. One of the very first movies was a French film adaptation of Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon. In the century since Burroughs and Wells published their classic stories, fantasy and science fiction books and movies have become popular entertainment. Robert E. Howard, C.L Moore and others wrote tales of swords and sorcery that appeared in magazines alongside stories by science fiction writers like Jack Williamson and John W. Campbell.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings catapulted fantasy into the popular consciousness when it appeared in paperback in the late 1960s, and inspired a host of writers in penning fantasy tales set in other worlds, often similar to medieval Europe. Today fantasy has overtaken its cousin science fiction

Not only are there many books and movies to discuss, there are numerous categories and types of fantasy and science fiction. In future posts I’ll talk about different sub-genres of both, and some favorite examples. But to begin with, what is fantasy and what is science fiction, and what is the difference between the two?

Here we open a proverbial can of worms.  Defining fantasy has proven easier than deciding what science fiction is—the author and editor Damon Knight once said that “science fiction is whatever I am pointing at when I say science fiction,” and while that isn’t as helpful as we’d like, it does capture the slipperiness of trying to define science fiction. Fantasy deals with the fantastic. Magic. Dragons. Elves. Flying carpets. Science fiction then must deal with science, right?

Well, yes and no. One of the sub-categories of science fiction is hard SF, which usually has a focus getting the science right and making the extrapolated science central to the story. A Hard “SF story” can have dragons in it, but they will be alien life forms or perhaps genetically engineered dragons, and won’t be able to violate physical laws like the fire-breathing flying behemoths of fantasy. Then there’s space opera, which for instance allows things such as psi-powers and faster-than-light travel without explaining the science behind it.

It has been said that fantasy deals with the impossible, and that science fiction deals with the possible, however improbable, and that’s a workable definition for me.

There’s a wonderful scene in Poul Anderson’s Three Hearts and Three Lions where the hero, an engineer freshly transported from our world to this land of magic, encounters a flying dragon and can’t believe it, since such a beast would violate the so-called square cube law. A great example of a science fictional mindset clashing with a fantastical reality that also illustrates the different paradigms each genre holds.

Let me know your thoughts in comment—how do you define fantasy and science fiction, and do you like one more than the other?