In tribute

My novel, “Tales from the Magitech Lounge,” began as a short story meant as a kind of tribute to Spider Robinson’s “Callahan” stories, but, as such things go, it grew to be something encompassing far more than that.  If my readers decided to explore his universe after it was mentioned in my book, it would in some way accomplish its original purpose.

They are, to me, among the finest works of speculative fiction ever put to paper by any author, even though they are nothing like what most people imagine when they think of sci-fi.

I like to think Spider I have something else in common, besides sharing the writer’s curse.  (As he once remarked in a short e-mail response to something I’d sent his direction).  Both of us have faith in the human race, despite all its shortcomings and inherent follies.

And as Spider says in his Callahan books–shared pain is lessened and shared joy is increased.

“Tales” is not a reflection of the Callahan novels, nor is the Magitech Lounge quite the same as either Callahan’s or Mary’s Place.  But it has a few things in common with them, I like to think.

Here’s to Spider Robinson and Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon.  Like the Lounge, a place I’d dearly love to visit to lift a glass with some pretty remarkable people.

 

 

R.I.P. George

I woke up this morning to discover that George Carlin died yesterday.  I was so out of it after work that I came home and slept for thirteen hours straight.  Crawled out of bed with a massive headache and got on-line to find that a great social philosopher and comedian had died of heart failure.

He was a confirmed skeptic and a master at disassembling bullshit, particularly institutional bullshit.  Like the man whose name appears on the award he recently received.  He was OUR generation’s Mark Twain, calling it like he sees it and not letting anyone steal his voice.

A few mailings went around, claiming that he was the author of some typical RW bullshit, but those of us who’ve been listening to him for years knew better.  George Carlin was no friend to the powerful.  He was a friend to the downtrodden, and a speaker of uncomfortable truths.

Here’s to George, slayer of dragons with the sword of truth.  You will be missed.  It will be a long time before we see your like again.

 

Confessions of a Proud Fantasy Geek

As I’ve mentioned a time or two before, my introduction to fantasy was through The Hobbit and, subsequently, the Lord of the Rings.  Before that point I was a comic junkie and, in fact, was reading comic books before I’d even gotten into school.

The fact that I was reading FAR above my grade level early on didn’t lend itself to a great deal of social skill.  Possessed of a quick wit and a smart mouth, I found that these things did not do a lot to deflect the much more potent armaments possessed by my classmates.  Namely, their fists.

I was small and skinny, though stronger than my size might have led people to believe.  I grew to depend on my rage to carry me through these times, a tool that proves far too unwieldy to continue to use indefinitely.

I had some martial arts training even as a child, beginning my studies at the age of six in a local kenpo class.  It began a love affair with the arts that continued throughout my life.

At the age of 14 I was introduced to Dungeons and Dragons by a neighbor and spent the next four years devoting myself to fantasy gaming as well as writing.  It wasn’t until I became an adult that I turned my attention to creating a game that was uniquely my own.

Geeks are notoriously under-socialized, apparently even athletic stoner geeks.  I tripped over my tongue entirely too often for my comfort, and made enemies without even trying.

I also grew to suffer from acute social anxiety by the time I’d reached thirty, a development I wasn’t at all sure how to deal with.  I grew to fear and loathe contact with anyone I didn’t already know, a phobia that grew even more pronounced when I tried to communicate by phone.

There are various levels of social anxiety, and I’m not sure my methods of dealing with it would work for all similar sufferers.  When my avoidance behavior grew so bad that it culminated in the loss of the people who meant the most to me, I forced myself to re-evaluate who I was and what I wanted out of life.

The first thing I impressed upon myself was that everyone has some level of social anxiety to deal with, that even the most forward, boisterous types were simply dealing with theirs in the way that worked for them.

I pushed the envelope, then pushed it farther, taking on jobs that threw me into situations I found initially terrifying.  When I met my wife Shaiha, her refusal to entertain the notion of enabling my anxiety gave me a kind of bulwark against further retreat.

Ironically enough, it’s something that barely bothers me at all anymore, though I doubt I’ll ever be able to make a phone call to someone I don’t know well without some hesitation.  But in person I have gained a talent for establishing rapport with nearly anyone.  I genuinely like people, which certainly doesn’t hurt.  Oh, yes, there are those who put anyone’s teeth on edge, and now that I’m working retail, I meet those folks from time to time.  But I also have gained a skill for disarming aggression and defusing anger.

I sure could have used that when I was younger.

 Wikipedia defines “geek” as someone who tends towards the obsessive, particularly about subjects that are either far too mature for his/her age, or considered immature for his/her age.  It further defines a geek as someone who is often physically or socially inept.

When I was younger I was fast, agile, and graceful.  At sixteen I could compete with nearly any of the jocks I went to school with, and come out equal or ahead.  Had I known about free running or parkour at that age, I would’ve quickly become a devotee myself.

But socially?  Oh, yeah.  I think back on all the overtures I missed from girls I liked and curse my stupidity.  Even when I wasn’t seen as a geek, I still saw myself as a geek and totally missed my cues.

It took me until I’d reached almost forty to learn to be comfortable in my own skin, to value myself not only for what I could do (write good fantasy) but for the whole gestalt of who I am.

My best advice to anyone?  You are the sum of your attributes and flaws, your mind, heart, and persona.  Even if there are things you’d like to change, I truly believe you have to accept what you are before you can successfully initiate those changes.

So here I am.  Everything I ever imagined and more.

Pleased to meetcha.

Themes

Back when I was in college, an American Lit class was inflicted on me, though my poetry class was my own damn idea.  The same teacher taught both classes.  As an avid reader and writer by avocation, if not vocation, I had some damn silly notions I believe clashed with the whole literary theory.  If there’s a more pointless exercise than deconstructing the works of various authors and comparing them to a few alleged themes that supposedly all literature goes back to, it’s probably trying to write poetry to please a college instructor.

Ack.  I hated Am Lit with a passion.  I’m sure there are those who love it, and they’re quite welcome to it.  I’ll stick to my love of genre fiction, both reading and writing, and leave the high-brow literary stuff to those who can bear it.

I will say, however, that if anyone should ever decide to deconstruct MY works, they’ll hopefully realize that it all comes down to one sentence.  Humanity abides.  That means no matter how far from the basic humanity I take my characters, it is that which dwells within them that makes them human in the end, even if they are so far post-human as to be almost alien.

As unpopular as my opinion might be in certain circles, I retain a faith in humanity all out of proportion to our troubled evolution.  I believe that we have within us the potential for real greatness, when our personal and social development begins to catch up with our technological achievements.

And, despite all opinions to the contrary, I believe that we humans have a purpose beyond simply stinking up the planet.  I believe that all sentient life has a purpose in the grand scheme of things, though whose scheme it might be I’m not willing to say.  My thoughts on God are somewhat different than most, I think, and there’s no point in rehashing something one might easily glean from nearly all of my novels.

My distrust of revealed religion balances oddly against my strange faith in humanity.  Religion has been both a boon and a bane for us, and I believe it’s about time we really strive to look beyond its legacy.  Humanity is here for humanity, and for stewardship of what we’ve nearly forgotten how to tend.  Our ills are ours to fix and crying for help to the ether is neither sane nor productive.

Humanity abides.  Well, it damn well better, or we’re good and screwed.

The Baen Free Library, Eric Flint, and this crazy ol’ world.

I recently stumbled upon a wikepedia page that, in turn, dropped me off onto a page where author and editor Eric Flint discusses such things as the Baen free library, e-books, and the different philosophies and approaches to this new medium.

I wanted to write to him directly in regards to some comments he made about Harlan Ellison and those who would like to boycott his work because of his attitude towards the free library.  I read through it and found myself chuckling, even though the content wasn’t specifically intended to be funny.

Eric made mention of the fact that one might as well refuse to read an author whose politics you didn’t like and that got me thinking.  He mentioned David Weber and John Ringo as examples of conservative authors we liberals should possibly shun.  Not that he suggested doing so.

Right now I’m listening to a book by Dean Koontz, the latest in a series I particularly enjoy.  “Odd Hours” is the newest book in his Odd Thomas series, easily my SECOND favorite series he’s written.  My first favorite is the Christopher Snow books, which I personally dub the “Moonlight Cove” series.

Now I know that my political opinions differ considerably from Mr. Koontz’s and, though he injects some of the conservative philosophy into his characters a little more than I like, I simply roll my eyes when I get to those parts and continue onward, thinking to myself that if he thinks THIS modern society is all that degraded, he must have studied the history of an alternate world of which I am unaware.  If it seems that our cities and towns have a much higher percentage of lunatics and psychopaths than in previous ages, it’s partly because as the population grows, the percentages grow with it.  It’s also partly because the career opportunities for psychos have been depleted over the past few centuries now that they can’t carve a place for themselves as warlords, pirates, and mercenary commanders and those that aren’t born wealthy must now primarily earn their survival as lawyers, diesel mechanics, grocery clerks, and other “regular” folks.  Last but not least, we’ve gone from a media that didn’t share with us all the unsavory things our neighbors were up to to a media that ignores just about everything else.

The world is screwed up because it’s always been screwed up.  No secret about that.  I don’t want to listen to anyone else trying to convince us we’re in a handbasket heading for a hot place as if it’s somehow a new development.

So, please, don’t tell me how bad this world is, and how much evil there is in it.  The only possible reply is “no shit.”  But there’s a hell of a lot more people around who don’t think a public hanging’s a fun family event than there were even a hundred or so years ago.  Selfishness, as sad as it is, doesn’t quite match up to casual cruelty as a yardstick of where we stand as a people.  The guy who walks past a homeless person begging change may be self-absorbed and oblivious, but unless something provokes a mob scene during which everyone loses any sense of morality, he’s also not likely to kick the guy in the face and laugh at him as he lies bleeding on the sidewalk.

I know humanity has some problems.  But anyone who believes we’re somehow debased compared to some mythical time in our past is suffering from delusions.  Ask any peasant of medieval Europe, or any slave of the Romans, Vikings, or Colonial Americans.  Ask any African American who was relegated to the back of the bus, or forced to use “colored only” drinking fountains.  Ask any Native American lying under smallpox-infected blankets as he watches his people die around him.

Yeah, there are some serious shitheads in the world.  But the majority of people are just trying to get by, trying to live the best life they know how.  They don’t exist to inflict suffering on others, or take joy in seeing people suffer.

So, no.  I don’t buy that line of reasoning at all.  But do I think we could all do more to make the world a better place?  Hell, yeah.  And maybe someday soon someone will come around and explain how to go about it without all the world’s shitheads getting together to kick the crap out of him or her for daring to say so.

In the meantime, the world keeps turning and every day is a new chance to make a difference somewhere that really matters.

But I digress.  Badly .  My original point was that, according to Mr. Flint and several others, having a book available in the free library has increased the sales of the authors’ other books by a considerable margin.  I can see where that might be the case.  Now, of course, most of us can’t afford to give our books away.  A few here or there, but not one of them to whoever wants it.

But I can, on the other hand, give my short stories away.  And I do so fairly often.  I have no deals to publish my stories, so they’re entirely mine to give away.  Not the same as giving away a whole novel, perhaps, but the fact is that I probably do have enough short stories now to fill a book.  Trouble is, most folks aren’t really into short stories anymore.  The market’s changed that much.

Too bad, really.  My wife says my short stories are even better than my novels.  Ironic, considering I’m one of those people who don’t like reading shorts.

Weird, huh?

I think it’s great what Baen’s is doing.  And I hope they continue doing it for years to come.

And, for the record, I agree with Eric Flint.  Don’t boycott an author because you disagree with his or her stance on something.  It’s not only silly, it’s self-defeating.  Enjoy books for what they are if they’re entertaining, and set them aside if they’re not.

It’s really that simple.

Here’s a link to the article in question to which I’m referring.

http://www.baen.com/library/palaver8.htm

What to write

There’s a funny thing about all of this.  Things are an “accepted truth” until they’re not.  Until they are overthrown by someone who doesn’t see the rules as written in stone and is willing to throw themselves against them until they’re no longer paramount.

 One thing about going along with established procedures and expectations…doing so all too often leads to works of limited originality because too many top dogs don’t deal well with innovation or creativity.  They’re afraid to take any risks and the art suffers as a consequence.

 Bureaucracy breeds and emphasizes conformity.  And time and time again the public, hungry for something different, shocks the bureaucracy by embracing something that seems to break all the rules in which the establishment has invested itself.

 Stifling creativity results in far too many works that end up being entirely too similar to one another because writers are afraid to experiment and push the envelope.  There are those who find comfort in this, but there are also many who get bored of reading stuff that doesn’t break any new ground.  I know certain whole genres and sub-genres that have reached the saturation point and are getting to the point I can’t even read them anymore because they’re boring me to tears.

 High Fantasy is one of them.  It’s getting harder and harder to find something in that sub-genre that doesn’t lean so heavily on certain established “truths” that it seems to border on plagarism.  And a lot of long-time fans are writing reviews that say “oh, this is just a ripoff of _____.”  They blame the authors when the real culprits are the publishing houses who are fearful of anything that might diverge from accepted rules of the sub-genre.

 Urban fantasy has gotten far more popular lately.  Back in the early 90s Mercedes Lackey wrote some great examples of the sub-genre, but ended up giving up on them because they weren’t selling as well as she would have liked.  Up until fairly recently, there were only about two dozen notable works of urban fantasy out there.  Now there are hundreds.  And as more are written, we’re going to start seeing examples of “established doctrine” that will begin to make them increasingly homogenous.  This is simply the way the industry works.  Because certain themes and styles have seemed to work so well in the past, they want new pieces that repeat certain concepts over and over again and will reject those works that don’t fit their preconceived molds.

 The recording industry suffers from similar issues–that’s why as one band gets popular, a score of new bands that sound almost the same seem to appear out of nowhere, making “art” increasingly “artificial.”  Television and movies are also affected by the same reasoning.  If THIS works, let’s beat it to death until everyone is so sick of it they don’t want anything more to do with it.  The only people this truly serves is THEM, who manage to stuff their bank accounts before the market for it vanishes into the ether.

 Regardless of success, there’s a certain amount of merit in the adage, “write what makes you happy.”  They say that if you write for what the “market” seems to want, whether it speaks to you or not, you’ll end up with stuff that may earn you commercial success, but leaves you cold.  Or you might end up missing the boat entirely as peoples’ tastes move on to the “next big thing” before you have a chance to join the crowd.

 Many of the most astounding successes in literature, movies, music, and television have been “cult” favorites–ones that originally attracted a small but loyal audience but have since grown to be forces of nature, a law unto themselves.

 Historically speaking, the establishment has been astoundingly bad at choosing possible winners.  A lot of what are now legendary works of fiction were rejected time and again by industry “experts.”  All too often they’re not reflecting the wishes of the buying public, but making judgments based on their own prejudices.  And the more established THEY are, the less aware they tend to be regarding changing trends.

 The best advice might be to write what makes you happy and hope that it finds a following outside the pack.  There doesn’t really seem to be a way to truly guarantee commercial success, but there certainly is a way to guarantee that you’re pleased with what you yourself create.

Musings on fan fiction and fiction fandom

I’m amazed when I see some of the things fans have written in settings originally conceived of by someone else.  The Star Wars universe, for example, has dozens of novels written by authors who were originally fans, people who grew up steeped in all things Star Wars and set out to make themselves part of the phenomenon.

Some authors are said to dislike fan fiction, though I can’t imagine why.  To have people love what you’ve created so much that they themselves want to play in your universe is an achievement any author should celebrate.  And that should go for any author, even (or especially) those who are most successful.  Fanfic shows exactly to what extent people are emotionally invested in an author’s characters and universe.

I could never do it, myself, though there are dozens of authors and settings that I have enjoyed well enough to try.  Yes, I tried and failed a time or three.  I have no talent for it.  Honestly, though I have created a universe that is uniquely my own, I admire the ability some writers have to take someone else’s creation and put their own stamp in one tiny corner of it.  I know it isn’t easy.  It’s apparently beyond me.

I know the frustration of a dedicated fan when an author pulls the plug on a favorite series or character and having no recourse but impotent grumbling.  I remember how sad I was when I discovered Mercades Lackey was ending her Diana Tregarde series.  I experienced a similar feeling of loss when Tannim was retired in the apparently final book of her SERRAted Edge series.  I  mean, it’s almost enough to make one want to get in a little fanfic or, failing that, write something in the more typical urban fantasy sub-genre more or less pioneered by Lackey, Tanya Huff, and Emma Bull.

There was a time when it was hard to find much at all in the way of urban fantasy.  But once the pioneers had blazed the trail that so many of today’s authors are following, they moved on to other things and left the field to their fans.  Many of these one-time fans are now becoming prominent authors in their own right.  Some, I think, have chosen to emphasize the romantic side of the equation, spawning the paranormal romance sub genre, while others stayed closer to the original idea and even expanded on it as I’ve done myself.

Writers start out as fans.  Some of us are lucky enough to make our own mark and start the whole thing over again, all the while remembering that we too started as fans.

It’s good to remember.