http://www.sffworld.com/forums/blog.php en Tue, 14 Feb 2012 08:30:05 GMT vBulletin 25 http://www.sffworld.com/forums/images/misc/rss.jpg http://www.sffworld.com/forums/blog.php http://www.sffworld.com/forums/blog.php?b=3613 Sat, 11 Feb 2012 14:04:44 GMT Today was a first. I was asked to sign three copies of my book for students, one being a former student whose sister is in my AP class. What an unnerving feeling, having to come up with something pithy to say and then sign my name. I have to say, I could feel myself getting anxious. Then, on top... Today was a first. I was asked to sign three copies of my book for students, one being a former student whose sister is in my AP class. What an unnerving feeling, having to come up with something pithy to say and then sign my name.

I have to say, I could feel myself getting anxious. Then, on top of that, watching students read my book during our "Read-A-Latte"... watching their expressions. [deep breath]

Five students (those who read) told me they really liked it; one said she needed a dictionary to read some of it. I'm okay with that, though.

If you like it, post a review at Amazon. That would be wonderful (and thanks in advance).

And my mother's reading it, too... that'll be an interesting conversation when she's done :) ]]> tchrofengl http://www.sffworld.com/forums/blog.php?b=3613 http://www.sffworld.com/forums/blog.php?b=3612 Sat, 11 Feb 2012 14:03:17 GMT So, yeah... you want to write a novel or a story or a poem or a play, but you're not sure exactly how to start.

First, you probably should ask yourself, "Why do I want to write something?" If the answer is:

• "Because I want to make money..."
• "Because I want to impress people..."
• "Because I'm bored..."

Well, that's not the best motivation. You have to write for one reason and one reason only:

You have a story to tell.

You should have this yearning to be a storyteller, whether it's sci-fi, fantasy, romance, drama, nonfiction...

There should be this SPARK of an idea that you fan and feed until it becomes a growing fire, one that slowly fuels your inspiration and urges you forward.

Some days the spark sputters and spits, verging on going out, while other days it becomes an all-consuming conflagration that reaches into your soul. It's a process. You can't control exactly how a fire burns, and you can't control everything about a story.

It should be organic, moving, growing, and allowed to move at its own pace. If you force it, you'll stifle that creative energy, but you should push yourself to write. An object in motion stays in motion, said Newton. But, an object at rest doesn't freakin' move at all.

Find your spark, and breathe life into it.

Write. ]]> tchrofengl http://www.sffworld.com/forums/blog.php?b=3612 http://www.sffworld.com/forums/blog.php?b=3596 Sat, 04 Feb 2012 08:31:13 GMT Hi, this is my first posting to SFF, and I've borrowed one of my earlier blogs from December which spiked a lot of interest. I'm still interested in more answers to this question, which is at the heart of SF:

What makes a good alien character?

For many years when reading science fiction, I was continually struck by how aliens were simply mirrors for humanity, foils against which heroic humans could find inner strength and show how good humanity could be. It didn't mean it was not enjoyable and even great, but for me it had the trappings of fantasy where the ultimate story is about good and evil, about what we can be (as is most fiction). When I stumbled upon David Brin's Startide Rising I uttered a 'Hallelujah' and plunged into the 'otherliness' of his aliens in the Uplift saga. I recently read Jack McDevitt's Deepsix and loved it for the same reason.

So when I started writing SF I was determined not to fall into conventional traps and set myself five simple rules:

1. Aliens won't look humanoid
2. They won't speak English
3. They will be more intelligent than us
4. They won't share our value structure
5. They won't wish they were human

The first is easy in principle, but as a writer I need to be careful and not chuck it all onto the page at once like a police description. I had some good advice early on from Jen Dick (a poet who loves scifi) who pointed out that people tend to describe things in different ways. So, in The Eden Paradox, in the first two thirds of the book there are only glimpses of the principal alien character, the Q'Roth, and people who see it describe it in different ways. Only later in the book is the reader able to piece them together to get a good look. This is used in films such as Alien, where only at the end is the creature really seen. Meanwhile, the reader's imagination gets a workout, which is what Scifi is all about, isn't it?

Communication is not only oral. In Eden's Trial there is an alien artifact called a Hohash, which cannot speak or utter sounds. Several professional readers (and SF author Gary Gibson) found this 'being' one of the most interesting aspects of both books (think of an I-Phone left to evolve for a million years...). Trapped onboard an alien vessel with a lone human female (a 'baddie' incidentally), the Hohash resorts to physical violence as a form of communication, always stopping short of killing her, its motives unclear until the very end of the book. Another alien, a reptile called Ukrull, can speak English, but hates to do so, because he finds humans so simple he'd rather not bother. The Ossyrians, a medical race, take another tack - they perform brain surgery on one of the humans so he can understand them, slowly destroying his humanity in the process. In Eden's Trail, there is no handy 'universal translator', and the human characters are constantly struggling to understand and be understood when they encounter aliens. Isn't that the most probable situation when we finally encounter aliens?

'More intelligent' is difficult to write, for obvious reasons. A trick is to make alien motivations obscure, adding lots of technological advancement and capability, and we infer intelligence. I'm just finishing Timelike Infinity by Stephen Baxter, and the Qax fall into such a category (also of course some of Greg Bear's works), though towards the end they started having human failings which for me lost some of the impact (but Baxter is such a terrific SF writer, who cares, right?). More intelligent can mean thinking faster, and as a writer this is easier to manage, since aliens can 'get it' when it has taken their human counterpoints a long time to reach what to the alien is obvious. In one scene in Eden's Trial I make this even clearer, by having the 'upgraded' human mentioned earlier thinking through a series of complex options literally while his former partner blinks once. Near the end of the book, Ukrull remarks of this human, "not so dumb."

Creating different value structures requires a lot of thought. Whilst loving most of the entire Star Trek series, the one race which stands out for me was the Cardassians. Initially they were painted as simply a nasty race, torturous, treacherous and brutal. But towards the end of Deep Space Nine, more of their culture became apparent, and their different value choices to ours became a little more understandable, and richer.

In The Eden Paradox, the Q'Roth are mankind's nemesis, and are a little black and white in terms of their value structures. But in the sequel, their role in the galaxy becomes clearer. In the finale of the trilogy, Eden's Revenge, which I'm writing now, a human who was hell-bent on their destruction has been turned into a Q'Roth and forced to fight alongside them against a larger enemy. Through his eyes (well, slits, actually), we gain an insight into what they care about, and what they simply don't feel (compassion, sympathy, love, the need for positive feedback, etc.). He still hates them and would like to destroy them, but he begins to respect them as the bravest soldiers he has ever seen.

The last rule (aliens shouldn't long to be human) requires the author to distance him or herself from the warm embrace of human contact and think instead about the cold hard vacuum of space: in other words, not to get 'romantic' about humanity and aliens, and not to secretly write fantasy under the guise of science fiction. A useful allegory is the African savannah of the Serengeti, where a panoply of animals co-exist, often by eating each other, according to the implicit rules of the food-chain and animal hierarchy. A wildebeeste doesn't 'want' to be a lion, for example, it just tries not to be the one taken down when chased. Would any of them want to be human? Really? I've been there, trust me, they wouldn't. The reverse might be true...

In dictionaries, the third definition of the word 'alien' usually means "a being from another world", and later definitions include the adjective "unfamiliar". Whilst I still read science fiction which is predominantly about humanity and may have no aliens whatsoever, frankly I get enough of humanity in daily life, so I'm always looking for books which have well-developed and thought-out aliens, to make me think about possibilities, because one day, I think they'll come a-knocking, and for me, they sure as hell won't look or be like us.

For more blogs on 'aliens' see my website: www.barrykirwan.com

If anyone is interested, The Eden Paradox is available in paperback and ebook from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Omnilit. Eden's Trial available from Amazon on kindle (B&N soon, paperback version fall 2012) ]]> barryineden http://www.sffworld.com/forums/blog.php?b=3596 http://www.sffworld.com/forums/blog.php?b=3595 Sat, 04 Feb 2012 03:08:34 GMT This is preliminary notice that I know a publisher that will be running a kind of "submit a cover" art contest. More details coming soon, but those of you interested, please take note. Exposure only, no actual pay (these are for token pay anthologies, after all...), but your work will be "out there" on the various sites as the cover.

--Brian. ]]> expatrie http://www.sffworld.com/forums/blog.php?b=3595 http://www.sffworld.com/forums/blog.php?b=3594 Thu, 02 Feb 2012 01:01:36 GMT I never realized that the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant were so interesting. My husband gave me links to a whole list of interesting free Kindle books for Christmas, including these memoirs, and they're engrossing. I read somewhere that his memoirs are supposed to be the best military memoirs ever written, even better than Caesar's Commentaries. It helps that Samuel Clemens was his editor. The section on how the army tamed mules had me laughing out loud! ]]> Marigwen http://www.sffworld.com/forums/blog.php?b=3594