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I’ve been working these past couple of days on a short story idea that’s kind of popped into my head. Not that I’ve given up on The Lost Colony–not at all! I just thought I’d break out and do something different. That, and write something that might be easier to finish and send out. And so far it’s been fun!

One thing about this book that really stood out to me was how character driven it was. Correct me if I’m wrong, but Science Fiction thirty years ago was much less character driven than it is today. The lens of the main character was very thick in this story, and a lot of the time it reflected back on Mandella himself and his own thoughts and impressions of the things that happened to him. It was much less a story about space battles and society than on the immediate human impact of war. And unlike a lot of space adventure, it didn’t glorify it AT ALL. Neither did it censor or tone down the horror of it. You got to see the horror of it all–and sometimes the most horrifying thing was that Mandella could be so desensitized to the carnage and immorality.

I was browsing around in Pioneer Book about a week ago (and Pioneer Book is an awesome place to hang out if you like books–they’re used, but cheap, and it’s really fun just to go and get lost in there!) and I saw a few used Heinlein books for sale. I don’t know too much about anything in particular that he wrote, just that he’s known as one of the best Science Fiction writers of the last century and had a very strong influence on the genre, and so I decided to pick up one of his books to get a taste for his writing. I settled on Citizen of the Galaxy, for no particularly compelling reason except that it seemed a little bit more interesting from the back cover blurb.

It was definitely a good book! I read it very quickly and really loved it! This was one of those books that I would read between classes (and maybe for the first five minutes of class as well), while eating, while walking back to my apartment from on campus, etc.  Basically, any time I had free time.

The story takes place in the far future, when humanity has expanded to many worlds and has diplomatic contact with many alien races.  But because space is so large, all the worlds are only held together in a loose confederation.  Far away from Earth is the Sargony of Nine Worlds, where human trafficking is alive and well.  The main character, Thorby, is a boy who starts out as a slave–but he is bought and befriended by a beggar named Baslim.  However, Baslim is much more than a mere beggar, and there are many people from outside of the Sargony who would like to see slavery abolished.  Soon, Baslim is killed by the Sargony, and Thorby is forced onto the run.  He moves from place to place, among many different people, as he grows from a boy to man.  When he finally finds the true identity of Baslim–and his own true identity–he finds that it provides him an unlikely opportunity to fight the evil slave trade.  But it will require him to once again give up everything that he wants.

It was easy to read and very fast. In fact, it was surprisingly fast.  There were many scenes where I thought to myself “wow, this scene could really be fleshed out more!” The descriptions were minimal, and at times, days, months, and even years passed by in only a couple of pages.  Heinlein definitely wasn’t too wordy, but the things that he did describe and did explain were the important and interesting things.

I think a lot of this was due to the point of view.  It was 3rd person omniscient, like Frank Herbert’s Dune, except that it was even more detached than Herbert.  Herbert would get into the scene enough to give a detailed picture of everything, but for Heinlein, the important thing was the plot of the story–as well as some of the more interesting ideas he had.

One really interesting idea that he had was of a society of space traders that travel the frontiers of known space on long voyages, completely isolated from the rest of humanity, who over time form their own distinct culture and government.  Each ship is like its own country, with a very rigid social structure to keep the friction of long voyages from causing mutiny and disorder.  The onboard community is almost like a tribe of nomads where everyone plays a role.  Every few years, they come together in a giant gathering to intermarry and buy new ships to start new clans.

The way that Heinlein envisioned this society is truly fascinating–he took the conditions that existed on the frontier of the world that he created, combined it with the technology of space travel, and drew it to what he saw as the logical conclusions.  He then humanized it somewhat by telling a story within it.

He did this for more than just the Free Traders: he did it to one degree or another throughout the whole book.  And these ideas and concepts, combined with the story of Thorby’s rise from anonymity and the underworld, made the story really good.  It really got my imagination going, which in my opinion is a sign of greatness in any story.

Oh, and one more thing: one reason why I love reading these old sci fi stories is because it is ALWAYS funny when one of the characters pulls out a slide rule to do some math!  ALWAYS!!!  It happened only once in this story, but it made me LAUGH so hard!  You’ve gotta love old 60s sci fi!

As I’ve become more and more involved in writing Science Fiction, I’ve felt a strong desire to educate myself on the genre and read the major Sci Fi books that have come before me. I want to do this so that I can make my own works stronger, and also because I really enjoy them. When I picked up this book, I did so more because it was one of the more well known books and I felt that I ought to read it than that I really wanted to read it. After all, 2001: A Space Odyssey is known to be really hard sci fi, and most of what I’ve experienced and come to love is more “soft” sci fi.

However, even though this book really is “hard” science fiction, I became totally engrossed and really came to love it. The last 50 pages in particular had a huge impact on me–I literally couldn’t put the book down!

2001: A Space Odyssey kind of reminds me of Asimov’s Foundation series, in that the thing driving the story the most isn’t the characters, the plot, or the conflict, but the idea. In Foundation, it was psychohistory and questions about free will and the ability to predict the future. In 2001, it has to do with the growth and development of humanity and wonder at the universe.

Like Foundation, it really isn’t character based at all–the story starts three million years in the past, when aliens encounter our primate ancestors, and goes forward to 2001, when astronaut David Bowman again contacts these aliens on a mission to Saturn that goes disastrously wrong. But really, it isn’t about David at all–he’s more of a vehicle through which Arthur C. Clarke describes the planets and the aliens.

The thing that really makes this book stand out for me is the writing. When the Discovery was flying by Jupiter, I really felt like I was there. It was almost as if I could feel the same anxiety and wonder that the astronauts felt–and when the probe broke through the first few layers of Jovian clouds to send out a video picture of what lay underneath, my eyes grew wide as if I were there. The writing throughout the book was superb like that.

One thing that surprised me a bit was that I didn’t mind how Arthur C. Clarke treated the man-apes at the beginning of the book. I’m a fairly religious person, and even though I accept most of evolution, there are some things about the Darwinist worldview that clash with my theology and can sometimes irk me. It’s not that I think I’ve got it figured out–because really, like every reasonable person I have to admit that I haven’t–it’s that there are certain things about the Darwinist worldview that I feel leave no space for the kind of stuff that I believe in. However, even though 2001: A Space Odyssey adhered very close to the Darwinist view of human pre-history, I didn’t feel all that upset or thrown off by it. I think this was because Clarke wasn’t preachy about it, or tried to use it as a way to downplay religion. Indeed, Clarke didn’t seem to have much to say either for or against religion–just that this was one aspect of where we came from.

And I think this gets onto something much bigger that I really liked about this book–Clarke didn’t try to explain everything. Indeed, there was a lot more left unexplained than explained, and that helped to preserve the supreme sense of wonder that the book conveyed. This wasn’t like the Star Wars prequels when they tried to do something as lame as explain the force–this book really showed that there are a lot of unanswered questions and fascinating possibilities in the universe. And I really think that that helped to strengthen the book as Science Fiction.

By far the strangest and most fascinating part of the book was the last fifty pages, when David Bowman gets to Saturn aboard the now partly derelict Discovery and finds the stargate. Once he goes through it, ALL KINDS of crazy stuff happen! And it was really thrilling to read! I won’t give away any spoilers, but it was really crazy–and really good as well! The thing that made it good was that even though it was really psychedelic and mysterious, I didn’t feel lost as I was reading it. I felt that I could visualize it very well, even if I didn’t know what “it” was, and every once and a while, Clarke dropped in a short explanation or two without breaking the action. Indeed, since the point of view was not really limited to David, there was room for the narrator to talk with the reader and explain some of the stuff that was going on. But Clarke really did a good job balancing the information he gave so that he preserved a sense of mystery without losing the reader. That, I feel, takes skill and practice, and can really strengthen a good story.

2001: A Space Odyssey is definitely hard sci fi, so if you like reading about characters or stories, you won’t get much from this–but if you have a sense of wonder about the universe and you like pondering scientific ideas, this is a really excellent book to read!

Alright, here are the two ideas I have right now.  I’m not really at a good stopping point for The Lost Colony yet, but I think I can slow down enough to divide my attention.

The first one I got when I finished 2001: A Space Odyssey just last week.  I was thinking about dating and relationships, and also thinking about the last 50 pages of 2001 (which, let me tell you, are psychedelically crazy!), and the thought came into my mind that a guy and a girl getting to the point where they start up a relationship is kind of like a first contact situation with an alien species. In both situations, both sides are trying to put their best selves forward; in both situations, communication is awkward and neither side quite knows what to expect; in both situations, each side is driven to figure out what the other side is thinking, and to predict what they will do; in both situations, the stakes are very high.  So, I thought I’d write a story which is actually two stories–a first contact story that parallels an awkward dtr, where it’s unclear whether the first contact story is real or is just happening inside the guy’s head.  Yes, I know it’s a really nerdy story.  Yes, I embraced my geekdom long ago.  And…to make it more geeky, I’m probably going to need a little bit of help with this one.  So I talked with my good friend Steve, and we’re going to collaborate on this one.  I think it could be really funny–just like Decision LZ150207! (speaking of which, I need to send out that story to some publishers)

The other idea I have is a bit darker.  I got the idea of it from Joe Haldeman’s Forever War.  I thought that the space combat in that book was very intriguing, about space battles fought across solar systems at relativistic speeds, and how the soldiers return after every combat to a very different world.  For a few months, I toyed around in my head what a spaceship would look like that fought at such speeds, and I came up with this idea of a one man spaceship that was equipped to defend a planetary system from attack.  And then, I thought “what would it be like if one of the pilots blacked out, was thrown out of the solar system at relativistic speeds, and by the time he came back, it was nearly a hundred years later and a peace treaty had been signed?” So now, I just need to come up with an idea for this pilot’s character, and to figure out a few more of the military details.  And…I need to figure out what this guy is going to do after his life loses its meaning.  He basically forsakes everything to go and become one of these pilots (since he knows that he will be flung far into the future), and the thing that compels him to do that is the urgency of this terrible war, but when something goes wrong in this battle (which he thinks is the final battle for his world) he comes back to find that the enemy that he has dedicated his life to destroy has made peace with his people, and they are now in an age of prosperity.  He becomes a relic.  What does he do about it?  That’s the key issue–and I don’t know exactly how to solve it.  I’m not exactly the person to do so, either, since I’m not a soldier and not a veteran of any war.  But…maybe I can come up with something.  I hope that something in my personal experience can help to suggest an answer to this soldier’s problem.  Because I don’t want this to be a lame story where the whole point is to destroy the hero.  I want it to be realistic, but worth reading as well.

So, those are some of the ideas I have in my head now.  I hope that more will soon come!  And really, the thing I need to focus on now is submitting the two stories that I’ve already finished.  I’ve been lazy on that end–too lazy.

So, I got back yesterday from my spontaneous trip with my old roommates!  It was a lot of fun!  Definitely worth skipping the last couple of days of classes! However, I can’t figure out how to upload pictures to this particular blog–I’m sure there’s a way to do it, I’m just not all that proficient at wordpress.  Shoot.  Well, you can check out my photoblog for pictures, since I’ll probably be posting most of them up there in the next few days.  And if you bug me enough, I might just put them all in a pdf or a word file and upload it to this post.  So there you go.  But here’s basically what we did:

My old roommates are really awesome.  I’m really glad that I got the chance to get to know them.  They are just a lot of fun to hang out and do stuff with.  I drop by every once and a while (you can do stuff like that when you have a car 🙂 ) and Sunday night, I dropped by to find them getting ready to leave for Zion National Monument!  And they wanted me to come with them!  Well, I’m the kind of guy who takes a long time and a lot of working up to finally decide to do something, so it took me a couple of really strenuous hours of convincing myself, but I finally went!  And it was a ton of fun!

We drove until about four in the morning, listening to music and having a general good time, and sticking our heads out to look at all the stars, because HOLY COW you can see a TON of stars in Southern Utah, especially when you’re out in the road in the middle of nowhere!  We passed through Hurricane and started looking for a park.  Yeah, we’re all pretty cheap–we didn’t want to pay money to go camping at an official campground!  Besides, it was 4:30 am.  We ended up crashing on the lawn of a local church there–it was kind of funny!  I was expecting that we’d stop at a campground, but instead I ended up feeling like I was homeless!  But the weather was warm, and it was good.  My friends told me that the bishopric stopped by and just kind of watched us for a while, but I was asleep and they were pretending to be asleep, so they didn’t bother us.

Then, after grabbing some breakfast from the grocery store, we went up to Zion’s!  And it was awesome!  The mountains there are vertical, red, and beautiful.  We climbed up Angel’s Landing, which was rather short but fairly strenuous.  There were all kinds of switchbacks and stuff, and I think we climbed up over a thousand feet above our starting location.  It was kind of funny, because I noticed these signs that said “warning, falls have resulted in death,” but I didn’t realize what that actually meant until we got to the trailhead and on to the part where the trail runs parallel to a sheer cliff.  They had these chains attached into the rock, and without those chains, holy cow! every other person to go up that trail would be dying!

I didn’t think much of the chains until I looked over my side and saw how sheer of a cliff it was, and then my legs started to get weak and I found myself gripping that chain very tightly!  I guess I’m afraid of heights or something.  And, as much as I would like to say that I conquered my fear and went ahead…I didn’t.  Yeah.  We got to the part with the bridge, and then I saw where the trail was REALLY headed, and holy cow!  I just kind of stopped there.  Man, it made me feel so…terrestial!  Like I was falling short or something!  But yeah, it was still something of an accomplishment.  And I really didn’t have the shoes for it (I was wearing Birkenstocks, with REALLY sandy socks).  And it was still very awesome.  So I came back and read for an hour or so on the top of the mountain, it was very peaceful and nice.  Read some more of that Madeleine L’Engle quotebook.

So then, on the way down, we spontaneously decided to go to Las Vegas and get a hotel there, instead of spending another night under the stars.  Also, it would be kind of cool to experience Las Vegas.  I thought that it would be interesting–I’ve heard a lot of things about that place and how evil it is, but never actually been there, so it would be a good experience.

We drove down there, had a good time (man, I love road trips!), and pulled in.  The hotels there are really cheap!  We got ours for maybe $40 or so.  And the parking is free as well!  But the way these places really make their money is in the Casinos and nightclubs.  We went out and spent the night walking around the strip, and holy cow!  I really got to see why they call it “sin city!” I won’t go into details (and don’t worry, I observed from a safe distance–and refrained from observing some of the more immoral stuff altogether!), but it was really crazy!  Man, when you legalize prostitution, you get all kinds of evil stuff going on!  We had so many people offer to take us to these sleazy places, or give us pornographic business cards for whores (little Mexican women were handing out those cards!  Holy cow!  How much more evil can you get than that?!), or try to talk with us, and man, it was pretty crazy!  My friends had this competition going, where they wanted to get as many girls’ phone numbers as they could (girls who were not hookers).  It was pretty funny when they tried to walk into a nightclub with their tattered jeans and ripped t-shirts!  The doorkeepers would look them up and down and tell them “sorry, you’re not dressed for this place!” They eventually teamed up and succeeded in getting a couple of legit girls’ numbers, and they were pretty dang happy about it!  But by then, it was ridiculously late, and we crashed pretty hard at our apartment.  It was hard to get up in the morning, but we did it, and had a groggy but quick drive back to Provo.

The highlight of the trip was definitely Zion’s.  It was a beautiful day, and a wonderful climb.  As we were driving away from there, I was trying to sleep, but all I could see in my mind was the car driving off of one of those cliffs!  It took a while to finally get the immediate impression of them out of my mind, but I must say that it was quite awesome, and I’d definitely recommend heading over there!  And as for Vegas, it was quite an interesting experience to see that place.  Now I know why the stuff that happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.  And what was really interesting was that it wasn’t tempting and it wasn’t scary.  It was just there, and just wrong.  The casinos didn’t really entice me, and all those crazy pictures and skanky people were more jarring than arousing.  I’ve already figured out that I don’t want that in my life, so it’s really not an issue at all for me.

One thing really got me riled up, though.  My friend Steve told me that he knows of a professor at BYU who did a study on the sex workers in Las Vegas–the ones who work the brothels.  He said that 45% of them are Mormon, and that most of those come from dual income households where the wife lost her job–and they both decided together for her to go into the sex industry.  HOLY FREAKING COW.  Most of those people are probably inactive anyway, but that just boggled my mind.  I would amputate my right arm RIGHT THIS VERY MOMENT if it was necessary to keep my future wife from working the sex industry–and I’m sure that once I’m finally married and in a deep relationship with my future wife, I would be willing to sacrifice my life to keep her from going into that line of work!  Yikes!  THAT got me riled up quite a bit!

So, yeah, sorry there aren’t any pictures here.  I have tons, I just don’t know how to post them!  If you would like to see them, either bug me or check out my photoblog over the next few days.

Drek says this blog is boring.  He says he doesn’t like reading post after post about how many words I did each day.  He says my life as a writer is boring.

I’m going to cry.

But I have a chance to redeem myself.  Because my old roommates are completely and totally insane.  They decided today to skip the last two days of classes and drive down to Zion’s National Park, just for the heck of it.  No plans, no nothing.  Just go and do something crazy.

Well, it was a tortuous process, but I finally decided to go with them!  So yeah, we leave in like half an hour, and we’re totally going to be trashed when we get back Tuesday afternoon, and my parents are going to think I’m crazy, and I’m going to feel guilty for skipping so many classes, and I won’t be able to write, and I have no idea what I’m doing or what’s going to happen…

But it’s going to be awesome!  YEAH!!!

So, Drek and I were having a chat the other day online, and we started sharing favorite songs from this website called ocremix. It’s a really awesome site for free fan-made arrangements and remixes of video game music, and it’s really cool because so much of the music comes from REALLY old games–I mean, games that me and my friends grew up playing! In some ways, they have the same appeal to video gamers as soundtracks from movies and musicals have to other people–it can really bring you back to the game, bring back memories and good times…it’s just generally very awesome. And even if you haven’t played the game before, the music is still usually of such a good quality that it’s fun to listen anyways. I mean, most of the music I listen to on OCR is not from games that I’ve actually played, but I still like it anyways.

So, without any delay, here is my top ten:

• 10: Bluelightning (Mega Man 3) by Disco Dan. I found this one just yesterday, and I’ve been listening to it ever since! I especially love the beat and the subtle yet awesome sound of the electronic organ!
• 9: The Dark World (Crystal Abyss Mix) (Final Fantasy III) by Ubik. This one is a little bit dark, but I like how the soft melody and the harp transposes over the electronic beats. It just seems to give this feeling of yearning for something. Also, I have some good memories of this, because I listened to it constantly during my first playthrough of FF Tactics.
• 8: Guile’s Mile Long…yeah (Super Street Fighter II Turbo) by Trenthian. (let me know if the link doesn’t work) I really like this one, because it seems to really give the sense of someone on a quest, and how that quest is such a struggle.
• 7: Clash at the Mountains (Zelda: Link’s Awakening) by Zircon. Zircon is just such an awesome remixer on the OCR website. He’s got a lot of good stuff. This one is just a way cool electronic interpretation of the classic Zelda theme! It really energizes me to just get up and do something!
• 6: JENOVA Celestial (Final Fantasy VII) by bLiNd. bLiNd is another really amazing remixer in the OCR community! I think that his techno is some of the best on the site. He contributed a lot to the recent Final Fantasy VII: Voices of the Lifestream project, and this has got to be my favorite remix from that album (and I have copies of all four cds in my car). The JENOVA theme is one of the best pieces of music from Final Fantasy VII, and this is imo an excellent interpretation of it.
• 5: Before Time (Jurassic Park) by Daniel Baranowsky. I love the guitar on this one! Also, just how everything seems to be so well balanced. This is one of the first songs that I discovered on the OCR site, and I still really like it!
• 4: Thirty-Plus Mix (Tetris) by R3FORG3D. Man, this is some really hard techno! It zones you out from everything and just hits you over and over again like an electric surge to your brain! Just makes me want to move!
• 3: Dream of Zeal (Chrono Trigger) by bLiNd. The time circuits song from Chrono Trigger just took me to another world when I first heard it! I remember playing Chrono Trigger and getting to the part right before you go to the magical world in the sky, when you travel forwards in time to the ancient age, and the whole world is nothing but an icy wasteland. You think to yourself, “hey, what’s going on here?” and then you find this really strange looking ancient building, which opens up a conduit and takes you up above the clouds to the magical floating kingdom of Zeal, and you just think “whoa!” for, like, the next five minutes! And this song was definitely a big part of that! This is the best interpretation of time circuits that I found on the OCR site, and I definitely believe that it does it justice!
• 2: Flying Heaven (Super Street Fighter II Turbo) by Zircon. Another impressive one by Zircon! This has got to be one of the best martial arts-ish songs that I’ve heard, on or off of OCR! Man, it really makes me want to get up and do some jujitsu! And I really like the whole Eastern feel to it!
• 1: White Skies (club mix) (Final Fantasy X) by bLiNd. This one has got to be my favorite. I think that the defining characteristic of good techno is that it gets you really excited and calms you down at the same time. The result is music that zones you out and lets you focus intensely on the task that’s right in front of you–and if you don’t have anything in particular to do, it just makes you want to move and dance without caring about what’s going on around you. Awesome stuff! And this has got to be one of the best techno pieces on the OCR site. Man, good job! This is AWESOME!

I could put a LOT more up here, and I’m sure that if I thought on it a lot harder I’d say to myself “no, wait! Number 8 should be this remix, not this one!” or “what about this really cool one? I really like this one! Which number should it be?” But I hold by my choice for number one; that one has got to be my favorite piece on the OCR site, hands down. bLiNd just makes awesome music!

I was looking around in some of the old files that I have, and I came across this old piece. It’s one of the first stories that I ever wrote–probably the first piece of creative fiction that I wrote outside of school. I remember writing this! It was back in 5th grade, so that would make me about ten years old! I wrote it on the family computer–an old 386 that died during y2k (well, not really, but we had to use a fix to get around it, and then we forgot how to use the fix and my Dad gave it away. Gave it away!!! What I wouldn’t give to still have that computer!!!!!). I wrote it back when I was reading books on African wildlife and the Goodals, and my goal was to become a naturalist someday. A lot of that comes out if you read between the lines here. Of course, I had already decided that I would be a fiction writer, but that would be a part-time thing–I’d still need a day job.

I think the real significant thing about this story was that it was the first one that I did independent of school. I was really fortunate in that my elementary school had a strong creative writing program, so I’d already “written” a dozen or so books already–mostly stories that were about 500 to 1,000 words long, with pictures that I drew. This one was about 3,500 words long, and when I finally finished it, I felt really tired and really proud of myself! I don’t remember how long it took, but it took several weeks, and possibly even months. This story marked the starting point in my life of writing creative fiction on my own. After this, I went on to write about five more hyena stories, then I started a science fiction piece based off of one of my imaginary universes, and then, after maybe a couple of other projects, I started my first attempt at a novel in the 8th grade. Ever since then, I’ve always had this writing bug. Even when I was on my mission I had it, and at one point even scribbled a few chapters for an allegorical story based on Lehi’s dream.

So, you could say that this Hyena story was a milestone for me. It’s not something I’d try to publish now, but I do think it offers a wonderful view into what I was thinking and writing back then as a budding creative writer. Enjoy!