Uncategorized – Page 99 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

Trope Tuesday: Recycled IN SPACE!

Or, as my friends at Leading Edge would say, IN SPAAACE!!!

The basic idea behind this trope is that setting a story in space makes it cool and different. The tvtropes article focuses mainly on how this trope is used in children’s cartoons, but it actually goes much wider. In fact, most space stories are actually based on stories from other genres, or even from history.

For example, Asimov’s Federation series is based on Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, David Drake’s Lieutenant Leary series is based on Patrick Obrian’s Master and Commander series, and Frank Herbert’s Dune is based on the rise of Islam. Westerns are especially prone to get the space treatment (Firefly, anyone?), which is where we get “wagon train to the stars.”

At its worst, this trope is nothing more than a pointless gimmick. At its best, however, it can produce some extremely good work. The key, as always, is to work within the limitations of the setting.

One of the best examples of this is Dune. Frank Herbert didn’t merely lift 7th century Arabia into space and call it Arrakis; he created a distinctly alien world with its own history, culture, biology, and role within the galactic empire. For example, Herbert solved the FTL problem by linking interstellar travel to the spice, tying his space-Arabs to the politics and economics of the rest of the galaxy.

Interestingly, your space physics don’t have to be perfect for this trope to work; they just have to be believable. For things like artificial gravity and faster than light travel, most people will accept a little hand-waving, provided that you do it well. The important thing, as always, is the story.

Minecraft!

I have a confession to make…I bought minecraft a week ago, and I’ve been playing it almost non-stop ever since. It is such a fun, addicting game!

The goal is…well, there is no goal, and that’s kind of the point. You start out in this vast open wilderness full of resources, and you gather them together and build stuff while trying to survive the monsters that spawn in the night. It’s like a world made of legos–there’s no limit to what you can do!

I got it so that I could play with my brother in law, but since then I’ve learned that a whole bunch of my other friends play too. I’ve got a pretty awesome world that I want to share with them, since multiplayer is probably a lot more fun than single player anyway. I call it New Cappadocia, and it’s basically a vast underground city that runs from the top of a mountain down to the bedrock.

Anyhow, I just finished up the main hall. Here are some pics:

dwarven_hall1 — The view from the entrance.

dwarven_hall3 — One of the wings--not sure whether to build anything here or just leave it as is.

dwarven_hall4 — The feasting table. Get me a tankard of ale, serving wench!

So yeah…needless to say, my productivity has taken a major hit. Fortunately, the novelty of the game has started to wear off; I managed about 2k words in Star Wanderers on Saturday, and I’ve all but got the kickstarter campaign for Desert Stars ready to launch. Last week was upside down, but this week I think I’ll be able to strike some balance. Famous last words, right?

Anyhow, if I did throw this up on a server, who would be interested in playing? I don’t want to make it too public for fear that griefers would tear it apart, but I think it would be cool to open it up to friends. My only rule would be that the physical structures have to look semi-plausible–no giant floating platforms with waterfalls that you swim up to get to the top (unless you can make it look believable).

Together, we could build something truly awesome!

Trope Tuesday: Pet the Dog

The basic principle behind this trope is that when you want your readers to feel some kind of sympathy toward a character, have them pet a puppy / puppy equivalent. Often used to show who the good guy is, but can also be used to add depth to a villain.

I first learned about this trope in Brandon Sanderson’s English 318 class, where he taught it as a way to build immediate sympathy when introducing a major character. A good example from his own work is Mistborn, where Kelsier’s first scene shows him giving the manor lord’s food to the skaa. From that moment on, there’s never really any doubt that Kelsier is the good guy.

Although often used to introduce a good guy, this trope can also be used quite effectively in the middle of the story, especially in a gray and black world where it seems that everyone’s a bad guy. A good example of this is Shadow from American Gods, who flips a coin with a hitchhiker to see who pays for dinner. Even though he’s a thief and an ex-convict, he rigs the coin toss so that he can pay for her. Through little gestures like this, Gaiman maintains rooting interest in his protagonist, even though everyone else in the novel is basically a jerk.

Another good example from a darker work is Angelo Osic from On My Way to Paradise. On the very first page, a fugitive shows up at his pharmacy booth, asking him to grow her a new hand. Even though he knows it’s dangerous, he takes her in and does what he can to help her. Later on, this same character rips out a man’s testicles and guts him like a fish. As repulsive as that is, however, I still keep rooting for him because I know that at his heart, he’s a good person.

Of course, when used most effectively, the pet-a-puppy moment has to grow naturally out of a person’s character. Even though Shadow is an ex-con, he served his time and feels genuinely sorry for what he did. Angelo Osic is a doctor, so it’s natural for him to try to help others; whenever he commits an act of violence, a part of his humanity dies, which becomes a major driving conflict throughout the book.

Finally, though this trope is often used to create rooting interest in a protagonist, it can also be used to add depth to a villain. A prime example for this is Captain Nemo from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The first moment happens when he rescues the main characters after their ship sinks, but it happens many more times too, such as when Arronax finds him weeping over a picture of his family. At the end of the book, even though we know that Nemo is the bad guy, we can’t help but feel a little sorry for him after he’s gone.

Puppy image courtesy Wikimedia. Cat image taken by me.

Goddesses by Linda Nagata

From the book description:

Michael Fielding is the newly appointed site director of the Four Villages project in rural India, tasked with guiding the economic development of the region. But a chance encounter with an ailing, homeless, and very young widow plunges him into the maze of an ossified and violent traditional culture, while putting his own career at risk.

On the other side of the world, Cody Graham’s hazardous waste cleanup company, Green Stomp, has earned a reputation for tackling the toughest, dirtiest jobs around. The harder the challenge, the more Cody likes it. But when chance—and the polluted ground water of Four Villages—brings Michael back into Cody’s life, both are forced to question their shared past, their values, and what it means to do good in the world.

This book was a change of pace for me. It’s science fiction, but takes place on a near-future Earth much like our own. In fact, the two driving elements of the story (infertility and economic development) are such contemporary issues that at points, I felt I was reading a piece of mainstream literature.

The writing is quite good, both on a technical and an artistic level. The storytelling is a little slower, but the character development is very well done, especially for Rajban, the native Indian girl whom Michael takes in and rescues. The parts from her point of view made me think a bit about my friends who did micro-finance after graduation; I think they would like her story a lot.

As a writer, one thing that interested me was how Nagata started off with a whole bunch of flashbacks and actually pulled it off. They tell you never to do this, but she made it work by grounding those scenes with clear action and a relatable conflict (childbirth, for example), all in the first couple of paragraphs. There were a couple of parts that confused me, but overall I think she handled it very well.

The ending was a bit ambiguous, which was dissatisfying in some ways but in other ways fit the story much better than a clean wrap-up. The story raises some very thought provoking questions about tradition and modernity, and a more definitive ending would probably have ruined a lot of that. But still, I wish I knew what happened to some of the characters after the end.

Overall, I’d give this book four stars. If you enjoy science fiction but you’d rather read something grounded in the real world, you’ll probably enjoy this book. If you’re interested in the developing world at all, I’d highly recommend it.

Trope Tuesday: The Call Knows Where You Live

I have a confession to make: I’m a tvtropes addict. Fortunately, it’s only about as bad as vicodin, which means that doses which would knock other people out do nothing to me–but still, I’ve wasted many, many hours on that site.

So anyhow, I thought it would be fun to do a weekly series where I pick out a trope and discuss it. After a lot of deliberation (and much clicking), I decided to start with:

The Call Knows Where You Live

This trope stems from one of the stages of the archetypal Hero’s Journey. The hero usually starts out in some sort of familiar setting, so that the reader gets a sense of who he is and where he’s coming from. To get the story started, someone or something from the realm of the unfamiliar calls him to leave on an adventure.

Most of the time (but not always), the hero turns down the call at first, not wanting to leave his comfort zone. This is called the Refusal of the Call, and it happens a lot. In The Matrix, Neo refuses to climb outside the window to escape the agents. In Ender’s Game, Ender Wiggin doesn’t actually want to go to Battle School, he just wants to be a normal kid and stay with his sister Valentine. In Star Wars IV, Luke tells Obi-Wan that he can’t go to Alderaan because he’s needed on the farm.

Unfortunately, the Call is not so easily evaded.

vlcsnap-2011-10-18-19h38m31s174 — Uncle Owen? Aunt Beru?

Sometimes, the best way to send a character off on an adventure is to have him lose everything right at the very beginning. With nothing to hold him back, the hero is free to go off and do something truly reckless.

I still remember how I felt when I first saw the burning homestead scene in Star Wars IV. The sinking feeling when I saw the smoke billowing from Luke’s house, the wide-eyed gasp at the mangled bodies of Luke’s aunt and uncle (I was so young, I had to close my eyes for that part). All of a sudden, the conflict felt a lot more real–and a lot more inevitable.

Of course, this trope only works for a certain kind of story. If the hero’s family is dead before he even leaves his home, there had better be some serious action later on. Also, the villain had better be the real thing–if nothing else in the story lives up to the depravity at the very beginning, a major promise has been left unfulfilled.

Alternately, I suppose you could have the hero’s family killed off by a natural event, or an unintentional accident–something where he has no one to blame and no face to put to the tragedy. I can’t think of any examples of this off the top of my head, but it seems a plausible motivation for, say, a scientist who wants to find a cure for some disease, or the source of some magnificent and dangerous anomaly.

Now, if I were an overlord, I would avoid this trope altogether by cozying up to the hero’s parents, perhaps even sending them Christmas cards. I might consider imprisoning them alive as collateral, but that would give the hero too much of an incentive to storm my castle. And of course, when slaughtering villages, I would make absolutely certain that everyone in the village is dead.

So what do you guys think of this trope? Any other cool examples you can think of, or interesting ways to subvert it? Let me know!

Let the job hunt begin!

Job-Hunting-on-Social-Network-Sites — Pull!

All right, I just updated my resume to account for the last year or so, and I’m ready to start looking aggressively for work. Given the state of the economy, I’m not optimistic that it will lead anywhere, but hey might as well give it a shot.

The ideal job would be something part time that allows me to write on the side while teaching me useful skills like book selling or copywriting. Oh, and it wouldn’t hurt to have interesting coworkers (especially female coworkers) and a fun work environment, too.

I’ve got to be honest, though; there aren’t very many jobs here in Utah Valley that are awesome enough to keep me here. In September, I finally got my TEFL certification, which means that I could probably land a decent job teaching English abroad if I were to look for one. In fact, if I showed up in Cairo or Amman with $500 USD in my pocket, I’ll bet I could establish myself.

So while there are a few jobs here in Utah that would make me decide to stay, if I can’t find anything satisfactory in the next few weeks, I’m probably going to go with teaching English abroad. My friends who have done it say that it gives you tons of free time to write, though generally more if you have a private apartment than if you’re living in a homestay. Even so, I think I’ll try out the Teach and Learn with Georgia program first for a few months, just to test the waters and see if this is something I actually want to do for a career.

That’s the tentative plan anyways. Things that could derail it include:

Finding an awesome job here in Utah.
Getting signed with my band.
Selling a bazillion ebooks.
Falling in love.

But either way, something’s gotta change.

Some awesome blogs you should follow

So a bunch of blogs I follow have been doing this blogfest called “Pay it Forward,” organzied by Alex J. Cavanaugh. The idea is to bring attention to some well deserving yet lesser known blogs, and that’s something I’m all for supporting.

The rules are simple: list, describe and link to three blogs that you follow, and check out some of the ones that others are recommending. So without any further ado, here are mine:

سفيرات أنثون — Don’t let the Arabic intimidate you. This is the travel blog of an old college friend of mine, Anthon Jackson. Since graduating in 2009, Anthon has been to just about every continent except Antarctica, taking some amazing pictures in the process. He’s the kind of guy who believes that life should be lived in the present, to the absolute fullest, and his blog reflects that.

Recently, he just got back from an Oxford sponsored expedition to the Danakil people of remote western Ethiopia. Other places he’s visited include Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, the Hindu Kush, western China, Italy, Norway, Korea, Morocco, the Sahel, etc. He posts rather sporadically, but whenever he does, it’s a real treat. So check him out!

God, Witches, Space & Stars — Laura is an old friend from Brandon’s writing class. She’s a great writer and insightful blogger, who takes a very thoughtful approach to everything she blogs about. She’s also an avid Kindle user with a lot of interesting thoughts on ebooks. So check her out!

Ben Godby — Ben Godby writes “mysteriously thrilling pseudo scientific weird western adventure fantasy tales.” He’s got a hilariously sarcastic writing style, and he’s not afraid to tackle controversial subjects on his blog. Whether or not you agree with him, he’s always entertaining to read. So check him out!

What does it mean to be “published”?

One interesting thing about making the shift from traditional to indie publishing is that it changes your perspective on what it means to be “published,” and not in ways that you might expect.

Before I made the shift, I felt as if I were at the base of a giant mountain, where climbing to the top meant getting published and that was all I could see. Sure, I knew there was more to it than getting that first book deal, but I figured I’d learn all about that at some point later–and besides, there’d be people along the way to help me.

Once I started indie publishing, though, my paradigm changed completely. Instead of focusing all my efforts on trying to land that lucky break, I started thinking in ways that were much more concrete and practical, like “how can I build my readership?” “how high (or low) should I price my books?” “how can I improve my ebook formatting?” etc.

All of a sudden, it was as if I were on top of that first mountain, with a whole range of even taller mountains to climb. And while that’s a very daunting place to be, it’s also quite encouraging, because I can see what lies in front of me and figure out what path I want to take.

One of the side effects of all this is that “getting published” is no longer a big deal to me. Whenever I see aspiring writers obsess over getting an agent or a book deal, as if that’s the single greatest thing that could ever happen to them and all their hopes and dreams hang on the balance, I have to stop and scratch my head.

Don’t get me wrong; it’s still a big deal to get picked up by a major publisher, and kudos to everyone who is. It’s just that that is not and shouldn’t be the end of your publishing journey; it’s only the beginning.

For this reason, I really don’t like the words “published” or “author” anymore. People throw those terms around as if it makes you part of a select elite, one of those godlike beings who lives up in the clouds and periodically descends from On High to grant blessings to all the poor unpublished wastrel folk on the surface. That’s complete and utter BS, and I never ever ever want to buy into it, not for an instant.

The problem is, so many people still do. They still think that there’s some kind of a divide between them and Big Name Authors, like peasants in the face of royalty. They labor endlessly over their manuscripts, terrified that one misplaced comma will forever their chances of fulfilling their hopes and dreams. And whenever anyone tries to tell them that there’s a better way, that it doesn’t have to be like this, they cling to the old paradigm like battered women who refuse to get help–or worse, like religious zealots who dream of being martyrs for their cause.

It used to be that self-published writers were the ones who constantly obsessed about being “published,” but now, I think it’s the exact opposite. Sure, there are crazies in both camps, but it seems that the balance of aspiring professionals–the ones who actually treat writing like a business–are turning to independent self-publishing.

The point is, I don’t like to think of myself as an “author,” or as an “indie published” whatever; I like to think of myself as an “indie writer”–or better still, just a “writer.” All the other terms are just too misleading and destructive.

Conquering the mountain

So this last weekend, I decided to solo climb Y Mountain. For those of you who don’t know, Y Mountain is one of the smaller mountains along the Wasatch range local to the Provo/Orem area. It’s called Y Mountain because of the enormous letter “Y” painted on its side (yeah, that’s what they do to mountains in this part of the country).

Of course, the only reason I did a solo hike was because I’ve been up this mountain multiple times before and I know the trail. Plus, it’s kind of a smaller mountain–it’s still over 8,000 feet, but the trail is only about 2 miles long. I’m a slow hiker, so it took me about three hours to get to the top.

To get to the top, you first have to hike the Y, which is the most boring part. The trail is literally wide enough for a truck to drive up–that’s how they repaint the Y every few years–and it’s all on the side facing the valley, so all you can really see is city.

After the Y, you go up a much smaller trail that cuts across the face of the mountain south, into Slide Canyon. At the entrance to the canyon is this really cool rocky outcropping that some people call Lover’s Point–I like to call it the Citadel. The trail winds up the canyon a ways, passes another really cool overlook, and turns a couple of bends before you reach the canyon head.

This is where things get interesting. At the head, there’s a small meadow surrounded on all sides by forest. On the right is a campsite, where the trail forks and heads up to Maple Mountain. If you stay left, though, the trail eventually takes you to the summit of Y Mountain.

The next half mile or so is pretty strenuous. The trail goes through an aspen grove, past another meadow, into this freaky dark forest, past another meadow, into another forest…and then you find yourself in this vast meadow, above the trees, surrounded on all sides by mountains.

I have to be honest: when I got to this point, I was absolutely terrified. The roar of the city was gone (and yes, the city roars–it’s a very distinct sound), the only other people around were a couple of hikers somewhere behind me, whom I hadn’t heard in maybe an hour, and all around was such incredible vastness…it’s hard to explain without actually being there. I just felt so small and isolated, surrounded by this immensity of nature that didn’t know who or what I was, or even that I was…

It was AWESOME.

By the time I got to the peak, the sun had set and the stars were already coming out. I only climbed to the false summit–the one with the view of the entire valley–and from there, I could see past Point of the Mountain all the way north to Sandy, with Spanish Fork and Elk Grove to the south, and Utah Lake a giant puddle in between. It was pretty cool.

But again, the alone-ness of the place really got to me. It made me wonder: is this how future space explorers will feel, when they’re traveling between stars? I can’t imagine how much greater is the vastness of space, compared to what I felt. If so, what kind of an effect with that have on the people who live out there on the fringes of settled space? How will it affect their culture, their religion, their sense of who they are and what their place is in this infinite universe?

I wish I could say I felt this huge sense of triumph after getting to the top, but honestly all I could think was: “oh crap, now I’ve got to walk all the way down.” I did it the same way anyone does anything–one step at a time–and thankfully, I made it down without incident.

Passed a young couple up on a date; they were pretty impressed that I hiked by myself, and gave me some water (which was fortunate–I ran out at the summit). Passed another pair of backpackers who were hoping to camp overnight on the summit, but other than that, I didn’t see anyone else until I got to the Y.

So that was my adventure this weekend, and how I celebrated my 27th birthday. It was totally worth it. In a couple of days, I’ll share the photos.

Difficult choices and keeping perspective

So I have some news, and it’s probably going to freak my parents out a little bit…I decided to turn down the full-time job offer that I mentioned a few weeks ago.

The company is great, they treat their employees well, I got along well with everyone there–so why not take the job? Because it wasn’t helping me make progress toward my long-term goals, it wasn’t teaching me any new or useful skills, and it wasn’t in a field where I’d like to make a career. After weighing the benefits vs. the costs, especially the opportunity costs, it just didn’t make sense to stay.

I know what a lot of you might be thinking: “Dude, a job’s a job. In this economy, you should take it and count yourself lucky!” I reject that, though. Last year, I managed to cut my expenses to less than $950 per month. I’ve been saving up my paychecks, and I’ve got enough to float me for a couple of months until I find a job that fits better, hopefully part-time.

The big thing I’m worried about is whether I’m digging myself into a hole. Since graduating in April 2010, here are the jobs I’ve held:

Conducting unsolicited phone interviews at a call center.
Picking, packing, and shipping at a costume company warehouse.
Delivering phone books from my car.
Miscellaneous unskilled labor at a candy factory.
Miscellaneous unskilled labor at an alarm company warehouse.
Processing inventory and shipments at an alarm company warehouse.

So yeah, nothing all that great. I’ve been doing some volunteer stuff in the interim, though, especially with Leading Edge and the “class that wouldn’t die” article from last year. But in general, it feels like I’m getting stuck in a rut, and that the longer I stay stuck, the harder it’s going to be to break out.

What I really want is something that will expand my mind and/or give me another major cultural experience. That’s why I’m thinking seriously again about teaching English abroad. But grad school is definitely another attractive option, especially if it gives me a chance to work on my Arabic.

With that in mind, here are the options I’m considering right now:

Travel to the Caucasus in January and volunteer teach English with the TLG program. It’s not particularly lucrative, but if I can balance my writing career on the side while having an awesome cultural experience in a region of the world that interests me, it might be perfect.
Study Arabic and/or Middle Eastern Studies at a university in the Middle East, ideally AUB or AUC. I don’t really want to be a security analyst, but I would love to make a career as an Arabist of some sort–provided, of course, that I could balance it with my writing.
Pursue a graduate degree in History, Anthropology, or Sociology in the United States. I’m less sure of this option, mainly because I don’t know if I’m passionate enough about any of those subjects to really succeed at them.
Take a chance and travel to the Middle East to teach English. I’d probably go to Jordan or Oman, where I actually know people, but Egypt, Libya, or Tunisia might be good too, especially with the Arab Spring opening them up. It might also be dangerous…but hey, at least it’s an adventure.
Finding a graveyard desk job, like night auditor at a hotel, and use that to support myself until the writing career start to take off. Even though this is the most boring option, it’s probably the most likely one I’ll follow…which probably isn’t a good thing.

The main goal, of course, is still to go full time with the writing career. That’s like the holy grail. I’m still optimistic about that; it’s just a matter of finding something useful to do in the interim. The last thing I want is to settle, or to get stuck in a comfort zone, or lose sight of my long term goals…

…I don’t know. I’m still figuring all this stuff out. But regardless, I just don’t think working full-time at an unskilled labor job is going to get me anywhere–and that’s an opportunity cost I can’t afford to take.