Tag: ideas and concepts

Operation SB #1: The Infiltrator

Title: The Infiltrator
Genre: Science Fiction
Word Count: 3,945
Time: 2 days

For my first story for Operation Short Blitz, I took a story idea that’s been bouncing around in my head for some time: that one of the best way for aliens to spy on us without being detected would be to send an infiltrator disguised as a homeless person.

I tried to do something with this idea before, but like many of my short story attempts, it turned into something longer.  For that one, I tried to tell the story from the point of view of a normal twenty-something single guy living in an apartment close to where the alien infiltrator had his base.  But then it started turning into a story about the guy, leaving the alien as the impact character, and the story became about something else.  I eventually lost interest and trunked it.

For this one, I kept it simple, telling it straight from the point of view of the alien.  I resisted the urge to put in extra subplots and instead focused on the core idea itself, making sure that everything in the story was directly connected to it.  That definitely helped to keep it short and focused.

I think it turned out pretty well.  It was hard not to self-edit as I wrote it, which was part of the reason it took two days to write instead of one.  I started it on Saturday, tried to finish it but went for a two-hour midnight walk instead.  Picked it up on Monday and finished it up then.

So now, after doing a quick proofread to fix typos and grammer, I’m going to put it on submission, sending it to Writers of the Future first and working my way down.  I don’t expect it to place, but maybe it will get honorable mention, which would be cool.  And who knows?  Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Y is for Yesteryear

Star_wars_oldThey say that the golden age of science fiction is about twelve years old.  That’s definitely true for me.

My first exposure to the genre was Star Wars: A New Hope.  I saw it when I was seven, right around the height of my dinosaur phase.  Everything about the movie completely blew me away, from the Jawas and Sand People of Tatooine to the stormtrooper gunfights and lightsaber duels.  After watching Luke blow up the Death Star, I spent the next few hours running around the yard pretending to fly my own starfighter.

In a lot of ways, I’ve never really stopped.

My parents made me wait until I was nine to watch The Empire Strikes back, because it was rated PG.  Without any exaggeration, I can say that those were the longest two years of my life.  I was literally counting down days by the end, and to pass the time without going crazy, I read up on all the books about space that I could possibly find.

My father bought the original X-wing flight simulator game somewhere around then, and I soon became totally engrossed in it.  Since the 386 was our only entertainment system (no Super Nintendo–I had to visit a friend’s house for that), X-wing became the defining game of my childhood.  I spent hours and hours on that game, to the point where I knew exactly which simulated missions the characters from the books were flying and how to complete them faster and easier.

I thought The Empire Strikes Back was a little slow the first time I saw it, but it’s since grown on me, to the point where now it’s my favorite film in the whole series.  Thankfully, my parents let me watch Return of the Jedi the next day, and for the next few months my life felt utterly complete.

Around this time I discovered the Star Wars novels and soon immersed myself in them.  The Courtship of Princess Leia by Dave Wolverton soon became one of my favorites, as well as the Heir to the Empire trilogy by Timothy Zahn and the X-wing series by Michael A. Stackpole.

But it was Roger Allen McBride who first introduced me to a different flavor of science fiction with his Corellia trilogy.  As I mentioned in V is for Vast, those books had just enough of a touch of hard science to intrigue me about the other possibilities of the genre.  That was the last Star Wars series that I read before branching out into other works of science fiction.

The Tripod trilogy by John Christopher was my first introduction to the dystopian / post-apocalyptic genre, depicting an enslaved humanity after an alien invasion.  Those books really captured my imagination for a while.  The Giver was also quite interesting and thought provoking, though since it didn’t involve spaceships or aliens it wasn’t nearly as compelling.

I read a lot of fantasy in my early high school years, including Tracy Hickman, Lloyd Alexander, and (of course) J.R.R. Tolkien.  While I enjoyed those books and immersed myself in them for a while, my true love was still science fiction.  For almost a year, I watched Star Trek: Voyager religiously with my dad.  And every now and again, I’d pick out a science fiction book from the local town library and give it a try.  That’s how I discovered Frank Herbert’s Dune.

In eleventh grade, my English teacher had us choose an author and focus our term papers solely on their books for the entire year.  She suggested I choose Orson Scott Card, but I chose Cormac McCarthy instead.  I’m not sure if that was the worst decision of my high school career, or the best decision, since assigned high school reading tends to make any book feel like it sucks.  I discovered Ender’s Game the following summer, and finished it in a delirious rush at 3am the morning after checking it out from the local library.

More than any other book, Ender’s Game cemented my love for the genre, and showed me just how powerful and moving the genre could be.  It opened so many insights into the world and human nature, reading that book made me feel like I’d opened a pair of eyes that I didn’t even know I’d had.  Looking back, that was probably the moment when I knew I would be a science fiction writer.  I’d known I was going to be a writer ever since I read A Wrinkle in Time at age eight, but to be a science fiction writer specifically, that goal was probably cemented by reading Orson Scott Card.

After high school, I served a two year mission for my church, during which I didn’t read any novels or watch any TV or movies.  When I came back, though, Orson Scott Card and Madeline L’Engle helped me to ease through the awkwardness of adjusting back to normal civilian life.  When I left for college, I expanded my horizons even further, starting with Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series and Edgar Rice Burrough’s Princess of Mars.

When I discovered Pioneer Books in downtown Provo, I knew I’d found my favorite bookstore in Utah Valley.  I have so many fond memories sitting cross-legged on the floor in the science fiction section, browsing through the musty used books for hours at a time.  That’s where I discovered C.J. Cherryh, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein, Ursula K. Le Guin, and numerous other authors who are among my favorites today.

When I discovered Spin, Robert Charles Wilson soon became one of my favorites.  I picked up that novel as a free PDF from Tor, and read it over the summer while studying abroad in Jordan.  Once again, that same hard sf sensibility I’d gotten from Roger Allen McBride touched me in an unforgettable way.  But it was the human element of that book that really moved me–in fact, it’s always been about the human element.  The world building in Downbelow Station was great and all, but the romance of Merchanter’s Luck had a much more lasting impact.  Starship Troopers had some good ideas, but it was Mandella’s personal journey in The Forever War that moved me almost to tears.  The intrigue of the Ender’s Shadow series was quite entertaining, but it was Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead that really taught me what it means to be human.

I finished my first novel, Genesis Earth, shortly after returning from that study abroad, and tried to capture the same sensibility from Spin as well as the intimately human element.  Since then, I’ve written several more sci-fi novels, some of them tragic, some triumphant, but in all of them I’ve tried to get as close as I can to the personal lives of the characters.  I don’t know if I’ll ever write a character portrait so intimate as Shevek’s in Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, but I certainly hope to someday.

For me, science fiction started out as a wonderfully exciting entertainment and turned into something much more meaningful.  If there’s anything the genre has taught me, though, it’s that the two aren’t mutually exclusive–that you can have your adventure and learn what it means to be human as well.  Indeed, the more imaginative the adventure, the greater the truths I’ve taken from it.

Because of that, even though I’m almost in my thirties now, I can’t possibly foresee a time when science fiction isn’t a major part of my life.  It’s a love affair that’s grown just as much as I have, and continues to grow with each new author I discover and each new book I write.  When I’m old and grizzled and pushing eighty, I’m sure there will still be a part of that twelve year old boy in me, still running around the yard flying his starship.

Continue reading Y is for Yesteryear

X is for Xenocide

xenocideThis post isn’t just about the third book in the Ender’s Game series–it’s about the genocide of an entire alien race, which is actually a fairly important trope in science fiction.

Of all the evils of our modern era, perhaps the most heinous is the systematic extermination of an entire race or ethnicity.  These acts of genocide not only cross the moral event horizon, they create specters and villains that live on from generation to generation.  Just look at how the Nazis are portrayed in popular culture–even today, they are practically mascots of the ultimate evil.

And for good reason.  There really is something evil about the total annihilation of a foreign culture.  It’s one of the reasons why terms like “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” are so controversial, especially in conflicts that are still ongoing–and there are so many unresolved conflicts where the systematic and purposeful annihilation of a race or culture is still happening.

Is wholesale genocide a phenomenon unique to our modern age?  Probably not, but modern science has enabled it on a scale that was previously impossible.  This became all too clear to us after World War II.  Only a generation before, great numbers of people believed that we were on a path of progress that would eventually culminate in world peace.  If there was any of that sentiment left, it was shattered with the liberation of Auschwitz and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Suddenly, we realized that systematic mass destruction and genocide were not only possible, they were a modern reality.

It should come as no surprise, then, that science fiction immediately began to explore this issue.  From Frankenstein to 1984, science fiction has been full of cautionary tales of science gone wrong, issuing a critical voice of warning.  But after 1945, it went much further, exploring the issue in ways that can only be done in a science fictional setting.

Is genocide ever morally justifiable?  In our current world, probably not, but what if an alien race was bent on our destruction?  If their primary objective was the utter annihilation the human race, and negotiation was impossible?  Wouldn’t it be justifiable–perhaps imperative even–to stop such a race by annihilating them first?

This is what is meant by the term “xenocide.” A portmanteau of “xenos,” the Greek word for stranger, and “genocide,” it denotes the complete extermination of an alien race.

Xenocide forms the core conflict of Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game series (hence the title of the third book) and features in The Forever War by Joe Haldeman.  Battlestar Galactica presents an interesting twist, where the cylons debate the ethical questions surrounding the complete annihilation of the humans.  And then, of course, there’s all the time travel stories involving Hitler–let’s not even go there.

The interesting thing about xenocide stories is that even though they describe a dilemma that does not currently exist in our modern world, they inevitably come down to issues of Otherness that lie at the very core of the evils of genocide.  In order for xenocide to be morally justifiable, you have to know your enemy well enough to know that there’s no possibility of forging any sort of peace with them.  And to know them that well, they cease to be quite so alien.  It’s one of the major themes in Orson Scott Card’s work–that to defeat an enemy, you have to know them so well that you can’t help but love them.

In our modern world, genocide is only possible when an ethnic group is relegated to the position of Other–when they are made out to be so different and unlike us that we can never possibly relate to or mix with them.  They become “sticks” (Germany), “cockroaches” (Rwanda), “animals” and “barbarians” (Israel).  That is precisely why it makes us uncomfortable in stories about xenocide–because it turns the well-intentioned saviors of humanity into knights templar, or possibly the very monsters they are trying to destroy.

By positing a situation in which genocide might actually be justifiable, science fiction helps us to understand exactly why it is so reprehensible–and that’s only one of the ways in which the genre can uniquely explore these issues.  That’s one of the things I love so much about science fiction: its ability to take things to their extreme logical conclusions, and thus help us to see our own real-world issues in ways that would otherwise be impossible.

Since most of my characters are human, xenocide as such isn’t a major theme in my books, but genocide certainly is.  In the Gaia Nova series, the starfaring Hameji look down on the Planetborn as inferior beings and think nothing of enslaving them and slagging entire worlds.  That’s how Prince Abaqa from Stars of Blood and Glory sees the universe at first, but by the end of the novel he’s not quite so sure.  Stella from Sholpan and Bringing Stella Home also deals with these issues as she comes to realize how it’s possible for the Hameji to hold to such a belief system.

If genocide is one of the ugly skeletons in the closet of this screwed up modern world, then xenocide is science fiction’s way of taking those skeletons out and dignifying them with a proper burial.  By wrestling with these issues in stories set on other worlds, we are better able to humanize the Other and prevent these horrors from happening again on our own.  In this way and so many others, science fiction helps us to build a better world.

Continue reading X is for Xenocide

Vortex by Robert Charles Wilson

Almost seventy years ago, the mysterious alien beings known as the Hypotheticals encased Earth in a force field and built a network of giant arches facilitating overland travel to other habitable planets.  With access to the fossil fuel resources of half a dozen worlds, humanity is slowly killing its homeworld, even as it expands to other stars.

All of this matters little to Sandra Cole, however.  A psychologist at the State Care facility in Texas, it’s all she can do to endure another day.  But all of that starts to change when a police officer brings in a mysterious boy–a boy with a message from the future.

This is the third and final book in Robert Charles Wilson’s Spin trilogy, and it brings the series to a thoroughly satisfying conclusion.  The first book introduced the Hypotheticals and hinted at some greater scheme that they were involved in, the second book further explored the universe while raising more questions about the Hypotheticals, and the last book follows the Hypotheticals to the end of time, answering these questions while taking nothing from the truly alien grandeur of it all.

However, like the other books, the story itself is not about the aliens, but the people who make contact with them.  The high-concept science fiction goodness is all in there, but it’s framed by characters who are both human and relatable.  I wasn’t as invested in these characters as the ones in Spin, but I was still very interested in seeing what happened with them.

The structure of the book is a lot like Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, with alternating chapters telling two stories that don’t connect until the very end.  I finished the last half of it in practically one sitting, and the last chapter in a breathless sprint–much like Spin and Axis.  The way everything came together, not only for this book but the entire series, was awesome.

I was really happy to see this series finish well, because the first book was a major influence for me in writing Genesis Earth.  As I said in an earlier post, I don’t think anymore that this is the kind of science fiction I’ll write very often, but I sure love reading it.  I wouldn’t recommend starting with this book, but if you like science fiction that makes you stand back and blink at the sheer magnificence of the universe, this is a series you should definitely check out.

Thoughts after finishing Vortex by Robert Charles Wilson

Whoa.

If I had to sum up my thoughts with one word, that would be it–though of course, by itself that word is hopelessly inadequate.  Let’s just say that, for me at least, this  was a truly astounding book, a literary journey that left me wide-eyed with my mouth hanging open, blinking wearily as I looked up from the last page and returned, reluctantly, to the world of physical reality.

I don’t plan to spend this blog post talking about how awesome this book is, however; I’ll save that for a review.  Rather, I want to spend some time talking about how this book has influenced the way I think about science fiction and my own writing, and to share a few of my thoughts having just finished it less than an hour ago.

If anything, this book has shown me that science fiction–real science fiction–is about staring into the unblinking void of the cosmos with a deep and abiding need to find answers, or perhaps more accurately, to ask questions.  This inevitably produces a sense of wonder, but that’s merely incidental; the genre is really about fulfilling an almost religious need to connect with something greater than oneself.

I enjoy reading science fiction and experiencing that connection, but I don’t need it–not in the way that I sense some of the grand masters of the genre truly did.  Instead, I hunger for the sense of wonder and adventure that is more characteristic of fantasy.  In my own writing, it’s not so much the grand sweep of the cosmos that interests me as much as the intimacies of human nature–which isn’t to say that the two are incompatible, but that my preferences lean more to the one than the other.

What I’m saying is that it’s not science fiction that I write, so much as science fantasy.  I still feel drawn to space adventures and the trappings of science fiction–I’m not at all interested in writing about elves or dragons–but at their heart, the books I write are more fantasy than true science fiction.

Which might be a purely esoteric distinction to the average reader, but if it helps me to understand my own writing, it’s a distinction worth making.  If science fantasy is the sub-genre that really speaks to me, then that’s the kind of literature that I should explore.  Of course, it’s important to be well-read in multiple genres, but if there’s a particular one in which you want to write, it stands to reason that that’s the one on which you need to be an expert.

So that’s my new goal: to explore fantasy, science fantasy in particular, and the ways in which other sub-genres like space opera and space adventure lean more toward the fantasy side of things than pure science fiction. And to keep reading really awesome books.

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.

The interior designer’s approach to story

I recently read a fascinating post on John Brown’s blog with an interesting exercise for analyzing the kinds of stories you most like to read.  By finding out what really turns you on in a story, you can have a much better idea what to write, and how to make your own stories better.

He prefaced the exercise with a story about the interior designer who helped them to decorate their house.  The designer spread out a number of home magazines in front of them, and told them to go through and tear out the pictures that most turned them on.  After doing this, they analyzed the pictures to see what they had in common, and thus discovered how to best decorate their house.

The exercise works much the same way.  First, pick out five books you really like that immediately come to mind.  Mine are:

As many of you know, these are some of my favorite books of all time.  I’ve reread three of them, and I intend to reread the other two at some point.

Next, pick out the elements that these books have in common.  Here’s what I came up with:

1) Set in a different time and place.

Not all these books are science fiction, but the all take place in a world far removed from our own.  Only Spin takes place largely on Earth, but the events of the story transform the world as we know it so much that by the end of the novel, it’s completely different. SPOILER (highlight to see) Besides, at the very end, the two main characters leave Earth by going through the giant portal to another planet, so the novel is arguably about escaping the world as we know it.

2) Stakes that are much more personal than global.

This was interesting, and highlights something I realized when I compared Merchanter’s Luck with Downbelow Station.  In all of these stories, the central driving conflicts are extremely intimate and personal.

To be sure, many of these stories also have an epic backdrop; Mistborn certainly does.  However, I was much more interested in Vin’s growth and development than I was in how the Ska would overthrow the Lord Ruler–in fact, Mistborn is my favorite book in the trilogy for that very reason.

3) Encourages deep introspection.

This shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise if you’ve followed this blog for a while, but I love love LOVE stories that make me see the world in a new way.  Thrillers and adventures are all fun and good, but if it doesn’t make me think, I’m usually like “meh” at the end.

4) Female characters who aren’t weak or passive.

This one might be a bit more controversial, but in all of these stories, I’ve noticed that the female characters are pretty strong, even if they aren’t all kick-butt Katniss wannabes (ugh…I hate Katniss).  Even in Legend, which is largely dominated by men, you still have the earl’s daughter, who is one heck of a spirited woman.

5) Life and death conflicts.

This is interesting: in all of these books, the threat of death is immanently real.  Some of them, such as Legend and On My Way to Paradise, are among the most violent books I’ve ever read.  I’m not sure what it is, but there’s something about life and death struggles that really draws me.

6) Romantic in a broad sense.

I’m using Tracy Hickman’s definition here, in which romance is all about teaching us to feel and bringing us in touch with our deepest feelings.  That’s the central theme of On My Way to Paradise: learning how to be a man of passion after witnessing some of the worst atrocities of war.

All of these books not only make me feel, they are about the feelings that they inspire.  In other words, the emotional elements of the story are both a part of and deeply embedded in the story’s central theme.

The exercises isn’t complete after this, though.  For the last part, take another five books and analyze them to see how they compare.  My second list includes:

So how does the list stack up?  Let’s see…

  1. Definitely true.  NONE of these stories take place in the world as we know it–and that’s awesome.
  2. A Canticle for Leibowitz might seem like an exception, since it follows the broad rise and fall of human civilization after the nuclear apocalypse.  But the things that really drew me to the story were the more personal elements: the novice who makes the illuminated manuscript of the electrical diagram, for example, or the abbot at the very end who SPOILER tries desperately to convince the single mother not to take her baby to the mercy killing station after the bomb fatally irradiates them.  In any case, it’s telling that A Canticle for Leibowitz made this list, whereas none of Arthur. C. Clarke’s books even came to my mind.
  3. Definitely true.  Even Citizen of the Galaxy, which is more adventure fiction than high concept sf, features a fascinating society of interstellar traders that really made me sit back and think about the way we structure our society.  Heinlein has a really awesome way of doing that with everything he writes.
  4. The only possible exception here might again be Heinlein, who had some very extremist views of women (putting it lightly).  However, if I recall, Citizen of the Galaxy has a female character at the end who helps pull out the main character from his indigent circumstances and helps him to come into his own.  Again, they might not all be kick-butt tramp-stamp vampire slayers, but they certainly aren’t weak.
  5. Less true of The Neverending Story and The Dispossessed, but while the central conflicts might not be about life and death, the threat of death (or a total loss of identity) certainly comes into play.
  6. Definitely true.  Few books have taught me to feel more deeply than The Neverending Story.  An absolutely magnificent piece of literature.

So there you have it.  According to this exercise, I should write books set in another time and place, where strong female characters face life and death decisions that personally impact the people in their lives and make the readers think and feel.  Interestingly enough, that is a PERFECT description of Bringing Stella Home, as well as Desert Stars and Into the Nebulous Deep.

Cool stuff.  Makes me want to write.  So on that note, I think I will.

The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang

Ana was a washed-up zoologist turned programmer looking for work; Derek was an avatar designer for the Data Earth virtual reality platform.  The thing that brought them together: Blue Gamma Inc., manufacturer of autonomous self-aware AI pets known as digients.

Like any pet, each digient requires constant attention as they learn and grow.  Soon, Ana and Derek become as attached to their own digients as parents to their children.  But when Blue Gamma goes out of business and the Data Earth platform becomes obsolete, the future for the digients looks grim–until they enter the next phase of their natural evolution.

I really, really liked this story.  It’s got just about everything that makes science fiction so great: futuristic setting, well-rounded characters with believable motivations, one Big Lie with everything else held more or less at the level of our current understanding, and tons of parallels between the fantastic world and our own that makes you step back and really think about things.

The interesting thing about this story was how it played with all the old robot/AI tropes.  Usually, stories of this kind will have the robots rise to transcendence, either becoming the benevolent (or largely absent) rulers of the world, or taking over and enslaving humanity in some fashion. Not so with this story; the scope was much more intimate and personal, driven by characters rather than the Fate of Mankind, and that ultimately made the story much more believable.

If I had any problem with this story at all, it was the ending.  After so much build-up and development, I felt as if it cut off rather abruptly, just as things were getting more and more interesting.  I suppose the author was going for something of a “Flowers for Algernon” feel, but that wasn’t what I took from it.  Or perhaps he ran up against the novella word limit and decided to cut it off; I don’t know.

Regardless, I thoroughly enjoyed this story.  It’s certainly worthy of the Hugo for which it’s been nominated.  Highly recommended.

Sholpan, or The Great Novella Experiment

So now that I’m finished with Desert Stars, the next project I’m working on is a companion novella to Bringing Stella Home titled Sholpan.  While Bringing Stella Home is about James and his quest to rescue his brother and sister, Sholpan is entirely from Stella’s point of view and traces her rise in Hameji society, from prisoner and slave to…well, I won’t ruin it for you.

I started writing it on Monday, and so far it’s been a lot of fun.  In some ways, it’s kind of a break for me, since I already know the story (most of the material is lifted straight from Bringing Stella Home, with a few extra changes to make the viewpoint tighter and build more character development).

At the same time, though, it’s a challenge because I’ve never written in the novella format before.  The definition as given by SFWA, has mostly to do with length:

For the purposes of the Nebula Awards, the categories are defined as follows:

  • Novel — 40,000 words or more
  • Novella — 17,500–39,999 words
  • Novelette — 7,500–17,499 words
  • Short Story — 7,499 words or fewer

However, I can’t help but feel that there are many other artistic elements to consider.  For example, the Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms gives this definition:

novella [nŏ‐vel‐ă], a fictional tale in prose, intermediate in length and complexity between a short story and a novel, and usually concentrating on a single event or chain of events, with a surprising turning point.

Other sites I’ve browsed (including this post from The Galaxy Express, this review from 2009 of several small press novellas, and another interesting post on short stories vs. novellas vs. novels) leave me with the impression that novellas typically

  • can be read in one long sitting, such as a train ride,
  • center around one major conflict, idea, or issue,
  • have more room for rich settings and lavish descriptions,
  • tend to focus more intimately on character,
  • are compact enough to take risks with voice and theme, and
  • can end without a definitive conclusion to the central idea or conflict.

I must confess, I’m not an avid reader of novellas.  I’ve read some of the classics, of course: Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, The Time Machine, Animal Farm, etc, but in terms of modern sf novellas, all I’ve really read is I Am Legend (and a few golden/silver age “novels,” if you count them).  Point is, I’m not an expert on novellas by any means.

However, the novella seems like a very promising format for epublishing, especially in conjunction with a novel.  Readers can pick up the novella for $.99 and get both a sample of the writer’s longer novel-length stuff, as well as a complete story in itself.

That’s what I want to do with Sholpan.  I want to write a less-expensive derivative work that’s artistically sound in its own right, while also driving interest in the full length novel.  Besides, it’s just fun to experiment with new styles and formats.

If this is successful, I can see myself writing a companion novella to most, if not all of my novels.  And who knows?  Maybe I’ll be able to sell some of those to more traditional print and electronic markets.  It’s worth a shot, and no matter what happens, I’m bound to learn something new.

So yeah, that’s my current writing project.  If all goes well, expect to see it out sometime this fall.  And if you have any comments or suggestions regarding novellas, please share!  I’m very interested to learn anything I can.

Story Notebook #4

Alright, it’s been too long since the last time I posted any story ideas here on this blog, so I thought I’d go back to my old notebooks and post a few of them here.  Currently, we’re on notebook #4, which basically covers the second half of 2009.

And so, without further ado…here goes!

A society in which infanticide, up to the first two years, is not considered a crime (since infants are not conscious in the same way as adults and children)

Youch–talk about a dystopia!  Which makes me wonder, what kind of a society would develop this belief?  Probably not one that values human life–or rather, one that somehow considers adults to be more “human” than young children.

As a direct result of this society’s system of values, there’s probably going to be a lot more promiscuity–or perhaps the promiscuity is what causes this belief to be engendered in the first place?  It reminds me of an ancient Carthaginian brothel, where hundreds of baby bones were found stuffed in the narrow alley between the brothel and the next building over.

Blegh–icky stuff!  Which is to say, it’s probably good story material. 🙂

A near-future dystopia in which the extras in movies (made in overpopulated developing countries) literally act out battle scenes, because hollywood studios can afford to pay for the loss of life

I got this idea from a comment by Dave Wolverton at a con, in which he said that in China, the maximum fine for negligent homicide is $10,000.  This is one of the reasons why so many movie studios do business there–if their extras die or get injured, they aren’t held nearly as liable as in the United States.

Of course, if the maximum fine is $10,000, why not put that in a deposit up front and have the workers fill out a form indicating who should get the money if they die?  You can then have gladiatorial movies and TV shows, where people actually die.  It sounds sick, but I’ll bet you could find a significant audience for that kind of thing.

Economically speaking, it’s a win-win-win situation.  The studios save on safety equipment and profit from the relatively cheap labor costs; the workers benefit whether they live or die, because either way, they’re getting paid much more than they would ever make otherwise; and the host country benefits, because the survivors can then be conscripted to form an elite corps of warriors.

The only real downside is the utter moral depravity of it all–but hey, we’ve already crossed that moral line so many times, what’s to keep us from crossing it again?

A time travel device that allows collection of data from the future without affecting causality–how would this change political science?

By “without affecting causality,” I think I meant that the time travel device itself wouldn’t cause any huge problems–that one could use it to observe without interaction, something akin to Orson Scott Card’s Postwatch. And of course, because I was so deeply engrossed in school at the time, the first application that came to mind was political science.

It would certainly lend a degree of credibility to the science, something which it currently does not enjoy.  It would probably also lead to fierce debates about fate vs. free will between the positivists and the interpretivists–something that has already been ongoing for some time.

My second novel (Genesis Earth) was, in some ways, a response to that debate.

A character who always has the latest liberal candidate’s bumper sticker on the same corner of his/her car, so that it builds up over time.

Interesting character quirk–though since it could only really makes sense in our world, I would never write about it.  Stories set in the real world bore me.

An MMORPG for orcs and elves where they play as humans

Check it out!  I’m a level 80 corporate CEO with the ability to cast ‘complete financial collapse’ and totally screw you out of a job!

Zombie insects

Oh noes!  Even worse if humans can become infected.

Sentient planets

Already done; the book is called Solaris.

Golfing on the Moon or Mars

This…would actually make a fairly awesome short story.

Were-squirrels!

Sounds like something Terry Pratchett would write if/when he parodied the urban fantasy genre.

What if all of us are characters in someone’s story?

God help us all!

A psychic agency that allows you to instant message dead relatives

Personally, I’d never stop wondering whether it’s just an elaborate hoax.

And that’s all for notebook #4!  Don’t worry–I swear I’m not as screwed up as these story ideas make me out to be.