Tag: ideas and concepts

Crunch time

Sixty six percent!  I’ve officially passed the two thirds mark in the fourth revision for Mercenary Savior–and not a moment too soon.  With only a week and a half until World Fantasy 2010, it’s crunch time.  I’ll probably quit my temp job a week early in order to devote the last few days of the month to finishing it.

As I’ve been working on Mercenary Savior, though, a fascinating idea for a sequel has been stewing in my head.  It was sparked by an online conversation with one of my first readers:

Reader: I was never fully convinced that James felt he had closure
Me: I see
Reader: but I was satisfied with the thought that he would get it sometime after the story ends
he’s still young, so he’s still maturing
even at the close of the novel
Me: yeah
hmm
interesting

It’s true; James does have a lot of room to grow and mature after the events of Mercenary Savior. In that book, his character growth arc (without giving away spoilers) is about him learning to accept change and stop running from adulthood.

Nothing in that arc has much to do with the kind of person James grows up to be, however, or the significant other with whom he comes to share his life.  In other words, there’s a whole lot of untapped potential for building James’s character and giving him a romantic interest.

The question that immediately rose to my mind was: what’s the story?

Now when it comes to sequels, I think the best ones take a long, hard look at the first installment and answer the question: therefore, what? Thus, in Star Wars IV, V, and VI (which I believe to be one of the best examples of a trilogy in any medium), the Rebels defeat the first Death Star in episode IV, but find themselves on the run in episode V because the Empire knows the location of their base.  Luke uses the force to pull off a last-minute victory in episode IV, but finds in episode V that becoming a true Jedi takes a lot more discipline and self-mastery than he thought.

So I applied that principle to my own work and came up with the following overarching conflict: the Hameji occupation of Karduna is devastating the people of the Colony to the point where they collectively decide to depart en masse and establish a new community somewhere else.  It’s a logical conclusion taken from the ending of Mercenary Savior; the people are well enough off to survive, but too poor and oppressed to do much of anything else.

You may not know this, but the first story I wanted to set in this fictional universe was about a group of starfaring pioneers traveling into the heart of a nebula to escape religious persecution and establish a thriving community on the fringes of settled space.  That’s right–I basically wanted to set the Mormon pioneer exodus in space.

For various unrelated reasons, that never worked out, but the desire has always been there in the back of my mind.  What can I say–I think that pioneers are cool, and stories about colonizing unsettled new lands just fascinate me.  I’ll probably write a massive Utah pioneer epic someday.

But anyways, I started playing around with this old idea to see whether I could recycle it.  Right now, I think that I can.  The idea is that James becomes the leader for one of these emigrant groups, and has to see them safely through to a young planet in the heart of this nebula.  They decide to fly into the nebula in order to isolate themselves from the Hameji, since the FTL tech in my universe doesn’t work within a Nebula.

And then something really crazy happened.  This scene popped into my head, stronger than any other idea I’d had so far.  I imagined that a group of pirates had captured the expedition and refused to let them go unless they gave the pirates three young women to keep as slaves.

Pretty standard conflict, right?  But then, I thought: what if three young women of their own free will stepped forward and offered to sacrifice themselves to save the others?  What would James do then?

Well, it wasn’t hard to figure that out at all.  James would never let them go.  He’d fight the pirates, even if it meant risking all the lives of those he’s trying to protect.

This raises some interesting questions of morality.  Is it right to risk the lives of everyone in the community when three individuals have already offered to sacrifice themselves for the good of the whole?  Is it right to deny someone the opportunity to give their own life to save others?  Or is James just being stubborn and reckless?

At a first glance, that’s the way it looks.  But then I imagined what James would say to justify himself.  After what he learns from the events of Mercenary Savior, James would argue that the community needs to stick together–that in order for the whole to survive, everyone has to know with absolute certainty that no-one will be left behind.  Once the leader shows that he’s willing to sign his followers over, how can any of them trust him with their lives?  Under such conditions, trust breaks down and the community falls apart.

From that, a whole host of other ideas started gradually coming to mind.  How does this event tie into James’s romantic interest?  Does it tie in at all?  What would the people’s reaction be to this decision?  Coming from the background of the Colony, would they want to put the issue to a vote instead?  Is it ever right to suspend democracy when facing a crisis, and if so, under what conditions? 

So anyway, I won’t tell you what I have in mind, but I have a lot of really interesting ideas.  It’s gotten to the point, in fact, that I may just write the sequel after I get back from World Fantasy.

In closing, let me leave with this excellent track from one of ocremix’s latest albums, a rearrangement of Donkey Kong Country 2.  Believe it or not, this song could be the main theme of this novel.  Listen to it and I think you’ll see why.

Good night!

Worlds of our own choosing

Note: All material in this post is under full copyright.  Do not use without permission.

About a month ago, I was walking out of the plasma center when inspiration smacked me square in the face.  Two character voices, both of which I’d never heard before, started having the most fascinating argument.

Knowing that I would immediately forget everything if I didn’t stop and record it RIGHT THAT MOMENT, I pulled out my story notebook, sat down next to my bike, and started writing.  This is more or less what I jotted down:

1st voice: All of us live in the world of our own choosing.

2nd voice: What are you talking about?

1st: I mean that all of us choose the world we live in.  All of us live in a world of our own construction.

2nd: That’s crazy.

1st: Yes, but it’s true.

2nd: It can’t be.  How can it be?

1st: Because that’s who we are.  It’s what we do.  We create worlds–if we didn’t, we wouldn’t be human.

2nd: Now you’re just being crazy.

1st: In the world you choose to live in, yes, I’m crazy.

2nd: Look, that can’t be true.  We all live in the same world.  We see the same things, not different things.  I can’t just choose to look out the window and see a red sky, can I?

1st: No, but you can choose whether or not the day is beautiful to you.

2nd: Yeah, okay, but the sky is the same color for all of us, isn’t it?  It’s still the same sky.  I can’t live in a world without a sky, can I?

1st: Actually, most people never look up to see it.  They live in a world where the sky over their heads is irrelevant–as if it didn’t exist.

2nd: Yeah, but look, if we were to take the same exact thing–say, a rock–and look at it under a microscope, we’d see the same elements, wouldn’t we?  The molecules and atoms are all the same, right?

1st: Of course.

2nd: Right!  So that means we live in the same world, not different worlds.  Everything is the same.

1st: My friend, you don’t understand.  A world is so much more than the sum of its atoms.  Those are just the building blocks–the true essence lies in how they’re put together.  It lies in the story we tell ourselves to explain it all.  You see a rock and think, “huh, just another rock.” It doesn’t fit into your story–into your world–except as another set piece.   A boy, however, would see the perfect, skipping stone; a geologist would see a remnant from the age of the dinosaur.  A pilgrim to Mecca would see the rock with which he will smite Shaitan.  Different worlds, my friend–their worlds are all very different from yours.

2nd: Okay, maybe that’s true.  We attach different meaning to things–I can accept that–but that doesn’t mean that we live in separate worlds.

1st: On the contrary, my friend.  You’re presuming that cold, objective reality is more important to us than subjective truth, and that’s obviously false, because none of us–absolutely none of us–can absorb objective reality without fitting it into some kind of story.  We cannot observe anything objectively, for in the very act of observation, we attach meaning to what we see, just to make sense of it.

2nd: Yes, but–

1st: This is what it means to be human.  We take pieces of the reality we observe and make up stories to explain it.  We all tell ourselves thousands of stories every day, simply through the act of living.  It comes so natural that most of the time, we barely notice it.

2nd: Whatever.

1st: The tragedy, my friend, is that most of us don’t realize that we choose the world we live in.  We make critical choices every day and aren’t even aware of most of them.  We each have the capability to change our world by changing the way we see it, yet most of us never realize it.  We go on living in a world that makes us miserable, looking for some outside force to change it, when really, change is no further than our mind.

2nd: That makes no sense.

1st: Only because you refuse to open your eyes and see it.

2nd: Yeah–because what you’re saying is impossible.

1st: Exactly!  That’s exactly what I’m talking about!

2nd: What?

1st: I’m talking about the impossible–the things that, in your world, could never happen.  But what if they’re only impossible because you refuse to believe in them?  Because they have no place in the carefully ordered reality you’ve constructed for yourself?

2nd: I–

1st: My friend, if only you can let go of the comfortable delusion of certainty and take one step into the darkness, you’ll soon find entire worlds of possibilities opening up to your view.  All you need to do is open your mind and take that terrifying first step.

There you have it.  A little rough, certainly, but that’s not important–what matters are the ideas behind it all.  And to me at least, the ideas are quite fascinating.

I tried to use some of these ideas in Worlds Away from Home, but I don’t think any of them came across very clearly.  I probably have to let the story stew a bit in my mind in order to figure out what it’s really about.  Maybe I’ll insert a slightly edited version of this dialog in there somewhere, but I won’t force it.

In the meantime, what do you think?  Did any of this resonate with you, or does it sound like so much philosophical hogwash?  Tell me–I want to know!

Story Notebook #3 (part 2)

Alright, I said I’d finish running through my third story notebook, so here it is. After all, there’s no better time than now:

The song, btw, is from Summoning of Spirits, quite possibly the best fanmade video game soundtrack that ocremix has put out. Oh, and it’s completely free; did I mention that? If you want to download it, you can find it here.

Anyways, on to the story ideas:

First line: “The invisible pink unicorn in the room sneezed.”

Hahaha! Martha, this one’s for you!

Theory: all of us have a mechanism in our brains that helps us relate to other people, to see ourselves in them. But over time, we learn to shut it off, because so long as that mechanism is working, we can’t do anything to hurt other people. If we can’t relate, we can’t care and can’t feel the pain of the other.

Or maybe we learn to turn it off because it just hurts so much to feel others’ pain. We desensitize ourselves in order to survive this cruel world. But is a life disconnected from others’ pain and joy really worth living? Where is the balance?

A writer who uses himself as an alpha reader by going to an alternate universe in which he never became a writer –> told from the point of view of the alternate person, who wishes he’d become a writer but never did.

I’m pretty sure I got this idea from a short story that Mechmuse published before it went under. You can still find it here. Normally, I have a policy of not writing stories about writers (since it’s so overdone), but for this one, I might be willing to make an exception…that is, if no one beats me to it.

A democracy in which the president serves for ten years and is ceremoniously executed at the end of his/her term.

Hey, that’s what they used to do to the ancient kings in Europe: when the king got old and the time came for him to hand over his kingdom, the druid-priests would ceremoniously execute him in front of the rest of the tribe.

The question is this: would such a custom lead to a better system of government? It would certainly weed out all the greedy scumbags who are only looking for money and power (which constitutes the majority of politicians). But who would take their place? Would the new politicos be any better?

How would foresight, like Atium, change sports? Like fantasy steroids, except different.

Thoughts while reading Mistborn. True story.

What if the Dome of the Rock was a magical portal to another world?

Hey, it’s possible. The circle/square/octagon motif represents a connection between heaven and earth, and scholars have never really figured out what the religious function of the structure was supposed to be.

And that concludes story notebook #3. Have fun writing!

Story Notebook #3 (part 1)

I’m not sure whether this notebook is #3 or #2. There’s a lot of notes from English 318, which would put it in the winter, but I don’t know if it’s from ’08 or ’09.

Not that that matters; ideas are ideas.  And here they are!

An empty parking garage with no exit.

Covered this already in a previous post. Strangely, it’s one of the most popular posts on this blog. I constantly get search engine traffic from people googling “empty parking garage” and other such stuff. Who googles “parking garage”? Weird.

Telepathy through instant messaging between microchips interfaced with the brain.

Also covered in the same post.

And they all lived evily ever after.

Bwahahah! I’ve got Jakeson to thank for this line–specifically, from a conversation at LTUE. Good times!

A TV show where the viewers vote between ads what should happen next.

I’m pretty sure I got this idea from an Escape Pod story–one of the Hugo short story nominations from ’06 or ’07, IIRC.

What if the human mind, which we think is so great, is ridiculously broken?

After all, isn’t it true that we only use a tiny fraction of our brain’s capacity during our lifetime? What if the true potential of the human mind far outstrips anything we could possibly imagine?

What if the human brain was manifested as some sort of library / processing building, with short term, easy access, and archival memory sections manifested as bookshelves and long rooms? And there were flies or insects or parasites of some sort that fed on the archives, causing forgetfulness? And you were trapped in there?

I’m pretty sure I was tripping out on the Brain Science podcast at this time, combined with an old Roger Allen McBride novel about time travel and terraforming. Good times.

What would it be like to be God’s intern?

FREAKING HARD.

If perfect, instantaneous communication is possible, doesn’t this blur the individual identities of those speaking, so that they become simply voices in one mind? If so, does this mean that our individuality is based on the ways we misunderstand each other?

At its core, this idea is a take on the whole perfection vs. personality debate: the question of whether our individual personalities disappear as we approach Godlike perfection. I’ve come to the conclusion that this is not the case, but that’s a discussion for my other blog (which I have not updated in a ridiculously long time, dangit).

A middle aged mom at a children’s book fair in Utah who has a tattoo partially showing from under her sleeve

I saw this in the Wilk one day, and started wondering about this woman. Who is she? Where did she get the tattoo? Why is she at a Utah Children’s Book Fair, which is about as far removed from tattoos and tattooed society as you can get?

A robot that was made to suffer, as part of an experiment.

It makes you wonder what ‘suffering’ actually is. Do inanimate objects suffer? Do the rocks and clouds and sky and stars suffer? Do they weep for us?

On that trippy note, I’ll cut this short and finish reviewing the notebook in a later post. Until then, stay awesome.

Story notebook #2

A while ago I rediscovered my first story notebook and wrote a few posts on it.  I promised I’d do the same for my other story notebooks, so here’s the next one.

For those of you who may be surprised that I’m sharing all my story ideas, let me explain why I’m doing this.  First, ideas are cheap, especially in genres as imaginative and inventive as science fiction and fantasy.  What really matters is the execution, and any two people’s take on the same idea is going to be different. For that reason, I’m not too worried about anyone “stealing” my ideas.

Second, and more importantly, I believe that the only way for ideas to grow in value is for them to be shared.  Ideas that get horded only worsen with age, because they’re not being explored. Only by exploring ideas can they come into their full potential, and the best way to explore ideas is to share them.  When we fail to share our ideas, we inevitably fail to explore them from all angles, because working alone in a vacuum, we’re so much more likely to miss something crucial.

Enough of that.  Here are the story ideas from my second notebook, roughly covering the fall of ’08, right after I finished my first novel and got back from Jordan.

How will myths arise in the space exploration age? Previously, myths formed perhaps because people had very limited means of communication and limited means of world awareness. Now, technology allows much better spread of information and science, but in isolated spacecraft, will [the conditions of isolation that lead to myth formation] return?

An interesting and somewhat complicated thought. How do myths form, anyway? I suppose that at the very least, the extreme isolation of space will lead to a proliferation of wildly different cultures and worldviews.

Just as the Catholic monks set up a monastery in Iceland, so people will go beyond the explored universe in the age of space travel and set up a religious order there.

Fascinating–and I think it runs somewhat counter to the grain, too. Most people tend to see space explorers as either adventurers or absolute believers in pure science–but what about the devoutly religious? If the Catholic monks set up a monastery in Iceland, is it possible that the monks of some other religious order may set one up on Mars, or Alpha Centauri, or Gliese?

And…that’s all I’ve got in this notebook. Sorry–there’s lots of scribbling and calculating for Genesis Earth, as well as library call numbers for books about Saladin and the Crusades, but not too much else in the way of story ideas. For more, you’ll have to wait until story notebook #3.

Old story notebook, part 3

Alright, it’s time to finish up with the old story notebook I discovered a couple of weeks ago.  These ideas were written down back in 2007, when I was writing the first draft of Ashes of the Starry Sea. Without further ado:

In the future, people live in arcologies, and wars are fought outside by robots. It will be a new system of feudalism: arcologies are like castles or walled towns, and people won’t die in the wars, just change sides.

I’m not sure I knew very much about feudalism as an economic system back then, but the basic idea, I think, was that life would be localized in the arcologies and nationalism as a unifying principle would die out.

In the Middle Ages, warfare was basically a contest between nobles, and though it certainly disrupted the lives of the peasants, they didn’t really care which side they were on because it didn’t make a difference. Napoleon revolutionized the world because he galvanized the peasants through the new concept of nationalism and made them actually care about the outcome of the wars.

An AI falls in love with a CS major, but the CS major loves a real girl.

The Little Mermaid, with a modern twist. And the mermaid AI commits suicide by uploading herself to a trashy old computer that’s on the verge of crashing. The final scene shows the wrecked computer somewhere in rural China, being scrapped for the metal parts in a vat of toxic chemicals. Awesome.

A character who’s an android and sees the world in terms of numbers.

The story should revolve around the question: if math is a language, how do you say “I love you” in numbers?

An election where people can scientifically predict best and worst case scenarios, based on each candidate’s qualities and the world situation.

Political science may not be a hard science, but it is awesome for science fiction.

Voter preferences are normally distributed around a common mean, but parties choose opposing points of view because of an information shortfall about the nature of that mean. What if the information problem were solved?

We would have exactly two parties that are identical in every meaningful way…wait a minute…

Someone discovers a language that is intuitive in all humans and overcomes many barriers of language in describing the world.

Linguistics is good for sf&f, too.

What if galaxies themselves were sentient?

Sounds like something out of a Robert Charles Wilson novel. I love it!

A space colony that, due to information technology, is a pure democracy.

I’m using this idea right now in Mercenary Savior. When I first started planning the novel, I wanted to do a story about the Mongols in space, but I knew it would need more than that, so I thought “what if one of the places they invaded was this pure democracy?” As soon as I combined the two ideas, BAM! I had a story.

An advanced society without public education or health care.

Uggggh, don’t even want to go there. Not until Obama’s out of office.

The Mormon pioneer exodus in space.

I tried to use this idea with Hero in Exile, but for some reason it didn’t work. It was as if the story wanted to go in a completely different direction. Oh well–you win some, you lose some. Besides, it’s not a total loss; it’s always possible to recycle.

A kingdom that will be cursed if ruled by anyone other than a direct heir. What if the direct heir is a child?

An attempt to brainstorm some fantasy.

Robot prostitutes–one who has no feeling or emotion, but develops artificial intelligence. This is what will fuel the development of androids.

Sad, but true.

A spaceship so massive that it generates tides when it enters orbit.

Sounds like something out of Arthur C. Clarke.

A tomagachi becomes sentient and uploads itself to the internet. OR…an AI disguises itself as a tomagachi.

Tomagachis! Whatever happened to them? They were so trendy…for like six months in the 90s.

What if our most deeply held beliefs had the power, under the right circumstances, to turn into monsters–real, literal, fantastic beings of awesome power?

Now there’s an idea with some interesting potential. We could build battle arenas and watch our beliefs duke it out, literally. Which ones would win?

A society that values myths more than facts.

I’m sure that societies like this have actually existed–or may still exist today.

American suicide bombers.

Hey! It could happen.

Ghosts on a spaceship.

Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide…

A culture where kissing (or any other public display of romantic affection) initiates marriage.

Now THIS I would like to see, or maybe even use someday. It could be interesting.

And that concludes the old story notebook, bringing us to the end of 2008 when I finished Ashes of the Starry Sea and left for the 2008 BYU Jordan study abroad.

Old story notebook, part 2

Alright, here is the second part of my oldest story notebook, the one that I just found a couple days ago.  These ideas date from 2007 when I started pursuing writing as more than a hobby, up to the summer of 2008 when I went to Jordan on the BYU study abroad program.

The Singularity: it will lead more to a social change and conflict than a transformation of humanity–increasing disparity between techies and non-techies, and a tech/class conflict. What will the perspective be of those who look at us and our advances after the new dark ages? Or are we in the dark ages?

Interesting–if you believe in the technological singularity, that is. I’m not quite so sure I do anymore; that’s kind of what Genesis Earth

was all about.

An alien race of beings that have no sensory organs, but instead perceive the thoughts of beings with sensory organs, and thus do all their perceiving through others.

There is so much cool stuff you can do with aliens–stuff that nobody seems to be doing, because they always stick with the tropes. Or maybe I’m just not well-read enough.

The more advanced our society becomes, the more our education specializes so that it becomes harder to know the minimum necessary to understand everything. This leads to class/tech divisions, and to the potential for society to fall apart.

Have you ever wondered about this? I mean, it’s kind of crazy how complicated we’ve made life and living. And all this we call “civilization.”

When relativistic space travel becomes more widespread, society will develop new rituals and ways to mourn and deal with the separation that comes with people going forward out into space.

I think I had this thought while reading Speaker for the Dead or another of Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game books. That series totally blew my mind.

If we lived in a telepathic society, we would learn to separate our deep thoughts from our shallow thoughts to put up a facade in public–but how would the relationship between deep and shallow change the way society works? If we had to hide even our thoughts?

Heck, what would a telepathic society even look like?

Aliens who shed their skin each year (or something else) and have derived a culture that treats each person as having a different identity each year.

Kind of like in Tahiti, where people change their names at different stages of their lives (childhood, adulthood, etc). I hear it makes family history work insanely frustrating.

We make contact with aliens who need a human companion with whom they merge telepathically, and the story is from the human translator’s point of view.

This would make a really cool anime.

First contact was made in the 12th century with the Abassids, and the explorer ship returned with Arab emissaries to the alien homeworld. Now those emissaries are returning to establish regular connections via ansible, and they are shocked to find the world in its current state.

Okay, I think this idea has some really cool potential. I’m not sure I’d be the one to write it, but it sounds like it could be really awesome, if it were done right.

An alien species incapable of lying.

It would probably turn first contact into an unmitigated disaster. After all, lying is the essence of diplomacy.

When we first go into space, colonies will be governed by multi-national corporations, not stats. Profit will come before the welfare of the colonists themselves, and the wars will be over trade routes and tariffs.

Sounds like something straight out of C. J. Cherryh.

An alien species* that considers it okay to show uncovered reproductive organs but obscene to show the eating organs. *Or, a human society

It sure would be weird, especially if it were a human society that did that.

An alien spaceship comes to Earth and it’s full of colonists.

Definitely been done already. Probably multiple times.

Dolphins are a post-alien species that came to Earth millions of years ago.

Has this been done before? I seriously doubt it. I’d write it, but any story set on Earth tends to bore me.

EDIT: Alright, yeah, it’s been done–quite a bit, actually. Looks like I need to get out from under my rock and read some more.

Aliens have colonies under the ocean.

Hey, if they have them anywhere, they’re probably down there.

Is a necessary element of our free agency our ignorance of ourselves, on the deepest level?

Perhaps.

A 19th century Mormon gets stuck in a time warp and ends up in 21st century Utah.

Oh, the horror!

I’d better stop here, since general conference is about to start. I’ll finish this list in the next couple of days, probably. Blogging keeps me sane. In the meantime, have a wonderful Easter!

Retired notebook: part 1

Like most writers, I keep a notebook with me at all times.  I use it a lot for scrap paper, but I also jot down all the weird story ideas that come to me, usually while I’m doing something completely unrelated to the idea.

A while ago, my old notebook got too ratty to keep in my back pocket, so I replaced it and put the other in my dresser drawer.  I thought it would be interesting, though, to go through some of the ideas I came up with.

Here they are, from the beginning:

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

…okay, maybe that one was a little creepy. Next:

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

Another creepy one, but it’s actually legit. I came up with it in the Las Vegas airport, listening to a panel from CONduit on my iRiver while waiting for my connecting flight.

On the panel, Dave Wolverton mentioned that in China, the most that any corporation can be sued for negligent homicide is $10,000. This got me to thinking, what if they had the extras fill out forms indicating next of kin, and shoot the battle scenes with real guns? It would cause a huge uproar among humanitarian organizations, for sure, but there’s certainly an audience that would pay for it. And really, who loses from it?

Yet another example of economics at work–and why capitalism is evil.

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

In other words, what if we could go into the future and quantifiably measure the effects of decisions made in the present? What if our hindsight really was 20/20? Something like that.

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

Just an interesting character quirk.

An MMORPG for orcs and elves where they play as humans.

Haha! I’d forgotten about that one. 🙂

Zombie insects.

“Infestation” takes on a new meaning.

Sentient planets.

We’ve already got that (sort of): it’s called the Gaia hypothesis.

Golfing on the moon or mars.

Or tennis, or soccer, or basketball…seriously, how cool would it be?

Were-squirrels!

…okay, maybe that one wasn’t quite as awesome.

A psychic agency that allows you to IM dead relatives.

I’d be surprised if this doesn’t already exist.

There’s more, but I’ll save it for another post.

The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin

Urras and Annares, a world and its moon, separated by the gulf of space and two hundred years of mutual contempt.  On Urras, capitalist and socialist nations vie for dominance over the world’s rich and abundant resources.  On  Annares, the anarchist exiles scrounge for a meager living, but live in peace–and in hope.

Shevek has never known any other world than the anarchist utopia of Annares.  His life’s work is to develop a unified theory of simultaneity–a tremendous feat that will rework the paradigm of space travel and communication.  When the people of Annares reject his theory, however, he voyages to Urras in the hopes that by offering his theory as a gift to all nations, he can bridge the gap between the worlds.

Hopelessly inexperienced in the cutthroat ways of the propertarians, Shevek has no idea what he is getting himself into.  In his gilded prison, with nations vying for control of his person, can he find allies who share his idealistic, utopian vision?  Or is he alone in a world of greed, lies, and murder?

This is, quite possibly, one of the most impressive and beautiful works of literary science fiction that I have read.  It may be the best novel I’ve read all year.  Le Guin’s characters are so deep, her ideas so compelling, her worlds so rich, her writing so poetic and beautiful that I hardly know where to start.

One of the many things that made this book so good was the depth of Le Guin’s character development.  The story had a plot, and Le Guin dropped just enough pieces of it here and there for you to know that there was one, but more than anything this book is a portrait of an incredibly interesting man, Shevek.

The book actually contains two stories that merge into one in the end.  One taking place in the present, after Shevek arrives at Urras, and the other is a series of flashbacks showing how he arrived at that point.  Le Guin alternates brilliantly between past and present to reveal insights into Shevek’s character that would otherwise remain unexplored.  By the end of this novel, I felt that I knew this man–and loved him–better than anyone in real life, including myself.  It blew me away.

Le Guin’s worldbuilding, too is incredible.  Before reading this book, I didn’t consider myself an anarchist, but after spending so much time in the utopian society of Anarres, I almost want to become one.  Le Guin meticulously extrapolates her world from her highly perceptive understanding of human nature, paying such attention to detail that her anarchist world is not only surprisingly plausible, but enviable as well.  This is the kind of world that I would like to visit, explore, and perhaps even settle down in and live.

Her ideas, like her world, are meticulously well thought out and incredibly compelling.  In the Hainish cycle, Shevek is the inventor of the ansible drive, the technology that eventually enables peaceable diplomatic missions to other worlds, such as the one chronicled in The Left Hand of Darkness. Shevek’s struggle is to find a way to let this technology bring peace and break down walls, rather than empower tyrants to conquer and destroy.  Time and again, Shevek’s egalitarian, anarchist values come to the surface, clashing not only with those of capitalist Urras, but with our own.

All of this would be enough to make this a compelling, memorable story–but Le Guin’s stunning, beautiful prose puts this book into a league of its own.  The rhythm and beauty in her words made every page a joy to read, with descriptions that kept me entranced and dialogue that made her characters leap off of the page.  Above all, her prose conveys with powerful and compelling clarity the many life-changing ideas and themes of this story.  The book’s last words still haunt me.

The Dispossed is, without a doubt, is one of the best works of Science Fiction that I have read.  I would even go so far as to claim that it is a superior book to Le Guin’s better known work, The Left Hand of Darkness. If I could read a book this insightful every month, I would be a much better man, and have a much deeper and imaginative understanding of the world than I presently have.  This book is a true masterpiece.