Urban Fantasy – One Thousand And One Parsecs

Story Notebook #6

Alright, it’s time to go through another story notebook. This one covers the spring and summer of 2010, right after I graduated. It was a weird transitional period in my life, when I didn’t really know what I was doing or where I was going, but I was determined to keep on writing anyway.

I filled three pocket notebooks with story ideas in 2010, and last time I mistakenly thought I’d covered one that went from graduation through the end of the year. While putting my records in order before going abroad, I found that this one actually came a little earlier.

Lots and lots of story ideas…2010 was definitely a good year for that. So anyhow, here we go:

A planet settled by people with aircars: there will be no asphalt roads, only packed earth.

An interesting consequence of futuristic technology; too often, stories come up with something flashy without really thinking through all of the implications. Can you imagine a world without asphalt? If you can, then please take me there!

A task-oriented woman who thinks men are fickle because they’re always trying to come across as macho, trying to save face, etc.

This makes me think of something I heard somewhere about gender roles and politicians. If I remember it correctly, most men go into politics for the fame, power, and glory, while most women go into politics because something in their community is broken and they feel it’s their duty to fix it. Not sure if that’s true or not, but this story idea made me think of that for some reason.

Humanity has been domesticated by a super-intelligent alien race and bred into several different breeds with wildly varying physical characteristics.

In other words, a post-human universe where humans have been bred as pets, like dogs. Can you imagine a world where the physical differences between humans of different races are as great as this:

Can these two even physically reproduce?

A fantasy where the traveling hero is actually the bad guy.

I think Girl Genius already beat me to that, though Othar is more of an annoyance than a genuine villain.

An interstellar Sir Richard Burton.

Now that would be an interesting series. Sir Richard Burton was a British adventurer who went to the Middle East before doing that was cool. He made the first English translation of the 1001 Arabian Nights (as well as the Kama Sutra, apparently), and was one of the first European explorer to sneak into Mecca–certainly the first non-Muslim explorer. I hear he was quite a character.

A planet on a highly eccentric orbit where habitability is sustained by large glowstones that absorb high amounts of energy and emit heat slowly.

Ooh, I’d forgotten about this one. I’ll have to use it sometime–maybe in a science fiction / fantasy mashup. You know, with dragons and stuff.

A werewolf who is tame around just one person.

I’m pretty sure this one has been done, and I’m also pretty sure I’m not interested in reading it. Sorry, Twilight fans–or maybe you’re welcome?

A landscape more vertical than horizontal, where the architecture reflects this (like the old Knight building).

The Knight building was a multi-split-level administration building at BYU where Leading Edge used to meet. Lots of stairs, entrances on just about every level–it was a weird building (but not quite as weird as the JKB). But yeah, a vertical landscape would be cool–though I guess that’s pretty common in cyberpunk, with all those cities.

An alien species that communicates only by touch.

“What the–augh! Get it off of me!” Thus begins humanity’s first interstellar war.

Purgatory for fictional characters, where all the plot hole stories go.

I’m pretty sure that was a South Park episode.

A religious order that believes that developing math skills is the key to self and enlightenment, becuase math is the only science that is completely a priori.

Heh, I’ll bet my Dad would like that story. It might be the first one of mine that he actually buys.

A man frames himself to go to prison so that he can go to law school / have time to write.

When you’re unemployed and struggling to make ends meet, some otherwise unsavory options begin to look pretty attractive…

What if humanity had a blight like the American Chestnut, where everyone over the age of 20 dies of a horrible disease?

I actually started writing that one. Finished the first chapter, kind of in a pseudo-Victorian first person style, like Robinson Crusoe. I have no idea when I’ll finish it, but the universe is really, really fascinating.

A world where novelists / storytellers convey their tales telepathically without translation into words.

And then SOPA gets passed, and all of us creative types are screwed.

What if the mountains were sentient? What would they think of the human race?

“Dang it! Not another cavity!”

Land of the sleeping rainbows

I think this is actually a real place in southern Utah; I just thought it would make a cool story prompt.

What if the Amish really are 18th century people, guarding a natural time portal in central Pennsylvania?

That would be a fun one to research. “Hello, I’m writing a time travel novel…can I join your village for a year?”

Marital therapy that involves swapping bodies.

I’m pretty sure Disney did something like that in the 60s. With the way the country has changed, I’m sure it would be much different if someone did it again today.

And that just about does it for this notebook. As always, feel free to use any of these ideas in your own work. It isn’t “stealing” if it hasn’t actually been written yet (unless congress passes a revamped version of SOPA that…hmm, that gives me an idea…).

Thanks guys! See you around!

I Don’t Want to Kill You by Dan Wells

John Cleaver, teenage sociopath and demon hunter, has put his inner monster to work protecting his small town community from supernatural beings. But now, the head demon, known only as Nobody, has come to take him down.

As if that weren’t difficult enough, the most popular girl in John’s class, Marci, has taken a liking to him–and he soon finds that he likes her back. What’s more, she’s not as weirded out by his obsession with the string of murders in their town–in fact, she’s interested in them too.

Just as their young romance begins to blossom, however, a rash of teen suicides makes John wonder: why does he even try if the people he’s trying to protect are just going to throw their lives away anyways? To defeat Nobody, he must search within himself and find the answer.

This book was awesome–like, Return of the Jedi awesome–and I’m not just saying that because the author is a friend of mine. It brings the Serial Killer trilogy to a dramatic and satisfying conclusion. Dan Wells’s storytelling skills are amazing, and he puts them to good use throughout this book.

The thing I loved the most was probably how all the major characters had to sacrifice something huge for the people they loved in order to overcome the evil forces at work in their lives. And the demons–whoa, they were pretty freaky. Supernatural freaky, yes, but in a way that was frighteningly true to life–even more so than the previous demons in the series.

Wells has an excellent handle on character arcs, and he applies that here to the romance subplot with excellent results. The romantic aspect of the novel was both believable and gripping, and made the ending all the more emotional.

If anything, though, I wish he would have played up the love triangle a little more than he did. No spoilers, but there were a couple of shifts toward the end that felt a little abrupt. Not too much, but I thought it could have been done better.

This is definitely an urban fantasy, but one surprisingly close to the real world. Unlike Mr. Monster, where the supernatural aspect came in halfway as something of a shock, I thought the supernatural and real world elements in I Don’t Want to Kill You were blended almost perfectly. Not only was it clear from the beginning that both elements were going to be important, but the feedback loop between the two was handled extremely well. If I ever write urban fantasy, Dan Wells has certainly set a high standard to follow.

All in all, a great book, one I highly recommend. If you enjoy urban fantasy or superhero stories, you’ll probably love this book.

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.

World Fantasy 2010: Day 1

So today was the first day of World Fantasy, the major professional convention for science fiction and fantasy literature. I’ve only been here for a few hours, but I can already tell it’s going to be awesome.

While making a stop in Chicago, I ran into two other writers on the same flight (one by the name of Theodora Goss who was on a panel later that evening) and ended up sharing a taxi with them. We had some great conversations on the way down, about non-conciliatory fantasy, Dave Wolverton’s workshops, writing short stories vs novels, etc. It was great.

So I arrived at the hotel, checked in, got situated, and immediately started running into other Utah/Mormon writers. I was a bit surprised, because I was expecting us to have a much smaller contingent this year, but I started running into familiar faces right off the bat.

And then, as a tribute to how universal science fiction and fantasy fandom really is, a group of us cleanshaven Mormons ran into an atheist and agnostic from Seattle in the hallway and spent a delightful evening together talking about religion, why there are so many Mormon sf&f writers, more religion, dating/relationships in Utah, still more religion…and it was awesome. They said we were some of the coolest Mormons they’ve come across, and I have to say, I very much enjoyed meeting them as well.

So anyways, I just went to one panel this evening: “Fantasy as a Rejection of the Present.” Basically, it was all about how fantasy tends to hearken back to the forgotten values of the past, and how steampunk and contemporary urban fantasy is largely a reaction against our modern consumer culture. There was a lot more to it as well, including a discussion of Tolkien, Lewis, and William Morris, but that was the most interesting tidbit I took from it.

It got me thinking that perhaps I should try my hand at urban fantasy. I haven’t yet tried it because I get bored just thinking about stories set in the “real world”–but lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how screwed up this “real world” really is…perhaps some of those thoughts would translate surprisingly well into urban fantasy.

I don’t know. Anyhow, that’s my <500 word report on tonight’s activities. I’ll try to make another one sometime tomorrow, but I make no promises–hanging out with these people is just too much fun. Good night.

Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia

Owen Zastava Pitt wants nothing more than to be a mild-mannered accountant with a comfortable, boring life. Unfortunately, fate has other plans. His father–a retired green beret–brought him up to be a killing machine, with or without a firearm. To pay for college, Owen worked alternately as a bouncer and a highly illegal cage fighter. But all that’s behind him now; he has a respectable job–one where he isn’t required to kill things for a living.

When his boss turns out to be a werewolf, however, and Owen single-handedly kills him, all of that changes. A guy shows up at the hospital with a business card for a company called “Monster Hunter International,” and promises to help him make a lot of money killing things for a living. It turns out that vampires, wights, werewolves, and evil tentacled monsters are real, and the business of monster hunting is quite lucrative.

At first, Owen is hesitant. But when an old Jewish man starts showing up in his dreams, telling him about an ancient, evil plot to subjugate the world, he realizes that he has little choice in the matter. Fate has given him a calling–or, as the old man likes to say, the “short end of stick.”

If you’re a gun fanatic or a B-movie connoisseur, you’ll love this book. It’s basically Men in Black meets Van Helsing, with enough firearms and weapons to make Rambo look tame. Hundreds of mindless zombie wights? Bring out your automatic 12 gauge shotgun. Giant flying gargoyles the size of semi-trucks? Hope you brought enough RPGs and grenade launchers to go around. Hordes of undead swarming across Alabama? Better arm the 5-kiloton tactical nukes.

The story was quite entertaining, with enough comedic and romantic subplots to keep things interesting. The battle between good and evil was pretty clear cut and unambiguous, with evil being measured by how many tentacles a thing has, but some of the monsters (such as the vampires) were much more complex. When you have to decapitate your buddies after they die, to make sure they don’t come back as something that will kill you, that makes things interesting.

I felt that the second half of the novel lagged a little, especially with the number of false endings. However, the ending itself was quite satisfying, with an interesting twist that caught me a little by surprise. The quality of Correia’s writing was a little weak in places, but the story was more about killing the bad guys than crafting beautiful prose. In any case, I don’t think his intended audience will mind.

Overall, it was an entertaining, surprisingly fast read. It’s not the type of thing I usually read, but I enjoyed it. If you’re looking for deep, meaningful literature that changes the way you view the world, or a clean, wholesome read that’s free of excessive language or violence (Gamila, I’m talking to you), this book probably isn’t for you, but if you’re looking for an entertaining story about undead monsters where the good guys aren’t pussy-footing idiots, you’ll probably enjoy this book. If you own more than one firearm, it’s a must-read.