worldbuilding – Page 2 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

Merchanter’s Luck by C. J. Cherryh

He was a down and out merchanter, the captain, crew, and sole proprietor of a run-down bucket of bolts spacecraft. She was a daughter of one of the finest starfaring clans, with seven hundred cousins standing between her and the one thing she wanted more than anything else: command of a starship.

They met at Pell during the height of the Company War–the key strategic point on the border between Union and Earth. Their fateful meeting would affect not only the outcome of the war, but the course of their own lives–for the starship Lucy of Wyatt’s Combine was not at all what she seemed to be.

Before I review this book, I need to issue a disclaimer: you probably aren’t going to enjoy it very much unless you’ve already read Downbelow Station. Cherryh isn’t the best at easing her readers into her worlds, and without the background on Union, Alliance, and the Company War, you’ll probably be hopelessly lost.

That said, I absolutely loved this book.

The premise is so awesome. Space adventure hardcore, with a beautiful love story set amidst an epic interstellar war, where alliances are constantly broken and no one can be trusted…oh man, I LOVED this book!

While the premise seems pretty standard, C. J. Cherryh transcends the well-worn tropes and cliches of her genre by intimately developing her characters and working their motivations into the story until they are the ones driving the plot, and not the other way around.

Every character is unique, and though they act in ways that may seem strange to our modern sensibilities, there are always reasons for everything they do, cultural or otherwise. As windows into their far-future spacefaring culture, they give the reader a wonderful view of Cherryh’s unique and marvelously constructed universe.

The thing that surprised me the most, however, was the sharp contrast between this book and Downbelow Station. While Downbelow Station traces the epic arc of the Company War through the viewpoints of a large cast of characters, much like Tolkien or Dune, Merchanter’s Luck focuses more on the characters themselves, in much the same way as David Gemmell or Ursula K. Le Guin. In other words, while Downbelow Station is comparable to “high” or epic fantasy, Merchanter’s Luck would fall closer to “low” fantasy or sword & sorcery.

The interesting self-realization I took from the book was that I’m much more interested in the intimately personal stories than the sweeping epic tale of the Rise and Fall of cultures and civilizations. I suppose that’s why I’m more of a David Gemmell nut than a Tolkien fanatic, and perhaps why I’m more into space opera and military sf than epic fantasy. In all of my novels, the focus is always on the individual characters and their personal conflicts, and whenever I get sidetracked and focus too much on the overworld story, it always falls apart.

Merchanter’s Luck definitely doesn’t get sidetracked, and that’s why I loved it so much. I fell in love with the characters almost from the very first page–from the blurb on the back cover, even. And most of all, I fell hopelessly in love with the starship Lucy:

You know you’re doing science fiction right when your readers bemoan the fact that they weren’t born in the 26th century, when they could command their own spaceship. C. J. Cherryh is an amazing writer, and if I had the chance, I would teleport into her Union-Alliance universe in a heartbeat.

If you love well-crafted far-future worlds and stories about the people that live in them, check out Downbelow Station (or really, just the first chapter–that’s all you need for a solid grounding) and read this book!

Confessions of a delinquent blogger

Man, so much has been happening, but now that I’m working an eight to five job, I never have the time to blog about it. It’s 2am and I’m running on only four hours of sleep from the previous night. Oh well, it’s a weekend. Here goes.

I passed the 50k mark for the rewrite of Mercenary Savior. I’m surprised how much I’m changing the draft. I’m especially finding a lot of slow chapter beginnings and thinly veiled expository lumps–not of scene descriptions so much as worldbuilding. Gotta remember the iceberg concept (to only include about ten percent or less of your worldbuilding in your story’s narrative).

I interviewed a few more people for the article on the “class that wouldn’t die.” Good stuff, all around. I met with Cara O’Sullivan today, and she had a very interesting comment about why there are so many LDS writers of science fiction and fantasy.

In her opinion, Mormon literary culture tends to push the more talented writers into sf&f because of the extreme lack of freedom in other genres of LDS writing. In mainstream and literary LDS fiction, there are so many expectations for the writers: for example, that the story will have a clear message, or that it will contain a certain brand of Mormon sentimentalism, etc. In science fiction and fantasy, OTOH, there’s much more freedom; therefore, LDS writers tend to gravitate that way.

I also had a phone interview for the wilderness job last Thursday. I think it went well, but we’ll find out at the end of the month, I suppose. Questions that caught me off guard include: “how do you define success?” and “how would you respond to something you heard secondhand about an employee from another shift?”

Finally, I recently got hooked on an old abandonware DOS game called Princess Maker 2. It is so freaking awesome. Basically, you are the father of this ten year old girl, and you have to raise her from childhood to adulthood.

There are so many possible ways to do this: build her fighting skills and send her on adventures, build her artistic skills and have her win dancing/painting contests, build her refinement and send her to court to build her social reputation, etc etc. There are over 70 different possible endings, including some really weird and crazy ones!

And yes, I know, it seems strange that I’d go for a game this girly–but dude, you have no idea until you try it out. It’s like being a father, but with magic and knights and dragons and stuff! So totally awesome!

The flipside is that I spent almost the entire day playing this game. Yeah…still got in 2.5k words, but I was hoping to put in somewhere around 6k or 7k. Man, I haven’t been this addicted since Alpha Centauri. Will it last? I don’t think it will, but then again, I don’t know. The bigger question is whether this is a game I can play in moderation (like Star Control II). I certainly hope it is, but I don’t know.

In the meantime, I’ve got five weeks to write 70k words. Lets go!

Forward to new ground

A couple days ago, I finished writing through the material I’d written for Worlds Away From Home back in 2008 before I dropped the project. For the first time since March, I find myself drafting entirely new material.

It’s a little bit unnerving; I’m a much better reviser, I feel, than straight up writer. Revising is awesome because I know that the book is getting better, whereas drafting is frustrating because the written story never turns out as awesome as it was when it was in my head.

At the same time, it’s really fun to play fast and loose with your book. Need a new character? Throw him in! A new romantic subplot? Go for it! A new planet for the characters to visit? Sure, why not?

I will say, though, that it’s much harder to keep up a steady writing rate when you’re drafting new material. My daily word count has fallen to about 2k, give or take a few hundred words. In order to finish this by August 15, I just need to do 2.2k per day, but I’m sure something will come up and I’ll find myself in a crunch by the end.

One thing that might throw a kink in the works is getting a new job. Being underemployed really sucks, and I want to move on to a new job by the beginning of August. Easier said than done in this economy, right? Well, there are some options open to a young, single college grad in my position: namely, a wilderness job. I’ve been holding out on that because eight days in the wilderness for every six days off seems like a lot of time away from other pursuits, but the more I look at it, the more appealing it seems. Six days completely off, with no money problems…hmm…

Which reminds me: would it be lame to put up a donate button on this blog? One that said “buy me a (non-alcoholic) drink” or something like that? I don’t want to ask for money, but if you guys feel like throwing it at me, who am I to hold you back? I don’t expect it to earn much, but something is better than nothing, especially these days.

Thoughts on the convolutions of discovery writing

It’s been forever since I posted, so I figured I’d put something up and let you guys know what I’ve been up to.

I’m happy to say that Worlds Away From Home is going well; I wrote just under 20k this week, which is more than I’ve written in a long time. I hope to keep a steady 15k to 20k for the next three weeks as I finish this draft.

I think I’m through the roughest parts (famous last words, right?), and I’ve got a fairly clear idea where I want to take this. That is, I have a target ending that’s both specific enough to give me direction and vague enough to give me some flexibility. If I’m doing things right, I expect these characters will surprise me before the end.

When I first started this novel almost two years ago, I hit a bad rough patch right around my current spot and had to put it on hold for a while. At the time, I thought it was because of a particularly difficult scene (which I just rewrote), but now I see that the problem was much bigger.

I thought that I was telling a story about a guy who nearly falls for the wrong girl and ends up with the right one in the end, when really the first girl was the right one. Once again, I found myself telling a very different story than the one I set out to tell.

Interestingly, in order to see what I needed to do to fix the problem, I had to write a completely unrelated novel in the same world about the same overarching world events. My problem, I think, was that I spent so much time world building that I stopped paying attention to what the characters were doing.

With the current draft, I’ve discovered that this story is very solidly a science fiction romance. There’s plenty of sf action, but it’s the romance that drives the plot.

While this discovery comes as a pleasant surprise, it also worries me because the potential audience may be very small. Traditionally, science fiction has been anathema to romance, and while that may be changing (as evidenced by this interesting post at tor.com), I wonder how well this book will sell, especially because it’s not your typical romance. In some ways, it’s actually a critique of our typical ideas of romance.

Oh well. I suppose there isn’t anything I can do about it except finish the damn thing and worry about selling it later. These types of thoughts tend to be counterproductive to the creative process, especially when you’re more thank 50k into the draft.

Overall, though, I’m optimistic. I like this story that I’m telling, and while I may cringe at the mistakes I make as I go along, I know that I need to resist the urge to fix them until the rough draft is complete.

Writing for me is like wandering around blindfolded with a Polaroid camera and taking a picture of something that sounds cool. When I take off the blindfold and check the picture, it takes a while before I can see the coherent whole. Usually, though I have some idea what to expect, the end result surprises me.

I love it, though. That element of surprise and spontaneity is well worth the lack of control, because usually (if I handle things right) it helps to give the story depth, meaning, and honesty that my conscious mind simply could not give it.

I’m very optimistic about this novel. Now that the world is solidly built, I can focus everything on the characters, and that’s where the true story lies. I’m currently having a lot of fun torturing them, but I know where their headed with their growth arcs and how all of this ties together (well, most of it, anyway). If I can pull it off, it should be quite satisfying. In the meantime, I’m excited to seeing where it takes me.

Dying of the Light by George R. R. Martin

Worlorn is a planet without a sun, wandering on the fringes of the galaxy where the skies are starless. Though it came to life briefly as it passed the red giant Fat Satan, those days are over, and the world is slowly dying.

Dirk T’Larien never thought he would find himself on such a forsaken world. But when his onetime lover, Gwen Delvano, sends him a plea for help, he realizes that more than anything, he wants to have her back.

It will not be easy, however. Gwen is betheyn to two men: Jaantony Vikary, whom she loves, and Garse Janacek, whom she hates. Both are from Kavalar, a warlike planet where offworlders are considered subhuman. And even though Worlorn is slowly dying, a colony of extremist Kavalars has taken root, planning to bring back the old ways when offworlders were hunted like beasts.

I picked up this book at Pioneer Books a couple weeks ago; I saw that it was by George R. R. Martin and decided to give it a try. I was very much impressed. For the last hundred pages, I couldn’t put it down, and the story haunted me for a couple days after I’d finished it.

The strongest element of the story was definitely the setting. The story may be set in a grand galactic empire with spaceships and alien worlds, but make no mistake, this beautiful piece of space opera reads more like fantasy than science fiction. There’s even a thirty page glossary of terms in the back, for ease of reference.

The effect of Martin’s grandiose worldbuilding is a haunting sense of wonder that keeps you, as the reader, hooked. The more you read, the more you immerse yourself in the world; and the more you immerse yourself, the more you want to read. After the story ends, you still find yourself thinking about the fantastic worlds, as if you’ve actually been there. It’s awesome.

Another thing that kept me hooked was the basic premise of the plot. The main character, Dirk T’Larien, is trying to win back the affection of an ex-girlfriend and get back together. That’s something with which I can definitely relate–the ex even has the same name (roughly) as a girl I once chased after (quite unrequitedly, may I add). Because of this, I was drawn into the story right away.

Martin is known for his plot twists, however, and though the story began as a basic love triangle, it very quickly became… something else. I’m not entirely sure how to describe it without giving major spoilers, but I will say that I found it impossible to predict how this story would end. I found that a lot more annoying than enjoyable, however–just when I thought things were headed in a certain direction, something happened to nullify everyone’s efforts and turn things completely around.

Despite this, however, the story…worked. I don’t know quite how to describe it. The basic markers were all there, even though they were jumbled in unpredictable patterns. No death was meaningless, no success was insignificant; there was no excess baggage in the story that didn’t somehow belong.

All around, it was a very good book. Kind of dark, but not nearly as edgy as I was expecting. This is definitely the kind of science fiction that a fantasy reader would go for–and probably most science fiction readers as well.

Quick worldbuilding question

For To Search the Starry Sea, I’m writing from the point of view of a far future starfaring culture completely independent of Earth. They’ve preserved our concepts of “hour,” “day,” and “year,” but these units of time do not correlate in any way with the revolutions of the worlds on which they live (basically, a set of tidally locked moons orbiting a gas giant planet several AUs from its sun).

The people of this culture use terms like “morning,” “evening,” “day,” and “night” to describe their waking and sleeping cycles, but having been cut off from Earth for so much time, they don’t associate these times with the position of the sun. In order to convey that this is different, I’m thinking of spelling “afternoon” like “afternune,” to show that there’s been some cultural drift since the migration from Earth.

Does that work? Or if you had to read “afternune” instead of “afternoon,” would it completely throw you out of the story?

Or am I just not making any sense at all?

Christmas break 2009

Christmas was great this year! I spent it in Texas, with my extended family–the family on my dad’s side, who I almost never see. The break has been a lot of fun so far! No school or work obligations, lots of time to lay back and relax, plenty of games to play and books to read, plus fun people to hang out with–it’s been great!

Most of my cousins are young teenagers right now, and are a lot different than I remember. However, I was able to get some presents for them that I think worked out well. David is into his iPod, so I got him some U2 albums (How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb and Joshua Tree). Savannah and Nash are both avid fantasy readers, so I got Savannah Mistborn: The Final Empire and Nash Victory of Eagles (the one chain bookstore in Midland didn’t have His Majesty’s Dragon, so I got him another from the series). Daniel, I didn’t know what to get, so I gave him my old camera.

Ashley (who is older) was telling me about how she lived abroad and wants to spend some time in Australia, so I got a travelogue on Australia by the same guy who did A Walk in the Woods. Based on her reaction, I think she’s going to like it!

It was much easier to get stuff for direct family, since I know them better. For Kate, I got Soulless, a steampunk / paranormal mystery novel that had an awesome release party at World Fantasy 2009. I don’t know if she’ll like the book, but the party was very steampunk / regency fantasy with the cosplayers, so I think she will. I got Danny The Screwtape Letters, since I know he likes that kind of religious fiction–turns out he’s been meaning to read it for a while! Mykle, I got the first book in C. S. Friedman’s latest series, since I know that she’s his favorite author–24 hours after Christmas, he’s already 200+ pages into it! And for Sarah and Mykle, I got them both $20 gift certificates to Pioneer Book in downtown Provo. They were very happy with that!

I wish I’d had the time to get presents for everyone in the family, but with moving out, coming here so quickly, and not having a car (or much of an idea what they wanted), it just wasn’t very practical. I did get my mom a gift certificate to B&N, but I haven’t gotten anything for my dad yet. I will, though–he wants stuff from our Christmas memories, and I happen to have all my old childhood journals in my carry on luggage. Lots of Christmas memories in those!

I’m satisfied with what I got, even though it wasn’t all that much. Besides the generic clothes, socks, ties, candy, popcorn, and other stuff, I got a spiffy tool kit from Robin and a flexible tripod from pop. Very nice! They will add some weight to my luggage, but I think I can give some of it to mom or pop to bring home.

As far as writing goes, I’m less than 13k words from the end of Bringing Stella Home 2.0. It’s not quite ready for alpha readers yet, but I want to get it ready soon (it’s going to take so much work! <sob>). If I average 2.6k words over the next five days, I’ll have it finished in time to start something new by new years!

That’s the goal. As for what the next novel is going to be about…let’s just say it’s Homer’s Odyssey meets C. J. Cherryh and Ursula K. Le Guin in space, where Telemachus is a girl and the story is primarily from her point of view.

I hope I can pull it off!

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.

Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds

Hundreds of thousands of years ago, an ancient race of sentient aliens known as the Amarantin went extinct just as their civilization experienced a golden age. No one knows why, but archeologist Dan Sylveste is determined to find out. Unlike the other colonists on the remote planet of Resurgam, he believes that the answer may be important.

He has no idea how right he is.

Just as he’s on the verge of a major breakthrough, a team of rebels takes over the administration of the colony. Sylveste becomes a prisoner of war, and his research comes to a frustrating halt.

Meanwhile, on Yellowstone (the nearest human-inhabited planet to Resurgam), a mysterious entity known as The Mademoiselle hires assassin Ana Khouri for a special mission: kill Dan Sylveste.

The only ship headed in that direction, however, is an ancient warship commanded by a rouge crew of Ultras, genetically modified transhumans. They seek Sylveste in order to heal their captain, who suffers from a plague that melds human biology with advanced technology. The de facto leader, Illia Volyova, hires Khouri to replace the ship’s gunner, who went mad and mysteriously died.

But neither Khouri nor Volyova realize that the thing that drove the gunner mad still resides deep in the ship’s systems. It is neither human nor AI–and it knows what killed off the Amarantin nine hundred thousand years ago.

Revelation Space is a space opera unlike any other that I’ve read, with the possible exception of Dune. The far-future universe Alastair Reynolds created for this book is incredibly complex and expansive, almost completely unrecognizable from our own, with technology bordering on godlike, posthuman and transhuman races that are all but commonplace, and nothing but a blurry, indistinct line dividing the human and the machine. On every page, I felt as if I had left the real world behind for something completely (and often disturbingly) alien.

Setting, by far, is the strongest point of this book. In fact, as an aspiring writer, I found it somewhat intimidating. Reynold’s Revelation Space universe was completely alien, but in ways that made perfect sense for the far future in which it was set. From this, I’ve learned that to make a far future setting believable, you have to make it…well, as alien and complex as Reynolds makes it. It shouldn’t be an exact copy of Reynold’s mold, of course, but if it’s 500 years in the future and everyday life still feels exactly like our own–well, there had better be a reason for that.

As for character and plot, I did not feel that those were particular strong points of this book. It’s not that they were done poorly, it’s just that they weren’t done well enough, in my opinion.

The characters in Revelation Space did not particular engage me at first; I found that I had to force myself to keep reading, rather than read because I had to find out what happened to them. Later on, as the story progressed, they grew on me, but I never felt that I intimately knew them.

As for plot, I felt that every fifty or one hundred pages, Reynolds would pause the story and throw something in from left field, simply because he had to foreshadow something coming up. In this way, the book seemed a little choppy–like a debut novel (and, in Reynold’s defense, this is his debut novel).

Even with these issues, however, this was an incredible book, and it’s stuck with me even months after finishing it. Reynolds pulled off an amazing ending–very satisfying, with a twist that I had not foreseen but that made good sense. The final scene, and the last two sentences of the final scene in particular, were just awesome. They made me want to clap my hands and say “bravo.”

If I could describe Revelation Space in terms of other works, I would say that it’s a cross between Neuromancer and Stargate the movie. While it’s solid space opera, it has a dark and gritty feel that borders on Cyberpunk / post-Cyberpunk. It’s not exactly the kind of stuff I want to write, it comes pretty darn close.

“Why people read”

Dave Farland puts out this great e-newsletter called “Dave’s Daily Kick-in-the-Pants.” For the kick today, he suggested the following exercise:

You probably have a good idea about what you want to write—horror, mainstream, fantasy, historical, romance, westerns, religious fiction, and whatnot. Sit down for ten minutes and on the left-hand side of your paper, list five things that you feel you most like in the fiction you read. On the right-hand side of your paper, list the biggest potential danger that you see in trying to create that effect.

Doing this exercise will help you understand who your potential audience is, and some of the challenges that you may face in reaching that audience.

This was my response:

Why I read:

1) To meet interesting characters and get lost with them in an exciting fantastic world.

2) To think deeper about fundamental truths I see in my own life.

3) To feel like I understand another person and connect with them.

4) To be reassured that true heroism is real, alive, and within the realm of possibility.

5) To experience beauty in the language and metaphor, the imagery and tension.

Potential dangers:

1) Trying to write about a world without a story–all info dumps, exposition, lacking interesting characters with whom the reader can journey and experience the world. Story IS experience, and experience does not exist independent of the person doing the experiencing.

2) Waxing allegorical or didactic in the writing–trying to force the message instead of leaving it open for the reader to discover multiple layers of meaning.

3) Focusing so hard on the character that the plot lacks the structure and tension to keep the reader interesting. Characters do not exist separate from plot or setting; they change and grow in reaction to both.

4) Creating a hero whose struggle is so far removed from the real world or our real life experience that the reader feels that this type of person could only exist within the pages of a book. Or, trying so hard to follow the monomyth structure that the story falls flat (ie Star Wars I, II, III).

5) Thinking that poetic license frees you from basic rules of style and grammar. Creating metaphors that are so unusual that they are merely non sequiturs. Writing prose so thick and “literary” that it kicks the reader out of the book.