Robert Silverberg has always inspired me, and just about everyone else who’s ever read his works.

I first read Lord Valentine’s Castle in high school. Sometimes my fingers trembled as I turned the pages. I was so close to being there that when I put down the book to do annoying things like homework, I felt homesick. Somehow he took me to Majipoor. And that is not easy for an author to do.

Silverberg’s world building (though I didn’t really understand it at the time) is some of the best. He’s up there with Herbert and Tolkien. As I grew older, I discovered other works that not only took me somewhere, but inspired me to write. Sailing to Byzantium was one of the first stories that made me want to be a writer. If I could only write like this! I would say.

And Silverberg also is a teacher. For anyone interested in writing SF, his collection dubbed, Science Fiction 101, is essential. It was there that I learned, among other things, the ‘dual plot’ of short story writing. Put two, probably, unoriginal stories together in a new way and you have a unique story.

Recently I ran across Nightwings, a short story. Again, Silverberg amazes me with his world building and his gentle descriptions that lift the world from the pages into my imagination.

He is a gem.

Thanks to my friend, Chris, I was able to see one of my heroes, Sir Arthur C Clark reflect on his life and the world.

On the first day of my literature class, Crisis in Civilization, the professor, Monsieur Boyer said, “What is Science Fiction? It’s how we try to understand the continuous technological crises in our civilization. We don’t know where we’re going, and that is why we have SF.” If we are always going to have technology, we will always have Science Fiction.

Yet why, every blue moon, does someone shout, “Science Fiction is Dead!” Recently, several articles have appeared on both the web and in print. Here are two examples: Article One & Article Two I also remembers a smattering of premature eulogies in the early eighties for the giants of the genre. Authors like Heinlein, Herbert, and Asimov had, the critics cried, long passed their prime and were cranking out mediocre novels. Out of date publishers were writing moribund works that spoke of an antiquated future instead of one that addressed the new problems of the eighties. No one cared anymore. Science Fiction was irrelevant. It was the end of Science Fiction.

Then a new style stormed across the SF landscape with an in-your-face attitude reeking of the gutter and tainted with pop cultural imagery. (I’m told that the word cyberpunk was coined by Gardner Dozois as he reeled in horror at the new style.) Science Fiction was not dead after all. It was reborn into a dark, but strange and wondrous future.

Why does this happen? How can people proclaim that SF is dead? Perhaps we should examine first the time before it is dead, when it has purpose. That purpose is the vision that it creates of the future. It’s a map. It is, to paraphrase William Gibson, an illustration of the future. Why cyberpunk struck so many readers in the early eighties was that readers could “see that future”. Gibson, Sterling, et. al’s future was grim, but possible, and in many ways, inspiring. It was new. In the words of Professor Boyer, it showed the Crisis in our culture created by the computer, genetic manipulation and a number of other technologies. The old SF style had indeed faded away, but SF wasn’t dead. It had simply lacked a vision that matched the current situation. And now cyberpunk is a style that has lost touch with the future. It’s cliche to speak of console cowboys and mirrorshades. Has anything replaced it? I don’t see anything…yet.

With every generation the genre loses its Vision. It ceases to offer us strange landscapes that capture our imagination. Instead it tells us stories in a well-worn time about as comfortable and as interesting as Grandma’s living room. Its only hope of entertainment is to give us melodramas set in the already antiquated future. We no longer see the Vision, we only see a scenario.

Who is the person that declares the genre is dead? Most are older, with a history behind them that can compare the past with the present. They use SF novels, TV, or movies of their youth and say: You see, what was predicted back then has come into being. The world is so different from the past that it can’t get any more different. Look! We have tricorders, genetically designed babies, satellites and rockets…there is no more future. For these people, the genre has lost its Vision. Their heads are stuffed with the detritus of unrealized futures. Where are the robots? The flying cars? The food capsules? Oh, SF is dead! These people don’t have the Vision to create a new map of the future. They, like most of us, can, at best, only can make a scenario or hide behind the veil of denial, dismissing the entire genre as passe. But that is why they are not A Science Fiction Great.

So Science Fiction must rely on the next generation. For those just coming into this world, the future is not here. For them, our future is their present. It is now. They have absorbed the future and made it their every day existence; they have nothing to which they can compare it. To them, the future is not here. What has taken an adult a lifetime to absorb is everyday experience to them. From what they absorb and begin to extrapolate, a new Vision will emerge.

Just like Professor Boyer said, we don’t know where we’re going. We still need to map out what’s around the corner. And for that reason, we will still have Science Fiction.

I won’t review Star Maker, by Olaf Stapledon. I will only make one critique: the entire story is a narration. There is no immediate drama and no dialogue. If you are like me, you will trudge through the first several chapters because you aren’t used to the writing style. But be patient. This book is a classic and you will learn why.

Star Maker, written in 1937, should make every science fiction writer proud and frustrated at their craft. Stapledon’s vision is infinite. His books are a testament to the ideas that the genre can produce. And we writers will always be frustrated at coming in second to his ideas.

But not only writers. Physicists must also tip their hats to him. In the 50th Anniversary Edition of Star Maker, on page 243, we read:

In one inconceivable complex cosmos, whenever a creature was faced with several possible courses of action, it took them all, thereby creating many distinct temporal dimensions and distinct histories of the cosmos. Since in every evolutionary sequence of the cosmos there were very many creatures, and each was constantly faced with many possible courses, and the combinations of all their courses were innumerable, an infinity of distinct universes exfoliated from every moment of every temporal sequence in this cosmos.

Wow. That’s a mouthful. And that is just one paragraph. Now look closely at what he is saying at the end of the paragraph: an infinity of distinct universes exfoliated from every moment of every temporal sequence in this cosmos. That is the Many-Worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. In the book, the creature consciously takes all of the possible paths. In the Many-Worlds interpretation, it is a quantum mechanical process that occurs. Despite the difference, it is prescient.

Writers, remember this. Ideas are important. Star Maker is now 70 years old. Its ideas are just as important today as they were then. They are timeless. Yes, other elements of storytelling are important too. But ideas are the stuff that makes science fiction unique. Characterization, the oft-touted requirement of good storytelling, is important. But it is not the raison d’etre of science fiction. If it were, we’d all be writing Jane Eyre In Space.

I doubt that would ever be a science fiction classic.

Okay, not quite.  In fact, it’s a while before we see any of this.  But it’s fascinating.  The Casimir force works because the vacuum is bubbling with exotic particles that flitter in and out of existence.  (See the wiki definition:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_force) If two plates are close enough together, the force from the particles that push the plates from the outside pushes against the force from the inside.  The force then pushes the plates together.  This is because there is almost no space between the plates to push back.  Now, if something called a perfect lens is used, which can bend the pressure from the inside outwards, then it can use the exotic energy to keep the plates apart.  In theory, this can work over larger and larger distances.

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/30670

My friend Chris recommended a book to me which I eventually got around to reading. I’ve been grateful to him ever since. The book is called, Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Brown and Dave King.

To paraphrase Chris, this book “teaches you the basics that you must have before submitting a work for publication”. He’s absolutely right. I strongly recommend it to anyone who is not receiving intelligent critiques. Until recently, I’ve had tremendous difficulty improving my writing. Part of the reason was finding people to critique my stories. Those that have read them have either liked or hated the stories. (I’ve also been accused of being derivative of writers I’ve never read!) But no one has critiqued the stories with the eye of an editor. Writing in isolation, the best I could do was practice my writing and improve merely by intuition. A sentence ’seemed’ better when written a certain way. And, although the bookstores sold a lot of books on writing characters, plots, etc, they didn’t sell books on improving the writing itself.

This book does that. It tells you much of what you need to know. Here are some chapter titles:
Show and Tell, Characterization and Exposition, Point of View, Proportion, Dialogue Mechanics and much much more.

So go buy it. Right now. Learn what they tell you. Your writing will improve drastically. It will appear professional.

This is several years old, and although it is long after the Feng Shui craze has ended, I thought I’d put it up. My cohort in this exercise of stupidity is Jina Oshiro. I hope she doesn’t tell Vlad…

In the mists of time, long before Lillian Too and Barnes and Noble rip-offs, the famous Vlad Tepes, or Vlad the Impaler, sent an expedition from his native land of Wallachia and across the Asian Steppes to learn the exotic philosophy known as Feng Shui. Along the way, the group faced dangers too numerous and fictitious to bore the gentle reader. Needless to say, they returned with this precious knowledge. They were promptly killed. But not before they taught Vlad:
FANG SHUI!!!

Testimonies:

“He appeared in a shimmering mist, and took our garbage can out of the corner of prosperity!”

“A great flock of bats showed up one night and replaced all of our toilets with big tanks of cichlids. No explanation, just this note reading “Turbulence bad, fish good“. At first we were skeptical, but decided to install an outhouse, buy some feeder guppies, and give this whole ‘fang shui’ thing a try. We’ve been considerably more prosperous ever since!”

“We awoke one morning to find that our front door had been painted red. My husband, furious at this obvious invasion of privacy, immediately had it re-painted blue. Unfortunately, it turns out that painting your front door blue is considered VERY bad fang shui, and greatly increases your likelihood of being found impaled on a spike in the vegetable garden! Who could have known? I couldn’t find that rule in _any_ of the books at Barnes & Noble… Anyway…I re-re-painted the door red the very next day, and no one has been found impaled on a spike in the vegetable garden since! Fang Shui works for me!”

“I was told by this Vlad fellow that I was to put a podium in front of my door!”, said Ethyl Baumgardner of Skogie, Illinois. “I mean, right in front of the door, where people come in! I couldn’t understand why, but he just fluttered in front of my face, and said, ‘If you don’t, I’ll make your anus pucker so tight you could launch ballistic missiles out of it.’ Well, I’d expect that kind of language from a Marine, but not European Aristocracy. But I did it, and my household energy just stayed home, instead of flowing out the door! I must say that intimidation has made my life just blossom into prosperity!”

Recently, Bastard Squad™ was given the opportunity to interview the legendary Interior Designer/Bloodthirsty Menace Vlad Tepes at his lovely home in the Romanian countryside. While none of our interview team returned alive (due, we are told, to “several separate tragic accidents in which spikes and exsanguination were entirely uninvolved“), we do have the transcript of the interview as was transmitted to us via live satellite feed.

(editor’s note: during the interview, the satellite feed was interrupted several times by an unusual disturbance in which faces out of hell itself materialized before our eyes. Several technicians fell ill and regurgitated their mocha latte’s, but recovered shortly after the garlic pizza arrived. Also, after Carrie Mossberger, the resident fundamentalist who sports a nice crucifix necklace returned with a two liter bottle of Diet Pepsi, the disturbance disappeared completely in a pixellated mosaic while the disturbing cacophony of tortured screams faded into the background noise.)

BS: We’re here live with Vlad Tepes: Undead European dictator, Enfant Terrible of the interior design world, and originator of the latest trendy pseudo-spiritual home improvement craze, “Fang Shui“. Thanks ever so much for joining us, Mr. Tepes-“

VT: Please, please, call me Vlad. “Tepes“ sounds so, well, outdated, and rather… negative, don’t you think? Rather like “Enfant Terrible“, yes?

BS: Ah…yes, of course. So Vlad, we understand that…What is that?

VT: Pay no attention to my children of the night. They suckle because they love you.

BS: Indeed, yes, of course. Suckling. Ahem, Fang Shui, not simply for poseurs?

VT: Absolutely not. Of course, you’ll find it in the homes of many trendy bourgeoisies, but our goal is to bring Fang Shui to the masses.

BS: Are they ready?

VT: Of course. While I am grateful to Hollywood and Cannes, Fang Shui is far greater than a few minimalists and pop icons.

BS: Soooo sleepy. Can you tell us how you became…

VT: Involved?

BS: Thank you, involved in Fang Shui?

VT: Of course. You see, the fifteenth century was rather blasé. The renaissance had yet to arrive in Eastern Europe, and the Ottoman Empire, well, I don’t need to speak of them. I mean, The Turks? I fancied a little Orientalism of my own. Yes, your eyelids are getting heavy.

BS: Heavy, heavy, sleepy… Hey Jim, hand me that latte, would you?

VT: Silence, media drone. As I was saying, I fancied a little Orientalism of my own, so I sent a convoy of my most trusted and beloved lackeys to the Far East. Upon their return, I asked them to show me all of what they had learned on this journey, this quest, this grand — not to mention expensive — mission to acquire knowledge. They showed me, with great enthusiasm, what appeared to be, for all intents and purposes, a new way of arranging furniture. Naturally, I had them all executed, and-

BS: I’m sorry, I could have sworn you just said you had them all executed.

VT: My, aren’t you… lucid. Drat these modern stimulants. Why yes, yes, I had them all executed. After all, I had sent them out to learn of military strategies, the art of war, that sort of thing, and what do they bring back? Crystals. Superstitions. “Positive energy“.

BS: So, like, New Age stuff?
VT: What?

BS: Never mind. So what happened after that?

VT: As I was saying… I had each of my useless minions executed in horribly painful ways. In fact, many years had gone by before I even thought to examine the decorative techniques that had brought about their doom.

BS: And you discovered that they had been useful after all?

VT: Absolutely not. I discovered, in fact, that they had been vastly misled.

BS: I’m confused.

VT: Yes. You see, most of what my unfortunate lackeys had learned was useless. Harmless, admittedly, but utterly devoid of value nonetheless. They were attempting to apply potent, ancient knowledge to aesthetics, furnishings, inanimate objects. As everyone knows, multiplying zero by any other number results in zero…

BS: I’m afraid you’ve lost me.

VT: Yes, that seems to be a prevalent theme in our discourse.
BS: Pardon?

VT: Oh… nothing, nothing. You must understand, I am trying to make you understand. Come closer. I will give you some rare knowledge, yes? An ancient Fang Shui secret, from the master himself.

BS: Shoot.

VT: (garbled)

BS: Now, hold on for just one minute-

VT: I wasn’t finished. (transmission scrambled by demonic interference)

BS: So what you’re saying is… so what you’re trying to say is…

VT: Fang Shui is far more than a decorating style, it is a way of life. And, of course, of death. In fact-

BS: God, this is so, like, Martha Stewart meets Psych 101. I totally get this. You’re trying to, through your choices in décor, express the angst of modern life, right? Like the red door. I mean, people might think that signifies blood-

VT: Well, actually-

BS: -but really what it’s representing is the human heart, the life, the soul, that link that ties all of us together. You’re really saying, “C’mon in, man, we’re all the same in here“. It’s so obvious! The loneliness inherent in the human spirit, the need for sexual companionship as symbolized by the running water…

VT: Tell me — do you actually understand the things I say, or do the words just sort of… echo off of the insides of your skull? It is really quite fascinating.

BS: Excuse me?

VT: Fool. It seems to be a trait of your kind, your generation, spouting off about things you have no comprehension of. Attempting to hide your ignorance behind exotic verbiage, heavily laced with “it’s so obvious“… Fascinating, yes, but hardly endearing. In fact, I think I may really have to order you strangled with your own viscera…

BS: What?!?

VT: Never mind. In fact… forget I said anything. Ha ha. Now… where was I?

BS: Uh… dammit, I need another latte… I think you said something about Fang Shui secrets, from the master himself.

VT: Ah, yes. You see, young man, most of the more… esoteric… elements of Fang Shui have long been concealed from the general public.

BS: Is that so? How about an example?

VT: We-e-ell. Okay. If I could just beg the use of your stimulant-toting dogsbody… “Jim“, is it not?

BS: Um, I don’t know if that’s-
VT: There’s a good boy. Now, as my worthy and nimble-fingered acolytes are demonstrating, this is the proper way to bind and gag an enemy.

BS: Hey! I don’t think that’s-

VT: Red cord, you see? It ensures that you will receive the maximum benefit of positive energy.

BS: Good Lord, what do you think you’re doing? Jim, can you breathe? He looks like he can’t breathe-

VT: Silence. As I was saying, the use of red cord ensures that you will receive the maximum benefit of energy from the eventual sacrifice-

BS: Sacrifice? Hang on, now-

VT: Oh, I assure you, we are only… play-acting today. Relax. Acolytes, take Mister… Jim… into the salon, have him unbound and cared for. He’s been an exceedingly good sport.

BS: I’m starting to think that you aren’t an interior designer at all. I’m starting to think that Jim is tied up in that other room, and I’m starting to suspect that my other assistant wasn’t really called away for an afternoon photo session with the Wallachian bikini team. In fact, I’m half-tempted to-

VT: You know, you really are, despite all evidence to the contrary, quite an irritatingly insightful young man on occasion. It is a pity you are feeling so very fatigued, I would love to continue this discussion if you weren’t so obviously just about to fall into a very deep sleep.

BS: You can’t just… You can’t… *yawns*

(transmission ends)

Aphorisms of Fang Shui:

When impaling your enemies upon the pike, position them in a circle so that Chi will move clockwise.

Placing a mirror in your home greatly increases your good luck. Unless you happen to be Vlad himself, in which case it is only useful for party tricks (“look into that mirror, the milk is disappearing into thin air! How does he do it?“)

Dr. Bruce Lipton, website:  http://www.brucelipton.com who wrote the book, The Biology of Belief, has a compelling view of the unconscious.  I don’t know if his view is based on the work of other scientists, or if it is completely his, so forgive me if I don’t give credit where it’s due.

He believes that the unconscious is a tape that tells us how to behave for the million or so circumstances that we encounter every day.  We use our unconscious 99 percent of the time.  For example, when we drive through a traffic light and later wonder if the light were red or green, it is because the car is driven by our unconscious.  

This is a wonderful tool.  Unfortunately, it is also a hindrance, because it is the reason we fall into patterns that are destructive.  The reason we repeat the same mistakes over and over and over and over is because we are simply playing the program that was built inside of us.  I know many of my million or so astute readers will know of Jung’s collective unconscious and wonder how that fits in.  I don’t have a clue.  But let’s put Jung aside for the moment.

Unfortunately, according to Lipton, is that all the psychological, and all the new (and not so new) age therapies are useless.  The reason why they don’t work is because they cannot change the unconscious.  These programs do not have a record button on that tape.   Affirmations don’t get recorded into the unconscious.  Neither does positive thinking.  Forget them.

Lipton does have an answer.  He says, “A variety of energy psychology modalities, such as Psych-K, Holographic Repatterning and BodyTalk, are among the variety of programs that can be found on the web.” Also, the Buddhist technique of mindfulness is helpful.

I think one could dabble in another way.

Lipton mentions that the unconscious is formed by the age of six.  During this time, our EEG waves are delta and theta.  We’re in a hypnogogic state and learn by copying the behavior of our elders and peers.  After age six, the waves change to alpha.  Theta is still produced, during REM sleep.  

Is that the record button?  Can I induce delta and theta waves on me to change my unconscious?  That’s fascinating as only a mad scientist like me would think.  The one way that this could be done would be to use a mind machine such as the Proteus:  http://www.3pounduniverse.com/Proteus_Mind_Machine_p/mm4.htm

What would be the result of prolonged delta wave exposure?  Would the brain be entrained into a sympathetic rhythm?  If so, then a door could be opened and the unconscious reached.    If I were to focus on specific thoughts, affirmations I suppose, then I could change the tape.

Or go insane.  Who knows?

One of the very first books on writing that I read was “How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy”…or something. To be honest, I don’t remember much of it. For some reason, however, I do remember Isaac Asimov explaining to us how he wrote a story. What he did was to start at the beginning and continue writing until the story was over. At the time, I took this as The Good Word. After all it was from The Good Doctor. How could I go wrong?

So I wrote stories that began on a whim and continued through plot turns and twists that went nowhere. Most of the endings were ambiguous. The characters had no real motivation and conflict came from an arbitrary sentence that I wrote on the spur of the moment. Even after I cut most of the chaff, I still didn’t have a plot. That is when I discovered the outline.

According to Robert McKee, the author of “Story”, the outline is the tool invented by writers centuries ago to organize the elements of a story. It is a tool that the writer must master. At first, the outline seemed to box me into a corner. It forced me to stick to the structure of the story, and that was just uncreative. Until my epiphany.

We know that a story is a plot. And a plot is a coherent structure. Of course, there’s much more to it than that, but without that framework, a writer has nothing. And that horrible outline that was boxing me in the corner was the face of Grim Reality staring me in the face and saying, “You don’t have a plot”. And creativity was still there, but it was forcing me to obey the laws of structure.

What has evolved though, is something in between. Although my friend Chris seems able to stick to one from beginning to end (sometimes), I certainly cannot. I think the best path is somewhere between a stream of consciousness free-form and adhering to an outline. When I finished the first draft to my novel, it had about 75 thousand words. That didn’t seem like a lot, but it was a fair amount to start. Much of the novel was free-form, you could say. It evolved as I wrote it. It was the only way to figure out what I was going to write about.

When I outlined what I had written, it turned out that I needed to strip 20 thousand words from the story. My short novel had become a novella. From there, I re-outlined the story using my first draft as the basis. I now have an outline that is coherent and has a good plot. But without that first draft, I never would have anything to work with.

Of course, everyone is different. But everyone needs to outline sometime in their story. But what about the Good Doctor? I don’t know. All I can say is that he probably did it in his head. What he called creativity and intuition was maybe just a logical structure forming in his unconscious. I don’t know. It’s just a guess.

Years ago, I was at my college library when I ran into a friend, named George. George was a painter. He was returning a book on a famous artist (I can’t remember the name). I asked to see the book and he showed me a few of his favorite paintings.
“What do they mean?” I said.
George gave me a big smile. “Whatever you want. You put your own interpretation on the painting.”
I remember my frustration. I didn’t know why, but his answer never sat right. It was years later, years of staring at paintings in total misunderstanding when I realized why I felt this way. I realized that I wanted a painting to mean something. In fact, I wanted every bit of art to mean something. I wanted the artist to tell me something that I didn’t know.
Isn’t that the point of art? To show me a new perspective? I didn’t want the artist to tell me that it’s up to me. I can do that on my own without looking at a painting.
And what does this have to do with writing?
I think the same problem in painting applies to what are called “ambiguous endings” in stories. The ambiguous ending is the author’s way of allowing us to put our own interpretation on the story. When we finish the last sentence, we each will have our own unique view of what just happened.
In reality, what I think happens is that we turn back to the beginning and flip through each page, searching for the cause that brought the conclusion of the story, only to find cause and effect ending with nothing more than a strange ending. It’s like quantum superposition, where, before measurement, an electron or other subatomic particle exists in this weird ethereal state of all measurements being equal. We never know the outcome. And we feel cheated that we spent this time only to have our hopes dashed by an empty ending. It makes me wonder if the writer is afraid to stand out in front of other people and say, “This is what I think.” Are we now just quantum superpositions?
But life is uncertain, you say. Life is just like an ambiguous ending needing one’s own interpretation. First, I and most other people don’t believe that idea and I think it’s quickly fading into the history books under “20th Century Philosophy”. Second, why the hell do I want to read about that? I want someone to at least attempt put structure to our lives and to try to figure out a reason for this whole damned situation called Life In The Universe As We Know It.
Especially with science fiction. For God’s sake, SF is out there on the cutting edge and one of its noble goals is to search for our place in the universe. Putting an ambiguous ending on the story doesn’t help with that at all. In fact, I would say it is laziness, pure and simple.
I need SF that–makes my eyes pop and my jaw drop and my mouth try to say “Wow!” but I’m too stunned to speak–the moment I reach the last sentence. Nowhere in that is a furrowed brow that says, “Huh?”