Assorted Nonsense

Well folks, while I’m not abandoning this blog entirely, I am redirecting my efforts to assist my good friend Barnabus J. Wildebear over at his new blog. He’s not much of a technophile so he’s going to need a lot of help for a while.

Barnabus plans to write specifically about his passion for all aspects of science fiction and fantasy, and also about certain recent exploits of his that, although difficult to believe, he insists are every bit as real as (ahem) he is.

So I hope you’ll join me in migrating over to Chez Wildebear for awhile.

He promises to post every single day, or at the very least, every eighteen days.

Good luck Barnabus!

And perhaps I’ll see the rest of you back here in the not-too-distant future.

So long…

Ever wonder what happened to the original Starbuck? (I mean the original BG Starbuck… not the Moby Dick Starbuck…)

Now we know:

Here’s more on Avatar, in response to this blog post, which I really think is over thinking the matter.

So now I’ll just go ahead and over think it:

Cameron’s hero is white because he’s white.  If he were to make a
movie with a hero of a different skin colour he would probably find
himself subject to even greater criticism, so he’s pretty much gotta
stick to white.

So he makes a movie about his white hero interacting with aliens.  He
could make the aliens white, but then they’d be the same as his hero.
It would be a completely white movie.  What kind of criticism would he
be subject to then?  So he doesn’t make them white, he makes them a
different colour, blue.  Why blue?  Because his mother dreamt about a
nine foot tall blue alien when he was a kid, which he thought was cool
and always remembered.

Now he’s got three choices.  Either the aliens are more advanced than
his hero, or the same technological level, or more primitive.  If he
made them more advanced there would be no comparisons to Dances With
Wolves and probably a whole let less criticism.  Maybe he should have
done that.  Better yet, had he made the natives the same technological
level as the hero it would have been a fair fight at the end and he
also would have avoided comparisons to Dances With Wolves.  Probably
he should have done that. Except that environmentalism is all the rage
now and it fit the plot he had in mind so he made the mistake of
making the aliens noble savages, and the comparisons to First Nations
folk becomes inevitable.

So what is the criticism in that post exactly?  That this movie is a
product of guilt, that it’s a white guy trying to make up for the
crimes of his own race by creating a hero who saves another race from
his own.  And that the movie is also a product of wish fulfillment,
because while he’s at it the hero (with whom the filmmaker and
audience both identify) gets to be just that, a hero, and the coolest
member of the other race.

On the first point, Cameron himself isn’t responsible for the white
invasion of the Americas. So I think it’s quite an assumption that he
would feel any guilt on that matter.  Why should he?  He didn’t have
anything to do with it.  He probably does (and should) deplore any
atrocities associated with said invasion, but I don’t see how any
residual racial guilt would necessarily find its way into any of his
films.  That being said I suppose it’s entirely possible that his
great grandfather was General George Armstrong Custer, in which case I stand corrected, but I doubt it.

On the second point I expect Cameron is guilty as charged.  It’s
completely wish fulfillment.  But what’s wrong with that?  What’s
wrong with fantasizing about being the hero, and getting to fly on the
backs of cool huge birds, and being able to fight like a son of a gun?
 Even if it is fantasizing about being a hero among a race other than
your own?  Maybe it’s just about being accepted, accepted by people
you happen to think are cool, and no more than that, certainly not
about being accepted by people a whole bunch of other people (who have
no more in common with you other than your skin colour) once treated
(exceedingly) poorly.

The more I think about it the more I realize that Cameron’s one true
mistake was making his aliens blue.  If he had made them white it
would have been exactly the same movie, but nobody would have been
able to read more into it than is actually there (although I expect
they still would have).  In real life we strive to be colour blind,
because we know that skin colour doesn’t (or shouldn’t) matter.  I
would suggest that the same should apply to this film.  It seems to me
Cameron is being picked on because of the colour of his skin.

Sometimes an alien is just an alien.

Somebody on a listserve I’m on trashed Avatar recently.  Having just stated on the same listserve that I liked the movie, I felt compelled to respond.  I can’t post the post I was responding to, but it should be pretty clear the sorts of things they were saying in my response:

Hi **********,

***********Spoiler alert**********

As someone who enjoyed the film I feel compelled to respond.

Cameron is the first to admit that the story is a hodge-podge of all his favourite science fiction tropes gleaned since childhood.  I don’t see how this is a bad thing as long as it’s not plagiarism, and the original sources are not denied; we all stand on the shoulders of giants.  No less a misanthrope than Harlan Ellison has stated that he would have been fine with Cameron “stealing” his ideas if only he had been credited (for Terminator).

Yes, the natives are Noble Savages but again I don’t see why that in itself is bad.  We’re not allowed to create stories about primitive cultures, or allegedly advanced cultures encountering those primitive cultures?

Your main criticism (if I’ve interpreted it correctly) seems to be
that the so-called primitive (non white, somewhat matriarchal) society needed to be saved by a member of a so-called advanced (white, male) society.  However, in the film it doesn’t appear he taught them much.  He certainly taught them little or nothing about fighting.  For one thing he didn’t have much time to.  He simply led them, brought them together to fight, inspired by the example of a previous generation of natives (as opposed to some innate “white” wisdom he himself brought to the table).  And ultimately when his attempt to thwart the enemy
failed, it was Pandora itself that responded, achieving success with its own methods, spurred into action by the memories and knowledge of a woman (admittedly white).

I would submit that the white man learned far more from this primitive culture (and the example of least two female mentors and role models) than he taught them.  Specifically, environmentalism and how to utilize (as opposed to exploit) your environment.  In return, the only thing he really taught them was the reality of the threat that they faced, which (through no fault of their own) they were ill-equipped to
appreciate.  And why shouldn’t he be allowed to teach them that if that was what they needed to learn, and it was all he had to offer in return for the riches with which they endowed him?

Finally, when the hero faced the American military leader in the end, the larger battle had already been won, by Pandora.  He was not therefore fighting on behalf of the natives at this point.  The final confrontation was about saving his own life.  And he didn’t even win that fight; he needed to be saved by a native (a woman, no less).

I would like to hear your unabridged thoughts on this movie’s
treatment of heterosexism, anthropomorphism, gender politics, Real Men and the fight between military (male) and cultural sensitivity etc. to understand exactly what else about this (in my opinion) really quite enjoyable movie got under your skin.

Regards,

Joe

I read an interview with Stephen R. Donaldson the other day (author of the Thomas Covenant Chronicles, the Axebrewder mysteries, the Gap saga, and others).  In it he stated what an excruciatingly slow writer he is.

And instantly I felt a lot better about myself.

I felt even better when he expressed one of the reasons why he’s a slow writer.  He said its because he never comes right out and expresses the emotions of his characters.  This is one of the reason’s why I’m a slow writer, too (sadly, the comparisons probably end there).

Not expressing emotions directly means you have to find other means of indicating the emotions of your characters.  So easy just to say, Ridley came home all happy.  Much more difficult to express that sentiment in some other subtle fashion, in a way that makes the reader complicit in the story.   “Ridley fairly capered up the front steps of the house,”  maybe.

Why do this?  To immerse the reader that much more fully in the story.  If you tell the reader too much, if you don’t leave a little bit for them to figure out, they don’t get as involved in the story.  You want to make them think.  You want to raise questions that compell them to read further to get those questions answered.

Why is Ridley capering up those steps?   Does that mean he’s happy?  You don’t caper if you’re angry.  Do you?  I’d better read a bit further to see why he’s capering, to see if I’m right.

Once you get the reader thinking like that, they’re hooked.  I hope.  At least that’s what I’m counting on.

Also, honestly, it’s probably a bit of a game with me.  I can’t come right out and state things like that explicitly, even if I want to.  I will, sometimes, in early drafts.  But I always change it.  It’s my rule.  Never come right out and state what the characters are feeling.  Show what they’re feeling instead.

The downside, of course, is that it takes me a long time to finish writing a novel.

Here’s hoping it’s worth it.

Just for fun, and because I keep mentioning it, here’s a snippet of “A Time and a Place”.  I read this bit to a bunch of friends recently and the resultant scorn and derision was well within acceptable limits.  I don’t think posting this tiny little section is giving too much away.

The section starts at page one hundred and sixty-three of the novel, at the beginning of Chapter Eleven, a chapter entitled Vegetation Abounded:

It was awful – the light too bright and the sounds too loud.  I cried out and curled up into a ball to protect myself.

“Wildebear!  Can you hear me?  What’s the matter with him?”

“He’s not used to it.”

“Will he be all right?”

“He should.”

“Should?”

“He might not.”

“Will he or won’t he?”

“That’s what you’re here for, doctor.  To see that he’s okay.”

“Hmph.  What happened to him?”

“Not much.  Plenty.”

“That’s an infuriating thing to say.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry – just don’t say anything like that ever again.”

“I can’t promise that I’ll –”

“Okay okay, just — where was he, anyway?”

“Where he needed to be.”

“Oh for crying out – Wildebear!  Wildebear, it’s me, Humphrey.”

I peeked out from between my arms to see who was talking.  Humphrey – the name sounded familiar.  He had a lot of meat on him, this Humphrey.  He’d make a sumptuous meal.  And I just happened to be starving.  Although a part of me knew that there was something very wrong with the idea, I unfurled myself in anticipation of a feast.  Catching a glimpse of one of my front paws, I was shocked to discover that it was almost completely hairless.  My God!  Was I ill?  I emitted a most un-T’Klee like whimper and curled back up.

“Physiologically he’s all over the map,” a voice said.  “His pulse is racing and his serotonin levels are dangerously low.”

It had come from my front foreleg.  Something shiny and silver was attached to me.  I tried to lick it off.

The creature Humphrey leaned down to touch me.  Instantly I whirled on it, but something was the matter with my reflexes.  Before I could deliver the coup de grace the Humphrey creature grabbed hold of me and held fast.  I found myself in the embarrassing position of having been captured by my own prey.  It was like having been bested by a bandaloot.  I hoped that none of my brothers were around to see.

Except that… I had no brothers.  It was Cat’s brothers I was thinking of.

And I was not Cat.

Was I?

“Damn it Wildebear, what were you trying to do?  Slit my throat?”

Humphrey.  Humphrey!  It was my old friend Doctor Peter Humphrey – and I had been about to eat him!  What had I been thinking?  Awfully confused, flitting back and forth between two identities, one human, the other a cat, I could not have said with any degree of certainty who or what I was just then.

“You should think about cutting your nails once in a while,” Humphrey muttered.

A thin red line had emerged on the side of Humphrey’s neck.  My attempt to dispatch him had come altogether too close for comfort. I started to apologize, but couldn’t seem to get the words out — talking involved using whiskers I no longer possessed.

Humphrey let go and stepped back.  I desperately tried to pull myself together.  I had no fur, no whiskers; I was, therefore, not a cat.  I was a human.  And humans spoke with their –

“Humphrey!  I – I’m so sorry.  It’s – it’s good to see you alive!”

He touched a finger to his neck.  The tip came away red.  “Little thanks to you.”

I rose to my feet and took in my surroundings.  We were in a small room blanketed in luxurious sheets and pillows.  Frills, tassels, reds and purples abounded.  The furnishings would not have been out of place in a Sultan’s tent… or that of a T’Klee.  Humphrey and I were not the only ones in the room, I saw.  Iugurtha was there as well.

I began backing away slowly.

“You’re scaring him,” Humphrey told her.

“It’s not me he should be afraid of,” she said.

And with that everything fell into place.  Suddenly I knew precisely who I was, where I was, and what I had just been through.  It seemed incredible, but I had just spent several days, possibly weeks, living inside the mind of an alien cat.  I had witnessed the subjugation of a people I had come to love by a race of horrible monsters.  After an experience like that it was a wonder I was anything resembling sane.

“Wildebear.”

“Yes, doctor.”

“You’re licking the backs of your hands.”

“Ah.”  I stopped and considered.  “So I am.”  Then, because there really was no better way to relieve stress, I resumed licking in earnest.  “Please don’t ever throw me through the gate again,” I told Iugurtha in between licks.

“Once should suffice,” she said.  “What is your opinion, Doctor?  Is he in good health?”

“Nothing a little bed rest and years of psychotherapy won’t fix,” Humphrey replied.

Mention of rest made me realize how exhausted I was.  I excused myself, curled atop several of the fluffiest pillows I could find, and purred myself to sleep in a matter of seconds.

A question you’re pretty much forced to ask yourself at an event like a World Science Fiction Convention is:

Just how much of a geek am I?

Not “am I a geek?” because if you’re at a science fiction convention, if you’ve actually paid for a membership, if you’re staying at a hotel in a city you don’t live in because you’re attending a science fiction convention, you ARE a geek, even if you’re a professional.

I’m not saying that’s a bad thing.  I readily admit that I am a geek.  I have a classic Star Trek poster in my office, for crying out loud.

But… just how much of a geek am I?

Because, you see, there are different stratums of geekdom.

There are people who, let’s face it, kind of look like geeks.  Blasphemy!  But it’s true.

For instance, one day at the World Science Fiction Convention I walked into a panel moderated by someone who, on the surface at least, seemed pretty geeky.  There was clearly a different standard at play in terms of physical appearance.  I’m not looking down my nose at the guy; heck,  his credentials beat mine all to hell.  But on the appearance front I would humbly suggest that this gentleman was a hair geekier than me.

I could be completely deluded.  It’s entirely possible that I look geekish.  Certainly when I was in high school I looked like a geek, which is to say bad haircut, so skinny I had to run around in the shower to get wet, terrible glasses and a wisp of a moustache.  I like to think that I have learned how to look after myself since then, or at least, have allowed the women in my life to correct at least the most obvious of my fashion deficiencies.

So anyway, that’s two levels of geekdom right there: geeks who don’t give a whit about their physical appearance (Corey Doctorow calls them the “Underwear on the Head” types) and those who are more “stealth” geeks, at least in terms of physical appearance.

Who cares if someone looks geeky, you say?  Good point.  It’s really how you feel about yourself that matters, not the opinions of others, right?   (As long as you’re not running around hurting others with your over-inflated self-esteem).   However, it’s probably undeniable that the appearance of some science fiction enthusiasts contributes to the image problem of science fiction itself.  I’m just sayin’.

So anyway, you go to one of these cons and there are a fair amount of these underwear on the head types, and right away you find yourself asking yourself, my God, do I belong here?  Am I one of these people?

I was walking to my hotel one night with a bunch of other con-goers (some in costume, Klingon and whatnot) and a car-full of young male Montrealers hooted and jeered at us.  And right away I thought, my God, do I belong here, being mocked with these… these geeks?

The answer was a resounding YES, of course.  I may have been cleaned up a bit by various pitying womenfolk in my life, the moustache is gone, the hair cut more or less properly, the glasses replaced with contacts, the jeans fit a hair better…

…but the underwear on the head is still there, I’m afraid.  You just have to look a bit harder (I think…)

On our last full day at Bon Echo.

We couldn’t get in at the Provincial campground, so I booked us a spot at a nearby campground called Bon Echo Family campground.  It’s only a hop, skip and a jump from the Provincial park, so that’s worked out well… every second day we get a day pass and spend it at the provincial park canoing, swimming, hiking, exploring.  And there’s canoing available where we’re staying, along with a beach that’s even better than at the provincial park, so we have the best of both worlds in many respects.

And the weather has been fantastic, especially considering it looked quite dodgy the day we got here, cold and rainy.  But every day since then has been better and better.

And that’s all the time I will spend blogging today, as this is not supposed to be an electronic vacation.  In fact, I just hooked up to the campground wireless to see if Mr. Schmidt had read my submission to Analog yet… but no such luck.

No news is good news, I guess.

And tomorrow it’s back to Whitby, and the following Monday back to real life.

Not thinking about that, though.  This afternoon is all about swimming, canoing, and ice cream.

The writers at Anticipation impressed me.

They’re all so darned friendly and approachable. A few examples… I met John Scalzi back at Torcon in 2003. Interviewed him briefly and was left with a positive impression of the man. He was there promoting his first book, Old Man’s War, which was just on the verge of being published. So he was an unknown at the time. Since then he’s become something of a phenomenon. He won the John W. Campbell award for best new writer, at least one Hugo, I think he’s on his fourth or fifth novel now, you get the picture.

So I had every reason to believe that Scalzi would have no memory of me at Anticipation, or even if he did, no reason to acknowledge my existence if he happened to set eyes on me.

I ran into him on the Friday night. My friend Fergus hailed him and they exchanged a few words. I extended my hand and began to introduce myself. “Of course I remember you Joe,” he said (this feat of memory may have had something to do with my nametag. Or not…). And we had a pleasant little chat. And I met up with him again later and another pleasant chat ensued.

Why does this matter? He’s not a rock star — outside the science fiction field he’s a mere mortal, like you and me. Okay me, at least. But at one of these cons, a guy like him IS a rock star. Despite this, if you click on the link a paragraph or two back and read his abbreviated bio, you’ll see further indication that this guy has his feet firmly planted on the ground.

Like Scalzi, I met Robert J. Sawyer before his first book was published. And then watched in awe as he completely conquered the field of science fiction over the next twenty years. I worked with Rob at CBC Radio a bit and discovered that despite his success he also has his feet firmly planted on the ground. At the con I asked him how he was finding the experience (he has experienced many). He commented that it takes him a long time to get from one panel to the next as fans are constantly introducing themselves. He doesn’t mind this one bit, of course, but it is a fact of life for him at the con. I told him I was aware of this, and as a result tried to leave him a wide berth despite our acquaintance, feeling he had enough on his plate without having to kibbutz with people like me. “Don’t worry about it, Joe,” he told me. “You’re a friend, it’s different with you.”

I appreciated that, especially because he could easily have written me off at any point following our work together at the CBC. There’s not much I can do for his career anymore. But he hasn’t written me off, because he’s a genuinely decent guy.

I met several writers for the first time at Anticipation, and they were all equally friendly. We were all amongst like-minded people, with a common frame of reference.

In stark contrast I offer up one odd exception. I once met a writer and was introduced to him as somebody from “the media.” I was gathering tape at the time (it was around the time I interviewed Scalzi and several others). We hit it off right away. I really like this guy, I thought. I got some tape of him but never did a proper interview, I’m not sure why. We parted ways, and I thought so well of him that I purchased his first book and read it.

Afterward, I wanted to let him know what I thought of it, offer a few words of encouragement, so I found his web page and dropped him a line.

Never heard back.

Dropped him another line.

Never heard back.

Honestly, I don’t know what the deal was there. I just told my wife that if somebody makes you feel paranoid, the truth is it probably has nothing to do with you or your actions, it’s something on their end. Maybe he didn’t get my missives, or there was something going on in his life, or what have you. I hope it isn’t that I was just a potential means of publicity for this guy, and when that didn’t pan out, I was of no use to him. At the very least he did manage to sell one copy of one of his books to me.

But this is the exception. Except for this blog with its limited (but, ahem, exceptional) readership, I’m not in a position to enhance writers’ careers anymore. I never really was.

And yet the writers remain friendly.

David Hartwell is the Senior Editor at Tor/Forge Books, and one of the people I very much wanted to meet at WorldCon. He is the editor of many well known, well regarded Tor/Forge authors such as Robert J. Sawyer and Karl Schroeder and a great deal many more. He’s the man responsible for putting Guy Gavriel Kay on the map (to name just one) and I have the perception that he knows a great deal about publishing, writing and editing. I wanted the opportunity to extract as much information out of this man as possible.

Plus he seems like a nice guy.

I didn’t get to meet him one on one, but I did attend a panel which, although called a panel, consisted only of him facing an audience of perhaps twenty-five interested souls. I would call them aspiring writers, but the questions they asked did not indicate that writing or editing was of any particular interest to them. Because those subjects are my chief interest, I don’t really remember any of the questions or answers not related to writing or editing.

That’s what the panel consisted of: people lobbing questions at Hartwell, all of which he answered gamely and at some length. I got two questions in. The first was something along the lines of: “I’m interested in your work as an editor. Specifically, you edit the manuscripts of highly accomplished writers. What do you typically find wrong with such manuscripts, and how do you fix them?”

He said (and I am of course paraphrasing): “That question is just specific enough that I can answer it in something less than half an hour.” (Which got a chuckle.) “Most of the manuscripts that we receive have too many things wrong with them, so they don’t get published. Of the ones that we do publish, the single most common problem of professional writers is setting. The writers don’t spend enough time on setting.”

I found this really interesting. Naturally you might think that professional writers get most things right, maybe they might screw up continuity or make the odd grammatical error, but setting? I’ve spent a lot of time on setting in my (darned near completed) novel, so this response gave me hope, though that doesn’t mean that I’ve necessarily gotten it right.

Hartwell provided this example of a writer getting it right. There’s a sentence in a Heinlein novel (Fergus Heywood later told me which novel, but I forget) that goes like this: The door dilated. That sentence (according to Hartwell, and I agree) packs quite a punch as far as setting goes. Instantly you know you’re in the future (doors don’t typically dilate in this day and age).

Later I got to ask Hartwell another question. That morning, I told him, listening to Neil Gaiman speak, Neil had spoken of his quest to learn how to write a compelling story, one that keeps you engaged. One day events conspired to teach him this. It was after watching a Peter Greenaway movie, I believe, which lacked a compelling plot, yet that nevertheless kept his eyes riveted to the screen. I apologize to Gaiman if I have this wrong. But the point is the plot itself didn’t keep Gaiman engaged, it was other factors in the movie. Gaiman decided all that was necessary to write an effective story was to write a sentence that compelled the reader to move on to the next sentence, which compelled the reader onto the next sentence, and so on.

I related a portion of the above to Hartwell and asked for his opinion on writing a compelling story. He said, more or less, that it was up to each individual writer to find the secret of telling a compelling story for themselves. And it was different for each writer. Some writers use the interesting sentence after interesting sentence method, others painstakingly plot things out, others make it up as they go along, others use a sketchy outline, and so on.

I prefaced this last question with the remark that I had a thousand questions for Hartwell, but I would limit it to one this time.

He replied, “One for now.”

Here’s hoping I get to ask him many more in the not-too-distant future.