Getting the Right Wrong

As a kidlette I read a lot.  Since I was reading at an adult comprehension level when I was seven, there was very little Dick and Jane in my life, and a lot more Hell at 50 Fathoms, which I read at least a dozen times before getting out of the 6^th Grade.

The one genre I was into, however, was science fiction.  I got my hands on most of the Golden Age authors and bought their books, read them cover to cover again and again, and went looking for more.  There was something awe inspiring to live in that time and know your book store would soon carry the new Clarke, the new Asimov, the new Heinlein, the new Ellison . . .

There was something that the writers back then spoke of when talking about science fiction and fantasy.  It was known that some of the things they wrote about were, perhaps, going to never come about.  There were items and subjects and characters that might not ever be anything but words on the page.  And they knew this, because–hey, writers, we make stuff up, right?

The trick, they said, was to follow your internal logic, and to keep your rules consistent.  If your technology could only do A, B, and C, you damn well better not have it do E at some point.  As David Gerrold once point out, if you write your story so that people can only use their right hands, then you damn well better now have the hero save the day at the end of the story by using their left hand.  Anything that plays hard and loose with your internal logic, that violates your rules and laws, it cheating that would make Lance Armstrong say, “Dude!” while giving you the stink eye.

When you’re writing anything–not just science fiction, but anything that requires some “facts” to come into play–it’s always best to do your research and make certain when you’re setting up your premise, you are working with something that not only makes sense,  but is also something that can’t be taken as complete bullshit.  Given what we know about space flight these days, it’s difficult–if not impossible–to write a story about some kids cobbling a rocket together in an abandoned field and flying it into orbit.  Oh, sure, you can adjust the rules of your universe and all that, but you best make certain that is spelled out so people don’t scratch their heads and go, “Huh?”

I’m in a few groups on Facebook where I hear and see about new novels and stories from people like me, writers who hope this will be our job one day.  I saw something like that the other day:  a new book, by someone I know.  I’m checking out the blurb, and right off the bat, I see something stated as a major plot point–

That is totally, scientifically wrong.

Now, I do things with time travel and faster than light space drives.  I can hand wave with the best of them, and I always try to keep my facts straight when I do this.  If my ships go this fast, I find out the distances between two stars and calculate travel times.  That’s how you do things.  When you’re stating as fact something that can be fact checked on any number of databases as all sorts of wrong, you’ve pretty much ruined the story for me–and probably for a number of readers as well.

Your stories live and die by facts and rules.  Create your rules based upon the first, and never violate the later.

Otherwise, you could find yourself becoming the Next Big Internet Meme.

 

Evenings at the Imagination College

Another chapter started, and another thousand words burned through pretty well.  I won’t say quickly, because it still took about ninety minutes to get to my nightly quota.  Part of that was from being tired as hell, and part of it came from . . .

Well, looking things up.

After my post about The Story of Albert and his love for The Duchess, I started thinking about that as part of a story I’d actually started putting notes to maybe a week before.  That story arose out of another idea, but it dealt with two of my characters going out to enjoy their birthday.  Yes, in my worlds, even if you are born twelve hundred years apart, you’ll share a birthday if you’re special—and if the author thinks there’s a good reason for it to happen.

As it is, given the date upon which their birthdays fall, getting them back in time to see one of the Genesis concerts held at the Lyceum in May, 1980, is something that can actually happen—and would put them in the ballroom for their birthdays.  Yeah, it’s a strange thing, because I never realized any of this when I was putting the character together twenty year ago—nor did I realize the significance of the dates, because, when I was finishing Transporting, I actually change the date of birth.

Strange, I know.

So, for the hell of it I started looking up things around that location—the theater is still there, running The Lion King pretty much non-stop—and began imagining the location in the 1980’s, with my character there wandering the streets of Westminster after the show was over.  It was a nice picture, and one that I can imagine even better once I know what the weather was like that night.  (Note:  it was cool, about 45 degrees Fahrenheit, and dry.  And Sky View Café tells me the moon didn’t rise until a little after midnight, and it was just past full.)

But I had other things bothering me as well, this time for another story for the same characters.  One of them buys some land—and by “land”, I mean they end up with enough property to start their own state.  It’s stated that they land will be managed as a natural preserve, and that most of it will be open to the public, with a “small” portion that will be kept completely private as their estate.

And how “small” a portion are we talking?  A parcel eighty by one hundred kilometers—or for those not completely into the metric thing, fifty by sixty-two miles.

That’s big; it’s pretty huge, actually.  The public land is even bigger, if you can believe that.  So I started wondering:  what does that look like in today’s terms?  If I overlay those dimensions over a map, how much of, say, where I live, will this estate take up.

Answer:  a lot.

The private land would cover something like five or six counties in Northwest Indiana; we’re talking the sort of estate that only third-world dictators get to enjoy.  As for the whole estate, the natural preserve that can be visited by people if they like themselves some wilderness?  Pretty much an area the size of the state of Indiana.

I’ve always wondered what it would be like to move all the people out of my home state and turn it into a park for all to enjoy.

Now I don’t have to wonder any more.

 

Time Jinxes and Lesbian Kisses

As you may have guessed from reading this blog, I’m a science fiction fan.  I’m also someone who spends some times fooling around with the concept of time travel.  Or, as I’ve started from time to time, I like Wibbly Wobbly, Timey Wimey Stuff.  So it’s not surprising that I find myself drawn to this sort of thing like a moth looking for a light bulb to land upon.

So after I edited my chapter for Her Demonic Majesty, I starting mind gaming some ideas for, well, characters in a story.  I won’t go into detail on the characters, or the story, but needless to say, an event involving some time travel that happens in an earlier (unwritten) story is discovered, and one of the characters now understands why something that she did years before happened the way it did then, and . . . well, this is where the “well” goes all Timey Wimey Ball on her.

Which brings another character to ask, “Instead of splitting them up (which is what happened originally, and one character time traveled back to prevent that), why not kill them?”

Of course, I had to figure that one out.  You get into all these strange paradoxes when you’re talking time travel, and sometimes it becomes impossible to know what’s going on, because the human mind can get all bendy wendy when you start thinking about why you just can’t keep going back and doing things again and again when you have the ability to flit about in time–

Which means you need to get your rules down pat before you head off in whatever doubles for your time machine.  It’s a tough multiverse out there, and you gotta be ready.

Or at least come up with something that makes some sense so you don’t have too many geeks poking holes in your logic.

There was something else I pondered yesterday as well.  I was speaking with a friend, and I mentioned to them that I was going to start on a story that would have a character who was a lesbian.  While my friend didn’t get indignant, or anything, she did say, “Don’t make her a lesbian.  You need more bi-sexual characters.”

Now, while I don’t have anything against bi-sexual characters, for the story I’m going to do, the character is a lesbian, case closed.  The funny thing is, last night I met with my therapist (yes, I have a therapist, and yes, she helps me), and mentioned this comment to her.  She laughed and said, “What?  There aren’t any stories out there with lesbians in them now!  It’s all gay men!”  I did tell her–as I am telling you now–that the dirty little secret about gay male erotica is that it’s mostly written by straight women, just as a lot of Japanese women write yaio manga (translated as “Boy Love Comics”, a very popular genre with girls there).

Her advice was keep writing what I like, and if I can write some great stories about lesbians, then go for it!  I don’t know about “great stories,” but since I love writing about women, maybe I’ll eventually become the “go to person” when it comes to lesbian erotica.

Until then, I’ll finish my novel edit, get it sent off . . .

And continue doing what I like.