On looking stupid, clueless, and unprofessional. . .

SFWA is becoming an on-line spectator sport. I'm not going to go into too much depth here, as the bandwidth expended on this is already reaching critical mass. I'll only comment by posing the following rhetorical question:

If the chair of your e-piracy committee screws up so bad that it makes your whole organization look like of bunch of myopic Luddite fossils and causes you to throw said committee under the bus, and then you impanel a bunch of respected writer-type folks to draft recommendations on how to fix the problems, is it a wise move to then, to all appearance, just take said recommendations, file them, and re-constitute the same e-piracy committee with the same leadership with the same obsessions?

I make no comments on the merits, but I'll just make the observation that in some situations, making yourself look as if you're stupid, clueless, arrogant and unprofessional is tantamount to actually being stupid, clueless, arrogant and unprofessional. Appearances count, and this looks really bad.

How *not* to sell your book

You may have read my earlier post on how not to query agents. Here’s a follow up, using another spam message I got recently.

I am genuinely mystified at the thought processes that produce things like this. Spam in general is only effective because it only requires .01% of the recipients to respond and order their genuine Nigerian Viagra stock enlargement cream. That's a model that doesn't translate to universes as small as the publishing industry. And even if it did, do you actually want responses from people gullible enough to respond to it?

Anyway, as case in point, I present the suitably annotated spam e-mail. (Remember: if you send me personal e-mail I treat it as confidential, if you send me spam, it’s fair game.)

My snark is in green.

Subject: Like Science fiction? The newest and most genuine saga is now availible!
[SWANN: A genuine saga? Is it in the original old Norse? And while I’m a sloppy-ass typist in my personal e-mails, if you’re advertising your WRITING you might actually try to keep typos out of your subject line. Just a thought.]

From: <xxxx@xxx.com>
Cc:<webmaster@xxx.com>, <soles@xxx.net>,
<webmaster@xxx.net>, <bud_sparhawk@xxx.com>,
<walter.spence@xxx.net>, <normanspinrad@xxx.com>,
<demonlord07@xxx.com>, <edstack@xxx.com>,
<justinvs@xxx.net>, <jimmy@xxx.com>, <bexstarr@xxx.com>,
<dave@xxx.com>, <jim0052@xxx.com>, <evenmere@xxx.com>,
<deb@xxx.com>, <dave@xxx.com>, <psicom@xxx.org>,
<swann_website@xxx.net>, <info@xxx.org>,
<webmaster@xxx.org>, <mattea@xxx.com>, <picpal@xxx.com>,
<enquiries@xxx.co.uk>, <email@xxx.com>,
<rsheckley@xxx.com>, <quaglia@xxx.com>,
<mop15870@xxx.pt>, <1@xxx.asu.ed>,
<sarahsingleton@xxx.co.uk>, <smartin@xxx.com>,
<theworldsofrobertsilverberg@xxx.com>
[SWANN: Never heard of BCC, huh? And unless it has to do with the latest SFWA implosion or Marty Greenberg anthology, I have trouble imagining a legit reason for sending me, Robert Silverberg, Norman Spinrad and Robert Schekley the exact same e-mail.]

If you want real science fiction we recommend this story to you.
[SWANN: You realize you just pummeled 32 professional, published SF authors with the blatant implication that they AREN’T writing real science fiction?]

It can’t get anymore real than this!
[SWANN: Unless you write non-fiction. Oh, and yes, it says “anymore real,” which might make a cool postmodern character name, but doesn’t do so well as part of an English sentence.]

We are excited to offer you this great narrative detailing real material for the next era in human history.
[SWANN: “Real material?” Does that even mean anything? And don’t you just love the royal “we?” It adds just the right amount of pretension to the cluelessness. Finally, given the nature of most of my other spam, please keep your excitement to yourself.]

From new, fantastic yet satisfyingly available technology to accurate alien biologies, provided in our new cosmic work is what your hungry sci-fi mind has been yearning for.
[SWANN: “New, fantastic yet satisfyingly available technology” is a phrase that belongs in badly-translated Russian Viagra spam. We’ve also gone from “great narrative” to “our new cosmic work.” This is not an improvement. Also, the writer is so in love with modifiers that they forgot to have the sentence make grammatical sense. “From … technology to … biologies, provided in our … work is what your … mind has been yearning for.” Arrgh, this e-mail has hurt me in my brain.]

Visit www.xxxx.com in your Internet explorer browser and see for yourself!
[SWANN: Damn! I use Firefox. And the exclamation point? Nice touch. PS: Bill Gates’ legal team is sending you a letter for failing to capitalize “Explorer ™”]

Feel free to contact us with the information at the bottom of the page and we can discuss how to get you your book.
[SWANN: As I said with the query spam: Good idea to make it a non-intuitive multi-step process to have people get back to you.]

We hope to hear from you soon!
[SWANN: No, I really don’t think you do.]

Whew!

Let me get serious here for a moment, because what this spammer is doing is actually a little less offensive than what the query spammer was doing. This person is obviously trying to get some buzz for their (probably self-published) book by getting other authors to read it. This person apparently tried to focus who they were spamming to. And there isn’t any reason why you can’t send a bunch of writers promo material for your book— but this is not the way to do it.

First off, they’re your peers (and I'm giving the author the benefit of one hell of a doubt here), and you need to treat them as such. I am assuming that this person is offering comp copies (if they’re actually expecting Norman Spinrad to go to their website and BUY a copy based on this, they are insane) but they’re offering them with a high-pressure ill-worded sales pitch that smacks of a deadly combination of arrogance, ignorance and desperation.

You want to ask authors to read your book, fine, but ASK them. Nicely. Something like, “Dear [author name here] I respect your work and would really appreciate it if you would read a comp copy of my latest book. Please let me know if you’re interested.”

And in the name of all that is holy, send individual personal e-mails! Sending the same e-mail to 32 authors shows a lack of respect that will be reciprocated, if the recipients bother to pay attention to you at all. If you follow these guidelines, you will probably still get near zero responses, but at least you will not actively piss people off and have snarky writers deconstructing your efforts in a public blogging.

Why Mixing Religion and Government is Bad

Sudan doesn't like your teddy bears.

Britain's foreign secretary said he was "very concerned" about the case of a UK teacher who was in court Thursday, facing charges of offending religion by allowing a teddy bear to be named "Mohammed."

Not only is is an appalling case of "let's persecute the westerner" but by their own laws the children in the class should be getting arrested because they're the ones who named the effing bear.

And frankly the "she should have known" apologists should realize that, just because you know a State is going to be intolerant, abusive, arbitrary and totalitarian doesn't excuse the State's behavior.

Stupid for Sale, 3 cents a word

(Scalzi @ Whatever alerted me to this.)

Note to aspiring writers:

Don't submit stuff to Dragon Magazine, just don't. They are paying a whopping 3-6 cents a word for all rights.

ALL RIGHTS.

ALL!!!!

This means you can't re-sell it, you can't put it on your website, podcast or whatever. You can't translate it and publish it in Germany. You can't write a screenplay based on it. And they can probably sue your ass if you write anything in the same universe and sell it to someone else.

IMO anyone who submits there is too stupid to write publishable fiction.

Bonus Kitty

This homeless waif accosted us while we were unloading groceries a couple of weeks ago, rubbing our legs and mewing incessantly. Since there're coyotes in the neighborhood (I had seen two crossing the street earlier that evening) we took the creature in and placed her on the sun porch, segregated from "our" cats. We posted flyers all about advertising "FOUND CAT" knowing in our hearts that a creature this sweet and friendly had to be missed by her owners. (Anyone who read my eulogy to Lil Dog knows where this is headed.)

No response after the fliers and Craig's List postings and we spent another week in denial ("but we don't want another cat") even as we paid a vet $125 for Feline Leukemia/AIDS tests, as well as getting vaccinations and testing for parasites. After all, the poor thing couldn't stay on the sun porch forever, and we had to give her a clean bill of health before she interacted with our other cats. Of course, we told ourselves that if we adopted her out, (by now we'd given up on her old owner showing up to claim her) her new owner would reimburse us for the vet bill.

Then a friend of my wife sees the flyer and gives us a call. She knew where the little vagabond lived. So we could finally take her to her rightful owner, right. Ah, sort of.

It seems that the old woman with a horse stable two houses down from us had kept this little creature as a barn cat. Two months ago, this old woman passed away, the trainers came and took the horses, and this poor thing was left to its own devices. So, now we have a new cat.

10 Things I learned this Thanksgiving

1. When you put 2 leaves in our dining-room table it doesn't fit in a 10x11 dining room.
2. The standard 8 pc. place setting that most of us get for a weeding gift will be inadequate once you start hosting the extended family for holidays, it is good to have a spare one.
3. Despite what it says on the tablecloth, a 144-inch table can only comfortably seat 10 people. If you have more than that, break out the card table.
4. One thing conservatives and liberals can agree on: Pumpkin Cheesecake. Mmmmm.
5. Even if you plan on people being late, they will show up later.
6. If at all possible, get your Chocolate Lab a 12-year old girl.
7. A 23lb turkey is at the outer theoretical limit of our roasting pan.
8. A 23lb turkey is a effing huge bird.
9. Carving on a card table is not recommended procedure.
10. When she can get enough time off of work on a holiday, my wife can cook one kick-ass turkey.

LOL is Win!

Wo hoo! I won Scalzi’s LOLCreation contest with the following entry:





If you’ve read my earlier post on Science <> Religion you probably know why, though I’m respectful of people’s belief systems, I find the concept behind the Creation Museum eminently mockable. Here’s the point:

Faith = The belief in a spiritual or moral truth without need of empirical proof.
Science = a systemic method of using empirical data to explain observable phenomena.

Please note the problem with mixing one with the other. By necessity, the scientific method is open to continual challenge by new data. Creation “Science” by definition is not open to any challenge, because it disregards data that contradicts the proponent’s particular interpretation of scripture. Rhetorical tricks invoking “starting points” and “differing theories” a just that, tricks just to make scripture sound scientific— “because the bible said so” might be the basis of a philosophical axiom, or a moral code, but isn’t a good basis to explain empirical data because, in the end, if you observe empirical data that contradicts your axiom you are forced to disregard the data. (This is the same reason mixing political “truths” with science is an equally bad idea.)

As corrupting this might seem to science, I think it has an even worse effect on religion. The Creation Museum is a temple to people’s lack of faith. Think about this: The creator is omnipotent, and is easily capable of creating a universe that’s 5 billion+ years old in seven days or so. In fact, those seven days could take an arbitrary length of time if God was in a reference frame traveling significantly close to the speed of light. There is no need to shitcan everything we know about biology, geology, plate-tectonics, physics, stellar evolution, down to the half-life of carbon-14, for someone to have faith in God and believe in the redemption of Jesus Christ. But the Creationists are so insecure in their own faith that they can only believe in a God that presents them with significant, definitive worldly proof of His existence. It’s a faith that’s so timid that it is threatened by any sort of inquiry, and crumbles at the slightest challenge.

I guess I knew this

A blog post elsewhere led me to an online political philosophy quiz where I scored thusly:

Progressive/Conservative score: 8 - Moderate Progressive ("You think the progressive movement is usually well intentioned, but is sometimes too extreme in its ways")

Capitalist Purist/Social Capitalist Score: 6 - Economic Moderate ("You support an economy that is by and large a free market, but has public programs to help people who can't help themselves or need a little help.")

Libertarian/Authoritarian Score: 0 - Anarchist ("You think that the government is making way too many unnecessary laws that are taking away our innate rights. You believe that the government's job is primarily to protect people from harming other people.")

Pacifist/Militarist Score: 8 - Moderate-Militarist ("You think that in very rare occasions, the United States should invade a country in order to make the world better by spreading democracy or ending a tyrants rule. You also think that defense is very important, and we shouldn't lower the defense budget.")

I am Libertarian, along with 14.5% of the folks who took this test. I probably would be a Hardcore Libertarian, but the Yes/No/Maybe format doesn't allow terribly nuanced answers.

Turns out I'm closest to Joe Biden, of all people.

Don't ask quesions, just click the link

MOO.

Worldbuilding Essay

Is now on Scribd, after being on my website for ages, I made a PDF of it and released it to the world. Plot will follow at some point.

Aliens and Sexual Politics

There's an interesting post on the Feminist SF Blog about aliens in Larry Niven's Known Space series. Essentially it points out how both the Kzinti and the Puppeteers both have what amount to non-sapient females, and how this amounts to a stealth misogyny. An interesting point that I think goes a little off the rails when the argument turns to objections to the biological justification of the Kzinti's sexual dimorphism:

I presume Niven had been asked earlier why all the kzinti who we ever met in Known Space were all males, and he was trying to come up with a backstory to excuse this other than “I’m a sexist git, what can I say?”

Actually, it's more like Niven mentioned the Kzinti sexual dimorphism in an early Known Space story and was pretty much stuck with it whenever he wanted to return to the species. But the point isn't the biological rationale, but the authorial rationale. Now I'm not going to try and step into Niven's head here, but he did offer up a case study in how world-building (and by extension, alien-building) is a political statement, whether you want it to be or not.

This isn't to say you can't play with reproductive issues with your aliens, after all, changing the way a species produces young is one of my top three ways to make a species feel alien. (The other two are altering the primary mode of sensory input, and changing how they communicate.) The thing you need to bear in mind (to minimize the possibility of a feminist SF geek calling you a sexist git) is the fact that when you change aspects of reproduction, and the society that results from the change, you are making implicit statements about how human reproduction affects society. When you create gender roles for an alien species, you are making statements about gender roles in general. If you aren't aware of what you're doing you could end up being blindsided by people making interpretations of your text (maybe even you) that you didn't intend.

Eddie Vader Lego

Everyone's doing it. . .
SF Signal, Big Dumb Object, Whatever. . .
. . . so I have to post it too. Eddie Izzard, Lego, Darth Vader.



Just to be different, here's a bonus Eddie Izzard Lego video about movies. (Bet you didn't know that was an actual subgenre) Warning, language not work safe.

Mary Who?

I recently responded on a thread on Whateveresque about the term "Mary Sue," its use and misuse and its drift from fanfic circles into more mainstream criticism. To review (for those who didn't just click and read the Wikipedia link I provided) the term "Mary Sue" originated in Star Trek fan-fiction circles to identify fan fiction that centered around new non-cannon characters that were generally better/smarter/more capable than the existing cannon characters, as well as being able to hurdle story problems without trying, as well as having the coolest hair/eyes/psychic powers/angsty backstory. Such characters can be wish-fulfillment and sometimes even authorial inserts.

Domini, the author of the thread, took exception to the use of the term beyond fan-fiction, because:

But...the term Mary Sue creeps into people criting original fiction, because many SFF readers wade in both worlds. (I do!) And that's where I REALLY get my feathers ruffled. Because it only takes a quick glance at some of our SFF classics and not-yet-classics to dredge up LOTS of main characters that fit the Mary Sue Don't List. The Hero archetype--Superman is an example of this--is chock-full of things on the Mary Sue Don't list.

And so I think, very strongly, that terming a character in an unpublished...or even published...original work a Mary Sue is terribly incorrect. It's not an issue of Laser Eye Beams...readers will happily believe your Laser Eye Beams...IF you are a good enough writer that you can get them to suspend their disbelief in general.

Which is true, I think, as far as it goes. But I happen to disagree and think the term "Mary Sue"/"Gary Stu" has a place in critiquing original work. A good example of this is in the hilarious recap of the movie Eragon on the Agony Booth. The reason is because the prototypical Mary Sue isn't a checklist of character traits, those character traits are merely a symptom. It also isn't necessarily the fact that the Sue is overshadowing characters from an existing cannon, it's the fact that the Sue overshadows any and all other characters in the work.

To come to a workable general definition of a Mary Sue, we can ignore all the specific character traits (weird hair and eye color &c.) and get to the meat of the issue: how does our potential Sue interact with the rest of the story?

Here's my Mary Sue checklist.

1. Is the character the most capable/talented person in the story's universe for a given area of expertise, and solves major story problems because of that expertise?
2. Does the character easily solve story problems outside of his or her established area of expertise? Possibly with a neat new surprise talent we're just now hearing about?
   
3. Is the character rewarded with position, fame, riches with little effort/consequence?
4. Do secondary characters like/love/respect/fear the character with little or no established reason?
5. Does the character easily pick up new talents/skills/magical powers with little effort/consequence? (see #2)
   
6. Is there one or more secondary characters that should, by dint of training, experience, or simple logic, exceed the main character's capability is some area, and are eventually overshadowed by the main character's mad skillz?
   
7. Is there any instance where the main character "solved" a story problem by luck alone?
   
8. Are the society's rules in this universe bent or broken to accommodate the main character? i.e. youngest to command, first human on the szantar council, only woman to ever join the Scarlet Rangers?
   
9. Does the character break the rules/law/societal norms, but suffers little or no consequence? Is even rewarded for daring?
   
10. Is a villain redeemed simply by changing attitude to the main character?

With apologies to Jeff Foxworthy, if your character suffers from one or more of these symptoms, they might be a Mary Sue.

ADDENDUM: Here's the original Mary Sue.

I be Scribd

First off: I've added "The Heavens Fall" to my Pixel-Stained Technopeasantry. It originally appeared in the DAW 30th Anniversary Science Fiction Anthology, and was subsequently reprinted in Apex Online. It is a little sf/horror/crime drama.

Also, it may be my penchant for irony, but I've uploaded my two fictional trial balloons to Scribd, which you may or may not know as the epicenter of the last significant SFWA oops. In addition to throwing them out onto a larger venue than my lil blog here, it does a number of automatic conversions, as well as allowing me (and others) to do neat things like this:

Psssst, bud, wanna short story?

Well, I'm starting a little experiment here. I am going to start releasing some of my short stories under a creative commons license. I'm a little bit of a latecomer to this, and I'm not Cory Doctrow or Rudy Rucker, but let's see if throwing free stuff out there gets any buzz going for ye olde midlist writer. First up, my real short time travel tale, "The Long View" which appeared in Amazing Stories back in 1995. Links to the stories will appear to the right.

Inside the front cover

Well, I am just about halfway done with the first draft of Apotheosis: Prophets. I have reached a point where I am willing to hazard a prediction. You know most books, in addition to the (usually badly written) back cover copy, there's almost always some edited snippet of the actual text inside the front cover. I strongly suspect that I've just written the scene that DAW's going to use for that snippet in Prophets.

Minor spoiler warning, as this is a big reveal midway into the book. But that doesn't change my opinion that they're going to use this bit as a teaser:

There wasn’t even a sound to mark the jump, just an abrupt shift in the star-field shown in the holo.

Another twenty light years, Nickolai thought. Here we are.

“We’re still nominal on all systems,” Parvi said. “Drives are cold.”

Wahid didn’t say anything. After a long pause, Mosasa said, “Navigation?”

“Hold on a minute.” Wahid shook his head, and for all the trouble Nickolai had in interpreting human expressions, even he could tell something was seriously wrong.

“What’s the problem?” Parvi asked. “Are we off-course?”

Nickolai knew that the Eclipse was fueled for multiple jumps at this distance, but even so, the thought of taching twenty light years in the wrong direction tightened something in his gut.

Could what I did have affected the engines? Nickolai began to realize that there was no particular motive for Mr. Antonio to keep him alive. Mr. Antonio wasn’t like Nickolai. He was a man, and had no honor to keep, even to himself.

“No. We’re right where we’re supposed to be.” Wahid said slowly. It almost sounded as if he didn’t believe it himself. “All the landmarks check out. . .”

“What’s wrong then?” Parvi asked.

“Look at the damn holo!” Wahid said, thrusting a hand at the display as if he wanted to bat it out of his face.

“What?” Parvi looked at the holo of stars between them, and her eyes widened, and she shook her head. “No. . .”

“Kugara?” Mosasa snapped.

“I’m ahead of you. Mass scans out to the full range of the sensors. No sign of anything bigger than an asteroid for 100 AU. We got background radiation consistent with interstellar media—”

One of the scientists, the female with yellow hair, spoke up. “What happened? Is there some sort of problem?”

“Bet your ass there’s a problem.” Wahid spun around on his chair and faced the spectators, pointing a finger at the holo display. “We’re missing a whole star.”

“What?”

“Xi Virginis is gone, Dr. Dörner.”

Random Thoughts

There's a cottage industry out there for various random plot/name/whatever generators out there on the interweb. Want a plot? A title? How's bout a name for one of your characters? Maybe you need the whole story? Working on a TV series or a movie, you can get your own random log lines. Maybe you just need the right prompt to get your story started. Or, maybe you don't want all that surfing and you just want random everything on one convenient site. There, now you don't have an excuse. . .

Time Marches On. . .

. . .and provides an example of a point I was making over ten years ago. You may or may not have visited my home page, which predates this blog by about a dozen years or so, if you have, buried in the writing portion are a couple of essays I did on plot and world-building when I taught some classes on those subjects way too many years ago. While such writing advice, when it isn't market-specific, isn't prone to become dated (one of my favorites in my collection of writing books is a little compilation of essays entitled Of Worlds Beyond which was originally published in 1947. And Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses are as offensive today as when Mark Twain wrote about them in 1895.) it is true that specific examples used in such advice may date badly, especially if you are talking about SF and technological change.

Exhibit one from "Worldbuilding: Constructing a SF Universe" by your's truly:

Unintended consequences are especially rife when talking about technological change. Every piece of technology will eventually find niches other than what its developers intend. (Consider the identification of pagers with the drug culture.) [emphasis added]

I mean, wow. You can now add, "consider how short that identification was." Or, "and aren't those obsolete yet?"

But more germane, and what got me thinking about this, is a quote earlier in the same section:

Making your world different can be as simple as locating it in that vast unknown territory, "The Future." But for every element of difference you introduce in a story, there will be a multitude of consequences rippling out from the point of difference. Consider one example: Once computer animation becomes cheap and detailed enough that a lone hacker can produce a feature film, what will this do to the major movie studios, television, advertising, intellectual property laws, politics, culture, and the nature of celebrity?

I wrote that over a decade ago. Now think about the fact that I just posted a Muppet re-mix of a Pulp Fiction trailer. Now think about the fact that the RIAA and the motion picture industry are having trouble just getting their heads around file sharing, I doubt it's even possible for them to respond rationally to this kind of "fair use." Then we have advertising like so:





And when it comes to celebrity, we now live in a world now where this guy is famous:





If you think about this as an SF writer, you have to conclude that it is a lot less likely that your future is too weird, and a lot more likely that your future just isn't weird enough.

The Internet is a Strange Place

What do you get when you cross muppets with Quentin Tarantino?





My favorite parts? Bunsen Honeydew, and the Fraggle Rock characters in the background.

I is playing wit mai toyz

I added a new little feature to the blog here. In the lower right there's now a widget that's keeping track of writing posts I flag on RSS feeds I'm subscribing to with Google Reader. Google Reader not only lets you share items from a feed on their own public page, but gives you a new RSS feed along with it. Now Blogger has a feed-reading widget, but it's limited to 5 items, so I routed the feed from Google Reader through Feedburner which will script you a Blogger widget with 15 entries. . .

ADDENDUM: Checked out del.icio.us and realized it has RSS feeds as well, which can be fed through Google Reader and combined with the feed from the various blogs. . .