Cripple-Mode:Series

Circa 1975 [Sketch] Portrait by M. Rowley

Lucia — Thu, 11 Jun 2015 10:54:08 GMT

About 40 some years ago I was managing a restaurant across from Lansing Community College. I had been working my way through college and had just gotten my Associates degree and had the better part of my life ahead of me. A gentleman had sat for quite some time next to a window that faced part of the main campus and looked to be studiously writing something on a note pad. Before he left he came up to the main counter where I was at the time and he put it down and I was amazed that he could do a portrait of me while I was darting around the restaurant. I complimented him on such fine work in such a short time and he pushed it toward me and said he'd done it for me and he left. I don't really think I ever saw him again after that.

Just recently I pulled out an old album and found this. Made me wonder if M. Rowley might be still around and then I started wondering what he did with the rest of his life.

J.L. Dobias

[Rock] : [Paper] : [Kindle (Computer)]

Lucia — Sun, 31 May 2015 00:38:56 GMT

[Rock] : [Paper] : [Kindle (Computer)]

It's that old game: rock; paper; scissors. Which beats which? Of course you might have to establish whether you’re talking about reading or writing. I might go into which is best to read some time later; but for now I want to look at how writing has changed. Notice how I didn't say improved.

I was reading about someone’s experience; they spoke about the advice that the speed of creativity in writing with the pencil or pen and notebook are things that go hand in hand; and that this advice worked for them. I think this type of advice is something that's more personal preference than universal truth. I won't even go into the argument that writing the creative content in your head is the most efficient: and saves trees. Writing onto media puts down into words what's rattling around in someone’s head in a form that might be readily available to the author and perhaps shared with colleagues. Throughout history the media has changed. The purpose might range from fear of forgetting something before they get it down or it might be viewed as a way of preserving information over long periods of time to be used by others. We’ve been doing this since near the dawn of time.

Long ago we used rock. Rock lasts longer most of the time and God wrote on rock with his fingers so there is no shame in using rock unless you're pretending to be God. It's murder on the finger. Then there was the quill and parchment of which parchment didn't last as long as rock and I'm sure there was some discussion about which was faster though not much really, because CNC machines would not be invented for quite some time; otherwise rock would still be in favor. Switching to quill had its advantages: such as, if you ran out of ink there was always blood. But for dissemination of work over a wide area either paper or rock required a lot of time with many hands to make a few copies. Then come printing presses, which were great for wide distribution; but for utility and speed it was easier to drag around, pen and paper.

Then we have the lighter weight typewriter. Nimble fingers and typewriters and precision typing skills would argue that the typewriter was faster than paper and quill and much faster than scratching on a rock. But they were heavy, cumbersome, and awkward;until there were light weight portables and electric typewriters, the market for quill and paper still existed for anyone constantly on the go. And then even the light weight portable typewriters were not as easy to carry as a pen and notebook.

The next big step is the computer. The first one of those was about as portable as a printing press and even the first laptop was a bit heavy though you didn't have to carry a ream of paper; as you would with a typewriter. Now with the tablets and phone apps it’s like having the notebook and pencil or pen and yet saving all the paper, ink, and graphite.

But which is faster for the writer? That was the question.

There's a possibility that most writers don't fall in that highly skilled department when it comes to typing skills. Perhaps hunt and peck or using one of those insanely small keyboards on a phone might add time to the equation. So does that make pen and paper faster?

Not for me.

I fact, using pen and paper has always been counter intuitive for someone like me. My handwriting is atrocious; so much so that I used to use a non electric smith corona for everything. Trying to sort through my notes done by hand are similar to deciphering a strange language etched on a rock. You can call it laziness that my penmanship is poor; and a lot of people did and still do. But the bottom line is that the best method for me to use, for written word, is the computer. As for computers: first drafts, for me; I leave the auto spell checker on, to save me from having to backtrack. Since I know I'll redo everything at least five times before I give it to anyone else, this works despite the insistence of the spell checker to incorrectly alter simple words on the fly. All other edits are with spell checker off.

Does this put me to a disadvantage and slow me down when creating? My hand, my pencil, my pen, my paper, my keyboard and my computer don't think. I do that and the only thing that slows me down is the thinking. When I put it all on paper or in electronic form it takes about the same amount of time and except for my poor handwriting, none of those other pieces of the puzzle seem to be any better than the next, in creating a page from my thoughts. But when my heart gets into it, everything begins to flow out and all I worry about is not having anything at all to put it onto before it starts to fade away like last nights dreams.

So I will take what's available at the moment, paper-and-pen or computer, with the caveat that if its pen and paper some parts might get lost in translation.

As for rocks: the neighbors are happy they took those away from me, because finding them in the living-room amidst all the broken glass was getting annoying.

J.L. Dobias

Navel Oranges, Granny Smith and other Genre Beasts

Lucia — Fri, 22 May 2015 02:09:09 GMT

Navel Oranges, Granny Smith and other Genre Beasts

I recently was in a conversation about genre because a book, I had reviewed, was criticized for having claimed to be hard science fiction: although it clearly wasn't. That latter is not my statement although I would agree that there are elements that would cause me to think it leans away from most people's view of what hard science fiction is.

The problem came when someone tried to compare the ease of identifying hard science fiction with how someone might identify a sonnet, which struck me as a somewhat inaccurate comparison as it seemed to be comparing apples to oranges. The reason I say this is that a sonnet might better be compared to perhaps determining if something is a novel or novella or short story; because it's a matter of specifics that must occur to be named such, with some small wiggle room for style as perhaps regarding the scheme of the rhyme in a sonnet, of which it is interesting to note when translating from Italian to English becomes an effort in futility to retain the rhyme scheme.

Whereas: Genre are a bit slipperier than all of that in that there really is yet no industry standard. This means that even within the industry there are differences of opinion as to what constitutes a specific genre and even all the way to identifying the elements of style and content. I would guess that the only real need for specific guidelines beyond this would come to those organizations giving out prestigious awards to authors: they certainly should define the scope as well as possible: to make the judge's job easier. The problem comes when those in contact with such organizations try to turn back upon the system and impose those ideals into a system that has not yet shown a desire to standardized itself.

The lack of standardization means that the publishers definitions might not be the same as the book sellers or librarians. And that from country to country there may be some wide differences. This is likely the source of the fuel to the fire of controversy over what should be hard science fiction. Going into a bookstore I would usually find all of science fiction under the heading of science fiction and sometimes included under the heading of science fiction fantasy which mean that all the sub-genre are mixed willy nilly and the reader has to sort through to discern which is what.

In the discussion mentioned above one complaint was that a self publisher should regulate themselves to be able to discern that they are not hard science fiction thus not proclaiming such and yet in the same breath this person suggested this responsibility to discern might easily be overlooked or not apply to a traditional publisher, which was so many ways wrong and backwards.

The next suggestion I was given was that Hard science fiction would be fiction that limits itself to the law of physics. To this I would have to have added :as we know it, if I were to agree. I don't agree because that is too narrow and again that is why we have the controversy. One problem even with physics is such things as the controversy of quantum entanglement as regards to the possibility of violating the speed of light limitations. The suggestion here is that we lack some understanding of physics to fully explain some observable phenomenon- where do we put such things in our view of hard science fiction, if we dare extrapolate?

If what we have today were actually the sum of all knowledge what physics has to offer I would guess that we'd live in a much different world.

But hard science fiction is not just physics its technology and economy and politics which in some way seems to fly in the face of reason because of the want to put those three into something called soft science fiction.

We have made it to the moon, a fact: unless you subscribe to a fringe element. We haven't gone back recently because of economic factors regarding the cost of current technology to get us there and the political and economic barriers of obtaining the funds: problems which are now being remedied by private concerns finally taking a step into the arena. So, even if a person were to take only what we have now and were to write about a universe where we were in constant motion between here and the moon there would have to be plausible explanations of all the factors to get us there or it would likely fail the test of some definitions of hard science fiction.

Let's consider the work of Arthur C. Clarke whom I always thought of as a hard science fiction writer if any would be. Yet when we look closely at 2001 Space Odyssey we see elements of the monolith and the race that made them and the ending of the book and we see some departure from what many claim hard science fiction must be. Not withstanding the disappointment; that we have a far reach yet to obtain the level of intelligence in AI's that HAL possessed.

Even other favorites such as Issac Asimov and his Foundation series do not fully qualify to some high standards of hard science fiction and it grieves me so.

I recently read a novel that might have taken a lot of its science elements and acronyms right from such accounts as Apollo 13's fateful voyage. The author added some inexplicable parallel universe device creating a novel to which we could always say is of a new genre to avoid the controversy of hard science fiction: since all we do need is a few more sub-genre to place on the steaming heap.

The bottom line seems to be that genre are meant as a means of creating a listing to assist the readers in locating the type of books that they enjoy. Unless or until they standardize, the practice will at best have limited success, but it should serve the purpose it was intended for , which is to get the book placed before the most likely readers of that type of book, or you would expect the industry leaders would have already moved to standardize.

If a writer intends to win an award, though, he may want to begin to consider obsessing about reaching those somewhat elusive standards for hard science fiction. This will likely lead to a lot of sweating of bullets and probably hinder the creative process and I would wish them a lot of luck.

Hard Science Fiction is at best a slippery beast that often gets relegated below Science Fiction which usually contains all of the myriad SF sub-genre if the venue allows. Sometimes I have found SF under Speculative Fiction and sometimes it has its own slot. Sometimes it is mixed not just with fantasy but paranormal, horror, and even suspense thrillers. It all depends on the shelf space and rightly so since the retail usage of genre is meant to exist as a marketing tool.

Perhaps on the day that I discover all those navel oranges in with my Granny Smiths and count them all as one in the same, I will say ah ha and I will have learned what hard science fiction really is.

J.L. Dobias

As a matter of interest I've included these links on the subject. This is not an endorsement, agreement, or refutation: Just a random selection of sources.

Genre Fiction Rules Genre categories agent query Genre categories cuebon.com Genre fiction categories WD Library of Congress Genre Term List Genre Category List Dummies guide to genre lists Big fat fiction genre lists Hard vs Soft SF Hard vs Soft SF@ asimovs.com Hard sf on wiki Genre fiction on wiki Genre fiction vs literature

Yes Virginia::Simon Pure Science Fiction Can Be Entertaining

Lucia — Wed, 11 Mar 2015 22:48:01 GMT

Yes Virginia: Pure Science Fiction Can Entertain

I recently read a rant about how Science Fiction shouldn't have or need the Gee Wiz science that pervade the modern era of such writing. The author bemoaned that it appeared today's readers prefer the Wiz Bang to real science. They stated: those who write Science Fiction with real science are writing to an elite audience of readers. I have doubts about this.

It was a comment meant to make me think. It did just that. I look into what is being proposed and tried to match that with what I look for myself and I saw some patterns; but not the ones being touted. It seems more a matter of one being more entertaining than the other and there is no good reason that they both shouldn't entertain the reader.

We as authors can take all of the stuff of science today and fill the stories with only that, which fulfills the notion of writing what we know. That would truly be Science and Fiction or maybe even Fact - depending on whether we depict fictional characters or real people and historically recognizable stories. Science - recognizable today (with physics as we understand it today) - turned to Fiction with the what if- that is common to Science Fiction - adding fictional and believable characters into the what if of speculation.

This reminds me of the old discussion about Sci-Fi not being Science Fiction and perhaps the above would be one of the delineating elements. In the article I read this was one distinction the writer was trying to make, though he called Sci-Fi Skiffy, because of a bad connotation put upon Skiffy as they call it. I actually hate that word Skiffy; so I’ll use Sci-Fi for the remainder of this article.

The issue I take is that for a reader it’s difficult to find and for the writer to write an as if without extrapolating the Science to some itchy limit, which runs the author head on into a bucket load of Sci-Fi. I'm not saying that that is bad or even wrong because some of the things Jules Verne wrote about seemed pretty fantastic at the time he wrote them, yet today there are parallels to the technology he imagined and what we have. What is interesting with an old classic such as that is that Jules Verne put some well defined characters into the story with all that fantastical science.

I look at what I like to read in both Science Fiction and Fantasy and try to discern what works and what doesn't: for me. I look at what is strict science and what looks like Gee Wiz or Wiz Bang; and I rediscover something that rises above the discussion about science and physics that we know.

That would be simple good story telling.

When objecting to all the special effects and strange (over- extrapolated) notions that appear to go too far (which all may ring true), is the focus so narrow that the narrative that surrounds it escapes us in our frustration? What I mean by that is that we sometimes labor under the misconception that the fantastic what if and derivative science we extrapolate from present understanding is the only element of the story that is important enough to define its quality, while overlooking skill in narrative and the well crafted stories with strong character development. The error lies in the belief that the science is the story and it doesn't matter how well we write or who we put into the story as long as the science is stunningly accurate and sounds plausible. So when people buy the story with inexplicable science, some camps are baffled that these readers can rave about the whole thing. We dismiss the idea that a well written story with strong believable characters the reader can relate to might be enough for many readers.

This is not to say we can't have both, but it also doesn't say that the stories with Simon Pure science fiction always naturally contains the elements of good fiction writing.

What I like in my fiction is stories driven about characters.(I look at the cover-read the blurb in back-if possible I read the first chapter or ten pages- then I decide if I’ll like it.) For me: if there are no stunning characters then the science must fill that void with science that becomes the missing element of character. Then we might have something like Anne McCaffrey's Ship Who Sang or perhaps Clark's Hal from 2001 Space Odyssey. And we are still very far away from those types of Artificial Intelligence that they could both be considered extrapolations that stretch the readers suspension of disbelief too far.

Any author who has mastered the ability to place a believable, likable character into whatever situation will get my full attention every time. For me good solid science becomes added value. The science becomes less necessary for me to enjoy and relate to the characters. Too often I've found novels that are mired in the science while they are peopled with one dimensional characters who could be interchanged with anyone and not change the story.

This underlines the most difficult problem encountered by new authors when they get caught up in the notion that they have the greatest new idea for a plot and they try to run with that, keeping it secret so that no one else will steal the idea, and then end up wondering how their idea can't catch on when they finish the piece. They don't recognize that their 'story' is not that great science woven into some fantastic notion that may in many cases turn out to be some combination of old tried and true plots such as blending Frankenstein with Sherlock Holmes and mixing them with Victorian fashion in a novel driven by the wonders of Steampunk with a mix of vampires and werewolves.Well that might be pure fantasy. But the point is that the reader has to see the human element in all of this and understand what drives the main character's story as it intersects with the myriad of ideas sprouting out of the authors mind.

For me plot's and themes and gadgets and fantastic scenes don't drive the story. The plots and themes keep it under control and help shape the story. The lands and technology are a backdrop to help keep the characters from becoming talking heads; but they still are nothing more than the props. Though I will grant that sometimes they are well crafted props.

Characters are what drive the type of fiction that I like. Believable people the reader can relate to and become sympathetic with. Their struggle or conflict and all the pitfalls and obstacles put in their path and how they deal with all of that while growing or maturing right there on the page. How they deal with and react to the science. This often rubs shoulders with what some define as the soft science fiction; the stories dealing with social, political or psychological sciences. It is when the Simon Purist try to avoid those three that they run afoul; because that distancing caused by the avoidance often rips at the heart of the story that I'm looking for.

Both the Pure and the Sci-Fi with Wiz Bang have to be balanced with good writing that engages the reader and if the author becomes enamored with the science or the special effects to the detriment of good character development then the story is lost. When the reader puts down one to pick up the other it is not a deficiency in the reader it is rather a disconnect of the story from the reader. They may not be abandoning the Wiz Bang in favor of real science or vice versa; but they are abandoning poor writing for something that is well crafted that grabs their attention and keeps them riveted to their seat while pages flow by. And it just might happen that those well crafted characters are surrounded by gardens of Wiz Bang.

There is no doubt that Pure Science can enhance a story as do a new and fresh plot or scene. But these cannot replace a well crafted story; they are the icing on the cake. They are the gift wrap under which awaits the surprise that is the author's skill at his craft of telling the story.

J.L. Dobias

Sites of Interest

Lucia — Wed, 11 Feb 2015 16:58:25 GMT

Dean Wesley Smith

Ella Distribution

Cassandra Marshall: When To Give Up On A Book

A. Sparrow-Facebook

Gargon Buster aka 51 grammatical definitions

Passive Voice

Effect vs Affect (Obviously I'm still working this one out.) To the effect of being affected.

Weird stuff and it takes long time to load

Genre Fiction Rules

Genre categories agent query

Genre categories cuebon.com

Genre fiction categories WD

Library of Congress Genre Term List

Genre Category List

Dummies guide to genre lists

Big fat fiction genre lists

Hard vs Soft SF

Hard vs Soft SF@ asimovs.com

Hard sf on wiki

Genre fiction on wiki

Genre fiction vs literature

Genre fiction on wiki

ESO Space Images

ESO Hubble Space Images

NASA JPL Space Images

Cal Tech Space Images

Hubble Space Images

Space.Com Images

Bringing awareness to the Consciousness debate

Punctilious Dialogue

Literary as Genre

webstorage

Cripple-Mode:Series

Lucia — Tue, 10 Feb 2015 18:05:29 GMT

Travis Lucia Hamilton-McQueen is a teen caught up in a strange circumstance. She has awakened from a coma to find everything out of control; her memories have been overwritten with another person's and she's battling to get her life back. It is no help that her Grandfather is a suspected mass murderer; her father is a convicted killer; and she is a clone who has apparently been bouncing illegally in and out of JumpSpace, which makes her a suspected terrorist. She suspects she is fitting into the family just fine. However there are more urgent issues because she's brought along a rider and eventually she'll discover she has three parasites sharing her body. Several agencies, including those responsible for engineering her existence, are interested in what she hosts. No one wants to share and everyone is willing to sacrifice the host if it comes down to that.

Travis will have to fight in order to live long enough to attempt to figure out who she is in a universe that will not allow time for someone to find herself.

Now someone expects her to do their dirty work and won't take no for an answer.

The parasitic children of the JumpSpace Entities, are the cause of half her problems and she'd love to be rid of them; except that there's a fine line between them and what makes her what she is. They brought her father's memories into her mind and without those memories she has nothing and she might return to a mindless coma.

The three agencies that claim responsibility for her creation are expecting her to tow the line with them and several other organizations would use her or kill her if she won't work with them. Some of those have raised the bar by threatening anyone near her. Everyone thinks they own her.

She must question what constitutes property and what defines sentient and sapient and then whether a being who is both should be owned by anyone; and then she must decide if she intends on freeing herself alone or all the other cloned life-forms created by man and held in slavery.