Spectrum of Speculative Fiction Blog Hop

 



 

Welcome to the Spectrum of Speculative Fiction Blog Hop.  This event, over the weekend, links the blogs of a group of speculative fiction writers whose work covers the whole gamut of fantasy, science fiction and supernatural horror.  You can find links to all the blogs involved at the bottom of this post, where you can read about the authors and their books, as well as entering for their various giveaways.

For my share in the giveaways, I'll be donating a copy of The Treason of Memory, my fantasy ebook from Musa Publishing that was published late last year:

Combining the sordid world of espionage with dark magic, The Treason of Memory is an action-packed adventure story set in a fantasy world of flintlocks and rapiers.

 

To enter, you just have to visit my website at http://www.nykiblatchley.co.uk/, go to the Contact page (via the sidebar) and send me a message letting me know you wish to enter, and which ebook format you use.  At the end of the blog hop, I'll choose a winner by means of the latest, cutting-edge randomising system (the details are top secret, but it involves slips of paper and a hat) and both announce and contact the winner.   

 

I mainly write fantasy, but that's a very broad category, and I don't even stick to it all the time.  My very first published story was horror, and I've strayed into SF and historical fiction as well, but the heart of my writing lies between epic fantasy and sword & sorcery, though not always in "traditional" settings.

So what is it that attracts me to these kind of stories?  Well, the cop-out answer would be "just because".  From the time I was about eight, I loved the legends of King Arthur, and I devoured every retelling I could find.  It didn't matter, somehow, that they all told the same stories ― the little differences were worth it.  I read and loved the Narnia books, too, and when I read Lord of the Rings at fifteen, that was that.  I was hooked for life.

I think there are three things that I love most about both reading and writing books like this.  One is, quite simply, the sense of wonder: there's no limit to what it's possible to encounter in fantasy.  You want to experience flying by your own power?  Casting spells that can change the world?  Debating philosophy with an sentient plant?  Fantasy can give it all to you.  (At least, I don't know if anyone's done the last.  Note ― write a philosophical plant into a story.)

The second thing is that I've always loved history, and fantasy ― especially epic fantasy ― offers a unique opportunity to explore more history than exists in the real world.  World-making, which is such a big part of epic fantasy, involves creating countries, peoples and their histories in a way that's both unique and believable.  That means understanding how history works, and applying it to something that didn't exist before.

The third thing is that fantasy (speculative fiction in general, but fantasy in particular) offers the chance to ask big questions without being bogged down in  specifics.  Realistic fiction is fine for examining how things work in the real world, but it's generally about topics everyone already has an opinion on.  A social realist could write a novel examining how, say, the middle-east conflict affects people caught up in it.  A fantasy writer, by making it a conflict between fictional nations, or even between elves and dwarves, can examine the basic moral issues of what happens when two antagonistic peoples claim the same territory.

It's not just big political issues.  You and I will never be offered absolute power over the world at the risk of absolute corruption, since there are no real rings of power.  We'll never have to achieve an ethical balance in the use of magic, or find out how we'd deal with being immortal; but fantasy can challenge us to consider how we'd respond to these, and that can help us understand our moral stance.

In a recent blog post, I pointed out that all fiction is set in an invented world ― it's just that fantasy is more honest about it than most.  All kinds of fiction have things they can do better than any other, but I feel that fantasy is the purest type of fiction and, at its best, can reach the greatest heights.

Besides, it's fun.  That's the main thing, isn't it?

 



Guest Post by SS Hampton Sr - War and the Supernatural

War and the supernatural—two completely different genres yet easily intermingled. It is done all of the time in literature, on TV, and in the movies. The key, however, is to do it successfully, to make it believable, so that your audience will not groan and roll their eyes as the story progresses. Assuming your audience is still with you after the first groan.

Sometimes the supernatural is invisible and one wonders if it is real. Yet the feeling of being threatened by something unexplainable is inescapable. After all, who dismisses a “gut feeling” honed by the experience of sustained combat when the senses may be the only thing to save you? For example, to a half-frozen Waffen SS platoon outside of Moscow confronted by Siberian troops lurking in a dense and shadow-filled forest; the Germans know they are there, but there is the feeling that there is something else. The question upon which survival hinges is, are the Siberians the only threat in the forest or is there something else in the forest, something unknown and dangerous?

Perhaps American troops in Iraq are testing a new generation of night vision goggles using cutting edge technology and near-mystical computer software. Maybe the goggles really do strip away the night to an extent only dreamed of. The combatant who can see in the night has the advantage over the enemy. And—considering the human eye sees a very small fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum—perhaps the goggles really do reveal “things” that can’t be. Yet, can one ignore the evidence of goggle-enhanced eyes?

When one considers that the universe is filled with electromagnetic energy from the greatest star to the smallest quarks, baryons, mesons, and bosons, is it impossible to believe that objects may actually “vibrate” with energy? And perhaps the energy of prayers and the spoken word can imbue otherwise inanimate objects, such as cult objects, with a power and a life of their own. Sometimes this power and life should remain undisturbed. But, if this power or life is unleashed and is confronted, does one say “it can’t be” or does one believe the evidence of their own eyes?

Yes, war and the supernatural easily go hand in hand; the key is to give the premise an easily understood and believable foundation. Add a believable plot, believable characters and dialogue, and take off from there. Remember, there are as many ways to blend war and the supernatural as there are writers. I’m eager to see how you do it. Good writing and much success in your writing career!

SS Hampton, Sr. is a full-blood Choctaw of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, a divorced grandfather to 13 grandchildren, and a veteran of Operations Noble Eagle (2004-2006) and Iraqi Freedom (2006-2007). He has served in the Army National Guard since October 2004, and holds the rank of staff sergeant. He is a published photographer and photojournalist, an aspiring painter, and is studying for a degree in photography and anthropology—hopefully to someday work in underwater archaeology. His writings have appeared as stand-alone stories, and in anthologies from Dark Opus Press, Edge Science Fiction & Fantasy, Melange Books, Musa Publishing, MuseItUp Publishing, Ravenous Romance, and as stand-alone stories in Horror Bound Magazine, Ruthie’s Club, Lucrezia Magazine, The Harrow, and River Walk Journal, among others. As of December 2011, he became the latest homeless Iraq war veteran in Las Vegas, Nevada.

 

“The Lapis Lazuli Throne.” Ed. Stephen Morgan. Musa Publishing, April 2012.

ISBN: 978-1-61937-263-4

BLURB: During the Iraq War supply convoys rumbled out of Kuwait every day, bound for Baghdad. These convoys traveled on MSR Tampa, one of the most dangerous roads in the world, battling insurgent ambushes and IEDs. It is on one such convoy that an IED took out a gun truck and wounded Specialist Ken Adams. His gun truck commander took the fight to nearby insurgents, but in the aftermath he committed a disrespectful act. In the following weeks the entire gun truck crew was stalked by something unknown, and they disappeared one by one, until only Ken Adams was left, cornered in Las Vegas…

 

EXCERPT: The desert was alive. Damp foul smelling sand exploded in a white flash. Smoky red and yellow tentacles snaked out of the sand. He tried to scream, but the tentacles choked him. Other screams tore through the boiling smoke that stung his eyes and fouled his mouth. He was suffocating. He swung his arms wildly through the heavy hot air as the ground gave way beneath him. He was being pulled into the living desert...

#

            Specialist Ken Adams, the Gunner of his gun truck, picked at his meal of cheeseburgers, French fries, and salad. The mess hall, no wider than a pair of double wide trailers and twice as long, was almost empty. Other than an evening kitchen crew, the only occupants of the mess hall were gun truck soldiers preparing to go out on another convoy security escort mission.

            They were escorting another supply convoy of forty-five white trucks, the civilian manned eighteen-wheel tractor trailers that had arrived that afternoon at Convoy Support Center Navistar. The small, cluttered, dusty camp a mile south of the Iraqi border, a jumping off point for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, was now manned by mobilized Army National Guard soldiers. After sunset, four HMMWV gun trucks would escort the supply convoy to Cedar, the first CSC on Main Supply Route Tampa. There, they would then turn the convoy over to other escorts, who would take the convoy further north. The gun truck crews would have time for a quick breakfast before they picked up an empty convoy returning to Kuwait.

            It was just another typical mission for Ken and his buddies. He grabbed a pair of bananas on the way out the door.

            They met their convoy of white trucks at the Convoy Movement Center, the dusty marshaling lot on the other side of a narrow dusty track across from Navistar. The soldiers checked the drivers’ paperwork and made a quick mechanical inspection of the trucks. It was a tedious but necessary process. Ken alleviated the boredom by raiding the packed bag of bubble gum Lenny had packed for the mission. Lenny loved bubble gum, and whenever care packages were put on the mail table for everyone to help themselves, he was one of the first to paw through them, searching for bubble gum…

Buy a copy here 

 

What Real World?

There are two boringly inevitable questions fantasy writers and readers are asked about their favourite genre.  One is, "Why read/write fantasy?" to which, of course, the short answer is, "Why not?" with the supplement, "Why don't you ask the same question about any other fiction?"

The other, which also has a short answer, is, "Why don't you read/write books set in the real world?"  The answer to that, of course, is, "What real world?"

The fact is that no fiction, of any kind, is set in some objective world that we all inhabit.  All authors invent a world to set their stories in; it's just that fantasy authors are more honest about it than most.

There are many ways of doing this, some more subtle than others, but perhaps the two main methods are the choice of what to include and exclude, and the presentation of moral beliefs as fact.

The inclusion issue, of course, can skew what we see as reality in any context.  Some years ago, there was a TV advertisement for one of the "quality" newspapers (I forget which) that was based on the proposition that you have to see the whole picture in order to know what's happening (which, naturally, that paper provided). 

It presented three short clips.  In the first, a skinhead youth runs up to a respectable-looking man on the street and shoves him hard.  In the second, the same skinhead is lounging on a street-corner when a police car draws up.  An officer leans out and shouts, and the skinhead turns and runs away from the car.

The third clip shows the whole scenario.  The man is standing under a cradle of bricks that's coming loose.  The skinhead, alerted by the officer's shouted warning, runs over and, at some risk to himself, shoves him out of the way just as the bricks come crashing down.  Without telling a single lie, the first two clips had the skinhead tried and convicted, whereas he's actually a hero.

Of course, even this isn't "the whole picture".  That might include the reasons why the accident happened (personal carelessness or corporate corner-cutting), who the man was waiting for, why the skinhead was at a loose end, what in his background made him risk his life to save the man... and so on, right back to the Big Bang.

In a work of fiction, some aspects of the "real world" are included, and some aren't.  This may be nothing more than what is or isn't relevant to the story, but even so, the author has to choose what story to tell.  It's often been pointed out, for instance, that Jane Austen's novels include none of the poverty, vagrancy and social unrest that was widespread at the time.  That doesn't mean she was unaware of it, or even unconcerned about it as a person, but she chose to write stories in a fictional reality in which those things didn't exist.

That doesn't make the stories "wrong" or even unrealistic.  They're very realistic about what she chose to present, and no author can cover everything.  It does mean, though, that they're set in a world of their own.

The presentation of moral belief as fact is a more complex issue.  Consider, as an example, a familiar type of character: the maverick cop who ignores the rules, and sometimes the law, to get the bad guy.  This can take place in either of two distinct realities (or a spectrum in between): the reality in which liberals are allowing criminals to rule the streets, and only ignoring the rules can safeguard decent people; or the reality in which the rules are there to protect the innocent, and ignoring them destroys lives.

This isn't just a matter of what happens in the story.  The different versions are actually set in different fictional realities, in which the author's belief (or the belief s/he thinks will appeal to the target reader) is a universal fact.  These are invented worlds, just as much as anything produced by fantasy.

Does it matter?  Ideally not.  When fantasy readers read of fictional realities, we understand them in the spirit they're meant: we learn broad lessons from the characters and situations or we just enjoy them (preferably both) but (apart from the very few who are always going to be out of touch) we don't believe in their objective reality.

Unfortunately, not all consumers of fiction have had our practice, and often seem to believe precisely that various kinds of popular fiction are objective reality.  Soap operas are particularly adept at creating this illusion, since their stock-in-trade is that they're presenting some kind of slice of life, even though they're doing nothing of the kind.  I've had arguments with otherwise intelligent and level-headed people who've based their arguments about the real world on what's happened in Eastenders or Coronation Street.  If they're challenged, of course, they'll acknowledge that it's happened that way because of the author's choice, but it doesn't seem to occur to them without the challenge.

Fictional realities are essential for stories.  No story could be written without them, and they only become a problem when the reader or viewer isn't aware of their presence.  Perhaps those people should practice by reading fantasy.

So, the next time you're asked, "Why read fantasy?" perhaps you could simply answer, "To keep in touch with reality."

Guest Blog by Donna Del Oro - Behind The Delphi Bloodline: My Personal Research into ESP Phenomena

It started with my cousin. She was a full-time, practicing psychic. People came from all over California for her “readings”, at which she claimed an approximately 85% accuracy. One day, while in my 40’s, I decided to get a reading from her.  Extremely skeptical—although I’d known her all my life and knew she wasn’t a con artist—I arrived, fully expecting a lot of lucky guesses on her part.  An hour later, I left dazed and confused. How did she know that my husband and I were deliberating over which of two investment opportunities to take. We hadn’t mentioned this to anyone, not even anyone in my family or my husband’s.   The one my cousin advised against—and which we didn’t take, fortunately—ended up in bankruptcy a year later. There were other revelations that day that proved true in the months to come.

And so, I became intrigued by this strange phenomena known as ESP, or sometimes psi. Whatever you called it, it was known as “extrasensory perception”. My cousin claimed to be a “clairvoyant”, or able to “see” what most humans cannot see. Her insights into people, their health, and other personal facts were amazing to me. People in my family both welcomed and dreaded her phone calls. It was often: “You’ve got diabetes,” “You have a cancerous tumor in your bladder. See a doctor immediately”, “Your appendix is infected. Get yourself to a hospital now!” One close friend of the family received one of her calls. She told her that her brother was dying of cancer and that this friend should call him as soon as possible. The friend insisted that her thirty-five year-old brother was perfectly healthy and they’d just spoken days before. However, my cousin persisted and prevailed, even over objections of the friend’s brother. Two weeks later, the friend’s brother called back. He’d seen a doctor, had gotten a series of tests, and his prognosis was grim. He died a year later after a valiant battle against cancer.

When I probed my cousin, she explained the genesis of her visions and revelations. As a child of eight, she began having dreams. Some occurred at night while she slept, while others happened as daytime visions.  A recurring vision puzzled her but one day it suddenly made sense. Her parents—my aunt and uncle—had announced that they were moving to Hollister, California and had just bought a house with property attached. My cousin “knew” what it looked like and proceeded to describe it to her parents, who hadn’t shown pictures of it to anyone. What she described, from the house to the trees, driveway and outbuildings, matched the place her parents had just put a down payment on.

After that, the family believed my cousin to have a gift from God. That experience prompted me to open my mind and begin a twenty-year exploration into ESP. What I’ve learned has convinced me that clairvoyance does exist, and that perhaps to some extent, precognition. Many people have incredible, intuitive abilities and many share this gift with others, at no intent of monetary gain but simply a desire to help others. A poll cited in the Journal of Parapsychology showed that at least sixty percent of Americans believe that they have had at least one psychic experience in their lives.

The difference between a true psychic and a charlatan, or someone who uses trickery and seeks profit or notoriety?  Only one does it for monetary gain. True psychics, as do the psychic women in THE DELPHI BLOODLINE, share their gifts quietly and gratuitously.

Like my cousin.

The Delphi Bloodline is available from Musa Publishing here



In Search of the Lost Tale: Returning to a Stalled Novel

I've just returned to writing a novel I haven't worked on since 2007.  That's not really as negligent as it sounds, since I started writing it in 1969.

Well, in a way.  Back then, it was a series of poems, and the story I was telling then has become virtually lost.  It's also grown into a trilogy — and, beyond that, into a loose ennealogy — with the original bit consigned to volume three, which is why I'm only just addressing it.

The trilogy's called The Winter Legend (the title I first came up with back in 1969, while taking the dog for a long walk in the country) and the components are The Tryst Flame (currently under submission to Harper Voyager's open submission window) Children of Ice (complete, but in need of heavy revision) and Dreams of Fire and Snow — the one I'm now working on.

So why the delay?  Both since 2007, and way back since 1969?

Well, the second is probably easier to explain — I simply haven't been a good enough writer until now (I hope) to do justice to the story.  Before the current versions, I'd written two complete versions of each of the first two instalments, as well as a couple of unfinished ones.  Over the decades, both my writing technique and my understanding of the world and human nature have improved, and I think I've finally expelled enough of the clumsiness and clichéd behaviour to give it a go.

Not that I've wasted the idea in the interim.  An originally minor background character has taken on a life of his own under the name of the Traveller, while I've written stories covering ten thousand years and seven continents of the world I created for The Winter Legend.  But it's time now to come back to where the whole thing started.

My original plan, back in 2004 or so, was to write the three books straight off, before going back and revising them.  That way, anything unexpected that came up in the course of writing — and it always does — could be written into the revision stages of the earlier books. 

A great theory, and it worked well enough for the first two books, where I was rewriting earlier versions.  When I got to Dreams of Fire and Snow, though, I was in territory I hadn't trodden since 1969, and the story's changed beyond all recognition.  Certain basics are still there, of course, but a lot of extra characters and subplots have found their way in since then, and other people have fundamentally changed.  Including the main antagonist, who's transformed from a stereotypical "dark lord" villain to someone you can almost like.

The tone has changed, too.  In the original version, for instance, the hero had to venture into Hell.  I quickly realised that this didn't fit at all, and I decided to turn it into the Underworld, seeing that as very much like the Underworld from Greek mythology.  Eventually, though, I came to the conclusion that would be a bit clichéd.  The episode still involves a place called the Underworld, but it's about as far as possible from any traditional concept of what that represents.

So I got to around 100,000 words and approaching the grand dénouement of the whole trilogy — and came to a grinding halt.  This was partly for practical reasons.  Because I was flying a bit blinder than in the other books, I found I'd followed plot threads I wasn't sure how to resolve, and I suspected I needed a rethink on those.

I think there was a psychological reason, though, as well.  The Winter Legend has been part of me for most of my life.  On a conscious level, it's important for me to finish it — which is why I've put my effort into a trilogy, something all sane advice tells us not to do till we can rely on getting it published — but, deep down, I think I'm actually a bit scared of it being done.  What's it going to be like when I don't have it to work on any more?

It needs to be done, though, and, having prepared The Tryst Flame for submission and revamping Children of Ice into something close to the form it'll finish with, I've just started working on Dreams of Fire and Snow again.  I've written chapter 26, introducing a couple of major retcons I'm going to have to write into earlier chapters, and finding one key scene resolving into an outcome I didn't expect, and I'm hoping to reach the end in a couple of months.  I wonder how many more surprises it has in store.

 

Wolves, Birds & Orgies: Not Just a hallmark Holiday

It's the annual celebration of luuuuurve and the chance for the flower, chocolate and greeting card industries to make their biggest profit of the year.  But what's behind Valentine's Day?  Is it really more than a Hallmark holiday?

In the Christian calendar, the 14th February is the anniversary of the martyrdom of St Valentine, a 3rd century Bishop of Terni.  He had very little to do with love, except for the kind that's a theological virtue, although all kinds of legends about him sprang up later to justify the identification of his day with lovers.

The earliest known mid-February festival that might be connected with today was the Roman feast of Lupercalia, but this was nothing to do with sighing lovers and pretty flowers.  Lupercalia, the festival of the wolf, was a celebration of fertility and an excuse for an orgy — assuming the Romans needed an excuse, of course.

The more formal part of Lupercalia was a ceremony (if that's the right word) in which men ran through the crowds with goatskins, hitting people with them at random.  This was supposed to promote fertility, a belief referred to in the opening scene of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, which takes place "upon the Lupercal", where Caesar is contriving to get his barren wife so blessed.

 

The exact relationship between Lupercalia and the later Valentine's Day celebrations are uncertain.  It's possible there was a direct carry-over, but it's likely that this was a time for fertility celebrations.  Although it seems hard to credit, mid-February marks the first stirrings of spring, the time when, as we know, a young man's (or woman's) fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love — or, failing that, of a roll in the hay at least.

In the 14th century, Chaucer referred to the tradition that this day marked the mating of birds:

For this was on seynt Valentynes day

When every foul cometh there to chese his make [choose his mate]

and this may have encouraged similar behaviour in humans.  Customs connected with love were certainly well established by Shakespeare's time.  In Hamlet, one of the ballads Ophelia sings when she's mad begins:

To-morrow is Saint Valentine's day,

All in the morning betime,
And I a maid at your window,
To be your Valentine
 

This refers to the tradition that, if you get up early today, the first face you see is destined to be your True Love.  Though presumably only if it's an appropriate face, of course.

Another tradition was the Valentine lottery, an ancestor of the modern swapping party, where you picked from a box the name of the person you'd be taking home from the dance.  They didn't have car-keys back then.  Robert Burns wrote about this in the 18th century:

Yestreen at the Valentine's dealing

My heart to my mou' gied a sten,
For thrice I drew ane without failing,
And thrice it was written, Tam Glen.

And what of the ubiquitous cards and gifts to the loved one?  This is actually recorded as early as the 17th century.  Of course, the cards would have been home-made, but the custom caught on to such an extent that, by the 19th century, the Royal Mail was taking on extra casual workers in the second month of February to deal with the volume of cards being sent.

Things have certainly changed in recent years.  Until just a few decades ago, Valentine's Day was purely for finding a lover, not for celebrating an existing relationship.  The custom was to send an unsigned card to the person you fancied and hope they guessed it was you.  And, of course, that they were pleased about it.  If they weren't, it was probably just as well you could deny it.

Valentine's Day has been over-exploited recently, but it's definitely not just a Hallmark holiday.  Sending Valentine cards is a time-honoured tradition, but if that's too modern for you, there's plenty of older ones that could be revived.  The Lupercalia orgy, anyone?  Get your goatskins out.

Rules? What Rules?

As a writer, it seems impossible to go anywhere on the internet without bumping into someone laying down rules for how to write, usually in the form of "Never do X."  Advice is great, but, as far as I can see, writing rules are like the Pirate Code - more in the nature of guidelines than actual rules.
 
Of course, some of these guidelines are a lot more rule-like than others, and can very easily be mistaken for absolutes.  Take grammar, for instance: there are constructions that are right and constructions that are wrong.  Is there really any room for manoeuvre there?

Well, yes and no.  I'd certainly encourage any writer to learn how grammar works, how to punctuate correctly and the actual meanings of words - many are hideously abused - but there are times when the rules are flexible.  Flexible, but not infinitely elastic, and only if you know precisely when and why you're breaking them.

Sometimes it can be for effect.  The last sentence in the previous paragraph is ungrammatical, because it's a fragment, but a fragment can sometimes be extremely effective, as can starting a sentence with and or but.  The secret is to do it at exactly the right time and to know why you're doing it.  The two secrets are to do it at exactly the right time and to know why you're doing it, and to use it very sparingly.  The three secrets...

The other main reason for using incorrect grammar is register, or the level of language-use you want to convey.  The most common distinction is between narrative and dialogue, but there's a great deal of variation within these.  Narrative might be the formal relation of an old legend or a chatty first-person account.  Dialogue might be spoken by a pedantic academic or by a yokel, or anywhere between.  In some cases, correct grammar isn't appropriate.

I'll take a simple example - the word like.  If you're following grammatical rules, it's correct to say He ran like a demon but wrong to say He ran like a demon was after him (here, like should be replace with, for instance, as if).  However, many people use the incorrect form, and in some circumstances it might give a feeling of the character or the narrative atmosphere to use it.  If you don't know it's wrong, though, you're likely to use it where it's inappropriate.

If even the rules of grammar are flexible, what about all the other "rules"?  Don't use passive voice; cut out adverbs; don't use words ending in -ing; don't use past continuous - and so ad infinitum.

Most of these have some reason behind them, but they're ridiculously dogmatic.  It's rare to find a construction or part of speech that isn't effective in its right place (I'm tempted to say it never happens, but I wouldn't be that dogmatic) but some are easier to misuse than others.  That's all.

Take the much-maligned passive voice.  Now, for a start, many writers (and even some editors) don't know what the passive voice is.  It isn't "writing weakly" or "distancing" - it's the form of the verb where the subject is the person/thing acted on, as opposed to active voice, where the subject is the actor, and middle/reflexive voice, where the subject acts on itself.  An active sentence would be John hit Fred.  The passive form would be Fred was hit by John.  Middle would be John hit himself (idiot).

Neither active nor passive is right or wrong: they perform different functions.  In the example given, it depends largely on whether the sentence is about John or Fred - whichever we want the reader to focus on should normally be the subject. 

Beyond that, though, passive can give an impression.  The anti-passive sentiment originated in business writing, where it's important to be strong and positive all the time, but this doesn't necessarily apply to creative writing.  Imagine a character who appears to be a strong leader or general - but you have your doubts as you read.  Something about him doesn't seem quite as strong as he makes out, and it turns out in the end that this impression is correct.  Where did it come from?  Simply that, throughout the story, a lot of statements about him, or things he says, are passive constructions.

This kind of thing applies to all the "rules", so where did they come from?  I suspect a lot of them may have originated in mistaking specific advice for general advice.  An author might get a critique from a Respected Source (a top editor, or a published author) who criticises a battle scene because "You use a lot of passive constructions, and this slows down the action and makes it seem remote."

Now, this is perfectly good advice: there are valid places to use passive, but a battle scene isn't one of them.  However, the author doesn't quite get that and spreads it all over the internet that "Respected Source says using passive slows down your writing and make it seem remote."  This isn't what RS has said at all, but it's plausible enough to catch on, especially if Acknowledged Expert and Impeccable Authority can be similarly misquoted.

Thus a "rule" is born.  It's not entirely wrong, but the correct guideline should be "Keep an eye on your use of passive voice.  It has its place, but avoid it in sections where you want the action to be fast paced and vivid.  If in doubt, it's probably best to change it to active."

The same is true for all the other "rules" that are flung around: guidelines, not rules.  In reality, I've only ever found two genuine rules for writing.  One is If it works, do it; if it doesn't work, don't do it.  The other is Never believe a rule that contains the words always or never.  Including this one.