The Descification of Space

Just before this year's Oscars, there was a controversy (a very mild and good-natured controversy) about the film Gravity.  Writer and director Alfonso Cuarón expressed bewilderment that everyone was describing the film as science fiction, just because it was set in space.

Now, I should say I haven't yet seen Gravity, although I hope to, but from everything I've read about it, I'd support Cuarón.  The film's about a fictional space shuttle mission going wrong — not because of aliens, or mysterious forces, or time travel, but simply because of an accident that, given very specific circumstances, could have happened to any of the real shuttle missions.

This isn't the first film to throw up such a conundrum.  Apollo 13 (1995) was not just a plausible fiction set in space, but a retelling of actual events. How could this be science fiction?

SF (or sci-fi, if you prefer that abbreviation) requires some kind of scientific speculation as part of the story.  This can be anything from some barely scientific concept or half-magical technology to something which might well be fact in a hundred years, but a story in which every event is possible according to current science or technology certainly doesn't qualify as SF.

One of the great pioneering novels of the genre, Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under

the Sea, is SF mainly because it's set on board a submarine.  That was speculation when Verne was writing, not because submarines didn't exist, but because the comparison of the Nautilus to the actual submarines of the time was like comparing the Starship Enterprise to the space shuttle.  It doesn't mean that we should class The Hunt for Red October as science fiction.

In the same way, any story written at the same time that featured a journey in a flying machine more sophisticated than a hot-air balloon would count as SF, yet almost any story set in the present day can feature a plane-trip with hardly a thought.

Science fiction is becoming realism all the time, but curiously the opposite has been true of fantasy.  Early literature, such as the great Greek and Indian epics, mixed what we'd class as realism and fantasy with gay abandon.  It isn't really possible now to be sure how much Homer, for instance, regarded the gods and monsters as literally true to life and how much they were just good stories, but it's probably safe to say that he'd have found them a lot more plausible than most 21^st century Europeans or Americans.

One of the earliest cultures to make a formal distinction between realism and fantasy was mediaeval Iceland, distinguishing "true-seeming sagas" from "lying sagas".  The former, interestingly, could be either history, biography or historical fiction.  The latter were the tales of the Æsir and the Giants, or of magical heroes like Sigurd the Volsung (also known as Siegfried).  Calling them "lying" wasn't actually as critical and disapproving as it would be now — it simply meant something that wasn't true, not necessarily in a bad way — but it made clear what the Icelanders thought about the veracity of these stories.

Nevertheless, the line they drew between "true seeming" and "lying" didn't come in quite the place we might draw it today.  The Saga of Grettir the Strong, for instance, definitely falls under the true-seeming category: a historical novel, set in 10^th century Iceland, about the exploits and eventual death of a great outlaw.

In one episode, though, Grettir fights a ghost.  Not quite our idea of a ghost — this is a reanimated corpse — but definitely someone come back from the dead.  He also suffers from a curse, which unmistakably works and contributes to his death at the end.

The point, of course, is that the average mediaeval Icelander didn't regard these in the same light as gods, dragons and enchanted swords.  Ghosts and curses were very real and present dangers, and of course they'd be included in realistic fiction.

It's been suggested that Latin America's afinity to the magic realism field may come from it being a culture that doesn't regard ghosts or minor miracles in the same way as someone in, say, a UK or US city.  That's not to say the authors or readers necessarily believe in these things, but may find them culturally easier to incorporate into an otherwise realistic story.

Of course, it's not impossible that some elements of fantasy may one day be defantasised, in the same way that space is becoming descifised.  The jury is still out on the scientific examination of paranormal phenomena, and it would only take one verifiable and repeatable proof of hauntings, telepathy or telekinesis for these elements to move from fantasy to scientific fact.

Unlikely?  Maybe, but it might have seemed unlikely at one time that stories about flying could ever be realistic fiction.  Let alone stories set in space.

Can the Passive Voice Be Used Effectively?

According to some sections of the internet, using the passive voice is roughly equivalent to drowning cute puppies. They revile something that’s been part of most languages for as far back as language can be traced, and which somehow has never gone the way as unneeded distinctions, such as the dual number (to distinguish pairs from singular and plural) or the locative case (a different form of a noun that means you’re talking about where the thing is).

This prejudice is complicated by the fact that a large proportion of people who rage against the passive voice (including one or two professional editors) don’t seem to understand what it is. The common definition is that it’s when you combine the verb with part of the verb to be. That certainly happens in passive, but to give it as a definition is like saying Cows are animals that eat grass is the same as saying Animals that eat grass are cows. Not the same thing at all.

Verbs can be combined with to be for a variety of uses, but the most common, other than passive, is the imperfect or continuous past tense (I learnt the classical names for grammar at school, such as imperfect, but some are rarely used today). This is when you say He was running rather than He ran. It’s another unfairly reviled construction, often misused or overused, but with its proper use. Continuous past is used when you’re describing a process rather than a single act, especially when contrasted with a single act — He was running down the road when he tripped on a stone.

The passive is one of the three main “voices” a verb can be expressed in (there may be other obscure ones, but I haven’t heard of any). Active voice describes the subject doing the verb; passive voice describes the subject having the verb done to it; middle or reflexive voice describes the subject doing the verb to itself.

And that’s about all there is to it — apart from how and why the different voices are used, of course. Though middle should be fairly obvious, so I’ll concentrate on active and passive.

Consider the two sentences Fred hit John and John was hit by Fred. They describe exactly the same action, but they’re saying very different things about it. The first (active) is a sentence about Fred and describes his action of hitting. The second (passive) is a sentence about John and describes his experience of being hit.

In some forms of writing, the distinction isn’t all that important, and other considerations take precedence. The prejudice against passive seems to have started primarily in business writing, and it’s easy to see why. In business, it’s important to come over as positive and active and dynamic, otherwise the predators will tear you to pieces. (No, that’s in the jungle, isn’t it? On the other hand…) If you’re writing a business letter, you need to say I shall do bla-bla, not Bla-bla will be done. Subtle shades of meaning can go hang.

This doesn’t apply to creative writing, though. I could certainly imagine a novel where the author never stops being dynamic and bullish, but it could get tiring pretty quickly. Sometimes a degree of uncertainty and vulnerability add to the story’s tone. In one part of At An Uncertain Hour, for instance, the main character is made a slave for a while. Needless to say, his experience is of being powerless, of having things done to him, and I tried to express this by using as many passive sentences as possible. As he gradually takes back control of his own destiny, the use of passive decreases.

Consider another hypothetical example. You’re reading a story that features a powerful leader, but you get the feeling as you read that there’s something phony about all this strength. Sure enough, you eventually find that he’s a good deal less certain of himself than he seemed. But what gave you that impression? Perhaps the fact that many of the sentences describing him were in the passive voice.

Uncertainty isn’t the only reason to use passive. Sometimes, as with Fred and John, the issue is whom the sentence is actually about, and whether the important thing is to describe the action or the experience of receiving the action. The person performing the action might actually be unimportant, and to say Someone I never saw jostled me gives too much importance to an unknown and irrelevant person. The sentence is about me and my experience of the incident, which makes it more appropriate to say I was jostled by someone I never saw. It reads better, too.

Passive isn’t by any means always correct, of course, and part of the issue is that it’s one of the things (along with adverbs, another bugbear) that inexperienced writers often overuse. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong in itself, though. If you tried to use a hammer to insert a screw, the result would be awkward, but that isn’t the hammer’s fault. It’s the right tool when you need to bang a nail in.

Like most of the absolute “rules” floating around about writing circles, the anti-passive prejudice began with a kernel of useful caution and proceeded via misunderstanding and chinese whispers to a ridiculous restriction that cuts out a whole section of linguistic expression.  By all means, be cautious about using passive, but the solution to the proplem is to learn how to use it properly, not to avoid ever using it.

Passive is often used effectively.

Weather in Fantasy

At the end of Mervyn Peake's fantasy novel Titus Groan, a grand and important ceremony takes place outside the castle on the lake, replete with the weight of a thousands years' tradition.  And it pours with rain, which could also be regarded as tradition, at least in Britain.  We're obsessed with the weather, and have been for a very long time.  Two and a half centuries ago, Dr Johnson observed that When two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather, and things haven't changed much since then.

On the whole, weather doesn't play a huge part in fantasy.  Oh, there's extreme weather, needless to say, whether it's blizzards, floods, or the baking heat of the desert (or just that Winter is coming to Westeros) but otherwise most fantasy (including mine, I admit) seems to take place in generic conditions of a pleasant day in late spring or early summer.  It doesn't drizzle just because it can.

That is, of course, an exaggeration.  This piece came largely from reading Joe Abercrombie's The Blade Itself, in which the weather makes itself felt in a variety of realistic ways, emphasising the contrast with other stories, and I'm sure there are other examples I don't know.  Some other authors I'm familiar with, both published and unpublished, build the climate into their work, though again that often comes in broad strokes, such as a monsoon.

Perhaps the relative lack of more intimate weather comes from the understandable desire of authors, not to mention their readers, to concentrate on important elements of the story, rather than waste time on irrelevant background, or even a desire to make the fantasy world less grey and dull than the real one.  We want to see Ug the Barbarian's sword triumph over the Evil Overlord's henchmen and allow him to rescue his True Love.  We don't particularly want to see him getting soaked to the skin while he's doing it.

Like other writers, I've used plenty of extreme weather.  My characters have struggled through arctic conditions and through the searing heat of deserts; I've had storms a plenty, and I've had irresponsible sorcerers trying to stop a monsoon, with disastrous consequences.  And yes, I think it has even rained normally on occasion, though not often enough.

Nevertheless, even a normal range of weather can create dramatic situations.  The rain might get into the supplies and spoil them, leaving our band of heroes short of food.  Wind and wet might prevent them from lighting a fire * (unless one of them happens to keep a fire elemental as a pet) with all kinds of consequences.  Poor visibility might prevent them from seeing the band of orcs waiting to ambush them.  Conditions might persuade them to seek refuge somewhere they really shouldn't ("Let's shelter in that nice, dry cave" being roughly equivalent to "I'll just check the cellar — there's nothing to worry about").  Or the weather might affect their health and reduce their effectiveness.

None of these drawbacks would be appropriate for superheroes who can trek for sixty miles a day and take on twenty swordsmen without breaking sweat.  If you're going for something a little more realistic, though (and just because it's fantasy doesn't mean it can't be realistic too), the weather can be a powerful weapon in your arsenal.

Weather has been very much in the news in recent months, what with unprecedented snow and ice in North America and storms and floods in Europe.  That's all extreme weather, though, and the everyday variety has its place, too.

Maybe, when two fantasy writers meet, at least some of their talk should be of the weather.  Certainly, more of my characters will be getting wet, cold and miserable in future.  Won't they love me?

 

* The rain in the Shire falls mainly on the fire.

Guest Post: Julie Ramsey and The Wild Bone: The White Alpha of Monroe

I'd like to welcome fellow author Julie Ramsey, whose paranormal romance novella The Wild Bone: The White Alpha of Monroe is just out on Kindle for 99c.  I'll let Julie introduce herself, and give a taste of her story.

Hello, my fellow readers, reviewers and authors. My name is Julie Ramsey. My 1st Novella was just released on Feb 13th 2014.

 

The Wild Bone: The White Alpha of Monroe is something I had always wanted to do. I have been a reviewer for years and run a successful review site called Julies Book Review. As a reviewer, I love books of almost every genre. My soft spot has always been paranormal romance. Some of the authors that have influenced me over the years: Christine Feehan, JR Ward, Suzanne Wright, Carrie Ann Ryan, and Katie MacAlister just to name a few.

 

I am currently back in school working toward my BA. It was in a creative writing class that Sally and the Monroe pack came to me. I couldn't use the piece for class, but I set it aside and came back to it. The paper then became The Wild Bone: The White Alpha of Monroe. 

 

I have had lots of good reviews so far and I am excited about the possibilities this book brings. For the future I am working on book 2. I am hoping to have it out with in the next couple of months. Also I have 2 kids books that should be out this year as well under the name J.J. Ramsey.

 

So please let people know about The Wild Bone: The White Alpha of Monroe. I hope you enjoy the book as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Blurb

When Sally's mother dies, she is left with no family. Her two best friends Hector and Cathy decide to take her out to the new bar in town, The Wild Bone, to get her out of the house. The night doesn't turn out how they imagine. Sally's mother kept a secret that is about to come to light. The secret holds the trio's future. 2 men both werewolves are about to change Sally's life forever. One will be her future and bring out what has been hidden from her. One wants to steal her future to gain the power of the Monroe pack. Will Sally and her friends survive the turmoil to come? 

Excerpt

 

 

The night was so peaceful. The breeze was cool on my skin. I sat on the little porch and sipped my tea. I had sweats and a sleeveless t-shirt on, relaxing, looking into the stars. I almost missed the shadow by my neighbor’s house.  I kept a bat by me just in case, when I was outside for protection. I am inexperienced in relationships, but I knew how to defend myself. So I set my tea down and pick up my bat, and snuck around the house. I was going to find out who was watching me. Bat up high, I peak around the corner. I don’t see anyone. Oh, I know I saw a shadow. My bat is still held high as I walk around to the front. That is when someone taps me on the shoulder. “OH MY GOSH” I scream, and I swing the bat. I hit somebody. No way was it a person. Whatever I hit, it went down like a ton of bricks and my arms were reverberating. It felt like I hit a steel pole. I look at the ground and sure as heck, it is the tattooed man. You…..What the heck are you doing sneaking around here, I could have killed you.

 He groaned, “I doubt that, but I am going to have a heck of a headache. You know that is twice now you have hit me.” He was on the ground and smiling up at me.

 

Buy a copy on Amazon

 

 

Watch a video about The Wild Bone

 

 

 



Self-Publishing Old Works

The Blogosphere (or at least that part of it interested in writing and publishing) has lit up recently with debate about the latest "proof" that authors should forget about traditional publishing and embrace the heady fortune that's waiting for them if they self-publish.  I'm not going to discuss the issue at length, but for a sensible, moderate view I'd recommend the posts that Chuck Wendig has made over the past few days on the subject, which debunk the more ridiculous claims while appreciating the possibilities of self-publishing.  The usual disclaimer for Chuck — his arguments are incisive, but his language isn't for those of a strait-laced persuasion.

I've always been very cautious of the self-publishing boom.  Self-publishing is by no means new — Charles Dickens did it, among many others — but it used to be costly and difficult.  What's changed is that it's now fairly easy and (at least in theory) it can be done for free.  This is a good thing, of course, but its very big downside is that authors who used to have to hone their skills through the cycle of submission and rejection now have the power to sling out their first drafts on Kindle, unrevised, unedited, poorly designed and with amateurish covers.

It certainly can be done properly, and most of the much-touted success stories are authors who knew what they were doing (often from experience of traditional publishing) and were willing to put a significant amount of time, effort and (often) money into preparing the book and then promoting it.  These, though, aren't always easy to spot in the midst of an avalanche of poorly prepared work

In spite of my reservations, I've just taken my first plunge into self-publishing by issuing a second edition of my novel At An Uncertain Hour.  This was originally published by the American house StoneGarden, which unfortunately closed down last year due to the owner's need to rearrange the priorities in his life.  I'd like to emphasise that my experiences with StoneGarden were all positive, from submission to their honest handling of the closure and reversion of rights, and I wish Kris all the best.

This was somewhat different from the average self-publication in various ways.  For one thing, this was a book that someone had considered worth investing his own money to publish, and for another I'd been through a rigorous editorial process with StoneGarden (four edits and then the galleys, if I remember rightly).  That didn't stop me giving it another once-over, but it did mean that I didn't feel the need to hire a professional editor.  That would have been beyond my means at the moment, but I'd be very reluctant to put out a "raw" novel without it.

There was still the cover to get right.  I have little confidence in my artistic abilities, but I was lucky to get a design from the excellent A. Carson without the high fee her skills really deserve.

I published the print and EPUB editions through Lulu, and the Kindle version (obviously) through Amazon, and it was definitely a steep learning curve.  Especially as I was simultaneously doing the same for the anthology Light of the Last Day.  I learnt about how their systems work, and everything from the assignment of ISBNs to allowance for "bleed" to how to make a table of contents in Word — something I'd never had the need to do before.

There were definitely hair-tearing moments, but I'm delighted by the results, and this made me think.  Ebooks, at least, don't need to be of novel length — I have several ebooks out from various publishing of novelette/short novella length — and many of my stories have been published in magazines or webzines that are no longer available.  The rights have reverted to me, so why shouldn't I make these available again?

The pros and cons are much the same as for At An Uncertain Hour.  Although none of these works have undergone the same intensity of editing, they've been accepted and tidied up by respected editors, and shouldn't require extra professional editing.   And, like the novel, these stories have been deemed good enough for publication.

This leaves the cover, which is going to be the main sticking point.  Maybe I'll be able to get another favour, or perhaps my finances will improve to the extent that I can afford professional rates.  Or, perhaps, I can overcome my doubts and try to do it myself — though I'll certainly ask for feedback from people who'll be honest with me before I use any of my own efforts.

I have a list of suitable stories, but for now there are three priorities.  The City of Ferrid, a fantasy thriller set in an industrial revolution society (though not really steampunk) was published as both a chapbook and an ebook by Crystal Codices, a publisher sadly no longer with us.  Steal Away and Rainy Season were both published in the webzine Golden Visions, also now defunct.  I'm particularly eager to get these back into print, since they're the first two stories in my series about the... shall we say enthusiastic teenage sorcerers Karaghr and Failiu.  The third story, The Temple of Taak-Resh, is currently available from Darwin's Evolutions, and I should soon be ready to start shopping the novella The Dweller in the Crack to publishers.  It would be good to have the earlier part of the series republished.

Is any of this going to work?  I've no idea, and I don't know if I'm going to be able to get suitable covers, but I think it's worth trying.  If these do turn out successfully, I have more out-of-print stories to come.

Light of the Last Day - new fantasy anthology

Light of the Last Day

 

Edited by Nyki Blatchley & Natalie Millman

Cover art & design by Mette Pesonen

 

Print edition, EPUB edition, Kindle from Amazon.co.uk, Kindle from Amazon.com

(also available on Kindle from other regional Amazons)

 

 

 

I've just completed editing, with Canadian fantasy author Natalie Millman, a new anthology of stories and poems by thirteen authors from all across the globe, spanning a broad range of styles and approaches to fantasy. All belong to the writers' peer critique group Fantasy-writers.org, and some are widely published authors.

 

The title refers to the theme we began with, combined with a selection of unrelated pieces, to write a story involving the phrase Waking to the light of the last day. Just that: it could be the last day of the world, the last day of an old life, or even the last day of a sporting season. We left it entirely up to each author to decide what to make of the phrase, and we had an enormous variety in their responses.

 

Let me introduce you to the contributing authors and their stories:

 

 
William Moon: Questions of the Creator is a brief tale about the end of a universe that's been a disappointment to its creator. But is that really all?
 
Leslianne Wilder: The Once and Future Kiss is a contemporary piece chronicling a relationship that doesn't proceed in the right order. And who is the mysterious seducer?
 
Mette Pesonen: besides providing the beautiful cover art and interior decorations, Mette contributes two lighthearted stories. Looking for Trouble is about a Hero at a loose end, while The Forming of Draakoa tells a legend from her wonderful realm of Hypnosia, governed by the Cliche Laws.

Nyki Blatchley: I also have two stories. In Lari's People, a ritual outcasting from a village proves not to be what it seems, while Dayglow illustrates the problems when a kind-hearted giant adopts a human baby.

Lindsey Duncan: The Scientific Method has a sorcerer trying to put right the catastrophe caused by his last experiment, while The Laughing Eye is a haunting poem.

Lee Kirk: Obsession is a time-travel story, but time-travel for something far more useful than killing your grandfather or stepping on a butterfly. Lee also contributes two short pieces: a chilling poem called Madness and a melancholy vignette called Tears.

Carl J. Snyder: Hair Apparent is the tale of a magic student that everyone picks on - until he's able to take revenge on his tormentors.

Erika Wilson: Ain't No Sunshine is a disaster story with a difference, as a group of survivors find non-human help and danger when Yellowstone erupts.

Natalie Walker Millman: Gaia gives a heartbreaking picture of just how far we've turned away from Mother Earth, while The Story Tree is a chilling fable of crime and punishment.

L. M. Price: Peter and the Monster is a children's fairy-tale of an unlikely symbiotic relationship and what happens when it's disrupted.

Lydia Kurnia: Eishenan tells of a boy caught up in a cosmic war between the Sun and the Moon. He's trained to be a heartless killer, but can he really be changed that much?

Jens Hieber: In Drops of Peace, a messenger of the gods comes to offer a rebel goddess redemption or punishment. Which will she choose?

Julie St. Thomas: Milla is a deceptively simple tale of a father's concern when he has to leave his young daughter home alone. But all is not quite as it seems.

So those are the authors and the stories. I hope you enjoy Light of the Last Day.

The Lady of the House in Plasma Frequency

Plasma Frequency Issue 10

February/March 2014

 

Cover art by Ron Sanders

 

Fiction By: Gary Cuba, Eric Cline, Davian Aw, Gary D. Goodson, Nyki Blatchley, Tim Talpas, Jarod K. Anderson, Cassandra A. Clarke, George S. Walker, Wendy Hammer and Anna Zumbro

 

Buy it in print, Kindle, EPUB or PDF

on this site

 

 

This edition features my story The Lady of the House. The Traveller, immortal wanderer, has never been anywhere near the ruined house in the forest before. Or has he? The strange woman who lives there alone is positive that she knows him.