The Science of Fiction

The End Times Are Upon Us: my first earthquake (awesome!)

silverstairs — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 21:50:44 +0000

I have pneumonia. Earlier this year I was rotten parasites from my trip to the Yucatan. A month ago I dropped with a dance with E-Coli that took fifteen pounds off of my weight (and maybe two years off of my life). It has not been an easy 2011. In a twist of geophysical poetry, Oklahoma has also been undergoing some unusual perturbations. Take the last two weeks for example. The appearance of the Aurora Borealis in the night sky, and unusual autumn outbreak of large tornadoes and the largest earthquake in the states history followed by thirty+ aftershocks of varying length and intensity. All in all- a great week. Followers of my blog or writing know that geology is a passion of mine and I’ve always considered it something of a shame that I grew up in a region that was as geologically settled as Kentucky and Florida. I had no expectations that Oklahoma was going to be any different, tucked as it is in the middle of the North American craton, with a fault that hasn’t been active since the late Carboniferous. Yet at three in the morning, as I was perched at my desk reading, the dachshund came running into the room howling and spitting in the way only a wiener dog can and suddenly the house began to roar. I think that the noise of the thing is what has stuck with me the most. The shaking, the tinkle of glasses and the swinging of fixtures and pictures were all notable, but the sound- you could feel the sound. It was like entire sonic registers were being cast out of the earth that were only detectable to dachshunds and the parts of you that manufacture dread. Fantastic.

I should try to wrap this into a writing lesson somehow. For instance, I feel as though I can more accurately write about earthquakes now. Actually, the movies get earthquakes pretty right, which they should, being as Hollywood is right in the middle of earthquake central. Still, I’m thrilled.

I suppose that’s all I have at present. I have a pile of slush six feet thick that I need to get through. I read about ten stories the day before yesterday. They were not the best submissions I have ever wrestled. I want to encourage all of you writers to ask yourself a couple of questions before you send your story in: “Is my story stupid?” and “Should I really force this down some poor guys throat?” I’m joking, of course. The questions that need to be asked are far more subtle than that, but after dragging my sick ass out of bed and suffering through half a dozen “mystical serial killer” clones, perhaps I’m not kidding after all.

More soon

The Science of Fiction

Guest Posting: A message from Maggie Slater

silverstairs — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 19:04:36 +0000

This was a message I received from Maggie Slater about a week ago. I thought that it contained several gems and proved that even though she is sixty-seven years younger than I, she knows a thing or two about a thing or two. Enjoy.

So…I’m thinking of starting up another Chekhov year when November rolls around. (By Chekhov year, I’m referring to a challenge to write a completed short story a week.) To be honest, I’m not sure why I started calling it a “Chekhov year” except that I think sometime ages ago I’d read that he either wrote a short story a week on a regular basis, or wrote a letter to an aspiring author suggesting they try it. Unfortunately, I don’t have a reference for that. Maybe I just made it up. Regardless! I’ve done it before, or attempted to do it before.

In 2003-2004, or give or take a couple years, I managed to write forty-six short stories, and cut out at November/December because I figured if I ever managed to make a living writing, I’d take those weeks off for the holidays and general decompression time. Most of those forty-six were horrible, and during the year (which my mother also participated in, believe it or not–it was our mother-daughter project to trick us into writing more regularly) there were many late Friday nights when I was slamming out a really, truly unreadable piece of crap just to “finish”. These endings are now called “bear endings”–not at all for the lovely Elizabeth Bear, but because many of these stories ended in the wee-hours before Saturday 12AM with a totally random grizzly bear rushing into the story and killing all the characters, because I had to end the story and I hated everything about it. Needless to say, very few of those stories ever saw the light of day. BUT, I actually have sold two of the stories from that year, and I’ve got a handful of others that aren’t too horribly shabby either. (Ki’o Ahi was one of them, as was Earthbound (though you haven’t seen that one, and won’t, until I finish editing it).)

I learned quite a few things from that year, foreshortened or not. The first was how to write a short story. Not a truncated novel. Not a 15k novelette. Not a 20k novella. An actual, honest to goodness short story, which previously I’d had immense trouble accomplishing. “Mimicry” (clocking in at 11.5k, and just came out a little while ago in Leading Edge Magazine) was the second story I wrote during that first Chekhov year. I wrote almost all of it between Thursday-Friday night, and I think had one session that was almost 7k long all said and done. It was murder. After that, I swore to work on coming up with shorter ideas.

I also learned that ideas aren’t really that hard to come by. When you have to write a new story every week, you MAKE UP an idea and go with it, even if it’s shitty (which it often was–I had one short story that was literally about a weird, semi-futuristic, semi-Bill-and-Ted Classic Rock fan having a discussion with a friend about how hard it was going to be to break the news to his father that his fiancee was a Heavy Metal fan, as his father was a staunch traditionalist.–YEAH. That bad.) Despite having some real stinkers, though, I also managed to find some real gems that I hadn’t expected, simply because I *had* to sit down and write, no matter what, and produce something that had a beginning, a middle, and an end. Even now, though there are some stories that were just… terrible…, there are a few that I’d like to revisit sometime to mine ideas from because the core was good, even if the writing was bad. It also pushed me into genres and weird genre-crossovers I would never have seriously considered before, which was a lot of fun, whether or not I was any good at them.

The last thing (or last significant thing) I learned was the value of writing a lot of junk. If you haven’t picked up on this already, I’m a rather asinine perfectionist when it comes to fiction, and I can really lock up my own creativity freaking out about whether or not a story is “working” or whether or not I’m allowed to use “to be” verbs (thanks to a particularly awesome, though insane, English teacher in high school who took points off essays for having any use of “to be”–seeing “was” on the page still gives me pangs of guilt). I don’t normally let myself write junk, which slows everything down, because ultimately, sometimes you just have to clean out the creative pipes of all the crappy stuff that’s gotten stuck there so the good stuff can get through. I did NaNo last year and *hated* every moment of it because all I kept thinking about what HOW MUCH WORK it was going to take to make what I’d gotten down even remotely readable, and I dreaded it so much, the last 15k of the “novel” is just a long rant about how much I *really* hate this story and how much it sucks and how much I could be doing “useful” writing on something else instead of torturing myself. I’m not doing NaNo again this year, if only because my attention span is still working on that whole novel-length sustainability thing–but THAT is another whine all together, and I’ll spare you for now. The Chekhov year has the built-in benefit of changing projects quickly–so if I hate something, I just have to finish that short draft and move on to the next one. It works well with my flighty attention span.

ANYWAY, that’s my random rant. I haven’t been able to find any writers in the local area yet (working from home creates this weird vortex of self-enclosure, and working West Coast hours on the East Coast definitely compounds that, since I don’t get out until about 7PM everyday), and needed to brain dump this massive idea-thing on somebody else who might actually–if not find it interesting–at least understand why it’s rather nuts to think about trying when I’m already stretched thin with the day-job, other long-term writing projects (oh, yes! I’m going to try to keep two separate writing sessions, one for this challenge, and one for “other” projects so they don’t cancel each other out), AND trying to actually get to the gym more than once every four years. Oh, and like, being even remotely social.

Also, I’ve noticed I adopt a rather pompous writing style when communicating with you. I think I’m trying to sound smart. (I don’t often use “rather” or “often” in everyday conversation.)

Hope all’s well! Say “Hello!” to the Lovely Lady and the Sweet, Oblong Doggie.

Wisdom. Learning to write a SHORT story can be a real challenge, and finishing is one of Heinlein’s rules. Hope you took notes. There will be a test.

For more Maggie visit her blog.

The Science of Slater

Writing in the post singularity world

silverstairs — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 21:45:07 +0000

Vernor Vinge has a sequel out to A Fire Upon the Deep, which I am quite excited about (though marginally less excited than I might have been for a sequel to A Deepness in the Sky, c’est la vie). As I prepare to plop down a couple of sawbucks to purchase this novel in old fashioned paper (take that computer God!), I have been ruminating on one of Vinge’s great gifts to the world of science fiction writing: THE COMING TECHNOLOGICAL SINGULARITY. This is the notion that, at some possibly near future point, machine intelligence will develop and then be bent on designing better machine intelligence, on and on, ad infinitum. Of course I paint this in the simplest of terms and the subtleties and variations on this idea are legion, but what it gives us (the writers of sci fi) is a sort of future BC/AD event which we must deal with, even if our method of dealing with it is to ignore it completely. Don’t knock that last method- space operas are largely built by ignoring the possibility of the TS.

Warning!!! Spoiler Alert!!! The following paragraph will ruin Peter F. Hamilton’s Night’s Dawn Trilogy if you have yet to read it!!! It is like 6ooo pages long, so I don’t necessarily recommend it unless you are just into that type of masochism in your reading, but if you are and you want to read it someday- don’t read on!!!

About six months ago I read Peter F. Hamilton’s Night’s Dawn Trilogy, a space opera of such heft and detail that I had to stop using Listerine as a mouthwash (and switch to… wait for it… Scope [ha!]). AI in this world of nanonically enhanced brains is the merest automation- really classy data mining. So there are no self-aware programs… except for maybe the one… the one that ends the story. The whole thing is resolved (annoyingly) by this machine god floating by itself in space that just fixes everything. I’m not kidding, 6K pages only to have a machine singularity go “your wish is granted, everything is now okay!” That might have left a bad taste in my mouth, though the novels did stick with me and I like his old school writing style, but I digress. Peter F. Hamilton dealt with the Singularity by saying, “it will happen, just not for a long, long time.” Vinge deals with it a different way in his far-future space operas by having “Zones of Thought,” i.e. regions of the galaxy where the rules of physics differ making basic thought in the center of the galaxy impossible while at the outer edges mortals transcend to godhood. Whatever your recipe- you must deal with the Singularity. Here is a very short, informal list of ways to write science fiction without trying to “write for God.”

1. Iiiiiiiit’s The Apocalypse!: Yes, nothing gets you away from pesky transhumanism than a good old fashioned collapse of society. Plague, nuclear annihilation, cosmic disaster- all will be your friends when the only rocket ships you need to write about are the burnt out husks that your protagonists hide in near Huntsville while passing through the Northern Alabama Free Simpletons Kingdom on there way back home with the very last copy of Paradise Lost. (that’s actually pretty good… hands off)

2. I Know Kung-Fu!: Thanks to the Matrix films, even soccer moms can’t shake the feeling that the world they are living in is just some sort of complicated simulation in which they are forced to comply. The idea goes way, way back of course. The

Rene Descartes: The original Neo

earliest form of it I know of is Descartes’ Evil Demon argument of systematic doubt (which leads to the famous dictum “I think, therefore I am”). In a simulation, you have a quite infinite playground that is perfectly compatible with a post human world!

3. Quest for Fire: Mark II!: All the people are gone, turned into machine/human meta-beings, but a few zygote bearing individuals stayed, got stuck on, or were left behind on good old Earth. They rebuild on the abandoned ruins of the former inhabitants, perhaps seeing them as gods. This works well for another intelligent species that might rise up on Earth, or perhaps you can go really retro and make it about the discovery of a former intelligent species that has been singularityized.

4. Well Isn’t This Disappointing?: There just isn’t a ghost in the machine after all. Vinge calls this scenario, “The Age of Failed Dreams.” It is a proposed alternative to the TS in which all our greatest technological postulations turn out to be hooey. Things plod on in a fairly linear way from where they are now, with lots of people going “where are the flying cars?” and considerably less people going “where is the silicon messiah?”

5. Steam Punk.: I want this sub-genre to go away really badly. I’ve always viewed it as the triumph of style over substance. Fantasy masquerading as a form of sci-fi. But the shit seems to sell and the cos-play kids at the conventions show no sign of giving up brass gears as earrings, so this is a surefire way to write free of the Singularity. I exclude China Mieville from my loathing as he is a self-proclaimed fantasist, his novels work, and I’m pretty sure that he can, would, (and one day will) kick the living snot out of me. Really, have you seen this guy? He’s like a cross between Che and Mr. Clean.

6. I won’t tell if you won’t!: In other words- ignore it. Make happy, super-intelligent AI piloting everything from star ships to coffee makers and make their existences occur completely free of greater consequences. If the story telling is good, the cute cat is in a particularly precarious tree, then many readers will ignore the problem. Fewer publishers will do the same, but then again, if the cat is really cute…

7. I don’t have to tell!: Just write around it. Even Ray Kurzweil, the great TS popularizing prophet thinks that we have several decades before the coming singularity. With all that time and potential for stories, you should never really run out of room to write. Really, if you are writing a cyber-sleuth or biomedical thriller set in 2037, California, what ground do you need to concede to some postulated- even inevitable- human event? None.

8. Behold brothers and sisters, I give you Utah!: (space Mormons) Fed up with the advances in human/machine interface, colonists move to the fringes of space to start anew in Luddite splendor. Fill in story where needed.

Take that you stupid Machine Overlord! Make my existence mutable will you!

That is this. I hope you are all keeping up with your reading. Cheers

Childhoods shattered and arms broken as young wizards ridden down by Brothers of the Nights Watch

silverstairs — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 19:56:18 +0000

Oklahoma City: Sunday afternoon was warm and pleasant, the type of mid-autumn day where summer is more than just a memory, winter less than a shadow in the back of the mind. The perfect day for a group of preteens in the Warr Acres neighborhood to engage in their favorite pass time- wizarding. But as the eight children (ages 9-13) gathered in the local park last Sunday afternoon they had no clue that winter was indeed coming.

“They just came out of nowhere, all of the sudden. I was in the middle of casting this sweet Confundus Charm at Alex when these guys dressed all in black rode up on their horses and started kicking the crap out of us with swords,” said Shawn Theodore Ransdell, 12 of Warr Acres. A man that lives near the park but wished to remain anonymous confirmed that the attackers were indeed dressed all in black, but that their horses looked more like a collection of Huffies, Schwinns, and Treks, and that their swords were mostly broom handles.

“I totally nailed this one guy with an Avada Kedavra, and he like totally ignored it. Next thing I know he is hitting me in the head and yelling ‘With long-claw I smite at thee!’ and that is totally unfair because I hit him with one of the unforgivables and I’m like totally not supposed to use those.” said Ashley Tinsdale, 10 also of Warr Acres.

Local police seem baffled by the attack, but one expert, Todd Loomis, owner of Castle Games and Books, has put forward a theory. “It’s obvious that these were members of the Night’s Watch. You can tell by their black dress and the presence of Long Claw, the sword of the Lord Commander.” He went on to say that the Night’s Watch is a celibate brotherhood that “defends the realms of men.” His appraisal was reinforced by Warr Acres peeping tom and park bully Steve Higdon who stated that the black clad riders were, “a bunch of nerd-ass virgins.”

Yet questions remain in what might be a new wave of cross-series attacks. Police are remaining on alert for further attacks against young would-be Hogwartonians. “When I first heard the call from dispatch I thought, ‘oh hell, the Wring Wraiths are back.’ We had a real time keeping those Nazgul off of the kids with wands back about ten years ago. With Return of the King sucking so bad I thought we had it all behind us, but from what I hear HBO is doing a real good job with its new series and that just means more broken bones and bruises in the future.” said Chett Knightly, Warr Acres public safety officer. He went on to say, ”You know it’s really a shame when a group from a fantasy series gets preyed upon by another group from a more aggressive fantasy series. Personally, I don’t think we’ll see an end to it until there is a new Star Wars franchise. After all, hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side.”

The Science of Fiction (it’s all fiction)

Farewell Absent Willow!

silverstairs — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 20:57:42 +0000

It was about two months ago that I received an alarming E-mail, “Chaos Theory: Stories Askew” was shutting down. This was a good little magazine, always worth a perusal and a regular rejection point for stories I had submitted. It was 8:15 in the morning- not a good way to start my day. But start it I did, coffee, breakfast, the usual negotiations with my digestive system along with a frank discussion with my paranoia. Then, at 9:16, exactly 61 minutes after the first e-mail, I got the news that my favorite free fiction outlet, Absent Willow Review, was also calling it quits. My day was ruined. Nothing left to do but bust out the chocolate covered almonds and start deleting story files. What is the point of going on if gems like this were not to be? Good question, and one I asked Absent co-founder Rick DeCost (check out his interview under my “interviews” page). Here was his reply:

Hi Andrew –
Thanks For the email. As I indicated in our message, it was an extremely
hard decision for us to make. We love the genre and have been overwhelmed
with the attention the AWR has received since its inception in 2008. Our
goal was to provide a quality venue for new and established authors and we
feel we accomplished that. The reality of the situation boils down to
economics. Being a small press we found ourselves faced with the dilemma
of being to commit the time that the publication deserved to the fact that
the revenue stream was minimal. We are a free monthly publication, and
while we analyzed various models (we even queried some of our top authors
for feedback) we could not justify going to a paid model. Along the way
we had to drop some of our more popular features (the monthly newsletter,
the Editor’s Choice Award, etc.). The AWR was truly a labor of love and
while we are writers and editors, we unfortunately lacked the marketing
the skills that were needed to build a viable advertising model.
Reaching the decision was a sad one for us, and the outpouring of support
and condolences we’ve received since making the announcement has been
truly heart-warming.
Kindest Regards and best wishes,
Rick

Well, I guess that is that. Nothing left to say. She be singing. Many of you, my loyal friends and readers, have read Absent Willow and share my fondness for it. I loved it long before they published my own story. It had great writing and fantastic art- often overlooked in online publications. I can only hope that Rick and company find that the success they are looking for in the future and that such a future includes publishing. For my non-writing readers, you happy few, I want you to appreciate what a blow this is. AWR published scores of stories and equal pieces of artwork- all for free. Thousands of readers will be affected and hundreds of writers. It is approaching Halloween. What better time to say goodbye to this guy.

Rest in peace scary pumpkin man

My day in a story, or Andrew gets the plague.

silverstairs — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 23:21:40 +0000

Some of you may (or may not) know, that I work at a restaurant a few times a week. It is not a heavy schedule and I find that I really enjoy the forced socializing after several years hiding in the house. This Friday however, I discovered I was in a movie, a movie about the plague.

Let me start by saying that for the past couple of weeks I have been a kind of kinetic thing. A super-human blur of motion and productivity. I’ve been a regular early riser, a regular gym goer and absolutely heroic in the garden and house. I can’t explain it; I’ve just been feeling really good. So Friday morning I awoke at five in the morning and began trimming some overgrown shrubs and getting all the weeks trimming tied up for the day’s collection, cooked breakfast for two, walked the dogs, went to the gym and then took shower prior to reading through the last slush in my inbox. Then, energized and enlightened, I drove to work to open the restaurant. I got there and was told I would be training a new employee, which was a bit of a compliment as I am myself fairly new there, though I certainly do a good job. After setting up the dining room I noticed I had worked up a bit of a sweat, but this is not unusual as I move fast. I drank some cold water and settled in to a more paced routine. When the restaurant opened half an hour later I was still perspiring fiercely. I changed shirts. Twenty minutes later I changed again. And then, despairing of ever staying dry, I put on a button-down that stayed a safe, linen distance from my saturated tee. A large table of woman sat in my section and I began to describe the high-lights of the menu, but my mouth was doing funny things, my tongue felt like it was borrowed from someone considerably larger than myself. Worse, I kept forgetting things. Understand, I almost never write down peoples orders. I can remember six complicated menu choices without even trying. It’s a gift. I suddenly found myself unable to remember the words that came before the word that was being at that very moment spoken. I went to make their drinks. I said to my co-worker, “I think I might be coming down with something.” He looked at me with a bit of pity and perhaps a bit of disbelief. I pressed on. I went to the table to get their orders, taking pains to write down exactly what they were having with a seat position beside it; all trust in my memory was going out the door. I started with the first lady; I noticed that sweat was dripping off my nose onto my notepad. By the time I got to the last position, the seat was running off my face, like a water pique was being aimed between my eyebrows. I wrote down the order, though I had no comprehension of what was being said. I had to hand the order off to my trainee with a sort of “figure it out, do as I say” comment, I was beginning to black out. I stumbled into the owner of the place int he kitchen. I said, “Sxxxx, I don’t feel so good,” to his back. He started to say some sort of dismissive, ‘you stupid hung-over servers’ type thing, then he saw me. Somewhere around then I lost the ability to hold anything in my hand. Then I lost the ability to understand where I was. My next memories are about a half hour later on my couch at home, sweat soaked and heaving vomit into an orange bucket. It is three days later. I’m mostly recovered, just kind of weak and lethargic. But I do have one wonderful memory: I can remember the faces of the women at the table as they looked at me in horror. I was a thing of contamination and they knew it and I felt it, though at the moment it happened I was being pulled along a path quite beyond my control. I wasn’t a person at that moment- I had no free will, but they viewed me as something far more offensive than some criminal.

It was… enlightening.

Science of Fiction

The Holy Grail of Science Fiction Plot-Lines: We have FASTER THAN LIGHT TRAVEL!

silverstairs — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 14:35:10 +0000

Okay, okay, fine, I know. It is waaaay too early to say that, but I have always wanted to say that. Perhaps only “Lady’s and Gentlemen, I give you Artificial Intelligence” ranks higher on my hoped-for announcement list.

So a quick rundown on what has happened even though if you read this blog you likely already know. CERN (or what I like to call Euro-Disney) rammed a proton into some graphite and created a burst of neutrinos (neutrinos are low-mass, uncharged subatomic particles that rarely interact with matter). These neutrinos were then detected about 700 km away in an Italian neutrino detector. The problem, the wonder, the miracle??? The particles were detected 50-60 billionths of a second too soon!!!! It could be a detection problem, it is likely just human error, but it could be something else.

If you think that this sounds like no big deal, think again. Einstein established that the speed of light is the absolute of universal values- NOTHING, NOT EVEN LIGHT, CAN GO THE SPEED OF LIGHT! Did you hear that? Light- photons which have small but appreciable masses, cannot go the speed of light. The speed of light is just an absolute value. For anything with mass to achieve that speed (299,792,458 meters per second or over 186,000 miles per second) it would require every scrap of energy in the universe. The most important thing to my mind isn’t that we might build super-luminal ships, but that we might send information faster than light. If Einstein isn’t turned entirely upon his head, then this discovery could point to different, accessible dimensions, hell, it could point to sending message through time.

But probably not.

Still, Arthur C. Clarke once said that any story that contains faster than light travel is a fantasy story, not a science fiction story. Other than missing the “fiction” part of that linguistic equation, Clarke really denied the possibilities. Even if he ends up being correct, ain’t if fun to pretend.

The Science of Fiction

Also: Congratulations to Maggie Slater on correctly predicting the newly discovered binary star planet systems.

Guest Post from A Writer’s Vanity- How to fake your way to Amazon Success!!! Self publishing made sleazy

silverstairs — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 15:19:22 +0000

Note to my readers: Jason Sizemore, Founder/Editor of the award winning sci-fi and dark fantasy publication Apex Books (and digest, magazine etc..) as well as the instigator of The Zombie Feed which publishes high quality work about chickens. I know that it seems silly to say that a magazine publishes high quality work when I’m obviously fond of them. I didn’t say Apex publishes high quality work because it can be taken as a given. Zombie story outlets are another matter. Most- maybe 99%- are utter trash. I sold a story to one of these markets once and after seeing grammar errors of their earlier anthologies I had to demand the rights to my story back. The Zombie Feed is not like these, it has Apex level quality, and Apex has become one of the darlings of the pro-level genre fiction world. (I’m not kidding- I had a conversation in Austin with one of the founders of Cyber Punk and he was all about his Apex) So that’s my pitch. As a reader of this blog you are contractually obligated to root for me in my personal publishing odyssey and as I have been published in both of the aforementioned markets, you must now do your part and read on. Lifted, without permission, directly from Jason Sizemore’s blog- A Writer’s Vanity- here is, well, here it is…

According to Bloomberg in this article dated December 21, 2010, Amazon was expected to sell 8,000,000 Kindles during the year. To be honest, I bet that figure will be greater.

Then there are all those iPads flying off the shelf. The nook color is a pretty damn cool reader and has a growing fan base. I even know a few people who read books on their smart phones (they are tougher than me… I just don’t have the eyes for it).

Even with so many new units and new eBook buyers, as a publisher, I find it a challenge to keep with the eBook rat race. For better or for worse, the self-publishers have sent a tidal wave of product to readers, most of it priced at 99 cents. This has created a new business advertising model where word of mouth, quality, and more traditional advertising outlets have less of an impact. The new model relies a lot more on building a platform (nowadays, it is all about what you have to offer to a reader in terms of expertise and less so in terms of entertainment), blind luck, and gaming the system.

The platform is something the author (or in my case, publisher) is something that you can control. The Apex blog is what we offer to readers and hope it serves expertise when it comes to things such as writing, genre matters, editing, etc. My personal blog my platform is that of a publisher and editor. A marketing friend of mine explained it like this: “Figure out what you can bring to people that most others can’t. That’s the stuff you blog about. That’s the stuff that will build an audience.” Naturally, there are dozens of other factors… timeliness of posts (personally, I’m poor at this), writing ability, authority, and so on. You hope what you do draws enough attention.

Gaming the system comes next. You offer a taste for 99 cents (perhaps the first book of a series or a novella). You talk a bunch of people into reviewing the book on Amazon. You write your product description in the manner that current marketing studies shows is most effective for producing a sale. You make sure your book cover title and author name can be seen on the book’s product page and in search results. You smartly tag your book (and talk a bunch of people to do the same). You try to place your book in less competitive bestselling book categories. Then you organize an Amazon sales ranking drive to get yourself placed on the bestseller lists (once there, it has been proven by studies that your sales will increase due to the visibility… blind luck will dictate how long or successful your stay on the list will be).

Or you pay $400 to sites like KindleNation to be listed in their newsletter and hope it generates enough interest.

Or you become like a tent revival preacher and appeal to a crowd desperately seeking validation (a high percentage of self-publishers) and build your audience.

Or you mimic a popular mainstream series and appeal to a crowd wanting more of the same.

I’m not making judgement on those who have successfully gamed the system. I tip my hat to them for having the smarts and resources to do so.

Heck, I’m even making a play at the game.

Apex has announced a “Kindle Ranking Drive” for Sara M. Harvey’s The Convent of the Pure. I’ve priced the book at 99 cents, I’ve tinkered with the book’s Amazon page, gotten some reviews posted, added some tags, built this blog using my editing/publishing ‘expertise’ platform, and am now asking *you* to help me game the system.

Between 9am and 9pm EST today Apex will be doing its damnedest to land The Convent of the Pure either in the top #1000 Kindle titles or in the top 100 of some bestseller lists.

To participate, all you have to do is buy a copy of The Convent of the Pure from Amazon for your Kindle reader or Kindle app. All it takes is 99 cents.

Click here to help me game the system and to buy a great book for 99 cents!

99 cents! But the sexy is free.

My Interview With Elizabeth Bear

silverstairs — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 16:24:28 +0000

There are a handful of living, active writers that don’t need to sell me. Writers whose body of work has, story by story, quietly entered my conversation with the world around me until one day I read a story and I think, “this reminds me of another story,” and when I look to see who the authors of both were it turns out to be the same person and from then on I carry that writer’s style as a sort of benchmark from which I view all other work. These are also the writers that most often leave me haunted, shocked, tearful, or wishing that the short story was a novella, the novella- a novel. Honestly, I’m terrible with names, both in my personal life and in my reading life. Part of this stems from the fact that I read so much, often as many as twenty shorts a week, which puts me in at somewhere over the average “reader” but under the slush wrangler minimum. Still, as disengaged as I am from names and titles, a few have asserted themselves into my consciousness and the list of these is the same as the list of writers that have imposed their essence on my world view.

I will name them, off the top of my head and without consultation now: Paul J. McAuley, Ian McDonald, Aastair Rynolds, and the one I come back to most often and with the most anticipation, Elizabeth Bear. I will purchase an entire anthology if she has a story in it. I would purchase a cookbook if she had a recipe for vegetarian meatloaf in there. We go way back, Elizabeth and me. I can’t say how far back, I can only say that the style I first came to recognize as belonging to Elizabeth has been with me since at least 2005. Elizabeth hit her stride and never looked back starting (to my mind) in 2005. In 2007 she published the story “Tideline” in Asimov’s (May Issue) and I thought it was one of the most perfect stories I had ever read. Others agreed, it garnered her a Hugo award (in her bibliography on her website, she notes to the side of this listing “finally a story sold to Asimov’s”…indeed!). A year later, another sale to Asimov’s with “Shoggoths in Bloom,” which nabbed a second Hugo in as many years and an absolute flood of critical attention both popular and academic. That rocket ship statuette turns out to be very apt. So I watch as this writer goes from nagging pattern at the edge of my awareness to darling-star of the genre to being on the verge of… well whatever she wants to come next I would imagine. Something about her reminds me of Ursula Le Guin, and it has nothing to do with gender.

Less me talking, more her speaking. I gush no more, for now. Without further ado, I give you my short little interview with-

I think my readers will really want to know about your first real fiction sale, but there is rumor (by rumor I mean you say it on your website) that you “disavow” your first publication. So, given the gap of four years from that publication to the next- what happened in those four years that made you proud of your production?

I learned to write.

Actually, I always think my work could be better. There’s a sweet spot of about two years ago where I’ve let go enough of the perfect book in my head to actually read my own old work and enjoy it. And then it ages out of that band and all I can see is how much I had to learn when I wrote it.

You’ve had a prolific decade, does Elizabeth Bear ever get rejected?

Fairly often, actually. Several novel proposals so far this year, in fact.

Most writers I know cringe at earlier work with the cringes becoming progressively more manageable. You say you learned to write, but were there specific components to that process that you could recommend to those writers who are in your 1996 shoes right now?

Keep writing. Learn how to learn. Apply those techniques to your writing.

Or alternately: Right story. Right desk. Right day. Write better.

So much of it is luck–but you can make your own luck by spending as much time as possible mindfully and directedly developing yours skills.

I think finding an opportunity to read slush–or critique a number of stories by other writers–is invaluable. Far more useful, really, than receiving crits one’s self.

You’ve written several stories with other writers, and this is something that newer writers find difficult as it seems to conflict with the “writer as tortured, solitary laborer” Byronic trope. What do find enjoyable or helpful working in tandem? Are your writing partnerships “Batman and Robin,” “Starsky and Hutch,” “Han and Chewie,” or “Thelma and Louis?”

I’m not sure what any of that last sentence means.

But Byron was a pretentious twerp (albeit a pretty good poet) and his and Shelley’s romantic nonsense about inspiration and pining for one’s muse and suffering for art has probably cost the world more good writers over the past two centuries than just about any other toxic meme I can think of.

Artists require community just as much as anybody else. That’s why you tend to find them in cohorts and clades–the Chelsea Hotel music scene of the 1970s; the Minnesota SFF scene of the 1980s. It’s all the same thing–we inspire and bootstrap each other, and we learn from each others’ examples and mistakes.

The nice thing about working with a partner, frankly, is the ability to say “This part bores me. Can you write it?”

Is your other car a Boojum?

Nor a Gremlin, neither.

Just before Garner Dozois started screening my calls, he mentioned that the recent recession has actually helped portions of the sci-fi/fantasy market- particularly among the semi-pro e-zines. Which of this elite cadre of survivors stands out most to you? Do you have a favorite small press?

I’m fond of Ideomancer, having worked there, But quite frankly, I’m not at all up on the online semipro scene these days.

I do think a thriving semipro scene is vital to the genre, though–short fiction is the equivalent of the club scene. It’s where we all get to know each other and our work, play with experiments, bat ideas back and forth.

When I talk to people about a story you’ve written I often get interrupted with, “Wait, I thought you said it was science fiction?” All I can say is, “Somestimes she is, and somestimes she ain’t.” Sometimes genre writers get pigeonholed. Why didn’t you?

Stubbornness and a short attention span?

It was probably a critical career error–I’d probably have much better numbers these days if I had just settled in and written a Jenny Casey novel every six months for the last five years.

But I get bored easily.

For someone that is “non-genre” specific, your space chops are pretty darn tight. Would I be wrong to assume that you’ve dabbled in the Golden Age of sci-fi?

Dabbled in? I’m not sure what that means. But I’m a third generation SFF fan on both sides of the family; I grew up reading science fiction and fantasy. So I’ve read a lot of the classics of the genre, or at least a fairly representative sampling.

I was sort of a fan in isolation, though, for many years–so I’m not as up on fandom history.

You have a character in a story named Celsius Washington which I don’t think Thomas Pynchon could do better. I’m not asking a question, I just wanted you to know.

I do? Crap, I’ve forgotten him. Where is he?

It’s in “The Red In The Sky Is Our Blood,” from the John Scalzi edited antho Metatropolis. A minor character, I only remember because I considered changing my pen name to “Fahrenheit Adams” for a bit so as to stop pissing off the editor Andrew I. Porter.*

Oh, right! And I remember being very pleased with that name when I came up with it. I used to know somebody named Kelvin, and it seemed like such a great name–

I may use “Kelvin” someday, too.

About twenty years ago I lived in the sci-fi/fantasy section of the B Dalton Bookstore at the nearby mall. One day the very intimidating manager told me that she could give me directions to the public library and that if I was going to loiter in her bookstore I could do better than loiter in the teenage boys club. I wasn’t really hurt by getting booted out the bookstore (Walden Books just opened up on the other side of the mall), I was hurt that science fiction was a boys club. It began years of genre-anxiety and closeted science fiction loving. These days I fly my sci-fi flag very proudly, but the accusation that the genre is a boys club has been leveled more than once. If you were to write a hateful letter to the mean manager of the B Dalton Books on my behalf, what would you say as to the accusation that sci-fi and fantasy is a redoubt for adolescent boys?

I’d probably just sniff sorrowfully and walk off. Life is too short to argue with assholes.

So I’ve been putting this question off because I know you hear about it all the time, but how has your life changed since having “Tideline” named “Story of the Week” on this block two years ago? Oh, and I suppose my readers will want to know what it was like winning that smaller prize, The Hugo. So what was that like to win it (the first time)?

Well, I was at home on the internet, watching a liveblog feed of the awards and possibly drinking some bourbon. It all had a dizzy unreality to it. And then there was a lot of congratulatory email to field.

….and the second time….?

The only award I’ve won that I’ve been there to receive! As I recall, I burst into tears.

I’m so cool.

Author you are loving right now?

Caitlin Kiernan.

If you suddenly turned into Elizabeth Care Bear- what would the symbol on your tummy be that would (when initiated by the energetic reaction known as “The Care Bear Stare”) fire rays of cuddly justice at perpetrators minor naughtiness?

I’d be Biker Bear, and the symbol on my tummy would be a Hog.

Last question. I’ve tried several types of fertilizer, more water, less water, bone meal, blood meal and compost and nothing is working. I’ve been told you are the expert, so can you please, please, please tell me how I can get my Shoggoths to bloom?

They never bloom once transplanted.

Sorry about that.

Thank you Elizabeth!

And thank you loyal readers! I’ve had a wonderful uptick in subscribers lately, half of them from the other side of the equator which is, as everyone knows, the best side fore spotting supernovae! If you are one of my new readers, enjoy this supernova.

That is the Science of fiction. A bit of housekeeping: I haven’t had a story of the week in, well, months, and honestly I usually just talk about the stories I like so I am axing that page shortly. Peter M. Ball once admonished me for not posting any of my own work on here (beyond links when I’ve made a sale) so I have started a page called, “The Unpublishables.” If you go to the new page you will find stories that I have failed to find homes for. Two so far, more in time.

Been having a great few weeks as far as production and I will update that saga later.

*esteemed editor Andrew I. Porter, upon my first pro-level sale sent me an email letting me know that I needed to include my middle initial in any future publications (I have done so), but I have been thinking about changing my pen name before it is too late. My middle name, Clark, though without the ‘E’ at the end is till sci-fi writery enough, so I think I am going to back that up by changing my last name to ‘Silverberg.” It would jive with my hacker alias “silverstairs.” Just a thought.

Hope to hear from you and please subscribe.

A final note: Mme. Bear was uber cool and approachable. I want to thank her from the bottom of my heart for making and taking time to answer belated rounds of questions. For me, this was an honor. If I ever gushed, E.B., it was only because I’m starstruck!

Thanks

Andrew Clark Porter

My Wiener Dog Hates Militant Vegan Straight Edge Music- and where I’m submitting (and getting rejected) Go Lightspeed!!

silverstairs — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 14:47:48 +0000

In the early 90′s I was a follower of the hardcore scene- hardcore as in punk rock, not like porn- though by some definitions… Anyway, a coworker invited me to a straight-edge hardcore all ages show a few days ago and I didn’t go (though I was tempted, just like I was tempted to get back on my skateboard two years ago and now I don’t walk so good). Still it evoked memories and I came home and pulled out the old Earth Crisis single “Firestorm,” and let me just say- wow, I mean, like, frightening and fascist and self-aggrandizing evil. Here are a sample of the lyrics:

Earth Crisis: Firestorm

Street by street. Block by block. Taking it all back.

The youth’s immersed in poison–turn the tide

counterattack. Violence against violence, let the roundups begin.

A firestorm to purify the bane that society drowns in. No

mercy, no exceptions, a declaration of total war.

The innocents’ defense is the reason it’s waged for.

… See? Violence against violence? Let theroundups begin? The ROUNDUPS!?? I could be wrong here, but I’m pretty sure that roundups are the exact opposite of doing good. Let’s just say that in a certain country on a certain oft neglected continent, a colonial European regime terrorized and subjugated an entire native population and put its most charismatic and effective leader in an 8X10 cell for decades and when he got out of prison and took his country over the first thing he did was tell the people asking for ROUNDUPS that they could go suck it. No wonder I never listened to the lyrics, but the guitars rocked.

I gave these people five dollars once.

So I’m listening to this panoply of crap and enjoying it like the sugar daddy of nostalgia that it is and I realized that every time I played (three in total) my Dachshund would run into the other room and get under a blanket. He doesn’t do that when I listen to Motor Head. As my friend Todd Cook once said: Straight Edge is the Republican Party of Punk Rock. He might have said the Nazi Party of Punk Rock but unfortunately there already is one of those.

So onto getting and not getting published. I want to take this opportunity to give a big ol’ shout out to the speed demons of slush management at Lightspeed Magazine. They received, processed and rejected my submission to them in three days! I hate to say it, but that kicked ass. You never get such quick resolution in this game. I mean most places are two to three months and some of the bigger venues can push six- for a rejection! I also want to point out that it is a really slick outfit with all of the bells and whistles that set it apart from operations like… well, like this! Good fiction, definitely a feather in your cap if they buy you. Also good non-fiction, I just go sucked into an article (and I mean just minutes ago when I was making the link earlier in this paragraph) about the types of responses to alien invasions and types of invasions represented in various sci-fi media. It was written by one Jeremiah Tolbert, who, if you want to know, wrote a great story that was published in Interzone that involves a lot of decomposition and brave choices of tense. I should probably put him in my writers I want to harass box, but he seems busy.

So Go LIGHTSPEED! …even though you can’t really “go light speed,” I mean, that’s ridiculous, it would take all the energy in the universe to go light speed and if you did that you wouldn’t have anywhere to go now would you. Nope, it is much easier to go the magazine version of Lightspeed.

Coming up next: My interview with Elizabeth Bear- author of such Hugo Award wining tales as Tideline, and Shoggoths In Bloom. If you don’t know her, go to a bookstore or any library with a stack of sci-fi anthologies from the last seven years and pick three at random- odds are good that all three with have one of her stories in there….

That is the Science of Fiction

you know what is coming up next.