I'll fully admit, the worldbuilding work I've done for the Banshee space-opera verse has was done in a strange way. Namely, I did a combination of top-down and bottom-up building.
To define these terms: top-down building is when you make first big decisions about the different cultures, borders and interactions, and then build the map to meet those needs. Bottom-up building is when you create the map first, and then figure out cultures, borders and interactions based on what the map demands.
Neither approach is right or wrong, good or bad. They're just different ways to go about it. In fact, I advocate the hybrid approach.
In this case, the "top down" involved the decisions about some of the alien cultures closest to Earth. I knew one thing I wanted was a large Alliance in close proximity to Earth, who had taken a preservationist/non-interference attitude to the planetbound cultures in their spheres of influence. I knew I wanted an aggressively expansionist culture (the Paxin) and an imperialist culture (the Surani), and a recent interstellar addition who would give the humans a good fight (the Krek'nik).
Also, in general, I wanted our interstellar region to be filled with intelligent life that was all, more or less, in the same place-- i.e. everyone had gotten into space or could potentially get into space within a few centuries of each other (or in the case of the three "old" powers in the region, a few millennia)-- which, in cosmic terms is the blink of an eye and highly improbably, unless you incorporate a serious don't-poke-this-too-hard conceit. Which I did.
But, in terms of "bottom up", I knew I wanted the stellar geography to be sensible. Real stars where they really are. Now, this meant I probably did a bit of homeworld-fudging-- I'm given to understand that Procyon is probably too young a star to have a planet with advanced life on it, for example-- but that fulfilled at least a sense of verisimilitude.
But the other "bottom up" aspect I had to ask myself was-- what else was out there? I had the raw data on stars within 150 light-years of Earth, and from that, crafted some randomization for each star: Are there planets? Where are the planets? Do any have life? Is that life intelligent? How technologically advanced is that intelligent life? Have they achieved FTL travel, and if so, when? From all that, I could build up exact details of the 147 starfaring cultures, and how their potential interaction might be.
This bottom-up method gave me the opportunity come up with ideas that I might never have had without star-map based data fueling it. Seven alien cultures in relative proximity to each other form a loose coalition. One advanced culture with no one in proximity builds a sizable empire before encountering any pushback. Another with a powerful aggressive species nearby builds their culture on defending themselves.
From this, I found more interesting discoveries. I devised a little equation based on expansion (how many colonies or outposts a culture had) and their tech level, and were able to calculate who the true "First Level" powers in the region were. And from that, I've been putting together how the Astronomical Geopolitics (Astropolitics?) really work.
I'd like to think doing that work-- while anal and time-consuming-- has created something a little more organic than just a top-down alone process would have.
Showing posts with label space opera. Show all posts
Showing posts with label space opera. Show all posts
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Monday, March 10, 2014
Where is the next Star Trek?
Something occurred to me recently: we haven't had a successful show about humanity's future in outer space on television since 2005, and that with a very broad definition of "successful". Before you say "Battlestar Galactica" or one of the Stargate variants-- neither of those technically qualify. BSG, strictly speaking, is set in the distant past (sorry, spoilers), and Stargate is more in an alt-present than the future. The last real attempt was the interesting failure "Defying Gravity" in 2009, and even that was set entirely within the confines of the Solar System.
In the 1990s, we had three iterations of Star Trek, Babylon 5 and Andromeda. in the first half of the next decade: yet another Trek, Firefly and Farscape*.
So where is the next Star Trek?
Now, so I'm clear, I'm not talking about another iteration of Trek itself. Not that I would object, mind you, but I'm not sure what form it would take, given the baggage of five different series, and even the rebooted movies come laden with baggage.
But it doesn't need to be Trek-- which Babylon 5 and Firefly proved. It can be its own new thing, a brand new vision of the future. In fact, that would probably be best.
So why hasn't it been done? I mean, it's not like anyone says, "Well, we don't need another cop show" or "we don't need another lawyer show".
I think there is a huge audience out there hungry for something new that would appeal to fans of Trek (and B5, Farscape, Firefly, BSG, and so on.) So I'm downright surprised that no one has tried to capitalize on it. And it can be presented in an entirely new way, because the television landscape has changed radically since any of those shows have gone off the air. I'm also surprised that no one seems to be hungry to do it.
My first rule of writing, in terms of what I write, is "write what I would want to read". I don't bother with trend-chasing or mimicking others or even what's necessarily "sellable"-- just that simple rule that I would want to read it. If it's something I'm geeked out on, then that passion would come through, and readers would be into it as well.
That's what's at the core of the universe I built for Banshee, my simmering on the backburner work-in-progress. It's a vision of the future that's not Trek (or B5, Farscape, Firefly, BSG, etc.), but would appeal to the fans of those things.
But in the mean time, I wouldn't mind seeing a new show. Trek or otherwise.
---
*- True, Farscape is also an "alt-present".
In the 1990s, we had three iterations of Star Trek, Babylon 5 and Andromeda. in the first half of the next decade: yet another Trek, Firefly and Farscape*.
So where is the next Star Trek?
Now, so I'm clear, I'm not talking about another iteration of Trek itself. Not that I would object, mind you, but I'm not sure what form it would take, given the baggage of five different series, and even the rebooted movies come laden with baggage.
But it doesn't need to be Trek-- which Babylon 5 and Firefly proved. It can be its own new thing, a brand new vision of the future. In fact, that would probably be best.
So why hasn't it been done? I mean, it's not like anyone says, "Well, we don't need another cop show" or "we don't need another lawyer show".
I think there is a huge audience out there hungry for something new that would appeal to fans of Trek (and B5, Farscape, Firefly, BSG, and so on.) So I'm downright surprised that no one has tried to capitalize on it. And it can be presented in an entirely new way, because the television landscape has changed radically since any of those shows have gone off the air. I'm also surprised that no one seems to be hungry to do it.
My first rule of writing, in terms of what I write, is "write what I would want to read". I don't bother with trend-chasing or mimicking others or even what's necessarily "sellable"-- just that simple rule that I would want to read it. If it's something I'm geeked out on, then that passion would come through, and readers would be into it as well.
That's what's at the core of the universe I built for Banshee, my simmering on the backburner work-in-progress. It's a vision of the future that's not Trek (or B5, Farscape, Firefly, BSG, etc.), but would appeal to the fans of those things.
But in the mean time, I wouldn't mind seeing a new show. Trek or otherwise.
---
*- True, Farscape is also an "alt-present".
Monday, September 30, 2013
Worldbuilding: Aliens and Environments
Now I'm working on Banshee, a space-opera novel that, on a fundamental level, is about putting a human being on a ship with a whole lot of different aliens and asking, "So how is this going to work?"
There are some hard questions that can be asked that a lot of sci-fi works tend to ignore or only give a passing nod to.
If I'm being honest, on my end, I'll probably be giving a passing nod to some of them myself. But here are some things I've been thinking about in terms of putting nearly a dozen different alien species on one ship together. First and foremost, the question of, "Is this even worth the trouble?" Can the advantage of mutual cooperation amongst different species outweigh the inherent difficulties in trying to live in the same space?
Let's just presume, in this instance, that most species on the ship have a respiration cycle that requires oxygen. It's not a terrible presumption, mind you-- any respiration cycle will need a molecule that's reactive, but not TOO reactive-- but then you have the question of How Much Oxygen? Odds are not everyone will need the same balance as everyone else. What if one species needs, say, 30% oxygen in their atmosphere? Then the reactive properties that make oxygen molecules useful for humans becomes a little more problematic. What if one species requires an atmosphere that's toxic to another? What if one species's waste product is toxic to another?
How do you decide who needs to just wear an environmental suit, since their environmental needs are far too inconvenient to everyone else?
Other factors to consider, just for starters: Gravity. Light levels. Temperature tolerances. Radiation levels.
And that's just about being in the same space.
What about working in the same space? Even presuming that interspecies communication is functional enough to facilitate working together, what about ergonomics?
How do you make workstations that accommodate beings with different body sizes, body types, forms of fine-motor control, visual ranges and hearing ranges? Do you put chairs at them? If you aren't humanoid, chairs are pointless. If you have only two hands (or equivalent) then using a console designed for four or more will be very challenging. Similarly, if you have four or more, using a console designed for only two would feel woefully inefficient.
So you have to ask yourself, which compromises are the best fit for everyone, and which ones create ones that everyone can tolerate, but no one is comfortable with? And at what point would it become too hard to be worth the trouble?
There are some hard questions that can be asked that a lot of sci-fi works tend to ignore or only give a passing nod to.
If I'm being honest, on my end, I'll probably be giving a passing nod to some of them myself. But here are some things I've been thinking about in terms of putting nearly a dozen different alien species on one ship together. First and foremost, the question of, "Is this even worth the trouble?" Can the advantage of mutual cooperation amongst different species outweigh the inherent difficulties in trying to live in the same space?
Let's just presume, in this instance, that most species on the ship have a respiration cycle that requires oxygen. It's not a terrible presumption, mind you-- any respiration cycle will need a molecule that's reactive, but not TOO reactive-- but then you have the question of How Much Oxygen? Odds are not everyone will need the same balance as everyone else. What if one species needs, say, 30% oxygen in their atmosphere? Then the reactive properties that make oxygen molecules useful for humans becomes a little more problematic. What if one species requires an atmosphere that's toxic to another? What if one species's waste product is toxic to another?
How do you decide who needs to just wear an environmental suit, since their environmental needs are far too inconvenient to everyone else?
Other factors to consider, just for starters: Gravity. Light levels. Temperature tolerances. Radiation levels.
And that's just about being in the same space.
What about working in the same space? Even presuming that interspecies communication is functional enough to facilitate working together, what about ergonomics?
How do you make workstations that accommodate beings with different body sizes, body types, forms of fine-motor control, visual ranges and hearing ranges? Do you put chairs at them? If you aren't humanoid, chairs are pointless. If you have only two hands (or equivalent) then using a console designed for four or more will be very challenging. Similarly, if you have four or more, using a console designed for only two would feel woefully inefficient.
So you have to ask yourself, which compromises are the best fit for everyone, and which ones create ones that everyone can tolerate, but no one is comfortable with? And at what point would it become too hard to be worth the trouble?
Monday, August 26, 2013
Worldbuilding/Perils of the Writer: One-Story Worlds vs. Many-Story Worlds
There are pretty much two ways a sf/fantasy writer can go about writing and worldbuilding: come up with a story, and build a world for it to be in; or build a world, and come up with stories to put in it.
One way to think of this is the difference between Star Wars and Star Trek. The Star Wars universe is really only about telling one story: the rise and fall of the Empire, and the concurrent fall and rise of the Jedi. I would argue that part of the problem with the Star Wars prequels is all they do-- all they really can do-- is set up the board for the story the universe has been built to tell. Star Trek, on the other hand built its universe out of telling many different stories, and has the ability to telling many, many different kinds of stories. Of course, with the Star Trek universe, you've got a lot of patchwork worldbuilding, held together by spackle, baling wire and wishful thinking.
There's no right or wrong in this, mind you. Like plotting/pantsing, whichever method works best for your own particular style is the right way to go. However, both methods have their challenges.
Personally, I'm a Method Two guy: I start with crafting and detailing the world, and the process of doing that opens up the avenues for stories. The challenge behind that is narrowing things down to figure out what, actually, you need to write in that world. With a whole wide world of grand and epic scope, you want to treat the whole thing like an enormous brood of children. No one gets neglected. So a world that has the potential for many, many stories might not yield any stories, because no singular story you write can be as grand and far-reaching as the worldbuilding work you've done.
This was exactly my problem with my trunked project Crown of Druthal. It was nothing but a travelogue, going from place to place with no through-plot and little purpose. And why was that? Because I had made EVERYWHERE and therefore I had to go EVERYWHERE. It wasn't until after realizing the flaws with that mindset that I was able to narrow my focus to one city, and let the rest of the world only brush up to it, as the rest of the world would in a cosmopolitan city. I had a similar problem in the space opera setting for Banshee-- I had defined so much, I had to force myself to narrow the focus of what the story actually was going to be.
So why not do it the other way, and build the world to suit your story? Of course you can, like I said, nothing wrong with that. The challenge there comes from when you need or want to do more beyond that story. I've mentioned this before with David Eddings. Everything in The Belgariad was set up to tell that story, as the ultimate, saving-the-world, fulfill-the-prophecy, make-everything-right story. And then a sequel series was asked for. So they had to undercut The Belgariad by essentially saying, "Yeah, that was the dress rehearsal. Here's the REAL event." Of course, building the world to fit the story you've come up with doesn't have to have this problem. Sometimes doing it that way can open all sorts of avenues to new stories that you hadn't imagined to begin with.
One way to think of this is the difference between Star Wars and Star Trek. The Star Wars universe is really only about telling one story: the rise and fall of the Empire, and the concurrent fall and rise of the Jedi. I would argue that part of the problem with the Star Wars prequels is all they do-- all they really can do-- is set up the board for the story the universe has been built to tell. Star Trek, on the other hand built its universe out of telling many different stories, and has the ability to telling many, many different kinds of stories. Of course, with the Star Trek universe, you've got a lot of patchwork worldbuilding, held together by spackle, baling wire and wishful thinking.
There's no right or wrong in this, mind you. Like plotting/pantsing, whichever method works best for your own particular style is the right way to go. However, both methods have their challenges.
Personally, I'm a Method Two guy: I start with crafting and detailing the world, and the process of doing that opens up the avenues for stories. The challenge behind that is narrowing things down to figure out what, actually, you need to write in that world. With a whole wide world of grand and epic scope, you want to treat the whole thing like an enormous brood of children. No one gets neglected. So a world that has the potential for many, many stories might not yield any stories, because no singular story you write can be as grand and far-reaching as the worldbuilding work you've done.
This was exactly my problem with my trunked project Crown of Druthal. It was nothing but a travelogue, going from place to place with no through-plot and little purpose. And why was that? Because I had made EVERYWHERE and therefore I had to go EVERYWHERE. It wasn't until after realizing the flaws with that mindset that I was able to narrow my focus to one city, and let the rest of the world only brush up to it, as the rest of the world would in a cosmopolitan city. I had a similar problem in the space opera setting for Banshee-- I had defined so much, I had to force myself to narrow the focus of what the story actually was going to be.
So why not do it the other way, and build the world to suit your story? Of course you can, like I said, nothing wrong with that. The challenge there comes from when you need or want to do more beyond that story. I've mentioned this before with David Eddings. Everything in The Belgariad was set up to tell that story, as the ultimate, saving-the-world, fulfill-the-prophecy, make-everything-right story. And then a sequel series was asked for. So they had to undercut The Belgariad by essentially saying, "Yeah, that was the dress rehearsal. Here's the REAL event." Of course, building the world to fit the story you've come up with doesn't have to have this problem. Sometimes doing it that way can open all sorts of avenues to new stories that you hadn't imagined to begin with.
Monday, July 15, 2013
Orson Scott Card and Tolerating Intolerance
One of the things circulating the genre-fan news is how Orson Scott Card, author of Ender's Game and noted anti-gay crusader, has recently put out a plea for "tolerance" of his intolerant behavior, and that people shouldn't picket or boycott the upcoming Ender's Game movie on his account.
I'm not sure where I stand on all this yet, though I'm a believer in separating the art from the artist if that's possible, but I thought I'd hand the mike over to a friend--who wishes to remain anonymous-- who makes his stance on this quite eloquently:
------
I found this discussion particularly interesting since I am gay, and I grew up Mormon and my whole family is still Mormon. I was also a huge fan of Card growing up and Enders Game is one of the defining novels of my childhood. I won't be boycotting the movie, and I probably wouldn't boycott anything he's done actually.
I think my "tolerance" (bad word choice) comes from a place of understanding. My parents have said things just as bad, if not worse then the things Card has said in his press releases and comments. But I have not boycotted my parents. We actually get along really well and have a better relationship then we have in a long time. They know I am gay and I know they don't like it but we focus on what is good for both of us.
Now the situation between my parents and me is possible because, when I was Mormon, I believed all the things that they believed and I can remember what it is like to be a slave to those beliefs. You know you are being cruel, you know you are insulting people, but it seems like the right thing to do because you are standing up for truth. It's like the Steven Weinberg quote. "For good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
Orson Scott Card is not a monster. He's probably a good father and a great member of his community. I have friends who have met him and say he is very nice. I had one friend who met him and when he found out she wrote poetry he demanded that she read some for him and he gave her a lot of nice attention and feedback. It was an inconvenience for him that meant a lot to her and was very kind.
Now does that mean I agree with his views on homosexuality? Absolutely not. The guy's insane. But so are my parents and all of my extended family and so was I until the age of twenty four. And the process of changing my mind was the most depressing, disillusioning one of my entire life. I am glad to be on the other side of it, but it was not a fun journey.
I think I have a degree of sympathy for people like him, and I don't feel a need to boycott him, or harass him with letters or call him names because, for one thing, fighting fire with fire always seemed foolish to me. And second, the world is changing without them. They are being left behind and in some ways their hatred will be a self inflicted punishment as they are abandoned by more and more people as the crack pots they are. I don't believe in god, but I do believe in Karma.
So in conclusion, I will go see the movie. I'm a big fan of many of the people working on it and a movie is such a big family to punish. As for Card, I don't feel like I have to do anything. I am totally content to wait patiently and allow him the right to destroy himself. Or maybe, some day change his mind.
I'm not sure where I stand on all this yet, though I'm a believer in separating the art from the artist if that's possible, but I thought I'd hand the mike over to a friend--who wishes to remain anonymous-- who makes his stance on this quite eloquently:
------
I found this discussion particularly interesting since I am gay, and I grew up Mormon and my whole family is still Mormon. I was also a huge fan of Card growing up and Enders Game is one of the defining novels of my childhood. I won't be boycotting the movie, and I probably wouldn't boycott anything he's done actually.
I think my "tolerance" (bad word choice) comes from a place of understanding. My parents have said things just as bad, if not worse then the things Card has said in his press releases and comments. But I have not boycotted my parents. We actually get along really well and have a better relationship then we have in a long time. They know I am gay and I know they don't like it but we focus on what is good for both of us.
Now the situation between my parents and me is possible because, when I was Mormon, I believed all the things that they believed and I can remember what it is like to be a slave to those beliefs. You know you are being cruel, you know you are insulting people, but it seems like the right thing to do because you are standing up for truth. It's like the Steven Weinberg quote. "For good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
Orson Scott Card is not a monster. He's probably a good father and a great member of his community. I have friends who have met him and say he is very nice. I had one friend who met him and when he found out she wrote poetry he demanded that she read some for him and he gave her a lot of nice attention and feedback. It was an inconvenience for him that meant a lot to her and was very kind.
Now does that mean I agree with his views on homosexuality? Absolutely not. The guy's insane. But so are my parents and all of my extended family and so was I until the age of twenty four. And the process of changing my mind was the most depressing, disillusioning one of my entire life. I am glad to be on the other side of it, but it was not a fun journey.
I think I have a degree of sympathy for people like him, and I don't feel a need to boycott him, or harass him with letters or call him names because, for one thing, fighting fire with fire always seemed foolish to me. And second, the world is changing without them. They are being left behind and in some ways their hatred will be a self inflicted punishment as they are abandoned by more and more people as the crack pots they are. I don't believe in god, but I do believe in Karma.
So in conclusion, I will go see the movie. I'm a big fan of many of the people working on it and a movie is such a big family to punish. As for Card, I don't feel like I have to do anything. I am totally content to wait patiently and allow him the right to destroy himself. Or maybe, some day change his mind.
Thursday, July 4, 2013
Independence Day Writing Pledge
Today's post is quick, because for the holiday I'm going to be prepping in the kitchen, then off to an event, so opportunity to post will be minimal.
However, I've been thinking about what I wrote on Monday and my future writing plans. See, once I finish cleaning up Way of the Shield, I'll start working on Banshee in earnest. The protagonist of Banshee is Lt. Samantha Kengle.
Right here, I'm going to make this pledge regarding the writing of Lt. Samantha Kengle:
However, I've been thinking about what I wrote on Monday and my future writing plans. See, once I finish cleaning up Way of the Shield, I'll start working on Banshee in earnest. The protagonist of Banshee is Lt. Samantha Kengle.
Right here, I'm going to make this pledge regarding the writing of Lt. Samantha Kengle:
- At no point will she be called a "bitch" or a "whore". Or cunt, strumpet, floozy, slut or quim.
- At no point will her competence or ability to do her job be called into question on account of her gender.
- At no point will rape or sexual violence be visited upon her. Nor will it play any role in her backstory or motivation.
- At no point will the reader be subjected to lurid descriptions of her physicality.
- Her uniform will be identical to every other officer's in the fleet.
- She will be a complex, vibrant and engaging protagonist. Given that I don't screw up in writing her. If I do screw up, reader, hold my feet to the fire.
Thursday, March 14, 2013
Future Worldbuilding: Geopolitics in the Interstellar (Part Three)
Borders are a hell of a thing in three dimensions. They aren't lines, of course. They aren't usually even walls. If anything, they're planes where spheres intersect.
I made a decision about how my FTL drive works that kept the whole "space is a lot of big empty nothing" front and center-- namely, you're still navigating in real space, you've just created a field around your vessel in which reacts to normal space in an amplified way. So if you're going from Earth to Alpha Centauri, you still have 4 light years to traverse, just you can do it in, say, three weeks instead of twice as many years.
What this means is there's a lot of space to "control", once a civilization has decided it wants to hold dominion over a region of space. What even is a "region" of space?
I have to confess something: I really loathe when sci-fi has some area of space defined as "Sector 47" or such, because it seems so utterly random. What is a Sector? Why is that one "47"? I like a bit of sense and order to these things. I like the idea that they were designed by someone who had a system.
So I had a system. Actually, two, in a way, but the same root beneath it, that root being a Cartesian coordinate mapping system. I prefer Cartesian coordinates to the Right Ascension/Declination system*. An X-Y-Z grid, marked by light-years, creates a clean system similar to latitude and longitude. So, since this is a human system, Earth is the "Greenwich", at point 0,0,0.** Thus, Indus Colony, for example, has the coordinates (5.66, -3.16, -9.9).
This system breaks all of space into eight Divisions, based on where they are, positive or negative, on the X-, Y- and Z-axes. Initially, I went with Greek letters-- Alpha to Theta-- to name the divisions, but A. that struck me as to close to Trek's "Alpha Quadrant" and such, B. offered potential for confusion, since the FTL system also used the Greek alphabet. So I took a different form of classical, with the eight divisions being: Zeus, Hermes, Gemini, Poseidon, Athena, Artemis, Apollo and Taurus. It has a certain degree of arbitrary to it, of course, but human naming systems can be arbitrary from time to time.
Next, I broke those Divisions into Sectors and Regions. A Sector is simply a cubic light year, defined by its Divisions and Cartesian Coordinates. So Indus Colony is in Sector Taurus-6-4-10. An alien colony, further away, is Paxin Gamma, (9.82, -7.78, -27.33), and it's in Sector Taurus-10-8-28.
But when you're talking in terms of space, a cubic light year is nothing. Traveling from Indus Colony to Paxin Gamma takes you through 18 sectors, and there really isn't anything there. Some of those sectors are clearly Human controlled, some are Paxin controlled, and some... aren't much of anything. So, where is the border between Human Space and Paxin Space? Is it defined, or is there a no-man's land somewhere between?
So, Regions give something with a little more scope, though they are only 1000 cubic light years. "Only", as if a 10x10x10 ly cube was something to sneeze at, but again, in an interstellar scope, that's still zip codes on an global scale. But it gives one an area of space that is easier to define, and define "ownership" of. Taurus-111 is clearly Human, for example, while Taurus-113 is Paxin controlled. Taurus-112, in between them? That's more disputable...
The other system divides the neighborhood into Expanses-- which are 30x30x30, aka 27,000 cubic lightyears. Expanses are kind of the Celsius to the other system's Fahrenheit. It still uses Cartesian, and uses eight division, but it just numbers them 1-8. Then each 30-ly block is letter-coded. Expanses aren't as useful for figuring out, say, borders or areas of control-- that Indus-to-Paxin Gamma trip is all in Expanse 7AAA-- it's helpful for figuring out larger geopolitical interactions. Sectors and even Regions are rarely populated by more than one species. Looking at Expanses gives you a better sense of how they bump into each other. But even that can be daunting-- in my defined 150-ly radius sphere, there are over 600 Expanses.
So that can give you some idea how big the "big picture" really can be.
--
*- Though I'm given to understand that RA/D is preferred by astronomers.
**- Which it is on Star Trek as well, despite the fact that the Federation is supposedly formed by many species. Earth is still the center. Hmmm.
I made a decision about how my FTL drive works that kept the whole "space is a lot of big empty nothing" front and center-- namely, you're still navigating in real space, you've just created a field around your vessel in which reacts to normal space in an amplified way. So if you're going from Earth to Alpha Centauri, you still have 4 light years to traverse, just you can do it in, say, three weeks instead of twice as many years.
What this means is there's a lot of space to "control", once a civilization has decided it wants to hold dominion over a region of space. What even is a "region" of space?
I have to confess something: I really loathe when sci-fi has some area of space defined as "Sector 47" or such, because it seems so utterly random. What is a Sector? Why is that one "47"? I like a bit of sense and order to these things. I like the idea that they were designed by someone who had a system.
So I had a system. Actually, two, in a way, but the same root beneath it, that root being a Cartesian coordinate mapping system. I prefer Cartesian coordinates to the Right Ascension/Declination system*. An X-Y-Z grid, marked by light-years, creates a clean system similar to latitude and longitude. So, since this is a human system, Earth is the "Greenwich", at point 0,0,0.** Thus, Indus Colony, for example, has the coordinates (5.66, -3.16, -9.9).
This system breaks all of space into eight Divisions, based on where they are, positive or negative, on the X-, Y- and Z-axes. Initially, I went with Greek letters-- Alpha to Theta-- to name the divisions, but A. that struck me as to close to Trek's "Alpha Quadrant" and such, B. offered potential for confusion, since the FTL system also used the Greek alphabet. So I took a different form of classical, with the eight divisions being: Zeus, Hermes, Gemini, Poseidon, Athena, Artemis, Apollo and Taurus. It has a certain degree of arbitrary to it, of course, but human naming systems can be arbitrary from time to time.
Next, I broke those Divisions into Sectors and Regions. A Sector is simply a cubic light year, defined by its Divisions and Cartesian Coordinates. So Indus Colony is in Sector Taurus-6-4-10. An alien colony, further away, is Paxin Gamma, (9.82, -7.78, -27.33), and it's in Sector Taurus-10-8-28.
But when you're talking in terms of space, a cubic light year is nothing. Traveling from Indus Colony to Paxin Gamma takes you through 18 sectors, and there really isn't anything there. Some of those sectors are clearly Human controlled, some are Paxin controlled, and some... aren't much of anything. So, where is the border between Human Space and Paxin Space? Is it defined, or is there a no-man's land somewhere between?
So, Regions give something with a little more scope, though they are only 1000 cubic light years. "Only", as if a 10x10x10 ly cube was something to sneeze at, but again, in an interstellar scope, that's still zip codes on an global scale. But it gives one an area of space that is easier to define, and define "ownership" of. Taurus-111 is clearly Human, for example, while Taurus-113 is Paxin controlled. Taurus-112, in between them? That's more disputable...
The other system divides the neighborhood into Expanses-- which are 30x30x30, aka 27,000 cubic lightyears. Expanses are kind of the Celsius to the other system's Fahrenheit. It still uses Cartesian, and uses eight division, but it just numbers them 1-8. Then each 30-ly block is letter-coded. Expanses aren't as useful for figuring out, say, borders or areas of control-- that Indus-to-Paxin Gamma trip is all in Expanse 7AAA-- it's helpful for figuring out larger geopolitical interactions. Sectors and even Regions are rarely populated by more than one species. Looking at Expanses gives you a better sense of how they bump into each other. But even that can be daunting-- in my defined 150-ly radius sphere, there are over 600 Expanses.
So that can give you some idea how big the "big picture" really can be.
--
*- Though I'm given to understand that RA/D is preferred by astronomers.
**- Which it is on Star Trek as well, despite the fact that the Federation is supposedly formed by many species. Earth is still the center. Hmmm.
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Future Worldbuilding: Geopolitics in the Interstellar (Part Two))
Last time, I talked about working out every culture's homeworld, how advanced they are, and when they achieved FTL tech. So, knowing that, the rest is simple, right? Whoever has the most advanced tech, who gets there first, they're the most powerful, right?
Not necessarily.
First of all, there's a matter of location. Where species are in terms of not only each other, but other worlds, and what those resources mean. A species that hits the stars and finds they have thirty-some odd other stars within 10 light-years, and most of those have vibrant solar systems chock full of potential resources-- they're going to have a different interstellar experience than a species whose closest star is 15 light-years away.
Even with that, I make deliberate decisions, since I'm the worldbuilder here, for example, if a species takes an aggressive or isolationist stance in exploration. If they focus on staying close to home, or perhaps try and spread themselves thinner than they should.
For example-- I've set up my FTL rules so increases in velocity jump in increments. Ships form a field around themselves, and the level of that field determines their velocity. An Alpha Field is the slowest FTL field, then Beta Field, Gamma and so on.* This gave me an easy way to benchmark future tech-- I can measure general advancement of cultures compared to each other without having to get too specific about what that means, techwise. A culture that can form a Zeta field is more advanced in general than a culture that one can only form a Delta field. I don't need to figure out the specifics of hull composition or missile yields for every different culture. So, every culture is rated by their maximum speed. And with that, I can estimate a reasonable radius a species can maintain control over. That Zeta culture can spread out, say, 30 light-years from home, while the Delta really can only manage 16. But at the same time, a culture's nature might be to push themselves. They might have to push themselves to reach resources they need.
So, that process of building every culture out from their homeworlds, figuring out what they build and where, who they bump into, what they decide to do when they bump into each other-- that's the real gearwork of the worldbuild here. It's not sexy, and it's not stuff that really appears in the text. Iceberg rules apply in spades here.
Then comes the next big step: figuring out who the Big Dogs are. Of course, the Big Dogs are the ones I chose-- especially the ones that are big dogs because they joined up to form larger empires. I've got eight First Tier* level powers, and four of those are joint-species collectives of some sort or another. And also, that isn't just about tech level, but about dominion and influence. The Colmerohn are more advanced than the Zutheka-- but the Colmerohn are slow and deliberate, and would rather withdraw than engage in conflict, while the Zutheka are hyper-aggressive conquerors. So the Colmerohn are a Third Tier power, and the Zutheka are First Tier.
The next step: figuring out the "borders".
-----
*- I've worked out the math, but you knew I did. An Alpha field will make the trip to Alpha Centauri in 2.95 years. With a Delta field, it takes 40 days. An Epsilon field cuts that down to under two weeks. If you managed to form a Xi field**, that trip is slightly over a minute.
**- No one has a Xi-field level of tech.
***- There are also three Zeroth-level, i.e. very high tech isolationists.
Not necessarily.
First of all, there's a matter of location. Where species are in terms of not only each other, but other worlds, and what those resources mean. A species that hits the stars and finds they have thirty-some odd other stars within 10 light-years, and most of those have vibrant solar systems chock full of potential resources-- they're going to have a different interstellar experience than a species whose closest star is 15 light-years away.
Even with that, I make deliberate decisions, since I'm the worldbuilder here, for example, if a species takes an aggressive or isolationist stance in exploration. If they focus on staying close to home, or perhaps try and spread themselves thinner than they should.
For example-- I've set up my FTL rules so increases in velocity jump in increments. Ships form a field around themselves, and the level of that field determines their velocity. An Alpha Field is the slowest FTL field, then Beta Field, Gamma and so on.* This gave me an easy way to benchmark future tech-- I can measure general advancement of cultures compared to each other without having to get too specific about what that means, techwise. A culture that can form a Zeta field is more advanced in general than a culture that one can only form a Delta field. I don't need to figure out the specifics of hull composition or missile yields for every different culture. So, every culture is rated by their maximum speed. And with that, I can estimate a reasonable radius a species can maintain control over. That Zeta culture can spread out, say, 30 light-years from home, while the Delta really can only manage 16. But at the same time, a culture's nature might be to push themselves. They might have to push themselves to reach resources they need.
So, that process of building every culture out from their homeworlds, figuring out what they build and where, who they bump into, what they decide to do when they bump into each other-- that's the real gearwork of the worldbuild here. It's not sexy, and it's not stuff that really appears in the text. Iceberg rules apply in spades here.
Then comes the next big step: figuring out who the Big Dogs are. Of course, the Big Dogs are the ones I chose-- especially the ones that are big dogs because they joined up to form larger empires. I've got eight First Tier* level powers, and four of those are joint-species collectives of some sort or another. And also, that isn't just about tech level, but about dominion and influence. The Colmerohn are more advanced than the Zutheka-- but the Colmerohn are slow and deliberate, and would rather withdraw than engage in conflict, while the Zutheka are hyper-aggressive conquerors. So the Colmerohn are a Third Tier power, and the Zutheka are First Tier.
The next step: figuring out the "borders".
-----
*- I've worked out the math, but you knew I did. An Alpha field will make the trip to Alpha Centauri in 2.95 years. With a Delta field, it takes 40 days. An Epsilon field cuts that down to under two weeks. If you managed to form a Xi field**, that trip is slightly over a minute.
**- No one has a Xi-field level of tech.
***- There are also three Zeroth-level, i.e. very high tech isolationists.
Monday, February 25, 2013
Future Worldbuilding: Geopolitics in the Interstellar (Part One)
Now, if you've been following me for a while, you know I take working out the geography pretty seriously. I've built out a 150 light-year radius from Earth, and while in the building process I let a certain degree of randomness occur*, once I had certain things set up (namely, initial homeworlds and tech level of all the intelligent species in 150-ly radius), then I had to build with deliberateness.
That deliberate comes from decisions that I need to control-- and not just because I can't figure out an effective way to randomize it on Excel-- because the way a culture expands into space says a lot about their character. Do they reach out and claim every star system they can get their dextrous appendages*** on as quickly as possible? Or do they move slowly, maximizing the usage of resources in each system. Do they aggressively strike out, clashing with any neighbors they might meet? Or do they engage diplomatically, building bridges amongst cultures?
Whatever they do, once I allow an interstellar culture to claim a star system, I need to decide what kind of claim it is. This depends a lot, but not entirely, upon what options that star system gives them: a star system with planets gives more options that one without, and one with planets with life gives even more options. My designations are as follows:
Homeworld: This is self-explanatory-- the Homeworld is the world of origin for any given species.
Colony: The next highest-level of designation, a Colony is fully-autonomous and self-sufficient world that has a civilian population.
Station: If there are no planets, then the highest level of designation is Station. Of course, there may be multiple stations within a system-- military, corporate or civilian, or a combination.
Outpost: An outpost is a planetbound facility that is neither self-sufficient nor civilian. It can range from a military listening post to a mining-and-refinery base to a terraforming crew to a high-security prison. These are typically on systems where no planet can support life, and are dependent on an infrastructure of supply ships.
Holding: This is the lowest-level of claim-- basically, little more than the claim itself. Perhaps there is a squadron of ships or automated satellites to maintain that claim.
Preserve: This is a special designation, in which a species lays claim to a system and does nothing with it, other than protect it. Of course, only a certain kind of culture is ever going to make a star system a Preserve.
--
*- Within 150 light-year radius radius, we're talking about over 10,000 stars in that space. We're talking 14.1 million cubic light years.** So you better believe I created a randomizing script in Excel that went through each star and decided how many planets it had, and the orbital radius of each of those planets, and then IF one of those planets was in the "Goldilocks" zone, IF there was life on that planet, and IF so, how advanced that life was, and IF that life was intelligent, how advanced the technology of its culture was, and IF that advancement has reached the point of Interstellar Travel, WHEN they broke the light barrier, and how advanced their interstellar tech is. Randomizing those factors was necessary just to get the work down to a manageable level.
**- Douglas Adams wasn't lying. Space is big. Really big. Because that figure is nothing compared to the rest of the galaxy.
***- They all have dextrous appendages. Else you can't build ships.
That deliberate comes from decisions that I need to control-- and not just because I can't figure out an effective way to randomize it on Excel-- because the way a culture expands into space says a lot about their character. Do they reach out and claim every star system they can get their dextrous appendages*** on as quickly as possible? Or do they move slowly, maximizing the usage of resources in each system. Do they aggressively strike out, clashing with any neighbors they might meet? Or do they engage diplomatically, building bridges amongst cultures?
Whatever they do, once I allow an interstellar culture to claim a star system, I need to decide what kind of claim it is. This depends a lot, but not entirely, upon what options that star system gives them: a star system with planets gives more options that one without, and one with planets with life gives even more options. My designations are as follows:
Homeworld: This is self-explanatory-- the Homeworld is the world of origin for any given species.
Colony: The next highest-level of designation, a Colony is fully-autonomous and self-sufficient world that has a civilian population.
Station: If there are no planets, then the highest level of designation is Station. Of course, there may be multiple stations within a system-- military, corporate or civilian, or a combination.
Outpost: An outpost is a planetbound facility that is neither self-sufficient nor civilian. It can range from a military listening post to a mining-and-refinery base to a terraforming crew to a high-security prison. These are typically on systems where no planet can support life, and are dependent on an infrastructure of supply ships.
Holding: This is the lowest-level of claim-- basically, little more than the claim itself. Perhaps there is a squadron of ships or automated satellites to maintain that claim.
Preserve: This is a special designation, in which a species lays claim to a system and does nothing with it, other than protect it. Of course, only a certain kind of culture is ever going to make a star system a Preserve.
--
*- Within 150 light-year radius radius, we're talking about over 10,000 stars in that space. We're talking 14.1 million cubic light years.** So you better believe I created a randomizing script in Excel that went through each star and decided how many planets it had, and the orbital radius of each of those planets, and then IF one of those planets was in the "Goldilocks" zone, IF there was life on that planet, and IF so, how advanced that life was, and IF that life was intelligent, how advanced the technology of its culture was, and IF that advancement has reached the point of Interstellar Travel, WHEN they broke the light barrier, and how advanced their interstellar tech is. Randomizing those factors was necessary just to get the work down to a manageable level.
**- Douglas Adams wasn't lying. Space is big. Really big. Because that figure is nothing compared to the rest of the galaxy.
***- They all have dextrous appendages. Else you can't build ships.
Monday, January 28, 2013
Space Opera Worldbuilding: Building the Non-Humanocentric Universe
You are probably familiar with the Bechdel Test*- while not a test of quality or even feminist credential, it is at least an interesting gauge to be aware of as a writer. You're not necessarily doing something wrong if your story doesn't pass, but you should at least interrogate why your story doesn't pass.
Now, let us apply that thinking to science-fiction, more specifically that brand of space-opera where humans are part of a rich interstellar setting, filled with many alien species. For that, consider the "Space Opera Bechdel", if you will. To pass, a work must have a scene where:
Now, I'm not saying that's bad. In fact, this scene is one of the best "aliens talk about humans" scenes out there, possibly because it doesn't raise us up to be the end-all, be-all, center-of-awesomeness that help define the interstellar region. In Trek, humanity are a superpower, even if they are part of a multi-species Federation, it's very clear humans are the center of it. Starfleet is mostly human, a carryover of an Earth-based organization, with its training academy in San Fransisco. The capital of the Federation is also on Earth.
Of course, it's easier to focus on humanity's role in a potential future. We are who we know the best, and in trying to make aliens-- even really alien aliens-- the best we can hope to do is show aliens filtered through a fact of humanity, or focus on what humanity is not. But we remain the lens we see the universe through.
For me, part of the solution is keeping humanity from being a superpower. To put it in terms of metaphor, a lot of works make humanity the equivalent of the US in the later half of the 20th Century. My tactic is to make them the equivalent of the US in beginning of the 19th: not a player on the interstellar stage, and regarded with a bit of respectful skepticism by the superpowers of the day.
The other part of the solution is to do one's best to give each alien culture depth. This doesn't mean working out a full history, all the separate nation states, religions, rituals, and so forth. If you're populating a full universe, that's a herculean task that isn't worth it. But every culture should have the potential for that depth. For example, if said culture is in space at all, you have to be able to believe that they've had a history of scientists and adventurers who've pushed the envelope to reach the stars.
Anything less will just seem lazy.
__
*- In brief: a work has to have 1. at least two [named] women in it 2. who talk to each other 3. about something besides a man. It was first come up with for movies, but I think it applies just as well to novels.
Now, let us apply that thinking to science-fiction, more specifically that brand of space-opera where humans are part of a rich interstellar setting, filled with many alien species. For that, consider the "Space Opera Bechdel", if you will. To pass, a work must have a scene where:
- There are two alien characters of different, identified species
- Who talk to each other
- About something other than humans.
Now, I'm not saying that's bad. In fact, this scene is one of the best "aliens talk about humans" scenes out there, possibly because it doesn't raise us up to be the end-all, be-all, center-of-awesomeness that help define the interstellar region. In Trek, humanity are a superpower, even if they are part of a multi-species Federation, it's very clear humans are the center of it. Starfleet is mostly human, a carryover of an Earth-based organization, with its training academy in San Fransisco. The capital of the Federation is also on Earth.
Of course, it's easier to focus on humanity's role in a potential future. We are who we know the best, and in trying to make aliens-- even really alien aliens-- the best we can hope to do is show aliens filtered through a fact of humanity, or focus on what humanity is not. But we remain the lens we see the universe through.
For me, part of the solution is keeping humanity from being a superpower. To put it in terms of metaphor, a lot of works make humanity the equivalent of the US in the later half of the 20th Century. My tactic is to make them the equivalent of the US in beginning of the 19th: not a player on the interstellar stage, and regarded with a bit of respectful skepticism by the superpowers of the day.
The other part of the solution is to do one's best to give each alien culture depth. This doesn't mean working out a full history, all the separate nation states, religions, rituals, and so forth. If you're populating a full universe, that's a herculean task that isn't worth it. But every culture should have the potential for that depth. For example, if said culture is in space at all, you have to be able to believe that they've had a history of scientists and adventurers who've pushed the envelope to reach the stars.
Anything less will just seem lazy.
__
*- In brief: a work has to have 1. at least two [named] women in it 2. who talk to each other 3. about something besides a man. It was first come up with for movies, but I think it applies just as well to novels.
Thursday, January 10, 2013
Worldbuilding: Space Opera and the Future of Food
I take the food aspect of worldbuilding pretty seriously, as you can tell. This is just as true in Sci-fi and Space Opera as it is in Fantasy.
On some level, I've often been disappointed by a lot of the SF I've read and watched along these lines. Not that I necessarily want some sort of long infodump of alien farming, but food sourcing gets elided quite often.
Take, for example, the Replicators on Star Trek. I kind of hate them. They're a cheap answer to a major element of civilized culture. On TNG, it even gives them the "high ground" to look down their nose at another species that still, you know, eats actual meat. Because in their enlightened future, they don't need to deal with any messy reality of food production. How do we feed ourselves? We talk to a hole in the wall, and it appears like magic.
But taking magic tech out of the equation, the practical realities of how people produce, store and prepare food-- especially on long, deep space flights-- should be a worldbuilding element the writer is aware of, even if they never talk about it much.
A fantastic resource Space Opera writers should check out is Mary Roach's Packing for Mars. In it, Roach digs into every little practical "but what about this?" question that NASA was thought of (and they really thought about all of them), and solutions they've come up with, as well as the ones they still struggle with. Food supplies for a manned mission to Mars is a major concern.* The whole book is worth the time.
Alien foods are another thing to consider, specifically in terms of humans eating alien foods. Now, biochemistry is not even remotely a strong suit of mine, but I'm given to understand that it's highly unlikely we'd be able to digest alien biomatter, let alone extract useful nutrients out of it. Presuming no negative reactions**, it would just pass through our systems untouched.
However-- they still may be interesting to eat. Spices, for example. We don't really get useful nutrients out of pepper or cinnamon or cumin, but they all make food more interesting. Alien spices can create unique culinary opportunities. And that's also where xenobiodiversity can come into play, especially in terms of interspecies trade. In the future you build, the trade of raw materials will, of course, be crucial, but there's nothing unique to, say the gold or molybdenum*** found on Earth compared to the gold or molydbenum on Starkasia or Paxica or wherever else people go in the galaxy. But paprika? Now that's something you can't get anywhere else. That could be worth quite a lot out there.
----
*- As is the human waste element, which Roach gets into as well. There were NASA scientists who suggested the possibility of having the problems solve each other: the waste material could be purified and used as a raw protein base to be repurposed as a food supply. Scientifically possible. But astronauts in the discussion shot this down: "We're not eat shitburgers on the ride home."
**- Which, I would imagine, would be more likely to be allergic reactions rather than toxic ones.
***- Or whatever matters. "Molybdenum" is just a fun name.
On some level, I've often been disappointed by a lot of the SF I've read and watched along these lines. Not that I necessarily want some sort of long infodump of alien farming, but food sourcing gets elided quite often.
Take, for example, the Replicators on Star Trek. I kind of hate them. They're a cheap answer to a major element of civilized culture. On TNG, it even gives them the "high ground" to look down their nose at another species that still, you know, eats actual meat. Because in their enlightened future, they don't need to deal with any messy reality of food production. How do we feed ourselves? We talk to a hole in the wall, and it appears like magic.
But taking magic tech out of the equation, the practical realities of how people produce, store and prepare food-- especially on long, deep space flights-- should be a worldbuilding element the writer is aware of, even if they never talk about it much.
A fantastic resource Space Opera writers should check out is Mary Roach's Packing for Mars. In it, Roach digs into every little practical "but what about this?" question that NASA was thought of (and they really thought about all of them), and solutions they've come up with, as well as the ones they still struggle with. Food supplies for a manned mission to Mars is a major concern.* The whole book is worth the time.
Alien foods are another thing to consider, specifically in terms of humans eating alien foods. Now, biochemistry is not even remotely a strong suit of mine, but I'm given to understand that it's highly unlikely we'd be able to digest alien biomatter, let alone extract useful nutrients out of it. Presuming no negative reactions**, it would just pass through our systems untouched.
However-- they still may be interesting to eat. Spices, for example. We don't really get useful nutrients out of pepper or cinnamon or cumin, but they all make food more interesting. Alien spices can create unique culinary opportunities. And that's also where xenobiodiversity can come into play, especially in terms of interspecies trade. In the future you build, the trade of raw materials will, of course, be crucial, but there's nothing unique to, say the gold or molybdenum*** found on Earth compared to the gold or molydbenum on Starkasia or Paxica or wherever else people go in the galaxy. But paprika? Now that's something you can't get anywhere else. That could be worth quite a lot out there.
----
*- As is the human waste element, which Roach gets into as well. There were NASA scientists who suggested the possibility of having the problems solve each other: the waste material could be purified and used as a raw protein base to be repurposed as a food supply. Scientifically possible. But astronauts in the discussion shot this down: "We're not eat shitburgers on the ride home."
**- Which, I would imagine, would be more likely to be allergic reactions rather than toxic ones.
***- Or whatever matters. "Molybdenum" is just a fun name.
Monday, January 7, 2013
Worldbuilding: Alien Perspectives and Communication
I've been thinking of late about how aliens, upon first meeting, would establish communication, as well as how communication continues once those baselines of communication have been laid down.
As far as starting things out, there's plenty of talk of using the language of math and science to establish initial codes. For a very rudimentary example of this:
Now, just about any species capable of, say, achieving
spaceflight should be able to look at this and decode-- from the top part-- the mathematical truism that is the Pythagorean Theorem.* Then looking at the bottom part, they should be able to decode that it's saying the exact same thing in another way... and from there, discern details about the English language, how it's constructed. You construct several of these images, and transmit them to the aliens you hope to talk to, and cross your fingers that those shoulds line up, and that you don't offend said aliens who think you're trying to patronize them and teach them basic math.
Of course, getting those shoulds to line up still makes assumptions. For example: "look at this". What if said alien species is, as we would understand it, blind? Would they even have developed the equivalent of Euclidean geometry? Or, at the very least, would it mean the same thing to them? What about a species that relies more on, say, echolocation and perfect pitch? Would their Euclid equivalent instead come up with fundamental mathematics based off of musical pitches and frequencies?
Even presuming we can get all that, then there's culture shock. I'm still figuring out where to start with that. Take, for example, how we and other species might process "scary". A species that's eight feet tall, with six long, spindly legs, winged arms like a bat and a face like a lamprey would, probably, on first meeting, look terrifying. But at the same time, our beauty-contest winners would still look like just another rat to them. We might both react with fear at seeing each other, and that fear could seem utterly rational, but at the same time be completely unexplainable to the other party.
So how hard is going to be, opening a dialogue with someone who makes you want to run screaming from the room, and the same time they think that you think they need to study 5th grade math?
There's a great short story by Kij Johnson, Spar, in which a human woman is stuck in an alien lifepod with an alien creature. There is no meaningful communication. There's only, from her perspective, constant sexual activity that wavers between consensual and non-consensual. She doesn't know if what it's doing to her is, as far as it's concerned, a sexual act. She isn't sure if it thinks of her as an intelligent being. She's not even sure if it is an intelligent being; she might be having sex with the alien equivalent of a cat.
And that might be what it comes down to: just not knowing anything, because there's no common ground at all.
---
*- Completely tangential**, but every time the Pythagorean Theorem comes up, I can't help but think of one of the dumbest moments in early Star Trek: Next Generation. Having assembled Data's evil brother Lore, the crew (not knowing Lore is evil) is showing him how the helm on the Enterprise works. Riker brings up the first half of the Pythagorean Theorem, which Lore automatically finishes, before stopping himself and feigning that it was something he had overheard but didn't really understand. I'm not sure which part of this whole exchange is dumber: that Riker thought that tricking Lore into revealing he knew the PT was a clever trick at all, or that Lore thought that pretending he, an android, didn't understand middle-school geometry, was somehow a clever ruse.
**- Ha!
As far as starting things out, there's plenty of talk of using the language of math and science to establish initial codes. For a very rudimentary example of this:
spaceflight should be able to look at this and decode-- from the top part-- the mathematical truism that is the Pythagorean Theorem.* Then looking at the bottom part, they should be able to decode that it's saying the exact same thing in another way... and from there, discern details about the English language, how it's constructed. You construct several of these images, and transmit them to the aliens you hope to talk to, and cross your fingers that those shoulds line up, and that you don't offend said aliens who think you're trying to patronize them and teach them basic math.
Of course, getting those shoulds to line up still makes assumptions. For example: "look at this". What if said alien species is, as we would understand it, blind? Would they even have developed the equivalent of Euclidean geometry? Or, at the very least, would it mean the same thing to them? What about a species that relies more on, say, echolocation and perfect pitch? Would their Euclid equivalent instead come up with fundamental mathematics based off of musical pitches and frequencies?
Even presuming we can get all that, then there's culture shock. I'm still figuring out where to start with that. Take, for example, how we and other species might process "scary". A species that's eight feet tall, with six long, spindly legs, winged arms like a bat and a face like a lamprey would, probably, on first meeting, look terrifying. But at the same time, our beauty-contest winners would still look like just another rat to them. We might both react with fear at seeing each other, and that fear could seem utterly rational, but at the same time be completely unexplainable to the other party.
So how hard is going to be, opening a dialogue with someone who makes you want to run screaming from the room, and the same time they think that you think they need to study 5th grade math?
There's a great short story by Kij Johnson, Spar, in which a human woman is stuck in an alien lifepod with an alien creature. There is no meaningful communication. There's only, from her perspective, constant sexual activity that wavers between consensual and non-consensual. She doesn't know if what it's doing to her is, as far as it's concerned, a sexual act. She isn't sure if it thinks of her as an intelligent being. She's not even sure if it is an intelligent being; she might be having sex with the alien equivalent of a cat.
And that might be what it comes down to: just not knowing anything, because there's no common ground at all.
---
*- Completely tangential**, but every time the Pythagorean Theorem comes up, I can't help but think of one of the dumbest moments in early Star Trek: Next Generation. Having assembled Data's evil brother Lore, the crew (not knowing Lore is evil) is showing him how the helm on the Enterprise works. Riker brings up the first half of the Pythagorean Theorem, which Lore automatically finishes, before stopping himself and feigning that it was something he had overheard but didn't really understand. I'm not sure which part of this whole exchange is dumber: that Riker thought that tricking Lore into revealing he knew the PT was a clever trick at all, or that Lore thought that pretending he, an android, didn't understand middle-school geometry, was somehow a clever ruse.
**- Ha!
Monday, December 31, 2012
Goals for the Coming Year
So, from my clock, 2012 has a mere 13 hours and change left to it. 2013 is coming, so its high time to set some unrealistic goals for the year:
1. Book deals for Thorn of Dentonhill, Holver Alley Crew, and Maradaine Constabulary. If we're really aiming pie-in-the-sky, this deal will involve the same publisher and all three at once. That would be very nice, indeed, Universe. But in the case of all three, I think I've really done what I can do, and it's past time to be focused on the Next Project.
2. Finish Rough Draft of Way of the Shield. I should have finished this last year, but between various rewrites of the other three, a hectic summer and a few other things on my plate, it didn't come together. Part of that was due to a flawed outline, which I think I've got a handle on now. I understand why it wasn't working, which is a big hurdle to clear. Time to drive it forward.
3. Finish Rough Draft of Banshee. This is a project that's gone through significant conceptual changes over the years (you may notice that it's no longer USS Banshee, which is one major shift), but I've finally found an angle that combines character, plot and worldbuilding in a way that works pretty well, at least so far.
4. Attend my first Worldcon. It's in San Antonio, it's literally taking the place of ArmadilloCon this year, so it's what I'm doing. Hopefully I'll have something good to do there. (See point 1)
5. Have a good reason to start second books of Thorn, Holver Alley or Constabulary. See point 1.
6. Hash out some of these random ideas into usable outlines. Because if I accomplish 2 & 3 before I accomplish 1, I'll have no good reason to do 5. So I'll need a new "new project", as it were.
7. Never give up. But this one's a given.
1. Book deals for Thorn of Dentonhill, Holver Alley Crew, and Maradaine Constabulary. If we're really aiming pie-in-the-sky, this deal will involve the same publisher and all three at once. That would be very nice, indeed, Universe. But in the case of all three, I think I've really done what I can do, and it's past time to be focused on the Next Project.
2. Finish Rough Draft of Way of the Shield. I should have finished this last year, but between various rewrites of the other three, a hectic summer and a few other things on my plate, it didn't come together. Part of that was due to a flawed outline, which I think I've got a handle on now. I understand why it wasn't working, which is a big hurdle to clear. Time to drive it forward.
3. Finish Rough Draft of Banshee. This is a project that's gone through significant conceptual changes over the years (you may notice that it's no longer USS Banshee, which is one major shift), but I've finally found an angle that combines character, plot and worldbuilding in a way that works pretty well, at least so far.
4. Attend my first Worldcon. It's in San Antonio, it's literally taking the place of ArmadilloCon this year, so it's what I'm doing. Hopefully I'll have something good to do there. (See point 1)
5. Have a good reason to start second books of Thorn, Holver Alley or Constabulary. See point 1.
6. Hash out some of these random ideas into usable outlines. Because if I accomplish 2 & 3 before I accomplish 1, I'll have no good reason to do 5. So I'll need a new "new project", as it were.
7. Never give up. But this one's a given.
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Analyzing Flawed Arc Structure, Part 5
Parts one, two, three and four of looking at Star Trek: Enterprise's third season Xindi Arc.
"Home", the third episode* of the fourth season of Star Trek: Enterprise served as an epilogue to the Xindi Arc, primarily by dealing with the emotional fallout of the character subplots. Specifically, it focused on Capt. Archer, and Trip & T'Pol. Both of these aspects work fine in terms of the episode itself. For Archer, he's somewhat broken by the things he did in the Delphic Expanse. He specifically mentions the theft of the warp core, which as mentioned last week, was his greatest sin. But beyond that, his optimism about exploration in general is broken, despite the fact that things did end relatively well. This ties into the one other minor plot thread in "Home"-- the Enterprise crew might be hailed as heroes, but there are some people who aren't thrilled with the fact that they had spent two years running around space saying, "Hey, we're from Earth. Come on over and smack us around, why don't you?"** For Trip & T'Pol, their subplots of his grief over his dead sister (more or less resolved in "The Forgotten") and her emotional damage due to self-inflicted Trellium exposure*** dovetailed into their semi-romantic friendship. So they go to Vulcan together, and deal with T'Pol's family drama.
So, in the end, what worked, and what didn't in the Xindi Arc?
For me, the broad brushstrokes worked: a threat is presented, and to defend themselves from that threat, core principles are challenged and strained. Despite that, in the end, it is those core principles that saves the day: friendship is achieved with (most of) the Xindi council, creating a lasting peace through conversation.
What didn't work, though, is how things went in terms of character. Specifically, character never tied into plot in a real organic way. The closest was with Archer, who's moral center was challenged, but that balance between what he needed to do and what he had to bring himself to do always came more with an axe instead of a scalpel. Archer doesn't get a slow descent into darkness. He gets one questionable moment (putting a pirate in an airlock to get answers) and one really bad no-win scenario (the theft of the warp core). Beyond that, what does he do? True, he doesn't blow up the refinery in "The Shipment", but that seems less of a Moral Choice, and more thinking in terms of long-term strategy: going in guns blazing isn't the smartest thing to do if you've only got one shot at that, and you haven't found the right target. In the final third of the season, Archer seems ready-- even eager-- to die for the cause, but why he's gone semi-suicidal isn't really explored. Despite Daniels coming from the future TWICE to tell him, "Yeah, you're important, you can't die," he seems hellbent on it anyway. There is a bit of lip service of not wanting to order someone else to their deaths, but that wasn't something ever really discussed.
What also didn't work was the lack of focus. Most of the first two-thirds is spent wandering: some of it ties to the Xindi or the Spheres, but the rest is largely irrelevant. It doesn't move the plot, nor is it called back later. So it doesn't serve a purpose. Perhaps if it had done more worldbuilding of the Expanse, creating encounters that mattered, so that they could be called upon at the endgame, then it would have seemed more meaningful. And that would have also tied into a Trek solution: humans build communities, create allies, so when the chips are down, friends come to their aid. But no species in the Expanse really were important other than the Xindi and the Spherebuilders. The Spherebuilders were, at the core, the Big Bad, and the Xindi-- while having solid individual character-actors-- themselves had no definition beyond "five subspecies in fractious alliance".
As counterpoint, I might present the end of Farscape's second-season. After two seasons of more or less random encounters-- those stand-alone episodes-- the crew is faced with having to do a Big Crazy Plan. And to pull it off, John Crichton calls on various species and people they've met along the way. Now those stand-alone's tie into the solution, and to worldbuilding as a whole.
But, credit where it's due: they took chances, and in the end, created something that had value. In my recent re-watch of it all, I was largely entertained. With a little more streamlining and focus (which, admittedly, in the world of episodic television, especially a decade ago, is challenging), it really could have stood out as something special.
---
*- The first two episodes had nothing to do with the Xindi storyline. Instead it involved time-traveling Nazi aliens, and served mostly to tie off the Temporal Cold War storyline, which had never been very well handled. "Zero Hour" ended with an exceptionally bizarre Hail Mary of a cliffhanger, and those episodes are at best a serviceable affair of digging themselves out of that hole, as well as the entire TCW one.
**- Though you have to wonder why, when the Xindi weapon showed up, Earth's only defense was, apparently, a single Andorian cruiser. It made for some satisfying drama, but didn't make much sense.
***- A clumsy drug-addiction metaphor.
"Home", the third episode* of the fourth season of Star Trek: Enterprise served as an epilogue to the Xindi Arc, primarily by dealing with the emotional fallout of the character subplots. Specifically, it focused on Capt. Archer, and Trip & T'Pol. Both of these aspects work fine in terms of the episode itself. For Archer, he's somewhat broken by the things he did in the Delphic Expanse. He specifically mentions the theft of the warp core, which as mentioned last week, was his greatest sin. But beyond that, his optimism about exploration in general is broken, despite the fact that things did end relatively well. This ties into the one other minor plot thread in "Home"-- the Enterprise crew might be hailed as heroes, but there are some people who aren't thrilled with the fact that they had spent two years running around space saying, "Hey, we're from Earth. Come on over and smack us around, why don't you?"** For Trip & T'Pol, their subplots of his grief over his dead sister (more or less resolved in "The Forgotten") and her emotional damage due to self-inflicted Trellium exposure*** dovetailed into their semi-romantic friendship. So they go to Vulcan together, and deal with T'Pol's family drama.
So, in the end, what worked, and what didn't in the Xindi Arc?
For me, the broad brushstrokes worked: a threat is presented, and to defend themselves from that threat, core principles are challenged and strained. Despite that, in the end, it is those core principles that saves the day: friendship is achieved with (most of) the Xindi council, creating a lasting peace through conversation.
What didn't work, though, is how things went in terms of character. Specifically, character never tied into plot in a real organic way. The closest was with Archer, who's moral center was challenged, but that balance between what he needed to do and what he had to bring himself to do always came more with an axe instead of a scalpel. Archer doesn't get a slow descent into darkness. He gets one questionable moment (putting a pirate in an airlock to get answers) and one really bad no-win scenario (the theft of the warp core). Beyond that, what does he do? True, he doesn't blow up the refinery in "The Shipment", but that seems less of a Moral Choice, and more thinking in terms of long-term strategy: going in guns blazing isn't the smartest thing to do if you've only got one shot at that, and you haven't found the right target. In the final third of the season, Archer seems ready-- even eager-- to die for the cause, but why he's gone semi-suicidal isn't really explored. Despite Daniels coming from the future TWICE to tell him, "Yeah, you're important, you can't die," he seems hellbent on it anyway. There is a bit of lip service of not wanting to order someone else to their deaths, but that wasn't something ever really discussed.
What also didn't work was the lack of focus. Most of the first two-thirds is spent wandering: some of it ties to the Xindi or the Spheres, but the rest is largely irrelevant. It doesn't move the plot, nor is it called back later. So it doesn't serve a purpose. Perhaps if it had done more worldbuilding of the Expanse, creating encounters that mattered, so that they could be called upon at the endgame, then it would have seemed more meaningful. And that would have also tied into a Trek solution: humans build communities, create allies, so when the chips are down, friends come to their aid. But no species in the Expanse really were important other than the Xindi and the Spherebuilders. The Spherebuilders were, at the core, the Big Bad, and the Xindi-- while having solid individual character-actors-- themselves had no definition beyond "five subspecies in fractious alliance".
As counterpoint, I might present the end of Farscape's second-season. After two seasons of more or less random encounters-- those stand-alone episodes-- the crew is faced with having to do a Big Crazy Plan. And to pull it off, John Crichton calls on various species and people they've met along the way. Now those stand-alone's tie into the solution, and to worldbuilding as a whole.
But, credit where it's due: they took chances, and in the end, created something that had value. In my recent re-watch of it all, I was largely entertained. With a little more streamlining and focus (which, admittedly, in the world of episodic television, especially a decade ago, is challenging), it really could have stood out as something special.
---
*- The first two episodes had nothing to do with the Xindi storyline. Instead it involved time-traveling Nazi aliens, and served mostly to tie off the Temporal Cold War storyline, which had never been very well handled. "Zero Hour" ended with an exceptionally bizarre Hail Mary of a cliffhanger, and those episodes are at best a serviceable affair of digging themselves out of that hole, as well as the entire TCW one.
**- Though you have to wonder why, when the Xindi weapon showed up, Earth's only defense was, apparently, a single Andorian cruiser. It made for some satisfying drama, but didn't make much sense.
***- A clumsy drug-addiction metaphor.
Monday, December 10, 2012
Analyzing Flawed Arc Structure, Part 4
Parts one, two and three.
The third act of the Xindi Arc is pretty action packed. On some level, it does make up for the heel-dragging and aimlessness of the first two thirds: Episodes are: "Hatchery", "Azati Prime", "Damage", "The Forgotten", "E2", "The Council", "Countdown" and "Zero Hour".
Of these eight, really only two are inessential: "Hatchery" and "E2". But both of them do speak to the character of the Enterprise crew. Since the one character-arc that's really tied to story-arc is "How far will Archer go?", to a degree "Hatchery" answers the question, "How far will the crew let him go?" Now, it approaches it from a different angle, where Archer goes to extreme measures to help a creche of Xindi-Insectoid infants, and the crew, sensing something wrong, engage in a mini-mutiny. As Archer is Being Affected By Something (a Trek staple to avoid actual conflict or responsibility), the real conflict boils down to the crew vs. Major Hayes, since Hayes just follows orders. This is also the closest thing we get to something resembling focus on the Xindi-Insectoids, who in terms of story never amount to actual characters, simply additional muscle to back up the Reptilians. "E2" is a kind of fun what-might-be time-travel episode, where the crew meets their descendents from a failed future-version of their mission, but other than turning the screws a bit tighter on the Trip/T'Pol romance, it's largely a placeholder.
That said, the three in between those episodes, "Azati Prime", "Damage" and "The Forgotten" do a very nice job illustrating the Collapse-Retreat-Recovery aspect of the Twelve-Part structure. The ship is really hammered, but at the same time Archer makes some connection with Degra and the other Xindi-Primates. It's here that the core Trek principles are pushed to their limits: having discovered the Xindi world-destroyer weapon, the first plan is just to blow it up. This goes wrong, and Archer gets captured, but in being captured, he uses his knowledge from "Stratagem" to his advantage. This convinces Degra enough to at least listen, and stop the Reptilians from attacking the Enterprise. Degra (with the help of the semi-enigmatic Aquatics) returns Archer to the broken ship, and sends message for a secret rendezvous a few light-years away. The ship being in such a state, making that rendezvous is impossible without a new warp-coil. Fortunately, there's another damaged ship nearby, and Archer feels forced to take theirs by force in order to make the meeting. This is without question his lowest point, committing for all intents an act of piracy in the name of saving Earth. It's very non-Trek, which works excellently for the sake of drama. Capt. Archer is torn up to do it, but he feels he has no choice. You could easily see, for example, Cmdr. Adama, John Crichton or Malcolm Reynolds doing the exact same thing under the same circumstances. The only question is, would they feel the same weight? As horrible as the act is, it is in service of, ultimately, a Trek-solution: solving the Xindi situation through dialogue instead of violence.
Of course, the cracks in the plotting armor are quite evident. Degra could have this clandestine meeting somewhere easier for Archer to reach, given that Degra knows the state Enterprise is in. He even could just go to Enterprise directly, and not even be clandestine. The need for secrecy from the Reptilians (and Insectoids) is a bit artificial. And that's a big part of the problem with this plotting, in that it forces Enterprise to go from Point A to Point B (this necessitating the stolen warp coil) and then from Point B to Point C (this using the subspace passage that creates the timetravel accident in E2, which is neatly avoided, meaning the second Enterprise may have "never existed".) It's mostly hoop-jumping so Degra can use Archer as a surprise in "The Council".
"The Council" is, in theory, Archer presenting his case that Earth is not a danger to the Xindi and that the Sphere-Builders/Guardians have been playing the Xindi for their own purposes. It's the latter point that is most crucial, since the Guardians are worshiped as deities by the Xindi, though they were unaware of the connection between the Guardians and the Spheres. While the Xindi Council has five groups, really only three matter: the Arboreals back up the Primates, and the Insectoids back up the Reptilians. And the Aquatics are the enigmatic deciders. In terms of character, it really boils down to Degra (Primate) and Dolim (Reptilian).
It should be noted that Randy Oglesby and Scott MacDonald deserve a lot of praise. Both are journeyman actors who have done tons of guest roles on various shows, including all four of the modern Treks.* They do solid work, often under a lot of latex, and you have to respect that kind of actor. In fact the real dramatic centerpiece of "The Council", and to a degree the turning point of the story arc itself, is between these two actors.
The final wrap-up of "Countdown" and "Zero Hour" is serviceable, in that the Xindi-Reptilians cement their role as the irredeemable villains, who have tied themselves to the Guardians. The Guardians, of course, want to reshape reality-- terraforming our space, as it were, to one that they can survive in. The Reptilians are their willing dupes. Even the Insectoids wise-up, though all they do is wonder why the Spheres are suddenly working to help their efforts to destroy the Earth before the Reptilians sudden-but-inevitable betrayal. The final push, in which Archer enlists Reed and Hoshi to destroy the weapon, saving the Earth, while Trip, T'Pol and Phlox destroy the Spheres themselves, saving the Xindi (and all of reality)-- is entertaining and fun, but sadly mostly involves pushing buttons and punching aliens. The highlight in terms of What-Makes-It-Trek is not the bit where annoying-time-travel-exposition-fairy Daniels pulls Archer to the founding of the Federation (to convince Archer not to sacrifice himself, something Archer is pretty hellbent to do). Instead, it's the moment where the Andorians show up to help defend the Earth. Jeffery Combs-- another strong member of Trek character-actor stable-- sells the hell out of it as the Andorian Commander Shran, and that's a lot of fun.
But in the end, it's a Big Finale: Things go Boom, and the Day Is Saved? Is that all there is? Is that all there can be? That's the big question remaining.
--
*- I'm fairly certain that the two of them and Jonathan Frakes are the only actors to appear in all four modern Treks.
The third act of the Xindi Arc is pretty action packed. On some level, it does make up for the heel-dragging and aimlessness of the first two thirds: Episodes are: "Hatchery", "Azati Prime", "Damage", "The Forgotten", "E2", "The Council", "Countdown" and "Zero Hour".
Of these eight, really only two are inessential: "Hatchery" and "E2". But both of them do speak to the character of the Enterprise crew. Since the one character-arc that's really tied to story-arc is "How far will Archer go?", to a degree "Hatchery" answers the question, "How far will the crew let him go?" Now, it approaches it from a different angle, where Archer goes to extreme measures to help a creche of Xindi-Insectoid infants, and the crew, sensing something wrong, engage in a mini-mutiny. As Archer is Being Affected By Something (a Trek staple to avoid actual conflict or responsibility), the real conflict boils down to the crew vs. Major Hayes, since Hayes just follows orders. This is also the closest thing we get to something resembling focus on the Xindi-Insectoids, who in terms of story never amount to actual characters, simply additional muscle to back up the Reptilians. "E2" is a kind of fun what-might-be time-travel episode, where the crew meets their descendents from a failed future-version of their mission, but other than turning the screws a bit tighter on the Trip/T'Pol romance, it's largely a placeholder.
That said, the three in between those episodes, "Azati Prime", "Damage" and "The Forgotten" do a very nice job illustrating the Collapse-Retreat-Recovery aspect of the Twelve-Part structure. The ship is really hammered, but at the same time Archer makes some connection with Degra and the other Xindi-Primates. It's here that the core Trek principles are pushed to their limits: having discovered the Xindi world-destroyer weapon, the first plan is just to blow it up. This goes wrong, and Archer gets captured, but in being captured, he uses his knowledge from "Stratagem" to his advantage. This convinces Degra enough to at least listen, and stop the Reptilians from attacking the Enterprise. Degra (with the help of the semi-enigmatic Aquatics) returns Archer to the broken ship, and sends message for a secret rendezvous a few light-years away. The ship being in such a state, making that rendezvous is impossible without a new warp-coil. Fortunately, there's another damaged ship nearby, and Archer feels forced to take theirs by force in order to make the meeting. This is without question his lowest point, committing for all intents an act of piracy in the name of saving Earth. It's very non-Trek, which works excellently for the sake of drama. Capt. Archer is torn up to do it, but he feels he has no choice. You could easily see, for example, Cmdr. Adama, John Crichton or Malcolm Reynolds doing the exact same thing under the same circumstances. The only question is, would they feel the same weight? As horrible as the act is, it is in service of, ultimately, a Trek-solution: solving the Xindi situation through dialogue instead of violence.
Of course, the cracks in the plotting armor are quite evident. Degra could have this clandestine meeting somewhere easier for Archer to reach, given that Degra knows the state Enterprise is in. He even could just go to Enterprise directly, and not even be clandestine. The need for secrecy from the Reptilians (and Insectoids) is a bit artificial. And that's a big part of the problem with this plotting, in that it forces Enterprise to go from Point A to Point B (this necessitating the stolen warp coil) and then from Point B to Point C (this using the subspace passage that creates the timetravel accident in E2, which is neatly avoided, meaning the second Enterprise may have "never existed".) It's mostly hoop-jumping so Degra can use Archer as a surprise in "The Council".
"The Council" is, in theory, Archer presenting his case that Earth is not a danger to the Xindi and that the Sphere-Builders/Guardians have been playing the Xindi for their own purposes. It's the latter point that is most crucial, since the Guardians are worshiped as deities by the Xindi, though they were unaware of the connection between the Guardians and the Spheres. While the Xindi Council has five groups, really only three matter: the Arboreals back up the Primates, and the Insectoids back up the Reptilians. And the Aquatics are the enigmatic deciders. In terms of character, it really boils down to Degra (Primate) and Dolim (Reptilian).
It should be noted that Randy Oglesby and Scott MacDonald deserve a lot of praise. Both are journeyman actors who have done tons of guest roles on various shows, including all four of the modern Treks.* They do solid work, often under a lot of latex, and you have to respect that kind of actor. In fact the real dramatic centerpiece of "The Council", and to a degree the turning point of the story arc itself, is between these two actors.
The final wrap-up of "Countdown" and "Zero Hour" is serviceable, in that the Xindi-Reptilians cement their role as the irredeemable villains, who have tied themselves to the Guardians. The Guardians, of course, want to reshape reality-- terraforming our space, as it were, to one that they can survive in. The Reptilians are their willing dupes. Even the Insectoids wise-up, though all they do is wonder why the Spheres are suddenly working to help their efforts to destroy the Earth before the Reptilians sudden-but-inevitable betrayal. The final push, in which Archer enlists Reed and Hoshi to destroy the weapon, saving the Earth, while Trip, T'Pol and Phlox destroy the Spheres themselves, saving the Xindi (and all of reality)-- is entertaining and fun, but sadly mostly involves pushing buttons and punching aliens. The highlight in terms of What-Makes-It-Trek is not the bit where annoying-time-travel-exposition-fairy Daniels pulls Archer to the founding of the Federation (to convince Archer not to sacrifice himself, something Archer is pretty hellbent to do). Instead, it's the moment where the Andorians show up to help defend the Earth. Jeffery Combs-- another strong member of Trek character-actor stable-- sells the hell out of it as the Andorian Commander Shran, and that's a lot of fun.
But in the end, it's a Big Finale: Things go Boom, and the Day Is Saved? Is that all there is? Is that all there can be? That's the big question remaining.
--
*- I'm fairly certain that the two of them and Jonathan Frakes are the only actors to appear in all four modern Treks.
Thursday, December 6, 2012
Analyzing Flawed Arc Structure, Part 3
A continuation of my analysis of the Xindi-arc of Star Trek: Enterprise. Parts one and two.
The argument could be made that the first third was a "slow build", putting pieces in play that would be needed later. While there is some truth to that (Rajiin introduces the idea of the Xindi working on a biological weapon as a Plan B, and Exile has a B-plot in which a connection between the Spheres and the Anomalies is made clear-- but both of those are drops of data in otherwise wheel-spinning exercises.)
So, onto the middle third of the arc, things should pick up? Should, yes. But doesn't. This middle third batch of episodes are: North Star, Similitude, Carpenter Street, Chosen Realm, Proving Ground, Stratagem, Harbinger and Doctor's Orders. Of this batch of eight, only three do any heavy lifting in terms of the arc plot, and they're back-to-back-to-back: Proving Ground, Stratagem and Harbinger. The rest are very mushy mushy-middle stuff.
The two biggest missteps are North Star and Carpenter Street. Strictly speaking, Carpenter Street does do some arc-work, but it's not compelling. Both these bits suffer from having an "neat idea" supersede what the story arc really needs. In the case of North Star, it was doing an old-school, Original-series style of episode where they come across a planet that's a History Planet instead of an alien world, in this case, the Old West, and it doesn't tie to the Xindi arc at all. It's disposable. For Carpenter Street, it's having the characters time-travel to modern-day Earth. For that, it does tie to the arc, in that they go back to stop Xindi Reptilians in Earth's past who are preparing the biological weapon. The time travel is so incidental for both parties, it's pure handwavium, and raises more "If they can do that..." questions than the arc wants to answer. It does, in the end, provide Capt. Archer with something tangible, and that proves important later... but that could have been achieved without the time travel mess.
Chosen Realm is largely disposable, but it throws a small long-term setback into the mix by having all the data they've collected on the Expanse and the spheres deleted from their computer. It's only small because it doesn't seem to slow them down significantly. It also introduces the idea of Who Built The Spheres, and that said Builders might be worshiped. Similitude and Doctor's Orders are also relatively disposable, but both of them are, at least, nice character pieces. Similitude again pushes the character-arc question for Capt. Archer: how far will he go to succeed? In this case, he allows a sentient being to be born and live for a short period of time in order to save Trip's life, on the principle that he cannot succeed without Trip. The plot requires a lot more of sci-fi handwavium (Dr. Phlox happens to have a Morally Questionable Miracle in the back of his cupboard...), but it works if you can swallow that pill. Doctor's Orders is fun enough, carried largely by John Billingsley's charm. It does built off the idea that the Spheres are Changing Space, set up in Harbinger, so that helps give it some purpose.
Fortunately, Proving Ground, Stratagem and Harbinger do some good work. The first two bring the Xindi and the Xindi Weapon into focus, largely through Degra, the Xindi-Primate who is responsible for actually designing the weapon. An excellent job is done in these episodes changing him from a Nameless Councilmember to a real character, someone who has agreed to do something terrible because he believes it's necessary. Strategem in particular, is a fun exercise, because it plays the "You don't remember but it's been a few years and we're friends now" trope in reverse-- having our protagonists be the perpetrators of the trick instead of the victims. But in doing so, Archer gets to know Degra the Man, as opposed to Degra the Weapon Builder, which also helps shift things towards a more Trek-oriented Final Solution. Harbinger, of these three, does suffer somewhat because it feels more disposable than it actually is: it's mostly character work, filling the time from the travel-with-purpose to Azati Prime (the location of the weapon construction, learned in Strategem) to work on character subplots. It turns the screws on the Trip/T'Pol romance, as well as the Reed/Hayes hostility. And, as mentioned, it sets up the Real Villain: The Sphere Builders. In doing that, the stakes are changed.
However, one should avoid having the word "disposable" being used too much, especially in the middle third of a storyline. It leads your audience to wander away and say, "I don't know what's going on, really". And who wants that? In terms of twelve-part structure, I feel like this only really brings us to Part Five: Payback (with the Sphere Builders being brought into play showing the real stakes). Five/twelfths of story when we're two-thirds in? Problematic. But it does offer the opportunity for a fast-paced final act.
The argument could be made that the first third was a "slow build", putting pieces in play that would be needed later. While there is some truth to that (Rajiin introduces the idea of the Xindi working on a biological weapon as a Plan B, and Exile has a B-plot in which a connection between the Spheres and the Anomalies is made clear-- but both of those are drops of data in otherwise wheel-spinning exercises.)
So, onto the middle third of the arc, things should pick up? Should, yes. But doesn't. This middle third batch of episodes are: North Star, Similitude, Carpenter Street, Chosen Realm, Proving Ground, Stratagem, Harbinger and Doctor's Orders. Of this batch of eight, only three do any heavy lifting in terms of the arc plot, and they're back-to-back-to-back: Proving Ground, Stratagem and Harbinger. The rest are very mushy mushy-middle stuff.
The two biggest missteps are North Star and Carpenter Street. Strictly speaking, Carpenter Street does do some arc-work, but it's not compelling. Both these bits suffer from having an "neat idea" supersede what the story arc really needs. In the case of North Star, it was doing an old-school, Original-series style of episode where they come across a planet that's a History Planet instead of an alien world, in this case, the Old West, and it doesn't tie to the Xindi arc at all. It's disposable. For Carpenter Street, it's having the characters time-travel to modern-day Earth. For that, it does tie to the arc, in that they go back to stop Xindi Reptilians in Earth's past who are preparing the biological weapon. The time travel is so incidental for both parties, it's pure handwavium, and raises more "If they can do that..." questions than the arc wants to answer. It does, in the end, provide Capt. Archer with something tangible, and that proves important later... but that could have been achieved without the time travel mess.
Chosen Realm is largely disposable, but it throws a small long-term setback into the mix by having all the data they've collected on the Expanse and the spheres deleted from their computer. It's only small because it doesn't seem to slow them down significantly. It also introduces the idea of Who Built The Spheres, and that said Builders might be worshiped. Similitude and Doctor's Orders are also relatively disposable, but both of them are, at least, nice character pieces. Similitude again pushes the character-arc question for Capt. Archer: how far will he go to succeed? In this case, he allows a sentient being to be born and live for a short period of time in order to save Trip's life, on the principle that he cannot succeed without Trip. The plot requires a lot more of sci-fi handwavium (Dr. Phlox happens to have a Morally Questionable Miracle in the back of his cupboard...), but it works if you can swallow that pill. Doctor's Orders is fun enough, carried largely by John Billingsley's charm. It does built off the idea that the Spheres are Changing Space, set up in Harbinger, so that helps give it some purpose.
Fortunately, Proving Ground, Stratagem and Harbinger do some good work. The first two bring the Xindi and the Xindi Weapon into focus, largely through Degra, the Xindi-Primate who is responsible for actually designing the weapon. An excellent job is done in these episodes changing him from a Nameless Councilmember to a real character, someone who has agreed to do something terrible because he believes it's necessary. Strategem in particular, is a fun exercise, because it plays the "You don't remember but it's been a few years and we're friends now" trope in reverse-- having our protagonists be the perpetrators of the trick instead of the victims. But in doing so, Archer gets to know Degra the Man, as opposed to Degra the Weapon Builder, which also helps shift things towards a more Trek-oriented Final Solution. Harbinger, of these three, does suffer somewhat because it feels more disposable than it actually is: it's mostly character work, filling the time from the travel-with-purpose to Azati Prime (the location of the weapon construction, learned in Strategem) to work on character subplots. It turns the screws on the Trip/T'Pol romance, as well as the Reed/Hayes hostility. And, as mentioned, it sets up the Real Villain: The Sphere Builders. In doing that, the stakes are changed.
However, one should avoid having the word "disposable" being used too much, especially in the middle third of a storyline. It leads your audience to wander away and say, "I don't know what's going on, really". And who wants that? In terms of twelve-part structure, I feel like this only really brings us to Part Five: Payback (with the Sphere Builders being brought into play showing the real stakes). Five/twelfths of story when we're two-thirds in? Problematic. But it does offer the opportunity for a fast-paced final act.
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Analyzing Flawed Arc Structure, Part 2
As I mentioned earlier, I'm analyzing a flawed structure as part of an exercise to improve my own writing, specifically using the third "Xindi Arc" season of Star Trek: Enterprise.
Now, let's look at the beginning section of the arc, the first third. This would consist of the second-season finale "The Expanse" as prologue, and the first eight episodes of the third season: "The Xindi", "Anomaly", "Extinction", "Rajiin", "Impulse", "Exile", "The Shipment" and "Twilight".
In three-act parlance, which I'm not a big fan of, this is all Act I. And, as far as I'm concerned, that's part of the flaw here: these episodes mostly serve to put the pieces on the board, and there really aren't that many pieces.
The Prologue set-up of "The Expanse" does its job relatively effectively, but it doesn't quite hold up to scrutiny. Earth is the victim of a Pearl Harbor/9-11 style surprise attack, killing seven million people. The attack comes from a single-occupant probe of unknown origin. Here's where part of the problem comes in: rather than have Starfleet actual figure out its origins, at least in part, answers are handed to Capt. Archer by an exposition fairy from the future. And said answers, as they usual are from poorly conceived exposition fairies, do little more than nudge in the right direction. In other words, the information they gain could have been gained in a less clunky way, and have been just as useful. But "The Expanse" sets the tone, puts a name to the adversary (The Xindi) and a place to find the (The Delphic Expanse). The Expanse, itself, is set up as the equivalent of the "Here Be Dragons" part of the space map: physical laws don't work right there, and it's so dangerous even Vulcans and Klingons steer clear of it.
The true "Act I" of those eight episodes serve to establish a few core elements: the dangers of the Expanse (tied to bizarre spacial anomalies), which may be connected to a mysterious sphere; the stakes for the crew of the Enterprise, personally and globally; the Xindi themselves. The problem is, only three of these episodes really effectively achieve these establishment goals: Anomaly, The Shipment and Twilight. The key points in play in this section are tied to what the crew needs and wants. They want to find the Xindi, but they really don't know where to start looking on once in The Expanse. They need to keep the ship safe from the spacial anomalies they constantly run into in The Expanse. For the latter, there is a running subplot involving Trellium-D, a substance that will protect the ship, but that solution isn't acceptable: Trellium-D is toxic to T'Pol, so they can't use it.
This ties into the only real character arc in this section: what is Capt. Archer willing to sacrifice to save the Earth?* His morality takes a bit of a pounding here, at one point torturing a captive pirate to get the information he needs. He's also willing to pimp out Ens. Sato to a mysterious alien in "Exile", though that's a sacrifice Hoshi volunteers for. He spends much of these episodes at the end of his rope, because he really doesn't see the mission as anything more than a ridiculous long shot. IF they can survive the Expanse, and IF they can even find the Xindi, then they'll still be outnumbered and outgunned. This comes to a head in The Shipment, where they find a Xindi refining facility. The materials made at this facility were used in the weapon of the initial attack, and Tucker, Reed and Hayes are all ready to start blowing things up. Archer, instead, decides to get to know one of the Xindi, and reaches an understanding with a decent man who didn't know what his materials were being used for. Two key things accomplished: The Xindi aren't All Bad, and Archer moral compass veers back towards where Trek's is supposed to be.
The final step in this part is in Twilight, a psuedo-time travel story that nails home the stakes of failure: Earth will be destroyed if the Enterprise doesn't succeed in their mission, which they don't due to Capt. Archer being incapacitated by on of the spacial anomalies. It is a classic Trek "reset button", but one with a point. It doesn't just give us craziness and then undo it.
Even still, the big problem with the arc in this part is it mostly just meanders. It takes eight episodes to do the work of three or four.** Extinction, Rajiin and Exile are largely pointless, serving only to provide us with funny make-up, cheap titillation and a poor Beauty-and-the-Beast homage, in that order.
When it comes down to it, the first section only really does the work of the first two parts of the Twelve Part Arc Structure, when it should be doing the first four. Once the situation is Established in The Expanse/The Xindi/Anomaly, we don't get back on point until The Shipment/Twilight to incite the plot to really start moving. That aimless wandering in between those points is where an audience is lost.
Next up: the mushy middle of the Xindi Arc.
---
*- The other character arcs set-up here are essentially minor bits of business. Cmdr. Tucker is assigned the personal loss from the initial attack (his sister was among the seven million), but this mostly serves as an excuse to push him romantically towards T'Pol. T'Pol's main conflict is resolved in the prologue: the Vulcan High Command don't want her on the mission, but she resigns from the High Command to stay on board. Of the minor four members of the main cast, only Lt. Reed is given anything: bristling against Maj. Hayes, of the newly added MACO forces.
**- I'll allow that "Impulse" does a fair amount of work of increasing personal stakes, and ties into what the Enterprise can do to keep themselves safe from the anomalies.
Now, let's look at the beginning section of the arc, the first third. This would consist of the second-season finale "The Expanse" as prologue, and the first eight episodes of the third season: "The Xindi", "Anomaly", "Extinction", "Rajiin", "Impulse", "Exile", "The Shipment" and "Twilight".
In three-act parlance, which I'm not a big fan of, this is all Act I. And, as far as I'm concerned, that's part of the flaw here: these episodes mostly serve to put the pieces on the board, and there really aren't that many pieces.
The Prologue set-up of "The Expanse" does its job relatively effectively, but it doesn't quite hold up to scrutiny. Earth is the victim of a Pearl Harbor/9-11 style surprise attack, killing seven million people. The attack comes from a single-occupant probe of unknown origin. Here's where part of the problem comes in: rather than have Starfleet actual figure out its origins, at least in part, answers are handed to Capt. Archer by an exposition fairy from the future. And said answers, as they usual are from poorly conceived exposition fairies, do little more than nudge in the right direction. In other words, the information they gain could have been gained in a less clunky way, and have been just as useful. But "The Expanse" sets the tone, puts a name to the adversary (The Xindi) and a place to find the (The Delphic Expanse). The Expanse, itself, is set up as the equivalent of the "Here Be Dragons" part of the space map: physical laws don't work right there, and it's so dangerous even Vulcans and Klingons steer clear of it.
The true "Act I" of those eight episodes serve to establish a few core elements: the dangers of the Expanse (tied to bizarre spacial anomalies), which may be connected to a mysterious sphere; the stakes for the crew of the Enterprise, personally and globally; the Xindi themselves. The problem is, only three of these episodes really effectively achieve these establishment goals: Anomaly, The Shipment and Twilight. The key points in play in this section are tied to what the crew needs and wants. They want to find the Xindi, but they really don't know where to start looking on once in The Expanse. They need to keep the ship safe from the spacial anomalies they constantly run into in The Expanse. For the latter, there is a running subplot involving Trellium-D, a substance that will protect the ship, but that solution isn't acceptable: Trellium-D is toxic to T'Pol, so they can't use it.
This ties into the only real character arc in this section: what is Capt. Archer willing to sacrifice to save the Earth?* His morality takes a bit of a pounding here, at one point torturing a captive pirate to get the information he needs. He's also willing to pimp out Ens. Sato to a mysterious alien in "Exile", though that's a sacrifice Hoshi volunteers for. He spends much of these episodes at the end of his rope, because he really doesn't see the mission as anything more than a ridiculous long shot. IF they can survive the Expanse, and IF they can even find the Xindi, then they'll still be outnumbered and outgunned. This comes to a head in The Shipment, where they find a Xindi refining facility. The materials made at this facility were used in the weapon of the initial attack, and Tucker, Reed and Hayes are all ready to start blowing things up. Archer, instead, decides to get to know one of the Xindi, and reaches an understanding with a decent man who didn't know what his materials were being used for. Two key things accomplished: The Xindi aren't All Bad, and Archer moral compass veers back towards where Trek's is supposed to be.
The final step in this part is in Twilight, a psuedo-time travel story that nails home the stakes of failure: Earth will be destroyed if the Enterprise doesn't succeed in their mission, which they don't due to Capt. Archer being incapacitated by on of the spacial anomalies. It is a classic Trek "reset button", but one with a point. It doesn't just give us craziness and then undo it.
Even still, the big problem with the arc in this part is it mostly just meanders. It takes eight episodes to do the work of three or four.** Extinction, Rajiin and Exile are largely pointless, serving only to provide us with funny make-up, cheap titillation and a poor Beauty-and-the-Beast homage, in that order.
When it comes down to it, the first section only really does the work of the first two parts of the Twelve Part Arc Structure, when it should be doing the first four. Once the situation is Established in The Expanse/The Xindi/Anomaly, we don't get back on point until The Shipment/Twilight to incite the plot to really start moving. That aimless wandering in between those points is where an audience is lost.
Next up: the mushy middle of the Xindi Arc.
---
*- The other character arcs set-up here are essentially minor bits of business. Cmdr. Tucker is assigned the personal loss from the initial attack (his sister was among the seven million), but this mostly serves as an excuse to push him romantically towards T'Pol. T'Pol's main conflict is resolved in the prologue: the Vulcan High Command don't want her on the mission, but she resigns from the High Command to stay on board. Of the minor four members of the main cast, only Lt. Reed is given anything: bristling against Maj. Hayes, of the newly added MACO forces.
**- I'll allow that "Impulse" does a fair amount of work of increasing personal stakes, and ties into what the Enterprise can do to keep themselves safe from the anomalies.
Monday, November 26, 2012
Analyzing Flawed Arc Structure, Part 1
Of course, there is much to learn from the masters. But there is also plenty to learn from mistakes. And the great thing is, there are so many out there, you don't need to make them yourself. One thing I've made several analyses of is arc structure, specifically in the work I did to create my Twelve-Part Story Structure. Even the stuff that didn't work.
Now, for these purposes, I want to talk about something that, as a story arc, was a great example of stepping up to the plate, pointing to the fences... and then hitting a double. Not terrible, but... not really what you were hoping to do, either.
I'm going to talk about the third season "Xindi Arc" of Star Trek: Enterprise.
I can imagine all the raised eyebrows.
But bear with me here. Like I said, I'm talking about flawed works.
So, some background: Star Trek: Enterprise was the fifth and final (to date) Star Trek series, and it came loaded with controversy. As a prequel, set a century and change before the classic Trek, and two centuries before the three other modern versions, it set some fan's teeth on edge from the beginning, for a variety of reasons.*
I enjoyed the show, but where the flaws really stand out in the first two seasons, are when it comes to stakes and drama. Stakes were, frankly, consistently low, and from that, drama stayed low. The show barely took itself seriously, aiming more often for light comedy and cheap titillation** over any real human drama. When you come down to it, for much of the first two seasons, the "mission", such as it was, involved tooling around and delivering fruit baskets to the neighbors. "Hi, we're from Earth, nice to meet you!" Yeah, the mission was "explore!", but it came off more as, "Eh, fly around and see what happens."
Season Three was where they changed things up: both in terms of trying something new for Trek in general, and in raising the stakes for the characters themselves. The stakes were high for the show as well. In 2003, Firefly had come and gone, BSG had a fantastic beginning***, and Enterprise was almost quaint in comparison. The need to reinvent themselves was paramount.
So they tried a season-long arc, with a more reactive, aggressive mission. The underlying hook was pretty simple: Earth suffers a devastating surprise attack, and the Enterprise is the only ship capable of investigating-- and possibly retaliating against-- whoever was behind the attack. Woven into that was a crucial question: Can Trek maintain its relevance in modern television, while at the same time maintaining the core values of hope and peace that made Trek Trek?
The overall story-arc consumes the third season, which was a first for Trek, even though DS9 had done more than its share of long-arc plotting. But the third-season of Enterprise was far more focused towards it's arc plot, dedicating almost every episode**** to the arc, as well as the second season finale as a prologue, and the third episode of the fourth season as epilogue.
So: we can't fault the ambition behind it. You can definitely say they tried.
With that, next installment I'll break down the arc into its sections, and how each one worked or didn't work.
---
*- A lot of those reason boiled down to continuity complaints, or rather "continuity", because more often than not, Enterprise didn't contradict established continuity as much as it contradicted fandom presumptions. There are plenty of legitimate gripes with the series, but I found many hard to take seriously when they boiled down to, "This ruins my fanfic!"
**- Much has been made of the show sexing-up Jolene Blalock, which is totally true. But, to be fair, they were just as eager to strip absolutely every cast member down whenever they could remotely justify it.
***- The ending was another story...
****- Almost. Which is one of the problems I'll get into.
Now, for these purposes, I want to talk about something that, as a story arc, was a great example of stepping up to the plate, pointing to the fences... and then hitting a double. Not terrible, but... not really what you were hoping to do, either.
I'm going to talk about the third season "Xindi Arc" of Star Trek: Enterprise.
I can imagine all the raised eyebrows.
But bear with me here. Like I said, I'm talking about flawed works.
So, some background: Star Trek: Enterprise was the fifth and final (to date) Star Trek series, and it came loaded with controversy. As a prequel, set a century and change before the classic Trek, and two centuries before the three other modern versions, it set some fan's teeth on edge from the beginning, for a variety of reasons.*
I enjoyed the show, but where the flaws really stand out in the first two seasons, are when it comes to stakes and drama. Stakes were, frankly, consistently low, and from that, drama stayed low. The show barely took itself seriously, aiming more often for light comedy and cheap titillation** over any real human drama. When you come down to it, for much of the first two seasons, the "mission", such as it was, involved tooling around and delivering fruit baskets to the neighbors. "Hi, we're from Earth, nice to meet you!" Yeah, the mission was "explore!", but it came off more as, "Eh, fly around and see what happens."
Season Three was where they changed things up: both in terms of trying something new for Trek in general, and in raising the stakes for the characters themselves. The stakes were high for the show as well. In 2003, Firefly had come and gone, BSG had a fantastic beginning***, and Enterprise was almost quaint in comparison. The need to reinvent themselves was paramount.
So they tried a season-long arc, with a more reactive, aggressive mission. The underlying hook was pretty simple: Earth suffers a devastating surprise attack, and the Enterprise is the only ship capable of investigating-- and possibly retaliating against-- whoever was behind the attack. Woven into that was a crucial question: Can Trek maintain its relevance in modern television, while at the same time maintaining the core values of hope and peace that made Trek Trek?
The overall story-arc consumes the third season, which was a first for Trek, even though DS9 had done more than its share of long-arc plotting. But the third-season of Enterprise was far more focused towards it's arc plot, dedicating almost every episode**** to the arc, as well as the second season finale as a prologue, and the third episode of the fourth season as epilogue.
So: we can't fault the ambition behind it. You can definitely say they tried.
With that, next installment I'll break down the arc into its sections, and how each one worked or didn't work.
---
*- A lot of those reason boiled down to continuity complaints, or rather "continuity", because more often than not, Enterprise didn't contradict established continuity as much as it contradicted fandom presumptions. There are plenty of legitimate gripes with the series, but I found many hard to take seriously when they boiled down to, "This ruins my fanfic!"
**- Much has been made of the show sexing-up Jolene Blalock, which is totally true. But, to be fair, they were just as eager to strip absolutely every cast member down whenever they could remotely justify it.
***- The ending was another story...
****- Almost. Which is one of the problems I'll get into.
Thursday, November 15, 2012
Riding the Muse Where it Takes You
Sometimes it just doesn't come together. And that's okay.
I'm in a strange position, writing-wise. Three novels are out there, shopping at various publishing houses. Any or all could hit tomorrow, or in a month or six months or never.* If and when that happens, I need to be ready to shift focus to the Needs of Publication-- including and not limited to starting the Book II of whatever series hits.
But until that happens, it behooves me to continue to produce more first-of-a-series novels, which is where Way of the Shield comes in. It ties to the other three novels, in that they are all set in the same city at around the same time**, but it is not necessary to the other novels (as they aren't necessary to each other). While it would be ideal for me to have Way of the Shield done, and get a deal in which all four books are published in rapid succession, that's not necessary either.***
This is all a rather long-winded way of me saying that no one, with the possible exception of my agent, is really asking for Way of the Shield to be written right now. And I'd be willing to bet if I sent him something else, say something space-opera, my agent wouldn't complain.
Which is good, because The Muse, as it were, has been muttering Space Opera and aliens and interstellar politics and how Lt. Samantha Kengle of the Terran Stellar Fleet wants people to know that the hairless monkeys from Sol III are not to be trifled with.****
And that's what you have to do sometimes: listen to the Muse, and figure out where it's taking you. Ignoring it, frankly, just makes everything work slower. And that doesn't mean one project is dead because focus is shifted onto another. Quite the opposite. It's getting a chance to breathe.
---
*- Personally, I'm hoping more in the tomorrow-to-a-month range, myself.
**- Strictly speaking, Way of the Shield takes place about a week after the end of Holver Alley Crew, which itself starts about a week after Maradaine Constabulary, which starts three days after the events of Thorn of Dentonhill. Yes, I have a whole calendar. Yes, I am that obsessively detail oriented about these things.
***- In fact, that's pretty damn pie-in-the-sky.
****- Her language is a bit coarser on the subject. Sailor's mouth on that one.
I'm in a strange position, writing-wise. Three novels are out there, shopping at various publishing houses. Any or all could hit tomorrow, or in a month or six months or never.* If and when that happens, I need to be ready to shift focus to the Needs of Publication-- including and not limited to starting the Book II of whatever series hits.
But until that happens, it behooves me to continue to produce more first-of-a-series novels, which is where Way of the Shield comes in. It ties to the other three novels, in that they are all set in the same city at around the same time**, but it is not necessary to the other novels (as they aren't necessary to each other). While it would be ideal for me to have Way of the Shield done, and get a deal in which all four books are published in rapid succession, that's not necessary either.***
This is all a rather long-winded way of me saying that no one, with the possible exception of my agent, is really asking for Way of the Shield to be written right now. And I'd be willing to bet if I sent him something else, say something space-opera, my agent wouldn't complain.
Which is good, because The Muse, as it were, has been muttering Space Opera and aliens and interstellar politics and how Lt. Samantha Kengle of the Terran Stellar Fleet wants people to know that the hairless monkeys from Sol III are not to be trifled with.****
And that's what you have to do sometimes: listen to the Muse, and figure out where it's taking you. Ignoring it, frankly, just makes everything work slower. And that doesn't mean one project is dead because focus is shifted onto another. Quite the opposite. It's getting a chance to breathe.
---
*- Personally, I'm hoping more in the tomorrow-to-a-month range, myself.
**- Strictly speaking, Way of the Shield takes place about a week after the end of Holver Alley Crew, which itself starts about a week after Maradaine Constabulary, which starts three days after the events of Thorn of Dentonhill. Yes, I have a whole calendar. Yes, I am that obsessively detail oriented about these things.
***- In fact, that's pretty damn pie-in-the-sky.
****- Her language is a bit coarser on the subject. Sailor's mouth on that one.
Monday, November 12, 2012
Perils of the Writer: False Starts
It hits like lightning across the forebrain. The Brilliant Idea that will be the Next New Book. And every thought is consumed with the "Oh, wow!"ness of this new idea. It's fresh and exciting, especially if it hits in the hard-middle-slog of a novel. Then, it inhabits your brain like new lover, with promises of how everything is going to be easy and light and problem free and THIS is the project you should be working on.
And the initial worldbuilding snaps together, characters are as clear as day. You open up a document and just start writing, because isn't that's how it's supposed to be? Isn't that how real writers write, right? They just pound it out and go where the story takes them and they do it brilliantly on their first draft and that's what you're going to do this time because it's brilliant and you're brilliant and this is the best novel ever written by anyone ever and--
CRASH
Somewhere between five and fifteen thousand words, the fiery passion part is burnt out, and then you're poking at those dying embers and realizing, "I don't actually have a plot here, do I?"
So you put it do the side, mourning its failure for a bit. Get back to work on the things that need work, where the work is paying off, slowly and surely.
But, of course, the siren call is there, summoning you back with the promise that this time it's going to work. This time it's going to be brilliant.
I've gone through this particular cycle with USS Banshee several times now. I do have a good sense what "went wrong" on my first few attempts: namely, that lack of plot. But with later ones, it was almost as if I didn't want to actually get to the plot. Put simply, I kept wanting to just write a "hang out" book. I was having fun with the various sets of characters in different sections of the ship, just playing with the personalities, showing off shiny toys, that I could never manage to get to the point where they went anywhere for something to actually happen. One failed draft reached 40,000 words of NOTHING.
That's the most prominent false-start in my stable. I keep coming up with new takes on it, one of which I'm currently quite excited about. Still hashing it out, but I think this one might work. But I've thought that before. Not to mention, there's all the "terminal cases" I have in my writing folders. But USS Banshee is, frankly, the one I can never give up on.
And the initial worldbuilding snaps together, characters are as clear as day. You open up a document and just start writing, because isn't that's how it's supposed to be? Isn't that how real writers write, right? They just pound it out and go where the story takes them and they do it brilliantly on their first draft and that's what you're going to do this time because it's brilliant and you're brilliant and this is the best novel ever written by anyone ever and--
CRASH
Somewhere between five and fifteen thousand words, the fiery passion part is burnt out, and then you're poking at those dying embers and realizing, "I don't actually have a plot here, do I?"
So you put it do the side, mourning its failure for a bit. Get back to work on the things that need work, where the work is paying off, slowly and surely.
But, of course, the siren call is there, summoning you back with the promise that this time it's going to work. This time it's going to be brilliant.
I've gone through this particular cycle with USS Banshee several times now. I do have a good sense what "went wrong" on my first few attempts: namely, that lack of plot. But with later ones, it was almost as if I didn't want to actually get to the plot. Put simply, I kept wanting to just write a "hang out" book. I was having fun with the various sets of characters in different sections of the ship, just playing with the personalities, showing off shiny toys, that I could never manage to get to the point where they went anywhere for something to actually happen. One failed draft reached 40,000 words of NOTHING.
That's the most prominent false-start in my stable. I keep coming up with new takes on it, one of which I'm currently quite excited about. Still hashing it out, but I think this one might work. But I've thought that before. Not to mention, there's all the "terminal cases" I have in my writing folders. But USS Banshee is, frankly, the one I can never give up on.
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