The Agent Hunt Begins

   

        Having recently completed the revision of The Singularity War, I'm now looking for representation. Finding an agent can be a long, arduous process, and it's not something I've taken to lightly. After compiling a list of 40 potentials, I sent out my first 10 query letters on Wednesday. As I understand it, it can take anywhere from a few weeks to several months to get a reply, so instead of sitting on my hands while I wait anxiously, I've decided to dive right into my next project. 
      I have two novels I'm working on at the moment. One is the sequel to The Singularity War, which has just entered the outline stage, and the other is a cyberpunk detective story set in the same milieu as Blood Red Mars, focusing on the character of Christina and her dealings with the Shadow Man, a plot thread that was never fully resolved in the collection. Now that I'm finally free of The Singularity War, I feel much more confident and energized about my writing. I can already see drastic improvements in my ability to plot, develop character, and integrate detail into the narrative. It all flows so much easier from my mind to the computer screen, and for that I have the Stonecoast MFA program to thank. 
       Working closely with so many fantastic writers has undoubtedly had an impact on my abilities. I'm happy to see that Stonecoast has made the jump from number 8 to number 6 on Poets & Writers top low residency MFA programs list. I can honestly say, going to Stonecoast was one of the best experiences of my life. I can't wait to see what new and exciting writers come out of the program over the next few years.

Writing/Reading Update

     

          So far, it's been a busy month. I just reached the 200 page mark in my revision, read a few good books, started a new novel, and I'm doing my best to stay disciplined now that I no longer have my Stonecoast mentors to hold me accountable. Oh yeah, and I graduated. I'm now officially an MFA. What that means for my future, I've no idea. But it feels nice. I had the pleasure of chatting with an agent who works for the Rees Literary Agency at my last residency in July, and she had some nice things to say about a sample from my novel, though she doesn't represent science fiction. I did, however, get a list of agents who might be interested, which is both surprising and exciting. Speaking of the novel, the revision's coming along nicely. I've got about a hundred pages of heavy lifting left before I do a final read-through and polish. Then I'll start shopping it around.
         I'm reading/listening to several good books at the moment. I just finished Infidel by Kameron Hurley, which was even better than the first book, God's War. I also read Overthrowing Heaven by Mark L. Van Name, which I liked quite a bit (thought not as much as the first two in the series), and I'm working on Sandstorm by James Rollins and the audio version of Relic by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. Also, I'm starting to get into The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall, a strange piece of genrebending metafiction that's not normally my cup of tea but I'm finding quite enjoyable. Up next is High Fidelity by Nick Hornby,  Skinny Dip by Carl Hiaasen on audio, and The High Window by Raymond Chandler. On the writing front, I've started work on Argos, the sequel to The Singularity War, and I'm in the note-taking stages of a cyberpunk detective story set on Mars, tentatively titled Shadow Game. I'm trying my best to stay occupied in my post-Stonecoast life and doing whatever I can to avoid the slump in productivity that always seems to be waiting just around the corner three months after residency. More ebook stuff is on hiatus for the time being, until I finish the revision of my completed novel and the outline for Argos. Sometimes I wish I had multiple clones, so I could work on several projects simultaneously, but unfortunately we're not quite there yet.
          Not much else to report. As usual, I'm slogging ahead. Gotta keep up the momentum. Oh, and some good news: my friend and fellow Stonecoast alum Zachary Jernigan just sold his first novel, No Return, to Night Shade Books! Can't wait to read it when it comes out next year. Night Shade is, in my opinion, one of the best indie publishers of science fiction and fantasy working today. They really seem to be pushing the envelope when it comes to discovering new and exciting voices. Congrats, man! May you be the first of many! That's all for now...

Worldbuilding: The Devil is in the Details

       

        As I launch into the full-on revision of my novel, The Singularity War, I've been thinking a lot about worldbuilding, specifically, how to convey the scale and complexity of a far future civilization, including all the different planets, cultures, races, technologies, politics, and histories without disrupting narrative flow or pacing. Admittedly, it's a difficult task. In the worst examples I've read, the author just dumped loads of information on the reader, as if he or she simply cut and pasted from his or her notes. But how do you get across what you need to get across without resorting to stilted dialogue where the characters explain everything to each other or dull, monotonous exposition? The trick, I think, is to write as if you inhabit your characters' world. When you read a contemporary novel, the author spends no time explaining economic systems or the finer points of auto mechanics. How stuff works isn't that important, just that it works consistently and believably. The key is to lay down ground rules and follow them to the letter (unless there's a very good reason to break them). But, of course, there are some things that simply must be explained. When that happens, I think it's best to just give the information as quickly and concisely as possible, then get on with the story. 
      When I started writing this novel, I knew very little about the world. I knew it was set in the far future with lots of colonized planets, faster-than-light travel, and real-time interstellar communication. I knew that people lived a lot longer than they do today, could record copies of their minds to be reconstituted in the event of death, and that emergent artificial intelligence was a constant threat. But beyond that, I had little in the way of actual worldbuilding. The story is set primarily on two different planets: the wealthy, cosmopolitan  Calliope, and the desolate, former mining colony Nyx. Each world offers a strikingly different environment. Calliope, while Earthlike, is rife with native life forms, including massive rainforests that span the equator. Due to a quirk in the photosynthesis process, most of the vegetation is purple. Nyx, on the other hand, is a barren wasteland, orbiting a red dwarf star that provides too little light and heat. Its atmosphere is toxic and its surface is scoured by dust storms. Nevertheless, there are native life forms, the deadliest of which are the nighthunters. All of these details came out in the first draft, and now it's time to fine tune them. Why, for instance, is Calliope's plant life purple? I remember reading an article once in New Scientist (or maybe it was an astronomy magazine, I'm not really sure) about how stars of different spectral classes could affect the flora of their planets, producing a range of colors, depending on what wavelengths they use for photosynthesis. If I remember correctly, this included purple. As for the nighthunters, how did such a creature come to evolve? What sort of ecology must exist on Nyx, as barren and lifeless as it appears to be, in order for them to prosper? It's details like this that, though they might not actually appear in the text, I need to work out, so that everything hangs together. 
        As I work through the novel, I find myself constantly questioning decisions I've made (or avoided making). What is the culture like on Calliope? There are numerous references to "mods," individuals who continuously alter their appearance in accordance with a particular fad, and cosmetic technology is so advanced that people change their physical forms as frequently as we change our clothes. This poses some interesting questions about the nature of identity. How closely are we tied to our physical form? When you can copy and transfer your consciousness between bodies, what are you? Is your body important, or is it just a shell for your mind? I'm seeing lots of thematic potential here, and it's all in the details. 
       Everything in the world effects everything else. One's religious belief can affect their choice of clothing, food and drink, social behavior, and even their choice of entertainment. Culture and language have a resounding impact on artistic design, architecture, and sociopolitical systems. What do families look like on other worlds, in the distant future, where reproduction is intrinsically linked to technology and completely ex utero? What does it mean to raise a child, when information can be directly downloaded and traditional schooling no longer exists? How will entertainment change, when severe injury and death no longer carry the weight they once did? All of these questions, and more, are on my mind now, and as I push forward with my rewrite I'm hoping to answer most if not all of them, at least through the actions and attitudes of my characters. Because, if there's one thing I've learned about worldbuilding over the last two years, it's all about the little things, the details, that make the setting come alive on the page. 

Thoughts on Prometheus

        There seem to be a lot of differing opinions about Prometheus, some very positive, some very negative. After seeing the film, I decided to wait until I had time to fully process it before sharing my own view. So, for what it’s worth, here it is. Warning: the following contains spoilers!

       Firstly, I’d like to say that despite its flaws, Prometheus is undeniably a beautiful film. Scene for scene, the imagery is stark, gothic, creepy, and just plain cool. Ridley Scott does a brilliant job conveying information visually. I can’t believe how many SF movies these days rely on voiceover to fill in back story, as if the audience is too uneducated to understand that what they are watching is set in an alternate world (*cough, John Carter, cough*). The overreliance on voiceover has become something of a red flag for me. If the film begins with a shot of space and some disembodied Morgan Freemanesque voice saying “In the distant future…,” as if no one bothered to watch the trailer before dropping 10 bucks at the box office, it will almost certainly be terrible. There’s a reason the director’s cut of Blade Runner sans Harrison Ford’s narration is considered superior to the one that was originally shown in theaters. So, I applaud the writers of Prometheus for not treating us like a bunch of morons and explaining every single detail of the universe and its mythology.      

       That being said, one of the common complaints I’ve heard about this film is that there is too little explanation. People want to know who the Engineers are, why they created humanity, and why they eventually decided to destroy us. I also initially wanted to know the answer to this question, but upon reflection, I’m happy the writers decided not to give us a long winded infodump at the end, which they easily could have. Instead, many of the mysteries remain mysteries, which rings true to me. In the real world, almost nothing wraps up as neatly as it does in the movies, and oftentimes the answer to one question will simply spawn more questions. This is especially true for some of the most basic questions, which the film raises: Who are we? Where did we come from? Why are we here?

       One of the things I think makes Prometheus a good film is how it takes the creation myth and reexamines it, exploring a central idea of the science fiction genre: the irresponsible creator. This concept can be traced all the way back to one of the first SF novels ever written, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, which is in many ways a proto-artificial intelligence story. Incidentally, Frankenstein’s original title was “The Modern Prometheus.” According to Greek mythology, the titan Prometheus created humans from clay, then gave them fire and was punished by the gods. He was chained to a large rock and forced to have his liver eaten by an eagle every day for all eternity. Prometheus was, in essence, punished for being irresponsible with his creations (fire was meant only for the gods). In Frankenstein, Victor creates the monster, then abandons him, failing in his responsibility to care for the life he engendered, and he is eventually punished for it when the monster turns on him and the human species as a whole. 

       The film Prometheus opens with a shot of a large alien (an Engineer) standing on a cliff on a world that may or may not be Earth in the distant past. He drinks a black liquid, which destroys his DNA, and falls down a waterfall, spreading the remnants of his genetic material to create life. It is unclear whether this was done voluntarily or if this was some sort of punishment. A comment later made by David, the android, recalls this scene, "Sometimes to create life, one must first destroy," in other words, one being sacrifices itself to give life to another. This is also symbolic of the statement Vickers makes to Weyland, "A king has his reign and then he dies." The life-death-life cycle is recounted throughout the film in many different ways. Contrary to what Janek says, I don't think the black substance was intended to be a weapon, but was a form of organic technology used to alter DNA and create life. Only, something went wrong. Its wielders were irresponsible with the technology and it destroyed them, just as humanity was irresponsible in its creation of the AI, David, whose actions also resulted in many of the characters' deaths. 

       Throughout the film, David is treated as an inferior. The humans on the ship have little to no regard for their creation. Though he claims to have no desire and no emotions, David very clearly does. He despises humans and finds their search for their creators to be arrogant and ultimately foolish. In fact, humanity's arrogance is one of the principle flaws that leads to so much of the horror and destruction in the movie. David infects Holloway with the black substance after asking him what he would do in order to meet his maker. Holloway says "anything," which, to David is a foolish answer. The fact that humans see the Engineers as all-powerful, even godlike, annoys him, since he cannot have the same reverence for his own creators. When the Engineer's head explodes, David says "mortal after all," as if there was some question as to whether or not the Engineers were  transcendent beings simply because they had the power to create life. Humans also have the power to create life, and they are far from godlike.

       Because humanity was irresponsible in its creation of artificial intelligence, David's actions are not only understandable, but inevitable, because he's sentient, he's a person (albeit a flawed, unguided one), and he most definitely has emotions, just like the monster in Frankenstein. Instead of guiding or helping David, all of the characters in the film treat him like a machine. Vickers orders him around, and David spitefully refers to her as "Mom." Near the end of the film, when he asks Shaw why she needs to know all the answers, she tells him it's because she's human and he can't understand because he isn't. This is quite an arrogant statement in my opinion, as David seems just as capable as any of the human crew. Shaw places herself, and humanity, on a pedestal, above other forms of life, which is foolish and self-righteous. Like the Engineers, humans attempt to master nature and use their technology without any sense of responsibility, and because of this, terrible things happen. Thus you have the final scene of the film. It is the culmination of the irresponsible actions of the Engineers, humanity, and David, that creates the proto-alien, which spawns an entire species that wreaks so much havoc later on. 

      I don't think Prometheus is a perfect film, far from it, but it does have a bit more depth than its harshest critics have given it credit for. Despite its underdeveloped characters and somewhat convoluted plot, I believe it is definitely worth seeing. The cinematography alone is second to none. It's definitely better than most recent SF, and I think it has just enough connections to the original Alien film that fans of the franchise will be quite pleased (I know I was!). Doubtless, there'll be innumerable Prometheus sequels in the future, and I can't say that I'll be disappointed if there are. 

God's War Review/Writing Update

     

          I recently finished reading God's War by Kameron Hurley, and I have to say I'm impressed. Hurley's prose is razor sharp, and she definitely doesn't pull her punches when it comes to depicting the harsh, violent world of the far future colony Umayma, where two opposing nations, Nasheen and Chenja, wage a holy war that has lasted centuries. I picked up this book when it first came out, after reading several other novels from Night Shade, which I enjoyed, but didn't get around to reading it until now. For a first novel, this one sets the bar pretty high. 
      The future depicted here is strange, dark, and grotesquely fascinating. No shiny spaceships or chrome plated robots. All of the technology on Umayma is based on bugs. That's right, creepy crawlies. A special class of people, dubbed "magicians," can manipulate swarms of bugs, which function as everything from long-range communications to heavy artillery, using some kind of pheromone control. Even their vehicles are powered by bugs! The world of God's War is bloody, brutal, and organic, a refreshing contrast to the spick and span futures so often portrayed in contemporary science fiction. The characters are vivid, three dimensional human beings and the subtlety of Hurley's prose makes them come to life on the page. Needless to say, I will be reading the sequels, Infidel, and Rapture. Kameron Hurley has easily made my top 10 list of favorite new writers and I'll be eagerly waiting to see what else she comes up with in the future. 

      On the writing front, I'm just about finished with the revision of my novel, The Singularity War, a far future space opera/spy thriller that explores issues of AI and the Technological Singularity combined with fast paced action adventure. After that, I plan to let it mellow for a couple of months before taking another pass at it. Then I think I'll start shopping it around. Not much in the way of new writing, I'm afraid. Most of my energy has gone into preparing my thesis for my MFA program, which I'll be graduating from in July. I've started compiling notes for a new novel, but it's in the very early stages, and I've got several different ideas floating around, so it's hard to say what'll stick. In the meantime, I'm reading a lot, both fiction and non-fiction. A little over a month till graduation. Can't wait to see everyone in July. 

The Science of Science Fiction

             

 


          One of my favorite popularizers of science is Michio Kaku, a professor of theoretical physics at City College in New York City as well as one of the co-founders of String Theory. With these two books, Physics of the Impossible and Physics of the Future, he takes many of the concepts once thought to be pure science fiction and explains them in such a way that is both accessible and plausible. 
       In Physics of the Impossible, Kaku classifies SF concepts based on how likely they are given our current understanding of the universe. Class I impossibilities, which include force fields, invisibility, laser weapons, and nanotechnology are not only possible, but many already exist in rudimentary forms. Faster-than-light travel and time travel fall into Class II, which are impossible given our current level of technology, but may be possible in the future if certain theories of the universe turn out to be true (though engineering will still be an issue). Finally, Class III includes out-right impossible concepts like perpetual motion and precognition (seeing the future). Kaku uses his knowledge of physics and his love of science fiction to make heady concepts easy to understand and fascinating to read about.   
      In the followup to this book, Physics of the Future, he examines the next 100 years in detail, explaining the wondrous possibilities of nanotechnology, virtual reality, genetic engineering, and a developing space industry. I have found Kaku's work not only a joy to read, but also quite helpful when postulating my own ideas about the future. These books are a goldmine for science fiction writers. Even if you have no interest in writing, you should pick up one or both of these. They're brilliantly written, easy to understand, and, above all else, fun.

The Cabin in the Woods

        The weekend before last I saw The Cabin in the Woods, the new horror movie from Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard. I was intrigued by this film after seeing the trailer, which depicts a run-of-the-mill slasher-in-the-woods storyline that suddenly takes a turn into unexpected territory, much as the film itself does. Just when you think it can't get any weirder, it does, but in a way that is refreshing and original. 
        This movie plays around with the tropes of the genre, making fun of some, while putting a new spin on others, which is one of the things that makes it so endearing. It is not above poking fun at itself or horror films in general, yet it also adds its own unique perspective to the genre. For me, the best thing about this movie is its wicked sense of humor, which is unrelentingly dark and, at times, deeply disturbing. The regularity and nonchalance of the mysterious "operators" who are responsible for many of the characters' demise is both a source of comedy and terror. The combination of humor and fear works well here, as you don't know whether you're going to laugh at the next scene or cringe. 
        Because the film takes the time to develop its characters, breathing new life into hackneyed cliches, you actually care what happens to them, and when bad things start to happen, you really want them to escape. The Cabin in the Woods has more layers to it than initially meets the eye. Not only does it take a familiar storyline and put it in an unusual context, but the outside world itself is not at all what it seems. There's a rich history here that's left mostly unexplored, though references to H.P. Lovecraft, Clive Barker, and other literary masters of the genre abound. If you're looking for a cheap thrill with recycled characters and ideas, go elsewhere, but if you are a true fan of the genre and want a movie that's both terrifying and hilarious, check out The Cabin in the Woods.