Happy New Year's one and all, and I'll check in again as soon as I manage to get something even vaguely resembling a full night's sleep....
WRITING ADVICE
I realized this morning, while facing the daily battle with writers block (Or maybe just laziness ... the two things are hard to tell apart sometimes), that most of the people who email me are interested in the one thing I never write about in this blog: the actual act of writing. Some of the emails are casual -- people who just think they might like to write. But most of them are pretty serious. They come from aspiring writers who have put real work into it and are far enough past the daydream stage to have realized that, yes, this is a J.O.B. And most of their emails boil down to a single question: how do you actually get through the long, doubt-inducing slog of writing a novel?
I wish I had better answers. But unfortunately, like most writers, I just sort of muddle through it the best I can.
I used to have a Writing Advice page on my now-defunct website. However, like many other things in my life (such as having a life), my website was dealt a mortal wound by the arrival of children. So for those who’ve asked about it, I’m reposting the original text of that Writing Advice page below.
I’ve learned a few more things since then, but by and large I stand by it as good advice .... especially the part about talent. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the last five years, it’s that talent is even more overrated than I used to think it was. Talent won’t even get you a first draft, let alone a published novel. Nope. Forget about talent. It’s blind, dogged, too-darned-stubborn-to-quit persistence that wins the game. In writing ... and pretty much anything else that’s worth doing in life.
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WRITING ADVICE
I get a lot of questions from aspiring writers who want to know how to write a novel. This page is an attempt to answer those questions by laying out the basics of the craft as I see it, sharing some of the information I’ve stumbled on in my own learning process, and pointing out some of the pitfalls along the road to publication.
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Talent. The first thing we need to talk about is talent. I don’t believe in it. I’ve seen brilliant talent squandered by writers who were lazy or conceited or couldn’t accept constructive criticism. I’ve also seen people with no talent at all become truly fine writers by dint of hard work and a burning desire to write stories they really, truly cared about. Writing is a learning process. A natural knack for spinning words can steepen the learning curve, but the one certain rule I’ve learned in a decade of writing is that no one can look into the future and predict the ultimate quality of any writer’s work. If you think I’m joking, go find a biography of George Orwell and read the stuff he was writing when he was twenty-five. It sucked. In fact, it was so awful that thirty years after his death his friends and relations were still struggling to figure out how an average kid with no talent at all turned into one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.
So. If you really want to write, go do it. Don’t wait for permission. Don’t wait for some famous author or college professor to tell you you’re good enough. Just write. Your stories may get no further than your own desk drawer, or you may turn out to be the next George Orwell. I can’t tell you which ... and neither can anyone else. You have to sit down and make your own future.
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Money (Part 1). The second thing we need to talk about is money. I've seen more than a few aspiring writers get scammed by people who promise to get them published or teach them how to write a novel in ten minutes or make them the next big thing in Hollywood. Don't let it happen to you. Remember the Writer's Golden Rule:
CASH FLOWS FROM PUBLISHERS TO WRITERS
Learning to write good fiction takes time, patience and years of work. However, unless you're paying tuition to a reputable MFA program or a workshop like Clarion or Odyssey, there is no step in learning how to write that should involve you reaching for your wallet. Well, okay ... word processors and strong coffee come in handy, but you get my point, right?
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Money (Part 2). That said, the amount of money that flows from publishers to most writers is small. This is a precarious way to earn a living. If you’re a productive professional writer capable of putting out a commercially viable novel every year or so, then you can eventually hope to make a living from your writing .... but from a purely financial point of view you’d do better flipping burgers at the local paper-bag-heart-attack factory. A writer who makes thirty or forty thousand dollars a year is doing very well indeed; according to one recent survey most professional writers clear less than five thousand dollars a year.
I think you see where I’m going with this. If you love writing and you’re willing to work at it - and you get a few lucky breaks at the right time - then you may well be able to write for a living someday. But if you want to get rich, forget about that novel sitting on your hard drive and go to law school.
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How to Become a Writer in Eight Not-Necessarily-Easy Steps
Okay. Now that we’ve gotten talent and money out of the way, let’s move on to the interesting stuff. What follows is the sum total of my wisdom about writing. It doesn’t amount to much, but it’s what I’ve got. Hope it helps.
Step 1: Read. This seems obvious ... to me, anyway. Nonetheless, an astonishing number of aspiring writers and a depressing number of established writers don’t seem to have much interest in reading other people’s fiction. It shows. Always. It makes their plots and characters thinner, their writing lazier and the overall quality of their work lower than that of writers who are also enthusiastic and thoughtful readers. There are few rules in writing that don’t have exceptions, but this is one of them. Besides, if you don’t really like reading novels, then the last thing you ought to be doing is writing them; I can tell you from experience that by the time any novel you write hits the bookshelf you’ll have read it at least a dozen times. With a pen in your hand. Trust me on this one: if you don’t like reading fiction, you won’t like writing it.
Step 2: Write. Another obvious but often ignored piece of advice. Like any other skill, writing requires regular practice. There may be some lucky writer somewhere who managed to produce a novel by writing only when he was feeling inspired, well-fed and adequately rested .... but I sure as hell never met him. For most writers, and especially for novelists, the key to successful writing is setting a regular writing schedule and sticking to it. When someone asked Michael Chabon to sum up the secret of a successful writing career, he said: “Write every day, write at the same time every day, and write for the same number of hours every day.”
Other writers might quibble about the details of Chabon’s advice. Some writers take weekends or Sundays off. Others, myself included, set a minimum daily word count rather than writing for a set amount of time. Still, I don’t think you’ll find many established writers who disagree with the basic idea. You get in shape by setting a workout schedule and sticking to it - and most people finish novels pretty much the same way. It may not sound poetic or artistic, but it works. For most writers it’s the only thing that does work.
Step 3: Don’t have time? Write anyway. One of the most amazing things about publishing a novel is the number of people who immediately tell you about the novels they’d write ... if only they had the time. Well, guess what? No one has time. Most writers produce their first (and often their second and third and fourth) novels while making a living doing something else. Many also write while juggling jobs, families, and all the rest of life’s little complications. So if you really want to be a writer, just do it. Get up at five in the morning and write until you leave for work. Or put the kids to bed and write until midnight. Or lock yourself in your office and write through your lunch break. Sure you’ll probably write slower than you would if you didn’t have to earn a living or give the kids a bath or whatever, but these things are all part of living ... and who wants to read books by people who’ve never lived? Most important, however you ultimately make time to write, you can be certain you’re in good company. Odds are your favorite writer has been there too.
Step 4: Write what you love, not what you think you’re supposed to write. As soon as you start writing seriously, all kinds of people - parents, teachers, aunts and uncles, wives and husbands and boyfriends and mere acquaintances - will pop out of the woodwork to tell you what you should be writing. Actually, that’s not quite true. Usually they prefer to tell you what you shouldn’t be writing ... which somehow always turns out to be exactly what you are writing. If you take one thing out of this entire page, I hope it will be this: IGNORE THEM.
Write what you like to read. Write the kind of stuff you’d read even if it wasn’t assigned in class. Write the kind of stuff you read under the desk instead of the stuff they assign in class. There’s nothing worse than a writer who secretly loves shoot-em-up space opera trying to write Serious Literature to impress the critics... except, possibly, a writer who really loves Serious Literature trying to write trashy space opera to make money. For one thing it doesn’t work; readers can spot a fake a mile away. For another thing, life’s just too damn short. So write what you love.
Step 5: Imitation is the best form of flattery (or how to use your favorite books to beat writer’s block). Sooner or later, you’ll run into the problem all writers face: wanting to tell a story that you don’t have the skills and tools to tell. Many first time novelists quit when they hit this point, assuming that if they were really meant to be writers they’d just somehow magically know how to finish their first novel. Other writers flit from one unfinished novel to another or end up revising their work to death - whittling promising first novels into dead, dried up little corpses. Writer’s block comes in every shape and size, and it can hit anyone.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that help is out there. Whatever kind of story you want to write, there are models - textbooks, you might call them - that can help you solve many the problems you’ll face during each stage of writing. What are they? Well, I’ll give you a hint: you’ve already read them. In fact, you probably already own them. They’re your favorite novels. You know, the ones you’ve read again and again, even though they weren’t assigned, even after your teacher confiscated them and gave you detention for reading under the desk, even though they made you miss your final or burn dinner or forget doctor’s appointments. If you’re writing the kind of book you should be writing (“write what you love to read”) , your book will have a lot in common with your favorite books. Even better, those books will contain most, if not all, of the tools and techniques you’ll need to finish your book.
I discovered this when I was writing Spin State and ran into a wall around chapter 20. I couldn’t figure out how the book ended. Hell, I couldn’t figure out how chapter 20 ended. It was a literary train wreck, general strike, and The End Of Everything, all rolled into one ugly package. After a few days of fussing and fuming, I gave myself a much-needed break and did one of the things I like best to do: read a spy thriller. Somewhere in the middle of that thriller, the lights went on. I realized that while Spin State (you write what you read, after all) was clearly a science fiction novel, it was also a spy thriller - a book about international (well, interplanetary) politics, lies, power and betrayal. With this realization in mind, I went back to the book that I consider to be the most perfect spy story ever written: John Le Carre’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Over the next few days I literally took my copy of that book apart. I wrote all over it. I made outlines and lists and marginal notes. And by the time I was done, I had a pretty good understanding of how the greatest living master of the spy thriller solved the same problems I was facing in my novel. More important, I had added a new and versatile tool to my writer’s toolbox: the realization that every successful novel is a roadmap that shows you how to solve the kinds of problems - character development, plotting, using place and atmosphere, you name it - that come up in writing that particular kind of novel.
All of which takes us back to Writing What You Love to Read. Because the more you read - and the more you read the kind of fiction you want to write - the better equipped you’ll be to solve the problems all writers face.
Step 6: Join a writer's group for moral support and constructive criticism. I cannot say enough about writing groups. A good writers’ group is a great moral and emotional support. It is also the surest and most direct route to publication for most writers.
There are any number of ways to hook up with a writing group, from local college creative writing courses to science fiction conventions and masters’ programs. If you’re interested in writing science fiction my first advice is to join one of the on-line groups I mention in the links page and start testing the waters to see if a writing group is the best place for you to learn. Then get on-line, locate nearby science fiction conventions, and go to one.
SF conventions are a little overwhelming for those who’ve never attended one before, but somewhere in the midst of the fray and hubbub you’ll always find a room or two dedicated to what convention organizers call ‘the writing track.’ Go there. Attend the writers’ panels, go to the local writers’ readings and tell them that you’re looking for a writing group to join. Already being a member of an on-line writing group will score you big points here, of course, because it will tell them that you know the basics of submitting and critiquing fiction and actually want to learn how to be a better writer, rather than just tell everyone what a great writer you already are (sorry, but there are a lot of people like that out there). Still, even if you can’t or don’t want to do the on-line thing, don’t worry. Science fiction writers are a nice bunch of people, and anyone who shows up with a smile on their face and a love of writing is going to be welcomed with open arms. Really. I mean it. Try us.
Step 7: Never forget that readers are doing you a favor when they read your books, not the other way around. Whether the readers you’re dealing with are fellow writing group members or fans who walked into their local bookstore and ponied up seven bucks to read your novel, please remember that they’re doing you a favor. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen well-meaning readers get their heads bitten off for offering constructive criticism ... often criticism that the writers in question would have done well to listen to. Don’t be one of those writers. Be kind to your readers. Feed and care for them properly. Otherwise, they will stop being your readers. And a writer without readers is no writer at all.
Step 8: Don't quit. This is the hardest one of all. It is impossible to get across to aspiring writers just how difficult it is to write a novel, even for people who have already written enough novels that you’d think they could do it in their sleep. Every novel you’ve ever read (yes, even Stephen King's fiftieth novel!) exists only because its writer persisted in the face of self-doubt, despair and the morbid conviction that even if he or she somehow managed to finish the damn book no one would ever read it, let alone publish it. If you set off to write a novel, know that you will face those moments too ... lots of them. And when you do face them, don’t quit.
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Finally, here's some parting advice from two masters of the craft:
[Don't take] literature so seriously ... it's just writing the best
you can and finishing what you start. - Ernest Hemingway
No one else can do it. The world is before you and you need not
take it or leave it as it was when you came in. - James Baldwin
A Sky the Color of Television Tuned to a Dead Channel
Tim Flannery is one of my favorite scientisits to watch. Even so, I haven’t been keeping a close enough eye on him. Somehow this slipped by me. Flannery is arguing that if we keep on our current track with carbon emissions, we’re going to have to take drastic geoengineering action in order to maintain Earth as an environment suitable for continuing human evolution.
His solution: inject sulphur into the upper atmosphere to create a “global dimming effect” that will slow down global warming. In essence, he's talking about replicating the effects of massive volcanic eruptions (think Krakatoa).
This is Big Scary Science, no doubt about it. A desperate Hail Mary pass aimed at heading off looming disaster. Flannery warns that we “don’t know” what the eventual impact of doing this would be. All we know for sure is that it would change the color of the sky ... hence the title of this post, which should already have Gibson fans laughing. Or maybe crying.
PS -- I just realized that I actually managed to mention global warming and evolution in one and the same post. Bring on the trolls!
PS -- I just realized that I actually managed to mention global warming and evolution in one and the same post. Bring on the trolls!
Science: It's Better than a Stick in the Eye!
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Last weekend Sean asked his readers to weigh in on what major scientific concept most needs to be explained to the public. The obvious answer is Evolution, except that he ended up ruling that out for the quite sensible reason that Evolution has been explained very well many times, and it's not scientists' fault if people just don't want to listen. But my favorite answer was this one from Scott Aaronson:
"The skill of sharpening a question to the point where it could actually have an answer."
Like many scientific concepts, this one has resonance in real life. In fact I would argue that the recent election season would have been significantly less nauseating had any of the political candidates or professional media loudmouths had a handle on that concept!
Mark Geyer Inquisitor's Apprentice Illustrations are here!
On a more pleasant note than my last post ... here's a quick preview of Mark Geyer's illustrations for my upcoming children's fantasy novel, THE INQUISITOR'S APPRENTICE (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Fall 2011). One of the most fun things about writing a kid's book was getting to have a real live illustrator. I actually started out my writing career as an aspiring children's book writer/illustrator. So I have huge respect for Mark's talents -- and I've had a lot of fun watching these illustrations develop over the course of the last year or so.
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| J. P. Morgaunt's Library (copyright Mark Geyer) |
Mark is best known for his wonderful pen-and-ink illustrations of Stephen King novels, including THE GREEN MILE and BAG OF BONES (actually, my favorite Stephen King novel of them all). Mark's work evokes the down-and-out grittiness of the 1930s and yet also boasts a level of detail and a quality of draftsmanship reminiscent of Gilded Age artists like Charles Dana Gibson. We needed someone for THE INQUISITOR'S APPRENTICE who could illustrate the whole spectrum of Gilded Age New York, from Millionaire's Mile to Coney Island and the Lower East Side tenements. So Mark was a perfect match for this book.
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| Harry Houdini and the Stolen Locket (copyright Mark Geyer) |
These are the first two finished illustrations. Unfortunately neither of them show the Lower East Side setting, which Mark has captured beautifully. However, these two examples definitely get across the overall feel of the book (as well as offering a glimpse of some of the historical figures I've used and abused in my tale!)
And hopefully I'll have some of the Lower East Side illustrations to pass along soon....
And hopefully I'll have some of the Lower East Side illustrations to pass along soon....
James Frey is Back (Ew ... yick!)
Okay. So I don’t usually use this blog to air my personal peeves. But sometimes I see something so bad happening in the literary world that I just can’t let it slide. And one of those somethings has just reared its ugly head.
James Frey is back. Remember him? Yeah, I thought not. He was last seen earning big bucks and bad publicity when he sold a novel about drug addiction as a "memoir" and then got caught on Oprah. But apparently the lesson he learned was not quite the one Oprah intended....
Now he's come up with a new and even more unethical scheme to make James Frey lots and lots of money. He's going around to MFA programs recruiting students to write work-for-hire books for his company, Full Fathom Five. (Read all about it here ... if you have the stomach for it.) Apparently Frey thinks this gambit is going to bag him "the next Twilight." It ain't. But that's not the point. The point is the unbelievably abusive terms he's offering these hapless young writers. Basically, he's paying them $250 up front to write an entire novel themselves, hand it to him for editing, and then walk away with a mere 30% of the normal author's royalties, the rest of which go to James Frey. Frey also gets a 70% cut of all world, film and TV rights. Oh and did I mention that Frey's for-hire writers are also never allowed to publicly claim authorship of their books?
This is as bad as it gets, folks. Truly. Please, if you are an aspiring writer considering entering into such an agreement -- with Mr. Frey or anyone else -- let me deliver a dose of reality.
If you write a book then you, and you alone, should reap the entire profits from it. The advance is yours. The royalties are yours. The movie and translation rights are yours. It's all yours. Because you wrote the damn thing.
The only exception to this rule is if a literary agent sells your book for you. In that case he or she rightly claims somewhere between 10 and 15 percent of the take. This fee is well worth paying, because a good literary agent can usually get vastly bigger advances for your work than you could on your own. Also, a good agent is a sort of career mentor, steering opportunity your way, giving you high quality editorial advice, and helping you develop the overall arc of your career in what has become a brutally tough, highly competitive business.
What Frey is essentially doing is serving as a literary agent. He claims to be offering more than than agents offer, but that’s hooey. All the things he brings to the table -- editing advice, marketing advice, in-house publicity, contacts with major movie producers and top editors -- are exactly what established literary agents give you for their 15% agent's fee.
Trust me, Sonny Mehta does NOT trust James Frey to pick good novels (let alone deal professionally with him over the course of a multibook contract) more than he trusts the top twenty or so literary agents in New York. And the same thing goes for every editor, movie producer, and TV exec you’ve ever heard of. These people are professionals. They want to work with other professionals, not con men.
Frey is just milking the eternal desire of aspiring writers to believe that there is a secret club or a secret handshake that will let them skip the hard work of writing their first novel themselves and finding an agent who wants to represent it.
There isn’t. You just have to do it. Period.
But here's the thing that Frey has carefully not told these poor writers. If you have written a good first novel (and can write a reasonably professional one-page query letter), then you will always -- and yes, I really do mean ALWAYS -- be able to get reputable agents to read it. My agent is one of the top people in the business. And like many other top agents he reads unsolicited manuscripts. He doesn't do it for charity. He does it because -- like every other agent in the business -- he's always looking for the next hot young writer. This is true in every genre and for every conceivable kind of book. Young writers are the lifeblood of the business, and agents who don’t actively recruit them don’t remain top agents for long.
That's how the business works, and don't let anyone ever tell you otherwise. As an aspiring writer YOU have something valuable to offer: your talent and your ideas. Agents know it. James Frey knows it too. The only difference between him and a reputable literary agent is that he’s trying to steal it from you.
James Frey is back. Remember him? Yeah, I thought not. He was last seen earning big bucks and bad publicity when he sold a novel about drug addiction as a "memoir" and then got caught on Oprah. But apparently the lesson he learned was not quite the one Oprah intended....
Now he's come up with a new and even more unethical scheme to make James Frey lots and lots of money. He's going around to MFA programs recruiting students to write work-for-hire books for his company, Full Fathom Five. (Read all about it here ... if you have the stomach for it.) Apparently Frey thinks this gambit is going to bag him "the next Twilight." It ain't. But that's not the point. The point is the unbelievably abusive terms he's offering these hapless young writers. Basically, he's paying them $250 up front to write an entire novel themselves, hand it to him for editing, and then walk away with a mere 30% of the normal author's royalties, the rest of which go to James Frey. Frey also gets a 70% cut of all world, film and TV rights. Oh and did I mention that Frey's for-hire writers are also never allowed to publicly claim authorship of their books?
This is as bad as it gets, folks. Truly. Please, if you are an aspiring writer considering entering into such an agreement -- with Mr. Frey or anyone else -- let me deliver a dose of reality.
If you write a book then you, and you alone, should reap the entire profits from it. The advance is yours. The royalties are yours. The movie and translation rights are yours. It's all yours. Because you wrote the damn thing.
The only exception to this rule is if a literary agent sells your book for you. In that case he or she rightly claims somewhere between 10 and 15 percent of the take. This fee is well worth paying, because a good literary agent can usually get vastly bigger advances for your work than you could on your own. Also, a good agent is a sort of career mentor, steering opportunity your way, giving you high quality editorial advice, and helping you develop the overall arc of your career in what has become a brutally tough, highly competitive business.
What Frey is essentially doing is serving as a literary agent. He claims to be offering more than than agents offer, but that’s hooey. All the things he brings to the table -- editing advice, marketing advice, in-house publicity, contacts with major movie producers and top editors -- are exactly what established literary agents give you for their 15% agent's fee.
Trust me, Sonny Mehta does NOT trust James Frey to pick good novels (let alone deal professionally with him over the course of a multibook contract) more than he trusts the top twenty or so literary agents in New York. And the same thing goes for every editor, movie producer, and TV exec you’ve ever heard of. These people are professionals. They want to work with other professionals, not con men.
Frey is just milking the eternal desire of aspiring writers to believe that there is a secret club or a secret handshake that will let them skip the hard work of writing their first novel themselves and finding an agent who wants to represent it.
There isn’t. You just have to do it. Period.
But here's the thing that Frey has carefully not told these poor writers. If you have written a good first novel (and can write a reasonably professional one-page query letter), then you will always -- and yes, I really do mean ALWAYS -- be able to get reputable agents to read it. My agent is one of the top people in the business. And like many other top agents he reads unsolicited manuscripts. He doesn't do it for charity. He does it because -- like every other agent in the business -- he's always looking for the next hot young writer. This is true in every genre and for every conceivable kind of book. Young writers are the lifeblood of the business, and agents who don’t actively recruit them don’t remain top agents for long.
That's how the business works, and don't let anyone ever tell you otherwise. As an aspiring writer YOU have something valuable to offer: your talent and your ideas. Agents know it. James Frey knows it too. The only difference between him and a reputable literary agent is that he’s trying to steal it from you.
Geek Heaven
Well, this is so old that I don't know if it even qualifies as news anymore. But someone recently pointed out to me that Marc Andreessen (Mosaic co-author and Web God) named me as one of his picks for top ten SF writers of the '00s. That's cool. Seriously. No, really. Can I explain how cool it is? Okay, you're right. Too Much Information. I should stop now before I lapse into hopelessly pathetic geekery.
Also cool (though perhaps not surprising) is how much I agree with him about the other people on the list:
Charles Stross
Richard Morgan
Ken McLeod
Peter Hamilton
John Scalzi
Neal Asher
Peter Watts
David Marusek
I haven't read David Marusek, and I plan to rectify that in short order. As for the remaining names on the list, these guys are all fantastic writers, tending towards exactly the kind of hard-driving hard SF I love best. If you haven't read any new hard SF in a few years, this is a pretty damn good jumping off point. I can't argue with a single name on there, And my only gripe is the absence of the following names: Elizabeth Bear, M.M. Buckner, Ian MacDonald, Adam Roberts, Justina Robson, and Sean Williams. (You'll note that I discreetly listed them in alphabetic order!) But of course this is why I can never compile lists like these. I'd be constantly tortured by 3 am revelations of all the great writers I'd left out....
Finally, I have to confess that especially near and dear to my heart is Andreessen's bonus pick on this list, Vernor Vinge. True Names really is everything it's cracked up to be. And thankfully we no longer have to hunt through used bookstores or cadge borrowed copies in order to read it!
Also cool (though perhaps not surprising) is how much I agree with him about the other people on the list:
Charles Stross
Richard Morgan
Ken McLeod
Peter Hamilton
John Scalzi
Neal Asher
Peter Watts
David Marusek
I haven't read David Marusek, and I plan to rectify that in short order. As for the remaining names on the list, these guys are all fantastic writers, tending towards exactly the kind of hard-driving hard SF I love best. If you haven't read any new hard SF in a few years, this is a pretty damn good jumping off point. I can't argue with a single name on there, And my only gripe is the absence of the following names: Elizabeth Bear, M.M. Buckner, Ian MacDonald, Adam Roberts, Justina Robson, and Sean Williams. (You'll note that I discreetly listed them in alphabetic order!) But of course this is why I can never compile lists like these. I'd be constantly tortured by 3 am revelations of all the great writers I'd left out....
Finally, I have to confess that especially near and dear to my heart is Andreessen's bonus pick on this list, Vernor Vinge. True Names really is everything it's cracked up to be. And thankfully we no longer have to hunt through used bookstores or cadge borrowed copies in order to read it!
Danger!! Flesh-Eating Pig Zombies!!
As William Gibson once pointed out, "the future is here, it's just distributed unevenly." And every now and then I read something in the blogosphere that makes me realize I've just bumped up against a lovely little piece of it. Today's piece of future shock comes from Michael Pollan.
Pollan, traditional foods guru extraordinaire, has long been one of my favorite bloggers, if only for spreading two of my favorite food rules ("Don't eat anything you're not willing to kill" -- a rule that works equally well for hunters and vegans -- and "If you're not hungry enough to eat an apple, you're not hungry"). However, his recent post about the death of honey bees and the rise of skin-eating bacteria on hog farms really is worth reading even if you're not a foodie.
I can't think of much to say about this, beyond the points Pollan himself makes so forcefully. Such as that high density factory pig farming and intercontinental shipping of bee colonies are both Really Bad Ideas from a public health perspective. For those among us who either require food to live and/or do not wish to become food for penicillin-resistant flesh-eating bacteria it's all rather depressing. But for SF writers .... well ... this stuff is pure gold! We spend so much time reading and writing about high-tech disaster that it's easy to forget that the Next Big Bad Thing could just as easily come from pig farms as supercolliders.
I keep thinking of Greg Bear's wonderful book, Blood Music, with its vision of futuristic high-tech pandemic. That was the primary vision of our science fictional future in the 1980s. And for the most part, high-tech mahem (well, and zombies and vampires) still seem to dominate people's SFnal imagination today. Still, I sense the tide is turning. I see humbler and grittier dangers on our fictional horizon.
Forget Armageddon! Start worrying about Farmageddon! And while we're waiting for the future to get here, can I offer anyone a nice plate of Honey Bee Flu with a side order of Flesh-eating Pig Zombies?
Pollan, traditional foods guru extraordinaire, has long been one of my favorite bloggers, if only for spreading two of my favorite food rules ("Don't eat anything you're not willing to kill" -- a rule that works equally well for hunters and vegans -- and "If you're not hungry enough to eat an apple, you're not hungry"). However, his recent post about the death of honey bees and the rise of skin-eating bacteria on hog farms really is worth reading even if you're not a foodie.
I can't think of much to say about this, beyond the points Pollan himself makes so forcefully. Such as that high density factory pig farming and intercontinental shipping of bee colonies are both Really Bad Ideas from a public health perspective. For those among us who either require food to live and/or do not wish to become food for penicillin-resistant flesh-eating bacteria it's all rather depressing. But for SF writers .... well ... this stuff is pure gold! We spend so much time reading and writing about high-tech disaster that it's easy to forget that the Next Big Bad Thing could just as easily come from pig farms as supercolliders.
I keep thinking of Greg Bear's wonderful book, Blood Music, with its vision of futuristic high-tech pandemic. That was the primary vision of our science fictional future in the 1980s. And for the most part, high-tech mahem (well, and zombies and vampires) still seem to dominate people's SFnal imagination today. Still, I sense the tide is turning. I see humbler and grittier dangers on our fictional horizon.
Forget Armageddon! Start worrying about Farmageddon! And while we're waiting for the future to get here, can I offer anyone a nice plate of Honey Bee Flu with a side order of Flesh-eating Pig Zombies?
Jack Aubrey ... with dragons!
I don't get football. Or, actually, I DO get football. Especially the good old-fashioned smashmouth kind. It's just the ads that confuse the hell out of me. Does 'get back in the game' mean something? And are all those ads selling hair dye, or, you know, something else? And why would people spend gazillions on a pill that might require them to report to the hospital four hours later for ... well, Jeez, I can't even think about it without cringing!
On the other hand, there is a pill I would spend gazillions on: a pill that magically extracted all traces of Patrick O'Brian's Jack Aubrey books from my neurons so that I could read them again for the first time.
I don't think Pfeizer is working on very hard on this pill at the moment. But in the meantime, I have found something almost as good: Naomi Novik's Temeraire books.
I can't remember when I've been so swept up in a new series. I feel like a kid again. I know, I know, I sound like one of those Superbowl ads. But really. These books are the perfect prescription for kids of all ages.
The first book in the series, His Majesty's Dragon, begins when a a British Navy captain in the Napoleonic Wars captures a French ship and discovers a dragon's egg hidden in the hold. His crew is ecstatic over the anticipated prize money ... until they realize that the egg is about to hatch and one of them is going to have to harness the newborn dragon and be consigned to a pariah's life in the despised Aerial Corps. Of course, the captain turns out to be the unlucky man. And so it begins ....
Novik's writing is surefooted and accessible. Like O'Brian, she manages to evoke early 19th century prose style (largely by the artful use of semicolons) without getting tangled up in it. And, again like O'Brian, she has penned a pair of comrades-in-arms whose evolving friendship has enough emotional depth to carry readers through any number of naval (or in this case aerial) adventures.
I'm now deep into the fourth book, and I see no signs of the pace or quality level slacking off. These books are good, clean, fast-paced fun with all the joys of science fantasy and naval adventure combined. If you're feeling world-weary and jaded then take my advice and have a go at them.
SPIN STATE Featured in 25 Years of Spectra
Bantam is celebrating the 25th anniversary of its SF/Fantasy imprint, Spectra, and I got a nice surprise when they made SPIN STATE one of the featured titles for 2003. They asked me to write something about the experience of writing the book, or writing in general, or SF in general. So being the indecisive type I picked all of the above....
Here's a link to the page on SPIN STATE. And here's a link to the main list, which makes for fun reading. Surprising how many of my favorite books these guys turn out to have published....
Another thing you'll notice is how many of the writers talk about working with Anne Groell, the senior editor at Spectra. Anne is one of the great unsung heroes of SF. She has worked with many of the top writers in the business, from Kim Stanley Robinson and David Brin to George R. R. Martin and Robin Hobb. In fact, Anne is the person who believed in Robin Hobb enough to give her a second chance when a string of badly handled books had ruined her sales numbers and most publishers had decided she was washed up as a writer. We all know how that turned out. And it was characteristic of Anne's steadfast belief that if you just keep putting really good books out there readers will find them.
One of the funny and endearing things about working with Anne is that, as Lynn Flewelling mentioned, she draws smiley faces on her manuscripts every time she likes something. So even if you get back a manuscript covered with red ink, there somehow seems to be at least one smiley face for every question, comment or correction. You wouldn't think it would matter. I mean we're all grownups and professionals, right? We ought to be able to take our medicine. Can you imagine the members of your average writing group drawing smiley faces all over each others' drafts? Heavens, no! And yet ... somehow Anne's smiley faces are like Mary Poppin's spoonful of sugar. They really do help the medicine go down. Though the slog from manuscript to publication can be long, when you are working with Anne it never gets discouraging. This ability to critique without crushing is part of her great talent as an editor -- and one reason why she has inspired so many writers to deliver of their best work for her.
Here's a link to the page on SPIN STATE. And here's a link to the main list, which makes for fun reading. Surprising how many of my favorite books these guys turn out to have published....
Another thing you'll notice is how many of the writers talk about working with Anne Groell, the senior editor at Spectra. Anne is one of the great unsung heroes of SF. She has worked with many of the top writers in the business, from Kim Stanley Robinson and David Brin to George R. R. Martin and Robin Hobb. In fact, Anne is the person who believed in Robin Hobb enough to give her a second chance when a string of badly handled books had ruined her sales numbers and most publishers had decided she was washed up as a writer. We all know how that turned out. And it was characteristic of Anne's steadfast belief that if you just keep putting really good books out there readers will find them.
One of the funny and endearing things about working with Anne is that, as Lynn Flewelling mentioned, she draws smiley faces on her manuscripts every time she likes something. So even if you get back a manuscript covered with red ink, there somehow seems to be at least one smiley face for every question, comment or correction. You wouldn't think it would matter. I mean we're all grownups and professionals, right? We ought to be able to take our medicine. Can you imagine the members of your average writing group drawing smiley faces all over each others' drafts? Heavens, no! And yet ... somehow Anne's smiley faces are like Mary Poppin's spoonful of sugar. They really do help the medicine go down. Though the slog from manuscript to publication can be long, when you are working with Anne it never gets discouraging. This ability to critique without crushing is part of her great talent as an editor -- and one reason why she has inspired so many writers to deliver of their best work for her.
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