Surreality CheckA Savage Writer's Journal
Like wow, man. A new month. Far out. Sorry. I was watching Vietnam war protest videos again last night. And it's, like, really happening. OK. I won't do it again. The summer barbecue season has officially started. My neighbor was attempting to do Kentucky Fried Fingers ("Chicken-lickin' good") with his new gas grill. Silly bugger didn't read the directions, which explicitly say to start the grill with the lid closed. Fortunately, nobody got hurt, but it was a pretty good fireball. Speaking of which, have you ever noticed how well science fiction characters can get by without reading the owner's manual? One of the things that bugged me the most about Star Wars (Episode IV: The New Hope) was Luke's ability to quickly use the Millenium Albatross—oops, Falcon—and its weaponry system during the "escape" from the Death Star. I'm sorry, but no. Try this simple experiment to see what I mean: jump in an unfamiliar car and set the time on the radio. You have ten seconds. See what I mean? Blackadder III shows some of the comic possibilities. The last episode ("Duel and Duality") has a hysterically funny climactic duel. Instead of swords, as Blackadder expected, he and the Duke of Wellington will fight with miniature cannon. Blackadder has no idea of how to fire a cannon, and begins reading from the handy user manual. "Congratulations on choosing the Armstrong-Whitworth Miniature Cannon. With proper use and care, it will give years of trouble-free maiming." At which point the Duke, who is thoroughly familiar with the operating instructions for the cannon, finishes loading and fires. (The opening sequence of Sneakers includes a similar snafu.) Maybe it wouldn't be Hollywood, but it might be nice to see people run the checklist on some semi-complicated unfamiliar Doomsday Devices sometime. Especially an alien artifact that has a Janglish (or the equivalent) instruction manual that leaves out or assumes some critical steps. Hmm. Just writing this out has helped me figure a way out of a corner I'd written myself into. I'll be back in couple days and let you know if it worked. I received an interesting letter today. Yes, I could be a winner. Of free room and board, a generous clothing allowance, and an exciting career in the growing field of license plate design and manufacture. Well, those weren't the prizes on offer. But that's what this particular bit of mail fraud entails. This one has an interesting twist. It's actually a rather sophisticated attempt to mask the underlying fraud. Basically, the letter offers a CD-ROM full of ready-to-sell booklets. One of the choices was "booklets aimed at prospective authors." Allegedly, these booklets (all 16- or 32-page fold-in-half-on-letter-sized-paper pieces, "guaranteed" to print out on any printer ready for the copy shop) will give out all the secrets to getting published. For the low, low, price of $125 (cashier's check only, please), I can get this CD-ROM. I can also turn around and sell this program to other suckers; the upstream people claim "only" $75 of the cash flow (plus a $25 order-fulfillment fee for the CD-ROM), so I break even after getting only five more entrepreneurs involved! Of course, the reason I've been offered this opportunity is that the originator is now "too busy" and wants to retire—no doubt to a warm climate where there's no extradition treaty. (He'll still be busy fulfilling CD-ROM orders, though.) His lawyer has "assured" him that this scheme is not fraudulent, since it offers a valuable product in return for the cash. Umm, right. And my mother's the Pope, too. I'm scratching my head on how my name ended up on this list. The return address was smeared; the postmark was Cheektowaga, New York. That's an interesting coincidence, if a coincidence it is. I'm turning this stuff over to the U.S. Attorney tomorrow. P.S. The envelope is addressed to "Esq.", too. Somebody didn't proofread the mailing list. Yesterday was a lovely evening for writing. The computer was plugged into Microsoft for about five hours downloading system-level software. This is inexcusable. (Mac fans, don't laugh. At least I could download the system-level software. I've worked on enough malfunctioning Macs to know that I couldn't do what I've done.) Frankly, I'd rather be writing for free, or even defending a deposition. Brain-dead Microsoft Design Decision #23: If an installation of system-level software, such as a web browser, fails, there is no uninstall information available, because the uninstall information isn't even created until after a successful complete installation. This is similar to not backing up a novel manuscript until after the final draft is complete, and requires figuring out which files to delete, which registry entries to change or delete, etc. Simple solution: Have the installation software create a "make file" and a "progress file" on disk. The "make file" lists exactly what the program must do, such as "expand all of the files in xxx.cab and put them in the directory c:\[user-selected path]\bin." The "progress file" lists what has actually been done, and gets written to disk after every operation. Thus, a simple file compare of a couple of 2-5k text files will create a real-time, system-customized undo script. The installation programs are based on "Acme Install" (an ancient VMS utility for updating dumb-terminal drivers that was ported to DOS). Reminds me of Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner. And we all remember just how well Acme products worked for Wile, don't we? For my next trick, I get to repeat this over a thin-Ethernet network of 125 computers. Oh boy. I hate the local post office. I want my Speculations. I haven't even seen my own article in print. I'll have to change my on-line bibliography after I see it. On sex, and writing, and imagination: Wellywellywellywell, my little droogs, it's time for Uncle Alex to tell you about the birds, the bees, the lampblack, and the linseed oil. Or at the least about that naughty sculpture you have in the parlor, you dirty old ptitsa! More writers need to suggest sex than describe it. Part of Burgess's point was that all of the explicitness led to sterility. This is one of the few serious errors in Kubrick's adaptation of A Clockwork Orange: Every bit of sexuality in the novel is "foreplay" (if you can call it that, although some deviants do), but Kubrick allowed too much sex and sexual content to occur on-camera. Nasty enough in its way, especially in the context of the rest of the film, but nonetheless a softer point than the author's. All of which leads to a question for writers. I suspect that every writer will answer it slightly differently, but here goes:
At what point does explicit description of sexual acts or sexual characteristics change from "story" to "prurience"? As it happens, I have quite a vivid imagination. Most regular readers of this journal probably do, too. Although I've not done a scientific study, extremely explicit description tends to become a "turn-off" as it descends into the twin prosestoppers of "mechanism" and "red-light metaphor." How often have we seen stories just stop while characters engage in a few paragraphs of (probably disappointing) sexual gratification? I'm not suggesting the extreme alternative of excluding all consideration of sex from stories. I am, after all, a Certified Dirty Old Man. But fiction today greatly underestimates the power of suggestion. The censors have long been aware of that, too. Joyce's Ulysses, for example, never actually describes putting part A in slot B. Until the mid-1960s, though, it was easier to get Playboy inside of Boston city limits than Lady Chatterly's Lover. Of course, I have only ever looked at Playboy for the articles and fiction. It does leave one wondering. To put it another way, sex is such a personal, individual, nonverbal activity that clinical descriptions are unfaithful. They also tend to be so dehumanizing that I can (almost) understand, if not accept, the radical feminist position that pornography justifies eviscerating the First Amendment. ("Is that all?") The "red-light metaphor" school of sex writing really isn't any better, with its extravagent comparisons. That, I believe, is where writing fails: At its very best, all it can do is try to compare sex to something else. Lampblack and linseed oil—or, in this day and age, soybean oil—has its limits. Le Guin has called a "metaphor" the attempt to describe, with words, something that cannot be described with words. I would include "sex" in the same class. We shouldn't play Victorian and ignore it, hoping the dirty thing will go away. I tried the "Star Wars Personality Quiz." No, even though I'm a lawyer, I didn't get Darth Vader. Instead, I got Obi Wan Kenobi. That's not too bad, though; I suspect that Atticus Finch would be Obi Wan Kenobi, too. Then again, that long black cape does look a bit like a judge's robes.
[Breathing through respirator] Counsellor, I find your lack of faith in the American system of justice . . . disturbing. You should not lightly dismiss the power of this Court. [Continued breathing] Perhaps I can . . . persuade you to cooperate. [Bailiff enters, pushing chrome-plated library cart filled with law books] It worked like a charm. I complained about not getting my Speculations, and it showed up in the next day's mail. Yes, that's my article on fair use. No, it is not legal advice, and it does not create an attorney-client relationship. ;-) Some interesting news on the Hollywood front: Vonda McIntyre's excellent The Moon and the Sun is going to be Muppetized. Well, at least Jim's production company has picked up the option and specified producer, director, and screenwriter. (Maybe having Kermit and Gonzo in minor roles isn't such a bad idea . . . naaaah.) One traditional parlor game is making movies out of novels. As writers, we're all convinced we could do it better than Hollywood. (Most of the time, we're right; but that often has far less to do with the script than with the realities of advertising, merchandising, and backroom politics.) For example, many speculative fiction writers complained bitterly about how Hollywood ruined Starship Troopers. Don't get me wrong. I'm not defending the movie as an everlasting work of art. But too many writers forget that, with only one serious exception (Apocalypse Now), Hollywood has never succeeded in getting inside characters' heads in a way that we wouldn't criticize as "infodump" on the printed page. That severely limits the kind of printed work that translates well to the screen. There needs to be a lot of action, a fair amount of dialogue (OK, The Brother From Another Planet is monologue, but you know what I mean), and very little interior or narrative introspection. Thus, I'm not sure that we'll recognize The Moon and the Sun on screen. There may well be a very fine film made from the general basis of the novel. Henson's company has a good reputation (in the publishing law community, anyway) for respecting authors' moral rights (droit moral) and actually listening to authors' suggestions. But I venture to say that it won't be the same thing. This works in reverse, too, particularly for older dramatic works. Of the Elizabethans, only Marlowe's plays, particularly Doctor Faustus, "read" like they're "played." Shakespeare is an excellent example. I have seen Hamlet performed 11 different times, by 11 different companies, with 11 different casts. If I add the text of the play itself, that makes 12 versions. Each version is distinct in its various emphases and cuts; acting and "business"; costume and sets. The "best" one, I believe, was a production I saw in Stratford by the RSC in 1989. It was also one of the "least faithful" to the Elizabethan vision, visually set in (basically) a late-nineteenth-century banana republic. All of which is to say, best of luck to Vonda McIntyre. I hope that she likes what comes out of Hollywood (presuming, of course, that "creative differences" or other hogwash doesn't spike the film down the line). It won't be the novel. I had another "throw the book against the wall" experience last night. It's a book for which I am an outside peer reviewer. (I am not going to go into the details, because I'm embargoed.) It's a lot less satisfying throwing a 900-page-rubber-banded manuscript against a wall than a good solid hardback, or even a paperback. I wonder how this piece of garbage made it through the acquisitions process. The author is not a "name." It's not a high-profit area (the particular market area is actually pretty crowded). So, what does she do? Does she try to just make a better presentation of material in a very technical area of law? Not a chance. Her writing is virtually a self-parody of bad legal writing. I think I found a declarative sentence on page 17, and one in active voice as early as page 12. Then there's the sloppy thinking and political determinism (the area of law is very subject to economic analysis that assumes its conclusions). I didn't need to turn to the author bio to see that she graduated from the University of Chicago Law School and was a student leader of the Young Republicans. Much of the economic analysis is valuable, and it certainly provides insight into one kind of pro-Big Business thinking. However, it is not stated as opinion, or even as analysis, but as fact, when it depends upon treating certain economic and noneconomic value judgments as facts. For example, at one point, the author begins to discuss the "economy of scale." This is a fairly elementary economic concept. She correctly notes that there is a diminishing return on scale that varies from industry to industry. The problem is that she assumes that creating an economy of scale is necessarily a net economic advantage. That is dependent entirely upon the scope of examination. Creating economies of scale in the early twentieth century dry goods industry (primarily fabric weaving) certainly brought the real cost of clothing down. However, it also destroyed Lowell, Massachusetts. I'm not sure if getting jeans for a buck less apiece is a net positive, given the direct and indirect economic costs (welfare, police protection, undereducated residents unable to obtain other work, etc.). This twists around into some speculative fiction that I've been reading lately. Peter F. Hamilton's portrait of Peterborough in the Greg Mandel books seems quite similar in concept. (If one accepts the premises of the series—admittedly quite a stretch—the books are satisfying technothrillers.) Hamilton's pro-Tory, anti-Labour politics come through on every page—everything positive about post-Warming Peterborough is due solely to the beneficent capitalism of Event Horizon. (Personally, I always thought that Steele and Owen were much more entertaining.) Event Horizon is a utopian, hyperaware supercorporation that never seems to fire people, never seems to enter markets without becoming a dominant player (and never abuses that dominence, because its competitors are all slime), doesn't pollute, has no problems with corruption or racial or gender discrimination, etc. But there are a lot of stories hiding in the margins around these supercorporations. What about the corner news shop put out of business by the new, "more efficient" corporation (or wizard, for that matter)? What happens to the owner? The owner's family? More importantly, what if the corporation really isn't more efficient, but can just stand losses long enough to kill off its competitors (the classic "predatory pricing" justification for antitrust laws)? What happens to the customers when they start buying inferior merchandise that is the only choice they have, such as the Ford Pinto? Is that economically efficient? Shakespeare's father narrowly escaped debtor's prison through bankruptcy; one can infer some of the roots of The Merchant of Venice. That's where Hamilton's series (centered as it is on the super-rich; one can almost imagine Robin Whatsisname doing voiceover descriptions for Lifestyles of the Rich and Shameless in the background) and this author's book fail. Hamilton can get away with it, because these marginalized people are, at best, on the margin of the story that he's trying to tell. (On the other hand, marginalized people make some of the most powerful storytelling characters and points of view available to the fiction writer.) My author, however, can't get away with it, because she's not telling a story. She's supposed to "tell it like it is." So, maybe [publisher] is going to publish its first science fiction book. I don't think that's what it intends, though . . . Congratulations to Dorothy Rothschild on winning a Fulbright scholarship. A year in the Balkans studying. Hey, that's what they called what I used to do—"Area Studies." Does that count? ;-) I think I finally found a way out of the corner I had written myself into. It also reinvigorated the novella that I had shelved (see the entries for May 3rd and April 7th). That old saw about making it shorter by adding complexity sometimes works! On to other topics. The current issue of Phantastes includes an article that asks some of the same questions I asked here on March 14th about racism in fantasy, albeit from a slightly different perspective. It's a valid issue; it is far from confined to fantasy. Science fiction is, if anything, worse. Larry Niven's Near Space universe is an excellent example. The Kzin, for example, are uniformly vicious, honor-is-all parodies of predator cats. The Puppeteers are all cowardly, and view that as a virtue. There are shades of difference, but both racial norms are so extreme that they become self-parody. Only in human beings is there any tolerance for diversity. Well, yeah. That's what evolution would do, right? Select for the most-successful traits? Bzzzzzzt! Thank you for playing! That broad generalization—encouraged by far too many basic high-school biology books, I'm afraid—just plain fails.
Of course, there is a much sounder reason to avoid the "one equals all" trap: It's bad storytelling. Fiction is about characters, and hence individuals. There is no story without difference. Otherwise, one is just rewriting Being and Nothingness over and over again, perhaps without quite the same pretentious bullshit that Sartre projected. Whatever it is, it isn't storytelling or fiction—just lies. This installment is not recommended for either the squeamish or true fans of Star Wars. I've seen lots of speculation about the "real story" behind Star Wars. Some of it is very plausible, particularly David Brin's hints in Salon. Brin's thoughts are much more in line with Joseph Campbell's internally inconsistent claptrap than are mine, so Brin is probably close to what Lucas will do. But I have a particularly grim and devious mind. Occam's Razor ("the least-complicated explanation is the most probable") and a few looks sideways at American literature lead to another, less Hollywood-friendly explanation; let's call this the Native Son theory. The central problem is the transformation of six-year-old Anakin Skywalker from an innocent child "who gives without expecting anything in return" (Padme/Queen Amidala) to Darth Vader who, for all his command over the Force, still doesn't seem to get anything in return. Stir in twin children unknown to their father, an adolescent boy or teenager in the grip of raging hormones (Have you noticed the strange absence of sexual action in the Star Wars movies? They're in more than just that way similar to E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensmen.) who is tired of not getting anything in return, the age difference between Amidala and Anakin, some melodrama, and . . . It's not suitable for pre-teens anymore, is it? It's certainly not suitable for Hollywood summer blockbusters. It would make for some very easy Hollywood-style explanations. And, unlike Native Son, it doesn't even have to appear on camera. But this is much too hard, and ultimately too "personal," an explanation. Examining this alternative shows where Joseph Campbell went wrong. Yes, people want stories. The problem is that the iconic Hero just doesn't belong in all stories. Many stories cry out for an Antihero, or an alternate point of view (e.g., Harlan Ellison's "The Deathbird"). If Star Wars really does end after Episode VI (The Return of the Jedi), the reclamation of Anakin Skywalker for the Light Side makes him the hero—not Luke, not Leia, not Han Solo, and sure as hell not Yoda. Look at Andersen's "The Snow Queen"! Without a darker, more personal explanation, the Campbellian Hero just doesn't fit in this story, because the obstacles are at best illusory or flat. If light is the left hand of darkness, darkness is the right hand of light. As usual, the best choice will lie somewhere in between. Neither Disney's Snow White nor Tanith Lee's, but somewhere in the middle, where there is enough light to see and enough shadow to provide perspective. I have little faith in the storytelling skills of marketing committees; and that, I'm afraid, is where the final decisions will be made. Really, now. An R-rated Episode III? But, of course, in terms of the structure of myth—Frazer and Campbell agree on that much, anyway—we're most likely to find darkness in the middle of a story, not the beginning or the end. If one looks at Western European fairy tales, all of the "big problems" present at the very beginning or very end of the tale are subordinate to even bigger issues. I just don't believe that there are any such bigger issues in Star Wars. (And this is before we find out that Darth Sidious is really . . . well, you should be able to figure it out. Hint: Who gained the most temporal power in Episode I?) Today is a bad day for writers, in a legal sense. The Supreme Court just threw out 40 years of federal law on when states can be sued (the doctrine of sovereign immunity). Well, that sounds technical. Doesn't really apply to writers, does it? Let's assume that a writer allows the University of Houston press to publish a book of her plays. A couple years later, the writer is browsing through a collection of contemporary plays by female playwrights, and finds one of her plays in the collection, also published by the University of Houston press. Sounds like copyright infringement, right? Well, the University of Houston press is an arm of the University of Houston; which is an arm of the State of Texas. The University of Houston press claims that, as an arm of the state, it has sovereign immunity. Sorry, guys. This is not a hypothetical. See Chavez v. Arte Publico Press (5th Cir. 1998), reh'g en banc granted. The only ray of hope, and it's an awfully small one, is that the Supreme Court's opinions today all dealt with property rights and denied that there was a protected right. Since copyright is an enumerated power (Article I, Section 8, Clause 8), not a "necessary and proper" power (Amend. XIV; Article I, Section 8, Clause 18), the Supreme Court may eventually hold that copyright is different from trademark infringements, and that one can sue a state for copyright infringement. But, given the judicial activism of the Reagan/Bush wing of the Court in today's opinions, I am not at all confident. Now you know why lawyers are grumpy in May and June, when the majority of a Term's Supreme Court decisions come down. The major reason I'm behind on my journal is the GeoCities/Yahoo merger. From this user's perspective, it has not gone well. The GeoGuide manager (the tool that keeps me from having popups on my pages that will kill Lynx and AOL, among other browsers, and look just plain awful anyway) is down, and GeoCities/Yahoo is busy pretending that there's no problem. Don't worry. Be happy. The other reason is that I've been spending time on two major writing projects:
Actually, the third reason is that, like any lecherous male, I've been busy watching the Women's World Cup. Vastly entertaining. The commercials are often better-written than any TV sitcom I've seen on this side of the Atlantic. Hmm. Maybe there's something there . . . naaah. Writers really prefer starving to beamers. Just a short entry here. I haven't been that productive on the fiction front lately, at least not in terms of words written. Most of my fiction work lately has involved wheel-spinning, note-taking, and research for projects only hazily outlined in the bottom of my skull. (And it takes a pretty fancy mirror to look there.) In the last month, I've completed exactly one short story, and that was a burst-forth-from-the-head-of-Zeus phenomenon. It's also got some serious problems, although I think I can fix them. On the other hand, I've reassessed and rebegun a novella that I've been struggling with for a couple of years, I've done significant background research on the long-simmering thermodynamic novel, and I've outlined my own attempt at a chess-based story. A few words about chess and fiction are in order. Carroll's Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There is notorious for its nonsensical chess game. Rev. Dodgson may have known his math, but he sure as hell didn't know strategy (or even the rules of chess). Since that time, there have been a lot of efforts at telling "chess stories." Some have been more successful than others—Ian Watson's Queenmagic, Kingmagic comes to mind—but the successful ones have all ignored the actual moves in any given game. The converse is also true: All of the "true to the game" stories have been rather unsuccessful. There is a common error in all of these: the equation of each chess piece with a single character. That is certainly not consistent with the game itself! Each chess piece, instead, seems to represent small groups of warriors. Rather than the queen herself on the battlefield, we have the Queen's Own Highlanders; rather than moving a real castle about, we have "combat engineers." With this understanding, it's a lot easier to translate a game to a plot. I leave implementation as an exercise for the reader. The GeoCities/Yahoo "Rights Grab" Controversy Part of the Yahoo takeover of GeoCities has included an unethical attempt at a "rights grab." Here's the new language:
Many people are upset by what appears to be a "rights grab" (paragraph 8) by Yahoo/GeoCities. Yes, the language is annoying. It is also unenforceable, for three reasons:
Nonetheless, this is an unethical statement by Yahoo/GeoCities in violation of the state consumer protections laws of 42 states. For that reason alone, over the next two weeks this site will be moved elsewhere. The real bad stuff is paragraph 9, which purports to allow Yahoo/GeoCities to pay off a claim or demand without any proof of validity. Although this is probably legally unenforceable and certainly unethical, I cannot tolerate it. I do make negative comments on these pages as justified. I cannot and will not tolerate any attempt to make me tone down my comments. So, for this reason, I am also leaving GeoCities. This all reminds me very much of the problems with the IDG contract last year for an anthology of vampire fiction. (Paragraph 9 is almost identical to a proposed term.) While I do not ordinarily support boycotts, I reluctantly support this one, but due to paragraph 9. This kind of indemnity without knowledge is absolute bullshit. The attorney or attorneys who wrote the paragraph should be required to defend his/her/their conduct and ethics before the relevant state licensing board(s). So, Yahoo/Geocities, you've just lost my business and the business of all people who frequent my website. It's not a lot, but I certainly hope that it annoys you. <<<Last Month (May) — Next Month (July)>>>
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