Dad talks about developing the MRI.

Abby interviews her father, a pioneer in the development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). He talks about his thesis in bioelectrochemistry, publication in scientific journals, the Nobel Prize, cancer research, and the early days of Fonar Corporation.

Science Fiction has changed since the "Golden Age" dominated by American 1950s and 1960s authors, such as Heinlein and Asimov. Abby chats with her father, a scientist and inventor, about why he stopped reading SciFi.

Chat with my mom

Abby discusses creativity and her early novel writing experiences with her mother, who also has a creative background in arts, cartooning, and writing.

About my epic series

Abby Goldsmith describes her series of epic science fiction novels. The first novel will be available in late 2015 or early 2016. Five Torth novels are complete, and she's working on the final book.

AG Vlog Ep02 Transcript

Hi, my name is Abby Goldsmith. I'm going to talk about my series of novels. I've completed five, and I'm going to complete the 6th one this coming year. It's science fiction. Epic science fiction with telepaths versus slaves.

The telepaths are all networked together in a ... something like the internet on steroids, where popular opinion gets up-voted or voted on by the majority. And, uh, the majority rules.

They do have individual personalities, so it's not quite a hive mind. But the more popular, the more celebrity type people among them, are the ones in charge.

And they've conquered the galaxy. They've taken over hundreds of planets and alien civilizations. They have all the technology in the galaxy, all the resources. They own everything. They have just countless slaves. And they consider themselves a superior master race. Earth is their next target. So ...

My first novel in the series starts on Earth, with unsuspecting humans, and, um, one of them happens to be a telepath who, indeed, was left on Earth by these people by accident. Well, not by accident, but I don't want to get into that backstory.

Basically, he's one of them. He was raised among humans. He has human sympathies. He was raised by a foster family that he cares about.

And the telepaths come and abduct them all. They're considering enslaving Earth. They're definitely enslaving his friends and foster family, and they're going to execute one of his friends. And so he thinks he's gotta save them. And the only way to do that is to become--join--the telepaths and learn their ways, become one of them, and figure out some way to persuade them. Or if he can't persuade them, use his new authority as a telepath to save his friends.

What he doesn't ... what he realizes, or learns very quickly in Book 1, is that there's no privacy among telepaths. They are all networked together. Every thought he has is known, and the telepaths are very interested in him because he's something like a feral child, raised among these primitive humans. So he's under intense scrutiny all the time. He's got tens of thousands of people in this mental audience, in the back of his mind. He can't escape their attention. So he's got to figure out a way to subconsciously, or in some some way that the Torth (telepaths) aren't gonna notice, help his friends. But the problem looks insurmountable because they own everything. The telepaths own everything. They're called the Torth.

Meanwhile, his friends may have a trick or two up their sleeves that the Torth weren't expecting. I'm not going to get into it any more than that. Pitching is hard to do. The technology the Torth have is like, they've got cloaking devices and the Torth themselves, as telepaths, can, if you come with a range of them, they know what you're thinking. They can see through the eyes of other telepaths, and hear through their ears. They have instant communication.

So, hurt one telepath, and an army will descend upon you very quickly. That's how they operate.

Until now, in the present time in my series, slaves have not been able to rebel. They haven't been able to plan anything because the minute they do, they're sentenced to death. The few that do live in the wild, so to speak, are just terrified of telepaths. They know that if they're caught ... if a runaway slave is ever caught ... they're executed.

So anyway, then my heroes come along and start changing all of that. I do not want to give away much. But it's very much a series that's about what it means to be human, good versus evil, and a lot about privacy. A lot about group-think. Not group-think, but crowd-think. What happens when you have a society where there's no privacy and everything is ruled by a majority. Where popular opinion becomes law. The Torth are not evil. They are just in a society where individual thought is dangerous.

So yes, there are good Torth, there are bad Torth, and later in the series, some start switching sides, and I'm not going to get into that. But, ooh, I hope I'll be able to give a better pitch next time. Anyway.

Thank you very much! I will be back next week.

Why Vlog?

An intro to SFF author Abby Goldsmith, and why she chose to talk to a camera despite feeling uncomfortable about it.

AG Vlog Ep01 Transcript

Hi, my name is Abby goldsmith. Welcome to my blog/podcast.

This is an experiment for me. I've never done anything like this before. I'm not entirely used to talking to a camera in the solitude of my house. It's a little bit awkward.

So you may be wondering why am I doing this. Well, I've thought about just blogging, and it's true I feel more comfortable typing at a computer than speaking to a camera, but a lot of authors do that. I like media. I like going on YouTube. I like podcasts; listening to them. And I figured, well, I'll give this a shot. I can talk for three minutes without a script, which is what I'm doing right now.

A new topic every week, that's my plan. And for me, this will be less work than a blog. A little bit more nerve-wracking ... well, quite a lot more nerve-wracking. But I would like to try to just reach people in different way.

I already have a YouTube show, Aspiring Writers, and I plan to continue that. I took it on a very long hiatus for about a year. I'm going to be starting that back up pretty soon, and I'm thinking this will just be a great supplement for my blog. I could talk about writing for hours and hours to friends. Anyone who knows me in person knows that I can go off on any topic. So I think I'll enjoy this, once I get a little more used to talking to a camera.

You may wonder: why am I even trying to market things at all? Well, I'm very new to marketing I would like to just write books; that's my main passion. However, after a lot of research, it seems like even debut authors that have a major publisher behind them tend to not get a very large marketing push from the publisher. So there's a lot of ... it looks to be, just from from many authors I've been following, whose careers I've been following, that marketing is something that we need to learn.

It's one thing to write a great book, it's quite another thing to reach people with it. So yeah, from what I've seen, all the indie authors I've seen become successful in the last two years, they're good at marketing. They may not be any more comfortable in front of a camera than I am. They've found ways to reach readers, and that's what I'm learning how to do.

So I'm probably going to be talking about some risky topics that I wouldn't even want to blog about. I'm thinking that talking about them, you can see my face and body language and tone, and maybe taking on some controversial topics this way will be are a little bit less "stirring up the pot" than doing it on a blog and the written word.

I'm already over time. I'm planning to keep each of these to three minutes and that's it. My topic today was simply "why I'm doing this." So hopefully that answers that question.

Feel free to reach me on social media. On Twitter I'm @Abbyland, and I'm on Pinterest. Of course you can just Google my name, Abby Goldsmith, and find me, and I'm on YouTube and everywhere else.

Thanks for joining me!

Dangerous cults

I've been reading a lot about cults lately. First I read Dear Leader and Escape from Camp 14, about the cult of Kim in North Korea. Then I read Prophet's Prey, about Warren Jeffs and his branch of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints. I've previously read The 19th Wife, about polygamy in early Mormonism. Now I'm finishing up Going Clear, a critical look at Scientology. I did online research and learned about the Order of the Solar Temple, which should be cited more often here in North America. And Eastern Lightning. And a whole bunch of other cults.

Years ago, I used to joke that I should start my own religion. I said, "I write science fiction. Wouldn't it be nice to have thousands of worshipers who sell my books for me?"

I was joking, of course. The only way to describe someone who fakes being a messiah is a con artist. And the only way to cement an unquestioning congregation is to do immoral things. It's not just a matter of telling a couple of lies. It entails a lifetime of false promises, threats, and backing up those threats. A fallible human can't have a live pipeline to the Truth without a team to confirm it. Over decades of working together closely and secretively, the team develops in-fighting. One member who defects with the cult's secrets can ruin everything. So they need to be bound by a web of threats.

After all this reading, I've come to realize that starting a cult is much more difficult than it appears. Even if we leave aside morality, there's decades of very dedicated work involved. Cult leaders have specific personal traits in common. Those traits include megalomaniacal ambition, and ignoring family in favor of work. Running the cult is their life. We hear about cult leaders who are middle-aged or older because it takes decades for a cult to grow to a degree where news media picks up on it. Even leaders who inherit a cult, such as Kim Jong Il and Warren Jeffs, worked behind the scenes for decades in order to wrest power away from competitors and cement their absolute authority. (Kim Jong Un is an exceptionally young leader, but there is doubt that his authority is absolute.)

People quibble about how to define a cult, and indeed, the definition is fuzzy. The Raelians and the Unification Church are considered cults, but over the decades, they've proved to be mostly harmless. It should be noted that they're spread out and don't have an isolation policy. Some religions have a prophet/Pope, or several such prophets--but mainstream religious sects don't have a leader with absolute authority. The dangerous cults all seem to have a leader whom members can never question or challenge. Members who try to quit are punished, and secrecy is enforced in order to hide crimes. That's the sort of cult I'm talking about in this article.

Many mainstream religions incorporate guilt and atonement, but dangerous cults take this to an extreme. Members are encouraged to atone for the slightest infraction, as often as possible, and remain in a constant state of guilt. Studies on sociology confirm a human instinct: Guilt and shame are crucial to resolving conflict in a healthy society or relationship. If one partner feels no remorse while the other partner always takes the blame, the relationship turns abusive. Religious cults replicate an abusive relationship on a massive scale. The leaders of the cult feel no remorse while the larger membership is constantly atoning.

Cult founders seem to share traits in common. Some of those traits are no surprise: Minor criminal charges prior to starting the cult, narcissism, a history of mental illness, and a history of making grand claims. I was surprised by other traits that kept showing up among these infamous men. Most cult leaders have a history of multiple sex partners or wives, and a great many children. They claim to value family and marriage as holy, yet neglect their own families. They marry underage girls. They have one long-term wife or partner who enables their tycoon lifestyle and whose support is vital. You might expect a cult founder to have been abused as a child, but many seem to come from stable or privileged homes. They downplay their parents and sometimes banish them from their lives. They were mediocre students who had trouble making friends or dating when they were young. They tend to be writers or painters, on top of being spiritual philosophers. No matter how much sex, material assets, or worshipers they gain, they grow increasingly hard to appease. They demand impossible projects and punish faithful members on a whim. Outsiders describe them as pathetic and sullen, while worshipers describe them as grandfatherly or jovial. They're distrustful of everyone and are often described as paranoid.

I wonder if they're on a quest for people who respect them without enabling their sociopathic behavior. Many cult founders seem to have been disparaged by teachers or classmates when they were kids. Typical cult founders seem to have malignant narcissism; they might grow up believing that teachers and classmates were too stupid or self-absorbed to recognize a true genius. The future cult founder gains respect when he makes grandiose claims, such as "I heard God talking to me." Untroubled by a sense of morality, he spends decades honing his ability to make grandiose claims. His burgeoning confidence allows him to attract friends. But he's troubled by his own lack of morality. He observe morality in friends and know something is amiss. So he explores spirituality. After decades of soul-searching, he's convinced that he has gained True Wisdom and he alone has the One True Answer. He believes he's figured out how to be happy and moral. His certainty draws people on a similar spiritual quest. Surrounded by awe-struck sycophants, his immoral nature and predatory instincts leads to temptation. He caves into temptation and commits a crime--child molestation or adultery--and rationalizes it by assuming it's what God wants. After all, he's already established his own wisdom. Now he has a perfect excuse to avoid feeling guilt or remorse. So he does it again. And again. Inwardly, he's terrified that his congregation will call him out and accuse him of being a criminal, but the congregation is taken in by every lie and excuse. So the 'messiah' loses respect for his congregation and grows bolder.

There's my unofficial criminal profile of a cult founder. I'll use it in a future novel! My fictional cult leader will be female, like they almost never are, but what the hey.

The other half of the cult equation--the faithful congregation--should not be ignored or excused. Adults who join a cult of their own free will are enablers. It's easy to see them as victims, since they often give away all their worldly possessions and endure torture. Some cults commit mass suicide, or force members into labor camps or terrible living conditions that lead to death. But it should not be forgotten that faithful members will give away their own children to be raped by a cult leader, believing it will lead salvation. They're desperate for someone they trust to control their lives and make all their important decisions--because deep down, they don't trust themselves.

A rare cult member will break away when pushed to an extreme. For instance, a pregnant Scientologist left when her punishment led to her baby nearly dying from lack of care. A polygamist Fundamentalist Mormon left when his wife and children were reassigned to someone else. North Koreans risk their lives to escape starvation and death camps. Yet the overwhelming majority of cult members will put up with all this and more. They'll become a living bomb, or feed toxic Kool-Aid to their kids, if their cult leader demands it.

The victims are the world governments--taxpaying citizens--who unwittingly or unwillingly support a cult. Most cults have a pool of eager slave labor, so wealth is easy for them. They have systematic approaches to any legal trouble they run into. They're more like governments than corporations; founded on ideology and protected by a militia. They win in courts, they win welfare aid, and sometimes they win sympathy from the general population by owning the news station or selling propaganda. They're more powerful than most organized crime rings, and more of a resource drain on the nations that shelter them.

Children raised in a cult should also be considered victims. Everyone deserves basic human rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Children in cults don't get the latter two. Little girls in cults tend to be married before they're old enough to know what sex is. If they try to escape, they're kidnapped, and their family is threatened with bankruptcy, ostracism, or torture. Child brides are basically slaves. Boys in cults tend to be forced into child labor, which is also a form of slavery. They're not given a choice. They cannot grow up to fulfill their human potential to pursue happiness. Liberty is a foreign concept to them.

Religious tolerance is an important principle, necessary for freedom; the basic human right of liberty. I'm all for allowing Wiccans to call the four corners. Satanists can have their private nude rituals with consenting adults. But basic human rights must take priority over religious status. If a religious organization kills or enslaves its members, or anyone else, then it ought to lose its status as a protected entity, and be considered hostile and criminal.

Cults rarely cross the murder line, although some indirectly kill members through neglect or mistreatment. If legal action against cults is to succeed, it should probably focus on enslavement: child brides, child labor, and unpaid adult laborers. Basic human rights violations should prove that the organization does not deserve legal protection.

Soon: Four Chilling Tales ~ horror stories

If you're in the mood for Halloween, I'd love to get reviews on this anthology, which includes four authors and my illustrations.

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Ghosts, cannibals, perverts, freaks ... they might be in your neighborhood. Even under your own roof. They're definitely in this collection of four tales of contemporary horror by acclaimed authors James Maxey, Abby Goldsmith, Rebecca Roland, and Sarah Kelderman. Learn what horrors lurk just beyond your field of vision.  Horrors that will reveal themselves ... Soon. 
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SOON: Four Chilling Tales

On Amazon
On Goodreads

Under the Dome season 2 finale

I don't watch a lot of TV, and lazy writing on series is half the reason why.  I was laughing in agreement with this review on TV.com about the season finale of Under the Dome.  This show is like a dumbed down version of Lost.  Not that Lost was all that brilliant, but at least it took itself somewhat seriously for the first three seasons.  The characters remained consistent that long.

As I watched the season finale of season 2 of Under the Dome, I couldn't help but reflect on how many characters have become a) murderers, b) melodramatic jerks, or c) murderous melodramatic jerks.

In the finale episode:  The high school science teacher (murderous melodramatic jerk) went ahead and murdered/euthanized the prophet-artist (melodramatic somewhat nice person), then got murdered by the used car salesman sheriff (murderous melodramatic jerk), who also punched his hermit brother (murderer), then went on to shoot a nice hoarder in an attempt to murder the lead female (melodramatic jerk), and then got shot by his sometimes-evil-sometimes-sweet son (murderous melodramatic jerk).  Got all that straight?  It's like some kind of weird nonsensical soap opera.

And then there are random monarch butterflies, glowing purple rocks, random dome weirdness, tunnels that lead to mysterious cliffs, some kind of evil corporation/government with an unknown agenda, a suck-hole in the woods, and a time traveling dead teenage girl (melodramatic jerk) who beckons people towards mysterious light.

The show is falling apart under the strain of not making any sense.

I don't know if they'll renew it for a third season, but I can't see how the writers (assuming the show has writers) can possibly salvage any hint of a coherent story.  If this was a novel, I would have stopped reading.  The show bears very little resemblance to the Stephen King novel.
 
And yet I kept watching.  Some of the characters have good chemistry together.  Some of the actors are really great at hamming it up, despite their role's lack of consistency.  Big Jim and Junior are fun.  Their characters have so much potential.

Treating the Book 1 Beginning Problem

I thought I was finally ready to submit Book 1.  It turns out I wasn't.

The good news is, I finally understand why the beginning of Book 1 has been such a problem.  It's not the prose.  It's not the main character, per se.  It's not bad luck, or a hatred of telepaths, or anything arcane.  It's jaded reader expectations.  Jaded readers see a child-genius-orphan-telepath-wheelchair-user, and expect a bland character who cruises through life with ease and saves the day.  They're expecting him to turn into Artemis Fowl + Professor X.  Or, as another writer put it:  How do you imply that there's more to a character than there seems at first, without giving the whole game away?

I've written myself into a corner on this one.  The character doesn't follow the tropes, but if I tell you that, it gives the whole game away.  His trope attributes are all vital to the story.  There's simply no way to change this character without ruining the story--and no way to introduce him without turning off jaded literary agents.  He is what he is.

But knowing is half the battle.

I spent the last decade wondering why I couldn't get the beginning right, no matter what I did.  Now I'm able to zero in on the root of the problem.  I might never be able to fully 'fix' it, or make it palatable to a jaded reader who expects the worst ... but I can treat the symptoms.  I finally have the correct diagnosis.  After so many years of wondering why the first chapters never worked magic on readers while the rest of the book did, this is a huge relief.

I wanted to start querying agents in March.  Now it looks like it will be September or later.  I wish it hadn't taken me a decade of start+stop frustration to figure out the root of this problem.  But, as the slaves in my series say, knowledge is worth a bit of pain.

My treatment plan is as follows:

1) Add a prologue from the point of view of the only person on Earth who knows that the main character is not what he appears to be.  Prologues are out of vogue and this is a minor antagonist, but it seems necessary, given the problem.  Her POV can explain quite a lot.

I wanted to let the reader discover the main character's true nature along with him ... but a jaded reader assumes they already know the main character's true nature.  This prologue will give them a more accurate estimation.

2) Have a character comment on one of the tropes.  This proves that I didn't include the trait subconsciously or out of ignorance.

3) Make everything else in the first chapters as un-trope-like as possible.  I'm focusing on having other characters act in unexpected-yet-still-believable ways.

4) Re-purpose my query letter to emphasize the main character's failure to save the day.  This is extremely tricky, since query letters are supposed to making the main character sound heroic.  I need to make him sound heroic, yet emphasize the fact that he's not the hero they expect.  Urrrrgh.

Here's my August 2014 query pitch:

Thomas never lets anyone take advantage of him.  As a 12-year-old with spinal muscular atrophy, he relies on caretakers ... yet dominates adults because he knows their secrets.  No one else has his powers.  Or so it seems.  

When other telepaths invade Thomas's mind, ripping into his embarrassing secrets and peering through his eyes, he's amazed that his powers are commonplace.  Trillions of telepaths like him rule the galaxy.  They transport Thomas to an alien metropolis where his most indulgent fantasies are actualized through advanced technology.  Here Thomas is normal--but everyone who isn't a telepath gets brutally enslaved.  Elite telepaths will kill Thomas in a nanosecond if he aids slaves such as his foster family and friends.  Or if he reverts to 'savage' emotions, such as compassion.  Unable to outwit or deceive his brethren, Thomas begins to suppress his emotions and give up.  

His desperate friends must prove that slaves are superior to the master race of telepaths.  They must convince Thomas to challenge his own conceits ... before he becomes just another brilliant, depraved slave-master.  The freedom of the universe is at stake.

Subverting tropes: a hard sell

I like to subvert tropes. I take traits that readers have seen too many times before--a gentle giant, for instance--and turn that character into something unexpected. Readers figure that a gentle giant will be misunderstood, considered a monster when he really isn't. The reader rolls their eyes ... until the plot takes an unexpected turn, and the gentle giant gains dangerous berserker tendencies that get innocent bystanders killed. Now the reader must reexamine their assumptions and wonder if he really is a monster, despite his depiction as kind and gentle.

The main character in my novel (Book 1 of the epic series) is front-loaded with tropes. He's a child genius. In a wheelchair. With telepathy. Mistrusting readers are rolling their eyes, thinking they've seen this before, in Artemis Fowl and Ender Wiggin and Professor X. Such readers assume that he's going to save the world (or his friends, or whatever) with his genius and telepathic abilities. They'd go on assuming that ... until he doesn't. About 30% into the novel, the story takes an unexpected twist, causing the reader to reexamine their assumptions about geniuses and telepaths and disabled protagonists. His strengths are being a child and being disabled; his weaknesses are being a genius and being telepathic. It's the opposite of what audiences are trained to expect.

I should have expected that this would be a hard sell. Holy cow. I'm running into a roadblock where industry professionals see the trope, assume that's all it is, and stop reading before the trope gets subverted.*

One beta reader suggested that I plant hints of trope subversion in the first chapter or two. I'm not sure that's feasible, since the beauty of trope subversion is setting up reader expectations before blowing them to smithereens.

Has anyone else run into this problem when subverting tropes? Have you found a way around it?

* The first chapter has other red flags for industry readers, but the trope assumption seems to be one of two 'kill switch' factors.  The other major red flag is the protagonist's young age, which industry professionals consider wrong for YA crossover or adult markets, A Game of Thrones and Ender's Game notwithstanding.

Writing Goals and the Odyssey Writing Workshop

In a discussion on Goodreads, author Susan Shell Winston asked if I'd started writing my epic science fiction series before attending the Odyssey Writing Workshop, and if the workshop changed my ideas about it.

Great question!  Yes.  I wrote the original drafts of Book 1 and Book 2 before I'd ever heard of Odyssey, and before I learned proper grammar. I just wanted to tell a good story. Despite excited beta reader reactions, my amateur manuscript gathered a solid wall of rejections from agents and publishers.  So I went to Odyssey in hopes of networking enough to get my manuscript read.  Plus, I was a fan of that year's writer in residence, George R.R. Martin.

During Odyssey, I learned so much, I added two new goals. I would: a) scrap those novel drafts and do a complete rewrite from scratch, and b) hone my short story craft and aim for at least one pro sale, since that credit might catch a literary agent's attention.

It took a few years, but I've accomplished both those goals.  Sadly, I'm still working towards my original goal of getting a literary agent or major publisher to read the manuscript of Book 1--the rewritten 2x version.  This ongoing quest has led me to co-found novelist groups, complete additional novels in my series, and gain a lot more practice at storytelling and writing.  At this point in my life, I feel capable of either accomplishing what I set out to do, or indie publishing a complete six-book series that will appeal to a broad range of readers.

Online Housekeeping

I updated my website, adding a section for my short stories, and a Goodreads widget to my book reviews. I also joined Wattpad. I'm preparing for a major round of novel submissions, so I'm forcing myself to work on the dreaded query letter. More to come soon ...

Now I understand gambling addiction

While I've been stuck at home, recovering from an illness, I've been compulsively playing two iPhone game apps by Storm8/TeamLava:  "Candy Blast Mania" and "Bubble Mania."  They are, respectively, a match-3 game and a bubble shooter game.  I love the adorable animations (and I'm an animator), which is part of it.  The evil gummy bear is so cute when he gets mad!

So I'm trying to figure out why I'm addicted, especially since I'm on the higher levels (around 120), which require a ridiculous amount of luck on top of skill.  Normally, I HATE luck factor games.  And these are frustrating as hell.  I'll play for 15 minutes and come within 1 point of beating the level, and then I'll get the wrong-colored bubble or something, and have to start all over.  It's idiotic.  And yet I keep playing. 

Maybe this is why some gamblers keep returning to play slot machines.  I've never understood that addition.  I wouldn't waste money on this stuff.  In fact, both of these game apps keep urging me to buy power-ups in order to beat the level, which I refuse to do.  I know that's how they earn a profit, but that's a level of addiction I haven't sunk to, thankfully. 

But it's weird how I get a little rush of pride when I finally beat a level, after 20 tries.  I love seeing the evil gummy bear keel over, with his cute little dying voice.  Sometimes he wears waffle armor, or cotton candy on his head!  So adorable.  And those baby raccoon-cats in Bubble Mania are so cute, even when they're crying.  It feels so satisfying to pop a whole series of bubbles at once. 

Yeah.  I need to get out of the house more.  I can't wait until this @#&%$! ear infection goes away. 

Soon: Four Chilling Tales

Are you looking for something scary and short to read?  Check out Soon: Four Chilling Tales, available for Amazon's Kindle.  In my story, "Handicapped," a real estate agent searching for his missing wife will find a unique horror inside the house that's For Sale.

I'm sharing the table of contents with three other talented authors: James Maxey, Rebecca Roland, and Sarah Kelderman.  Oh, and I drew the interior illustrations!

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Penultimate Ending

As I head towards completion on the penultimate book in my Torth series, I'm wondering what note to end it on. Crowd-sourcing the ending of a novel is a bad idea--especially since most of the crowd hasn't read my novels--but I figured I'd ask your opinion, just to entertain myself.

How should this book end?  Please note, the real question is where should I split the story between Books 5 and 6, since this series is actually one gigantic, epic story.

SPOILER ALERT.  Don't continue if you don't want spoilers. 

1) The protagonist goes against his own ethical code to create a brainwashed army of living zombies. This is a big step towards the 'dark side' for him, but a big step towards victory for the heroes. I guess this ending could be called bittersweet.  I'm worried it might lose some fans, if they're rooting for that protagonist, since the resolution to this story-line would be in the next book.

2) The protagonist sees friend #3 (whom he owes his life and much else to) purposefully do something evil/manipulative to friends #1 and #2.  The protagonist intervenes, and friend #3 gets furious and threatens to quit the war, which will leave all the heroes in a very bad position.  This would be an ending where the readers are rooting for the protagonist, and worried for the heroes ... ideal, perhaps.  But after all the battles and conquests in the rest of this book, it might seem a little anticlimactic.

3) The protagonist invents something that renders the heroes all but invincible, putting them in a very strong position at the end of the book.  It might be too strong; readers might (wrongly) assume that the heroes have nothing left to worry about, and feel nonchalant about picking up the final book in the series.

4) The protagonist gets kidnapped by one of the major antagonists and put in a torture chamber. Then he's rescued with help from an unexpected friend; someone he wouldn't have relied on.  He has a death match duel with the major antagonist, and wins/escapes.  This is a classic heroic ending, but in my series it has some problems.  There are three major antagonists in the series, and if I choose this ending, only one major antagonist will be left for Book 6.  I'd rather not end with making the enemies seem too weak.

5) This is my favorite ending, but it will take a lot more wordage than the other endings--which might leave Book 6 short.  This ending involves a super trap the enemies set up for the heroes, which they'll fall for.  In this case, Book 5 would end on a very dark note, with the heroes in a horrible position.  Readers will wonder how they're going to survive/escape.  The problem with doing this one, besides word count, is that it is the 'darkest hour' moment of the epic, which should structurally come before the big climax.  In other words, it should probably be reserved for Book 6.  Otherwise Book 6 won't have a super low point in it.

Whew!  Just writing those out helped me.  Now I'm leaning towards option 2). If you actually read this, and if you have an opinion, let me know.

Thanks!  And if you want to see how complicated the ending of this story is, I've diagrammed it on Padlet.

Epic Science Fiction: Space Opera

TV shows such as Firefly, Farscape, Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5, etc. have massive, loyal fan followings. Where are their equivalents in the book industry? I hardly see any. Epic space opera is very much in a low ebb right now. It seems that no one has had a space opera hit since Frank Herbert's Dune was published in 1965.

I think a large part of the lack of best-selling epic science fiction is its association with military fiction (a niche genre). These two don't need to go hand-in-hand, yet they often do. Many of the published Baen Books titles are military space opera. Ender's Game, Old Man's War, and the Vorkosigan saga are all arguably military space opera/epic SF. However, one could argue that George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones and Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time are military fantasy. Why is epic science fiction consigned to the small niche of 'readers who like hard science fiction plus military stuff' while epic fantasy gets a broad audience? No one really thinks of those best-selling epic fantasy series as military fiction. They're associated with fascinating worlds, high adventure, epic battles and epic romances, colorful characters, and high stakes plots. Why can't epic science fiction have all this as well?

It can, and it should.

There's a war going on in my epic science fiction series. So yes, there are battles ... but it's not military fiction, any more than A Game of Thrones is military fiction. There's no chain of command until they create one. There are no uniforms. The story is not about learning who is in charge and who is subordinate. It's not about adjusting to military life. There are no barracks. The main characters are not soldiers.

In fact, one of my main characters is a handicapped boy who's too weak to walk. Another main character is a female elderly alien slave. Only one of my characters is a muscle-bound warrior type. That should make it clear: This Is Not Military Fiction!

One more thing, and then I'll get off my soap box. I want to read some new epic science fiction that has the same sense of grand adventure that we see in epic fantasy. It seems that book publishers have developed a bias against epic SF due to the boatloads of military epic SF already published. But there is more to epic SF than military fiction.

I'm a major Scott Sigler fan because he writes epic SF that isn't military.  I love his books.  But I want to see more along these lines.  I've been told that literary agents shy away from space opera because they claim that it's 'hard to pull off well.'  I think they mean to say that 'space opera is always military fiction, which doesn't sell well, and therefore we don't want to see it.'

I wish they'd give my saga a read.  One more time: It isn't military!!!

Awful Air France Ordeal

When we travel these days, we all expect long lines, underpaid airport staff who don't care about helping travelers, delayed flights, and hassles.  That has become normal (and I found a good article about why that is).  However, my experience over the past 30 hours goes way beyond normal.  I arrived at my destination a full day later than scheduled.  I've had to go through airport security three times during this journey.   I've had to pick up my baggage and re-check it twice.   The Air France staff lied and never provided any truthful explanations for their behavior.  Everyone on my flight was subjected to the same ill treatment.  The passengers were international, and include children traveling alone, an old woman in a wheelchair, and families with babies.

Air France flight 688 was scheduled to depart Paris CDG at 1:30pm, and arrive in Atlanta around 5:30pm.  What happened?  We departed Paris at 2:45pm, diverted to Washington D.C. for no apparent reason, and arrived in Atlanta at 3:30am the next day.

Here's how my particular adventure began.

If I had known what a mob scene awaited me at Charles DeGaulle airport, I would have given myself 5 hours to get to my gate instead of just 3 hours.  July is peak tourist season in Paris, yet the airport seemed ridiculously understaffed and overcrowded; much worse than anything I've seen at LAX. 

When I exited the RER train, there was a mad rush to the single escalator leading to Terminal 2.  It got mobbed.  I squeezed into the herd of travelers with luggage, and followed the herd until we arrived in an atrium with passages to 2A, 2B, 2C, 2D, 2E, 2F, and 2G.  I had no idea where to go.  A huge monitor listed flights, but mine wasn't on there.  The single information booth with its one employee had a huge line.  I was on the verge of choosing a terminal at random when I lucked out.  An airport employee hurried past me, and I asked her where to go.  She directed me to 2E and hurried onward.  I dragged my luggage to what seemed like the world's busiest, most crowded terminal.

I squeezed into the enormous mob crowding the Air France area.  There were no ropes or anything to corral the mob into orderly lines.  I figured I'd save time by checking myself in using a passport scanning machine.  However, the machine was French only, and when it got to the passport part, it wouldn't work.  I'd wasted time by waiting on line for this machine.  The people around me were unhelpful.

So I dragged my luggage around until I finally spotted an Air France employee.  I asked her how I might check in.  She flippantly told me to speak to another employee, pointing.  I asked her where he was, since all I saw was a mob.  She said, "he is there."  I asked if there is a line to speak to him.  She said, "no line."

Bit by bit, I inched my way into the mob.  I realized they were all waiting to speak to him, and plenty of anxious travelers were trying to cut into the disorganized mob.  Sure enough, one short man was scanning passports, slowly, one by one.  This one Air France employee was in charge of scanning passports for hundreds of travelers trying to get to their flights on time.  Other Air France employees frequently came by to speak to him, and he always gave his coworkers priority attention, ignoring the mob of anxious travelers.

I waited for at least an hour, and finally got the guy to scan my passport.  He printed out my boarding passes and told me to go to point 8 and 9.  I was at point 1 and 2.

I dragged my luggage through a ridiculously overcrowded terminal, only to find that point 8 and 9 was even more overcrowded.  I had to wait over an hour just to check my luggage.  The Air France employee who checked it barely spoke English, and she waved vaguely for me to go somewhere else.  I followed other travelers through a maze until we arrived at a passport checking station.  Another huge line awaited us.

By this time, it was past noon, and I worried that I wouldn't make my flight, which was scheduled to depart at 1:30pm.  Boarding would begin soon and I hadn't even seen the security line.  Other travelers in line were also anxious about their flights, many of which were scheduled to depart soon.  No one came by to reassure us about our flights.  The passport station employees were few and far between, and they all seemed bored stiff.  They moved slowly and paused to chat with each other.

After my passport was checked, I had to hurry through a corridor and more escalators.  When I spotted a few Air France employees hanging out and chatting, I asked them where gate L45 was.  They pointed to a subway train, which was about to leave.  I leaped on board just in time.

After exiting the subway, I finally encountered the security line.  It wasn't as bad as the rest; they had a lot more employees working there.  No body scanners.  I got a brief pat down.  My carry-on bag was searched.  Then I was through, and emerged into what looked like an expensive shopping mall.  Sephora and other perfume shops were everywhere.

I figured I was just in time to board my flight.  Relieved, I rushed to the women's restroom, which featured only four stalls and a huge line.  I emerged to learn that my flight was delayed.  Delta Airlines called me twice to let me know this.  It would have been nice if they only called once, and nicer if they'd called earlier, while I was stressing out about making my flight. 

The flight didn't board until 2:30pm.  The hour-long flight delay caused me to worry that I'd miss the tight connection I needed to make in Atlanta.  Maybe the delay was due to mechanical problems or bad weather, but I suspect it was actually due to the poor handing of passengers at CDG airport.  If the plane had left on time, there would only be about 50 passengers on it.  The rest would be stuck in various lines.

The fiight was full when it departed.  We were perhaps 45 minutes away from landing in Atlanta when our flight got diverted to Washington D.C.  The stewardesses claimed the change was due to a severe thunderstorm, and everyone believed them ... but hours later, we learned this was a lie.  Atlanta had clear weather that evening, on July 23, 2012.  No one ever explained why we were diverted.  I would still like to know.

And then we sat in the stuffy airplane at the Dulles airport gate for hours, stretching a 7 hour flight into a 10.5 hour ordeal.  Babies were crying, children were yelling.  We watched the sunset.  People fretted about missed connections.  I knew I'd missed mine.

Then the Air France crew announced, in their poor English, that the pilot was tired and legally couldn't fly any longer, so everyone would have to disembark and go through U.S. customs in Dulles.

We went through customs.  It took less than an hour.  After that, we went to baggage claim to retrieve our luggage, which took a long time to arrive.  Then we were rushed through a line to re-check our luggage to Atlanta, and we had to suffer through airport security again.  Then we were directed to an Air France ticket counter to receive fresh instructions.

We waited at that ticket counter for hours.  While we waited in this interminable line, one of the stressed-out employees announced that our rerouted flight to Atlanta would depart at midnight.  She claimed we would receive a meal voucher and a hotel voucher for our trouble.  In reality, all we received was an $8 meal voucher for the only airport restaurant still open at Dulles: Fuddruckers.  The Air France voucher didn't fully cover my overpriced airport hamburger meal.

By this time, the passengers were exhausted and furious.  Several passengers left, booking last-minute flights on different airlines.  Others had final destinations near the Washington D.C. metropolitan area, and they caught late night cabs or rented cars.  Still, hundreds of passengers remained corralled in the Dulles airport, which was shut down for the night.  We ate Fuddruckers and waited.  It was past midnight.

The airplane gained a fresh crew around 12:45am, and we began to board for our new flight from Dulles to Atlanta.  We sat in the same stuffy airplane for another hour before it finally took off, around 2:00am.  No one explained why we had to wait so long.

 

We arrived in Atlanta around 3:30am, and we got nothing for our trouble.  No vouchers.  No help.  The Atlanta airport was shut down for the night, and all we saw were cleaning crew, who stared at the hundreds of angry travelers from Air France 688.

The four Air France employees on duty in Atlanta looked stunned by the hundreds of passengers who suddenly showed up at 3:30am.  It seemed no one had told them what to expect.  They phoned in a manager to help out.  Still, the line moved slower than any before it.  I was in the first third of the line, and it took me over an hour to reach the counter.

There, I rechecked my luggage, and got re-booked on another flight to my final destination in Texas, leaving at 8:50am.  I had to go through airport security yet again.  My passport was examined for the tenth time. 

The remaining travelers from Air France 688 entered the Atlanta gate area.  Atlanta is the world's busiest airport, but at this early hour, it was utterly empty, except for the late night cleaning crew.  We had the whole automated subway train to ourselves.  Here it is, the Atlanta subway at 4:30am:

I settled in at my new gate and watched the sunrise.  I should have been home yesterday.  My Delta flight left on time, and I arrived home on July 24, 2012.  I was so tired, I slept for an hour on that flight, despite the shrieking, kicking baby sitting on her mother's lap next to me. 

As frustrated as I was, there were people from that Air France flight 688 who had it worse.  There were families with babies, an old woman in a wheelchair, and people with flights connecting to Alaska, California, and Guatemala.  I think one person was bound for Australia.  None of them will arrive on the day they wanted to arrive.  There were several children traveling alone.  I noticed that Air France took special care with them, since a lost child would turn our general ordeal into a P.R. nightmare. 

Air France should have been up front with their customers.  Tell us the truth.   They made a tough situation much worse by keeping all the passengers trapped on the grounded plane, uninformed, and lied to.  Quite a few people could have caught connecting flights if we'd been let into the Dulles airport at 6:00pm, when we landed there.

If Air France existed in a competitive market for airlines, they would be offering free flights in compensation.  Instead, they treated the passengers with lies ("go into the airport, there will be people lined up to help you") and no truthful explanations.  They offered a brief apology and an $8 voucher for Fuddruckers, and that was it.

Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury has died at age 91. He was the last of the major "Golden Age" science fiction writers, with Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein being the others who gained mainstream popularity, due to successful film adaptations of their novels. Of those writers, Bradbury was my favorite, and the only one I've met in person. He was outgoing and friendly, and always seemed willing to speak to fans and audiences at conventions such as Comic Con.

I won't match what many others will say in eulogy for Ray Bradbury. But I was just talking to some neighbors, and when I mentioned his death on the news, they confessed they'd never heard of him. History is easily forgotten. So I do want to make sure that future generations recognize the huge impact that the Golden Age of science fiction had on our culture, and remember that Asimov, Bradbury, and Clarke (the A-B-C) were a major part of that. They inspired many real astronauts, physicists, and biologists to go into that line of work and change the world we live in. They inspired contemporary authors, artists, and film directors to explore other worlds, which in turn has shaped pop culture.  Perhaps you've never heard of Bradbury, but I'm 99% certain that people you have heard of--J.J. Abrams, Joss Whedon, Peter Jackson, Stephen King, Suzanne Collins, and many more--have read his books and consider him an influence.

When I attended a live panel with Ray Bradbury about his novel Fahrenheit 451, I was surprised by how many audience members focused on the book burning. Bradbury had to explain that the story wasn't mainly about politics, nor was it a Nazi allegory. It was about television. It was a cautionary tale about replacing active story consumption with passive story consumption--reading versus watching/listening.  I thought this point was obvious in the book, and it's by far the best rendition of this theme I've ever read or seen.

I wasn't around before the invention of television, but when I read Fahrenheit 451, I wondered if Bradbury was right; maybe we have lost something in our leap from books to radio to TV to the internet. Even the best film or TV show is delivered in a format that limits the imagination; we are shown exactly what to think and feel, and when it's over, we easily forget and move on to the next one. Books are a much more personal, intimate experience, and a good book can have a huge and memorable impact on a person's life. One-hour TV shows and two-hour films and 5-minute internet shows crowd our attention, demanding that we LOOK and LISTEN so we can be up-to-date and discuss them with our friends. And as a result, people have less time for books ... and less time to truly ponder an idea.

I never thought I'd side with the old guy. I enjoy contemporary TV shows and films, and I'm a technophile. Yet I will admit that something of myself is lost in all this easy entertainment. I don't see myself as a brainwashed drone, the way Bradbury depicted the reality-show-addicted character of Mildred, yet I would undeniably be a much different person if I spent years without TV, film, or internet. I would read more. I would write more. And perhaps I would think more, and be a smarter, better person for it. But that's not the world any of us live in.

I'm glad that Bradbury wrote about it, and I hope other readers understand his point.

Latest Publications

I've been storing up some news, saving it for the opening of my redesigned website.  But the website isn't quite ready to go live, and I don't want to wait any longer!

First, my article Implausible Dystopias: Logic Problems in Contemporary Dystopian Fiction is published in the April 2012 issue of the Copperfield Review.  Read my opinion on dystopias and the bleak outlook permeating today's science fiction!

Fried Zombie Dee-Light! is available as an ebook, with a cover illustration by me.  Read short stories by the talented Susan Abel Sullivan!  The theme is zombies, the slant is humor.

I did interior illustrations for Skeptoid 4: Astronauts, Aliens, and Ape-Men, by podcast/educator Brian Dunning.  The books and the podcast are fun to read!

Finally, I will be appearing at Armadillocon in July 2012, and I hope to be speaking on a panel.  More news on that later!

HBO's Game of Thrones

It's time to critique something I love!

First: I think HBO is doing a wonderful job of adapting George R.R. Martin's series to film.  The minor changes they've made to dialogue and events all serve the purpose of clarifying back story for viewers who've never read the books, or emphasizing character traits that need emphasizing.  Kudos to HBO, and hooray for the screenwriters, directors, and producers who are making such great decisions. I would love to see other book adaptations done this well. 

The main problem I have is with their casting choices.  Many characters are cast well.  The best choices are the actors who play Arya, Bran, Tyrion, Catelyn, Sansa, Petyr (Littlefinger), Joffrey, Cersei, Varys, Renly, Melisandre, Lysa, Shae, Theon, and Syrio Forel.  But why does Stannis look and sound like he has a sense of humor?  Why does Davos look and sound so regal?  Why is Daenerys a bleached blond, and why is Craster well-groomed?  Why does Jon Snow seem more like a poet than a northern ranger?  Why does Gendry look more like a ballet dancer than a blacksmith's apprentice?  Why does Robb Stark look pouty instead of battle-worthy?  They should have gotten the guy who plays Grenn to play Jon, Robb, or Gendry.  Samwell Tarly comes off as a bit of a creep, overdoing the social ineptness.  Hodor seems a bit old for a young giant in the bloom of health.  And Sandor Clegane (the Hound) isn't exactly hulking; he looks more pathetic than dangerously full of anger.  

The problem goes deeper than these characters merely being different than how I envisioned them as a reader. If the actor doesn't fit the role, in terms of personality or physical type, then the scenes with that character ring false.  An original screenplay has flexibility for an actor to redefine a character, but this is an adaptation of a book series, and therefore a rigid story.  The actors cannot redefine the roles too much.  

So viewers are told that Craster is a polygamous wildling who abuses his wives and daughters ... but upon seeing a well-groomed man, they might forget his role, or at least forget that he's a wildling.  He simply doesn't look like the crazy hermit that he is.  A viewer who has never read the books will have trouble understanding why so many characters fear the Hound, or refer to him as angry, since the actor shows no hint of that personality. Those scenes are written for someone who looks and acts more like an angry bad-ass.  

I suppose viewers will be more accepting of heroic protagonists Jon Snow, Robb Stark, and Gendry as pretty and pouty actors, since that look is unfortunately the Hollywood norm these days.  What happened to heroes who look more like (young) Harrison Ford, or Viggo, or Guy Pearce?  Oh well.  And I guess Daenerys exemplifies another Hollywood norm: collagen-injected lips and as much pout as possible.  With that super-fake bombshell look, it's hard to take her seriously as a dothraki khaleesi roughing it on the grassy plains.  That look seriously undermines her role in the story. 

Finally, I'm going to complain about the snow setting of the Night's Watch scenes.  I get the sense that no one on the board of producers and directors has ever lived in a snowy forest.  In a truly cold setting, there would be icicles hanging off eaves and branches.  Also, people's breath would be visible as white vapor.  Every time I watch those scenes, I feel like I'm seeing a movie set instead of a real place.  I'm sure other viewers are also jarred out of the story for the same reason.  It sounds like I'm nit-picking, but attention to small details (like icicles and breath vapor) are what make a story come to life. 

If anyone wants to take a look at the actors I'm talking about, here's the HBO cast page.

Spring Cleaning

I'm clearing out my gmail archives, which have attained shameful proportions. If my gmail was a person, it would be morbidly obese. Would you believe that it was 77% full? It clogged up at least 7000 MB ... just with email.

To all the people I neglected to reply to from the years 2003 to 2009: I'm sorry.  Very, very sorry. This must be why I always feel a nagging sense of guilt.

I'm not a very good correspondent.  Oftentimes, I put off a reply because I want to make it a good one, and then it falls off my inbox screen and I forget it exists.  A better way to reach me might be blog comments!  At least I'm sure to see it, since I don't get many.  :-)