The Fiction of T.C. Powell

Review(s): "Huddling Place" to "Coming Attraction"

2011-05-14T07:40:00.000-07:00

Well.

So I've been doing some reading lately without taking the time to sit down and write my reactions. Whether that's good or bad for my reading experience I can't say, but it's damn undisciplined of me.

Instead of trying to write full reviews of each story -- a daunting prospect -- I'll set out here just a thought or two per story, as I remember them.

"Huddling Place" by Clifford D. Simak

Serviceable tale which again strikes me as being somewhat xenophobic. I'm surprised to learn (though perhaps I shouldn't be) that many "futurists" have nothing but fear for, apparently, anything other than their experience of the routine.

In this one, a doctor has grown so accustomed to being at home that he's developed an acute agoraphobia. See, The Future has allowed people to, essentially, never go out at all... a reasonable development, seeming more likely all the time.

Why this turns into such a powerful agoraphobia, I'm not sure. Like with Asimov's Nightfall, I don't think I believe the psychology. But whatever. Then the story plots to make it absolutely crucial that this doctor leave home... He's the only doc across multiple worlds who can save the life of a VIP; someone who stands poised to change the universe, somehow. Kind of a crude, over-the-top, and not very believable way of raising the stakes...

But it works out well enough. The stakes are laid out so plainly that it's hard not to be interested in the resolution. Will he leave home? Or has the future doomed us all to our individual isolations, and universal tragedy?

That the story ends in a twist is disappointing.

"Arena" by Fredric Brown

Heh. Now this was interesting. A chance to read the original version of the Star Trek classic. I've got to say (or maybe I don't got to... and maybe it'd be better for me to keep quiet, but...) that I think the Star Trek version was the superior.

The basic premise is intact for both stories. Superior third party reduces conflict between warring races to a one-on-one struggle, and the race of the loser will be obliterated by the third party. Human ingenuity carries the day.

While the alien in Brown's story is truly more alien, I preferred the Gorn as an adversary. Brown's creature is reminiscent of Rover from the Prisoner. Really, I wouldn't be surprised if this provided the inspiration. Except, it's not just a rolling ball of doom. It's a telepathic rolling ball of doom... that can build catapults. And that's part of my problem.

In Brown's story, man's victory is kinda sorta lucky. Yes, he happens on an insight which leads to success, but the insight is somewhat accidental. In the Star Trek version, it's a case of man's mind winning out over the Gorn's brawn. It's more meaningful, imo, because it's tied to intrinsic characteristics of the races in contest. It isn't just "a man" who happens to win, but mankind that does win, and for some specific reason. Kirk, who is himself Ingenuity Incarnate, is the perfect avatar to carry this meaning.

Also, I much prefer the ending of the Star Trek story. Kirk displays another of humanity's better attributes -- compassion -- in declining to kill the Gorn. And after all, the Gorn is just doing its best for its own species. Despite its evil-looking reptilian form, the Gorn isn't necessarily a "bad guy."

But Brown's story lacks this sentimental twist. He's made his villainous alien a true villain; a rolling ball of hatred. And painted into such a corner, he has no choice but to carry the threat through: the aliens are wiped out by the "superior" entity.

In other words, Star Trek's rendition has a certain... grace about it, in making humanity's prime strength our compassion, and in showing that a superior entity will respect this above all.

"First Contact" by Murray Leinster

This is a nifty story for the first page or so, and the last page or so. Sadly, it carries on for about thirty. And there is no "middle." Not really. The beginning introduces the story problem (as beginnings are wont to do) and the ending resolves it, but between those two things are not "developments" so much as they are killing time until the resolution is introduced. The time is killed by constantly restating the problem.

And ultimately I have a slight problem with the problem.

What's interesting here is... the problem is essentially the "prisoner's dilemma." I wonder when that theory was developed by name, and whether the coiners of that term had read this. While the prisoner's dilemma is an appealing problem when we're discussing cutthroat prisoners who cannot communicate with one another... it's perhaps less appealing when we're talking about outer space explorers who can.

See, here's the deal: a deep-space exploration team has happened upon alien counterparts. While communication is possible, both sides determine that they must destroy one another in order to prevent the other side from potentially killing the others' race. Because they just can't trust one another.

And I ask: really? Really they can't? Perhaps I suffer from some unexamined naivete/optimism, but I figure that trust is a universal. The humans in the story suppose that the aliens are so alien that trust between them is impossible... But none of the actual evidence in the story supports such a conclusion. It seems much more likely that the aliens are "human-like" enough to warrant a reprieve from a damning species-bound mistrust. That the humans judge that they can't even trust their own opinions on the matter amounts to a kind of general Skepticism I just can't support.

If/when actual human explorers make first contact with an alien species, I hope that they'll be empowered to make decisions up-to-and-including risking the human race on a justifiable observation that the aliens might be trustworthy after all.

"That Only A Mother" by Judith Merril

Don't know how to categorize this, or what to say about it, really. Less sweep than most of the others I've read and discussed; just sort of about a woman who's lost touch with reality, and the story's strength is in that revelation/twist, coming at the end.

I don't know. I don't remember finding it poorly written, per se, but this doesn't seem the kind of story to stick in the mind. Good instance of an unreliable narrator, perhaps, but apart from that (and my reservations of the other tales notwithstanding), this is the strangest inclusion thus far.

"Scanners Live In Vain" by Cordwainer Smith

Wow. Now this is a work of imagination. Whether the plot elements would stand up to modern scrutiny, I'm unsure. (After all, we've been into space and haven't felt the Pain yet, but let that pass.) But the plot is almost negligible in the face of the strong inventiveness on display in the world and character creation.

The Scanners themselves are nightmarish -- wonderfully so -- and man's future is so alien, yet ultimately understandable, that it's just all around engrossing.

This is the first time where I've really felt that there was a terrifically large, vibrant world, teeming all around the edges of the tale itself -- that we could easily leave the people we're reading about currently and find some equally interesting story down the block.

As for the particulars of the story itself...? Meh. Don't like the "twist" at the end, but what of it? That's not this story's selling point. :)

"Mars Is Heaven!" by Ray Bradbury

This is the kind of story I feel I've encountered a million times on the Twilight Zone. Maybe that speaks to the seminal nature of this story, or Bradbury's work in general, but there it is. A slightly creepy tale that doesn't -- to my view -- offer much more than that: a general creepiness and "whoops! better not go to Mars!" Doesn't deepen my understanding of human nature or anything, and perhaps it doesn't need to.

Maybe all it needs to do is be creepy. And there, it succeeds.

"The Little Black Bag" by C.M. Kornbluth

Yay! Another winner! :)

More than simply plot and character -- both of which I enjoyed here -- this story had on display my favorite writing so far. The opening sequence, in particular, the description of drunkard Dr. Full, was as evocative and chilling as anything I've read in recent memory.

That Kornbluth immediately thereafter takes us away into the omniscient narrative that so many of these authors employed to convey exposition is unfortunate... but the story makes up for it by continuing to return to Dr. Full's more interesting tale, rendered brilliantly.

And yeah, there's a twist. But it's a twist I felt was justified by the preceding story and it felt (somewhat) satisfying.

I'm not anti-twist at all. But there are times and ways to do it, and times and ways to avoid it being done.

"Born of Man and Woman" by Richard Matheson

An improvement on Merril's mutation tale in that this puts us in the mind of the mutant. Inherently more interesting to me. Well written, too.

"Coming Attraction" by Fritz Leiber

Now this is interesting. I see an evolution taking place in the scale and scope of the stories. This one -- set in a post-nuclear war world (everyone was afraid of radiation it seems) -- presents all sorts of compelling details about the environment, such as a curious fixation on wrestling and the adoption of burka-like clothing as western fashion... but ultimately that's all window dressing for a small-scale, quasi-noir character sketch.

I dunno that it was 100% successful for me, but it's curious to see the march away from grand ideas and events -- a man saving the world or discovering a new alien race or seeing the future or somesuch -- to small movements in the internal life of a character, where the sci-fi is largely a backdrop.

These stories end not in bangs, but in sighs. And I don't know which I really prefer yet, but the change is to be noticed.

Review: Mimsy Were The Borogroves by Lewis Padgett

2011-04-17T13:43:00.001-07:00

Yay! :)

Now this story rocked. This "review" will thus probably be brief because 1) I'm a jerk who enjoys complaining more than praising, and 2) I've had a really hard day and will be grateful when my labors are complete. Neither is fair to you or Padgett's story, and so I offer apology.

This... was excellent. Like the best of the Twilight Zone, and accordingly (and perhaps furnishing a third rationale) I don't want to give too much away. The characters were vividly drawn and interesting and I was hooked from (almost) the beginning. The climax/resolution is devastating and nigh-perfect.

For "critique" all that really occurs to me is to question the use of a prologue which introduces what becomes "mystery objects" for the remainder of the tale -- was it really necessary? I suspect that the tale would have had greater mystery and foreboding had we not known ahead of time what the objects were with precision, or whence they had arrived. We could have had meaningful "speculations" later on to fill in those gaps in knowledge.

Also, there is a large section about a third of the way through that drops scene in favor of narrative. This is probably the only real "gaffe," in that I sincerely believe the tale would be stronger without this section, and especially in light of the fact that most of the exposition delivered there is almost wholly reproduced in a later conversation. Here's a small taste of that narrative section:

"Youngsters are instinctive dramatists, for purposes of self-protection. They have not yet fitted themselves to the exigencies -- to them partially inexplicable -- of a mature world. Moreover, their lives are complicated by human variables."

It's like that for most of a page and a half, and really a misstep. Really, as an author (and as a reminder for myself, for when I start to do this), when you've found yourself in full professorial mode, treating your readers to "moreovers" and such, it's probably time to bring it back to immediate scene -- dialogue and action. If it's somehow truly necessary to "moreover," invent a scientist character and put him on the damn stage.

My final comment, and owing to the strength of Mimsy altogether, will not be a critique of story or craft, but one of theme. I find there to be a strong xenophobia animating this tale. A fear of difference, change, and the other. But I don't want to delve too far into my reasons for such an extrapolation because, again, I don't want to spoil this tale at all.

Wow, what a treat. Till next time, and in hopes that this quality will last...

Review: The Weapon Shop by A.E. van Vogt

2011-04-16T07:18:00.000-07:00

Here's a curious little tale about a civic-minded man in a "far future" who conspires against the newly established neighborhood Weapon Shop, fails in his conspiracy, but winds up the better for it.

More curious than the story itself, to my mind, is that it worked for me... and I can't say why. I found the writing kind of... awkward, at times? No more so than my own, certainly, and yet it was sufficient to make me pause and reflect on the relative value of "writing craft" versus "story craft."

Immediately let me dispense with this: there needs be no "conflict" between the two. Ideally a writer will write excellent stories, and write them excellently. However a newbie writer such as myself must select something to study at first, and primarily. I think it a valid question as to which path -- story then writing, or writing then story -- will pay the greater immediate dividends.

I also need to say that neither can be neglected absolutely. Story without writing is unintelligible, like James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. And writing without story is unintelligible, like James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. Neither of those results is desirable.

So perhaps there's merit in telling the new writer, "use adverbs sparingly," just so that writer can be aware of the dictum... but what I suppose I'm calling into question is the practice of making such advice the main thrust of criticism (let alone comma placement!). I know that critters are often afraid of "rewriting another's story," and maybe this causes them to be reluctant about criticizing the greater sweeps of plot, conflict, character... I don't know. Perhaps the roots run deeper than that; maybe story analysis has been stunted altogether by an approach to literature (especially in schools) that devalues "story" considerations in favor of "style," metaphor and theme.

All I know is that A.E. van Vogt liked his adverbs:

"curiously"

"contentedly"

"dimly"

"vividly"

"utterly"

"automatically"

"naturally"

"immediately"

"humbly"

"serenely"

"kindly"

"softly"

"instinctively"

These are the adverbs used on one single page from his story, and that page wasn't chosen at random -- it's the first page (which takes about 60% of the actual sheet).

Adverbs aren't the only awkward aspect of his writing (just the most apparent to me following participation in a handful of critique groups). Action sequences seem drawn out and overwritten, in ways that are possibly still too subtle for me to identify with any specificity. As an example, here's a paragraph from the story:

"Fara walked forward gingerly on a rugged floor that muffled his footsteps utterly. After a moment, his eyes accustomed themselves to the soft lighting, which came like a reflection from the walls and ceilings. In a vague way, he had expected ultranormalness; and the ordinariness of the atomic lighting acted like a tonic to his tensed nerves."

I don't know, and I don't know that I can say exactly why, but this just strikes me as being not very good. (How's that for some cogent analysis?!)

Anyways -- and if you've been reading my other reviews you can probably anticipate the punchline here -- this was selected as one of the greatest sci-fi stories of all time. And so, what conclusions can I draw from this? Perhaps that, while it's fine to try to trim down adverbs where possible... it isn't a crucial consideration. One may season liberally with adverbs and yet produce "all-time classic" fiction.

As to the story itself, again, it worked for me... but I can't quite say why. The tale seemed like some sort of paean to vague libertarian notions about guns and freedom -- that future oppression will be countered by the gun dealers -- and an examination of the small-mindedness of those who strive to keep their neighborhoods free of "undesirable elements" at the cost of their neighbors' freedoms. And all of that is well and good, but it seems a touch haphazard, and never really developed. We never really know, for instance, what gives the Weapons Shops their great power and position within this society, save that they have these nigh-magical "technologies," such as a computer that unfailingly assesses every man's moral character. Really, the Shops function as a sort of giant deus ex machina -- being of practically limitless power, swooping in and saving the main character from harm at the last minute (just as he can see no way out of his troubles and has reached the point of suicide).

The "libertarian" character of the Weapon Shop is incidental. It would've functioned just as well if the great shop with magical powers had been Communist, saving our hero from the horrors of a free state with all of its unpredictability. This is because there's never any real examination of the meaning of "freedom" versus "tyranny," or how it relates to our characters or what happens. There's a bit of sloganizing ("The Right to Buy Weapons is the Right to Be Free"); the tyrannical state is ultimately bad because the Empress turns out to be a bitch and conspires directly against our protagonist; our hero overcomes because the Weapons Shop happens to be physically stronger than everyone else; but none of these events are demonstrated to be fundamentally derived from the sides they're supposed to represent. They have almost the depth of Black vs. White in a game of chess. And so as social critique, I'm afraid I find this story superficial.

Dammit, why did it work? I enjoyed this story, I did. I was intrigued the whole way through, and wasn't dissatisfied when I got to the end. But I don't know why. Maybe one day, when I know better and am better, I'll be able to answer these sorts of questions. Till then I'll have to derive what satisfaction I can just from being able to raise them.

Review: Nightfall by Isaac Asimov

2011-04-09T07:27:00.000-07:00

Good thing nobody reads this blog. Otherwise, I imagine that I could be doing significant damage to my "career."

After all, Isaac Asimov is a saint. Right? And to criticize him... well, that can't be the brightest thing to do in the speculative fiction community. I don't know. My background in reading, well, everything, is severely and stupidly limited. So there's always that caveat to my opinions. To my knowledge, this was my first time reading Asimov. I'm sure there's more and better out there. But again, this is a "Hall of Fame" story and I've got to say: I wasn't all that impressed.

Unlike any of the other stories thus far, Nightfall simply didn't work for me. I wanted it to work. I tried suspending my disbelief; I used this whole system of pulleys and levers, but the disbelief came crashing down anyways.

Here's the premise: there exists a planet close to so many stars (suns) that it is never night. Except for every two and a half thousand years, where things line up just so (the final touch being an eclipse) to trigger an actual "night," revealing a universe of stars.

Because the people of this planet are so unused to darkness, this results in a pandemic of madness, and the entire civilization collapses, just as it routinely has every nightfall.

I appreciate the attempt to try to take something novel and explore the greater ramifications of that novelty on human (? never specified or discussed, but I'll take it that way) psychology and society.

But specifically in this story, I do not buy: 1) the event itself -- the planet Lagash and its night; or 2) the extrapolations to psychology and society. In short, I don't believe any of it.

I'm well aware that Asimov is far more of a scientist than I will ever be. I imagine that, where I disagree with him, I must surely be in error. And this story was voted the best pre-Nebula awards science fiction story by the Science Fiction Writers of America! How wrong am I getting all of this!? But here's my case:

Suppose that this planet exists, surrounded by suns (so much so as to prevent night in toto except for this rare confluence of events), the nearest being about like our own sun... Now, in my own limited experience on Earth (which, remember, has only the one sun), I have observed that, although it is routinely night here (at least once a day)... it's never night everywhere all at once. So what am I to make of a planet with so many suns? I accept that it might be night to a delimited area of such a planet... but night everywhere all at once? Isn't Lagash round?

Or maybe the civilization of Lagash is confined to one continent, or something like that. I don't know. Maybe (although they have "scientists" and "reporters"), they haven't really circumnavigated their globe -- they don't know that it's probably daytime on the other side, and that if they're really concerned about the effects of night, they can just take a small maritime vacation or what have you. And then there's the matter of the eclipse. It's supposed by the Lagash scientists that there's some sort of a moon orbiting their planet, on account of otherwise unexplainable fluctuations in gravitational forces. Fair enough. And it is the eclipse of the lone remaining sun in the sky by this moon that is the final cause of the darkness. Okay.

But much like "night" isn't everywhere at once, neither is an eclipse. Wikipedia says: "[t]otal solar eclipses are nevertheless rare at any particular location because totality exists only along a narrow path on the Earth's surface..."

So now, lest I lose the premise entirely, I'm forced to imagine that Lagashian civilization is confined to that narrow strip that would be entirely subjected to this periodic eclipse-darkness. And that... just doesn't seem right. (Besides, I'd imagine that, given a moon, solar eclipses would be very regular, even if they didn't always trigger nightfall. Wouldn't these "scientists" have long been aware of the shadow that passes over one (or more) of their suns every so often?)

Further, I'm forced to wonder how dark even a total eclipse of the sun really is. Isn't there light at the edges? Aren't people advised not to look directly at the sun in such cases? 'Cause of the damage to the eyes? And speaking of eyes... how quickly would a person's eyes grow accustomed to darkness to see stars? I know that in Earth twilight, it's often possible to see a few stars, especially the bright ones at the horizon.

Yet in Nightfall, it goes from seeing no stars at all (despite being at the center of the galaxy) to instantaneously seeing all of them. Okay, I suppose we have to allow that for drama's sake... but, you know, I just don't think it's how that works.

Now, as a segue into the psychological/societal aspects, I'd like to ask about the duration of the eclipse. We have some idea as to this because we know about how long it takes to go from the start of the eclipse to totality -- somewhere more than an hour, but not by too much (when the sun is a third dark, it is "not quite an hour" to totality). When they observe the "first chip" in the sun, it's supposed that the eclipse has begun within the last fifteen minutes or so.

Given this, I'd surmise that this might be a total eclipse of their sun... but not a very long one. Indeed, about fifteen minutes after totality, they'll have a "chip" of their sun back. And somewhere between one to two hours thereafter, they'll have the sun back completely, and light for another 2500 years. It won't be dark long.

Yet Asimov's world goes nuts during this darkness. Completely nuts, to the point where they raze their civilization (again -- it happens during their nightfalls like clockwork). The rationale offered is... claustrophobia. Or something like it, at least. It's supposed that since it's always daytime on Lagash, darkness triggers an intense panic in the people there like an extreme bout of claustrophobia, which causes them to run riot, burn buildings for the light they'll provide, and generally pull civilization so far down that the next "cycle" will have to completely rebuild, remembering nothing of the past cycles (except for vague snatches recorded in myths).

Wha?

I mean... really? In the first place, I find it difficult to accept that, because they don't have night, the people of Lagash also don't have darkness. They talk about caves in the story, briefly, so we know they have those. They also have shelters. Presumably, due to whatever other elements Lagash might have (do they have overcast days, I wonder?), they keep indoors at times... and maybe to ward off predatory creatures? Or just for military protection against one another? In short, I suspect that they occasionally spend times indoors, and out of the suns' light.

Not only that, but... can't these people shut their eyes? I'll assume that they have eye lids. Nothing in the story says otherwise, and it makes even more sense to me given the number of suns from an "evolutionary" perspective. I find it hard to accept that people close to us in biology and nature could be so completely unaccustomed to darkness, whatever the solar situation.

Further, it's clear from the story that their interior lighting technology is underdeveloped. Storywise this is so they have no real protection against the encroaching darkness. All right, I'll buy that. But they must have some sort of mastery over fire/heat, musn't they, and therefore have access to the light as a byproduct? They have scientists, for crissake! What about deep sea explorations, or spelunking? Don't they use light for that? And don't they cook food? And what about welding, and the other industrial applications of flame?

But okay okay okay. Fine. There are these people who are going to feel night for the first time, let's accept that. They're completely unaccustomed to darkness and they have no tools to sufficiently provide artificial light. Fine. What then?

The darkness causes them to panic and tear down society.

???

We're all familiar with fear, and most of us even know bouts of intense fear from time to time. Surely it can make us do some strange stuff. And yeah, I buy looting and rioting for a period of time. Fires are understandable. I've seen people in a panic, and I don't doubt the power of "mob mentality." I do not question the general ignorance, fear, anger, etc., etc., etc., of the people. But. Claustrophobia, however bad, doesn't tear away peoples rational faculties permanently. We're talking about a spate of darkness no longer than an hour or two, and most of that spent with a quarter sun, or a half sun, or three-quarters sun -- conditions they bear during almost the whole of the story. It is not enough to believably drive a whole planet of people mad.

The story itself is concerned with the scientists who predicted the event. Asimov here presents a sorry show of what it means to be a "scientist." For my money, knowledge is power. If a person understands the nature of a given event, like say an eclipse, and knows that it will soon be over (leading to another 2500 years of happy, happy sunshine), then that knowledge will, in itself, steel the scientist to bear the torment of a twenty minute or so attack of severe claustrophobia. Right?

I mean, I'll accept that different people will experience their own fears differently -- we can't generalize too much -- but then neither can Asimov. Yet he wants to -- needs to -- make his madness a nigh-general condition in order to secure the outcome he desires. Again, things simply don't work this way. And Asimov's society-destroying-claustrophobia in particular makes zero sense to me.

Whew.

And now, what of the story? I mean, beyond all this (questionable, to my mind) hard and social science, maybe the true strength of the tale lies in its exciting plot and its well-developed characters?

The plot is: the scientists stand around waiting for the eclipse, discussing it. The characters are, essentially: Reporter, who asks "what's going on? why?" as a means of eliciting exposition; Scientist, who answers those questions; and Cultist, who provides some, uh, societal color, I guess. There aren't really characters here, but talking abstractions which exist to explain the "science" and civilization.

Nope. I don't get it. This didn't work for me. And I'm willing to entertain that this fault lies more with me than with Asimov. Perhaps I didn't commit myself sufficiently to suspend disbelief? Maybe I just don't have a good palette yet for sci-fi? After all, this is a much-beloved story, considered one of the all-time greats. What does it mean that, were I publisher of my own little sci-fi mag, I would reject this on first reading? What does it portend for my own fiction, and my future? I don't know any of that.

But I am glad that I'm sufficiently under the radar thus far that my heresy will go unnoticed for a while. I can only hope that if anyone ever realizes (and cares) about my opinions, they'll approach both Nightfall and my critique of it with an open mind. Perhaps then they can kindly show me the errors of my ways...

Review: Microcosmic God by Theodore Sturgeon

2011-03-27T09:11:00.000-07:00

Let's get Today's Big Sin out of the way: "Microcosmic God" is a story told, not shown. It begins in this folksy way:

"Here is a story about a man who had too much power, and a man who took too much, but don't worry; I'm not going political on you."

So we have a true narrator. But oddly, the narrator isn't a character and there's no context for the narration (it's not being told in any "frame"; just directly to the reader). The narrator is essentially omniscient, but doesn't know everything... and the narrator is strictly impossible, given that everyone who would be privy to the story's events wind up either dead or missing. In other words, according to everything that I "know," the narration -- the point of view -- is a mess.

And yeah, there are hardly any "scenes." What scenes exist are packed towards the last third of the story. So far as I can tell, again, this would never pass muster in any workshop I've attended. And yet (per Wikipedia): "The novelette was also recognized as the 13th best all-time short science fiction story in a 1971 Analog Science Fact & Fiction poll, and as the 42nd best all-time science fiction novelette in a 1999 Locus poll."

Perhaps it's meaningful that the story has dropped in estimation from 1971 to 1999? Or perhaps other, better stories have come along? Whatever the case may be, this story obviously remains highly-regarded. Like, all-time highly regarded. Yet it violates the most sacred dicta of "show not tell," and in opening with, like, nine pages of narrative summary rather than any scene.

When I workshopped with those (truly) lovely people in Eugene, OR -- the Wordos -- it was often said that adherence to the rules hardly matters so long as "it works." I'd hardly disagree with such a sentiment. It seems to have the soundness of "immoral actions are wrong." But I find it equally helpful; of course something works if it works and doesn't if it doesn't. The struggling, beginning, not-very-good writer like myself needs direction as to what makes a thing work. And if a rule may be violated such that the violation "works," then it leads me to believe that the rule, as such, is misunderstood. The real rules, whatever they may be, run deeper than "show not tell."

And maybe, practically, it usually amounts to "show not tell" and "keep in scene" and "maintain a consistent point of view" and all the rest. Perhaps that standard advice covers 90%, 95%, or greater of our stories.

But my preference is to understand the underlying cause. I'll let you know if/when I ever get there.

As for Microcosmic God (I need to stop doing this; just start talking about the damn stories), did it "work"? Yeah, it did. I enjoyed it.

One thing I found interesting was the lack of moral question over the course of the story. In the story, a character essentially creates a new species which he then lords over as a Terrible God for the purpose of human scientific advancement. When I say "Terrible God," I mean that he regularly brings catastrophe and wholesale slaughter down on his people as a means to stimulate them to evolution or technological advancement. He manipulates them into war with one another so he may study their tactics and military developments. And! He doesn't do this for the sake of humanity -- he hates people -- but just apparently out of curiosity and a love of science for its own sake.

Any way you slice it, this scientist seems an awful, awful man. Sturgeon nearly gets away with the character, however, by pitting him against an even more awful man -- a banker! Yet I continually wondered whether the story felt that the main character's treatment (especially) of his creation was acceptable.

I may want to try writing a similar story for the purpose of examining some of the moral questions involved which Sturgeon's story never approached, to my disappointment.

Despite this, I still enjoyed the story, and yeah, I was rooting for the scientist-God by the end. :)

Next up is an Asimov. I'm excited.

Oh, By the Way...

2011-03-26T11:51:00.001-07:00

It occurs to me that one or two other things need updating around here.

1) Finished "A Canticle For Leibowitz." Didn't love it. I'm starting to despair of getting into good fiction -- life and analysis have taken their toll. Did I mention that I liked Helen O'Loy? 'Cause that was really excellent. :)

2) I've been published since last we spoke! Both poetry and short fiction, and actually in a handful of spots: the Shine Journal, New Myths, Big Pulp, Every Day Fiction and others. Also, I was again selected as a semi-finalist for Writers of the Future! Not quite ready to retire yet, but I enjoy every moderate success. Hopefully more news in the near future, and hopefully some of it good! ;)

Review: The Roads Must Roll by Robert Heinlein

2011-03-26T10:03:00.000-07:00

Sure, it's taken a year, but I'm back and ready to review! Still working on the same volume -- the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, volume 1.

As I'm sure you can appreciate, life has a way of interfering with our plans at times. Since my last blog entry, I've moved from lovely Springfield, Oregon to chaotic Los Angeles. There was much transition. And now, with that out of the way as a general mea culpa/excuse, I'll waste no more time and get into it!

So, if there's been a theme to my reviews thus far, it's been finding examples in these classic stories of what would ordinarily be termed "faults" by my writing peers and instructors. Heinlein's story is no different.

There are a number of POV shifts throughout -- from one character to another, and even into omniscient and back. And there are "problems" in the exposition. What I mean is info dumps. Large, tottering masses of material that -- far from being placed into any scene -- are simply unloaded onto the reader as from a dump truck. Here's the opening sentence from one such section:

"The Age of Power blends into the Age of Transportation almost imperceptibly, but two events stand out as landmarks in the change: The invention of the Sun-power screen, and the opening of the first moving road."

This reads as the opening to a college professor's lecture. So, what am I concluding? That this is bad? That Heinlein's story fails because of poorly-handled exposition? That this story doesn't deserve publication, let alone its Nebula award or Hall of Fame placard?

Nah. I'm not concluding anything. (Not yet, at least.) Right now, I'm simply at the stage of observation. I'm observing that the way Heinlein handles his exposition -- and his point of view -- would be severely red penned in nearly every workshop or class I've yet attended.

A quote from Theodore Sturgeon (whose story is next) graces the back of my volume. It reads in part, "Not for years has there appeared a collection of stories so remarkable, so profoundly enjoyable..." If we take him at his word, I'm forced to wonder: enjoyable? Despite the evident "flaws"? Even now, even in our modern society, what with our crazy music and youth fashions and what-nots? What's the source of this "enjoyment," and does it actually have anything to do with a consistent point-of-view, or with skillfully deployed background information? I begin to wonder whether we're truly keeping our collective eye on the ball when we workshop our stories, and teach one another to do the same...

Now let me caution: I'm not claiming that Heinlein's exposition in this story *is* well-handled. It is not (though I make no claims at greater skill). Nor am I saying that his story wouldn't have been improved with a better exposition, or some consistent point of view. It may well be that these, or any other number of changes, would have resulted in a greater story still (though I don't know that I could make any recommendations specifically). But I guess that I'm left with this: info dumps and "greatness" are not mutually exclusive. A story may not handle its exposition well, and yet still be great and "enjoyable" and a classic.

If this is true, then oughtn't we endeavor -- rather than concentrating our efforts on zeroing in on some slip of perspective or minor background material "shown" not told -- to determine the true sources of "greatness" and how those might be approached in our fiction? For some time now, I've feared that the critical process tends to concentrate on "what's missing" rather than "what's there," a feeling that I've struggled to put into words and would not feel confident in any current attempt to do so. And yet, they seem related to me. We concentrate on point of view when, perhaps, point of view isn't always the point... and when the true strength of the story expresses itself via other means.

Maybe there's something "easy" about the flaws of point of view or exposition or, more tediously still, comma and period. After all, a person trained to do it (better than myself, hopefully) can recognize when a punctuation mark is out of place. If they seek to be helpful (or from some other, less-worthy motive), it isn't too hard to point that out and offer remedy. Layman and beginner though I be, I know when Heinlein indulges in an info dump. If I were "critting" his work, how could I avoid circling those sections and writing "Info Dump! Revise!" on them? Maybe what makes his work great is subtler, and harder to identify (for otherwise, wouldn't we all be a Heinlein?)... and so we just talk about what we can, and leave determinations of "greatness" for posterity...?

I'm not sure. But I think it might be an important goal for any critic to look less for what lacks in a given work, and to look all the harder for what succeeds. To try to find the source of greatness, and allow more superficial (though still important) matters their true place in things. After all, we should only bother to polish the chassis when the engine purrs.

Oh, yeah, also there was this story I'm supposed to talk about. Did I like it? Meh. It was okay. Due to all of the thoughts I (mostly unwillingly) have about what I've talked about, like exposition and etc., it's really hard for me to read smoothly through a story with the "faults" already discussed. What would my experience have been if I were still a "simple" reader, with no particular insight into storycraft? I can't say. I can only report on my experience in the here and now, and lament that one's naivete can't be flipped on and off to maximize immediate pleasures.

The exposition really was problematic for me. Not just the info dumps, but there was a character created simply to have things explained to them. He even says, "Suppose you tell me about the roads as if I were entirely ignorant. And I will ask questions." Oh yeah.

Now, I do that sort of thing, too. Or in the story I'm currently writing, at least, I've introduced an ignorant character as a means of relaying expository information. It's a classic gag, and I think still acceptable in the crit-crowd. But what irks me about Heinlein's character (apart from the clumsiness exemplified by that quote) is that he never factors instrumentally in the story. He's there almost solely as an info device. And to my way of thinking, that's just some laziness. I want Heinlein's character not just to serve that one narrow purpose, but also to come to bear on the events of the story as they proceed. Anywho, that will be my goal in the character/story I'm creating.

The story itself doesn't get going until a fair way through. Wikipedia unconsciously identifies this problem by beginning its plot recap with an event that doesn't take place until thirteen pages into my printed edition: "Larry Gaines, Chief Engineer of the Diego-Reno roadtown, is dining in a moving restaurant on the road when one of the moving sidewalk strips unexpectedly stops, causing injuries to the thousands of commuters on it."

Now, that seems to me a classic sci-fi difficulty. In order to appreciate the plot events, we have to know some measure of the context; it requires some (if not all) of that expository information to have the sufficient context to know what it means when the moving sidewalk stops. Again, that's a difficulty I'm dealing with presently in my own fiction. :) Perhaps the "two" problems are really one? Perhaps, had the exposition been more skillfully incorporated into present scenes, I wouldn't have felt as though the story took too long in starting...?

Finally, the resolution left me wanting. All of the hero's actions seemed reasonable and perhaps even expectable. That they overwhelm the antagonist and his "plot" means to me that the villainy didn't ever have much a chance of working, or carry great threat. Further, the villain's plan is ultimately self-defeating in a way. He seeks to orchestrate some national labor rebellion. But he's achieved prominence enough to even attempt such a thing by gathering all of the potential malcontents to his local roost, leaving the rest of the country filled with those who would never join him.

So, yeah, that doesn't work out too well, and it leaves our hero to overcome him just by being a functionary (essentially) rather than through some special feat that only he could have pulled off. Just doesn't satisfy.

With that, I'm off. Hopefully it'll be less than a year between now and my next post. But as life remains complicated, I make no promises. ;)

Review: A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller, Chs. 6-10

2010-04-27T08:19:00.001-07:00

Just checking in with this. The novel is going along at about its normal speed. Events are occurring, but again I don't feel as though there's a strong plot afoot.

I'm less convinced now that Miller knew what he was doing in switching POV. It remains to be seen, but the character he broke POV for (a couple of times) hasn't yet factored in, and I don't know that he ever will. Also, the narrative has taken on the voice of a strong "narrator" a couple of times (as in an "omniscient" author-voice), which is also a POV break, imo.

Also what I find interesting (and possibly dissatisfying) is how there have been a series of leaps forward in the time-frame of the novel. We jump months and years at a time into the future. I find these breaks to be as disturbing as anything else, and much more than an ordinary scene change.

I mean, I'm no stickler to the Unities, but it seems messy to me to have such a series of incidents.

Overall, I don't yet see why this novel has won the acclaim it has. I hope (and somewhat expect) to be shown why, soon.

Review: A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller, Chs. 1-5

2010-04-21T07:18:00.000-07:00

So, in addition to reading the short story collection, I've taken up A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller, a classic SF novel. Right now, I'm five chapters in. Thoughts thus far:

* A lot of exposition--a lot of world building. We're learning quite a bit about this post-apocalyptic, neo-dark age monastic society and especially the apparent protagonist's position in it, as the young novice who stumbles on the pre-nuclear holocaust artifacts from their venerated founder Leibowitz. It's well done, in my opinion. Or well written at least, and I haven't grown tired of it, which is hard to do when it comes to a tale that demands a ton of expository information.

The author hasn't been afraid to give it to us straight. He gets a little bit into the protagonist's head and then gives himself permission to tell us all manner of things. Some may say that this is a fault, but I'm not so sure. Might be the best way to get out a lot of information in an economical manner.

* The plot, whatever it might wind up being, has been somewhat slow in developing. Certainly there's been forward motion, but I've read sixty-four pages and I still don't really know what's at stake, or what the protagonist wants, or what to be afraid of, or to anticipate anything in particular happening. There are interesting tidbits which *might* prove consequential (and probably will), like the monastery wanting Leibowitz to officially be canonized by "New Rome," and the protagonist's desire to take permanent vows with the order, but none of them seem central thus far.

Taken together with the world building, this all seems interesting but not vital. It's like, suppose the Lord of the Rings existed, but without Frodo's quest. Instead it's just about how Bilbo up and leaves during his party, and then Frodo has to go on at Bag End and deal with his obnoxious relatives, but there's no force driving him out of the Shire...

It might still be interesting to read about Middle Earth, but the tale wouldn't have the same force, if you get my meaning.

Right now, it's unclear what will motivate Brother Francis (the apparent protagonist) to go do something engaging. I don't know that he, or anyone else, is in jeopardy.

* I call Francis the "apparent" protagonist because Miller has done something rather interesting with the POV thus far. He's kept it with Francis except for a couple of scenes with another character, Cheroki, where he's switched the POV in the same scene.

As always, this would be a huge no-no according to the books on writing I've read, and subsequently according to my fellow would-be writers. I find it all confusing. If a novel can contain such an "error" and yet still be regarded as classic literature, then how grevious a fault is it really? Further, do we assume that the fault was taken on accidentally, or without purpose? And if more is gained than lost by indulging in this fault--if Miller knew what he was trying to accomplish in switching POVs, and succeeded--then how is it a "fault" at all?

It's rather like complaining about the health problems brought about by industrialization. Yes, there are some. But our lives have improved according to almost every metric since industrialization, health included, and so to refer to industrialization itself as being problematic is... just wrong. Here, if playing with POV is a net gain (and Miller must have thought so, whatever my evaluation of it), then it cannot be said to be the wrong thing to do. If it's a net gain, then it's the right thing to do.

What I think I'm coming to is: switching POV has certain effects, many of them negative (and perhaps strongly so). However, that does not make it necessarily wrong to switch POV, because any particular instance might be recommended according to its specific context and use. In a given circumstance, it might well be the right thing to do.

Whether Miller is or is not doing the right thing is an open question. But I think now that the mentality I've been exposed to--that there are rigid "rules" when it comes to POV--is perhaps mistaken. If one can break "rules" and yet write "classic" stories in doing it, then the rules aren't really rules.

* Speaking of rules, I've been noticing Miller's use of punctuation a lot. Like me, he uses a lot of it. Commas, em-dashes, semi-colons, it's all there. And his syntax is very formal, putting the sentences together as though he were writing a formal essay, with "furthermores," "indeeds," "howevers" and etcetera. I think I do this, too. So it's interesting to see this stuff on display by someone else, and it might help me to recognize my own style, in case I should want to change it.

* More to come as I read on...

Review: Helen O'Loy by Lester del Rey

2010-04-16T08:01:00.001-07:00

Well! The third story in the collection is Helen O'Loy by Lester del Rey, originally published in 1938, and it is wonderful. :)

It concerns two friends who conspire to add emotions to a robot, and wind up creating Helen, a beautiful and perfectly woman-like android. Romantic complications ensue. (Interestingly, it deals with some of the themes and ideas I've been playing around with in my own fiction, such as in my story "Love Guaranteed," which is scheduled for publication in a few months' time--more details on that later.)

And I'm going to keep this short because, frankly, I don't have much to complain about here... and outside of complaints, I don't have much to say (which is a flaw in myself I obviously need to address).

I found the writing to be elegant and witty--didn't see much that I would red pen at all--and the dialogue in particular struck me as nicely done. But more than being an example of good craft, this story deals with human emotion and it does it well. I *felt* by the end, which is really what I want out of the fiction I read. I cared about the characters.

Oh (and yes, this--and every other "review" I write--will have SPOILERS; take this as a general disclaimer), I do want to address something really quickly, as a little bit of the story's brilliance. The Wiki article about this story says this:

In the final line of the story it is revealed that the medical student, who had been narrating the story, had secretly been in love with [Helen] too.

Not so. There's no "twist" here. The final line confirms his love for her, although even that is done with admirable subtlety, but his love for her is there throughout the tale, evident in a certain way from the very first line.

The facts are: Helen is supremely beautiful (compared favorably against Helen of Troy); she's described as being a perfect homemaker (which I suppose was the late 30s womanly ideal); the narrator is shown as caring for her, in how he doesn't want her to suffer through the torment of unrequited love; and etcetera.

And since this entire tale is about love between man and "machine," the reader must surely ask himself: what are the narrator's feelings for Helen? Further, as she's named for the lady whose face sailed a thousand ships, the reader must be expecting some kind of romantic conflict between potential suitors. Mustn't he? Doesn't the very structure of the story--doesn't everything about it--suggest that there will be rival feelings for the lady between her two creators?

Combining all of that with the fact that the narrator is telling the story, and that he never *does* speak to his own emotions in describing the tale, especially as they relate to Helen... well... that answers our question well before that final line. He loved her, and is haunted by it. He must be, as it's the only thing that makes sense.

It's just... beautifully done.

Yeah, this one's a keeper. :)

Review: Twilight by John W. Campbell

2010-04-15T09:04:00.001-07:00

The second story in Science Fiction Hall of Fame, v.1, is John W. Campbell's Twilight. Like Weinbaum's, this was published in 1934; the anthology is organized chronologically.

And, perhaps typically of its age, it shares much in common with A Martian Odyssey. They are both essentially conversations between characters detailing past events, rather than something being experienced "in real time." Also, the emphasis of both tales is in the reader vicariously experiencing something out of the ordinary, rather than characters taking on challenges. Perhaps I'm speaking a bit out of my ignorance here (like usual), but these strike me a bit as what I think Orson Scott Card would describe as "milieu" stoires, where the "point" is the discovery of a new world.

In this case, the new world is the far human future--man in his "twilight," where machines continue on, but man himself is enervated, ineffectual, and approaching a kind of careless self-extinction. It's relayed in a confusing sort of manner, a past conversation relayed through a current conversation. Wikipedia begins to describe the plot like this:

The narrator relates his conversation with an oddly dressed man whom he had picked up by the side of the road. The traveler claimed to have been from 1000 years in the future, and to have developed time-travel technology with which he had first traveled 7 million years forward in time. He then overshot on his return trip, landing himself in 1932.

But this isn't precisely true. The first narrator of the piece is relating his conversation with the man who is relating his conversation with the oddly dressed man. Anywho, Wiki continues on:

In the future, Man has colonized the solar system but is dying out. Human existence is free of difficulty, as all illness and predators have been eliminated, and all work is done by perfect machines. However, humans have lost their curiosity, drive, and lastly their technological knowledge. As a result, they have accomplished nothing new in about two million years. Before leaving the future, the time traveler activates intelligent machines that he hopes will allow Man's creations, if not Man himself, to strive and evolve.

And... yeah, that does it fairly well, I suppose. Though that last sentence, about what the time traveler does "before leaving the future"? It's almost completely incidental to the story (rather like a bit of business at the end of Weinbaum's tale), but I find it interesting that in both cases the authors felt the need to include a little bit of forward action in their tale. Almost as though they felt that describing Wonderland to us wasn't enough for a proper tale. Isn't it? I don't know. But I find the sudden introduction of action at the ends of these stories to be a little bit unconvincing, albeit moreso in Weinbaum's (to the point where I didn't even mention it in my Martian Odyssey review; it's wholly immaterial to the story). These pieces are travelogue, really, of impossible times and places. And I think that's fine, and that they don't need artificial action to justify them, so long as they're travelogue done well.

So what I think Twilight does well is in providing a sense of the sadness and loss at this glimpse of mankind's future. Even though he comes back to it a few more times than I'd like, I have to admit that the image of machines running on long after their creators have vanished is fairly upsetting, as is the idea of an Earth with all other non-man/non-plant life destroyed.

What doesn't work for me as well are a digression or two into the technology of the future, which seems rather besides the point to me. I don't mean that any discussion of tech should be absent--it has its place in a "future" story, of course--but Campbell, for instance, goes on at length about how a flying car operates as he's going to Future San Francisco. Do I *really* need to know the intricacies? What story purpose do they serve? Do they give me a better sense of the characters? Of this future society? Does it further the plot? Does it enhance the mood? Is it thematic somehow? I don't see any point, other than describing it for its own sake... which isn't of much value to me in the context of this story.

I suspect that this is an aspect of much sci-fi with which I'm apt to be at odds. I like science alright. But my interest is more in the "fiction" part. I believe technical details to have their proper home in technical manuals and patent forms, and that they should only show up in a story when absolutely required (and even then, they should be dealt with as quickly and harmlessly as possible, getting back to the heart of the matter). Maybe future stories will show me how to appreciate the "harder" stuff...?

Another issue about Campbell's story that I should address is the point of view. Twilight is an interesting experiment where POV is concerned, as the story slips between the first person narration of three different characters. Again, this would be a huge no-no where I to present my critique group with such a "flaw." They certainly wouldn't vote my "broken" POV story into any hall of fame. :)

Is it really such a problem, moving between points of view? I must confess, it did throw me at first. I think that Campbell does it this way to address the problems with relating a story through dialogue of past events--he makes the story more immediate by gradually bringing us into the first person POV of the time traveller.

A person might well say, "why not just have this be a first person POV story from the time traveller's perspective?" To that, I believe Campbell's answer might be that we need to start from the perspective of someone from our own time and place because that's intrinsically more relatable than a man from the year 3059. And the story is removed one more time, to two modern earthlings discussing the time traveller, so that we're initially put into the position of the skeptic; the man who must be convinced of this tall tale.

I guess he felt that we'd accept these strange occurences more if we started further away from them, and only came to them by 1st hearing the testimonial of a reliable witness (Jim's in real estate, after all), and then moving to the time traveller's story. I think Campbell was really concerned with this issue of believability, as this is how the story ends:

Jim claims he doesn't believe the yarn, you know. But he does; that's why he always acts so determined about it when he says the stranger wasn't an ordinary man.

No, he wasn't, I guess. I think he lived and died, too, probably, sometime in the thirty-first century. And I think he saw the twilight of the race, too.

It all seems a bit like an apology for the "weirdness" of the tale, putting us in the shoes of a (we presume) rational non-believer who's then convinced. I can understand it being done that way at the time, though maybe such things are no longer necessary as science fiction and its traditional settings (the future; alternate dimensions; alien worlds; etc.) are all commonly accepted now. I'd hope that today readers wouldn't blink at being presented a first person narrative by a man from the year 3000.

So yeah, I think that Campbell's POV shifts were in response to trying to address two percieved problems: the initial believability and relatability of the narrator, and the distancing effect of having a story related in dialogue versus a direct, first person telling. Would he write it that way today? Likely not. Although... and despite the drawbacks of shifting POV... I wonder if it still doesn't contribute something to the story, starting in the mind of the skeptic and then gradually moving to the strange stuff...? I don't know.

Review: A Martian Odyssey by Stanley G. Weinbaum

2010-04-14T08:48:00.000-07:00

I've been told a few times that if I want to write genre, I ought to read it as well. And so for my first project in reading genre, I've selected the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, v.1, edited by Robert Silverberg. Can't go wrong with something like that, right? :)

"A Martian Odyssey" by Stanley G. Weinbaum is the first short story (and the oldest) in the collection. It is, by all accounts, a classic in the field, as all things in a "hall of fame" ought to be. From Wikipedia I've learned that the author--and this story in particular--changed the way that science fiction is written.

The story concerns an astronaut who, as a part of the first manned exploration of Mars, is stranded a few days' walk away from his command shuttle and must make his way back. Along the way he encounters several interesting species of life and is ultimately threatened by a couple of them.

What I found interesting in reading this is how "wrong" so much of it is. I don't mean regarding the actual conditions of Mars or anything like that. Even if I cared about such accuracy (which I largely don't) I certainly wouldn't hold it against someone in the thirties to make such errors. But what I mean by "wrong" is that there are many things in this manuscript that my critique group and all of the "how-to" writing manuals I've read would decry as being Violations of Technique.

Here are a few for-instances, off the top of my mind: the story is all told through dialogue, after the events have taken place. We are therefore removed from the action--distanced--and I could see some people complaining about that. Also, there are the "said-isms," like "'I could have fixed!' ejaculated the engineer," and my personal favorite tag, "'That's her," said Jarvis ungrammatically." The characters aren't much developed except through having accents. Everyone speaks in perpetual exclamation (like our ejaculating engineer). The dialogue doesn't ring true. We're told things, not shown. And so on.

Now, perhaps it wouldn't be very fair to this story to judge it through a modern lens. After all, the copywright is given as 1934. Certainly theories of writing and storycraft have changed since then. And yet... and yet...

I find it interesting that a story with so many so-called flaws would be regarded as a classic. Indeed, of classics, it is one of the most classic-ish; the stories in this collection were selected via vote by members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and Weinbaum's Odyssey received the second highest total.

Is this story so highly thought of simply because it is so old? Because it was "groundbreaking" at its time? Or does it still work as a story today? I'd argue that certain stories continue to amaze long after their initial publications--what of Weinbaum's tale?

For me the answer is: yes and no. I wasn't blown away by anything in the story, but I still found Weinbaum's depiction of his alien critters to be intriguing. And after all, it is the description of these odd creatures that forms the heart of the tale. Quite a bit of imagination went into them, and the result is a sort of Wonderland with a patina of scientific rationale given to make these particular lifeforms seem plausible in their environments. I can understand why people at the time were excited to read this, and especially if it hadn't been done before. Also, the writing is clear and accessible which I consider an unmitigated virtue.

So I start to wonder: the various "flaws" that I noticed due to my thus-far training, how much do they really take away from reading the story?

I don't have an answer to that yet. Maybe it would have been better if the engineer "said" things, rather than "ejaculating" them. Maybe that's true. But perhaps it isn't a fatal flaw after all. It doesn't seem to have stopped this tale from breaking through and then owning a piece of perpetual reverence in the industry's history.

This is not me declaring my intention to disregard the rules that more learned men than myself have set down for crafting good fiction. My characters will only ejaculate if/when I start writing erotica. But perhaps it's worthwhile to note that... it's possible that what a story *is*--the positives that it carries with it, whatever they happen to be--can outweigh what a story *is not*, meaning the rules that it technically violates or the opportunities it doesn't exploit.

Perhaps it's more productive to concentrate on offering things of value in one's fiction as opposed to shrinking back from what might be poorly received. Maybe readers are more forgiving than previously supposed...

The Reviews of T.C. Powell

2010-04-14T08:39:00.001-07:00

So, it has occurred to me that if I only blog when announcing new publications, the posts here might be few and far-between. :) Might as well pass the time between rejections with sharing some of my "insights" and other observations on Learning to Be a Writer and etcetera.

Part of what I'm doing is a bit of reading catch-up. Honestly, most of my reading over the last year and a half has been nonfiction--manuals on how to write (and how *not* to). But now I'm turning my attention to fiction again, with an interest in filling in some of the gaps in my education. Turns out, there's a lot I've never read. Whole libraries, in fact.

And so I figure that as I read through these classics and not-so-classics, maybe I'll write a few review-like reflections in here. Or something like that: I'm not promising to hold to any particular format, or schedule; it just seems like a better use of this space than leaving it blank.

Whether I'm right or wrong in that, I'll leave for the reader to decide... ;)

The Poetry of T.C. Powell...?

2009-10-17T16:38:00.000-07:00

Wow. So I don't write much poetry--and if you've read any of mine, you know why--but a few months ago I wrote a small poem and sent it away and, lo and behold, it's been published!

You can find it here.

(4-14-10, Edited to Add: the online formating of the poem seems a little... screwy, now. But it still looks nice in my Word doc, and hopefully in the print edition, for whomever out there that has a copy of it. :)

"Through the Window" -- Flash Fiction Online! :)

2009-07-03T02:21:00.000-07:00

Hooray!

I've had a story published on Flash Fiction Online! It can be found here. :)

A Little Bit o' Why

2009-06-29T03:43:00.000-07:00

Since I'm here, boasting about my (victory, say victory) near-victory in taking semi-finalist honors in Writers of the Future, I might as well set some of my thoughts down on writing.

Why this? Why write?

I won't be able to give a full answer here and now... but however much I do say, I want it to be true. No safe, pat answer--nothing about how I write because I have no choice, etc. To do this right, I'm gonna dig a bit into my feelings, and ones that I don't normally try to put into words. The result might not be particularly coherent:

I write because, when I've read stories (and not just read them, but seen/heard/experienced them)... good stories, I have been moved. Not by all of them, certainly, nor even most. But a few have gotten through to me, to my core, and I know that I'm a different person because of them.

I feel them now, and carry them with me today. I can name a few, of diverse origins: a filmed-stage production of Camelot on PBS; the text adventure (interactive fiction) Photopia by Adam Cadre; It by Stephen King; Buffy the Vampire Slayer (television); others.

Anyways, when I look back on those... works (? stories? experiences?), I recognize that I have received something special from the universe. And I find that I desperately want to give back--to take these brushes with divinity I've had, refilter them, reshape them, and then blast them into the souls of people unlike me, yet like me, too.

I want to touch as I've been touched.

And yeah, I'm babbling more than I ought to, and sounding hokey to myself. I should stop. But there it is: I've known beauty, and it demands--from inside of me--to be shared. It's as close to God as I've known.

And so that's a little bit of why. Not all of it; I'm also in it for the Huge! Money!, of course... But for the most, I simply hope that I am one day skilled enough to give as good as I've gotten, and love as much as I've been loved.

WotF Semi-Finalist! :D (Sounds Better Than "Loser")

2009-06-29T03:26:00.000-07:00

Huzzah! A short story of mine was selected as one of the semi-finalists for the Writers of the Future contest for the 2nd quarter of 2009!

I'm thrilled to have done so well, of course, but at the same time I have to confront the fact that I'm still not ready for primetime. Not being a finalist means I'm not yet a Writer of the Future... I'm a Writer of the Future of the Future.

But this is easily a cup half-full scenario. Or a cup four-fifths-full. It's just my damned way of looking that always draws my attention to the missing fifth.

Welcome!

2009-03-26T23:52:00.000-07:00

This is the official blog of T.C. Powell.

Appropriately enough, I am T.C. Powell -- an author of hope and promise! (Or, at least, an author who hopes to one day be successful and promises his landlord that it will happen...)

I mainly write Speculative Fiction (science fiction, fantasy and their friends), though I'm still green enough to dabble around as the mood takes me.