Science Fiction

The Uncertain Sum of Definite Parts

March 14, 2014 by John Leave a Comment

[Image: “I dreamed about a human being,” by Fran Simó (original on Flickr; used under Creative Commons license. For more information, see the note at the foot of this post.]

From whiskey river:

The Life of a Day

Like people or dogs, each day is unique and has its own personality quirks which can easily be seen if you look closely. But there are so few days as compared to people, not to mention dogs, that it would be surprising if a day were not a hundred times more interesting than most people. But usually they just pass, mostly unnoticed, unless they are wildly nice, like autumn ones full of red maple trees and hazy sunlight, or if they are grimly awful ones in a winter blizzard that kills the lost traveler and bunches of cattle. For some reason we like to see days pass, even though most of us claim we don’t want to reach our last one for a long time. We examine each day before us with barely a glance and say, no, this isn’t one I’ve been looking for, and wait in a bored sort of way for the next, when, we are convinced, our lives will start for real. Meanwhile, this day is going by perfectly well-adjusted, as some days are, with the right amounts of sunlight and shade, and a light breeze scented with a perfume made from the mixture of fallen apples, corn stubble, dry oak leaves, and the faint odor of last night’s meandering skunk.

(Tom Hennen [source])

…and (italicized portion):

The brain’s dynamo runs millions of jobs, by mixing chemicals, oscillations, synchronized rhythms, and who knows what else. It is like looking at a mosaic or a pointillist painting in motion. Study the whole and the parts disappear; study the parts and the whole disappears. Maybe stronger brains will solve that problem in future days. I believe consciousness is brazenly physical, a raucous mirage the brain creates to help us survive. But I also sense the universe is magical, greater than the sum of its parts, which I don’t attribute to a governing god, but simply to the surprising, ecstatic, frightening everyday reality we all know. Ultimately, I find consciousness a fascinating predicament for matter to get into.

(Diane Ackerman [source])

[Read more…]

Too Many Answers to Stop

March 8, 2014 by John Leave a Comment

I’ve long held that a story I’ve started writing must reach a certain “critical mass” in order for me to carry it through to completion. This critical mass might be defined as the written length — the word/page count — beyond which I will not, can not stop writing. A story which might become a novella (or longer), for instance, seems to hit critical mass at about 10,000 words. At this point, the narrative has so much momentum in my head that it’s a force in its own right: I know enough about the characters and the story to know how little I really know about them, and how much I want to find out.

(I’m pretty sure many/most other writers feel the same way, incidentally, although we’ve probably all got different critical masses.)

Mostly, this is just a descriptive figure, not a prescriptive one. It’s an observation which seems to have held true in the past and (as I expect) will likely hold true in the future, not a make-or-break target.

For the piece I’m working on now, though, I seem to be approaching — perhaps have already crossed — a different and perhaps unquantifiable threshold: a critical mass of research.
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Everyone’s Excited About the New Cosmos

March 3, 2014 by John Leave a Comment

Or so it appears. Yesterday, it was the guys from the “Get Fuzzy” strip who brought their fractious relationship to bear on the mysteries of time, space, and everything in between.

First couple of panels are shown here. See the whole strip over on the Washington Post‘s site.

Midweek Music Break: A Science-Fiction Mini-Mix, from Stanley Kubrick

February 26, 2014 by John 1 Comment

[Images: Keir Dullea, in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Malcolm McDowell, in A Clockwork Orange]

Stanley Kubrick made two films unabashedly science-fiction in nature: 2001: A Space Odyssey, and A Clockwork Orange. I think they’re both classics, but will concede that 2001 is more commonly listed as such by people who’ve seen both; indeed, Clockwork Orange comes across as a little too, well, repellent for many people.

(Understandable: the film’s protagonist/narrator, Alex, is something of a beastly creature — at once sadistic and self-pitying. That he’s also wry, charming, often quite funny, a victim of circumstances, etc… Well, easy enough to overlook all that if you’re so inclined.)

Whatever one thinks of the films, the soundtracks worked very, very well as veritable works of art in their own right. The one from 2001 appears never to have been released — or at least, is no longer available — as a single collection. Luckily, all or most of it came from individual performances (most/all) which are available, sometimes in slightly different arrangements, by the same artists.

Because I’m working on a new SF story, I’ve found myself using these soundtracks quite a bit recently. And I thought I’d share a mini-version of the combined lot here, as a Midweek Music Break.

#	Composer/Title	Film	Length
1	R. Straus: Also Sprach Zarathustra	2001	1:47
2	Rossini: The Thieving Magpie	Clockwork	5:57
3	Tucker: Overture to the Sun	Clockwork	1:47
4	Beethoven: Suicide Scherzo (9th Symphony, 2nd Movement) (abridged)	Clockwork	3:09
5	R. Straus: The Blue Danube Waltz	2001	11:47
6	Freed/Brown: Singin’ in the Rain	Clockwork	2:37

(Note: The playlist goes automatically from start to finish, once you click the little Play button. To skip to the next number, once a song is playing you’ll find a little fast-forward button to the right of its progress meter — and a fast-rewind to the left, for that matter.)

[audio:2001_alsosprachzarathustra.mp3, clockworkorange_thievingmagpie.mp3, clockworkorange_overturetothesun.mp3, clockworkorange_suicidescherzo.mp3, 2001_bluedanubewaltz.mp3, clockworkorange_singinintherain.mp3|titles=’Stanley Kubrick Mini-Mix’|artists=Various Artists]

Scraps and Leavings: What I’ve Been Working On

February 1, 2014 by John 2 Comments

Cover: 'Night of the Living Dregs,' by the Dixie Dregs

[Image: album cover for Night of the Living Dregs (1979), by the Dixie Dregs]

For some time, I haven’t talked much at all here — anywhere — about what sorts of things I might have been writing since I finished the putative final draft of Seems to Fit, now a couple of years ago. I haven’t talked about it because it’s hard to classify:

No books, certainly not completed ones [Update: see the note at the foot of this post] — although much of what I’ve been writing has (you might say) potential in a bookwards direction. Instead, I have been sort of puttering around with well over a dozen short projects. A handful of these are complete, more or less; most just stop — some in mid-page. I don’t even remember a few of them: the act of writing, or even where the story was headed. But every one of them contains something, some scrap of verbiage and/or some scene or scrap of dialogue, which I was happy to encounter today, as I set about revisiting (not revising) them.

Here are some samples.

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Story Up My Sleeve #18: “Jeffty Is Five,” by Harlan Ellison

May 18, 2013 by John Leave a Comment

[Don’t know what this is? See the Story Up My Sleeve background page.]

What I mean by five years old is not that Jeffty was retarded. I don’t think that’s what it was. Smart as a whip for five years old; very bright, quick, cute, a funny kid.

But he was three feet tall, small for his age, and perfectly formed: no big head, no strange jaw, none of that. A nice, normal-looking five-year-old kid. Except that he was the same age as I was: twenty-two.

When he spoke it was with the squeaking, soprano voice of a five-year-old; when he walked it was with the little hops and shuffles of a five-year-old; when he talked to you it was about the concerns of a five-year-old… comic books, playing soldier, using a clothespin to attach a stiff piece of cardboard to the front fork of his bike so the sound it made when the spokes hit was like a motorboat, asking questions like why does that thing do that like that, how high is up, how old is old, why is grass green, what’s an elephant look like? At twenty-two, he was five.

[source]

Story Up My Sleeve #17: “Abominable,” by Carol Emshwiller

May 17, 2013 by John Leave a Comment

[Don’t know what this is? See the Story Up My Sleeve background page. A regular whiskey river Fridays post will follow later today.]

We are advancing into an unknown land with a deliberate air of nonchalance, our elbows out or our hands on hips, or standing one foot on a rock when there’s the opportunity for it. Always to the left, the river, as they told us it should be. Always to the right, the hills. At every telephone booth we stop and call. Frequently the lines are down because of high winds or ice. The Commander says we are already in an area of the sightings. We must watch now, he has told us over the phone, for those curious two-part footprints no bigger than a boy’s and of a unique delicacy. “Climb a tree,” the Commander says, “or a telephone pole, whichever is the most feasible, and call out a few of the names you have memorized.” So we climb a pole and cry out: Alice, Betty, Elaine, Jean, Joan, Marilyn, Mary… and so on, in alphabetical order. Nothing comes of it.

We are seven manly men in the dress uniform of the Marines, though we are not (except for one) Marines. But this particular uniform has always been thought to attract them. We are seven seemingly blasé (our collars open at the neck in any weather) experts in our fields, we, the research team for the Committee on Unidentified Objects that Whizz by in Pursuit of Their Own Illusive Identities. Our guns shoot sparks and stars and chocolate-covered cherries and make a big bang. It’s already the age of frontal nudity; of “Why not?” instead of “Maybe.” It’s already the age of devices that can sense a warm, pulsing, live body at seventy-five yards and home in on it, and we have one of those devices with us. (I might be able to love like that myself someday.) On the other hand, we carry only a few blurry pictures in our wallets, most of these from random sightings several months ago. One is thought to be the wife of the Commander. It was taken from a distance and we can’t make out her features, she was wearing her fur coat. He thought he recognized it. He has said there was nothing seriously wrong with her.

So far there has been nothing but snow. What we put up with for these creatures!

[source]

Story Up My Sleeve #13: “A Toy for Juliette,” by Robert Bloch

May 13, 2013 by John Leave a Comment

[Don’t know what this is? See the Story Up My Sleeve background page.]

Juliette wasn’t smiling at herself. She smiled because she knew that Grandfather was back, and he’d brought her another toy. In just a few moments it would be decontaminated and delivered, and she wanted to be ready.

[source]

Story Up My Sleeve #9: “Babel II,” by Damon Knight

May 9, 2013 by John Leave a Comment

[Don’t know what this is? See the Story Up My Sleeve background page.]

From the front he looked a little like Happy Hooligan, if you remember that far back. From the side, where you got a better view of that silver white crest, he looked like a cross between George Arliss and a cockatoo.

He stood just under four feet tall, big head, crest and all. He had a wrinkled violet-gray skin, curious S-whorled ears, and a Tweedledum tummy; he was dressed in an electric-blue jacket and small clothes of some crinkly material that glittered when he moved, with jackboots on his stubby legs and a white-metal disk, a quarter as big as he was, slung by a baldrick from one narrow shoulder.

…Suddenly illuminated, the Hooligan-thing blazed at him like a Christmas tree ornament. Its eyes blinked rapidly; then the long upper lip curled up in an astonishing crescent-shaped bucktoothed smile. It made a sound like “Khakh-ptui!” and nodded its head several times.

Cavanaugh’s first thought was for the Hasselblad. He picked it up, tripod and all, carried it crabwise backward to safety behind the armchair, then crossed the room and took a poker out of the fireplace rack. Gripping this weapon, he advanced on the Hooligan.

The thing came to meet him, grinning and nodding. When they were two strides apart it stopped, bowed jerkily, and lifted the white disk at the end of the baldrick, holding it at the top, with one of the flat sides toward Cavanaugh.

A picture formed in the disk.

[source]