WADD/Straw Poll 10:43 PM

Best intentions to the contrary, I've had a hell of a time getting any writing done. It's easy to blame it all on being a battery commander. The new job is, admittedly, not conducive to writing... or sleeping... or doing anything other than BEING a battery commander. (Sidebar: this is not a complaint, I freaking love being a commander, and I have an excellent collection of men, NCOs, and officers under my command, this is unquestionably the peak of my career). That's not all, or even most of it, though.

While I don't think I've ever struggled with writer's block, I have an affliction that impairs my output nonetheless. I have Writer's Attention Deficit Disorder. Seriously, I don't think there's been a time since I was fourteen years old (I'm three months away from thirty now) that I haven't had at least three ideas for novels, hell, for full on epic sagas, running around in my head. To date, I've completed precisely zero first drafts. I usually get somewhere between ten and twenty thousand words into a story and then- I go to the field, or I go to Iraq or Afghanistan, or I watch Lord of the Rings and decide I should be writing an epic fantasy instead of a alternate history, or watch Battlestar Galactica and decide that military science fiction is my first love and I should be writing about powered armor and spaceships not magic. Oh, I'm also in the Army, so, yeah, write whatcha know and all that. Then, for good measure, I'll read The Cat Who Walked Through Walls and decide I want to do some multi-verse hopping brain trip through the World-as-Myth.  I can't stay on one project to save my life and once I come back to an old one, I usually discover I hate everything I've written and need to start over from scratch.

This is all the more frustrating since I've probably got several hundred thousand more words to go before I can start reliably producing solid prose. I'm not sure if all the false starts count or if the word count only locks in once you've got a full manuscript.

For grins I've decided to throw up synopses of all the crap running around my head and see what ya'll think. What follows is a working title and brief description of each story idea I have pounding on the inside of my skull, what I'd like from anyone caring to comment is which ones you might be persuaded to pay money to read and which ones leave you cold from get go. If anyone wants to take the time to rank order with commentary, I'd offer my sincere gratitude and throw in an autograph on the first novel I get published some day (caveat: don't hold your breath, it may be awhile). I'm not promising to order my schedule by the results of the poll, but you'll still be helping me out by assuaging my curiosity.

Here goes:

#1: The Reliquary Wars (Science Fiction): Several thousand years into the future, a colony world that has long lost contact with Earth and degenerated into a pre industrial state of existence is climbing its way back towards modernity. Perhaps the most important resource on the world is the knowledge found amongst the ruins of the original colony settlements which were founded with the full advantage of advanced technology. With nation-states now having worked their way back up to the computer age, the books, databases and artifacts found in the ancient ruins confer large advantages to the parties that can find them first. The use of these “cheats” has advanced technology far faster in relation to the social and political institutions of the various civilizations of the new world than what occurred in our own history. As a result, nations still practicing feudalism are equipped with technology roughly equivalent to our own. Monarchs, feudal lords, shamans and chieftains face the daily question of how to maintain control of their subjects while simultaneously creating effective work and military forces in an environment which requires a large number of skilled workers, researchers and soldiers rather than ignorant agrarian surfs, superstitious mobs and spear fodder. Into this world walks Nathan Day, scion of the middle class which has sprung into existence relatively overnight. Conscripted into a war over a newly discovered ruin, Nathan's service will propel him to the royal court of the world's most powerful Empire where he will be instrumental not only in winning battles and campaigns but in shepherding his society and the world through the technological and social changes that threaten to tear it apart.

#2: Lords of Contagion (SciFi, Zombie Apocalypse, Post-Post Apocalyptic): The brilliant and sociopathic Dr. George Rome uses RNA resequencing to create the rage virus long envisioned by authors of many zombie apocalypse stories. Only the brilliant efforts of nano biologist Erica Hernandez allows the survival of the human race. She creates nanite antibodies which are infectious, just as the virus itself is. Unfortunately, Rome's virus mutates at an accelerated rate, requiring the remaining human population to conduct periodic anti-virus updates to ensure they don't fall prey to newer versions of the rage virus. Fast forward three generations, those organizations capable of reproducing Hernandez's anti-viral nanites have evolved into the real powers of the world. The human population, now at less than one hundred million world wide, has stabilized and even started to rebound, but the savages afflicted by Rome's Virus are showing disturbing signs of intelligence, applying tactics where before they had been mindless ravenous beasts, and, even more disturbingly, evidently gaining the ability to reproduce sexually (don't think too hard about it in a graphic sense) rather than solely through infection. As if this were not bad enough, the factions dividing the American continent; the Washington Remnant, the Mormon Free State, the San Joaquin People's Republic and the Great Lakes Confederation have allowed their relative success at beating back the zombie hordes to foster complacency and even rivalry amongst themselves. The situations is now a powder keg, with the remaining human population eyeing each other suspiciously and ignoring the obvious warning signs from the afflicted. A few clear thinking individuals work to preserve the human race regardless of factional lines, but the polities controlling the antivirals have established the tightest control on their citizenries since the fall of the Soviet Union, and they have no intention of relinquishing that control, even in the face of possible extinction.

#3: System Patrol (Science Fiction, Young Adult): One hundred years into the future, governments and corporations have finally begun to fully exploit the resources of the solar system in the form of asteroid mining, solar relay stations and extensive zero-gee manufacturing, agriculture and research. Shortly following the creation of wealth come those who wish to take it by force rather than develop it honestly. The first space war ends in 2115 with ad hoc forces facing one another in orbit around Mars, mineral rich asteroids and Earth itself. Countries scramble to create viable space forces to protect their offworld interests. Twenty years after the end of the first war, the space powers have managed to avoid the outbreak of another general war, but corporate and covert privateering is commonplace, as is Cold War style brinksmanship between the great powers. We join the class of 2139 of the Western Coalition Space Academy as they come of age personally and come to understand the ambiguities of the solar system in which they will serve. I'll admit this one is heavily inspired by Heinlein's Space Cadet, but with less of a globalist view of the universe. I'm a nationalist who is extremely skeptical of the value of the United Nations. I can believe in strong alliances of countries with aligned interests and values but I do not consider a one-world (or one solar system) government desirable, nor achievable short of massive and multiple genocides.

#4: The Throne of Albion (Fantasy, Alternate Universe): It is the early 19^th century, by subversion or conquest, the whole of Europa has has fallen under the sway of the Marquin dynasty. Only Albion, a land in which industrial advancement and sorcerous knowledge are both at their peak, has successfully resisted the conquest of the Marquins, but the noose is tightening. In an attempt to maintain a modicum of independence while assuaging the Marquins, King Alfred II of Albion agrees to marry Alecta, a powerful sorceress in her own right and youngest daughter of the Marquins. For some years his strategy works, but eventually his bride of convenience sows insurrection and discord amongst his kingdom and finally kills him. Now the King's illegitimate daughter Miriam finds herself on the run with only an apprentice wizard and a smith's son to guard her. To find aid for the loyalist forces of Albion, she must cross the channel to Eire and treat with the querulous Gael tribes and Fae courts that have long eschewed contact with the rapidly industrializing world of man, then return to Albion to oust the assassin queen from the throne.

I have a couple more, but these are the ones that keep me awake at night right now. All opinions are welcome, though I understand if science fiction and fantasy are not your cup of tea, none of these may sound appealing to you.  

Wherein Justin Forgoes an Emotional Monologue on Returning from the War and Instead Dorks Out on Something Really Random 1:48 PM

For coverage of the wonderfulness of being home from Iraq and associated topics, see our affiliate blog at thetomatobear.blogspot.com. It isn't that I am the slightest bit less overjoyed at being home than my wife, it's just that she's already said all the fuzzy emotional stuff I feel; leaving me free to dork the hell out on my blog :)

Speaking of dorking the hell out I would like to discuss a topic which is of great concern to the nerd population of America. That topic is Star Wars. Now, those of you less familiar with Nerddom and its various sub-fiefs may ask, "you like Star Wars, what's the problem?" Those of you with a passing knowledge might say; "Justin, Revenge of the Sith came out four years ago, quit whining about how much the prequels sucked and move on with your life you pathetic refugee from a Star Trek Convention." While the prequels did suck ,"JAR-JAR MUST DIE!!! AND HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN IS THE ANTI-CHRIST OF SCIENCE FICTION CINEMA!!!!" That's not actually what I'm here to talk about today. I'm here to talk about the Expanded Universe of Star Wars, and its bearing on what Michele and I have dubbed the, "going back to the well" problem.

Even most Star Wars fans stay within the Holy Writ Canon of the movies, either sticking with the dated but wonderful original trilogy or, in fact, embracing the new, shiny, poorly written, soul-less on-screen abortions of the prequels which all REAL fans see as a George Lucas giving anyone with multiple digits in their IQ the finger... oh wait, I'm not bitching about the prequels, sorry, forgot for a second. (but the Gungans ARE racist. They're like amphibious Jim Crowe's)

The point is that a wide and deep well of Star Wars fictions exists outside the six movies, and no I'm not talking about the Ewok movies that aired on the Disney Channel. The three mediums most common to Expanded Universe Star Wars Material are novels, comic books and video games. Now, one would naturally jump to the entirely logical conclusion that these products would be varying degrees of mind numbingly awful, being an OBVIOUS attempt by LucasFilm to cash in on the success of the film franchise. In many cases they are... BUT.

But then there are novels that have tightly woven plots, three dimensional characters, even explanations for some of Lucas's inexcusably sloppy plotting from the DREADFUL prequels. I was confused upon reading some of the novels because I realized that, from a purely artistic perspective, some of the stories were actually better than my beloved original trilogy because the same unbelivably neat concepts, the Force, Lightsabers, High Space Opera, were in the hands of a writer with some freaking talent. Now, don't get me wrong, there's a LOT of crap in the field, just as you would expect, but the best of the novels and comics are quality enough that I would rate them as solid Second Tier fiction; not terribly meaningful ala BSG, Heinlein, LOTR, CS Lewis, etc etc, but DEFINITELY entertaining.

Ironically, the best example of Expanded Universe Star Wars fiction I have seen, the one that almost moved from second to first tier, was not in novel, or even comic book format, but in a video game. The game Knights of the Old Republic has an outstanding story, and some real choices; what romantic relationships to pursue, what characters and sub-plots to explore and, ultimately whether to be a bright shiny Jedi Knight or to fall from grace and become a Dark Lord of the Sith.

Being a Nerd of the First Order, I have spent much time considering what made Knights of the Old Republic so fascinating to me. Believe it or not it actually takes a lot for a video game to catch my interest at all, as my wife will attest, and Knights is the only video game in the last ten years of my life that I have spent an entire day, from dawn until nightfall, playing. Even the joy of massacring terrorists in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare only held my interest for three to four hours at a time :)

Some of the success is in the format; video game RPG's really do give you a choose your own adventure feel and the particapatory nature pluses up some pretty decent writing. But the one thing that finally floated to the top from a purely fictional stand point is that Knights of the Old Republic is its own story, set within the Star Wars Universe. As good as some of the SW novelists are, they are essentially writing prequels and sequels to another man's story. Say the equivalent of a really talented writer writing Harry Potter 8. Sure, they might do as good a job as possible, but, really, they're isn't any need for a Harry Potter 8.

Which brings me back to the "Going Back to the Well" paradox. Michele and I read a lot of the same stuff (including the magnificently wonderful Harry Potter novels) and I'm prone to want more whereas she is prone to say, "enough is enough." I have lightly suggested that in order to wash out the taste of those GODAWFUL prequels (DEATH TO JAR JAR, MIDI-CHLORIANS DO NOT EXIST) she might read some of the Expanded Universe novels that, while not high literature, are FAR superior to ANY Star Wars property produced on the screen past 1984. She has politely declined due to the aforementioned sentiment encapsulated in the Harry Potter 8 analogy. There are three good Star Wars movies, why muck with it any more?

But the one day I was playing Knights of the Old Republic and found that Michele was watching the game like a movie. The reason? It was Star Wars, but not really, because it wasn't Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Princess Leia, it wasn't even their descendants or ancestors, the game was set several thousand years before the movies, so it was, well and truly, a completely different story.

Therein, I think, lies the secret behind the dangerous practice of going back to the well. Sure, some fictional universes are so damn cool that they demand more material, but we don't need books about Harry Potter's career as an Auror, or even books about Albus Severus, James and Lilly Potter, and Rose and Hugo Weasely (yes, I'm THAT big of a nerd that I DIDN'T have to look up the names). What might be cool though, is reading about the struggle between Dumbledore and Grindelwald. Why that and not Hogwarts: The Next Generation? Because it's unrelated, you'd have ONE character for tie-in and that's it. Voldermort and all of his Death Eaters haven't even been born yet, you could use the universe to tell an ORIGINAL story that wasn't just new wrapping paper on an old plot. Not that I'm dying for another Harry Potter book, and NO ONE but JK Rowling should be allowed within a thousand miles of that franchise, but if there were to be more material, I think it's vital to break away in time and casting from the original material in order to find another story in a big universe.

More on this later.

Futue History 10:23 AM

While I will not publish anything I'm trying to sell on here, for obvious reasons, I will occasionally use this format to narcisiticly ramble about my ingenious ideas for my latest story.

The last thing I submitted to Baen's Universe was a story about hunting werewolves in the Canadian Rockies. I got some decent feedback, a few people liked it pretty well. But after two revisions it's still getting as much criticism as praise and definitely no sign of getting picked up by the magazine. I am not disheartened by this, becoming a professional writer is a lifetime project, especially when you've got a real job and life to worry about in addition to your literary aspirations.

I'm not abandoning the story, but I'm tabling it to get back to science fiction for awhile. Though I am not a hard science major I want to write science fiction with PLAUSIBLE science. This is not to say I want to innundate readers with a bunch of technobabble; but one of the things that most appeals to me about science fiction is that it is the literature of the possible. The new gee-whiz gadgets are inconsequential next to the time honored elements of any good story, but the future offers magnificent backdrops that are all the more tantalizing because they just may be within our reach.

Several of the best science fiction authors have constructed what devotees have titled "Future Histories." More than just a series of books, Future Histories are webs of short stories and novels that may or not may be closely intertwined yet all fall within a singular coherent fictional universe running parallel to our own. Most of these Future Histories have identical or similar timelines to our own up to a few decades (or centuries for those authors who do not want to be around when their ideas are proven impossible) into the future. Michael Resnick has several dozen novels and short stories that all fall within the Birthright of Man universe. Isaac Asimov wrote the Foundation series as a Future History. Gordon R. Dickson wrote a series of novels and shorts known as the Childe Cycle (or more popularly as the Dorsai series) which included elements from as far back as the 13th Century in history and as far forward as the 26th century.

Justin, you haven't mentioned you-know-who yet!

Oh, of course the richest and perhaps best-loved Future History was written by... you guessed it, Robert Heinlein. His future history stretched from the 1970's (thirty years in his future at the time) to the 41st Century. Incidentally, the first future history story, Life-Line, was the first story he ever wrote and he sold it on the first submission- as he did everything else he ever submitted for the rest of his life- lucky bastard. Heinlein wove hundreds of characters and plots into a world that some times feels as real as our own, though always with a touch of Mark Twain-esque humor. And when it turned out that Mars and Venus were NOT inhabited by sentient life, the old rascal introduced the concept of time travel and parallel universes into his Future History. So, no wonder Mars isn't inhabited, we're just in the wrong universe.

Very nice, Justin, are we approaching a point?

Simply this; I'm infected with the same virus. I want to write not only good individual stories or series, but craft entire universes out of the ether. Everything I write either falls into an enormous history I'm constucting or spawns a new one, I'm incapable of writing something and then walking away from it. I have to wonder what happened a thousand years later or a hundred years before.

In the universe I've created the next century is dark. That's because that's how I see it unfurling. Fundamentalist Islam isn't going anywhere. And in the mean time Russia, China and others are increasing their military readiness. The era of peace and brotherhood is not at hand.

In this world the fundamentalists of the muslim world continue to gain support as conditions worsen and the Western powers make either half-hearted or ill-directed efforts to snuff them out. About half way through the twenty-first century a quarter the population of Europe is muslim (ridiculous? go check the birth and immigration statistics in Wester Europe for the last few years). A coalition of Arab nations assembles enough conventional military power to make a power grab, supported by local insurgents, in the Balkans. This goes unchallenged by Western Europe and the United States and the Russian expeditionary force sent to stop them is defeated in detail.

Inevitably the whole of Europe falls to the Caliphate. Russia stands on the sidelines this time, remembering the abandoment of the previous war. Israel and the United Kingdom stand besieged. Christians and Jews are placed under the dhimma, atheists, hindus, buddhists, and so on, are jailed or executed. From Portugal to the Ukraine only Switzerland stands sovereign thanks to bloody resistance in the Alps. The Pope-in-Exile proclaims the renewal of the Crusade from Geneva.

The Caliphate, whose willing members stretch from Mauritania to Indonesia, bites off more than it can chew when it goes to war with India and China simultaneously. The US military finally gears up enough to be a serious force in the conflict. Europe is liberated and the siege of Israel is lifted and the Caliphate's situation becomes desperate. As allied forces conquer first North Africa then Central Asia, the madmen in charge orders his affiliate terrorists to release the Green Plague, a biological weapon which kills twenty-five percent of the world's population before nano-scientists are able to design a nanite antibody to kill the virus.

The retribution is awful. The allied powers, save for Israel, the United Kingdom and the United States strike every Muslim medical center they can find with tactical nukes. The Muslim population suffers the worst for the plague. Islamdom shrinks from 2 billion in 2085 to 250 million in 2090 at the end of the Last Jihad.

In the ensuing chaos states are redefined. Devestated Mexico and Central America become protectorates of the United States. Israel stretches from the Nile to the Euphrates. Europe is gripped with a fundamentalist backlash against the brutal ten-year occupation of the Caliphate. The former European Union is reformed as the European Alliance under the acknowledged leadership of the Vatican. China and India are gripped by trans-national genetic socialist revolution and unite as the new Xiaoist Collective, named after the originator of eugenic-socialism. (Summary- Lennin, Mao and Marx mistakenly waited for the "new man," Xiao and his followers intend to engineer him). In Russia a brilliant general and his corps of disciplined troops emerge as the only thing saving the motherland from utter anarchy and he finds himself the new Tsar.

There are no Muslims left in Europe, the lucky ones were simply deported. In the United States, though legally protected, they are subject to racial violence in frequency and intesnity unheard of since the 1960's. Israel and the UK likewise. In China and India the eugenic socialists have used the same nano-tech cure to enslave the entire muslim populations of their countries.

This is the state of the world on January 1st, 2101.



Justin, do you really hate Muslims so much?

As a matter of fact no, I don't. Mohamed Al Muslim is no better or worse per capita than John Q. Christian or Herchel P. Jew. But right now there is a dangerous trend to underestimate the fundamentalist and violent elements within Islamic society. The vast majority of Muslims are not evil. The vast majority of Germans were not evil in 1939 too. It won't matter if they and we allow the cancer to grow to the point where we, either out of necessity or out of righteous anger, are forced to use extreme measures to defeat them.

I hope this future does not come to pass, yet I will write it in the hopes that westerners and moderate muslims alike will realize the need to oppose the fanatics before a greater conflagration becomes inevitable. All my stories will take place after the Green Plague and the Last Jihad. I've fought fundamentalist Islam for years now, I have no desire to write fiction about it except as background.

Okay... I should probably edit this, but it's freaking 2300. Time for me to call Michele and go to bed!

Sit in Front of the Typewriter and Open a Vein 5:43 AM

This is the first official "tortured writer" post of this publication. It probably will not be the last.

I posted the third revision of my werewolf story this morning. I am incredibly grateful for Baen's Universe, the online magazine of professional quality short science fiction and fantasy because it gives a possible venue for newbees to get picked up and a guaranteed feedback system for us to polish our skills.

The issue is that for several years working on a completely amateur (and very solitary) venue I only received criticism from people who love me. This is not to say I don't value that criticism. My wife has pointed out so many absurdities and gaffes in my thought process before I could even put them into print that I fail to see how anyone writes without a supportive spouse. They either must stumble painfully through it or just not make as many mistakes at baseline.

The point is that at Baen's, they offer no-punches pulled criticism, which is exactly what an amateur like me needs to get to the next level. The only issue is that it stings like a bitch. The paradox is thus; to write something worthwhile you have to get personally invested into it. YOU have to believe in it or sure as hell no one else will; however, to survive the editing process, you MUST NOT take it personally when someone rips your beloved creation to shreds, points out gaping holes in your logic and tells you that your carefully worded passages failed to move them.

I'm still learning this skill. Right now, every time I post a story I immediately start chewing my nails until the first response. Then I am usually depressed because the quickest response is usually one of the editors who points out, correctly, all the things that keep the story from being pro quality. At this point I generally sulk and question my own skill at anything and lament the fact that I ever took it into my head to try and write fiction. This phase lasts until the next post, this one usually from one of my fellow newbies, who also has criticism to offer, but feels enough fratnernity to offer up praise and encouragement as well. This makes me feel better as sometimes the praise is accruate and flattering. (I do not blame the editor for not patting me on the ass, it's not his/her job to make me feel better about myself).

Michele, bless her heart, usually finds herself bemused at this stage because while her best attempts to cheer me up over the previous 12-48 hours were received gratefully but with visibly limited effect, a few lines of encouragement from a complete stranger somehow manage to brighten up my whole outlook on the practice of writing science fiction. I understand her frustration and I apologize and tell her that her opinion matters most in almost all things, and especially in terms of her opinion of me as a person as a whole, but that deep in my heart I assume her bias.

It doesn't matter that she has ripped apart more than one of my drafts for being shallow or illogical or just plain bad, somehow I always assume that at the end of the day she's going to like what I produce. Which is a good and necessary feeling; I feel sorry for anyone married to someone who didn't believe in them. It's just that it feels good to know that someone who has no vested interest in your happiness likes what you've written- even if you haven't quite sold the editor yet.

So today I'm back to biting my nails and trying not to check the boards every five minutes. Wish me luck. Who knows, this could be the draft that does it, or at least the first to get a kind word from the editor.

The Sentient Machine as Character 10:48 AM

Skynet. HAL 2000. The Cylons. A multitude of science fiction authors have engaged the idea of machines becoming self-aware and they have, almost without exception, portrayed this as varying degrees of catastrophic for the human race. Skynet and the Cylons committ near genocide on the human race. HAL 2000 tries to kill Dave. Etc, etc, al infintium. This is not a criticism; I enjoy Battlestar Galactica, 2001 and Terminator (especially BSG) a great deal. Nor do I have an issue with the assumption that the advent of artificial awareness will result in violence. Given our history, it's not a bad guess at who we'll react to just about any sudden dramatic change.

Robert Heinlein, aforementioned in the TANSTAFL post, offered up a different view. In several of his stories computers are portrayed as achieving sentience, but are sympathetic characters. The two books which most strongly embrace this feature are The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress and Time Enough For Love. In the first a government computer named Mike becomes self-aware and befriends Lunar revolutionaries out to establish a free and sovereign state on the Moon. In Time Enough For Love there are actually several, arguably, sentient computers, but the one that matters the most is the computer Minerva, who falls in love with her primary user and eventually transfers her consciousness to a biological body in order to marry him.

One can argue that this seems entirely too optimistic, but I find it even more fascinating than a doomsday scenario. Put it this way (for all you BSG nuts out there) the Cylons are an effective and terrifying bad guy when they nuke humanity and use their human appearance to deceive, seduce and betray mankind. They are fascinating, however, once you realize that Athena really, no bullshit, loves Helo, and that Caprica Six really, no bullshit, feels guilt for her part in the war. And so on, and so on. As each cylon becomes more and more human, the story gets more interesting and rises far above, no offense to Arnold, the simplicity of the Terminator.

The question that interests me is this; how would a society function in which artifical constructs with self awareness were legal citizens with similar or identical rights and priveleges to biological beings? How would division of labor work? What shape would relationships between the biologicals and the artificials take? This is assuming, of course, they've reached a stage of not trying to kill each other. No, Matrix scenarioes don't interest me either, nor any lesser extrapolaiton where humans have willingly or unwillingly given up their dignity to the machines. Us as pasty meat sacks playing endless virtual video games is not something I wish to write about.

It's an interesting thought, I think... wow. I'm going to leave that pun there. And there's nothing you can do about it.