New Words: gribble

“It resembled a large ring, but was really two conjoined semicirclets of twisted gold, thick as a finger and rounded, incised with tortuous little markings like the borings of gribbles in a sea-logged wood.”
-from The Many-Colored Land by Julian May

grib·ble \ˈgri-bəl\ noun: either of two small wood-boring marine isopods (Limnoria lignorum and L. tripunctata)
Origin: perhaps alteration of grub.
First use: 1838

(I’ll stop with this one. As this is only page two, I suspect the new words will continue to be frequent.)

New Words: astrobleme

“Far along the rim of the astrobleme, in both directions, she could see other such birds standing widely spaced, all looking into the dark-mirrored depths.”
-from Julian May The Many-Colored Land

as•tro•bleme n. [GEOLOGY] an eroded remnant of a large crater made by the impact of a meteorite or comet. mid 20th cent.: from Greek astron ‘star’ + ‘wound’

It’s All About The Venue

I recently played a club concert as a part of a Star Wars Day/Free Comic Book Day evening of geek music and I came away with this: venue is key.

When I play at a convention, the room may be a dull, hotel cube but, it is intimate and everyone in the room wants to be there. At a club, the room may look cool but, the people in the room are not necessarily there to see me. They are there to drink and hang out. That’s cool, but I don’t like it. This is why I don’t play bars, wineries, or coffee shops unless I have a good reason.

A few years ago, before the ghost, my goal was to play at least four shows a month and for a year, I did. In order to hit my four show goal, I accepted shows where I knew that no one would show up. There was one particular coffee shop/gelato stand that kept trying to have music, but nobody – NOBODY – ever came. I accepted the show because I only had three booked that month. They said I could have a free gelato but after two hours of a public rehearsal in an empty shop, I just wanted out.

I feel much better about playing one or two concerts a month for conventions and odd events than I did playing twice as often for inappropriate venues.

Which brings me to authors.

Authors have a similar dilemma for book signings and readings. Much like unfocused musicians, unfocused authors sometimes scramble about looking for anyone with a room and a chair. Like aimless musicians, aimless authors, after having a disappointing show, will go back to that venue with little to no adjustment in their approach.  Sometimes the poor experience has to do with the author not getting the word out, not telling friends, not doing a facebook/twitter/meetup event thing. But sometimes the venue just sucks for you. If the regulars at a club expect a rockin’ band and they find an acoustic guy (granted, a pretty awesome acoustic guy),  right away it’s a fight. If the shoppers in a book megamart just want a coffee and a quiet browse and they find an author staring at them with a “buy my book” look in their eyes, it hurts everyone.

Now that your event has failed, how do you change your strategy?

 

Aethernet Magazine and Shadow Unit: two things worth charging your e-whatsit for

Aethernet Magazine has re-vivified the serial story. A serial, I learned from reading Issue 1, gives you bits of a story in every issue, a-la Chuckie Dickens.

Let me tell you: the cliffhanger, the tenterhooks, this business of leaving off at the really exciting bit and making me wait until the next issue? It totally works.

The thing is, it surprised me. I’m pretty cynical, so I went into a magazine of serialized fiction thinking “o sure, I understand how this works, so you won’t catch me up in an emotional froo-ha-ha, waiting with bated breath for the next issue.”

Crap. That’s crap. I actually had to
wake up Hubs to tell him about this amazing story and I HAVE TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT! …he was not impressed, sleepily not understanding why Juliet McKenna was mailing cereal to me.

I’ve read a *lot* of McKenna, so her writing style is familiar to me, but what she’s done with this story completely blindsided me. The story starts out in the idyllic Not-Backwater-England which is totally typical McKenna–she does this so well: “settle down and be cozy in this calm little story about a wee village with thatched huts and a butcher,” and then kablammo …

Heh-heh. Try it!

Though I bought the magazine for the McKenna, of course, I’m reading the others now. The Adrian Tchaikovsky is interesting so far, very D&D magic systems style characters. And spiders.

“Penthos, what’s a word for something that’s all over covered in spiders?” (from Mirkwood Blues by Adrian Tchaikovsky)

***

The second thing of interest I wanted to share is Shadow Unit, a shared world collection of novellas edited by Emma Bull and Elizabeth Bear.

They’re up to issue 14 now.

It’s urban fantasy in D.C., set up as though the writers were writing for a hit TV series.

…more later, I want to get back to these spiders…

Lords of Time!

(…Insert Doctor Who Time Lord pun here…)

Armchair Archaeology time.

Here are two videos from National Geographic Live that I thought some of you might be interested in. The researchers present new information.

This one is from Bill Saturno. He explains about the different Mayan calendar counts, and the precision with which they counted the days forward. (And why the world didn’t end last December.)
http://youtu.be/YcJY22wFpFg

In this one, the researchers rattle the cage of Dogma, performing experimental archaeology to demonstrate a reasonable hypothesis as to how the Easter Islanders moved their giant heads.

http://youtu.be/J5YR0uqPAI8

Enjoy!

Dialect Over Language

I have been reading a number of different SciFi/Fantasy stories lately, and one thing I have noticed is that I can place the dialect of the characters, which in most cases shouldn’t be possible. How does an alien starship captain sound like he is from North London or a medieval knight speak like a New Englander? The answer is found in the writer’s background. Writers will more often than not pen their works in dialects most familiar. This has the unfortunate side effect of causing characters to speak in a manner familiar to the writer but foreign to the context of the story.

By far, I would say the greatest champion of dialect usage was J.R.R Tolkien. He not only created entire languages for the different races in his books, but he also created dialects unique to different regions within each language. For me, the acceptance of an entire language is a bit taxing on the reader. I am fully comfortable with every race speaking English for the sake of story progress. Suspension of disbelief will allow me to assume that the story occurred in a faraway land and has been translated into English for me to read. With this acceptance, the language is not important, but the dialect still is.

When I read about a foreign culture, particularly a unique culture that has only ever previously existed in the writer’s mind, I want feel and experience this culture as completely as possible. One of the key factors for this lies within the dialects spoken by the characters. Tolkien was a linguistics professor, but you don’t have to be to write a unique dialect. Simple things, such refraining from the use of contractions, reversing subject-object order (“Do this, you must”), and creation of unique slang words (“Frack!”) will add enough flavor to make an English speaking alien sound alien. The key component in dialect is consistency. One of my favorite aspects of dialect done well is when half way through a book I can tell who is saying what based on how the characters are speaking. That level of difference is a great use of dialect, but does require a great deal of work on the part of the writer to keep those dialects distinct. According to modern linguists, there are 66 dialects of English spoken in the US alone. A minimal amount of research will allow the writer to contrive a unique dialect for that unique culture.

In addition to Tolkien’s works, other great examples of dialect done well in SciFi/Fantasy:

Aliette de Bodard, Servant of the Underworld
Mike Flynn, The January Dancer
Marion Zimmer Bradley and Deborah J. Ross, Darkover Series

Cherryh’s Merovingen Nights (TM) Shared World Anthologies

Hey! Here’s a reading recommendation for you from the DAW-way-back-machine.

Merovingen Nights shared world anthology series, edited by C.J. Cherryh.

What’s a shared world anthology?

20130504-154523.jpg

Well, another well-known example has been Thieves’ World from Robert Asprin and Lynn Abbey.

Someone writes a cool book about an immersive and cool world and then a bunch of other cool authors jump in and write short stories taking place in that world. Neat, huh?

C.J. Cherryh wrote Angel With The Sword in 1985. Then her buds jumped up and down and said, “ZOMG! dude that’s so cool! Can I write a story taking place in Merovingen?” And Cherryh says “sure, that’s a totes fab idea, yo, but I get to edit for consistency, LOL.” (paraphrased, of course)

Merovingen is a city of small islands, canals, dead bodies, waterways. The primary mode of transportation is by small canal boat: shipping, mass transit, murder, politics and derring-do all take place via water craft. The lower city at water level is hard living, wealth and ease rise with the elevation, and much of the story centers around the interaction between the two socio-economic statuses.

Our main character is Altair Jones, seventeen and street-savvy. She makes her living polling a canal boat for hire. In Angel With The Sword, she finds Thomas Mondragon washed up and nearly dead from a dose of too much intrigue.

When we get to the short stories, it’s the editing for consistency that makes this series what it is. The story authors haven’t just dipped their toes in Cherryh’s universe. They’ve bought in, lock, stock and barrel. Cherryh writes a single short story that she breaks up into parts, focusing on the two main characters from Angel With The Sword. The parts are interspersed with tangential short stories by the guest authors, such that the characters in the short stories will be reacting to the actions taken by the main characters’ encompassing story arc. Very tidy.

Additionally, there’s some swank bonus material. What’s a fantasy book without maps, right? Well, we have not just one dinky hard to read map, but nine, yes nine maps, o soon-to-be fans! We’ve got the Eastern and Western Hemispheres, the different districts and quarters of the city, Major Eastern Oceanic Currents and –serious– maps of the ocean floor.

Now on to the appendices. In each of the different volumes Mercedes Lackey wrote up supplemental background material on the Merovingen universe. She gives us in depth info on diseases, ecology, folklore and poisons.

And, any fantasy world is totally lo-rent without fan music, yes? Well, guess what?

20130504-160930.jpg

(If you want a definition of “Filk”, that’s it, right there.)

All of these books are totally out of print, and mucking about with e-rights for multiple authors, some deceased, would be the headache you’d expect so don’t look for these on your e-whatnot anytime soon. But do look for them in your local used bookstore. If you’re really, really nice, I *might* lend you my copies.

Hard SF Lives On!

Copyright 2013 by Paula S. Jordan

Used to be that Hal Clement was the Bureau of Rates and Standards point-to example of the hard science fiction writer. He and others–Larry Niven, Poul Anderson, and Jerry Pournelle among them–did excellent work in depicting the science in their stories and extrapolating its implications for whatever “what if” scenario they were writing about.

But science fiction has changed around them.

It’s well-known that sf in its early decades paid little attention to the human aspects of story, and Hal and company were no different. The interest in the “softer” sciences and the introduction of real, three-dimensional characters brought much-needed growth, both in reader appreciation and in the literary values of the work. But as these new elements developed, they often seemed to overshadow the kind of seriousness about the science that typified a Hal Clement story.

That’s not to say that the quality of the science in science fiction has faltered. But it’s taken a while for writers to find a balance between the human and the scientific that would satisfy the hard science fiction reader. Greg Bear, Catherine Asaro, Joe Haldeman, and C.J. Cherryh are among those who have done that for me.

And now I’ve found another one.survivals

I have just finished Survival, book one of Julie E. Czerneda’s Species Imperative series, and it is stunning. As a former biologist, she interleaves her intense story lines and characterizations–both Human and not–so deftly with the underlying science that you get it all at once. In descriptions of a Canadian coastal wilderness the beauty and the ecological interdependencies are inseparable. With her alien species–and there are many of those–their ingenious, scrupulously logical design is revealed in detail as their resulting behaviors move the story forward. The plot line both rises from and vividly illustrates the imperatives of a species’ innate survival strategies.

The science is alive on every page.

Best of all are the insights that her scientist-characters provide into the minds, lives and insatiable curiosities of research analysts teasing out the wonders of worlds beyond imagination.

Hal Clement may forever be the patriarch of hard science fiction writers, but he has some kick-ass younger company.

Five Practical Tips on Writing Humor by Alex Shvartsman

Alex Shvartsman is the editor of Unidentified Funny Objects, a Science Fiction and Fantasy humor anthology that was funded by Kickstarter, released late in 2012. I really respect his theory that not all humor strikes all audiences in the same way, that humor is subjective. Taking that theory into the method by which he ultimately selects the stories in the anthology makes for a very well-rounded discussion of humor in speculative fiction. I’m thrilled that he’s decided to run another Kickstarter campaign to fund a second anthology, here, and links again below his guest article. In this article he wrote for us Darkcargo readers, he gives us tips on writing (and thus, reading) humor.

FIVE PRACTICAL TIPS FOR WRITING HUMOR

By Alex Shvartsmanee3ab93ffea350ed5be9f578c0ef6588_large

I’ve been thinking about humor writing a lot. Not only do I write (or attempt to write) funny science fiction stories, but I am also in my second year of reading submissions for the Unidentified Funny Objects, the speculative humor anthology series.

The most common reason a story is rejected from UFO isn’t because it’s bad – many are perfectly serviceable or even excellent – but because the writer’s idea of what makes a story humorous rather than merely light-hearted doesn’t match that of this editor.  I’m of the opinion that a story with a funny line or two thrown in is just that – a story with a few funny lines. That doesn’t make it comedy. A true humor story has a whimsical quality to it that, much like Potter Stewart’s description of pornography, is difficult to define but is immediately recognizable as such when you begin to read it.

In my quest to make everyone write funny stories I would enjoy, I have identified five practical strategies to writing humor in a speculative story, which I am now going to share with you. It may not necessarily be good advice, but I’ll make up for that in volume.

1)      Voice Matters

One of the most common ways in which a humor story fails is a writer coming up with a funny or cute premise, and then proceeding to tell it straighter than a straight face being shaved by a straight razor while setting the record.

You can’t rely on the premise for all of your funny. Can’t let your characters be the comedians with humor confined to dialog, either. You have to let the narrative voice do much of the heavy lifting. Consider the opening paragraphs of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.

Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.”

In five measly lines, Adams does such a masterful job of establishing the irrelevance of humanity, H.P. Lovecraft must be turning over in his grave with jealousy. Not only does this opening serve his plot later on (Spoiler: Things don’t turn out so well for the Earth), the writing is amusing, engaging, and humorous, immediately setting up the tone for the rest of the book.

Here’s another example:

“One of the few redeeming facets of instructors, I thought, is that occasionally they can be fooled. It was true when my mother taught me to read, it was true when my father tried to teach me to be a farmer, and it’s true now when I’m learning magik.”

Robert Asprin opens his inaugural volume of the Myth series – “Another Fine Myth” – with a bit of observational humor, just like Adams. Yet could their humor styles be any more different from each other?

One doesn’t necessarily have to open with an observation. Here’s an example from “Timber!” by Scott Almes – a short story from Unidentified Funny Objects volume 1:

“I realized I was in trouble when my realm-appointed lawyer showed up drunk and asked for spare coins. He made a valiant effort to defend me in the courtroom, but his lack of judicial knowledge, poor grasp of language, and mispronunciation of my name proved futile against the realm’s brilliant case. It didn’t help that the prosecutor was an exceptional medium. He used my incorporeal, perpetually disappointed mother as a character witness.

I was sentenced to death. The executioner immediately wheeled out a guillotine to a short round of applause.”

Almes jumps right into the plot, but his opening is clearly indicative of the sort of wacky you can expect from the rest of the story.

Whatever style or sub-genre of humor you’re shooting for, be sure that your narrative voice is unique, entertaining, and interesting.

2)      Comparison Joke is Your Best Friend

Comedy is hard, but some aspects of it are easier than others. Arguably there is nothing easier than a Comparison Joke. They are effective, and reasonably easy to come up with. Comparison joke can be a well-placed and unexpected metaphor, or simply comparing a thing to another thing for comedic effect. Here’s one of my favorite examples, source unknown:

Game of Thrones is a lot like Twitter: There are 140 characters and terrible things are constantly happening.

This joke is asking a lot of its audience. You must be familiar with both Game of Thrones and Twitter in order to appreciate it. But if you happen to be a part of that target audience, you might find this hilarious. You will nod sagely, recognizing that the Game of Thrones book and/or TV series has an unwieldy cast of characters and something terribly unpleasant is happening to most of them at any given time. You won’t even stop to ponder whether terrible things are actually happening on Twitter. You won’t dissect it, chuckling at the comparison instead, because the joke works.

You can always spice up your description of absolutely anything with a comparison joke. Take care not to over-rely this tactic. Like everything else in life (with possible exceptions of coffee and chocolate), it is best used in moderation.

3)      Steal from Yourself

Many of my writer friends claim that they can’t write funny, yet they are incredibly witty when you talk to them in person or on social media. If you say something that’s an instant hit with your friends, why not write it down and save it for later?

I was chatting with some writers recently, and one of them said that he could use some advice on a certain subject. My immediate response?

“We can do advice. It might not be good, but we make up for it in volume.”

I was not trying to write a story, nor was pretending to be a humor-writing guru in a blog post, at that time. But the joke went over well, and so I saved it for later use. You may recognize it from the third paragraph of this article.

4)      The Secret to Humor is Surprise

Most humor relies on surprise, one way or another. It can be an unexpected comparison like those discussed above, a humorous observation (if the store is open 24/7, 365 days a year, why are there locks on the doors?), play on words (A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station), or a misleading setup (I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather. Not screaming and yelling, like the passengers in his car).

As a rule of thumb, if you can make the readers complete the sentence in their head before they finish reading it, and then pull the carpet from under them, you’ve got a good joke.

To do that, you can subvert a popular saying:

“I’m so hungry, I could ride a horse,” deadpans Chris on an episode of Family Guy.

“Don’t judge a book by its movie,” proclaims a t-shirt popular with many a writer.

5)      Humor is Subjective

No matter how hard you try, you can’t make everyone laugh. Humor is extremely subjective. What’s funny to me may fall flat to you, and vice versa. Fortunately, for fiction writers there is a workaround:

Make sure that your story works regardless of whether the reader finds it funny or not.

Some stories are so reliant on a joke that they utterly fail if the reader doesn’t laugh. These are more often than not very short stories that do nothing but set up a pun or a twist at the end which, the writer hopes, will be funny. This is stunt writing, and should be avoided in most cases.

Write a story with an interesting plot, engaging characters, and great pacing. This way, if the reader finds it to be funny, it’s a huge bonus. But if they don’t, there is still a good chance they will enjoy the story overall.

The Kickstarter link is here: http://kck.st/17bWO89

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