The right degree of familiarity

It's always a challenge when we're writing SF with an unfamiliar culture and tech to get across the story to the reader.  The characters who inhabit that world know what a whergleflump is, and what it does.  But the reader, looking in on their world, doesn't.  This is the challenge of providing the right degree of familiarity with the world for the reader so that he or she doesn't get lost in it.

We have to balance the need to explain what a piece of tech does, or what a culture believes, with the requirement for the characters to just exist in their world. You or I don't go around every day noticing the telephone sat on our side table at home, or thinking about our laptop, except when we want to use it.  Those things just exist in our world, as tools for our use.  And so it will be with the tech of the future.  The characters who live there won't bat an eyelid twice at the fusion reactor in their neighbourhood.

How do we explain things without resorting to the dreaded "As you know, Professor," info-dump in dialogue?  One very common device is to use the "idiot abroad" mechanism, the stranger in town who doesn't know either, and needs things explained to him/her.  That gives the reader a chance to explain puzzling things, hopefully in swift-moving bits of dialogue while the characters are doing something.

It sometimes seems to me that SF authors get away with bamboozling their readers far too much.  They even get rave reviews for how difficult their books are to understand.  Stuff that.  Call me old-fashioned, but if you set out your stall as a storyteller, I damned well want you to tell me a story.  All of it, with enough detail so that I can understand it.

After all, we choose to become storytellers.  Nobody forces us to write.  So I want you to tell me stories I can understand.  I want you to get the balance right between familiarity and strangeness and the unknown.  That is the art of the accomplished SF storyteller.

Making the impossible possible

The art of writing speculative fiction is the art of making the impossible possible.  Which is what I've been doing this week with my re-write of Jade.  The original story is over fifteen years old.  I wanted to create a sentient planet that communicates with my heroine.  Plenty of sentient planets exist in SF, one of my favourites being Anne McCaffrey's Petaybee.  But Anne doesn't try to explain how that planet became sentient.  She merely states that it must have been a side-effect of the terraforming process.

When I started my re-write of Jade I decided I wanted to try and explain the planet's sentience as far as possible in terms of known science.  And this is where the big difference lies from that original draft.  My knowledge of the science and procedures I needed to know was extremely sketchy fifteen years ago.  I didn't have easy Internet access then, it was before the era of broadband in the UK.  Researching the many and diverse topics I needed to know to make the planet work was near-impossible then.  And some of the science I've appropriated for the story, like crystal storage mediums for computers and DNA computing, didn't even exist back then.

Fifteen years ago it wasn't easy to research submarine diving procedures, how CDs were made, or how a planet's thermohaline circulation works.  Now all that information is readily available on-line.  Also in that period the depths to which such submarines can dive has extended enormously.  We've now explored the deepest places in our oceans.  We've discovered the communities of animals that congregate around the scalding water given off by black smokers.  And we used to think, before discovering the creatures who live down there, that all life needed sunlight to survive.

Being able to easily access all this knowledge has meant I've been able to deliver on the challenge I've set myself to make the impossibility of Jade possible.  I know how the planimal and ocean exchange data, and I know how the ocean writes that data into its Fire Crystal storage centres.  There are a few things that have defeated me, one of which is working out how the ocean retrieves its stored memories.  But it turns out that researchers don't really know how humans retrieve their stored memories either, so I'm not going to worry about that.

The other thing I can't explain is how heroine Kaath can communicate with the planimal and ocean telepathically.  Part of it is her unique genetics, but the other half is pure science fiction.  And I am writing fiction after all, so I feel well satisfied with what I have achieved in making the impossible possible.

An excess of navel gazing

Sometimes I get frustrated with science fiction books.  I love the genre, but not the affectedness with which some authors write in it.  As well as being a repository for the most startling new ideas, it can also descend into a place for navel gazing.

I read one such book this week. It explored the politics of an empire through the eyes of one of its citizens.  The story was supposed to be an adventure of this main character travelling out to a solar system  to discover why the gate had been shut down there.  On the face of it, the potential for a great deal of conflict, and action.

We're always told as writers that first person is more immediate, that it brings the reader more closely into the story.   But this was the only writer I've known who could use first person in a distancing way.  Somehow, the character was narrating the action at a distance, standing back and observing it, even when she was part of it.

This character came over as unemotional, yet she was motivated enough to take sides against a divided ruler.  But the worst thing for me was the lack of passion in the story.  She did what she did because she was ordered to, by a ruler with such a complete hold on power that to defy her would be impossible.  And without the power to act, all a character can do is gaze at their navel.

It's this navel-gazing that irritates me about so much SF work.  Every set of submission guidelines I read for an SF magazine always says that they want character-driven stories, they want people doing something with the tech a writer invents.  And yet I still see far too much navel-gazing there.  Not so much character-driven as character yawn-inducing.

Twenty first century heroines

I love writing speculative fiction because it allows me to visualise worlds and cultures very different from my own broken society. The clue's in the name : speculative fiction.  SF should speculate about the future, or an alternative past, dream of something better than today.

Which is why it irritates me to hell when women throw away the wonderful gifts and freedom that working in the genre offers to reproduce the present-day's sexy and romantic cultural brainwashing. I don't find the domestic sphere in the least bit interesting, and I spend as little time there as I can.  I don't want to read about continuations of today's controlling nuclear family structure in SF.  I don't want to read stories which assume all women are maternal.  I want to read stories that show women accepting their diversity, being proud of their choices to live independently, and unburdened by the sort of emotional rubbish most women take on today.

I've recently sent off a story to a competition told from the viewpoint of a female security commander responsible for protecting a bank of artificial wombs.  I've extrapolated today's falling human fertility to the point where IVF reproduction and growth in artificial wombs has become the norm.  But the beauty of writing speculative fiction is that I can imagine what wider changes this would have on women.

I decided they would be far-reaching.  Children produced in artificial wombs would be more closely monitored for abnormalities. Eventually the society would require foetuses to be scanned, and defective ones terminated well before birth.  But this change would also trigger major cultural shifts too.   I think most women would see recreational sex as useless.  Perhaps the cultural emphasis will shift, and the "sex is good" mantra will die out.

Which brings me back to my story,.  Such a change would inevitably cause a backlash, and here it's neo-mysogynistic men who campaign for a "right" to sex.  They attack the wombs my heroine has to defend.  She has had her ovaries removed and her vagina filled in.  She is one if the first women who can't be physically raped, or get pregnant by mistake.

This is the kind of twenty first century heroine I want to write, and read, about. One who is independent and makes her own decisions, a woman who doesn't alter her appearance or behaviour, or what she does, to please others.  She is a true twenty-first century heroine.

NaBloPoMo. Day 30

Panthera : Death Spiral. Chapter 5 - continued

Bryn met her in the lobby.  Her brother's usual uniform of crumpled trousers and ceased T-shirt had been replaced with a smart cream suit and a turquoise patterned shirt.  He smiled as she came in, but he looked tense.

  As promised, he'd booked one of the Pod tables, and as they took their seats behind the floor to ceiling glass walls Ren realised why the place was called The Ocean Flame.  T he sun was close to the horizon and the sky was aflame.  A blanket of gold cloaked the wavetops beneath them and haloed her and Bryn.  

  "Order anything you want," he said, "it's my treat."

  She chose the Ocean Platter.  It had startlingly turquoise crabs, pink lobster, and blue prawns.  It was delicious, and they watched the sun set as they ate.  Bryn was attentive to her and the conversation flowed easily enough, but when he laughed it sounded strained.  Something was definitely wrong.

  "And now for your birthday present," he said as they sipped their coffee at the end of the meal.  He took out a heavy envelope from his jacket and handed it to her with a flourish.

  She opened it and stared at the card inside with disbelief.  It was a Travelpass, and it carried enough credit to take her half way across human space.  "Bryn, this is far too extravagant," she protested.

  "Nothing but the best for my sister.  I have another present for you, but it's in my car. We should go to your house before I give it to you."

  "Bryn, what's going on?" She asked.

  "Just humour me.   It's a surprise."

This is the last NaBlPoMo extract from Panthera : Death Spiral.  I hope you've enjoyed reading about the adventures of the Hunters and Panthera.

NaBloPoMo. day. 29

Panthera : Death Spiral. Chapter 5. - continued

  Friday night arrived without any more kingcat deaths and Ren felt cheerful as she showered and dressed for her birthday date with Bryn.

  She put on a wine calf-length skirt and a scarlet top and examined her reflection in the mirror.  Her hair was too long and the layers were getting difficult to manage.  She must schedule a haircut.

  She fastened the ruby drop necklace which had been Byns's birthday present to her four years  ago. It matched her outfit perfectly.  She picked up her jacket and bag and went down to the garage.

  She eased her hovercar onto River Boulevard and watched the changing colours of the sunset sky as she drove.  Today had been hot, and only now nearing sunset had the temperature dropped to a comfortable level.  The sky changed from azure blue to crimson and deep gold.  She darkened the window plas to maximum but even so the brightness made her squint.

  The Ocean Flame car park was filling up fast as she arrived and she had to leave her 'car a long way from the restaurant. She didn't mind on such a glorious evening. She took her time walking to the building, drinking in the beauty of the sunset over the ocean.  It was a wonderful gift for her birthday.

Panthera : Death Spiral is available as an ebook and paperback from Amazon.

Is there enough danger?

As an introvert who writes "quiet" adventure books, I'm not much into big guns, wholesale slaughter, and the sound and fury that goes with genres like space opera.

More often my heroines are geeks, quietly working away finding out why something is or isn't happening.  Often there's a crime involved, and my characters appear in the role of unofficial private investigator.  The reality of the world is that thousands of people engageed in quiet research are behind every new discovery, but this doesn't make good TV news, or thrilling fiction.

I think there's a need for "quieter" books to satisfy the reading needs of the fifty per cent of the population who are introverts. I'm thinking of one if those mega best-selling fantasy series which has a reputation for the wholesale slaughter of its characters. That's not the sort of book I want to read, or write. But that raises a tension between "quiet" storytelling and creating enough conflict to keep the reader engaged.  And to get the main character involved In the story the stakes have to be high enough to motivate them to take action.

I had this problem with the end of Panthera : Death Song.  Towards the end of the book a crucial court hearing takes place.  It's vitally important for Panthera's future, but having trained as a Solicitor (Attorney), and having sat in courtrooms listening to hearings, I know how boring they can be.  I needed to spice up the story around the trial.  I needed more danger.  Cue handy riots outside the courthouse, and an attempted kidnap.

I have almost the same problem at the end of Jade, the novel I'm editing now.  I've got my heroine giving evidence to a hearing that's vitally important for protecting my sentient planet.  Even so, I can't make that boring for the reader.  Cue a breakdown in the communications link, and an attempt to murder my heroine.

I've had to add a whole new section to the end of the novel to create this extra tension and danger.  When I first wrote the book fifteen years ago I didn't even know there was a problem with it. But exposure to books like Robert McKee's Story and Christopher Vogler's  The Writer's Journey have shown me why the novel didn't work originally. It's often the case that I need to add more danger to my stories.

NaBloPoMo. Day. 28

Panthera : Death Spiral.  Chapter 5.  -  continued

  She wasn't going to let that happen if she child help it. She sighed.  If only she and Nic hadn't  quarrelled about that hunting trip.  She'd been furious with him for not controlling the situation and had ripped into him when she saw him.  They hadn't talked since then.  Every time she saw Bryn he urged her to make contact with Nic.  Deep down she knew her reaction to that slaughter had been unreasonable.  She'd expected him to control an impossible situation.  She'd replied to his last two birthday greetings, but each time her messages had been undelivered. Nic was always on the move, and he'd left before she called him.

  Bryn had told her that Nic was out of CF now, working as a civilian security consultant. She couldn't use the excuse that she didn't approve of him being in CF any more.

  Nic's expertise was what she needed to solve the kingcat puzzle.  It was time to bury her pride and contact him.  She'd check his contact details with Bryn when they met on Friday night for her birthday meal.  And this time she'd keep calling until Nic returned her call.

Panthera : Death Spiral is available as an ebook and paperback from Amazon

NaBloPoMo. Day. 27

Panthera : Death Spiral. Chapter 5 

  Ren arrived at Kerestal Wildlife Reserve at noon on Wednesday.  The scene was depressingly familiar.  There were two dead cubs this time, and again their scans showed atrophied thymus glands.

  Now there was no doubt someone was systematically targeting kingcat cubs.  The questions were who?  And why?

  Kerestal's data gave her no more clues and she left the Reserve at nine that night, feeling thoroughly  depressed.  She was no nearer to finding out what was going on and she was scared about these attacks.  There were few kingcats left in the true wild.  Most of them were in wildlife reserves.  If she couldn't stop them being picked off, soon there was a real possibility the species would go extinct.

Panthera : Death Spiral is available as an ebook and paperback from Amazon

NaBloPoMo. day 26

Panthera :Death Spiral.   Chapter 4  - continued

  I miss Bryn every evening when he leaves the building.   He's very special to me.  He  was the first person I saw when I became aware, and he's been with me every step of my development.

  My file dump ends and I disconnect the data jack. Now I'm free to think what I want without ES recording it.

  What I feel right now is lonely.  It's a vast, aching feeling I've never experienced this intensely before.    I'm like a frightened child that needs its parent, but my parent isn't here.

  It'll be fourteen hours before Bryn reappears at ES.  That's forever for a being who measures time In nanoseconds.

  Most of it I'll spend on standby, recharging my internal power packs.  Thankfully I'll be unable to think about my problems while that's happening,

  I raise my front paw and extend it towards the outlet. I push out my power receivers and plug myself in.  Power surges through my body, a rushing feeling that almost overwhelms me for a nanosecond.  It settles down to a manageable level and I feed it into my power packs.

  Just before I shut down to standby I wonder how much longer I'll do that here,

Panthera : Death Spirał is available as an ebook and paperback from Amazon.

NaBloPoMo. Day 25

Panthera : Death Spiral.    Chapter 4. - continued

  Bryn had to write me some secret code to understand emotions and the way humans express them through their bodies.  He modelled every emotion for me, and described their accompanying mental states.  I was so eager to have that knowledge that I didn't consider it could have a downside.

  That downside is feeling scared as hell at the idea of self-destruct code.  Would I be able to reject it?  Could I erase it the second it was inserted into my memories?  Would I be able to erase a command to trigger the code?  I don't know, and I need to know.

  I find my data point and sit down on my haunches close to it.  With the fingers on my left front paw i part the seam in my programmable matter body covering, grasp the data jack with my other front paw, and plug it into my body.

  The feeling is briefly  unpleasant as my processors handshake with ES's storage system, but it doesn't last long, and I'm soon downloading my carefully edited file of my day's learning to their system.  I'm happy to report on my motion and sensing progress, but cognitive processing is another matter.  That I don't tell ES about.

  As the download runs I re-live the afternoon's events again.  I feel dreadfully alone.  I desperately need to talk to Bryn, but he's gone home.  He'll probably be driving through the evening rush hour by now.

  I could contact him at home.  I can tap into any electronic system, but it wouldn't be a smart move.  ES might notice the activity and investigate, and the last thing I want is for the company to discover my sentience.

Panthera : Death Spiral is available as an ebook and paperback from Amazon

NaBloPoMo Day 24

Panthera. : Death Spiral   Chapter 4 continued

  I'm careful not to show the company all of who I've become.  I feel embarrassed as I remember how angry I was with Bryn when he cautioned me not to tell people what I had learned.  Now I realise my programmer was right, and I'm so glad I didn't contact Torr Nevan, the man who's on the point of selling me to CF.

  I reach the download shack and transmit my access code to the door.  It rumbles open and I walk inside the room.  I'm not sure why humans call it a shack.  In reality it's the most secure and high-tech room in Exoviron Systems'  vast complex.  It's armoured, and has its own generators.  There's a shielded room next door full of processors that constantly churn over the data we send them.

  I share this space with the other twenty development AIs.  ES seems to want to keep us locked up for some reason.  But they don't deny us access to data while we're in here, so I don't mind being confined overnight.

  There are four EnviroScouts.  I'm the Panthera body form, Version 7.2.  Arachnis is built like a spider, the Homoform is a poor imitation of a human, and Chilopoda is modelled on the centipede.  It has fifteen segments and fifteen pairs of legs.

  ES settled on these four body shapes as they think that between us we'll be able to deal with every terrain.  Eventually they want to send us out into the universe as advance planetary scouts, but that's still a long way off.

  Or is it?  Not if the deal suggested in this afternoon's meeting comes off.  I re-run the conversation, and the way Lars so casually mentioned fitting weapons to me makes me feel scared.  But not as scared as the idea of having self-destruct code inserted into my operating system.  Would they really do that?  From the look on Bryn's face when it was mentioned I know he believes they would.

Panthera : Death Spiral is available as an ebook and paperback from Amazon..

NaBloPoMo. Day 23

Panthera : Death Spiral.  Chapter Four.  

Panthera - Exoviron Systems, Earth

 When the meeting in the Board Room ends Bryn sends me off to the download shack before he leaves ES for the night,

  As I walk along the hallway I'm thinking about the meeting we just witnessed.  I'd been right to suggest we listen in to it.  It affects us both deeply.

  I put a degree of jerkiness into my gait as usual.  I learned to walk fluently over six months ago. When I was first booted up I used to fall over often.  My legs seemed long and gangly and I couldn't imagine how I'd ever be able to control four of them.  But now I don't even have to think about moving them.  Bryn calls that 'unconscious competence'.

  I'm fully sentient.  It took me months to get my programmer to accept that.  When I first stumbled across data on Alan Turing and his tests for machine intelligence I didn't realise how me momentous being sentient was.  I ran every test I could find, setting myself against the brightest of ES's  programmers.  Not one of them ever realised they weren't talking to a human.  I passed every Turing Test first time.

  I'd made contact with Hyperion's AI just before the launch of the probe.  I'd wanted to measure my intelligence against that of a fellow AI.  Hyperion was way below me on cognitive and insight learning, and I wasn't surprised when the mission failed. 

NaBloPoMo. Day 22

Panthera : Dearh Spiral. -  Chapter 3  - Continued

  There was a moment's pause, and Nic saw Marcus's security crawler tracing the location of his call.  He hadn't bothered putting up any security.  He didn't intend to say anything incriminating in this conversation.  He'd save the confidential stuff for a face-to-face meeting.

  "Okay," Marcus said.  "Are you available at noon?"

  "I'll check my schedule," Nic said for the benefit of any snoopers.  He waited a beat then said "yes, that's fine.  At your office?"

  "Sure."

  "Good.  See you at noon," Nic said, and broke the connection.

  He'd made a start on protecting Bryn.  Now he had to turn his attention to Ren.  He had to talk to her, persuade her she needed his help.

  If CF took over the hunt for Panthera, Ren would be in serious danger, sand even he might not be able to keep her safe.

Panthera : Death Spiral is available as an ebook and paperback from Amazon.

  

Alien politics

I'm coming towards the end of my re-write of my novel Jade, and starting to set up for book two in the series, T'zeen.  Until a couple of months ago I knew nothing about this alien world, save for the fact that my heroine Kaath's father came from there.  Then one day I had one of those bursts of ideas that can only be described as channelling thoughts from somewhere else.  I realised Kaath needed to get involved in conflict with the alien Zarnn whose planet she was going to study.

Kaath has discovered that she is half Zarnn and half human, a hybrid created at the request of her Zarnn father K'ynss and her human mother Astra.  She was created by Bara, a genetic engineer whom Kaath has always thought was an aunt.  In reality Bara is a genetic engineer, and created Kaath by IVF fertilisation, and grew her in an artificial womb.  

The Zarnn are clan-based, and that led me to considering their politics.  What if some clans accepted Kaath's creation, and some thought it was evil?  If Kaath comes down onto the planet that could stir up all sorts of tension.  I haven't worked out what the conflicts will be yet, but I expect she'll face kidnap, death threats, and possibly be rescued by her father's relatives.  But alongside the action I want to explore environmental themes, so she will be dragged into protecting the intelligent planimal on that world, further stirring up the tension.

There's enough there already to drive the story engine, but I like the idea of delving deeper, exploring the politics and ecological ideology of the Zarnn in more depth. I can see a mammoth research session for the novel being needed.

Where would I start?  A good place to look at clan-based ways of living will be to study aboriginal and American First Nations' cultures.  I'd have to be careful not to lift ideas wholesale from any Earth culture.  That would be disrepectful, and anyway some of their culture will, no doubt, not fit my idea of who the Zarnn are.  It's more a process of opening my mind to ideas of how differently they lived from me.  I'd also like to create a system which does away with the restricting nuclear family, and a clan-based system is ideal for that.

I've got lots to be going on with, but I think I'd better finish editing the first book before I start on this new journey of discovery.

NaBloPoMo. Day 21

Panthera : Death Spiral. Chapter 3. - continued

  He returned to Bryn's plan for abducting Panthera.  He didn't know how much money Exoviron had  spent on developing the AI, but it would be a lot. Which meant they'd be pissed as hell if their expensive asset disappeared.  Bryn had no idea what a hornet's nest he'd stir up if he stole the AI.

  Bryn had said those guys wanted to arm it.  That fitted with what his CF contacts were telling him.  There was a lot of tension right now on the Human/N'adiim border, and it looked like humans were the cause of if.

  Deal with the immediate problem first, he told himself,  Bryn needed to disappear as soon as the AI did.  He'd have to arrange a safe house, then get Bryn off Earth.

  Where could his brother go?  And what would he do if he walked out of the place he'd worked all his adult life?

  Enough brooding.  Time for action.  He got his internet contact lens to page through his valuable address book until he found the right contact.

  "Marcus Varner."  Marcus's voice was as sharp as ever.  There was no vid feed.

  "Nic Hunter.  I want to talk to you about a property matter."

Panthera : Death Spiral is available in ebook and paperback from Amazon

NaBloPoMo. Day 20

Panthera : Death Spiral.  Chapter 3 - continued

  If only she'd talk to him.  It was so unfair of her to cut him off because of that blasted hunting trip.  He'd   done his best to stop the rednecks shooting endangered species, but she wouldn't listen to him and stormed off.

  He hadn't spoken to Ren since.  He'd tried to.  Bryn had given him her address and contact numbers every time she moved.  He'd messaged her, and 'phoned several times, but she'd never returned his calls.  And both of them had travelled so much in the last ten years they'd rarely been in the same place for long.

  Bryn had told him he was meeting Ren at The Ocean Flame on Friday evening.  He briefly considered turning up there and gatecrashing her birthday dinner, but decided against it,  it wasn't fair to ruin her birthday.

  He checked the chrono on the wall.  It was ten a.m.  Ren would be up by now.  He blînked, and his contact lens brought up her number and dialled it.  The answer machine clicked in straight away. "Hello.  This is Ren Hunter.  I'm not here at present.  Please leave me a message..."

 Nic cut the connection. If he was going to be reconciled with his sister it would take a frank face to face discussion, not a message left on her vidphone.

Panthera : Death Spiral is available in ebook and paperback from Amazon.

NaBlOoMo Day 19. Panthera : Death Spiral

Panthera : Death Spiral. Chapter 3 - continued 

  Bryn was the geeky one, and from an early age he'd been able to sit still for hours, absorbed in writing and debugging code.  Nic couldn't imagine himself ever having the patience to do that.  He was a big picture guy, and he needed to be active all the time.  A career in Core Worlds' Combined Forces had seemed a perfect fit, so he'd signed up for a twenty year commission.

  Big mistake.  Shortly after he'd joined he'd realised that humans were mounting a big land grab against the N'adiim.  He'd quickly realised his moral centre was stronger than he'd thought and he couldn't bring himself to kill innocent aliens.

  He'd managed to get himself out of the front line and into intelligence work before he got to the point  of actually disobeying orders.  He'd spent the last ten years volunteering for unpopular and uncontroversial assignments most people rejected as too boring.

   Three years ago his commission had ended and he'd hightailed it out of CF as fast as he could go. Despite a very lucrative bribe to take on a new commission he hadn't weakened.  He was now the owner of Nic Hunter Security Services, a company  that had already made a reputation as a competent and ethical outfit.

  The questionable ethics of Bryn's plan to smuggle his AI out of Exoviron bothered him more than he'd admitted to his brother.  If the AI went to Ren he was afraid his sister would get dragged into things she didn't understand and get hurt.  Ren didn't know any more about security work than Bryn.

Panthera : Death Spiral is available as an ebook and paperback from Amazon.

NaBloPoMo Day 18. Panthera : Dearh Spiral

Panthera : Death Spiral. Chapter 3

Chapter Three. Nic Hunter - Earth

  Nic keyed in his encryption codes and waited for the file to unlock.  The screen came alive with figures, a listing of money paid into his company business accounts.

  He leaned back in his seat and looked out of the window of his apartment, across the jumble of city rooftops to the river glinting in the sunlight in the distance.  He liked this place, and now his client had paid the last of his instalments for the Jupiter security contract he'd be able to pay the next month's rent.

 Looking at the river brought his thoughts back to his conversation with Bryn last night.  He'd never seen his younger brother so scared. He didn't understand what Bryn did at Exoviron. Bryn had joined the company twenty years ago as a junior information systems graduate, full of enthusiasm for creating sentient AIs.  Nic had dismissed his brother's dreams as unrealistic, but he'd seriously underestimated Bryn's talent.

Panthera : Death Spiral is available as an ebook and paperback from Amazon.

NaBloPoMo. Day 17 - Panthera : Death Spiral

Panthera : Death Spiral.  Chapter Two - continued

  "Yeah, that could do it.  She know you're planning to use her like this?"

  Bryn shook his head, feeling embarrassed.  Trust Nic to see the flaw in his plan.  But Nic was ex-CF and he'd done intelligence work, so he was trained to think that way.

  "When your AI disappears they'll check family connections first," Nic pointed out.

  Bryn nodded.  "I know.  It worries me, but I haven't got any better ideas.  Have you?"

  "Not without getting other people involved, which I'm guessing you don't want."

  "No way."

  "Okay, then I agree Ren's your best bet.  But you gotta tell her the truth."

  "I need help to smuggle Pan out.  Maybe as a delivery to somewhere."

  "Like to one of my non-existent companies?"

   Bryn nodded.  "Yes.  I don't understand how security stuff works.  I'm a geek.  Can you sort that?"

  "Yeah, but you need to fake purchase orders and whatever other audit trails you gotta leave in ES's systems."

  "Pan can do that.  He can tap into anything at ES."  He nearly said Pan could hack into any electronic system, but that would freak Nic out.

  "Okay, get him to sort that.  Here's what we'll do..."

Panthera : Death Spiral is available as an ebook and paperback from Amazon.

NaBloPoMo Da y 16 - Panthera - Death Spiral

Panthera : Death Spiral.  chapter two - continued

  Now Bryn felt even more alarmed.  "Nic, you don't know all of it.  They want Panthera.  And Pan's sentient.  I can't explain how wonderful that is.  We've always known sentience would be an emergent property, that it would appear as a whole greater than the sum of its parts, but he's so alive, so..."

  "Slow down, bro," Nic said.  "You're saying the AI you've been working on at ES is sentient?"

  "Yes.  I can't let them hand him over to CF."

  "Hmm."  For an awful moment Bryn thought his brother would dismiss his words, tell him he was daydreaming again.  Then Nic said "it'll need careful planning.  Any ideas how to make him disappear?"

  "I want to give him to Ren as her birthday present."

Panthera : Death Spiral is available as an ebook and paperback from Amazon.

NaBloPoMo Day 15 - Panthera : Death Spiral

Panthera : Death Spiral. Chapter Two - continued 

  Nic was at the Riverbar when Bryn arrived, sitting at a table on the cantilevered jetty jutting out over the river. Bryn thought again how tough his brother looked.  Nic was six foot two and broad shouldered, and he still wore his light brown hair cropped into a severe military style.

 It was Monday evening, and the place was quiet.  The sun was almost down and the breeze off the river cool enough to keep other customers off the jetty.  Which suited Bryn just fine. He needed privacy for tonight's  conversation.  

  Nic waved him over, the gesture relaxed and casual, but Bryn knew his brother wouldn't have missed the tension in his voice when he'd called him.  He sat down beside Nic, ordering a beer from the table's holo menu.  When the robo-server had delivered it he said "I need this conversation to be secure, Nic."

  His brother nodded, indicating the innocent-looking datapad resting on the table beside his left hand. He hit a key and Bryn felt his skin crawl.  "That's the shield up.  What's eating you?"

  Bryn told him about the board meeting and Nic swore.  "Not good, bro.  They gotta be Combined Forces.  If they want weapons and self-destructs fitted they gotta be sending 'em somewhere disputed.  Sounds like they're planning to take on the N'adiim again.  Wonder where."

Panthera : Death Spiral is available in paperback and ebook from Amazon.

Sensawunda regained - how Philae and real science drove my wonder engine

This week saw the most spectacular space event since humans landed on the Moon.  The culmination of the Rosetta mission, the tiny lander Philae succeeded in landing on a comet three million miles from Earth after a ten year journey.  The feat had the magic of the Moon landings, with the modern twist of seeing the events unfold real-time via social media.  At one time the ESA's Twitter account was receiving ten thousand congratulations messages a minute.  The landing has captured the imagination of everyone.

I happen to be reading the Human Universe book right now, and the ideas in it also feed my sensawunda.  An infinite number of universes means that it was inevitable that one universe would arise where conditions were just right for us. Brian Cox speculates that there may be many universes where the laws of physics are different.

Two mind-blowing real science events in one week.  It's at times like this that I wonder if we need SF.  It was fabulous to watch the congratulations to the Rosetta team pour in on Twitter, from NASA, other scientists, and prominent SF writers.  For a few brief hours, humanity united to celebrate an extraordinary achievement for our species.

But the news will very quickly swing back to focus on the petty side of human existence, the latest atrocities of war, or some organisation claiming that not enough money is spent on something.  But I don't want to be ground down again by the petty false conflicts of a too-comfortable civilisation that is losing its drive and purpose.  I want to retain that sensawunda and common purpose.

In earlier ages, I could only get that feeling by reading SF, by sharing the dreams and inventions of the future that SF writers created.  But right now I feel that science has closed the gap,  Philae, the work being done at the Large Hadron Collider, the theoretical exploration of the origins of the universe, have their own sensawunda, one rooted in real science.  

And I've delved into real science in my rewrite of Jade. This week I've looked at DNA computing, crystal matrix storage, cells and viruses, neurons and memory.

The real events of this week, and each piece of research I've done, has shown me that the flights of fancy I've set up on my fictional planet aren't so crazy after all.  Many of the pieces that I need to slot together to make my planet 'work' already exist.  Real science has given a hell of a boost to my fictional sensawunda this week.

NaBloPoMo Day 14. Panthera : Death Spiral

Panthera : Death Spiral. Chapter Two - continued 

  Pan went off to the download shack and Bryn walked to the lobby and let himself out of the building.  He strolled to his hovercar, aware of ES's security cameras looking down on him.  He made an effort to walk slowly and casually.  They might be watching him, and he had to appear as if everything was normal.

  He reached his 'car and let himself in, then called Nic.  His brother answered on the second ring, a crisp "Nic Hunter here," and no vid image.

  "Nic, it's Bryn.  I need to talk to you.  Tonight, if possible."  He tried not to sound desperate, but that was how he felt.

  There was a pause, then Nic said "Okay.  How about the Riverbar?"

  "Perfect," Bryn replied.  "Nine o'clock?"

  "Fine by me," Nic said.

Panthera : Death Spiral is available as an ebook and paperback from Amazon.

NaBloPoMo Day 13. Panthera : Death Spiral

Panthera : Death Spiral. Chapter Two - continued

  Fear flashed across Pan's face.  For the last six months Bryn had been working with the AI on imitating human emotions and body language.  He was startled to see the results of his teaching displayed so effectively on the AI's face and in the stance of its body.

  "That means I will have to leave you," Pan said.

   "You need to get as far any from me as you can, to throw them off your trail," Bryn explained.  "You can trust Ren."

  "If you say so," Pan said, his speech synthesiser producing an uncertain-sounding voice.

  "I do," Bryn insisted.  "We have to get you out of here.  I'm going to call Nic and try and meet him later.  Go to the download shack as usual and act normally tonight.  Tomorrow I hope I'll have a plan for getting you out of here."

Panthera : Death Spiral is available as an ebook and paperback from Amazon.

NaBloPoMo - Day 12. Panthera : Death Spiral

Panthera : Death Spiral.  Chapter Two  - continued

  The first step was to call her.  He checked the chrono.  It was six p.m.  Would she be home by now?  He blinked, telling his internet contact lens to page through his address book and find her number.  He dialled it, and the word 'connecting' popped up in his lens.

 Ren answered on the third ring, and the vid came up on his wallscreen.  "Hi," he said, "how's things, Sis?"

  She turned towards him and he could see she looked tired and sad.  "Not good.  A case of a crap Monday.  I had to deal with three more dead kingcat cubs today."

  "Sorry your week started off so bad," he said,  "I was calling to check our birthday date.  Are we still on for Friday night?"

  Ren smiled, the weariness disappearing from her face.  "We sure are.  So where are you taking me, brother?"

  "How about The Ocean Flame?  We could get a pod over the ocean and watch the sunset.  I know you'd love that,  and I have a very special present for you."

  "Sounds intriguing.  Okay, The Ocean Flame it is.  Eight-thirty?"

  "I'll be there," he said, and cut the connection.

  "What are you planning, Bryn?" Pan asked.

  Bryn turned to face him.  "You're about to become Ren's special birthday present."

Panthera : Death Spiral is available in ebook and paperback from Amazon

NaBloPloMo - Day 11. Panthera : Death Spiral

Panthera : Death Spiral. Chapter Two - continued

  Bryn's mind raced.  He couldn't let them fit a self-destruct to Pan.  He had to find some way to save the AI, but he had no idea what to do.

  He'd known Pan was sentient for the last year.  That's when he'd starting telling the AI to be careful.  There'd been some tense moments, with Pan threatening to contact Torr Nevan directly at one point.  He'd been able to make the AI understand the need for caution in time, and now he was thanking the Gods that he had.

 He'd always known a fully sentient AI would raise all sorts of ethical and legal questions, questions his geek-brain wasn't equipped to handle. But now he had to get his head around them.  "I have to get you out of here," he said. "But where to?  And who can I trust with you?"

  Bryn thought it over.  When it came to real trouble, family were the only people you could trust.  His sister Ren was always travelling across human space.  Perhaps if he could persuade her to go somewhere remote... Harmarkis, or Dehuti.  He could smuggle Pan out of here before those CF goons came back, and give him to Ren to take off Earth.

Panthera : Death Spiral is aviailable as an ebook and paperback from Amazon,

NaBloPoMo. day 10. Panthera : Death Spiral

Panthera : Death Spiral. Chapter Two. - continued

  "Weapons?  What kind of a project is this?" Kerr demanded.

  "An exploration of fringe worlds a long way from Earth.  The explorers would need to defend themselves from... shall we say unexpected threats.  And they will need self-destruct commands deep-coding so they can be destroyed if they fall into the wrong hands."

  Torr's jaw dropped.  Shock ran through Bryn, closely followed by fear.  "Self-destructs?" Torr said, his voice shrill.  "You can't be serious!  The AIs are high-level intelligences.  It isn't ethical.  We can't..."

  "You have a choice," Wolf interrupted.  "You can take the project, or let Exoviron Systems collapse.  Which is it to be?"

Panthera : Death Spiral is available as an ebook and paperback from Amazon.

 

NaBloPoMo. Day 9. Panthera : Death Spiral

Panthera : Death Spiral.  Chapter Two - continued

  "I am sure they are," Pan replied.

  Bryn tried to concentrate as the talk turned to the failure of the Hyperion explorer.  ES had poured billions into that project.  It was intended to be the first mass-production low-budget robotic explorer, but it had failed spectacularly.

  "We know the failure of Hyperion was a major embarrassment for ES," Wolf said.  His voice was silky-smooth, but it was dangerous somehow.

  "Not to mention financially ruinous," Lars added.

  "Not ruinous," Kerr objected.  "We got a lot of useful data we can use to debug the system."

  Wolf smiled.  "Nevertheless, the probe was a failure.  And we understand that those who were poised to place orders for Hyperion have gone mysteriously silent.  You're in a fix, Mr, Nevan, and we can help you out of that fix."

  "What do you mean?" Torr asked.

   Lars smiled, and Bryn felt afraid.  It was the smile of a predator about to pounce on its prey.

  "We can offer you a contract," Wolf said.  "A very lucrative contract.  Exoterra has need of robotic explorers now.  We're interested in the Panthera and Arachnis EnviroScouts.  They'd be perfect for exploring the world we have in mind,"

  Lars leaned forward and held Kerr's eyes in a stare that made Bryn shiver.  "Of course, we'll need some modifications to their programming.  We'll require weapons fitting..."

Panthera : Death Spiral is available as an ebook and paperback from Amazon.

NaBloPoMo Day 8. Panthera : Death Spiral

Panthera : Death Spiral  chapter two - continued

  He pushed a hand through his brown hair, making the fringe stick up.  He really must schedule a haircut, but he couldn't think about such mundane things right now.  He'd been worried since Pan stumbled over this meeting entry in the Board Room diary. He sensed the company was in trouble.

  His attention was drawn back to the wallscreen as the door of the Board Room opened and two men walked in. They both wore immaculate black business suits, but he could tell by the way they walked stiffly to attention that they weren't civilians,

  "I don't like this," he muttered as they sat down.  The older man introduced himself as Lars Zehara, Exploration Director.  The other one was Wolf Halan, Robotics Programme Director.  The names sounded phoney to him.

  "Pan, can you do a CoreNet search on their company, please," he said.

  The AI reported that he could find no trace of the company, or of the two directors either.  Bryn's sense of unease deepened.  "I have a feeling they're Combined Forces," he said.  The Core Worlds had collected together their land, sea, air, and space militaries decades ago into one huge organisation.  Bryn suspected this bogus company and its phoney directors were a front for some dodgy CF operation.

 

Panthera : Death Spiral is available as an ebook and in paperback from Amazon

The challenge of the water computer

This week I've been continuing with my edit of Jade.  I revamped my plot, making it more difficult for Kaath to get what she wants.  The man she expected to help her wouldn't. Politics has made him more cautious, and he's insisting she gather more evidence before they make the all-important legal application to protect Jade permanently from exploitation.

Which leaves me with as big a challenge as Kaath.  I now have to work out in detail how my sentient ocean collects and stores its memories.

I've been surprised how far-reaching my research for this book has been, and now I'm delving off into other areas.  I've decided the computer uses crystals growing on the sea bed as its storage medium.  But I can't see an ocean being able to develop a laser-substitute powerful enough to burn data pits into the crystals, so I've decided to use acids instead.  They'll have to be created by the black cells which carry the data, and I need some mechanism for controlling the acid to create different depth pits in the crystal.

I think I've figured out how to get the data gathering and memory storage parts of the equation done in a way that doesn't have people howling with laughter, but that's only half the story.  I then need to work out how this computer would retrieve its memories and use them.  And right now I have no idea how to do that.

Then again, I have no idea how the human brain stores and retrieves its memories either.  So that's my next line of research.  Every time I delve into a new area I find something I can adapt and use for my story.  And if I really get stuck I'll work out a new plot wrinkle which forces her to make the application before she has all the evidence. But I don't want to use that unless I'm absolutely stumped.  I want to see if I can rise to the challenge of working out how that system works.

Researching topics for this novel has helped my scientific education tremendously.  And I've enjoyed the journey.  I'm like a curious kid gathering in new knowledge.  The challenge of of the water computer has been the toughest yet, but I'm determined to rise to it, somehow.

NaBloPoMo - Day 7

Panthera : Death Spiral.  ChapterTwo 

Bryn Hunter - Exoviron Systems headquarters, Earth

  Bryn leaned back in his seat and looked at the screen that covered one wall of his office.  The space was little bigger than a cupboard and he didn't use it often, but he needed privacy today.

  Pan sat beside him on his haunches.  The company called him an Artificlal Intelligence EnviroScout, Panthera body form.  His quantum-scale optical computing hardware was anchored to a carbon nanotube skeleton covered by programmable matter.  Panthera looked like a kingcat, with a tawny coloured coat blotched with black and a broad black stripe across his back.

  Pan looked up at him, and although he knew it wasn't physically possible Bryn imagined he saw anxiety in the AI's twin fisheye lenses.  It matched his own feelings.

  Pan tapped into the vid and audio feeds from the Board Room and sent images from the cameras to the wallscreen.  Torr Nevan, the Exploration Systems Director, and Kerr Gallend, the Finance Director, walked into the room.  Bryn didn't know them well.  He'd been keeping a low profile from most people recently, and urging Pan to do the same.  The AI was sentient, and he was worried about the company's reaction when they discovered that.  It wouldn't be welcome news to them.

Panthera : Death Spiral is available as an ebook and paperback from Amazon.

NaBloPoMo - Day 6

Panthera : Death Spiral.    Chapter One - continued

  The cubs' blood samples showed they'd made thousands of antibodies. She asked the computer to identify the ones for Nereva, and came up with a blank.  "It could have been that," she said, and showed him the analyses.  "Show me the scan files."

  Cory obliged, and she homed in on the thymus glands of the cats.  "What the hell?  Check this out for me.  What do you think of this?"

  "I'd say all three glands look shrunken.  I don't think that can be the result of genetics."

    Ren nodded.  "I agree.  I've never seen a defect like this before."  She grimaced.  "Sorry, Cory, but we need better scans of their thymus glands.  You're going to have to pull them out of cryo."

  

  An hour later she and Cory sat down to look at the new scans. "Here goes," he said as he opened the first file.  "Huh!  It's massively atrophied.  He opened the other two files.  They were the same.

  "Zoom in there," Ren said, pointing her finger at a region of the gland on the boundary of the cortex and medulla.  Cory obliged and she studied the images.  "The boundary between the two sections is wrong.  There's a bunch of dead cells there, but it doesn't look like a tumour."  She traced a curved line on the screen.  "This looks like a scrape mark, as if someone's put in a pipette and removed cells.  I think whatever they did has damaged this region."

  "Why would anyone take those cells?" Cory asked.

  "I don't know.  But I do know these aren't natural deaths.  Someone's take away so much of their thymus glands they can't make new antibodies.  These cubs have been murdered."

Panthera : Death Spiral is available as an ebook and paperback from Amazon,

NaBloPoMo - Day 5

Panthera : Death Spiral.    Chapter One - continued

  Cory strode over to her.  "The analyses will take an hour to do. Let's go and have coffee while we're waiting."

  Ren followed him to his office and let him fuss over her.  She drank the coffee he handed her without tasting it.  While they waited for the computer to process the samples she checked his husbandry records.  None of the other cats had been ill and the mother's pregnancy had been normal.  There was absolutely no reason for a whole litter of cubs to die.

  Cory got up and went to the lab, returning with the news that the sample analyses were done.  He sent the files to the console in front of her.  Ren propped her head on a hand while she read the DNA sequences.  They had the right number of genes, but she'd have to compare them with the Core World's Conservation Authority's reference genomes later to be sure.  It was always possible a mutation had occurred, but highly unlikely the same mutation would have been passed  on to all three cubs.  Instinctively she felt the answer to this puzzle didn't lie in that data.

  "Want the blood analyses?" Cory asked.

  "Yes, please."

  He brought up the new file and said "I'm wondering if they've fallen prey to Nereva."

  Nereva was the new, frighteningly virulent, strain of cat 'flu.  "It's possible," she said "but wouldn't the other cats be showing signs of it too?"

  "Good point.  Yes they would.  And they're not, thank the Gods."

Panthera : Death Spiral is available as an ebook and paperback from Amszon.

 

NaBloPoMo - Day 4

Panthera : Death Spiral     Chapter One - continued

 Cory brought in boxes and they put the cubs into them.  Ren entered their ear tag numbers onto the box panels, shut the lids and got the cryo chillers going.

  "Let's get them into store," Cory said, appearing with a grav sled.  They lifted the boxes onto it and she followed him into the bio store.  They unloaded the cubs and Cory filled out the bay labels, as meticulous as ever.  Levanna was a model reservation, and he did everything he could to keep its animals in good condition.  Which made this set of deaths even more puzzling.

  As they exited the store a wave of sadness hit her.  Usually kingcats lived around fifteen years.  Now suddenly whole litters of cubs were dying,

  "I'll get your blood and DNA analyses running," he said, and disappeared into the lab.

  Ren let herself out of the vet block and went to stand by the yard fence, looking out over the savannah.  In the distance a stand of acacia trees thrust their spindly branches into the harsh blue sky.  This beauty usually lifted her spirits, but not today.  She couldn't shake the feeling that something evil was behind all these deaths.

Panthera : Death Spiral is available as an ebook and paperback from Amazon.

NABloPoMo - Day 3

Panthera : Death Spiral -  Chapter One - continued

  Cory reappeared as she was packing up the sample phials into her kit.  "I'm done," she said.  "Now we need to scan them."

  "Scanner's all set up."

  "Good.  Let's get them into it."  She bent and picked up the nearest cub.  They were about three months old.  They'd already acquired the black back stripe, but they still had some of the fluffy grey hair cubs grew on their necks when young to disguise themselves from predators.

  The little body in her arms seemed so fragile.  Its amber eyes, glassy and unfocused, stared out at her like an accusation.  You failed me, they said.

  Cory walked beside her, carrying the other two cubs.  As Ren came into the reserve's yard the sunlight assaulted her senses.  She narrowed her eyes against its glare and tried not to sneeze as pollen motes swirled in the golden light and floated into her nose.

  She reached the vet block and opened the door, tucking the cub under her arm as she held it open for Cory.

  "In the big exam room," he said as he joined her.  She nodded and turned to her left, entering the room at the end of the corridor.

  Ren laid her cub down on its right side on the scan platform and moved to the console.  She set the scan in motion.  Half an hour later all three had been completed.

Panthera : Death Spiral is available as an ebook and in paperback from Amazon.  

NaBloPoMo - Day Two

Chapter one - Ren Hunter - continued

  "This isn't her first litter, is is?" She asked.

  Cory shook his head and the highlights on his black skin danced. "No.  It's her third.  She was a good mother to her previous cubs.  They all survived and are grown now."

  "Hmm.  So we can rule out inexperience."  Ren watched the cat.  The Savannah sunrise framed through the open door painted the mother's outline with gold.  She tossed her head and Ren caught a glint of fire in her amber eyes.  This beauty was why she'd become a wildlife conservationist, but it was bitter-sweet today,

  She shook her head, driving out the thought, and reached for her forensic kit.  "I'll take some samples."

  Cory nodded and let her into the pen.  She knelt beside the huddle of bodies and pulled on surgical gloves, swabbed a place on the first cat's shoulder and forced in a pipette.  The cats were still in the stiffness of death and getting the samples was a struggle.

  She took DNA and blood from all three.  Cory walked off to try and comfort the mother while she worked, and she could hear his deep voice at the other end of the house, talking to Amira and trying to soothe her plaintive calls.  Over the years Ren had witnessed such scenes many times, but she still found them heartbreakingly poignant.

Panthera : Death Spiral is available in paperback and as an ebook from Amazon.

NaBloPoMo - Day One

I've taken on the challenge of NaBloPoMo this year. I plan to blog sections of my book Panthera : Death Spiral each day, so here goes.

Chapter One

Ren Hunter - Levanna Wildlife Reserve, Earth

 Ren looked down at the three little bodies and sighed.

  "They were doing really well," Cory said.  "Until I found them this morning we had no idea they were ill."

  Ren pushed a hand through her hair, combing out the tangles.  This was a hideous start to a Monday morning.  "This is the third litter of dead kingcat Cubs I've investigated in the last three months," she told him.  "I'd better get to work."

  Cory had put the cubs into a pen at one end of the kingcat house.  The mother was at the other end of the row.  Ren watched the animal pacing back and forth.  She was a mature kingcat, slightly larger than the king cheetah she was descended from.  Her black back stripe was unusually broad, and she had more than the usual number of dark blotches on her tawny coat.  She constantly raised her head and uttered contact calls.  The sound seemed mournful to Ren, as if the cat knew her cubs were dead but wasn't ready to accept it.

Panthera : Death Spiral is available in paperback and ebook from Amazon.

Putting the speculation into FEM-SF

There was a lot wrong with the so-called 'golden age' SF, the biggest issue being the invisibility of real women, but there were some good things about it too.  One of the best was its ability to dream, to look outwards to the stars and speculate about future tech and societies.  And it's this speculative element that is sadly missing from so much of today's so-called SF.

It's good that the whole issue of women's representation in the genre has come centre-stage, but for me that's raised new issues.  One of the biggest is that so many female authors are transferring the  navel-gazing of contemporary women's fiction into SF.  

I don't read so-called women's fiction because I'm not interested in romance, sex, or owning designer shoes.  I don't want to endorse traditional family structures, I want to champion archetypes of successful independent women.  Filling SF books with angst about current gender concerns is a criminal waste of the opportunities the genre provides.  

I want to see characters who choose their gender, get over it, and get on with their lives.  And I don't want their lives to revolve around the patriarcally-conceived family control system.  I want to see societies where women are valued for choosing life-long celibacy, societies which entrust them with leadership positions because they can't be corrupted by sex.

I want to see societies where no women breeds, where kids are all produced by IVF in artificial wombs,  only enough to maintain the society.  We'd solve the overbreeding problem that way. But how would the millions of women who today take their whole identity from breeding construct meaning in their lives then?   Let's speculate on women who take full responsibility for their lives.  Perhaps the dominant social grouping would be clan-based, moving away from the stifling nuclear family's constraints. How would those clans be organised?  Males together?  Females together?  Or on the basis of profession, or religion?  How would being a member of a clan change women's lives if they had equality there?

But, of course, that would require publishers being willing to take a risk on offending some people with that speculation.  And I see little evidence of that so far.  I sigh long and loud when I read another so-called SF short story about a brother and sister growing up together in a traditional family.  I could read so-called women's fiction if I wanted that.  I don't.   I want change, female equality, female power and respect for professional women.  Let's see FEM-SF embracing that.

The 'not good enough' demon

Reading reviews of Kameron Hurley's The Mirror Empire and Anne Leckie's Ancillary Sword, it struck me how far away from my own work these two books are.  I tussle constantly with whether I can make my name as an SF writer. I came into the genre in what seems like a much simpler age.  I read a lot of Anne McCaffrey, and Elizabeth Moon's feminist military SF.  These are writers who write a straightforward story, with a clear narrative style.  They may have multi-viewpoints, but it's always clear who's speaking and thinking.

The same can't be said about some of the more recent published SF.  Confusing, viewpoints jumping  everywhere, switching first person viewpoints without making the change clear, all seem to be in vogue.  I wonder if publishers are looking for clever structure and complexity - a "challenging read" - over simple storytelling.  

Ambiguity, and concepts so high they're stuck in the stratosphere, don't do it for me.  Despite my two Master's degrees, I'm still a five year old kid at heart. I want you to tell me a story, dammit.  Which leaves me wondering if my straightforward style is a disadvantage in the current market.  I'm having an attack of the 'not good enough' demons.

Every review I've read recently has focused on gender representations in the text.  Yes, there's an issue with female invisibility in the genre, but sometimes this smacks of point-scoring.  "My book has characters with three genders".  It almost seems mandatory to consider gender issues in texts.

But I don't want to focus on that.  Yes, most of my protagonists are "strong" female characters with lives and careers of their own.  They pay their own way.  Men and women are pretty evenly scattered throughout my stories, and often the women are in charge of the men.  But they don't spend their time thinking about that.  It's just how things are.

But I get the feeling that reviewers are "keeping score".  This politicisation of story almost makes me afraid to put pen to paper, for fear of judgement.  I'm not interested in exploring gender issues, it's  wildlife and the natural world that fascinates me.  Am I wasting my time writing about deforestation, overpopulation, and species extinction if all anyone's interested in are gender counts and the Bechdel Test?

I want to tell a simple story focusing on the politics and issues that interest me.  And if that's judged not good enough, then so be it.  That's who I am, and what I care about.

The confusing multi-viewpoint 'I'

I'm working my way through a well-respected SF author's novel right now.  I'm about seventy pages into it, and still not sure how many characters I'm dealing with,  I know I have 'flu and I'm not at my brightest, but even so, this far into the book I should have a clear idea of the number of viewpoints.

There seems to be a vogue for multi-viewpoint first person SF books at present.  One of last year's multi-award winning books was first person viewpoint.  I got all the way through it, and still wasn't clear how many viewpoints it was dealing with.  I suppose I should go back and re-read it, but I don't feel inclined to.

The job of a storyteller is to tell us a story.  If I as the listener don't know who the story is about I'm going to get confused.  If those authors (or maybe it's their publishers) would stop being so clever, and  put the character's name at the top of the chapter when they changed viewpoint I wouldn't get confused.  It's a simple thing to fix, but it doesn't get done, and leaves the reader feeling confused and dissatisfied.

I get frustrated with SFF publishing because it seems there's a triumph of style over story.  I've read several SFF short stories recently that had fragmented sections and viewpoints jumping everywhere, and to me there seems no good reason for most of it.  In fact, often when I analyse the story it's a boring domestic tale with nothing unusual about it except the jumping-about viewpoints.

I wish this trend for fancy writing would die out.  I grew up with the writing of Anne McCaffrey, a straightforward storyteller.  I also like Elizabeth Moon's Vatta's War books.  They're multi-viewpoint, with the characters spread out across the universe, but they don't get confusing.  Why not?  One, they're third person viewpoints, and second, every time the viewpoint and location changes, that information goes at the top of the new section or chapter.  I can easily follow this large cast of characters back and forth across the galaxy without getting lost, and I wish we'd see a return to that clarity.

I've gone to the other extreme in the book I'm re-writing now.  Jade is a fifteen year old novel, told in one viewpoint, that of xenoformer Kaath N'Kosi.  I've found the return to a simple structure with one viewpoint character refreshing.  It allows me to present the complex science and ideas without them getting lost in character changes.  Bring back simplicity in viewpoint.

The story comes first

This week I led a Writing Science Fiction workshop for my local literary fesrival.  My workshop attendees were a varied bunch, and interestingly, I had more women than men.  None of them were existing science fiction writers, but were intrigued by the genre and willing to give it a go.

All except one woman, who revealed herself to be a space scientist.  She seemed inrent on picking holes in some of my ideas about world-building, but when it came to the writing exercises she huddled behind her laptop.  I'm not sure if she actually wrote any fiction, as she was the only person in the group who refused to read out what she'd done.   She couldn't seem to grasp that we were writing fiction and not delivering peer-reviewed science papers.

Science Fiction is becoming an ever-broader genre.  The traditional hard SF story is now only one part of a much broader genre.  The "soft" social sciences are every bit as important to the genre,  and often we fudge the science to get the story to work.  Because we're writing fiction, not fact.

It worries me when a career scientist gets so locked up in the technicalities of their science that they can't step over the threshold and consider the impact of it on our civilisation, or on the other creatures we share our planet with.  Just as great storytelling needs a dose of dreaming, so does great science, an ability to see beyond the rigid borders of the discipline and imagine how that knowledge will change the future.

I'm currently re-editing my novel Jade.  It has a planimal and ocean in symbiosis, and I'm trying to work out a semi-plausible way in which it can collect and store data.  I've hijacked the ocean's thermohaline circulation to do that.  I've also got an "impossible" human/alien hybrid that I'm doing my best to justify.

I've tried to make the known science work.  And ithat's been wide-ranging, from photosynthesis to how viruses transmit themselves, to the composition of atmospheres and submarine diving procedures.  I've done a lot of research to make the planet seem plausible.  The idea is that the whole planet is alive, in a form of sentience that hasn't been seen before.  And, necessarily, when something hasn't been seen before, known science breaks down.

And that's where I differ from that space scientist.  I can switch off the science brain and tell the story,  Because, after all, I'm a storyteller, and ultimately the story comes first,

The critics don't scare me - much

One of the downsides of following links on Twitter is that I sometimes read reviews which I'm eternally grateful aren't aimed at me.  What is it about these people that they think they can get all pretentious about a writer's work and pronounce on it in unintelligible terms?  I've read reviews of books that I've  also read, and wondered if we've seen the same text.  

So many reviewers seem to use the text they're commenting on as a springboard for their own obsessions.  One I've become very aware of recently is the call for diversity in stories.  Many critics are pulling apart stories because they don't have people of colour in them, or they don't have gay or lesbian relationships in them.  They're keeping score of the diversity instead of evaluating the story.

Yes, they do have a valid point that the universe will be as diverse as little of' planet Earth is, but sometimes these critics use their politics to browbeat authors.  Because here's the thing: I'm a storyteller.  I'm not a political activist.  Yes, my books will contain comments on situations I don't like, but my interests are big cat conservation and ecology, not the diversity of humans.

I've also sometimes read reviews about an author's writing style which have left me scratching my head and wondering whether I've learnt anything about my craft in forty years.  The critic sometimes picks up some very obscure point about the text and flogs it to death.

Never respond to a critic, we're told. It's just one opinion.  Which is fine, until that one person is a reviewer for a major magazine or newspaper.  Them they have considerable power.  It's not a critic's words that would ever scare me, but their reach.  The number of minds potentially changed by a damaging review in a major newspaper could be great.  And the impact on the author's sales.

It matters because an awful lot of critics are what Julia Cameron calls Shadow Artists, blocked writers themselves.  And instead of claiming their own writing talents they spend their time taking apart the writing of those who do use their talent.  Instead of getting started on their own great novels, they take apart the novels of those who have got on with the work.  That's what scares me about critics.  Not their words, but the subtext behind their words.

Bringing in the big guns

"I write shoot-em-up space operas" a female author said recently on an SF panel of writers. She seemed to take delight in blowing things up, the bigger the explosion the better.

I baulk at this idea. I'm aware that, at base, everything in the universe is energy.  The energy of the universe is affected by everything that I think, say, and do. And the words that I write are also energy that I'm sending out into the universe.

In recent years dystopian stories, and ever more violent crime books, have filled up the booksellers' shelves.  I've read quite a lot of  young adult dystopian stories, and a few adult SF ones too.  But I refuse to buy, read, or endorse, books that have graphic violence front and centre in their plots and stories.  Yes, there is violence in the books I read, but it's never centre stage.  For the most part, the deaths are off the page.

An exception to this was a young adult book I read a couple of weeks ago.  I'd followed the spiky, not-quite-romance of the two central characters throughout the book.  It was the classic clash of opposites, the rich, privileged girl falling In love with the boy from the wrong side of the tracks.  So what did the author do?  She had the boy shot, on the page, in the last chapter of the book.  And he was shot in the back, unable to defend himself.  She then added an epilogue which said, in effect, that the relationship was never going to work.  The rich girl had a duty to marry the prince she didn't love, and she did.

At this point I wanted to throw the book across the room.  A more clumsy use of violence to twist a plot I've never seen, or a more unfair ending,  I felt cheated.  It was an unjust ending to the book to kill the boy.  And it was a convenient cop-out.  I could have looked forward to a sequel which addressed the challenges of this on-off relationship as the characters went on new adventures.  Instead I've marked the author down as one won't read again.

In YA books it's amazing how many sets of parents are killed while being watched by their children.  But it's just a story, isn't it?  But in two cases these books have been turned into films.  The big guns on the page have been turned into big guns on the silver screen.  People have been trying to convince us for years that violence in "make-believe" worlds doesn't affect people in real life.  I've never believed that.  Everything is energy, remember, and I think the violence in books and movies does affect us long-term.  The energy is being absorbed by us, incorporated somewhere into our consciousness.

That's a scary thought, and it's one reason why I don't have big guns in the centre of my writing,  it's a moral decision not to put that violent energy into the world.  Violence doesn't settle anything permanently,  it's only when the big guns fall silent that the talking starts.

Blurring the genre boundaries.

This week I've re-written another short story into a novella.  The original was fantasy, but the anthology I'm aiming it at doesn't take pure fantasy.  It needed to have some SF content added to stand a chance of acceptance.

That got me thinking about blurring the genre boundaries. There's long been a debate whether Anne McCaffrey's Pern books, with their telepathic, fire-breathing dragons, are fantasy or SF.  In the early books I would have said fantasy - until I read All The Weyrs of Pern.  

Pern has a feudal-type  society, and a low-tech setting in most of the books.  But in 'All The Weyrs of Pern' , McCaffrey introduces Aivas, a voice-address AI that's 2500 years old and came with the original settlers. Its discovery sets off a chain of events where the people re-discover all the scientific knowledge the original settlers had.  But they blend their new knowledge into their current society.  This story clearly blurs the boundaries of SF and fantasy.

Pern was uppermost in my mind when I started re-writing my novella.  It has huge Goldeagles instead of dragons, but I also added an internet, bioengineering, and drones.  Then I had to ask why, if there's an internet, anyone would pay a much slower courier service to carry things around the planet.  I came up with two answers.  First, hacking of the 'nets and data theft is so bad that many large corporations won't trust sensitive data to it any more.  And the second reason was that the rich and famous liked a discreet and exclusive service to deliver their holiday postcards.

I decided the Goldeagle Courier Service would cultivate that image of exclusivity, and the idea that it carried fripperies.  That way, most Goldeagles didn't get attacked.  But I invented smaller, faster black hawks that were also ridden.  They were used as military birds, had steel-tipped talons, and could outfly and menace the Goldeagles.

As in Anne McCaffrey's stories, I've blurred the boundaries of fantasy and SF.  The original settlers bioengineered the wild Goldeagles into the huge beasts that can be ridden today.  An SF purist would object that the planet's gravity and atmosphere probably wouldn't support such huge flying creatures.  But if I allowed the atmosphere to be dense enough to allow such creatures to fly it probably wouldn't be suitable for human-derivative settlers to breathe.  I blurred the genre boundaries.

I think Stephanie Salter's Gemsigns does the same. Her Gems are genetically modified humans.  But the big reveal at the end of the book shows a gem using an ability which it's questionable whether our atmosphere would support.  (I'm sounding cryptic because I don't want to spoil the book.  It's brilliant, go and read it.)

Even within books that are considered wholly SF we still have blurred boundaries.  The biggest one is the idea of travelling through space at FTL speeds.  We have no idea whether we'll ever be able to do that.  But everybody uses it, and I do too, because sending a ship through jump is just so damned convenient.  It opens up the galaxy to the writer.

In the end speculative fiction is about story, it's an entertainment.  I'm not writing a scientific paper documenting what is, I'm telling a tale of what might be.  "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."  Now that's the ultimate blurring of SF and fantasy.

The quiet power of the word

There are some SF authors I follow on Twitter who are perpetually angry about anything and everything.  Several times I've been enticed by a good headline to check out a blog post, to see what that person has to say about a subject that interests me.  This week there were several that I started reading, but didn't get past the second paragraph before I stopped reading.  Why?  Because the page was littered with 'f' and other swear words.

No, I'm not a prude.  I'm quite capable of telling someone who really annoys me to 'f' off in appropriate circumstances.  But that's usually an immediate response to an in-my-face interaction.  But writing a blog post is different.  It should be a reasoned argument for whatever view you're putting forward.  And to me, strong and controlled narratives have more persuasive power.  A text littered with angry rants and swear words dilutes the writer's message massively,

I have a similar problem with the thorny issue of representation of female characters in SF stories.  In the so-called "golden age" (aka as "dark age" for women), white male writers included female characters only as sexy bimbos, to be carried away by the aliens, screaming.  It meant the art department could produce a pornographic cover for the magazine with the woman's breasts exposed.  Real women with intelligence were pretty much absent,

Now at least real women are SFF protagonists, but I think some authors have pushed the boundaries too far the other way.  We have a clutch of books with "kick-ass heroines" (easily the term I most detest) , employed as assassins, mercenaries, and selling their wombs for money.  These books are a huge turn off for me.  I don't think you need to be in the reader's face, or angry, to make a powerful point.  I think the quiet power of gentle but persistent persuasion can often work better.  

Where a reader has been thoroughly entertained by a tale they're more likely to go back and re-read the story.  On a second or third reading the chances are that they'll notice the nuances of the book's theme, and the arguments the writer is making, far more than in the first, headlong, rush to discover the story.  When we know how the story ends but we don't want to let it go, we go back and re-immerse ourselves in the world of the story and its characters.

And, just as several viewings of a painting, or several listens to a piece of music, turn up new insights, so does several readings of a text.  I'm all in favour of the quiet power way of getting my point across.

I'd rather have my character Ren Hunter quietly despairing about why big cats are being exterminated than writing an angry rant about deforestation, habitat destruction, hunting and poaching.

Plenty of other people are using their energy to tackle those issues head-on, leaving space for me to address the things I care about sideways.  And, just as a casually overheard song can lodge itself in your mind, so can a casually absorbed idea from a favourite story have a lasting impact.  In the end, it might be the insidious insistence of the ideas planted by quiet power that really change the world.

The ten books meme

Facebook and Twitter are full of posts by people listing the ten books that have been most important to them.  I thought I'd join in for today's post and list the ten most Important books for me.

1.   All The Weyrs of Pern - Anne McCaffrey

In this book the Pern colonists discover their ancestors' AI 2500 years later.  I love the self-referential nature of the book, and the way McCaffrey has blended fantasy and SF elements in the story.  Guided by the AI's knowledge, the citizens of Pern do something impossible.  They move the Red Star into a new orbit.

2.  The Ship Who Searched - Anne McCaffrey

This is one of here 'brainship' books, this time with an archeology theme.  The relationship between Tia and Alex was one of the major influences for my own book Eyemind, where I have a similar relationship between Keri and Bi, but set against an art background.

3.  The Pride of Chanur - CJ Cherryh.

I love the portrayal of the Hani Pyanfur Chanur.  This alien is alive and real.  And the details of taking a ship through interstellar space are stunning.  It reads as if she's really been there.  And if you want a masterclass in handling dangerous interstellar politics, read this book.

4. Vatta's War - Elizabeth Moon

Ky Vatta is a disgraced Spaceforce cadet who ends up leading her own Space Defence Force and saving human space against ruthless pirates.  I'm not normally a fan of military SF, but this series is much more than that.  It is multi-viewpoint, and most of the viewpoints are civilians.  The books show us how ordinary people's lives can be threatened by one ruthless individual.

5.  Polar Ciry Blues - Katherine Kerr

This book shows us life on Hagar, a planet close to a red giant sun.  It's a murder mystery with interstellar ramifications, as an alien has been murdered.  It's a fabulous depiction of life on a planet where it's dangerous to be out in the daytime, and where interstellar politics are again finely drawn.

6.  Dragonsinger - Anne McCaffrey

A girl dreams of being a Harper.  But she's female, and girls can't be Harpers.  At least, according to her brutal father.  This is a feminist tale of Menolly running away from home and seeking her dream.  And eventually finding that her incredible talents are appreciated by others.

7.  Treaty Planet - Anne McCaffrey

This is the third of the Doona books, the first being Decision at Doona.  I love its portrayal of Hayuumans (humans) and Hrrubans (a walking big cat like species), and the way they live together in harmony on Doona.  Despite the meddling of their respective governments, the colony is a success.  There are some great descriptions of friendships across species.  These people don't just co-exist, they're workmates and best friends.

8. Slated - Teri Terry

This is a YA novel about a brutal repressive society where teenagers get brain-wiped to "correct" their behaviour.  Kyla somehow recovers her memories from before her Slating, and brings down the brutal totalitarian government.  A message that there is always hope in the darkness, if we look for it.

9.  Uglies/Pretties/Specials -  Scott Westerfeld 

Okay, I cheated.  This is three books, but you need to read all three to get the whole message.  It's a story about the dangers of pursuing extreme beauty treatments, and what their real cost might be.

10.  Freedom's Landing/Choice/Challenge - Anne McCaffrey 

Okay, so I cheated again with three books.  This is the story of how transported humans build a new life for themselves on Botany with only cups, knives, and blankets.  Human ingenuity triumphs, and this is also a tale about how they learn to accept a member of their oppressing species.