Friday 27 March 2015

Getting inside the alien mind

This week I've made a start on re-writing Geneship.  The first book is now Genehunter, and covers the first half of the events that the original book did.  

My alien viewpoint, Yull, was always an interesting character.  Because I had to invent him from scratch, he always had more detail than my human lead, Aris.  He's the leader of a tribe of Ur-Vai, and I knew they had as much tech as humans.  Yet they're big cats, and Aris sees them hunting like lions  early on in the story.  So they retain their predators' instincts even in a high-tech culture.  I knew they lived in caves, and they inserted bioware into a species of birds to make them into a natural type of drone for surveillance.  

In the original book I hadn't worked out the aliens'spirituality.  Now I've decided that each tribe has its own God or Goddess to protect their tribe.  I want Yull's long journey with the humans to question his sense of belief in the tribe's Goddess.

I also had to decide how and where they live.  The planet has two long mountain chains that bisect it north-south and east-west.  I've decided that Yull's species, the Ur-Vai, live in caves dotted along the mountain chains.  That allows me to give them distinct territories with hunting rights.  

In the first chapter Yull makes first contact with the human characters.  When he returns home he has to face a challenge from a hostile deposed leader, giving me a chance to detail their politics (a form of democracy). 

But Yull knows about a mysterious Artefact lying at the far end of the continent, which he suspects is human.  Finding out what it is, and what connection it has to these humans, forms the basis of the story, and drives him to question and challenge everything he thought he knew about the universe.

There's lots more detailing to do, but now I feel much happier about getting into my alien's mind effectively.

Wendy Metcalfe is the author of Panthera : Death Spiral and Panthera : Death Song, and the short story collection Otherlives.  Her website is: www.wendymetcalfe.com






Thursday 19 March 2015

Re-using old myths, legends, and fairytales

Writers have always re-told myths, legends and fairytales.  Sheri Tepper had great fun with her retelling  of Sleeping Beauty.  Her Beauty is a sassy, time-travelling character who compares and contrasts the best and worst things of each time period she travels through.

Yesterday I finished reading Julie Kagawa's young adult book Talon.  The book has been much hyped, and I've read many enthusiastic reviews of it.  I was curious to see if the book lived up to them. The story is a contemporary retelling of the George and the Dragon myth, set in Southern California, and including a teen romance.  But the book is also a deeper examination of duty versus love, and shows us the evils of indoctrination.  And it's a damned good read.

Rick Riordhan has had great success with his books turning the gods of Olympus into contemporary children's stories.  And Kathy Reichs has re-worked the werewolf trope in her Virals series.  There the teenagers aren't bitten, but are infected with a virus that gives them their superpowers.

This set me thinking about using myths and legends in my own work.  I'm currently re-writing a stand-alone book that was originally a young adult adventure into the first two books of a new adult series.  My heroine Aris is human, but the creatures she spends most of her time with in the book are the alien Ur-Vai.  The Ur-Vai indulge my fantasies of what big cats would look like if they'd become the highest intelligence dominant species on a planet.

I've already decided they need a spirituality.  But what to use?  Gods, goddesses, and religions arise out of the environmental and cultural situation of the people of that faith, so their gods and goddesses should be cat-related.  I think I should delve into Egyptian cat beliefs for a start. So far, I've decided that Yull's Ussin tribe worship the Dark Huntress, a powerful dark big cat goddess.  I'm not sure what the legends concerning her are, so will need to work these out.  And as the Ur-Vai are fiercely tribal, and each tribe has their own god/goddess, I'll need to invent a few more individuals for them to worship.  

Myths, legends, and fairytales endure because they deal with universal themes and truths, and I think they'll continue to be a source of inspiration for writers for a long time to come.


Wendy Metcalfe is the author of Panthera : Death Spiral and the Panthera : Death Song, and the short story collection Otherlives.

Thursday 12 March 2015

The passing of the old guard

I started writing this post early on Thursday morning, when Terry Pratchett was still alive.  I then went out for a long working lunch with my fellow Pentangle Press authors, and came home to the news that Terry had died.

It feels like the foundations on which I built my love of SF are crumbling.  Only last week we had Leonard Nimoy pass away.  Being an introverted, bookish type, I always identified with Spock rather than the over-excitable Kirk.  I sometimes feel like emulating Spock's raised eyebrow when I see some of the things around me today.

Then we heard of Terry's passing.  At 66, that's way too early.  Not only have we lost a uniquely talented writer, we've also lost someone who inspired other writers. I was lucky enough to hear him give the plenary address at the Winchester Writers' Conference back in 2010.  Although he managed to get through his talk, there were pauses where the Alzheimer's was already making itself felt.

Just as cherished are my memories of meeting Anne McCaffrey at Octocon some years ago.  Anne is one of my major influences, and in my wildest dreams I hope that someone some day might describe me as 'the new Anne McCaffrey'.  

There's a sense of the passing of the old guard.  One by one, the people who were so influential in instilling in me a love for SF, and the desire to write it myself, are disappearing.

Leonard's and Terry's deaths have left me with a feeling of melancholy, and have turned my thoughts back to my own work.  What legacy will I leave when I join them in the afterlife?  It's made me redouble  my efforts to have my own work recognized and accepted.

With the passing of the old guard I have the feeling that a moment of zeitgeist has gone.  The kinds of influence Leonard,Terry, and Anne had on our SF culture have sadly passed us by, with no obvious candidates to take their places.


Wendy Metcalfe is the author of Eco-SF books Panthera : Death Spiral and Panthera : Death Song, and the short story collection Otherlives.

Thursday 5 March 2015

What legacy will I leave?

As part of my personal development work I've been working through the deeper purpose for my writing this week.  Thirty years ago I just wrote what came into my head, what excited me in the moment.  I wasn't thinking about what genre it fitted into or if I could sell it. But now, 26 novels and 200 stories later, it's time to take stock and see what my writing reveals about me.

My writings divide into two broad explorations.  One is the championing of the natural world, and covers everything from challenging homocentric cultures to showing the beauty of wildlife.  The other broad strand is writing about alternative ways of relating to each other through AI and non-human friends.  It's about challenging the sexualised and objectified way we see people today.

My heroines aren't in sex-based relationships.  This is the future, and I want to show mature cultures that don't do recreational sex, objectification of women, or excess breeding.  My 'relationship' (what a sexualised and abused word that is!) stories explore real love - the unconditional, uncontrolling acceptance of another.  I often use friendships between intelligent big cats and humans for this,but I have used high-intelligence birds too.  My YA novel The Code River charts the non-sexual friendship between a human boy and a half-human, half-big cat girl, and the Panthera novels explore the relationships between the Hunters and sentient AI Panthera.

So what legacy do I want to leave?  I'm aiming to get readers to think about how they live, to question and challenge the sexualisation and objectification of our society.  And if I persuade one woman to breed one less child I will be well pleased.  But I hope my readers will also admire my competent, professional heroines and want to emulate them.  They too might choose to follow their passion, not be derailed by sex, and become world-class experts in whatever fields they choose.

Do I sound deluded when I say my aim is to change the world?  Then so be it.  Every person we now consider a great thinker or leader was reviled and called mad at some stage of their lives.  But the prize we play for is saving Gaia and all her creatures, and if I have to be labelled crazy to achieve that, I'll live with it.


Wendy Metcalfe is the author of Panthera : Death Spiral and Panthera : Death Song, and the SF short story collection Otherlives.