Evolving science fictional wildlife

This week I've reached the place in my edit of Auroradawn where Arrien is searching for an object in a desert market.  The place is about an hour's walk from where Auroradawn has landed, so I wanted to give my heroine some transport to the town and back.  

I needed a creature that was adapted to a hot, dry, desert environment.  Mindful of the principle of convergent evolution, I thought that the animal I came up with, a tobal, wouldn't be a lot different from Earth's camels.  For example, they would have evolved broad feet, to spread their weight more effectively when walking across loose sand. 

I also thought they'd have a water and fat storage system like camels.  I changed them by deciding they looked like leggy equines, and the humps that store their water and fat are in their necks, and under their bellies.  I think we can't ignore the knowledge we have of how evolution by natural selection works.  And that means that any changes I make from 'Earth-norm' have to be justified in evolutionary terms,

I did a similar piece of tweaking in Genehunter with the Ur-Vai.  I wanted talking big cats, and I had lions in mind for my base species.  But the Ur-Vai have also evolved hands and arms as well as their four legs.  This is not impossible.  It might have started out as a random mutation that conferred evolutionary advantage, and was thus passed on to later generations.

I wanted the Ur-Vai to have hands because that made them more feasible as tech users.  So what I've ended up with is a species that still hunts like lions for its food, but has radio, language, culture, and democracy.  They have mates and children, allies and enemies, and they worry like we do too.

In my novel Soulsinger I created alien dolphins who communicate telepathically with the natives.  The creatures bond with a native, and consent to being ridden by them.  We know that dolphins have complex language and social structures, so again I didn't think this stretch was impossible.

I enjoy the challenge of creating something a little bit different.  Yet I still think that creature needs to be one I can believe in.   I'm writing SF not fantasy, so I need a creature that doesn't cross that boundary from realistic into something that is only feasible in a fantasy world.

Riddles and objects - laying a trail of clues

I'm continuing with my rewrite of Auroradawn this week.  The book is structured around the main character, Arrien, being sent off around the planet to find the answers to seven riddles.

When I wrote the book I first worked out the riddles, then decided what the objects the referred to were.  Then I wove the book's plot around them.  Arrien's mother had been studying a gold necklet inscribed with the 'master' riddle, and Arrien only finds about about them when her mother dies.

The necklet tells Arrien that she has to find seven objects, and hints that each of the seven objects is held by one of Vedrana's Great Families.  That gives enough information for her to start looking for the first clue, on a friendly neightbour's land.  But the clue doesn't tell her where on his large estate the object is hidden, nor does it reveal what form the object takes.

As the writer, I knew where and what each clue was, but I had to reveal them through Arrien's eyes, and think like she would.  I know that each clue will be found in the same type of location on each estate.  But I realised as I was working though the re-write that Arrien would have no reason to think that.

And here is where I had to balance the needs of keeping the story flowing against the complexities of the riddle quest.  If Arrien set off to search each Great Family's lands without any idea of where to look, it could take her years to find the riddle objects.  And the reader would have got bored reading about her aimless wandering a long time ago.

So I resorted to some editorial sleight-of-hand.  I had Arrien reasoning that, because she found the first object in a certain type of location, she should start off by looking in similar locations for the rest of the objects on the other Great Families' lands.

She makes an assumption that turns out to be true.  And that allows me to write about her solving the riddles and finding the objects solely by her own efforts.  That first unseen nudge by me has put her on the right track to complete the quest.

I'm happy that I've got the balance right between authorial direction and character freedom, and can now get on with unfolding the rest of the adventure.

 

Crimson, gold, and ice-blue - the power of detailed description

This week I'm continuing with my re-write/edit of Auroradawn.  One of my faults is a tendency to under-describe my worlds, and I'm trying to fix that in this rewrite.  But because I'm an SF author, I'm having to create and describe a whole world.  That gives me wonderful freedom, but I can't rely on the reader to know what's there.  If I want them to 'see' Vedrana, I have to describe the planet in enough detail to allow them to do that.

As in so many things, the devil is in the detail.  In my earlier draft, I had a description of summer alpine meadows dotted with red, blue, and yellow flowers.  But what shade of red or blue were they?  And is the yellow a weak pale lemon, or a deep strong gold?

It's that sort of thing I've been fixing in my re-write.  The flowers are now crimson, gold, and an ice-blue that reminds Arrien of a winter sky in the mountains.  I've described some of the paintings on the walls of the great house, works painted and drawn by Arrien's brother, Baak.  One of them is a graphite pencil study of Arrien and her mother.  As the mother has just died, this has special poignancy for Àrrien.

Describing the paintings also allows me to fill in more of Baak's history.  Two years earlier Baak ran away from home, after a long series of rows with his ex-military father, who didn't recognise his artistic talent.  It's a familiar scenario, a sensitive child having their talents ridiculed because they don't fit their parents' dreams for them.  Describing the brilliance of Baak's artworks allows me to tell the reader that Baak really is a talented artist, and that his father was wrong to rubbish his work.

And this detail also functions as a sneaky set-up for book two of the trilogy.  In book two the riddle quest switches to finding clues in symbols incorporated into paintings.  The reader doesn't know that at this stage, but in book two Arrien will be forced to find a series of paintings, and identify and decode clues wrapped up in symbolism in those works.  By then I've already established Baak's talent and knowledge of art, so it's natural that he would take the lead in searching for those clues.  Which allows Arrien to keep the matter within the family.

The challenge of detail in the second book is about inventing symbols, colour associations, and delving into the history of painting.  But that's a whole new story.

Familiar strangeness - the weird everyday in SF

I'm editing Auroradawn this week, and the early chapters talk about my heroine, Arrien, bonding with her soulship.  The novels brought me up against the problem of describing the strange in familiar ways.

What is a soulship?  It's a biomechanical creation, with an organic flesh hull that was specially grown.   It has a biological/mechanical mind.  It started out at as high-level AI on the verge of consciousness.  

So far, not so strange, but it's at this point that the narrative does turn odd.

One of my inspirations for Auroradawn was reading Robin Hobb's Liveship Traders book Ship of Magic.  I loved the way the heroine, Althea, felt connected with the Liveship Vivacia.  Robin describes it as Althea having a sense of connection with the liveship's 'near-life'.  The idea inspired me, and I wanted to write my own version of it.

Ship of Magic is very definitely fantasy.  Liveships come alive through the flowing of their dead captains' 'anma' into their timbers, and each death brings the ship closer to awakening.  Auroradawn is firmly SF.  I re-worked Robin's ideas in an SF context.  Instead of a hull made of wizardwood, Auroradawn has a bioengineered organic hull.  I have each dead Great Family Captain's memories being transferred to a crystal that is linked into a reader in the soulship's Memory Room.  The ship reads the memories it contains, and integrates them with the memories of each previous Captain.

At some stage, a critical point is reached where the memories tip the high-level AI over into full sentience.  The current Captain carries a command implant in her head, and the ship is able to talk telepathically with its Captain on Awakening.

But all this strangeness is familiar to my heroine Arrien.  She's grown up knowing it, and so my challenge was to write the scene through her eyes, yet provide enough explanation for the reader.  Arrien wouldn't stop to explain how the system worked, she's known it from birth.  But the reader can only learn about her world through Arrien's eyes and mind.  I had to find a way to get the information across in her narrative, in a way that didn't seem awkward or forced. 

I think I've got the balance right, but I'll see when I send the novel out on submission.

Submissions and the Imposter Syndrome

This week I've been coming across lots of references to the imposter syndrome.  One definition I found  defines it as "a collection of feelings of inadequacy that persist even in the face of information that indicates the opposite is true."  It's associated with high-achieving people, who don't believe they're as good as they are, and especially with women.

I wish I'd researched this fully years ago.  I'm beginning to realise that the imposter syndrome has worked its way into my writing world.  I'm always berating myself for  not having enough richness of description in my work, or enough emotional depth to my characters.  Who am I to put myself up against all the published authors I admire?

I'm still struggling with imposter syndrome in relation to magazine short story submissions.  The  syndrome goes into full throttle when I read phrases like "fresh voices", "stories that push the boundaries", "intricate storytelling" in submissions guidelines.  I've already blogged about how meaningless these phrases are, but they still act to shut me out.  But it isn't the magazines who are stopping me, it's my imposter syndrome. 

I'm cutting off possible story markets because my imposter syndrome tells me there's no point in submitting to these magazines, as my story isn't fresh enough, intricate enough...  blah, blah, blah.  And it tells me that on absolutely no evidence.  Some of those magazInes I've never submitted to, so how can I know whether my story is what they want or not?  This makes me wonder if the imposter syndrome is partly to blame for the low level of submissions by women writers.  If it's causing others to self-select, not sending stories to some magazines, just like I am.  

I recall from my corporate days that men will apply for jobs they only have 80% of the skills for, women generally won't.  That's happened to me too.  The old imposter syndrome has always been part of my life, I just haven't realised until now how much it was shaping my writing actions.  But no more.  I'm now making it my mission to submit to those "leading-edge" "intricate" "fresh voices" magazines.  It's  time to kick out the imposter syndrome and get some real evidence in its place.

Wendy Metcalfe is the author of Panthera : Death Spiral, Panthera : death Song and the short story collection Otherlives.  Find out more at www.wendymetcalfe.com

Huggeddon and beyond

The Hugo awards were announced last weekend at the Worldcon in Spokane, and I couldn't not comment on them.  The results were nothing less than extraordinary.  It was very strange to watch so  many awards being announced as 'no award'.

Every SF writer wants to win a Hugo. Stories are nominated by fans and readers, and they have a special place in everyone's hearts.  But this year's events threatened to derail the awards for ever.  Google 'sad puppies' and 'rabid puppies' and you'll get the whole sorry story.  I'm more interested in what the result means for SF, and for women, in the future.

I have the sense that this is a time of change for the SF genre.  Over a year ago I attended a Women in SF panel event at Blackwell's Bookshop in London where five female published SF authors described the struggles they had to be recognized and reviewed.  Since then, it feels like the pressure to recognise female and diverse voices in SF has risen steadily.  

Which is good, but we women have to do our part too.  I won't deny that Twitter scares me as much as I find it useful.  It can be fabulous for raising awareness of issues, but it can also be a very nasty place.  Like many women, I dislike direct conflict, and I will sometimes pull my punches in comments, mindful of the snark that will ensue if I speak my whole truth.

I have to stop doing this.  We all have to stop doing this, and the Hugos this year was a watershed.  It was a time when we said 'this misognyy is not acceptable', and voted accordingly. The awards were about much more than the individual nominees.  This year the result sent a message to the world about what we want SF to be in the future - inclusive.  

Some good people lost out on awards they deserved in the midst of the 'no awards' carnage, but we had to take a stand.  For after all, if speculative fiction cannot speculate on a future where women and diverse people are equal, then it has no right to call itself SF.  The Hugos were a necessary calling to account and course correction.

Wendy Metcalfe is the author of Panthera : Death Spiral and Panthera : Death Song and the short story collection Otherlives.  Find out more at www.wendymetcalfe.com

Sensing the alien

Following on from last week's blog post on aliens, this week I'm back to editing my novel Genehunter.  One of the main characters in that story is Yull, an Ur-Vai leader.  The Ur-Vai are zebra-sized big cats, with the solidity of a lion.  As well as their four legs, they also have two arms and hands.

This is a rewrite of the novel, and I'm trying to deepen Yull's character.  One of the things I realised early on is that I'd totally missed references to his sense of smell.  But Yull is a cat, and I realised his sense of smell would be much stronger than humans'.  He will be able to scent things the human characters can't smell at all.   And when he is introduced to human tech, that will have strange scents to him too.

So I'm now rewriting all of Yulł's chapters to add details about how the world around him smells.  I've decided he can scent each individual Ur-Vai emotion.  This is going to come in handy when he has to decide who is friend and foe later on in the novel.  And I've realised that the scents of the humans, and their technology, will be totally unknown to him.  He's put in the position of trying to build a friendship with humans without having all his usual scent clues to help him.  I'm writing in his sense of dislocation and disorientation this unfamiliar task brings to him.

I haven't mentioned the cats' sight in detail, but I've decided they see in full colour.  I'm cheating, because I've had them retain the tapetum lucidum, that reflective layer of cells cats have that help them to see better than us in the dark.  Cats can see up to eight times better than us with these cells, but the trade-off is that they don't see full colour,  I've been greedy.  I wanted the Ur-Vai to see in full colour as well.  I'm sure evolution can design an adaptation that will allow that.  I reasoned that the cats are tech builders and users, and they might need to see in full colour in order to use their tech safely.  

Because the cats have hands I've been able to work in a little of their sense of touch too.  At one point in the story Yull comforts Aris.  I've had him stroking her hair, and observing how different its texture is to Ur-Vai manes. By twisting around familiar senses, I've managed to make Yull unique.

Wendy Metcalfe is the author of Panthera : Death Spiral and Panthera : Death Song, and the short story collection Otherlives.  Find out more at www.wendymetcalfe.com