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Author: Aaron Starr

R&D to SF: Thanks for ruining it for the rest of us!

R&D to SF: Thanks for ruining it for the rest of us!

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Patents on skull-smashing implements are also void.
Patents on skull-smashing implements are also void.

Although it first filed paperwork in mid April of this year, the news that Samsung was suing Apple (the iPhone guys, not the Beatles label) was rendered strange by one of their arguments. It seems that Samsung was contesting the viability of Apple’s patents for the iPhone and iPad, because a nearly identical device had been seen used on the U.S. space mission Discovery One, way back in 1968.

Yes, that Discovery One. You know, the mission to Jupiter where the HAL-9000 AI had a series of unforeseen technical difficulties and eliminated the human crew, thus putting the U.S. space program on hold until mid 1969, when America renounced its Jovian ambitions and settled for landing on the moon.

Samsung used, in its initial defense of the argument, this clip from a documentary on Discovery One, clearly showing members of the ill-fated crew using an iPad-a-like to stream video feeds while somewhere past Mars orbit. This, Samsung assured the press and the courts, is clear evidence that Apple didn’t invent anything, and that the idea –the actual execution, even– of the iPad had been around long before Apple even existed. So, all of Apple’s patents had to be seen for the shams that they were. Steve Jobs was, in effect, cribbing ideas from doomed U.S. space missions, and profiting from the misfortunes of historical figures.

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A Lone Candle, Part 2

A Lone Candle, Part 2

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expedition
"Quick! Get the laser ri- I mean, get the thunder stick!"

If genre-shifting mid-tale is unwelcome in film and literature, where is it sometimes acceptable? I’ve found only one medium in which this sort of thing is easily done, and generally welcomed, if done right.

Role playing games.

Hear me out on this. Role playing games are a lot more fluid, since the storyline just keeps going after the genre-shifted adventure. The players know that, sooner or later the story will return to the main genre, and so they’re more willing to play along. That’s been my experience, anyway.

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A Lone Candle In A Dark Passage

A Lone Candle In A Dark Passage

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muir-candle-2
How fast can you run with a lit candle?

It’s a cliche from the horror genre: a character (almost invariably female), ill prepared for misfortune (as her flimsy nightgown demonstrates), ventures down a newly discovered secret passage. She is wary, but determined, holding aloft her sole source of illumination.

A candle.

We find ourselves wanting to shout “Don’t go down that passage!” Or at least demanding she pause for sensible footwear, a better source of light, a weapon or two, and, time permitting, more clothes.

But we know something she doesn’t: her genre. We know that, as a horror story character, she’s setting herself up for a very bad time indeed. There’s no way I’d do that, we tell ourselves. No freakin’ way.

But, of course, we do similarly things all the time, tempting fates in ways that our fears cry out against. In blackouts, we fumble around in our basements looking for candles. We wedge ourselves into crawlspaces and attics looking through old boxes. We take shortcuts through dicey neighborhoods and across rickety bridges. We hear creaks in the house at night, and roll over and go back to sleep. And we do so with some confidence, because most of us aren’t in a horror story.

We know our genre. That’s one of the differences between us and the characters we watch and read. They just think they know.

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Going Commando: The Endless War Between Pantsters and Outliners

Going Commando: The Endless War Between Pantsters and Outliners

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Outlining makes you more attractive to the opposite sex.
Outlining makes you more attractive to the opposite sex.

Human beings are sort of odd. That might be why we love examining our motives and actions so much. In fantasy, the traditional alternative races, such as elves and dwarves, have certain views about humans, and, if you were to ask any elf or dwarf you might meet how they felt, they would likely hew closely to the party line. The same goes with science fictional alien races. Their cultures have pretty much set viewpoints on how humies act, and they are generally not impressed.

One of the odd things about the humans, perhaps the most odd thing (according to these non-human viewpoints) is that we are generally given the full spectrum of viewpoints to choose from. Some of us distrust elves, and some of us have been raised with an unshakable hate for the bog-leapers of Epsilon Sigma. But then there are those humans who adore elves, and others who organize “Save the Bog-Leaper” campaigns. Humans, you see, can hold any viewpoint.

But that, obviously, is a far cry from accepting that diversity. We tend to caricature, pigeonhole, and stereotype other viewpoints, cracking that smooth continuum of opinion into a mere handful of glittering shards with massive generalizations filling in for what’s lost in the process. This makes the complexity of human thought approachable, and understandable, but it’s pretty irritating sometimes, especially when an opinion is contrary to a strongly held opinion of our own. Suddenly certain other humans are little better than bog-leapers themselves.

Outlining before writing is one small example.

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This Page is Half Empty: The Five Horsemen of Literary Apocalypse

This Page is Half Empty: The Five Horsemen of Literary Apocalypse

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428px-durer_revelation_four_riders1Right now, as I type this — and as you read it — I’ve got a new manuscript half done. For a writer, this is sort of like me saying that at this very moment I’m not wearing anything under all of my clothing. Well, duh, most people are thinking, while trying to not involuntarily imagine me naked. For writers, the thought continues, there’s always the current project.

The process of forging the first draft is much like any other relationship between the mind and the will. Romance, for instance. There’s the initial flare of interest, the slower “getting to know you” stage, and a much longer “I know you, now” period. These are all easy to navigate, because they are exciting and interesting. They are effortless, and writers know the feeling of a Work-In-Progress crush.

But this infatuation period cannot last. While in it, there’s always the potential that your feelings are mercurial, diaphanous dream-fluff that make no sense when you try to go deeper. To your shock, you realize that perhaps your burning love isn’t the stuff of ages, but mere puppy love. Your ardor has brought you no glamour, but instead made those around you somewhat uncomfortable, hoping, for your sake, that it will all end soon without you getting hurt too badly.

Am I just a puppy-lover? you find yourself asking.

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The Gods Never Urinate

The Gods Never Urinate

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zeus-heraIt’s true: the gods never have to go pee.

Unless they want to, that is. But they’re never inconvenienced by it. As far as I know, never in the history of human mythology has a divine being hurried someone else along during a meeting, or interrupted some vital piece of work, to relieve themselves. Even nature deities, whom you’d image to be most in tune with this sort of bodily necessity among the living, and, presumably, have some sway over its function (or lack thereof… yow!), don’t seem to bother with it themselves.

Eating? Sure, okay.

Sex? Yes, please.

Excretion? Nothing beyond normal breathing, thank you.

And that is the true magic of deities, and why fantasy is destined, on the longest scales, to have greater longevity than science fiction. Because fantasy never gets brought down to the level of the mundane. It never misses a mark that reality has hit square. Science fiction, for all its glories, inevitably diverges from reality, and rarely for the better. We expect science fiction to be somewhat oracular, in that the technologies and situations presented remain plausible.

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The Ones We Love

The Ones We Love

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conan-of-cimmeriaWe’re all guilty of it. Yeah, we mean well, but our need to see our literary heroes in just one more adventure is tragically unfair to them. As readers, our fantasies of characters navigating awful situations and hair-raising exploits are harmless enough. But what of us as writers? How can we excuse the need we feel to put our beloved characters through just one more physical and emotional wringer?

Because let’s be clear. For the characters, adventures are painful, scary experiences they feel lucky to put behind themselves. Those sword fights could, at any moment, end tragically. And gunplay? Don’t get me started.

I know, I hear all of the diehard fanboys of this or that series clamoring for a more balanced viewpoint. They will mention how brave and skilled this or that protagonist is, and are always ready to give some example of stoic adventuring and daring-do. And I suppose there are those of the adventurati that really are stone-cold warriors and flinty-eyed sorcerors to whom deadly danger is like mother’s milk. But would you want to have a drink with any of them? No, the characters we love the best, who really get to us, are those we can empathize with, to who we can relate.

If you can relate to the hardened killer type, you have one type of problem, while the rest of us have another: we long to visit very trying times on characters we feel deeply about. Robert E. Howard’s tales of Conan of Cimmeria are typical examples of a hero set upon by a troubling world, who is forced time and again to use his battle prowess and wits to see his way clear.

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