Unabashed

How many stories are there in a day? Every day, every one of us is a story. Some are boring, but some are fantastic. Every soul on Earth has its own story, set to the cadence of every heartbeat drumming up the words. The most frustrating thing is not knowing the stories of the lives that we intersect with. Points of interest along the route of life compile without definition: we don’t meet, we don’t know, we only move on, just as the story does. Today I met four stories, but I have no idea how they began or end, I only have the snapshot in my mind, a single page or paragraph, and the frustration and wonder at what it is that made that story fantastic.

In order of occurrence:

There was a dark-haired woman and a toddler sitting at a table in McDonald’s eating breakfast. Her arms and legs were crossed and she stared down at her food, but the little boy, with a pacifier in his mouth, watched me as I walked by. When I left, walking back by them to get to the door, I noticed a car right outside the door with New York plates, and I wondered if it belonged to her and the little boy.

A big, tall man with copper-colored long hair was walking along the side of the road with a petite blonde woman wearing short-shorts. The woman was holding the hand of a little girl who might have been five years old, and the little girl had a dolly wrapped in her free arm. All four of them stared straight ahead, without expression or conversation (at least in those ten seconds that I saw them). The man was walking with a deliberate gait, and the other two were just keeping pace as well as they could. Or so it appeared.

A woman wearing a white dress and a black backpack was standing by a patrol car with the police lights spinning, and the officer, a burly macho type with mirrored sunglasses, was standing beside her holding a book or a pamphlet of some type, staring down at it. The woman wasn’t looking at him, but past him, at nothing I could see. There was a church nearby, but the road they were on was a connector route between Centreville and Tuscaloosa. There are a lot of houses along that stretch, but not much else, so it was kind of odd to see a woman walking alone through there.

Another woman, barefoot, wearing a tee shirt that was just long enough to make it look like that was all she was wearing and with a big blonde hairdo of loopy curls, was walking smoothly across the pavement around her car, which was stopped at an intersecting road between Centreville and Montevallo. She wasn’t walking with the “I think I have a flat tire” hop, but as if she was thinking something through, something very distracting. I didn’t stop to help because she got back into her car, and I saw in my rearview that she was pulling onto the main highway, heading back toward Centreville.

All of these people were beautiful, from the burly cop right down to the little dolly. They were all people in my own story’s margin, people whose lives I’ve glimpsed but whose stories I’ll never know, no matter how boring or adventurous or scandalous or petty or eager or psychopathic or horrific or desirable or melodic or distressful or macabre or mischievous. All I know is each one of those stories was interesting, for those few words I was able to read of them. All the planets this morning were spinning out of line–or into a line–and gave me a glimpse into the eyes of ordinary grandeur, everyday wonder. And I liked it.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: stories, story

I took my 3-year old son Lucas to the river Saturday (the Coosa River, specifically around Lay Lake in south Shelby County, AL) and we took to the water on my mom’s Yamaha waverunner. At one point out on the lake an island came into view, and I had to slow down and make a slow pass by the island, because it looked very odd. It was only about a hundred feet across and was covered with tall pine trees, some of which didn’t look very alive. But all the trees on the island were topped with something very white, and as I came closer I realized that the island was a nesting spot for egrets. Of course I didn’t have my camera with me, either, so I can’t show you how amazing it was. There were probably ten to twenty nesting pairs crowding the tops of the trees, in a mass of nests (which is why some of the trees looked dead). They were huge birds, with wingspans that must have reached six feet.

It occurred to me later that, before Lay Dam was built, this spot would have been a hill, not an island, possibly overlooking the river, which would have been narrow and fast in those days, and of course it would have been densely wooded. I wonder what it would be like to step foot on that island. Sure, there’d be a mass of guano probably, but what else? Might there be any mammals living on so small a piece of land? I dread to think it might also be a nesting spot for cottonmouths, which is entirely possible. But what else? Might it have once been a burial ground for the indigenous Creek Indians who lived around this area? I’ve found several spots around that area (which is where I grew up) where arrowheads could be found by the handful. Has anyone else ever decided to try to walk out on that island? I have no idea, I just know it was wonderful, and beautiful, and I want to go back again (and take my camera this time!).

Photo by mikebaird.

written by Matt Mitchell

Automobiles have never been efficient, but they’ve always been economical. And that’s even more evident today than ever before. I remember when I was younger how common it was to see an older car or truck running on the road. But you don’t see that much any more. It’s too easy to buy a new car, or even a new-used car, just a few years old. When I was a kid it wasn’t unusual to see a car driving down the road that was 20 years old or more. Today, it’s unusual to see a car much more than ten or twelve years old. Most anything so old as twenty years is considered vintage and is considered a collectible.

There was a time when buying a car didn’t mean you were identifying yourself, too. Today, you have to consider what the car says about you, you have to consider what it means to drive a Sebring, or a Hummer, or a BMW. Status has always been a consideration when buying a car, but it’s never been anything like it is now. Now there are tons of cars in the $50-75k price range. You don’t just choose from one or two. You decide which of the ten or twenty you can choose from correctly represents your personality. Everyone knows a similarly-priced Mercedes or a Hummer makes a statement about your level of income, but a Hummer delivers a completely different message than a Mercedes.

Buy my, how times do change, and how quickly they do it. Now, looking at someone driving a Hummer my first thought isn’t the desired “battle-ready” that I’m sure most Hummer owners want to project. I do think of dollar signs, yes, but the specific dollar signs I see are the ones they ring up at the pump. And it’s never been more evident how much pollution cars are spewing from the tailpipe. Now that it’s no longer exactly economical to drive everywhere, I’m hearing a whole new class of folks bemoaning their gasoline bills. The guy who sprays my house for insects mentioned this morning how great it would be if someone would invent a new power source for cars. I told him, “They’re working on it.” And then we had a nice little conversation about MIT’s pledge to deliver a more efficient photovoltaic system, even edging into the territory of all-too believable conspiracy theory, said he: “You know there’d probably already be something if it wasn’t for the oil lobbyists in Washington.” Yes, Big Oil definitely wants to keep us hooked on the pipeline they provide.

So what are the benefits of absurdly high gas prices? Well, for one, it’s entirely possible you might see a revitalization of small-town America. The super stores have all but killed commerce in the little towns, but it’s not too far beyond reason to presume that people will start shopping closer to home, that they might opt to drive ten minutes to a small grocery store than thirty minutes to a Wal-Mart. But the biggest benefit is one I’ve already stated: That more and more people, from previously unlikely places, are wanting to see a change. That the guy who drives the Hummer might just say, “Man, I sure wish I was driving a hybrid.” That people will actually begin to care what kind of efficiency the cars they buy might have. And, even better, that interest alone might be the provocation enough to develop a mass transit system for the country, and an improved drivetrain for cars. Personally, I find it rather appalling that we don’t have better mass transit systems than we do. Previously, if improved transit was needed from Baltimore to New York, they would just widen the interstate, rather than build a better system.

It’s hard to believe there’s no bullet train in America.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: big oil, economics, fuel, gas, lobby, mass transit, oil

In the continuing saga of my life, I had an interesting experience I’d like to share, and one that again has awakened something inside me, something creeping and profound. Last summer I was with my mother and two nieces (aged 14 and 15) in my mother’s garden. She plucked a ripe tomato from the vine and smelled it, and then took a big bite out of it. My mouth watered. I’m used to the stock of vegetables we get at the market nowadays and I know how much difference there is between that and vine-fresh. It’s staggering. But my nieces had an entirely different take. One of them said, “Ew, gross!” And at that point there was exclaiming and proclamations on the wrongness of it all. What became clear to me in that moment was this: If something truly awful happened, and society collapsed, the human animal as it has evolved would be in a lot of trouble. Because a vegetable plucked off the vine is considered dirty, gross. That tomato was probably the cleanest, most pristinely perfect tomato those girls had ever seen, but since it wasn’t displayed in a bin at the grocer, because it was so close to soil and sky and life and segregated from any form of disinfectant by a good hundred yards, it was gross. Kids, it’s time to refresh your relationship with the Earth. Stop primping for a moment and watch the sunrise, let the rain fall on your face, stop fretting and just be.

Photo by bucklava.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: gardening, tomato

There’s a sad state of affairs in the world today, and it has to do with language. Words like terrible and great and awesome don’t seem to pack the wallop they should any more. The problem arises when someone wants to describe a profound sensation they’ve experienced, whether it’s the flavor of a particular ice cream or the color of a new car, and the same old words just don’t seem to have enough impact any more. Maybe it’s because we use them so much.

Awesome, for instance. Awesome has devolved into slang term now describing things that are simply impressive, not necessarily something that inspires awe. Awesome is a word that should be reserved for things of such magnificence that your breath catches as you stare at it; this is what a sensation of awe is. Your friend’s new laptop, impressive as it might be, isn’t “awesome.” But to say that something is good or even great just doesn’t carry the weight it used to, and, needing some way to express extreme liking or fondness, awesome has become the go-to word. Often awesome is used when a lesser term would have worked just fine. Great, for instance, is a word describing something that’s tremendous, monumental…transcendent. That new laptop, if it’s really top of the line and elite, might be considered great. But “great” just doesn’t have the impact that it should, being an over-used word itself. Sadly, your friend’s laptop might simply be good, which in itself describes something that is “of high quality; excellent.” But if I told my friend his new laptop was simply good, he’d think I didn’t like it at all. In order to keep from hurting his feelings, I would have to gesticulate and give praise. And not be brief about it, either. No, I’ve got to remain in my excited state for a considerable length of time. I can’t just say it’s awesome, I have to over-enunciate it with a voice full of emotion: “Dude, that is so AWE-some.” Otherwise, he might be deflated. He might think his good laptop is actually inadequate.

Tucked in between good and great is another word that I could use to elevate the laptop’s status without going so far as to say awesome: Terrific; a word used to describe something marvelous, something extremely good. Of course, terrific is a versatile word that also means extraordinarily great, which gives it more weight than even great could.

If I had to rank describers from mildest to wildest, it would be thus:

1. Agreeable
2. Nice
3. Good
4. Exceptional (or excellent)
5. Delightful
6. Terrific
7. Great (or grand)
8. Spectacular (or amazing)
9. Magnificent
10. Sensational (or phenomenal)
11. Awesome

So now when your spouse brings home a new purse, you’ll have a reference to look to so you can come up with the proper descriptive adjective. Of course, that new purse had better be something better than grand or you’ll be in the doghouse. I’m shooting for spectacular, myself (even though it’s probably only exceptional). But not awesome; not unless I can reach into it like a shaman’s pouch and pull out anything I might imagine. Then it would be awesome. Or maybe if it was constructed of nanobots and could transform into an invisibility cloak. That would also be awesome.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: adjective, describer, descriptive, language, part of speech

This is brilliant, really. Freightliners on transoceanic voyages guzzle gas like nobody’s business. A company called Skysails, based in Hamburg, Germany, has unveiled a product that can reduce fuel consumption of those vessels by up to 35%.

The best apparatuses and advancements in the world, to me, are those which utilize traditional concepts and methods while at the same time capitalize on modern technology. They’re nostalgic–in a good way–but at the same time they’re modern and technological. This may seem like an oxymoron–past/future; historical technology?–but they combine the quaint with the futuristic in a way that’s very appealing. To me at least. I love reading about the Age of Sail, the era of tall ships, and I’ve pined for the romanticism of sailing ships exploring the world. (My love of old things-made-new manifests itself, obliquely, in my reading: I love equally to read Charlie Stross and Patrick O’Brian, Joe Haldeman and Shelby Foote.) The Skysail concept doesn’t go so far as to suggest a regression, but augments modern apparatuses with forward-thinking modifications to historical concepts, improving historical technologies.

I like new stuff, too. Like microwaves. Love microwaves :-)

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: , age of sail, freightliner, futuristic, historical, nostalgia, sail, sailing, ship, ships, skysails, tall ship, transoceanic

Yes, I am prone to ruminate about the future for some reason. But it’s not always in the line of doomsday odds and possibilities, sometimes it’s about simple things, like light. I think about light a lot. We need light; even people who sleep all day and wish they were vampires will have a few lights on during their awake hours, you know, so they can see. There was a time in our recent history when people only had a few lights in the whole house, and those often dim, leaving a room murky and shadow-filled. A lamp by a chair and a bulb-sometimes naked-in the ceiling, and when the sun went down folks went to bed. Because it was dark and all. But now we can expel virtually every shadow in a house. I’ve got around sixty light bulbs inside my 4br house so, as it is with most modernized folk these days, I don’t have to go to bed when the sun goes down, because the darkness is outside of my walls.

And it is often these simple ideas that keep me wondering. Light: what will we be doing in the distant future to keep the darkness at bay? There’s emerging technology that will allow us to illuminate anything using quantum dots:

The light bulb is made out of metal and glass using primarily mechanical processes. Current LEDs are made using semiconductor manufacturing techniques developed in the last 50 years. But, if the quantum dot approach pans out, it could transform lighting production into a primarily chemical process. Such a fundamental change could open up a wide range of new possibilities, such as making almost any object into a light source by coating it with luminescent paint capable of producing light in a rainbow of different shades, including white.

I wrote a story once (that I subsequently deleted) in which the opening few paragraphs followed a guy walking around in the dark holding a lantern. The lantern in question, and the only part of the story I’m getting into right now, was a nostalgic bit of tech. It was designed to look like an old-time whale-oil device. It would hang on a gimbal, just like a shipboard lantern, so that in heavy seas it could swivel. But, looking more closely at it, you could see that it was actually a very high-tech gizmo, even though it only had a single switch (on/mode/off), a button, and a small dial.

It was powered by an organic, bioengineered blue pea, grown right in the back yard, using an extremely efficient power transference system. It could run for a long time on a single pea, never needing to be recharged or plugged in, but it could hold a dozen peas in its little power slot. In the story, the lantern was just a way to give an example of the living conditions for this character. It was a sample of the appliances he had in his home, a statement to the fact that the people in this future lived lives as gardeners in a high-tech, unplugged world. Compared to our world today, it would be like having the internet and all our little gizmos, television and computers, light and communications, without a single wire attached to the home.

Ultimately I went on a bit too long about the lantern for the piece to be an effective an entertaining piece of fiction. It might have been interesting, but it probably read like a technical manual. But just for giggles, and since I’m feeling the future lately, I’m going to extrapolate just briefly on this amazing lantern of the future.

The light will illuminate in any shade of the color spectrum imaginable. The light can flicker, giving the impression of a flame. Despite it’s broad range of available spectrum, though, it’s defaulted to the orange-yellow glow of old incandescent bulbs or firelight (the default setting is modifiable).  (As the main character was walking along across a grassy hillside, he had the lantern set to the default, flickering “lantern” selection. Looking at him walking along, he could just as easily have been a man in the 1800s. And that was one of the key facets of the story: his clothing and the lantern looked like relics of the 19th century, but there was a lot of incorporated tech that wasn’t noticeable.)

The lantern default beamwidth was omni-directional, like a light bulb, but it could be split into any number of sectors of any width, all the way down to a beam as compact and powerful as a laser. It could dim to nothing, and it could glow as bright as sunshine. He could turn the knob and illuminate a football stadium well enough to play a game. It could be used as a very powerful spotlight. He didn’t have to worry about an accidental glance in the direction of such a bright source of light: his eyes were equipped with implants that would immediately shade his vision to specified comfort levels. He could also see the infra-red spectrum and X-ray and his vision could telescope and microscope. (Since I wrote this story, I’ve read recently that the University of Washington is in the process of designing a set of contacts that will perform some of these functions already.)

By this time in the future people will probably be wearing light-emitting clothing, but I still believe in the power of nostalgia, and I think there will be people in the future who, like the character in this story, want the tech but also want the comfort they feel emanating from the past.

You know, now that I’m thinking about this story I may have to sit down and give it another try. There are juxtapositions I haven’t mentioned here that are still very interesting to me.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: , beamwidth, bioengineering, green power, illumination, lantern, light, spotlight, tech, technology, whale oil

If science is right, the sun still has a good 5 billion years worth of fuel left to burn. At that point it’ll turn into a red giant and swallow Mercury and Venus, possibly Earth as well. So a million years really, in the Universal time frame, is still just a smidgeon. Our entire history, as a species, on the Universal timeline, might occupy a single pixel on an image a hundred feet long. All I’m asking is: what will our history look like when we’ve got a few inches worth of history to look back at?

I think about this often. Our civilization is so young, our species is so young, and even though we’ve come so far in so little time, humanity is still in its infancy, even though the planet we live on (as well as our Sun) is middle-aged. I think of the history we’ve accumulated so far, how much of it is actually recorded, rather than speculated on. Realistically, we have recorded history from two to three thousand years ago. Beyond that, back into the last ice age and beyond, it’s all just speculation. And the Universe is roughly 13 billion years old. And here we sit, a fledgling species, at the cusp of many remarkable discoveries and accomplishments. What will the human race be like when it’s a million years old? I rarely hear any speculation. Even in science fiction, the future we explore is normally what could be classified as near, within, say, one hundred to one thousand years. Maybe even ten thousand if the author is really stretching it out. But a million years…that’s something that kind of makes my mind shiver and turn to water.

Even in that near future of SciFic we see mankind exploring the universe. Rarely is he evolved, though. Sure, there are usually some technological modifications to the bodies, but I don’t think I’ve ever read a story in which man was evolved. Maybe one where the pancreas had disappeared, but what about skin: will we all be cafe aulait colored? Will our hair be all the same color? Will we still have hair?

And this history we’ll have piled up… it’s staggering to think of the amount of information that might be immediately available to us, to any one. Only recently, since the advent of the Internet, have we really begun to make information available, to sufficiently put the world to record. If we continue to chronicle our lives and store the data, if the petabits keep piling up, the possibilities are limitless. Just think of it from one aspect, like ancestry. I’ve tried searching back through the census records to find my ancestors, and I have found some, back into the 1700s, but even that is only 300 years. At the rate our data is being stored a person in a million years will be able to track their lineage across that entire gulf of time, have pictures, video, imprints of lives. We are a nostalgic people, and I can’t help but think that we will still pine for the days of yore, even then.

How many ice ages will we have endured? How many catastrophic events? How many species will be extinct? Will we still have a moon? Will Saturn still have rings? Will we have finally solved the riddle of time? Space travel? We’re so close to so many things, and the possibilities are so exciting, it’s almost a shame that I won’t be there to see it. But maybe my great grandson (x1000) will be able to look back across the ages and see his old papa, in that little white house on that six acre patch of grass in Montevallo, Alabama, and smile. And, whether my book ever gets published or not, he’ll have a copy of it that he can read, because people will still love the feel of a good hardback in their hands. Of course it’ll be translated, and the antiquity of its ideas might seem simple, but it’ll be a connection, something I don’t have even with my father’s father, who died when I was very young.

There’s been a lot written about how rotten the future might be. But usually when I think of it I try to send some positive thoughts that way, I paint a nice picture of it in my mind. I still see grass and mountains with billy goats on top of them. I still see little houses where people farm for their food. But I see a people who have solved many of the big problems our civilization has today. Sure, they’ll have their own batch of problems, but they’ll have fixed a lot, too. One thing’s for certain: at some point, a few generations of humans will have to dedicate themselves to cleaning up the mess we left them.

I think that they will. I’m sorry that they’ll have to, but I believe they will.

What do you think life will be like in a million years?

written by Matt Mitchell

Wrapped in full darkness in the middle of the exceptionally silent forest as the eclipse began: deadstill. I lay down on the cold uneven ground, staring up for the calm extravaganza, imagining the blaze of sun on the far side of the world, brilliantly encompassing half the globe where life is shrill, humanity volatile, sweating. Reaching past Mother Earth and touching the pale white moon, sunlight was still a tangible thing, a thing I could inspect, collect in a small wooden box, if only in moonbeams. The moon, a tiny speck of luminescence in the Sea of Liquid Infinity, was creeping behind Earth’s shadow to hide.

Gradually the invisible life around me, the hiding, silent masses, began to liven, becoming an outburst as the eclipse progressed. Unsettled critters, scurrying chirping clucking clicking mewling screeching, howling. The tempo of my heartbeat intensified; I didn’t have their senses; I didn’t know what was wrong. All I could see was the purple hue of that which is always white, fading to black, blotting to nothingness. I couldn’t conceive of why it would affect them as it did; all the same, it excited me. It made me remember that, as an animal, I am quite stupid. I don’t feel the palpitations of mother nature, I’m not in tune with the discord of the universe, I can’t experience oneness with the everlasting, like they can. I was a separate, singular entity, soaking up the experience like rainfall, not really wanting it to end.

Soon the moon crept back into the light, and the normal pace of life resumed, for them. For me, it never altered course. The soft night buzzing, a pleasant but cacophonous melody of the still and invisible and multitudinous, pleasing night sounds to accompany me back along the moonlit path, the bone-white glow of the full moon all around me.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: full moon, lunar eclipse, moon, night, wildlife

Whatever happened to the novella as a form of prose? Many of the greatest stories of all time were written in the 20k - 50k word range. Stories like The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and A River Runs Through It. There are countless others, but it seems the publishing world in general is intent on not publishing any novelettes or novellas. And this is particularly frustrating to me because all of my best work seems to be in novella word-count range.

I know: there’s no money in novellas for the publishing houses. If they can’t get 90k words or more they don’t want it. And short fiction had best not be written any longer than 5k if you want any decent shot at getting it out there. But there’s something about a thin book that I can carry comfortably in my back pocket and read in a couple of days that’s immensely appealing to me. But then the whole publishing industry seems to have veered starkly away from the middle class: there are the haves, of course, and the have nots, but there are rarely any have a littles or comfortably just getting bys. And of course this goes right back to the root of the publishing problem today: fewer and fewer people read any more. More and more it seems the only folks who read are those who are also either writers or who want to be. It seems to me a grand idea to put a wire rack back in the quick stop and stock it with pulp novellas, but then, I guess those would just sit there until the one or two of us who actually like to read them would buy them. Same goes for comic books. More and more, if you want a book, you have to visit Amazon or one of the huge booksellers, because the little bookstores are out of business now, and the selection at the drugstores and grocers are simply awful if you’re into anything other than romance.

I wish the novella format would make a return; just put them out there in pulp paperbacks and see if people won’t give them a try. I would, and that’s not just because I write them. Some of the best reads I’ve ever had were in novella format.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: Fiction, novella, novellette, stories, writers, writing

Generally, I like to refer to things that I write as “Speculative” fiction, because I often utilize rules of SciFi and fantasy in the same piece, that is, I write fiction with fantastic elements but I expound on the details as if it were SciFi. Is that a bad thing? There was a time when it would be looked down upon, maybe even be considered heretical, as Michael Crichton pointed out a long, long time ago:

“As a category, the borders of science fiction have always been poorly defined, and they are getting worse. The old distinction between science fiction and fantasy - that science fiction went from the known to the probable, and fantasy dealt with the impossible - is now wholly ignored. The new writing is heavily and unabashedly fantastical.”

“The breakdown is also seen in the authors themselves, who now cross the border, back and forth, with impunity. At one time this was dangerous and heretical; the only person who could consistently get away with it was Ray Bradbury. Science fiction addicts politely looked the other way when he did books such as Dandelion Wine and the screenplay for John Huston’s Moby Dick. It was assumed he needed the money.”

Consider a movie like Jurassic Park, where the concept of bringing back dinosaurs is perfectly believable. You believe it, don’t you? We believe it because we want to believe fantastic things are possible, and this is especially the case with readers of SciFi. One advantage SciFi has over fantasy, however, is that SciFi generally resounds with possibility. Even though its ideas may be impossible now, one who has the foresight to dream of tomorrow can see the inherent potential in virtually any work of SciFic.

There are two basic ways to write fantasy, and neither of them have to be believable in the least:

1. Real world, whether it be historical or modern-day.
2. Other world, in which another universe is created specifically for the story.

Sure, fantasy can take place in the future, but generally if it does, it’s called science fiction, and it’d better stick to the laws of physics as we understand them. On that same note, present-day fantasy is often called horror, therefore it should really be classified as a sub-genre of fantasy. It’s difficult to make a sweeping epic of orcs and dragons set in our present day, unless you create an alternate reality, which is generally how it’s handled. The teen is swept into a book, goes down a rabbit hole, whirled away in a tornado, or opens a door that allows them to enter a fantastic realm. Rarely do we get an insight as to how the portal works. We just get a stock line of explanation stating that the door or book was magical, if we get any explanation at all. In SciFi, this would hardly ever do. Readers of SciFi want the exposition of how things work:

• Why did the wormhole appear?
• How does it work?
• To where does it lead?
• How long is the travel time through it?
• What happens when you travel through it? Do you get sick?

This, to me, is one of the great dividing differences between the genres.

When the science of something is explained plausibly, within the laws of physics it is SciFi.
When the science of something is not explained, it is fantasy.

For SciFi, you can’t simply talk about a world of orcs and dragons, you have to give the planet a name, talk a bit about the history of it, how it evolved, and it wouldn’t hurt to have them flying a spaceship. But with fantasy, if it’s a good enough story the hows and the whys aren’t really all that important.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: fantasy, Fiction, sci-fi, Science, scifi

A few things have cluttered up my thoughts today, feel free to wiegh in on any one of these:

• Ficlets. A place where you can write what basically amount to Story Bones, and if it is well received by someone else they can write a prequel or a sequel to the Bone, or in this case, “Ficlet.” My problem with this is that, as a writer, I’m trying to get my stories published. Why would I want to write for a place that is cluttered with little nothings? Or are they somethings? Is it just something for fun? Because it just doesn’t seem fun to me, even though it seems like a really cool concept.
• Guidevines. A wiki for writers. In principle I think it’s a pretty good idea and I think he’s picked a great name for it, but it’s hosted on Alex Wilson’s domain, so it loses a bit of allure right up front because it looks like a back-ended concept. Even if it had been posted on Wetpaint.com (a tool I love) it would at least have had a professional-looking domain: guidevines.wetpaint.com. I also have a tiny bit of hesitation in linking to it because my friendly email to Mr. Wilson was ignored, but I went ahead and linked it because maybe the Internet went down and he didn’t get the email.
• Google Docs. I’d heard of this before but never checked it out until I saw Ken McConnell’s Submission Log spreadsheet. I like the idea, but I usually carry my submission log on a thumb drive, so I don’t have a need for that just yet, although it is fun to see someone else’s SL (which bears a striking resemblance to my own. But then, I guess there’re only so many ways to keep track of subs in a spreadsheet).

written by Matt Mitchell

True story: I was working one night at a remote cell phone tower, carrying my equipment into the shelter from my truck. A motion caught my eye under the arc and electric hum of a security light above the shelter. I watched for a few moments as a big something–at first I thought it was a bat–kept flying up in a circle and then would smash back into the ground. I walked over, head cocked to the side, trying to figure out what it was and why it kept bashing its head into the ground over and over with big meaty-sounding thumps. I finally saw that it was a big luna moth, as big as my hand, and in the next few minutes as I watched and it continued its cycle of circle, whomp, circle, whomp, I felt a stirring of something like pity in my gut. I felt like this moth was fresh from its cocoon and learning to fly and just wasn’t getting the hang of it. I watched and waited, silently cheering the little fella along, but although it would stop and sit on the ground for a minute or two it eventually would hop into the air again. It was really disheartening.

I know a lot of people would tell me to keep out of nature’s affairs, to let the little moth learn on its own merit, but it was damn hard for me, a bona fide softy at heart, to keep watching it smack into the ground again and again. So I tried to do something about it. I wanted to help. Besides, I wasn’t going to get any work done that night so long as I knew that helpless little moth was out there banging away at the gravel.

When it took a break I reached down and picked it up as gently as I could. It didn’t make any fuss, which made me think it must be utterly exhausted. I remember it felt like I’d picked up a silk feather. It tickled a little, but it was as gentle and weightless as air in my hand. My plan was to simply hold it up as high as I could, so when he decided he could just take off from there (I’m 6′3″, so I gave him a pretty good launching pad). Soon enough, he took off, and went up about three feet with me cheering and hooting below him, and then he dove straight back to the ground. He just sat there and I thought, “Oh my God I’ve killed it.” I picked it up again and it fluttered a touch, just a touch, and so I held him up once again, praying–praying–that he would find the skill he needed to fly, to live.

That last time was magical. I was cheering for him as he launched off my hand. He flew up into the glow of the security light, up and up so high I could barely see him, just a faint little will-o-the-wisp against the night sky, floating back and forth, back and forth. And then he came back down like a flash, so that I thought he was going to hit the ground again, but just as he reached head height to me, he looped back up and at that moment I knew, I just knew, he would be gone in a flash, never to be seen by human eyes again, and I smiled. For just a moment, the thought popped into my head that this little moth was thankful for my help, and that he was flying down to let me know he appreciated it, that he couldn’t have done it without me, and that he was going to be all right now.

And then a bat ate him. Right out of the air. Swooped in like a black bullet and gulped him down like a little green burrito. I stood there for a few minutes, staring up at the spot where I’d last seen him, and I could see the bats now, flying around the light, just outside of its limits, swimming through the night like sharks waiting for a newborn to drop into the inky blackness of their ocean.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: bat, luna, moth, night

Autumn has latched her grooved claws into the nub of my neck and is maliciously, needlessly needling me. I awoke this morning to the first showing of frost of the year, and the in-dash thermometer in the Mitchell Clan Shuttle read 37 degrees. I know that’s not cold to you folks up in the hinterland, but for us Southerners it’s what we call God-almighty Cold.

On a positive side note: I was worried that we wouldn’t see any fall color this year�because of the drought, but, while it may not be as vibrant as it’s been in years past, the leaves are showing color with struggling courage.

I admit I’m not exactly on my game today; I’ve had server problems, Wordpress problems, printer problems, and a slough of grief it seems from the air itself. I was notified today that my short story “Wagon Hill” will not be considered for a future issue of Coyote Wild. They did offer a positive little note on the rejection email, however: “There’s a lot about “Wagon Hill” to like — but ultimately it’s not
quite right for us.”�Oh, well. You can’t win them all. I hope to be back in form tomorrow. Meanwhile, there are a lot of very positive things brewing in my camp:

On the docket for this weekend:�

• Working on an interview with Cherie Priest, author of Four and Twenty Blackbirds, among other novels and short stories, for posting here on Unabashed. The interview will primarily focus on her rise to fame by way of blogging, but, as you can read on her blog, she’s swamped right now with personal issues and has had to postpone the interview.
• Also working on an interview with Momus, another blogger who came to fame by blogging, but I haven’t heard back from him on the request yet. Stay tuned.�
• I’m trying to figure out if it’d be worth my time to try John Scalzi and David Wellington for the same interview series, which actually began a few weeks ago as an article�for Unabashed�concerning “Bloggers who came to notoriety through blogging,” but the project swelled and became a 4-part series with interviews and research and more than a little distraction. Still, the interviews will make it all worth while, even if Cherie is the only one who finally participates.
• Get some printer ink: GUD (Greatest Uncommon Denomenator) Magazine has asked me to review their introductory issue and kindly sent me an Advance Review Copy (makes me feel all special and tingly. Seriously, I’m very honored). But my frail little printer promptly shat itself when it realized I wanted it to print off 214-odd pages of text. I think all it needs is ink. I hope all it needs is ink, because it printed all but the first 25 pages before dying with a moan and a little puff of smoke (kidding. There was no smoke. Only a moan).
• Work on Psuburbia, the Ning social-networking site I’ve created and had little chance to fondle since.
• Work on populating the Mythica Wiki with some more information, to help that project breeze along a little quicker.
• Get my Wordpress comments working right again.
• Plus, and finally, today I am the proud owner of the first three issues of Steampunk Magazine, delivered into my hands by UPS this very afternoon directly from Merry Olde England. Coincidentally, Cherie Priest is a big Steampunk buff, as you can see in the photograph above. It is fated: we will be BFF (&E).
• I have so much reading to do…
• But that’s a great problem to have!

�

written by Matt Mitchell

Where are all the cool blogs? I know there are some out there, blogs written by people who have an interest in writing about cool stuff, interesting subjects, with witty flair, but damn if I can find many. Sure, recently I found Al over at Life and Lawns on Blogspot (or rather, he found me), but so far he’s been the exception rather than the rule. I’ve looked through Technorati, searched the Google Blog Search, checked BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog but I haven’t been very lucky with my searches, I guess.

MySpace or LiveJournal haven’t shown me what I’m looking for. Most people that have MySpace pages don’t use their blogs much, and the rampant friending in lj just gives you a bunch of people who you really have no connection with. I’m not opposed to lj, I just haven’t found many ljs that I would like to read consistently.

What am I looking for? Content; and I think personal blogs can provide it for me at a maximum dose of two or three posts per day (any more than that and I begin to feel overwhelmed). Give me someone with a small blog who posts “where to buy the best sorghum syrup” or “here’s how to build a better outdoor theater,” you know: articles. Diary-type entries are okay sometimes, even desired, because you like to know what’s going on with the writers you like, don’t you? But I also want articles of interest. How to do this and why to do that, what star is lining up with Jupiter right now or how to rid your personal space of noise pollution. Just content; is that so much to ask? It doesn’t even have to follow a specific topic, topical blogs being all the rage right now, of course, but in a personal blog it’s difficult to have a specific topic, so you write about what you like. Certainly there’s someone out there who wants to read about stuff you like, right? Right: me.

Now: Do you know of any good blogs? Shoot me a link please :-)

Update: I’ve got plenty now, thanks. Some of them are even ljs, which makes me happy.

written by Matt Mitchell