Unabashed

In a conversation today about science fiction movies, a person I was talking with challenged me on the “realism” in scifi movies. And of course I kind of had to shake my head. To me, scifi is realistic. It’s the modern action movie that’s traipsed over into the category of I-can-no-longer-suspend-my-disbelief-to-believe-this-is-possible.

SciFi movies are futuristic, meaning they take place in the future, meaning that a lot of the things that happen in them might actually be possible one day. But now let’s look at some modern-day action movies. You can pretty much name the lame at this point: XXX, The Fast and the Furious, or, here’s a good example: Charlie’s Angels. Are you telling me that’s a realistic representation of what three female cops look like, and that they can leap twenty feet into the air while dodging bullets, spinning, and then jettison themselves out a window and take out six armed, burly, lethal guards before ever touching the ground? It seems to me that futuristic SciFi is much more realistic than that. Case in point: Pitch Black. A space ship crash lands on an alien planet full of a particularly horrible breed of life that, given the planet’s situation, it makes perfect sense for them to have evolved into. Their ship requires fuel, their people rely on guns and sharp objects for self defense, they are easily cleaved by claws and seemingly delectable by the local dominant species. To me, I guess that all just makes perfect sense, given the fact that we can’t prove it wrong. Unfortunately, we can prove all too easily that Cameron Diaz cannot leap tall buildings in a single bound. Granted, she does look awfully cute dancing around in her panties, but…I’m losing focus here. You tell me, are SciFi movies more realistic than action movies?

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: action, charlie's angels, Movies, pitch black, science fiction, scifi, scific, vs

While I’m thinking about it, I’ve had dreams before that have ended up being incorporated into various stories I’ve written. For instance, one morning I woke up with a clear line in my head, which may not make any sense to you (it didn’t to my wife), but nevertheless I liked it and I thought it was funny so I adapted it. The line was this:

“Being the first ith, he was Irmth. His name was Irmth the Eleventh.”

As it happened I was embroiled in the writing of a scifi comedy about a space-traveling zydeco accordion player named Joe Remeleaux Redmill. Irmth became the bad guy for that story, and it’s one of those humorous SciFic pieces I told you I’d really like to find a home for.

The way it finally worked out was: Irmth belonged to a race that was the result of a genome abnormality in an entirely other race, the name of which is inconsequential at this point. Irmth and his kind were called “Shifts” by those they were spun off from, and were shunned despite their evident superior evolutionary state. Irmth was the eleventh Shift to have evolved, though there are many thousands in the universe now. Shifts were art-loving Methuselahs who lived millions of years. They were born with duplex personalities and referred to themselves using 1st person plural pronouns (we, us, our). They speak with two voices and, in the bulbous, gelatinous, transparent midriff of their bodies, which is usually tinted green or blue or brown and inside of which can be seen their organs and various floating detritus, had a second face, though their physiology was otherwise more or less human in appearance. They were usually phenomenally rich, intelligent, and deviant (though not sexually, not having the necessary equipment). Irmth himself was the first Shift of a separate branch called Ith. The only difference between a normal Shift and an Ith was that an Ith was much taller. Irmth specifically enjoys cocktails, sometimes delivered intravenously, technology and information, and music. He has organized numerous events throughout the Universe, some of which were so successful that they never stopped. Irmth scours the Galaxy, looking for musical talent to feature at his events, and is currently organizing and promoting an event in the Hypersholean system called “Music Horizon,” which promises to be a never-ending event and boasts five generation seven Posi-Tek SubSpaceWoofter Platforms, release 5ZR11.32.99, AKA the GalactiBlaster, which essentially turns a moon or planet into a speaker. When Irmth hears music he likes, he usually leaves his card, which is the model of simplicity:

Being the first ith, he was Irmth.
His name was Irmth the Eleventh.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: galactiblaster, ideas, irmth, ith, science fiction, scifi, scific, shift, stories, story, writing

Internet pal and fellow writer Ken McConnell’s debut story, “The Renoke,” is up at SpaceWesterns.com. It’s a nicely creepy story and it’s science fiction; you can’t get much better than that.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: free, free read, Ken McConnell, science fiction, scifi, scific, spacewesterns.com, story

Someone should put together an anthology of humorous science fiction. Maybe even make it a tribute to Douglas Adams, the man who proved that humor and scific was possible. It’s been almost 30 years since the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was first published, and Adams remains the only successful author of humorous SciFic that I know of. It’s a genre that needs some attention, I think. I say this, of course, because I sometimes write funny SciFic, and I need a market to sell my stories to. There are some markets that say they’d like to have it, but either they don’t really want it or the usual applies: “this story just wasn’t right for us.”

Whether humorous SciFic is being written now I don’t know, I only know that the only SciFic that seems to be enjoying any success in the market isn’t written with humor being the first intent. Some say that it’s been done, to which I would counter by saying hasn’t everything? I’ve heard it said before that there are no original stories left to write, that we only substitute new characters into stories that, to one degree or another, have already been done at one time before. Humorous science fiction is something I would like to read, so, I think it hasn’t been done enough.

I’ve even thought about doing an anthology myself, except for all the problems related to that, the two most pivotal being: I don’t have the time to do it, and I’m not an editor. The only thing I could really contribute is that I know what I like to read, and sometimes that jives with what other people like to read, too. But then I would still have the problem of placing my own stories, since, you know, it wouldn’t be a good idea to put my own story in the anthology I was “editing.” That would just be wrong and smack of amateurism, like when someone builds a website for fiction and when you visit it all the stories you see are written by the same person. That’s one of the best ways to ensure your work never gets read.

Would it be better to self-publish an anthology than a book you’ve written yourself? I don’t know. I know that indie writing doesn’t get much respect these days, primarily due to the fact that at least 90% of what’s ever been self-published in the history of indie writing has been manure. With an anthology you’d have to get submissions, but I don’t really think that would be a problem. You always hear editors bemoaning the sheer numbers of subs in their slush piles. The plus would be that you could use CreateSpace, and thereby sell your anthology on Amazon and to Kindle readers. The only publicity you’d get would be what you could put together yourself on the web. Very few reviews, very little marketing, all could add up to very few sales. And if your reason for doing an anthology is sales, well, you probably should have known in the first place that it wasn’t going to make you rich. If your reason for doing an anthology is because you want to see more of a certain type of story that’s not getting much attention, then maybe. Maybe.

This is no call for subs, by the way. This is just me pondering possibilities on my blog, public forum that it is. Feedback is welcome, as usual.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: amazon, Anthology, createspace, douglas adams, indie, kindle, science fiction, scifi, scific, short story, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Tribute, writer, writers

What makes science fiction great? Yes, the story, and yes, the characters, but don’t forget all those nifty gadgets! Equipped with this list of goodies, you could go anywhere, create anything, know everything, have a faithful, useful friend, and look really cool the whole time. These are the items that represent SciFi’s greatest imaginings: 

Lightsaber
Star Wars, by George Lucas

It’s a weapon at heart, but so versatile that it is infused with gadgety cool–use it as a flashlight, to melt through metal doors, to slice open large meat carcasses, and it’ll probably slice fresh bread into instant toast (as seen in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, using a much smaller version of the tool). With an extremely rare Adegan crystal in its core, and being crafted in a month-long rite by a Jedi Knight, the lightsaber is the ultimate tool of the ultimate philosopher/warrior society. Nostalgia is one reason this futuristic gadget is so cool: the idea was obviously borrowed from feudal Japan’s Shogun warriors and their attachment to their carefully crafted artisan swords.

See also: Crysknife from Dune; Ultimate Nullifier from Marvel Comics

Stillsuit
Dune, by Frank Herbert

Quoting the book from Wikipedia:

It’s basically a micro-sandwich — a high-efficiency filter and heat-exchange system. The skin-contact layer’s porous. Perspiration passes through it, having cooled the body … near-normal evaporation process. The next two layers . . . include heat exchange filaments and salt precipitators. Salt’s reclaimed. Motions of the body, especially breathing and some osmotic action provide the pumping force. Reclaimed water circulates to catchpockets from which you draw it through this tube in the clip at your neck… Urine and feces are processed in the thigh pads. In the open desert, you wear this filter across your face, this tube in the nostrils with these plugs to ensure a tight fit. Breathe in through the mouth filter, out through the nose tube. With a Fremen suit in good working order, you won’t lose more than a thimbleful of moisture a day…

R2-D2
Star Wars, by George Lucas

You can have Threepio, you can even take HAL; I’ll take Artoo. This little robot can do almost anything from underway spaceship repair to serving drinks. He takes the AI concept to a whole new level, with built-in courage, humor, fear and devotion.

See also: HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey

Holtzman Shield
Dune, by Frank Herbert

The Holtzman Shield is a potent literary device: it makes directed-energy weaponry impossible against any worthwhile opponent, and also proves traditional projectile-based firearms and missiles ineffective, adding to the feudal atmosphere, and enforces the usage of mêlée weaponry despite other more advanced technology.

Cornucopia Machine
Singularity Sky/Iron Sunrise, by Charlie Stross

The Cornucopia can be programmed with the atomic structure of virtually any item (including another Cornucopia Machine) and, so long as it has fuel, material and time, fabricate it. (I would ask it to make everything on this list.) This is the only item on the list that hasn’t been adapted (yet) into a movie or television program; if you haven’t read these two books yet, I highly recommend them.

See also: Nutrimatic Dispenser from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; Food Replicator from Star Trek

Transporter
Star Trek, by Gene Roddenberry

The Transporter was so powerful you could almost call it the deus ex machina of Star Trek, but you can’t, because it wasn’t spontaneous; it was there from the beginning. Still, though; how many times have Trek characters escaped imminent doom by uttering the phrase: “Beam us up”? There are many incarnations of teleportation devices, but none done so well as Star Trek’s Transporter. It was in almost constant use in every movie and throughout every television series, making it one of the most useful gadgets on this list.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams

Complete with it’s Don’t Panic! mantra, this wholly remarkable “book” can tell you anything you want to know about anything in the universe. The Guide was an electronic guidebook which was connected to the galaxy-wide Sub-Etha network for updates. The book was published in 1978, making the Sub-Etha one of the first imaginings of what the Internet could be. 

Iron Man’s Armor
Marvel Comics, by Stan Lee

Super strength, supersonic flight, repulsors, missiles, and pimped out with a red and gold titanium alloy…Nothing is cooler.

See also: KITT, from the 80s TV show Knight Rider

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: , cool, coolest, Fiction, gadgetry, greatest, sci-fi, Science, scifi, sf, tool, Tools

**Spoiler Alert** 

Something I’ve been thinking about lately: SciFi movies, more of them, please? Oh, and try and make them better, k? Here’s an idea: Old Man’s War, by John Scalzi, a book that is utterly primed for adaptation, and I don’t even see much of a way for them to ruin it. Look at the Hollywood history of putting the wrong actors in roles; the list is as long as the list of movies themselves. I’ve commented before that Rachael Taylor was an utter flop as IT genius Maggie Madsen, as well as a host of others. I’ll add to the list Halle Berry; she’s just too damned pretty to be Storm. Rebecca Romijn, she of the amazing body, who was perfect as Mystique in the X-Men series, but was a total bust (no pun intended) in The Punisher. The problem is that often Hollywood casts people that are too pretty for roles in which obviously less-pretty people belong. Such is the case with Maggie Madsen, and the same is true for Romijn’s Joan in The Punisher. But the reason she was perfect for Mystique is also the reason she–or any overly-pretty actor–would be an ideal fit for OMW the Movie. In OMW Scalzi has already craftily eliminated the problem of the exceedingly-pretty, not-believable-as-a-person actor, because everyone recruited into the Colonial Military is given a new and improved, genetically enhanced body that, while it retains the donor’s DNA and general appearance, is made much more physically appealing. The point being, you could cast the hottest people in Hollywood for the roles in OMW, ugly them down for the first thirty minutes of the film, and then just paint them green and give them cat’s eyes.

I’ll add that, like most people, I’ve read OMW’s one-star reviews and, frankly, I don’t understand it. It’s a testament to the fact that people just don’t like the same material, no matter what. In my opinion, OMW is easily the best SF book of the past ten years (at least of the ones I’ve read. And that includes all of Charlie Stross’s books, which I love also, but which aren’t quite as good as OMW). I just don’t get it.

Anyway, here’s my suggestion for the casting of OMW: the Movie:

• John Perry - Brad Pitt
• Jane Sagan - Rebecca Romijn
• Somebody else - Will Smith
• Somebody else - Orlando Bloom
• Somebody else - Charlize Theron
• Somebody else - Clive Owen
• Somebody else - Ken Watanabe

There, that ought to get them started.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: Fiction, John Scalzi, movie, Old Man's War, OMW, Rebecca, Romijn, Science, scifi

I am really loving io9. If you don’t read it, get on over there because they are consistently putting out great content. Today, for instance, they’ve posted a little space porn, some comics industry opinion, and this bit of writing advice, on “how to bring the weird” in your near-future SciFi stories. This is another one of those posts I want to print and paste to the wall by my desk, one of those I wish I’d written. Apologies for posting this word for word, but it is really all excellent and I want it filed away in my little internet brain for future reference:

Extrapolate from current trends…

Certain things happening now will probably carry on, and even accelerate, over the next two decades. The icecaps will keep melting, natural disasters will probably come more often, and droughts may affect more regions. Rich countries will become fortresses of the elderly, with fewer young people who aren’t immigrants. Corporations will probably keep becoming more powerful and diversified, unless the next economic meltdown actually weakens their power somehow. There will be less oil, and more fighting over oil. Food prices will keep going up for third-world countries. China and India will be economically resurgent, unless they fuck up. Some forms of social deviance will be marginally more accepted, within wealthy societies at least.

…but don’t be their bitch.

Don’t assume that every current trend will continue in a straight line — it’s never worked that way in the past, and it’s unlikely to start now. New technologies will help stem some of the negative trends we’re dealing with right now. And unimaginable disasters will spark new cycles of misery that will sweep us all down. Nobody in 1988 could have predicted 9/11 or the girl who hanged herself because her MySpace friends turned out to be mean grownups. (How would you even explain the “MySpace hoax” to someone in 1988?)

The technologies of tomorrow already exist.

Nanotechnology is already turning up in socks and medical devices, and everyone’s predicting it’ll replace basic circuitry and lead to miracle cures within a few years. People are already chuffed about home robotics, and robots are already helping us fight our wars. There’s a lot of talk about amazing replacement limbs that will use nanotech, and even be able to interpret signals from your brain. And there’s a lot of reason to be optimistic about gene therapy.

Don’t just pick one technology to update.

One of my pet peeves is the near-ish future story where everything’s more or less the same, except that there’s one miraculous new technology that is transforming the world. It’s way more likely that there’ll be half a dozen semi-miraculous technologies that will be nudging the world in different directions. (And we can’t discount the possibility that things will go to shit so badly that none of those amazing new technologies will come to fruition.)

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: Fiction, Future, sci-fi, scifi, writing

Just put the finishing touches on a new short story, SciFi with a hint of horror. I have to say I’m pretty excited about it, too. The preliminary idea I had a couple of years ago, one of those story bones I wrote down, saved the file and looked at every now and then to see if the spark was there yet. The spark arrived Friday, and today it’s done. Three drafts, 3k words, three days. Once it started flowing it was on, there was nothing I could do but write it down; it was one of those periods when you realize again why you write, why you tell stories, because you know it’s good, you feel it, it just sings to you. One of those stories you have no choice but to write. Sure, sometimes there’s filler stories, the ones you struggle through because you had an idea that just talked, but when they sing, boy, that’s a great feeling. It makes me think sometimes it might be what heroin is like (I’m not joking), because when the story sings to me and I’m flying through the writing… it just doesn’t get much better. I don’t know if it’s endorphins or serotonin or just old-fashioned adrenaline, but it is an undeniably exhilarating experience. Intoxicating. It makes me want another one. And the greatest part of it is it still comes; every once in a while I get that lightning in a bottle sensation that is just as good as the first one, and that’s something I hear even heroin can’t do for you. The last story I wrote under similar sensations is in publication now; I’m hoping this one will be too, and soon. It’s one of those that, when you put it in the envelope and you have just the right publisher picked out and you send it off, you can’t imagine how they could possibly say no. They will, of course, and that’s why the rejection hurts so bad sometimes–because this is the work of life, the stuff of dreams, the fabric of your imagination, and you know it’s good and right, but sometimes others just don’t see it, or for some reason pass on it. So you pick another publisher and eventually, if you do it enough times, you get that other high from writing: acceptance. Validation. Success.

The story itself is one I’ve wanted to write for a long time: a zombie story. It’s titled Planet Zombie, and it’s about priest/medic on a exploration mission through the Milky Way, who just happens to drop in on a planet where everything dies, where nothing lives, and yet the body remains animated. He knows his soul is gone. His heart stops beating, he isn’t affected by the cold of the planet’s surface, nor the radiation, nor the choking gaseous atmosphere. He feels his soul slip away, feels his death, and knows that God has abandoned him. My wife read it and said it was good, but gross (she didn’t like the part where the geologist is sitting on the floor eating his own fingers). It’s a new take on an old genre, which is something that publishers say they like to get. Go ahead and pencil me in for my Nebula; it’s a lock.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: , horror, Planet Zombie, science fiction, scifi, short story, Zombie

Okay; who else is excited about this? I’m getting free e-books in my email, free artwork, and, if you read the fine print in those emails or visit Tor.com nowadays you get this little message:

Something new is coming.

For days I’ve been watching this site. What’s it going to be? Is it going to redefine the SciFi presence on the web (something that is in dire need of redefining, if you ask me)? I’m tantalized beyond words. I am ready, Tor.

Make the internet better for us.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: science fiction, scifi, scific, Tor

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