Easter Treats for Writers

I've been saving up some goodies. I noticed all the Easter goodies out in the stores today, so I thought I would give my readers a few sweet gifts for the season.

NASA's Launchpad Workshop for Science Fiction Writers

This has got to be the greatest deal going for writers. Launch Pad is a free, NASA-funded workshop for established writers held in beautiful high-altitude Laramie, Wyoming. Launch Pad aims to provide a "crash course" for twelve attendees in modern astronomy science through workshops, guest lectures, and observation through the University of Wyoming's two large telescopes.

Applications are now open for 2008's workshop, and will be accepted until March 31st, 2008. See the website: http://www.launchpadworkshop.org/ for more details.

I attended the first Launch Pad last year, in 2007. It was a stunning experience. I knew a lot of astronomy from 50+ years ago, but what was a lot then is merely a small fraction now. As I'm writing some "space fiction" now, this was the perfect workshop for me. And for the eleven other participants, who were all terrific people to get to know. And, the faculty were superb: Michael S. Brotherton and Jerry Oltion, both writers and astronomers.

It's all expenses paid, folks. What's not to love?

Creating a Sense of Urgency Among Agents and Editors

My writing buddy, Scott William Carter, has a great blog, including his "First Book" feather I wrote about recently. Now he's written a blog entry

Selling Your Book: Ten Tips on Creating a Sense of Urgency Among Agents and Editors


This is great stuff. Read it. Print it. Post it at the place where you write your submissions.

Thank you, Scott.

Nine Stories in Nine Weeks

My dear friend and student, Dwayne Phillips, set himself the challenge of writing a short story a week for all of 2008. The first nine weeks of production are posted in a blog format at http://dwaynephillips.net/shortstories.

Dwayne would appreciate any feedback on any of his stories. I appreciate him showing some of the sluggard writers out there what is possible if you set your mind to it.

What is Science Fiction Anyway, and Does it Matter?

If you're interested in writing science fiction, and even if you can't get to Launch Pad this year, take a deep draught from Steve York's post on What is Science Fiction Anyway, and Does it Matter?

Lots to think about. Don't write another word without it.

Howdya Like Them Eggs?

(If my readers like this sample, I'll post more goodies in the future, and perhaps I won't wait until next Easter.)

Why Am I Now Writing Fiction: 4. Surrounded by Einstein and His Friends

One way to describe a character in a story is through setting—showing the reader how your character surrounds himself. Another way is by the company he keeps. Today, I learned that Quantum Books had featured The Aremac Project on their website.


Naturally, I had to look at the page, and was I ever surprised to find myself surrounded by two books about Albert Einstein. I shouldn't have been surprised, because I'm surrounded every day by the Man of the Century. Any time I am temporarily paused in my writing, I can look up and see no less than four pictures of Einstein, plus one action figure. From this information, you, the reader, may surmise that Albert's writings have been a great influence on my life and writing. In this essay, I want to make some of those influences more explicit in terms of quotes by Einstein and some of his friends.

Social Change and Technology

"The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe." - Albert Einstein
Not just the atom, but all technology, could lead us to unparalleled catastrophe, including the computer technologies to which I have contributed. I feel a deep obligation to write books that may help change our thinking about how we respond to technology.

What We Owe Each Other

"Every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving." - Albert Einstein
I feel this same sense. Before each meal, I say a silent grace, thanking all those people who have worked together to bring this food to my plate. And before each book, I think deeply about all the people who might read it, and how it might influence their lives, written this way or that.


Style

"If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor." - Albert Einstein

I try to write truth, so I try to write simply. I will never win any prizes for eloquent prose, but perhaps I will be understood. Perhaps, if I write untruth, people will more easily see through my words.


Why Science Fiction?

"When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking."- Albert Einstein

I can think of nothing more depressing than the thought that our world is limited to what happens to exist today. At many miserable moments in my life, I've been kept going by the thought: "It doesn't have to be this way." I could never allow myself to be constrained to writing about the way things are. (In no way does this denigrate the great book, The Way Things Are, by Nobel Prize Winner, Percy Williams Bridgman. This is one of the ten books that has most influenced my life.)


Humanity and Technology

"Concern for man himself and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavor. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations." - Albert Einstein

My goal in fiction is not to write about technology, but about human responses to technology. I write about how we make machines and how machines, in turn, make us—but primarily how we can and do make ourselves. You won't find many equations or diagrams or scientific explanations in my fiction, but any that you do find will first serve the goal of making us more fully human.

Charlie Chaplin

One of the photos facing me as I write is Albert Einstein with Charlie Chaplin, each dressed in a tuxedo.

Humor

“A day without laughter is a day wasted.” - Charlie Chaplin

Nobody who has seen a Chaplin film will be surprised by this quote. He was a man who could leaven the most serious subjects with laughter: Greed (The Gold Rush); Tyrannical Power (The Great Dictator); Dehumanizing Technology (Modern Times). I will never be one-millionth the comedian he was, but I am committed to leaven my serious fiction with as much humor as I can sneak in.


Character Creation

“I had no idea of the character. But the moment I was dressed, the clothes and the make-up made me feel the person he was. I began to know him, and by the time I walked onto the stage he was fully born.” - Charlie Chaplin

This is exactly the way I create my characters, in a virtual sense. I dress them with the character, brilliance, and personality of the people I have known, then I let them walk on the stage—the pages of my manuscript—and become fully born. Perhaps this is why my villains are, as one critic said, "a bit wooden at times." I simply haven't known many villains in my life, just people trying to do the best they can with what they have.

Rabindranath Tagore

Another photo facing me as I write is Einstein with Rabindranath Tagore, the poet from India.

The Limits of Logic

"A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it." - Rabindranath Tagore

I write about the people I know best, the scientists and engineers whose primary tool is the sharpness of their minds. To do that truthfully, I must also write about their deviations from logic that both complicate and enhance their lives.

Systems Thinking

"By plucking her petals, you do not gather the beauty of the flower." - Rabindranath Tagore

A system is more than the sum of its parts. I write about how properties and behaviors not seen in parts of a system emerge surprisingly from their combination.


Facing Problems

"Every difficulty slurred over will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on." - Rabindranath Tagore

I am not awfully interested in writing about victims. I want to create characters who face their problems—though often wary and fearful—and deal with them using the powers of their minds. I want characters who know, or discover, as Tagore also said, "You can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water. "


Unconventional Solutions

"The flower which is single need not envy the thorns that are numerous." -Rabindranath Tagore

My characters not only cope with the problems that face them, but they cope with them creatively. Theirs are not the tried-and-true solutions that may or may not work for others. Instead, each solution is like an engineering problem, with opportunities to choose among, and tradeoffs that constrain the choices.

The Hopi

The largest of my Einstein pictures has him standing in front of the Fred Harvey Hopi House, at the Grand Canyon, Arizona, with his wife and a half a dozen Hopi Indians. Incongruently, but humorously, he is wearing a Plains Indian headdress and holding a "peace pipe," but the message is clear enough. Einstein once said about racial bigotry, "What can the man of good will do to combat this deeply rooted prejudice? He must have the courage to set an example by words and deed, and must watch lest his children become influenced by racial bias."


I hope I am of sufficiently good will to combat each of these prejudices in my novels, particularly by showing what can be done if we shed them, but also by showing the sad consequences if we don't.


Natural Law

"The supreme law of the land is the Great Spirit's law, not man's law."  - Hopi saying

My novels are all fantasy, but not in the "fantasy" genre. I want to confine myself to natural laws that are at least plausible in terms of what we know. No gods emerging from machines, no ghosts, no vampires or werewolves, but, from time to time, aliens. No magic, except in Arthur Clarke's sense that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.


Teamwork

"One finger can't lift a pebble. " - Hopi saying

I am particularly interested in writing about teams, for that is what I know from half a century of working with teams of brilliant people all over the world. Like the little girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead, those teams, when good, are very, very good. And, when bad, are horrid. I hope to help them by showing what it takes to be very, very good.


Story Telling

But, in the end, why tell stories at all? I believe the Hopi deserve the last word:

"The one who tells the stories rules the world."

Why I am Now Writing Fiction - 3

On Monday, at long last, I received my author's copies of my new novel, The Aremac Project.

On Monday, I also received news that a disturbed student at Virginia Tech University had shot and killed more than 30 fellow students.

I immediately felt a visceral connection between those two events, a connection I need to write about, if only to help me cope. Perhaps my thoughts and feelings will prove helpful to other writers.

The first connection is obvious. The Aremac Project is about a terrorist plot, killing people and destroying property seemingly at random around the city of Chicago. But that's not all it's about. It's not even the main theme—which is technology's role in crime, both its propagation and prevention.

Fiction Can Show Us The Way, or Ways

I've been a science fiction fan for as long as I could read. I always believed that a better world was possible—better than a world where bright young children were abused by adults. One of my favorite books was Dr. Seuss's, And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street, where a young boy conjures up imaginings far more wonderful than the simple horse and wagon he saw on Mulberry Street. That boy was me. Those imaginings—of a wonderfully better world—were mine. And, sadly, the adult who squelched those imaginings was mine, too.

A second favorite book of mine (one whose title I cannot remember—and for which would give a reward to some reader who can) told the story of an awful, messy town where one day, a pied-piper-like character arrives and initiates a clean-up campaign. This Mr. Clean, with a few tiny interventions, causes a revolutionary change in the people of the town. When he leaves, they have cleaned up everything and created, yes, a wonderfully better town.

Half a century ago, when I began writing about technology, I was convinced that technology carried the promise of a utopian future. I was further convinced that the only reason that wasn't happening was inferior technology, so I set about becoming a Mr. Clean who wrote about how to do technology (software, in my case) correctly.

Any Technology Can Be Misused

Alas, after many successful years helping make better technology, I began to realize that any technology could be misused—and that better technology in the wrong hands could lead to better mass murder. And most fiction today treats mass murder as an exciting plot element, something for the authorities or amateurs to solve—but not to prevent except by mass murder of some other parties.

I believe that the role of science fiction or techno-fiction is to offer possibilities of other ways of being—other kinds of technology, yes, but more in the way of how we can invent and use technology to help us build a better society—not just hardware and software, but "social technology" that engineers new ways for people to interact.

One problem that social technology will have to address is learning how to prevent atrocities without locking down everyone until the entire country becomes a vast prison (though prisons have their own atrocities). And how to provide the meta-technology to minimize misuse. The protagonists of The Aremac Project are trying to do just that, but are learning how difficult a job it is.

Things Don't Have to Be This Way

I will to continue to explore such possibilities in further novels. I believe I will have to make them interesting and exciting novels in their own right so that people will come away thinking, as I did years ago, "Things don't have to be this way. We can think our way to a better society."

Preaching that message doesn't seem to work. That's the next reason I've decided to write fiction.

Why I Am Now Writing Fiction - 2

Some of non-fiction books have been directed specifically at people in the information technology (IT) business. Some have not. Generally, the ones that have sold best and longest have been the ones not so specifically directed at IT people (The Psychology of Computer Programming is the exception, but think of An Introduction to General Systems Thinking, The Secrets of Consulting, Are Your Lights On, What Did You Say?, Weinberg on Writing, even Exploring Requirements and Becoming a Technical Leader). In other words, my audience is larger than just IT folk.

I no longer write books for the money, but I do like my books to sell because I like to think people are reading them and learning how to be happy. I was upset when the IT market declined during the dot.com bubble burst, because my books declined along with the rest.

One of my happiness lessons says, "It doesn't pay to remain upset for too long, and I can usually think my way out of useless emotions." Applying this lesson, I figured out that there are still lots of smart, talented people out there, in addition to the many remaining IT folk. They were the people for whom I've always written, and as long as I made my novels general enough and appealing enough, there would never be a shortage or readers.

Well, there's no limit to how appealing a story can be. All I had to do was learn the craft.

Sending Messages

"If you want to send a message, go to western union." Attributed to Ernest Hemmingway, Harry Crews, Sam Goldwyn, David Lynch, "they," "oft-quoted sentiment," "old Hollywood saying," "old saw,"

It was good advice for novelists, script writers, children's writers, and actors, but not for me. My whole purpose in writing is to send messages about how to be happy though smart. I would have to take this advice as a caution, rather than a prohibition. I would have to make my messages interesting, embedding them in compelling incidents that would be worth reading even if you didn't care about the messages they contained.

My novels carry messages that are fiction in one sense, but non-fiction in another, more important sense. Every incident is based on one or many incidents I have observed in the hi-tech world over more than half a century. That's the non-fiction. But the specifics of each incident—the technology, in particular—have been changed. That's the fiction. The people's names and appearance are changed, as are the settings in which they operate (fiction), but their personalities, aspirations, character flaws, and behavior are the same (non-fiction).

Experience is the best teacher, which is why my classes have always been experiential, based on simulations of reality. I want my novels to do the same. My goal is to make reading one of my novels like having the experiences of the characters, compressing, say, six months of experience into six hours of reading—fun and interesting reading.

Problem Solving

What makes fiction fun and interesting to me, and to my audience of smart people? Some audiences are transported by long, detailed descriptions of exotic settings. Others adore romantic encounters, horrible crimes, or supernatural phenomena. My audience, the smart people, might enjoy these features of a novel, but deep down, when they love is problem solving.

In my novels, as in my life, my characters engage in at least four types of problem-solving:

1. Technical problems: making stuff work.

2. Personal problems: coping with their own emotions and mental limitations as they try to make stuff work.

3. Interpersonal problems: dealing with people who may be envious of their success, dedicated to their failure, attempting to inflict help, elevating them to godlike status, stealing their creations, working other agendas, or simply blundering around in a way that impedes their progress.

4. Global problems: coping with the intended and unintended effects of their successes and failures.

Most non-fiction technical books concentrate on (1), and that was true of my earliest books, starting half a century ago. As I tired of books becoming obsolete through the advance of technology, I began to look for the deeper human issues underlying the technical problems. My novels are merely the next step in that process. The first one—The Aremac Project—is due out any day now. I hope you let me know if I'm getting a few messages across to you, but most of all, if you enjoy the experience.