Just The Caffeine Talking

Worldbuilding Workshop: After-Action Report

On April 17 I ran a three-hour workshop on science fiction worldbuilding for the Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop. It was my first time teaching a class of any kind, so I think I learned as much as I hope my students did.

The students were great. All ten of them were engaged, intelligent, and seemed to have no trouble keeping up. They all participated, asked useful questions, and grasped the concepts quickly. Better still, they appeared to be having fun.

The online format worked well enough, but doing class discussion via Zoom did slow everything down considerably. Questions take longer, polling the class takes longer, and typing on the online "whiteboard" screen is much less satisfying than actually writing on a board in front of a group of people. I really want to do this in person when I do the class again.

The three-hour time slot seems about right. Longer would just wear everyone out. If I can streamline the presentation I can fit more material into three hours and keep the class engaged.

My outline was a little over-complicated. I began with what I had planned to be a brief lecture on why and how to do worldbuilding, but it ran a little long. After that we began a collaborative exercise, in which I walked the class through creating an alien world. Their choices drove what kind of a world we built, and I tried to show how story choices set requirements for the planet's physical parameters. I think I could trim down the introductory lecture and introduce more of the physical science aspects as they come up in discussion.

One thing which I will change is the option of designing the world from the bottom up (Hal Clement style) versus top-down. That choice just added a time-consuming step. In future workshops I think I'll simply start with the story concept and show how that informs all the worldbuilding decisions.

Another feature I would love to add would be to collaborate with an artist. This would be best for a live workshop, where my colleague could be sketching away on an easel or whiteboard while the class proceeds. People — even writers — are visual animals, and seeing what we're imagining would be a huge benefit. I need to find someone who can draw aliens and otherworldly environments quickly, and is willing to do it for a three-hour stretch. (Any volunteers? Contact me privately if you're in western Massachusetts and are willing to do it. You will get paid.)

Overall I was very happy with the turnout — a full class of ten people, all excellent participants. If there's enough demand I'd be happy to do this twice a year or even quarterly. As soon as I can set up another session I'll announce it here on my 'blog, and of course on the PVWW Web page.

Publishers Weekly Reviews Godel Operation

The first reviews of The Godel Operation are starting to trickle in as the release date approaches. Here's what Publishers Weekly had to say. Sounds like their reviewer enjoyed it. I hope everyone else does, too. 

The Godel Operation 

James L. Cambias. Baen, $16 trade paper (288p) ISBN 978-1-982125-56-1 

With this freewheeling story of an ancient, cunning artificial intelligence and its naïve human companion, Cambias (The Initiate) mashes humor, mystery, and looming apocalypse into a roundly satisfying space epic. In the Tenth Millennium, AI Daslakh’s effort to help human Zee feel that life has purpose lands the duo amid a maelstrom of treasure hunters, among them a woman Zee erroneously believes to be his long-lost girlfriend, a disaffected young lady of wealth, the “Greatest Thief in History,” and a cat with human intelligence. They’re all on the trail of a legendary weapon rumored to be capable of destroying the quintillions of AIs on which civilization depends. It’s a legend Daslakh has millennia of experience with, and its knowledge of the weapon’s true nature is teased out through flashbacks to its past. Cambias positions eminently likable characters—particularly the cynical Daslakh, who is constantly frustrated in its role as Zee’s guardian—on the edge of a very old abyss. With plenty of fun moments along the way, this raucous adventure through the solar system’s distant future will appeal to any fan of lighter science fiction. (May) 

Godel Operation Minus 10

Ten days from now is the official publication date of The Godel Operation. The clocks are running, the pumps are powering up, and the gantry has been rolled back. Be sure to get a copy because this launch is going to be spectacular.

If you want to read more about The Godel Operation, see my recent guest post at Sarah Hoyt's 'blog According to Hoyt. In that post I talk about the problems I've had in writing an optimistic far-future science fiction series at a time when it's hard to be optimistic about anything. Read it here.

There are many other Godel-related events in the works. Watch this space for more announcements!

In the Right Ballpark

Last year I wrote a nine-part series of 'blog posts about the Drake Equation, the Fermi Paradox, the Great Filter, and how many civilizations are likely to exist in the Milky Way Galaxy. If you want to re-read it, start here. To give away the ending, after a lot of discussion I would up estimating about 50 space-exploring civilizations in our Galaxy.

Apparently I wasn't the only one who's been thinking about this topic last summer. I just saw an article in Popular Mechanics, dated July 2020, reporting in turn on a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal. The authors, Tom Westby and Christopher Conselice, analyzed the likelihood of space-exploring civilizations arising in the Milky Way and came up with a figure of . . . 36.

That sound you hear is me, preening. 

Let's Build a World

This Saturday, April 17, I'll be teaching "It Used to Take a Week," an online workshop on worldbuilding in science fiction for the Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop. This is a new step for me — I've never taught a class before. Except that I've done hundreds of convention panels and presentations over the years, and run game sessions online and in person, and basically done all the things that go into teaching a class.

My main problem is squeezing everything into the time slot. I've got three hours to teach students how to build a planet and its inhabitants, based on science as hard as I can make it. In short, I've got to teach courses in astronomy, planetary astronomy, geology, climatology, biochemistry, biomechanics, astrobiology, psychology, anthropology, comparative civilizations, and writing, all in 90 minutes.

After that we'll do a "worked example," creating a world and civilization using what we've learned, which students can then use for their own fiction or game projects.

If nothing else, there's no danger of anyone being bored . . .

 

Inception Et Cetera

I recently saw the film Inception for the first time — I'm not sure why I didn't watch it when it came out, but I didn't. It's a great movie, and it helped me to understand a key difference between science fiction films and novels.

A perennial gripe about SF in movies is that films sacrifice science and plausibility for spectacle. That's true, and I think that's kind of the point. A film is, after all, a visual experience. Showing an amazing shot (like Inception's tilting and zero-gravity hotel, or a fight between people moving in different directions in time in Tenet) is the goal, and the script and storyboard are created to allow that.

Of course a novel can have amazing spectacles, too. Larry Niven's classic book Ringworld is full of marvels — a stellar flare turned into a weapon, teleport sidewalks, flying cities, a giant mountain with a secret at the top, moving planets, and of course the titular ring itself.

But Christopher Nolan, the director of Inception, has one huge advantage that Larry Niven doesn't. He can show you his amazing spectacles, right up there on the screen with Hans Zimmer music playing. Your brain accepts it as real, simply because your brain is accustomed to accept what you see as real.

Larry Niven can't do that. He has to use other methods to fool your brain into accepting his marvels. For a novelist one very effective tool of trickery is plausibility. In a novel you fool the reader's brain by making everything seem so real and scientifically possible that their disbelief gets suspended.

However, these tools work on different aspects of belief. Visuals get accepted right away ("seeing is believing"), but when the viewer leaves the theater there will be some discussion and nitpicking. "Why didn't they . . . ?" Getting the audience to accept written marvels may take more persuading, but the result is more permanent.

So I'm going to stick to my own conviction: that there's no reason to put these things in opposition. Good writing or good visuals are not antithetical to sound science and plausibility. You can have both, and you should. Imagine if Christopher Nolan's movies didn't have to include a character telling the protagonist (and the audience) "Don't think about it too much." 

Look What's Here!

I was sitting at home minding my own business on Thursday when the dog started barking because a delivery truck was coming up our driveway. They're common enough nowadays, but this truck had come to deliver something I wasn't expecting for a couple of weeks yet: the first copies of my new novel The Godel Operation. Here it is, 275 pages in trade paperback format. The official publication date isn't until May 4, but if I'm getting copies now they may be trickling into bookstores. Or you can order from Amazon. A billion worlds await . . .

Note: I got the books Thursday and wanted to post this immediately— but then I decided that people might take it more seriously if I didn't make my big announcement on April 1.

(Photo by Diane Kelly)