Just The Caffeine Talking

Captain Opposite

I've noticed an interesting approach to writing genre characters, one which also applies to roleplaying games and other media as well: take an iconic character and make up someone who is as opposite to that character as possible.

When Michael Moorcock wanted to write a "sword and sorcery" epic, he didn't make his main character a clone of Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian. Instead he made up Elric of Melnibone, who is Conan's opposite in almost every way. Where Conan is a barbarian, Elric is the scion of his world's most advanced and decadent civilization. Where Conan is a warrior who enjoys a good fight, Elric is skilled in magic and intrigue as much as swordplay. Conan fights his way to the throne of Aquilonia, while Elric begins as a hereditary Emperor and ultimately abandons his throne and kingdom.

When Patrick O'Brian began writing a series of Napoleonic-era sea stories based on the life of Thomas Cochrane, he didn't make his main character a clone of C.S. Forrester's Horatio Hornblower. Instead he made up Jack Aubrey. Where Hornblower is a progressive Whig with suspiciously 20th-Century attitudes, Aubrey is a reactionary Tory. Where Hornblower is tone-deaf, Aubrey is a skilled musician. Where Hornblower is diffident and shy with women (mostly), Aubrey is an enthusiastic womanizer. And where Hornblower is isolated and lonely in command, Aubrey has the constant friendship of Stephen Maturin.

Some authors even do it to themselves. L. Frank Baum's first Oz novel centered on Dorothy, a girl from Kansas swept off to Oz by a tornado and trying desperately to return home. His second centered on Tip, a boy native to Oz who is running away from home. With the help of magic, Dorothy gets back to Kansas and resumes her old life. Tip is transformed into Ozma and begins an entirely new existence as a Lovely Girl Ruler. 

One of my mottoes is "Constraints inspire creativity," and I think this is a perfect example. Using the "Captain Opposite" method one gets two sets of constraints, and their intersection can generate wonderful creativity. The first constraint is of course making the character the opposite of an iconic genre character. But it goes beyond simple negation. The second constraint is that Captain Opposite still has to work as a genre character himself. 

After all, making a sea captain who isn't Horatio Hornblower should be pretty easy: make him incompetent, cowardly, arrogant, and ultimately a failure. (And in fact George MacDonald Fraser did just that with his Harry Flashman.) But what makes Aubrey a classic character in his own right is that he is Hornblower's foil — but also his equal. He works as the anti-Hornblower but still gets to do all the Cochrane-inspired exploits. (In fact, my personal opinion is that by stripping away Hornblower's anachronistic ideas about personal hygiene and democracy, O'Brian makes Aubrey a more realistic and vivid character.)

Similarly, Moorcock's Elric still works as a Sword 'n Sorcery hero, despite being the kind of person Conan routinely beheaded in his own climactic battles. Howard famously made Conan the sort of person whose first instinct is to fight his way out of a situation, which was perfect for the pulp action stories Howard wanted to tell. Moorcock's Elric, by contrast, hates the vampiric magical sword which keeps him alive. His efforts to avoid fighting get him into more and more trouble — and build the reader's anticipation for the inevitable moment when he does finally pull out Stormbringer and start swinging.

So, here's an exercise for the next time you're writing in a genre with iconic characters: try to create a Captain Opposite. An anti-Sherlock Holmes who still solves baffling crimes, an anti- James Bond who still thwarts Britain's secret foes, maybe even an anti-Batman who still battles supervillains. If you can think of other examples I'd love to hear about them in the comments.

 

The Zydeco Operation

The Godel Operation comes to Acadiana! On Wednesday, September 22, I'll be doing a reading and signing at southwestern Louisiana's premier book shop, Beausoleil Books of Lafayette, from 6 to 8 p.m. The event is free and all are welcome.

Come on down and hear some of the adventures of Daslakh and Zee in the Billion Worlds of the Tenth Millennium! I'll answer any questions and sign whatever is put in front of me. 

Did I mention this bookstore has a wine bar? That's the hallmark of a truly advanced civilization.  

Excellent Analog Review

Don Sakers has a review of The Godel Operation posted in the current issue of Analog. You can see it online here (but only until the next issue comes out). 

Because of that time limit, I'm going to quote it, especially since the review really is quite favorable.

In science fiction we deal with weirdness budgets all the time, especially in stories set in the far future and dealing with technology advanced enough to be, in Arthur C. Clarke’s phrase, “indistinguishable from magic.”

Any advanced far future must include elements that today’s readers find unfamiliar, if not downright bizarre. We know that time brings change. Any world of future millennia in which everything is just like today just isn’t convincing.

At the same time, a future world with too much change borders on the incomprehensible. . . . Indeed, some cross right over the border. If we’re going to be honest, a realistic depiction of a society thousands of years in the future would be foreign in language, culture, technology, and a thousand other variables. It would be at least as hard for a present-day reader to apprehend as are Sumerian cuneiform or Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Authors of far future SF must tread a thin line: Exceed the weirdness budget and lose readers, or use too little weirdness and bore them.

In The Godel Operation James L. Cambias hits the balance just right.

This was an issue I really worried about while writing Godel Operation. I wanted to have relatable characters at least similar to modern humans, but I wanted to convey the fantastic reality of the Billion Worlds. Glad to hear I managed to thread that needle.

Pulp Covers!

Here's an article on LitHub about pulp-style covers for some very not-pulp novels. I even remember seeing some of these back in the 1970s. Some are silly, but a few are hilariously wrong.

Still, I kind of wish publishers still did covers like these. I think my own novels could really benefit.

A Darkling Sea: scantily clad Alicia menaced by giant lobster, beefy Rob Freeman wrestling it, knife in hand. Tagline: "An Ocean of Danger — and Passion!"

Corsair: bare-chested beefy David Schwartz, bikini-clad Elizabeth Santiago trading pistol shots with bad guys as a rocket lifts off in the background. Tagline: "A Fortune From Space — Big Enough to Kill For!"

Arkad's World: Arkad, sans shirt, punches tentacled pirates while Baichi in just the shreds of her torn cloak fights off a clawed flying monster. Tagline: "Across a World of Danger Lies the Ultimate Treasure!"

The Initiate: Pretty much the cover and tagline of the actual book, really. Maybe replace creepy horror-novel Isabella with Taika Feng in a femme-fatale pose.

The Godel Operation: Shirtless Zee and Adya in torn skintight spacesuit battling a big boxy robot with eye-beams. Tagline: "Save the Fabric of Existence Itself!"

My Canon

In modern geek culture we've begun to use the term "Universe" to refer to a background setting, particularly one which is shared by multiple creative works. The most famous, right now, is probably the "Marvel Cinematic Universe," which encompasses all the Marvel/Disney superhero films and TV series since Iron Man in 2008. There are some odd borderline cases, mostly the result of rights ownership issues, but right now pretty much all live-action films about Marvel characters can be assumed to take place in the same world.

A related concept is "canonicity" — which stories "really happened" in the fictional universe versus which ones are either "imaginary stories" (a term pioneered by DC Comics in the Silver Age) or alternate timelines. The Star Trek universe illustrates this: for a long time the rule was that the live-action TV shows and movies were "real" and thus canon while animated shows, comic books, tie-in novels, and games were not.

There was some permeability, as when the depiction of Klingon society and culture invented by John M. Ford for his novel The Final Reflection and the FASA Star Trek roleplaying game were adopted wholesale by the makers of Star Trek: The Next Generation and thereby became canonical. The 2009 film snarled everything up by introducing a canonical timeline split induced by time travel, so that it's no longer clear which universe is which.

All that throat-clearing accomplished, now I have to grapple with the fact that I seem to be creating a couple of Universes of my own.

Most of my novels and short fiction have been stand-alone works. The world of my first short story "A Diagram of Rapture" has nothing to do with my second story "The Alien Abduction," or my first novel A Darkling Sea. And none of them are connected with The Initiate or "Object Three" or Arkad's World.

However, because I was writing "Abduction" and Darkling Sea around the same time, some concepts and jargon did seep into both. Those two stories can be considered to share the same Universe. Its defining features are:

• Very near-future interstellar travel (basically some smart people discover a convenient way to go faster than light next week, and this sparks a boom in space exploration),
• Star travel primarily a scientific endeavor, under the auspices of the UN Interstellar Cooperation Agency (UNICA),
• Multiple intelligent species, but
• Few technological civilizations.

I may return to this Universe again, especially if I want to do another first-contact story. There are some complications about publishing, but nothing insuperable. Possible names for this setting are "the Darklingverse" or "the UNICA/UNIDA universe." At present it includes only the novel and the short story already mentioned.

My second, and more extensive Universe is of course the Billion Worlds. So far it encompasses one published novel, one published short story, a novel in progress and two forthcoming short stories. In addition, some concepts and ideas from some of my earlier works show up again in the Billion Worlds, so I'm inclined to retroactively put those stories into the same history.

So, the official list of Canonical Billion Worlds Universe fiction, straight from the creator, is:

"Balancing Accounts" (2008) — the dawn of autonomous sarcastic artificial intelligence;

"Periapsis" (2014) — first mention of Deimos as an important power center;

Corsair (2015) — the dawn of private space development and colonization;

"Contractual Obligation" (2014) — collective AI runs a military squad, Deimos shows its ruthless side;

"Calando" (2020) — specifically mentions the Billion Worlds, side reference shows up in Godel Operation;

The Godel Operation (2021) — primary introduction of the Billion Worlds;

"Out of the Dark" (forthcoming) — Billion Worlds short story, references Juren habitat;

"The Paoshi Puzzle" (forthcoming) — involves Adya and Pelagia from Godel Operation;

The Scarab Mission (in progress) — takes place a few years before Godel Operation and involves one character from that book.

By including Corsair I can even create a thrilling canon/non-canon debate about its short story progenitor "The Barbary Shore" of 2007. Let the flamewars begin!

Event Horizon Interview on YouTube

I have been a fan of John Michael Godier's "Event Horizon" channel on YouTube for more than a year now, so I was particularly pleased when Mr. Godier and his team decided to interview me about my new book The Godel Operation. The interview itself was great fun. Our conversation rambled widely, discussing the book, artificial intelligence, apocalypses, the Fermi Paradox, and some topics I'm probably forgetting.

While it's technically a "video" because it's on YouTube, the graphics are mostly just for show. You can listen to it here. Enjoy!

How's It Doing?

 

The Godel Operation has been out for three weeks now. I've done interviews and promotion — there's an interview on the "Event Horizon" YouTube channel due to drop Friday the 27th. I'm sending out signed bookplates in lieu of autographings. Reviews have been good: Publishers' Weekly liked it, and Paul DiFilippo wrote a glowing piece for Locus. Responses on GoodReads and Amazon customer reviews are also very complimentary.

Naturally, this prompts people to ask how the book is selling. I can track that a little — the Amazon ranking is currently #1430 in "Hard SF," #4645 in "Space Operas," and #6272 in "Science Fiction Adventures." That's pretty good. Store sales, however, are a mystery.

Publishing in 2021 is an odd mix of current cutting-edge tech and practices dating back to the age of Dickens. I write on a laptop, and submit my manuscript in electronic form via email. The book doesn't actually exist in physical form until it's sent to the printer. It's all just-in-time and postindustrial.

But sales information and royalty payments hearken back to the era of stagecoaches and post horns. I won't see my first official sales reports until six months after publication. 

So for now we are enveloped in fog. I hope a lot of people find this book. I think they'll like it. Pass the word.

I Will Sign Your Book Wherever You Are

There haven't been any bookstore signing events for The Godel Operation, and I haven't been able to attend any conventions in person. But one of my friends had a brilliant suggestion: signed bookplates! 

I ordered a batch: they're self-sticking bookplates, about the size of a business card, with original artwork (above) by Emily Cambias, showing the logo of the spaceship Pelagia from the novel. It is a proven fact that copies of the book with Pelagia's logo never get destroyed by angry whale cyborg space mercenaries.

If you want a signed bookplate, just email me at billionworldspromo@gmail.com, and I'll get one in the mail as soon as possible. You can have more than one if you want, although my supply is finite. I'll also throw in some bookmarks from previous books and anthologies, depending on what I have.

So anyone in the world can now get their copy of The Godel Operation signed, and I don't have to get out of my chair.

Baen Free Radio Interview

The Baen Free Radio Hour sounds like it should be broadcast from hidden antennas deep in occupied territory, keeping the flame of freedom alive. Actually, it's a podcast. They've got an interview with me up now, about — no surprise — The Godel Operation.

You can listen to it or watch the video version here. Note that the video player doesn't seem to like the Safari browser.

 

Big Idea Guest Post

I've got a long guest post up at John Scalzi's 'blog Whatever, part of his ongoing "Big Idea" series for writers to talk about their work. For this post I waded deep into the history of how I came up with the Billion Worlds setting and my future plans for more stories in that future.

It did make me wonder something: various libraries around the country have collections of "papers" from various authors. H.P. Lovecraft's letters and unpublished drafts are at the John Hay Library at Brown University, for example. 

But I have no "papers," at least not as such. I have a hard drive stuffed with material — but memory storage decays, formats and hardware become obsolete. Will there be any "papers" of 21st-century writers for libraries to keep? And if libraries do maintain electronic archives of unpublished material by authors, how secure will they be? What's to prevent some busybody from going into the John Scalzi Collection at the University of Chicago Library in 2121, in order to remove (or insert) passages offensive to that era's sensibilities? With a box full of crumbling old typescripts one can at least authenticate the age of a document, and whether it was made on the right typewriter with the right kind of ink. But electronic documents have no such protection. Metadata can be tinkered with.

It will be ironic if future centuries have more concrete information about pre-2000 authors than they do about their nearer contemporaries.