Science Fiction
I've been reading both fantasy and science fiction for years. Many, many years. I love them both, although I do tend to read much more science fiction than fantasy. And I've always considered myself strictly a science fiction writer... until now.
I have a fantasy story that has been running around in my head for years, and my muse tells me it is time to start writing it down. As I've begun to outline it, and spin the plot out before beginning to write scenes, I'm struck by the differences and similarities in my process.
I am, and probably always will be, a hard sf writer (that is, when I write scifi.) I think it's that I've been a scientist, and I like to have my stories have scientific credibility. An upcoming novel I have in draft form, tentatively titled The Right Asteroid is very definitely a hard SF novel. You could argue that the Casitian series is soft, because of it's focus on social commentary, but I tried pretty hard to make the science mostly believable. So in the process of outlining a new novel, I spend a fair bit of time figuring out the science. How fast can ships go? Is the star I'd like to pick for the location of a planet truly a good candidate to have a habitable planet? What would living on Mars be like 100 years from now?
In starting to write this new fantasy (ish - I don't want to spoil it, but it does have science fiction elements) I'm starting with what the families look like, and what does royalty look like, and what faith do people adhere to, and what is the social structure like? I'm delving into landscape and weather, and level of technology (like, uh, swords and stuff.) I'm looking at what kinds of gifts people have, etc.
Some similar elements are things like language and names - I've spent time on that a lot in writing scifi as well.
It's fun. It's different, and I'm enjoying the different muscles I'm stretching. And I think it's going to be a fun story.
Self-publishing books used to have a bad reputation. That has changed a little bit over the past couple of years, but there definitely is the sense that people who get published "for real" must be better writers, and certainly have more cred. I decided to self-publish my novels for a number of reasons, after long consideration and contemplation. These reasons are both philosophical as well as deeply personal.
First for the philosophical. There are two different threads that I'll follow in this post about the philosophical underpinnings of my decision not only to self-publish, but also to publish using a Creative Commons License. I have been an open source advocate for many years. Although not as much of a purist as some, I still believe that the way to create and share these digital things we're awash in now, whether it be software, content, data, music, writing, art, what have you, is to make them open and freely available to everyone, and allow anyone to "riff off" of that creativity. And, I want to help encourage economic models which help creators make a living from creating.
Open source software is a great example of a gift economy at work, and although it is never, and can never be purely so until and unless our society operates as a gift economy (my personal economic philosophy) it does present a success of sorts for that ideal.
When I wrote my first novel 5 years ago, I knew I wanted to release that work using an open content model. I worried as an emerging writer about how I could possibly do that and get published at the same time. I even wrote Cory Doctorow an email about it once. He is without a doubt the most well known published author who's work has an open content license. There are very, very few other success stories like his. He was quite nice in reply, and basically said "don't worry about it until later." Well, three books and five years later came, and getting published "for real" didn't look especially likely, especially not with an open content license. I'll talk more about those issues a little later in the personal section.
The second thread has to do the concentration of ownership of media companies in a very, very few hands. Six companies in the United States own the vast majority of media, including TV, radio, music, movies, and print. Most publishers of science fiction and fantasy novels are now owned by one of these big six. And in the pursuit of being published "for real", one might be hard pressed to pick and choose. I found the idea of being a part of that machine kind of distasteful. I don't blame other authors who are - not at all. But I realized it wasn't for me.
These two threads come together in talking about copyright, and the ways in which these large media companies work very hard to not only extend copyright protection for works far beyond what makes sense in order to protect the creators of that work, but also to do their best to limit the availability of work, and prevent unauthorized copying of works with technology such as DRM. Things which, in my humble opinion stifles creativity and innovation instead of fostering it. There is a great (albeit long and complex) discussion of this in Yochai Benkler's amazing book The Wealth of Networks.
So now to the personal. Frankly, I didn't spend many years trying to get an agent, or trying to get published. I did spend some months, however. And I got feedback from editors and such on my work. The most common kind of feedback I got was "it needs more conflict." I even had someone suggest that the Casitians should be involved in a space battle with the US military at the beginning of my first book!
I was fighting with this - I wanted people to read the books. I wanted to get published. But I realized that that wasn't why I was writing. It's a subtle thing. I write to tell stories that flow through me. That's the only way I can describe it. I realized that I wanted to write without compromise. I think I'm a good writer. I hope some day I can become a very good writer. I want people to read what I write - but that's not why I write. I write because I can't not write. I can't not tell these stories that come to me.
I didn't want to have to change how I write, or what I wite just so I can get published. I write on subjects that some science fiction fans (and therefore publishers) won't like. I write about gender, race, sexuality and spirituality. I write about peacemaking, and alternative economic systems. I write about the effects of oppression. I want these stories to be read - I don't want them to simply pile up on my hard drive, with no one to see them but myself.
I don't know what will happen now that I've embarked on this road. It's been fun talking with people who are reading, or have read my first book. I'm looking forward to the process of putting the rest of them out, as I'm also already working on more (yes, there will be more - I said I can't not write.)
It's been almost 5 years since I wrote my first novel in the summer of 2006, a science fiction story about aliens who are human. It has finally made it to the light of day! After a lot of consideration about the current massive changes in the publishing world, and my own penchant for all things technical, I decided to self-publish the novel, in eBook form first. If enough people request it, there will be a print run. There may even be an audio book!
I'm excited that this has happened - I've written a lot in the last 5 years, and I'm happy that I've finally allowed myself to get this out the door! :-)
The novel is called: "The Casitians Return." The sequels in the trilogy, called "The Story of New Earth" and "Humans Untied" will be published in June and August, respectively.
You can watch the video trailer for the book on You Tube.
More information (like where you can get a copy) is on the website. It's not yet available on Amazon for Kindle, but should be in the next couple of weeks or so.
If you want to keep informed, feel free to check out the website, sign up for my email list, and/or check out the Facebook page.
Many of you know that I write science fiction. I've been writing science fiction since the summer of 2006, when I wrote my first novel - it was designed to be the first in a series of three. I subsequently wrote the second (which is mostly complete) and started the third about a year and a half ago. Over the entire time I've been writing, it has been a struggle to figure out what to do with it. On one hand, it would be nice to have the recognition that published authors get. And it also would be nice to have been through that vetting process - people know that what's on the other end is more likely to be good than bad. On the other hand, I'm not looking to make any money off of my writing, I just want people to hear the stories. And as a long time advocate of open content, the idea of moving down the standard publishing route seemed hypocritical - I just couldn't stomach the idea of standard copyright for my work. The idea of telling agents and publishers, at the same time as I was looking to be published as a new, unproven author, that "oh, and by the way, I will demand that all of my work be Creative Commons licensed" seemed a recipe for failure. I know Cory Doctorow did it, but he seems a hard act to follow. Also at the same time, there is a sea change happening in the way that creative work gets distributed - there's disintermediation happening all around - artists sharing and selling their work directly to their audiences, instead of through the standard mediators that used to control distribution. So since I'm pretty much on the technical cutting edge in everything I do, it seemed pretty natural to me to be the same way in this realm as well. And I've also gotten really enamored of the idea of podcasting the novel in episodes. So that is what I am going to do. The episodes will run about every two weeks, starting sometime in late September (once I get a new microphone, and iron out all the kinks.) All episodes will be licensed with a Creative Commons license (I haven't chosen one yet.) I'll also include small amounts of CC-licensed music in the podcast. At some point, if there seems to be interest, I'll put the text up as well in varied formats (probably text, pdf and .mobi,) also CC-licensed. I hope all five of you who listen like it.
I'm quite excited - I'm on my way to WisCon, a feminist Science Fiction Convention. I'm doing a writing workshop on Friday, which I'm really excited about, then there are lots and lots of things going on until Sunday night. It's my first scifi con, which is kinda funny, since I've been a science fiction fan since I was a little kid. Somehow I missed the con circuit earlier in life. I guess perhaps because I never was the fannish sort. This should be exciting, and it has given my writing a burst of energy - now I just need to find the time to use it!
Here's a new SF books meme, which, I think, is better than the last meme, which had no women authors. This is a longer list, and has some women in it.
I got this from Lou Anders. This is the Science Fiction Book Club's list of the fifty most significant science fiction/fantasy novels published between 1953 and 2002.
As a long time science fiction fan, and a new science fiction writer, there is no question that a very formative influence on me was Star Trek, which is celebrating it's 40th year. I watched TOS (The Original Series) as a kid with my mom, and watched each series as it came out, except for the last, Enterprise, which started around when I stopped watching TV regularly, and also I heard it wasn't great. I've seen every Star Trek movie at least once, some a number of times. I have my list of favorite episodes, and favorite movies.
I just read a great essay by Pam Noles about, among other things, the adaptation of "A Legend of Earthsea" by Ursula LeGuin by the SciFi channel last year. I read about this essay in BoingBoing, and there has been some interesting commentary on it.
