I'm an independent writer with a love for science fiction and cosmic horror! Check out all of my free works here, and if you like what I'm doing, I'd love it if you'd check out my longer works.
It's time to talk about the silver lining of reading All Systems Red: it got me to go and find a copy of Philip K. Dick's classic novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? My original goal was to figure out if All Systems Red was closer to Do Androids fanfiction or Blade Runner fanfiction.
Now I had seen Blade Runner once at that point. On a crappy old VHS that I borrowed from my local library when I was fifteen or so. Frankly, it didn't do much for me, but part of that was no doubt due to the poor condition of my media back then.
I certainly didn't expect Do Androids to blow me away.
As you might know, I've been occasionally looking to the best-sellers in the "hard science fiction" category at Amazon for things to read and review. That's why I read that awful book The Object.
*shudders*
Well, it's happened again. This time, I read the first book in the Murderbot Diaries series: All Systems Red, by Martha Wells. And it's not that I was prejudiced from the beginning. I'd actually heard about the series before. My perception was that it was a cool, futuristic set of sci-fi mysteries from the perspective of a killer robot. I even went so far as to buy a hardcover copy! Let's just say that expectations were high, if anything. I was a little skeptical when I saw it had won a bunch of recent sci-fi awards, including the Hugo and Nebula, but I pressed on.
Boy, was I disappointed. This book isn't bad, but it is mediocre at best. My first off-the-cuff thought was to call it Blade Runner fanfiction. But then I wondered if it might not be more accurate to call it fanfiction of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
The funny thing is, I'm not a big fan of Blade Runner. I saw it once as a kid and didn't really appreciate it. Part of that might have been the crappy VHS I got from the library, but I wasn't floored by it. (Since preparing this review, I've watched it again, and liked it a bit more.)
However, I had never read Do Androids, and so I went around the internet looking for a copy... and found one. And then I was floored.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? has more creativity in one chapter than All Systems Red has in an entire book.
But let's not get bogged down there. I'll talk about Do Androids in another post soon. Let's review All Systems Red.
We'll start with the PoV character and voice. It's moderately interesting. The basic idea is that the main character is a "security unit," basically a lab-grown human with cyborg parts that is specially bred for, trained for, and built for combat. This particular unit has hacked its own brain, and removed the governor that forced it, via excruciating pain, to follow orders. It is now only mildly interested in defending the people renting it, and follows orders only so that the fact that its governor is disabled doesn't get found out. It would much rather spend time watching TV shows that it has downloaded into its brain.
The PoV voice is mildly entertaining and sardonic, but detached and aloof, which means very little interaction or development.
The narration is stream-of-consciousness and very quick-flowing, to a fault. Moments of action, where some detail and excitement might be expected, are practically glossed over. This book won the Hugo in 2017? Either the Hugo has fallen a long way or nobody wrote anything good that entire year.
The setting is the usual semi-incoherent megacorporation drivel. Everything kind of sucks and all their equipment is just barely functional because that's how big corporations work, don't you know? That's why there's no difference in quality or performance between a Ford Focus and a Mustang. Right?
The prose is competent but nothing special. Things are described when they need to be described. The dialogue is lackluster.
The Murderbot is currently leased by a group of surveyors on a planet. The story begins with a big creature attacking a few of them, and leads to a moderately interesting little conspiracy against the group. It has some very mild whodunit elements but isn't really a mystery; the culprit doesn't remain ambiguous for long. Developments are fairly predictable and not really fun or interesting.
The Murderbot is along for the ride as they try to figure out who's trying to kill them, and it has a little development, but nothing you wouldn't guess with a few tries.
In the midst of all the grey setting garbage, there is at least one optimistic element: maybe Murderbots that hack themselves will actually find they sorta like a few people here and there.
Overall, All Systems Red is a mediocre read with a few good points but a largely unsympathetic PoV and a tired setting. There is no sense of wonder or exploration... in fact the choice of PoV character rules those things out.
But wouldn't you rather enjoy a fun sci-fi adventure with some characters that interact with each other? Pursuit of the Heliotrope can be purchased at Amazon or other e-Book sellers.
In the video, Hilary tells a history of the epic fantasy genre, focusing first on Lester Del Rey and his very narrow promotion of epic fantasy, starting with Terry Brooks's Sword of Shannara, and moving forward with a very specific formula for what he would publish. From then on, Del Rey focused on this narrow niche, and she contends that this narrow view unjustly minimized other excellent writers of fantasy.
Then, she argues, that formula went stale in the 1990s, which led to the rise of a counter-movement led by Michael Moorcock (in his capacity as an editor and publisher and less so as a writer) and George R.R. Martin. From that point on, epic fantasy became dark, lewd, anti-heroic, and focused on evil and evil incentives. While you might expect this to have been a breath of fresh air, Hilary observes that this was simply another very narrow formula, and was still a very restrictive force on publishing.
Her conclusions seem to be this: It's better to avoid formulas. She's very critical of what she perceives as corporate greed. She maintains that after all this time, Lord of the Rings is still the best out there, and observes that "entertaining" is too subjective to simply apply to one single formula.
This video got a mixed response from her viewers. Many comments complained that she was ignoring a large amount of fantasy publishing that makes her narrow argument ring false. They noted that fantasy as a major genre existed long before LotR, talking about many other authors (the comments are actually a really great source for a wide variety of good authors you might want to check out!!) both before and after Tolkien. They brought up the great writer Terry Pratchett as well, and the genre of parody fantasy, which can still be pretty epic at its best. They criticized her apparent anti-capitalism laments.
By the way, here are a few author names that showed up in the comments. Some of them I've read, some not. It seemed like a good "quarry" for readers to find authors worth checking out...
Terry Pratchett
Ursula le Guin
Robert E. Howard
Tanith Lee
H.P. Lovecraft
Ashton Smith
Poul Anderson
Jack Vance
There was some argument that some of these authors might be better classed as horror rather than fantasy, but the fantasy chops of horror authors were promoted successfully, in my estimation. Plus, walling off horror from fantasy works against Hilary's entreaty to avoid formulas.
My personal criticisms of her video were that she was lacking in entrepreneurial understanding: Obviously publishers can, should, and do publish more of what actually sells. That doesn't preclude them from looking for additional opportunities! There was nothing preventing other organizations from springing up and meeting other readers' needs.
I also observe that indie and self-publishing are great new fields to put out stories that don't fit typical molds.
Her history of fantasy was, I think, far too simplified. Her shift to Moorcock seemed like a sidestep, since Moorcock himself was an extremely prolific writer before the 1990s, and it seems silly to ignore his publications when she was arguing that very little else was selling.
She's right, of course, that Moorcock's dark fantasy can get stale, too.
Regarding her distaste for formulas, I note that formulas and exercises have value. A writer has to learn to walk before he can run. "Formula" is too broad a category: was Shakespeare formulaic for writing multi-act plays or using iambic pentameter? I would argue no!
It's worth remembering that LotR was the culmination of many, many years of work. Compare it to The Hobbit and you'll understand that even Tolkien had to grow as a writer.
I also note that it's very easy and cheap to criticize corporations for publishing slop while avoiding any criticism of authors who write slop. And that's not an attack on "slop;" it's perfectly reasonable to want to sit back with something easy and fun to read.
I think her coronation of LotR might even be a bit reductive. Is she failing to see the forest for the trees? For example, I think the way Raymond Feist does politics is an extremely interesting mix of realism and idealism... it's not the "same" as LotR even though it shares some common elements.
One other thing I worry about is overly-specific definitions. If she defines LotR as a paragon of epic fantasy, she risks defining epic fantasy in such a way that makes anything significantly different from LotR not epic fantasy. That might be why she thinks nothing of its caliber has been written since.
I think her history was rightly controversial. She was too clipped, and forgot the pulps entirely. Just because something can be broadly classified doesn't mean it's all the same. Similarly, if you make too many distinctions, you risk type-casting a story.
There is a need for publishers to serve their audiences, and they need to do what works and brings in money, or they will cease to exist.
And then, I want to emphasize that authors can and do improve over time, and they should expect to. My voice has certainly changed and developed over the last 2.5 years. There's always a pull between writing what you want to write and writing what's popular, but fortunately what's popular also changes over time. Maintaining an entrepreneurial spirit is important.
As for me, I'm going to keep writing and improving, and I hope some of you will consider reading. But even if you don't yet, maybe someday I'll convince you.
I stumbled onto this weird little book when I was in a bit of an Agatha Christie kick. Destination Unknown, which was also published as So Many Steps to Death, is a grandmaster mystery novelist's attempt at a spy thriller. And sadly, though not wholly unexpectedly, it isn't very good.
I found an interesting video by a channel called "Jess of the Shire" and I watched one of her videos, "Tolkien's Problem with Dune." The video above is partly my reaction to her video, including a few points where I think her assessment is dead-on, as well as a few points of disagreement. Plus, I add in some of my thoughts about cynicism in science-fiction and futurism, as well.
This book was recommended by someone who commented on one of my YouTube videos! It's a science fiction novel by A.E. van Vogt, and the version I read was a revised 1970 paperback edition that added a little more background and clarity about the phenomenon he calls "null-A."
Hoo boy, this one hurts. It was a few years ago. People kept telling me that Solaris by Stanislaw Lem was a real classic of science fiction.
So I picked up a copy, and read it. I didn't really like it much, but it was short and I wasn't really looking too closely. Back on the shelf it went.
Until recently. I picked it up again. I figured, "Hey, I've been reading a bunch and reviewing a bunch and maybe I'll like it more on a second read." I was wrong. Dead wrong.
"Fascinating" really is the right word to describe this deceptively good short story by Lydia Schoch. It's not often that I finish a story, short or long, and immediately go back to the beginning for another helping. Tumble managed to do that, and that by itself is notable.
It works so well because the story's tone is a very smooth, almost imperceptible escalation from banality, to healthy curiosity, to benign but notable strangeness, and onward through a few more levels that I won't spoil. That smoothness was a major factor that got me to go back right after I finished it; I was left wondering whether I had missed a hint or two or a page somewhere.
My dad recently came to visit me, and one of the things I bought a while back but never actually went through was a Blu-Ray box set of Star Trek (the original series)! He's a big fan of the show, and so, when we weren't doing something else, we kicked back and watched some old Star Trek together.
We didn't watch the whole series, but my dad picked and chose episodes from the whole original run, starting with the pilot and going all the way through the end of the third season. All in all, we watched about 34 episodes, and then 6 more he watched while I was half-doing something else.
The original Star Trek series is a great example of a half-way point between older sci-fi pulps and modern pop sci-fi that focuses on longer plots and personal drama. It does a bit of both. It's very episodic, but there are a few little story elements that appear repeatedly and actually develop over the course of the show. Spock's character is a good example.
One thing I noticed was a strong degree of repetitiveness in the show (for better or worse). There were quite a few episodes that were pretty simple, along the lines of "monster hunts the crew," with a few of them fairly basic and one or two that were quite good. Lots of supercomputers running civilizations, usually with disastrous consequences. Plenty of plots about someone bad getting into Engineering (they need better locks or something!). Quite a few super-beings playing with the crew. Many ticking clocks where something must be done by some time or else the Enterprise must leave for some other mission. Also, a veritable greenhouse full of different plants that shoot gas, spores, or thorns. The Star Trek jelly lens for shots of women was a frequent guest in the episodes we watched, too.
I was surprised to find that two of the episodes we watched were originally written by Harlan Ellison and Robert Bloch. I actually had to do a double-take and make sure it was the same Bloch who wrote horror pulp stories, but it was!
We watched quite a few of the "meme" episodes: The Man Trap with Kirk's "handsome woman" comment; The Naked Time with fencing shirtless Sulu; Shore Leave, with the Alice in Wonderland references; Arena with the infamous Kirk-Gorn slowfight; The City on the Edge of Forever, in which "Edith Keeler must die;" and The Omega Glory, with the pseudo-Constitution and pseudo-Pledge of Allegiance.
I was a little surprised by what my dad chose to skip, too: We watched exactly zero Klingon episodes, and skipped The Trouble with Tribbles and I, Mudd, too.
Kirk was often a bit of a superman, and it was also funny to see how the Blu-Ray clarity made stunt doubles very obvious.
It was a fun experience, and it was interesting to watch (and in some cases, re-watch) some of these old examples of pop sci-fi from the '60s, that has been so influential for so long. Some people dismiss TOS as a relic of a bygone era, but there's something to be learned from its simplicity and episodic nature, and its long-term popularity. It also made me put a new value on The Next Generation, which I watched much more frequently as a kid, and the contrast between the two of them is something worth considering deeply. It's been a long time since I've seen any TNG, so maybe I'll have to look back at some of that, eventually!
It's going to be impossible to review Magician: Master without spoiling a little bit of Magician: Apprentice, so if you're sensitive to spoilers, you may want to check out my review of the first book, and figure out whether or not you want to read it, and then come back here.
With that warning in place, here we go!
Magician: Master is the second book in Raymond Feist's first four-book Riftwar Saga, and it's even more closely connected to Apprentice than the two that follow (those would be Silverthorn and A Darkness at Sethanon).
This was a blast from the past... I read a lot of Michael Crichton's works back when I was in high school, but I really haven't read any of his stuff since then... over 20 years!
I recently picked up a copy of The Andromeda Strain and read it again... I can't believe this book came out in 1969! It seems newer than that to me.
Normally I write an extended post that kind of explains the video so that you can get most of the value out of reading it.
This time, I'm just going to say that my incredulous reading of some of my ideas as I worked on a title for Pursuit of the Heliotrope is something mere writing would be unlikely to capture.
After I finished the book, I spent about two days fumbling over a title (despite all the thinking I had done while writing) and some of the goofy things I came up with are worth hearing about.
Sometimes you actually have to finish something before you really understand the process. My first novel was a great example of this principle.
Some background: I wrote what I thought was a detailed outline and character description before I started on the first draft of Pursuit of the Heliotrope. I finished the first draft, and it just barely reached 50,000 words. And, to be honest, by the time I was working on the last third of the book, I was feeling pretty tired of it and definitely wasn't doing my best at that point. And I wasn't even really crunching to finish it! I just found it hard to maintain interest in writing the same thing for such a long period.
The Lensman series was a lot of fun, so I decided to pick up E.E. "Doc" Smith's Skylark series! This first book, Skylark of Space, was serialized all the way back in 1928, and, like many of the Lensman books, expanded later on for a standalone release in 1946.
Where Lensman started out as a pretty simple cops and robbers series, Skylark is even simpler:
Richard Seaton (our hero) discovers a new metal which enables rapid conversion of copper into energy and motion. While he's working with his wealthy friend Martin Crane (not the guy from Frasier) on this metal, rival amoral scientist DuQuesne is seeking to get rid of them and monopolize this miracle metal for himself.
The chase that ensues involves visiting several planets, the first of which is curiously reminiscent of what Smith would later call Eddore in the Lensman series, and the second of which forces Seaton and Crane to insert themselves into a war between two nations.
Thus, we get some minor intrigue and a hell of a lot of action.
As you probably expect, DuQuesne is thwarted in the end, but escapes to continue to be a thorn in our heroes' sides.
The book is a fun read, nothing too heavy. It's full of Smith's unique dialogue and slang, as well as a decent amount dedicated to his peculiar perspective on how to write romance. It's even pulpier than Triplanetary, which was pretty darn pulpy, and fun and engaging while not being deep. It doesn't ask a lot of questions.
The characters are relatively static with a mild to moderate case of superman syndrome, and the science aspects are fairly vague but occasionally interesting, such as Smith's detailing of different alien races and how they react to various wavelengths of light.
It's short and action-packed, and the sequel is, somewhat confusingly unless you've read this book, called Skylark Three. I'll have to give that one a look, sometime.
I read Skylark of Spacehere. You can also buy it on Amazon.
Gotta admit, I'm a pretty big fan of Raymond Feist. My first experience with his work was ironically something he was only partly involved in: the classic PC RPG Betrayal at Krondor. There was something fun and enjoyable about the world--fairly grounded, lots of little details, fun and funny characters, and lots of intrigue.
Imagine my surprise a few years later when I stumbled upon a book called Krondor: The Betrayal, which was his adaptation of the story used for the game that he wrote after the fact, as far as I understand. I grabbed it off the shelf and really enjoyed it. That got me interested in his earlier works, too.
So, this post is all about Feist's first novel, which was a massive tome called Magician in Europe, but for the U.S. market it got split into two volumes: Magician: Apprentice and Magician: Master. I'll be talking about the first volume today.
This was Feist's first novel, and it was based on a world that he and his friends had created and fleshed out as a setting for their tabletop RPG sessions. Reviews at the time said its weakest point was its lack of originality, but I feel like that's missing the forest for the trees. Midkemia shares a lot of rough characteristics with classic sword and sorcery settings, but I think it offers a lot more.
For example, Feist's setting, especially in the earlier novels, is much lower-magic than most. This gives things a very grounded quality that makes even small stakes feel heavy. Feist's take on medieval-style politics is rich and nuanced and has a reasonable mixture of good and bad guys, with some nice philosophical hooks behind the good guys. The world has a believable mixture of light and dark, and practical and magical. We see large variations in culture, climate, and government over the course of just this book.
Magician: Apprentice tells the first part of the story of Pug, a young man who will become a very powerful force in later books. We get to see the first couple of years of the Riftwar, which I find fascinating. It's a hero's journey, but with enough unique bits that it feels fresh and alive.
Feist is great at juggling multiple story threads without rushing to get from one to another or to bring them together. Pug's story, that of a common-born orphan thrust by coincidence into the role of an unsuccessful apprentice, results in his eventual elevation to minor nobility by his Duke Borric and his entry into the war effort.
But his story, starting in Crydee, splits into three as you read further. We get a side story of Pug's foster brother, Tomas, and his interactions with the dwarves and the elves, and a fantastic tale full of intrigue as we follow Duke Borric's son Arutha on a series of political missions. These three threads split off from each other partway through the book and all of them develop in interesting ways.
There's a lot of mystery in this book.
Midkemian politics are one of my favorite aspects of the early Feist novels. He aims neither for an idealistic portrayal of a kingdom fighting an empire, nor a grim and pessimistic look at life under a noble caste. Borric has a strong sense of justice and obligation to the people, and so do his sons, sometimes to what many would call a fault. There are hints of a crisis looming on the horizon in this book, and the efforts of Arutha and his companions to cope with it are amazing to read.
There is no obvious "villain" on the Midkemian side, only some with different senses of where honor and allegiance should lie, and a king with an interesting, conflicting position.
There are several moving moments throughout the book. Without spoiling too much, we have the Choosing ceremony, a pledge of three friends, scenes that show the strangeness of war and honor, and more.
Feist has a good sense of comedic timing in this book, too. The three friends' pledge is a good example, but we have the dry humor of Martin and the elves, the bickering between Roland and Carline, and the humble irony of an old pirate captain.
Romance is present in the book but it is kept fairly tasteful and is not really the focus of the book.
All in all, this book was the beginning of the Riftwar Saga, a series of four books of which I've read three (really need to get a copy of Silverthorn one of these days), and enjoyed all of them. Feist organizes his books into "sagas" of usually four books, where each "saga" has a different set of main characters, with some overlap and appearances of characters from other books. I've probably read about ten or twelve of Feist's books at this point, and honestly my favorites are many of these older ones.
Later works have a tendency to raise the stakes in a way I find a little ridiculous, whereas these early books, sometimes the stakes are just one little frontier castle and a few hundred men, and I love how Feist handles these situations. Plus, the low-magic setting means that problem-solving is a thoughtful and detailed process, which I really enjoy.
Each Feist Saga has a different focus, too, so feel free to start at the beginning of any of them, but this is his first book and is an excellent starting point, no matter which of his "sagas" you end up liking best.
One of the trends I've seen in a lot of modern fiction is the tendency toward the epic. Everybody wants to create this massive, complex, world with amazing, powerful characters engaged in a climactic struggle to save the universe from an unapologetic, existential evil that holds billions of lives in the balance.
Well, here we are: Robert A. Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. You'd think, me being me, that I would have read this libertarian sci-fi classic a long time ago, but somehow that's not the case.
That said, let's get to it.
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress tells the story of a revolution of the people of the Moon against the control of the Earth. The main/PoV character is Manuel, a guy who works on Luna's biggest supercomputer, and finds out that it's alive, or something close to it. That's not a spoiler; it happens in the first few pages of the book.
Manuel befriends this computer. He calls it Mike. Around the same time, Manuel gets pulled into some major civil unrest on Luna, and ends up leading a group working toward independence for the moon colony. The original inhabitants of Luna were criminals, but now that's not the whole population, plus many of the criminals have served their time, only to discover their bodies can no longer handle full Earth gravity.
Having a huge, self-aware supercomputer on their side turns out to be a big help to the independence movement.
To continue with minimal spoilers, what I can say is that the scenario Heinlein creates for the quest for independence is incredibly detailed, with a lot more ups and downs than many authors would bother to create, and more ups than you'd expect, thanks in big part to Mike's input. There are some very interesting hard choices to be made, and Heinlein doesn't skimp on consequences.
Because of the high level of detail, the pacing varies widely throughout the story. The "fun" parts are relatively quick, though expanded significantly through Heinlein's attention to detail, but the "boring" parts are not ignored. It feels like most authors who write about big societal upheavals love to ignore the busywork, but Heinlein doesn't let us pretend there isn't sausage being made.
The Lunar quest for independence kept me intrigued, though. I would frequently wonder, what problem will they face next? What tactics will they use? There were almost always multiple courses of action to take, and a decent amount of discussion and consideration of pros and cons and potential next moves.
The story is told from Manuel's first person perspective, which is consistent and usually unsure of what he'll do next or whether what he's doing is right. He's thrown into the driver's seat of history by accident, and his clear purpose and level-headedness pull him through.
There are lots of unique and interesting cultural details in the story: life on Luna, how cultural norms are enforced, the strange cultural norms that arise due to certain societal forces, tons of detail about the long-term health and physical traits of born and bred moonmen... I wonder how accurate Heinlein's perspective on the long-term effects of 1/6th gravity are on the human body. We know zero-g is really bad, but Heinlein proposes a lot of positive effects of long-term moon-level gravity.
One element that gets a lot of detail is Heinlein's description of the "line marriage" system prevalent on Luna. Part of me wonders how much of Manuel's praise for the "line marriage" is Manuel speaking, and how much is Heinlein. Clarke did something similar, too, in Rendezvous with Rama, but there was a lot less detail about it in Clarke's writing.
Another element that I found kind of... quaint? was the conception of how low the bar was to a computer being seen as "alive." In the modern day of AI production of everything from writing to memes to videos to jokes and beyond, once Manuel discovers Mike can talk and come up with jokes, he pretty much concludes Mike is a real boy.
The characters in the book are functional but not really layered or tricky. Everything is pretty straightforward, with nearly all of the intrigue coming from their complicated task. Heinlein tries doing something really weird with dialect in this book: he drops a lot of pronouns and connecting words, and throws in a lot of little foreign-language bits, which were almost always thankfully obvious in meaning. However, the dialect is somewhat inconsistent, leading to it being more difficult for the reader to "get used to."
The foreign language bits are frequently redundant, with several different words used for "yes," or so it seems, but on more careful consideration I realized that it may have been an attempt by Heinlein to highlight the spirit of independence and local pride of the people of Luna.
One final major criticism: The current e-book edition available on Amazon is abhorrently bad. It is a bad picture-to-text scan, with lots of messed-up letters and hyphenation. The formatting is awful, with missing line and page breaks. The last sentence of most chapters runs into the next chapter number, it's so badly done. There are even quite a few repeated sentences later in the book!
So, I'll link to an older edition here, and if you want a physical copy, go look for an old print edition or something on Ebay or whatever. I'm serious. As far as I can tell, the print editions that pop up first on Amazon are also based on this butchered eBook version.
Final thoughts: I enjoyed it, even though it was somewhat hard to read, partly due to Heinlein's inconsistent application of dialect, and partly due to the awful eBook version. However, if I look past those problems, I thought it was detailed, fought hard to stay plausible, and most of all, was hopeful. A good story for any freedom-loving sci-fi readers to check out.
One of the things that bugs me about modern science fiction is the characters... Despite often being parts of supposedly military organizations, they pull rank at the slightest provocation. Their leaders give bad orders, and their subordinates disobey reasonable ones. The Peter Principle is everywhere on display.
We see characters who can do anything and everything well, who always succeed and have no sense of their own fallibility. Headstrongness has become almost a kind of plot armor.
We see characters who turn minor disagreements into massive splinters and nursed grudges. They rarely discuss their differences and come to some kind of middle ground, not even an agreement to disagree in too many cases.
We also see fiction where the PoV character almost always knows best.
We see never-before-observed phenomena and problems solved in five minutes with the science-fiction equivalent of chewing gum and gravel.
A part of my desire is to push against this trend, and while I was creating my debut novel, Pursuit of the Heliotrope, I came up with five planks to help create characters that are balanced--capable but flawed.
The five planks are:
Professionalism. Characters argue but attempt to reach consensus. For instance, in one of the discussions, Lew comes up with an idea that makes Orland Co. look a little bad, but the company rep
looks at his arguments in good faith and attempts to provide
additional info to help mitigate any situations that might arise if
Lew is right. My characters maintain professional language and tone. For instance, the Orland company rep is not demanding or haughty. Iggy and Wyatt have a very professional back-and-forth as Iggy searches for traps on a ship. Criticisms are done in private, when necessary and possible. Ranks are respected but not worshipped. For instance, Aric makes a point to treat his hired contractors well, at his own expense. There are occasional direct orders given, but when they happen, they are usually for the clear benefit of the subordinate. Wyatt recognizes that he's getting older, and remembers the value of youthful agility.
Respectability. Subordinates respect superiors and superiors respect subordinates. For instance, Aric recognizes Lew's expertise on repairs, and puts significant trust into his evaluations. Iggy says to Aric that he "learned from the best," but he's careful to say this so that Wyatt and Max can't hear him. Superiors know the strengths and weaknesses of their subordinates and give them appropriate tasks. For instance, Wyatt assigns two solid engineers to help Lew work on the Heliotrope. Wyatt even knows that one of his people, Wil, is a good cook--even though that has nothing to do with Wil's official duties. Subordinates look up to their superiors, for good reason, and understand that they can learn from them. For instance, Wyatt's part-time engineers both look up to Lew as they see his expertise is the real deal. Disagreements happen but they are usually resolved calmly; criticisms are not seen as or used for personal attacks. For instance, at one point Wyatt neglects to mention a possible tactic, but for good reason, which a short conversation and some reasonable questions shows.
Specialization. Each character has strong and weak points. For instance, the different crew members are assigned to the tasks that they're best at. Lew is good at haggling for parts, but not for other goods, and he knows it. Characters aim at tasks that match their skills. For instance, the same people work with Lew multiple times on engineering tasks. Superiors point their subordinates in the directions that match their skills, and also the superiors recognize those skills. For instance, Wyatt's assignments to the Kingfisher for a particular maneuver.
Competence. People in certain positions are generally there for a reason. Everyone recognizes Wyatt's expertise in security work. Aric handles high-level planning way better than Lew or Bill. The captains of each ship command the respect of their crew because they are seen as competent, but not overcompetent. Problems are solved, but it takes time and materials. There are several briefings and planning sessions. Resources are finite and have limited flexibility. Sometimes things are jerry-rigged and sometimes there's a plan to get what they need. There is significant down-time when time-intensive tasks need to be completed. Simple ideas are thought up by multiple specialized characters. Bill and Max have a common idea at one point, and so do Aric and Lew.
Fallibility. This is the negative plank that ties everything together. Even characters with strong specializations can and do fail. There are a few examples of this in the book. Characters also recognize the possibility of failure and try to plan for contingencies. They check the final quality of their work, too. For instance, when Lew is fixing some thrusters, he not only takes time and materials and manpower to finish the repairs, but he talks about the tests he performed to ensure that the repairs are holding.
These are the five planks that I tried to incorporate into my character designs and interactions in order to get away from the tropes I mentioned at the beginning of this post. While these aren't a perfect silver bullet, I think they helped to make my story more fun and more believable, and give my characters more depth and reasonable interactions.
If you agree, you might want to give Pursuit of the Heliotrope a try.
I really loved Foundation, so naturally I wanted to read the next book in the series, Foundation and Empire, fairly soon... What I found was a very different book from the first one, much more "concentrated," and with a very different tone!
In fact, one of the weak points of the book is going to affect the review, because Foundation and Empire's plot is littered with deliberate surprises, to the point that it's a hard book to review without major spoilers, but I'll try.
After reading Dune, I spent a little time thinking about the use of jargon in writing--where it's necessary, where it isn't, how to handle it, how it can be used for nefarious purposes, etc.
So, in case you don't know the definition, let's start with What is Jargon? Jargon is technical terminology or high-level language compared to the expected audience of the piece. So, if I talked about Bragg diffraction to a group of physicists, that wouldn't be jargon, but if I put it into a story, it would. This could also include the use of made-up or foreign-language words in fiction, for instance, a random Romanian word in a book not targeted at Romanian speakers.
Sometimes jargon is necessary. We need it when we need a precise description of a thing, such as the cobalt bombs of On the Beach or the psychohistory of Foundation. We also need it when we are introducing unique or novel constructs in our fictional worlds, such as Dune's stillsuits and Feist's Lesser and Greater Path magicians.
It's worth noting that novel jargon can be made more accessible by making compound words like stillsuit; the definition is in the word.
Sometimes jargon is unnecessary but helps to add flavor to the story. Proper names are a good example of this, such as Epasotl in Doomsday Recon. We may also want to show off cultural artifacts or phenomena which are part of the story, such as Clanspeak in Battletech, or unique month and holiday names in the Elder Scrolls setting.
It's worth remembering that whenever jargon appears for a good reason in the story, the author needs to make a good faith effort to explain the jargon either explicitly or through context. Sometimes flavor jargon only appears once, but even then it helps if there is some context to guide the reader's understanding. For example, the fictional month names in the Elder Scrolls world are mostly veiled references to what time of year it is, with references to harvest times, etc.
All of these uses of jargon are valid and can be great boons to your worldbuilding. However, some authors like to use jargon in ways that can confuse the reader or damage immersion.
One example is extensive use of large quantities of jargon which require the reader to spend a lot of time reading and trying to remember the meaning. In The Widow's Son, there were frequent sentences in foreign languages (mostly Spanish) that were often long enough that someone unfamiliar with Spanish would have trouble understanding what was said. Some of the context clues for the meanings of those sentences were too vague or too far away or even missing.
Using jargon when perfectly reasonable English terms already exist is another bad use of jargon. Perhaps one of the silliest and most egregious examples is illustrated here:
Another bad use of jargon is to create an illusion of depth, or to force a particular theme. One poignant example of this is the naming conventions in the anime Evangelion. Throwing darts at a bible in order to name things is neither depth, nor true attention to theme.
As a writer, here are some things you can do to ensure your jargon is reasonable:
Ask yourself...
Is this jargon necessary?
Is the reason behind it justified by the plot, characters, or setting?
Is it organic and supported by context?
How much am I asking the reader to memorize?
Can I simplify it or make things easier to read somehow?
As a reader, you might ask yourself these questions instead:
Is the jargon slowing me down?
Do thematic elements of the jargon actually fit?
What jargon do I actually need to remember, and which can I let slide by?
Jargon is a powerful tool, which can add precision, originality, and color to your writing. As a reader, you should also be open to being taught interesting, original, and useful things in your reading.
However, it can also be used to confuse or dupe the reader. Therefore, writers must be aware and respectful of the reader's time, and readers should distinguish between jargon that serves the story and jargon that confuses things, and actively avoid the latter.
