Tag Archives: After the Martians

Warehouse of Unwritten Stories

Today we visit a warehouse, a dark and dusty place of vast dimensions. Innumerable cobwebs stretch between wall and ceiling. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of crates stand stacked in utter disorder. We’ve entered the warehouse of your unwritten stories.

Most writers don’t suffer from a lack of ideas. Story ideas spring up all the time, born from new experiences, fresh acquaintances, travels, chance meetings, TV shows, daily life, other writers’ books—from everywhere. Many authors scribble these ideas or tap a note on their phone and save them in a file for later use. Let’s picture that file as a warehouse, into which more crates accumulate every day.

What happens to the items in there? On rare occasions, I venture into my warehouse, open an interesting crate, and write the story. Infrequent, but it happens. Most of the crates remain there, unopened, unexamined, gathering dust. I suspect your warehouse looks much the same.

In this helpful post on LifeHacker, writer Nick Douglas provides several methods of dealing with all these unused ideas. He doesn’t use the warehouse metaphor—he calls the phenomenon ‘Idea Debt.’ I’ll summarize his options here, in my own words, but I encourage you to read his post.

Mr. Douglas’ approach presupposes that you’ve rummaged through your warehouse, become overwhelmed, and fled in despair. So many good story ideas, so little time. Douglas’ steps represent a way to assess the warehouse inventory, sort it, and reduce the backlog.

  1. Shrink and Submit. Some of the best and most time-sensitive ideas might lend themselves to this method. Look at the idea and imagine the smallest viable product you can make from it. If you originally saw it as a novel, consider a short story, even flash fiction. Look for a way to turn it into a written product quickly, and get it done and submitted. Sure beats letting it linger in the warehouse.
  • Add to WIP. The smaller ideas, maybe just character sketches or scenes without a plot, could work here. Examine the idea for inclusion into your current work in progress. If it fits, presto, you’ve reduced some clutter already.
  • Gift It. Still have a lot of crates in the warehouse? Some you’ll gaze at, thinking, ‘I’ll never find time to write that,’ or ‘I’m not the one to write that.’ Maybe you know another writer who could use it. Give it to that writer. That’s how I ended up writing After the Martians. Another author gave the idea to me. Douglas also suggests you could post your idea/gift on social media as a giveaway.
  • Give Them Away. Looking around, you still see way too many crates. Face it, you’re never going to get around to most of them. The one-at-a-time process of gifting in step 3 would take forever. Time to break out the forklifts, load up the semi-truck, drive to the center of town, and dump the crates by the side of the road. In other words, gather the ideas in one long list and post the list on an open forum for others to use.
  • Manage the Remainder. What’s left in the warehouse now? Only those ideas that can’t be shrunk, won’t fit in your WIP, and are too valuable to give away. For those, you must become a disciplined project manager (or use an app that helps you become one). Writing those stories is now your next project.  Set goals, organize the work, break it down into tasks, schedule and accomplish the tasks. Get those stories written and submitted.

Wow! Your warehouse is empty, thanks mostly to Nick Douglas and, in lesser degree, to—

Poseidon’s Scribe

January 28, 2024Permalink

Twistery History

When writing fiction, do you set your tales in historical times? If so, you must resolve the inevitable conflict between The Facts and The Story. In other words, you’ll have to twist some history.

Author Colin Falconer expresses the problem well in a post titled “How to Mix Historical Fact and Fiction.” He says real life is chaotic. It doesn’t obey the rules of fiction. It’s filled with aspects that interfere with a good story.

Here’s a table that contrasts historical fact and historical fiction:

Historical Fact Historical Fiction
Chaotic, messy Planned, ordered
Mostly boring Mostly interesting or exciting
Has real people, with infinite complexities Has a protagonist, antagonist, and supporting characters
Events occur as they will, often by chance or coincidence Events occur in a believable order, in a way that supports the plot
How people lived is as interesting to us as what people did What characters do is more important than details of how they live
Historian’s aim is to get the facts right Fiction writer’s aim is to entertain and engage the reader

I should also mention an important distinction between historical fiction and alternate history. Colin Falconer writes historical fiction, where he takes a set of historical events and fictionalizes them. I write alternate history, set in another universe whose history matched ours until some Point of Divergence (PoD), after which things proceeded quite differently.

Even in alternate history, though, readers want to know the author took the trouble to study history and get some details right. If the story takes place in the past, readers expect the author to transport them there, and not jar them with anachronisms like the clock striking three in the second act of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. (I know, I know—Shakespeare might well have deliberately used a not-yet-invented clock as a dramatic and metaphorical device.)

Here’s how I twisted history in my most recently published alternate history tales:

In “Ripper’s Ring,” set in 1888, the PoD occurs the moment a troubled mortuary worker comes across the legendary Ring of Gyges, the invisibility ring mentioned by Plato. Other than that, I tried to remain true to the facts about Jack the Ripper. I did invent a fictional Scotland Yard detective, but the rest of history didn’t get much twisting.

Regarding my story, “Ancient Spin, (in the Hides the Dark Tower anthology) I hesitate to categorize it as alternate history, since it’s about the Biblical Tower of Babel. Still, I gave my characters Babylonian names and tried to depict the mood and scene after the collapse of a large ziggurat in that time period.

“After the Martians” takes place during our World War I, but the PoD happened sixteen years earlier, in 1901, when the Martians of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds invaded. Since the combatants in my story use Martian technology, that changes the very nature of the war, so my story doesn’t bear much resemblance to the actual conflict. Even so, my photographer character uses an actual camera from that period, and the old woman treats the soldier’s injuries using techniques of that time.

My story “Instability” (in the Dark Luminous Wings anthology) derives from a legend about a medieval monk in a British monastery around 1000 A.D. I tried hard to get details right about life in a Benedictine monastery including daily schedules and the layout of the abbey. I used one of the actual abbots of Malmesbury Abbey as a character. Aside from the improbable legend itself, I didn’t do much twisting of history in this one.

“The Steam Elephant” (in The Gallery of Curiosities, Issue #3) takes place during the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879. The PoD is my assumption that the events and characters of Jules Verne’s novel The Steam House were true. Again, I strove to keep details of the Battle of Isandlwana accurate, including the names of British commanders and the Zulu king. However, since my story occurs twenty-two years after the setting of Verne’s novel, I stretched things by assuming his characters remained nearly unchanged despite the passage of years.

As you write your historical fiction, try to strike a good balance between getting facts right and telling an interesting story. If you have to twist some history to do that, well, you’re in good company along with—

Poseidon’s Scribe

April 14, 2019Permalink

Technoethics and the Curious Ape

In the movie Jurassic Park, the character Ian Malcolm says, “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” Today, I’m focusing on another technology topic, namely ethics in technology, or Technoethics.

Wikipedia article “Ape”

Our species is innately curious and inventive. We possess large brains and opposable thumbs, but lack claws, shells, great speed, camouflaged skin and other attributes employed by animals to attack prey or to avoid becoming prey. These circumstances make us natural toolmakers.

From the beginning, we found we could use our tools for good or evil. The same stick, spear, bow and arrow, or rifle we used to kill a rabbit for dinner could also kill a fellow human. The different outcome is not inherent in the tool, but in the heart of the person employing it.

For each new technology in our history, there was at least one inventor. This person took an idea, created a design, and often used available materials to assemble the new item. Were these inventors responsible for, in Malcolm’s words, stopping to think if they should?

With some technologies, like the plow, the printing press, the light bulb, and the automobile, it’s certain their creators intended only positive, beneficial outcomes. The inventor of the automobile could not have foreseen people using cars as weapons, or that one day there’d be so many cars they’d pollute the atmosphere.

With other technologies such as the spear, the warship, the canon, and the nuclear bomb, the inventor’s intent was to kill other people. Why? The usual rationale is twofold: (1) My side needs this technology so our wartime enemy does not kill us, or (2) If I do not invent this technology first, my enemy will, and will use it against my side. Given such reasoning, an inventor of a weapon can claim it would be immoral not to develop the technology.

I’m sure there are unsung examples of would-be inventors refusing, on ethical grounds, to develop a new technology because they feared the consequences. The only example I can think of, though, is Leonardo da Vinci. Although he had no qualms about designing giant crossbows and battle tanks, he drew the line at submarines. Though at first excited about giving a submarine design to the Venetians for use against the Turks, da Vinci reconsidered and destroyed his own plans, after imagining how horrible war could become.

That example aside, the history of humanity gives me no reason to suspect future inventors will hesitate to develop even the most potent and powerful technologies. It’s our curious ape nature; if we can, we will. Only afterward will we ask if we should have.

As a writer of technological fiction, I’ve explored technoethics in many of my stories:

  • In “The Sea-Wagon of Yantai,” a Chinese submarine inventor intends his craft as a tool of exploration, but an army officer envisions military uses.
  • In “The Steam Elephant,” a British inventor sees his creation as a mobile home for safari hunters, but then imagines the British Army employing it on the battlefield. Only the narrator character fears what war will become when both sides have such weapons.
  • In “Leonardo’s Lion,” da Vinci actually builds his inventions, but hides them away and gives clues to the King of France about where to find them. The King never sees the clues, but decades later a ten-year-old boy does, and must decide whether the world is ready for these amazing devices.
  • In “The Six Hundred Dollar Man,” a doctor imagines how steam-powered prosthetic limbs would have saved crippled Civil War soldiers, but fails to foresee how super-strength and super-speed could turn a good person bad.
  • In “Ripper’s Ring,” a troubled Londoner in 1888 comes across the Ring of Gyges that Plato wrote about, an invisibility ring. Possession of that ring changes him into history’s most famous mass murderer.
  • In “After the Martians,” the survivors of an alien attack in 1901 take the Martian technology (tripods, heat rays, flying machines) and fight World War I.

As we smart apes start playing with bigger and more deadly sticks, maybe one day we will stop and think if we should before we think about whether we can. Hoping that day comes soon, I’m—

Poseidon’s Scribe

March 10, 2019Permalink

What Hath Smashwords Wrought?

Amid all the holiday rush, you meant to buy three of my books as gifts (or for yourself), but somehow forgot. Good news! That same $12 you were going to spend now buys four (4) books, or even more.  

Smashwords is holding an End of Year Sale, but they’re letting it run over one day into 2019. All the books in my What Man Hath Wrought series are 25% off.  

For $2.99, you can get After the Martians, Ripper’s Ring, Time’s Deformèd Hand, The Cometeers, To Be First/Wheels of Heaven, Rallying Cry/Last Vessel of Atlantis, A Tale More True, Against All Gods, Leonardo’s Lion, or Alexander’s Odyssey.

For just $2.24, you can get The Six Hundred Dollar Man, A Steampunk Carol, Within Victorian Mists, or The Wind-Sphere Ship.

These stories explore the theme of people dealing with new technology, a problem to which we all relate. I put my characters and technologies in historical settings, so these are all alternate history stories or secret histories.

Take advantage of Smashwords’ End of Year Sale, and enjoy some books by—

                                                            Poseidon’s Scribe

December 26, 2018Permalink

What the Tech?

Today I’ll introduce a new feature to my blog. I’ll be exploring the way people deal with new technology. It’s a theme in most of my stories, and I’ll be discussing it in some depth in this and future posts. I’ll still offer guidance to beginning fiction writers, but I’ll also pursue this technology topic on occasion.

I’m not concerned so much with any particular technology itself, but rather the relationship between humans and new technology. This relationship can bring about a number of problems, including:

  • Technical failures during development and testing
  • Development of a technology without considering its harmful or immoral effects
  • Unanticipated problems brought about by use of the technology
  • Lack of acceptance of, or opposition to, the technology by others
  • The technology’s failure to live up to its hype
  • The possibility that the technology may change the user in some way
  • Eventual complacence brought about by success of the technology leading to new failure modes

In many of my stories, I show characters struggling with new technology and encountering several of these problems. Here are some of the most recently published ones.

In “The Unparalleled Attempt to Rescue One Hans Pfaall” in the Quoth the Raven anthology, there are two new technologies. One is the hot air balloon, in which my characters voyage to the Moon in 1835. The other is a mysterious machine they find on the Moon, a device that maintains both the satellite’s atmosphere and the life-link between paired individuals on the Earth and Moon. The balloon causes no problems, but one character’s ignorance and rashness causes disaster when he operates the Moon machine.

In “Target Practice” in the Re-Launch anthology, the technologies are a future underwater prison and one-man submarines. They use the mini-subs in a cruel training exercise that always results in the death of an inmate. The challenge for my protagonist is to exploit weaknesses in the technology and possibly survive the training exercise.

In “The Steam Elephant” in The Gallery of Curiosities, Issue #3, the technology is a mechanical, steam-powered elephant. In 1879, the British owners and occupants of the elephant are confident they will prevail in a war with primitive Zulu ‘savages.’ Perhaps their confidence is misplaced.

In “Instability” in the Dark Luminous Wings anthology, my medieval monk protagonist invents a pair of bat-like wings to achieve human flight. Other monks in the abbey are convinced he’s insane, and his first flight is not problem-free.

In “The Cats of Nerio-3” in the In A Cat’s Eye anthology, I mention several technologies, but the most important is an artificially intelligent computer. The AI believes itself far superior to its human companion, but perhaps it shouldn’t count humans out so soon.

In “After the Martians,” aliens leave their technologies behind after a failed invasion of Earth, and people use them to fight World War I. The Martian tripods and heat rays change the very nature of the war.

In “Ancient Spin” in the Hides the Dark Tower anthology, the technology is a giant stone tower, designed and built in Biblical times. After the tower’s collapse, its inventor considers how to avoid the blame.

In “Ripper’s Ring,” the technology is an ancient ring that can render its wearer invisible. Not only does this change the ring’s finder in negative ways, it complicates the detective’s search for him.

In “A Clouded Affair” in the Avast, Ye Airships! anthology, the two competing technologies are a 19th Century steam-powered ornithopter and a 20th Century diesel engine biplane. Which one wins the battle?

You’ll see this topic considered in detail and related to more of my stories in future posts by—

                                                Poseidon’s Scribe

December 23, 2018Permalink

Veterans Day and WW I Centennial

Happy Veterans Day! This day also marks 100 years since the end of World War I. On this centennial, it’s appropriate to reflect on that pivotal war, its improbable beginning, its gigantic scope, its horrible casualty numbers, and its historical impact.

As it happens, I’ve written two stories that fictionalize aspects of that war.

In “Rallying Cry” (packaged with the story “Last Vessel of Atlantis”), two surviving veterans of World War I, residing in a nursing home, relate their experiences of that war to a young man and their stories change his life. The veterans, both Frenchmen who later moved to America, had served in a secret outfit called the Jules Verne Regiment, which employed futuristic weapons from Jules Verne’s novels.

My story “After the Martians” describes an alternate World War I that takes place following the attempted Martian invasion of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. The combatants fight this war with the technology the Martians left behind: tripod fighting machines, heat rays, and propeller-less flying vehicles.

After you honor Veterans Day and reflect on the WW I Centennial, consider purchasing and reading these stories by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

November 11, 2018Permalink

Giftwrapping an Idea

Most gifts are tangible things, items that occupy space and have weight. But writers tread the realm of visions and dreams, thoughts and imaginings. You can’t give those things as gifts, can you? Well…

Author Andrew Gudgel and I were exchanging gifts at holiday time a few years ago. He’d been talking (for well over a year) about a story idea he had. I thought it was wonderful and kept urging him to write the story. Instead, as a gift to me, he said, “You write it.”

There were some tangible things he also gave me, the notes he’d compiled while preparing to write the story. But the real gift was the idea, and he’d given it to me.

I know, I’ve blogged before that ideas are the easy part, the trivial part, the dime-a-dozen part, and I’ve said the hard part is actually scribbling down the story and polishing it until you can sell it.

Let me caveat that now. Some ideas are more valuable than others are. Some are gold. Some are more valuable to a writer other than the one who thought of them. Such was the case with Andrew’s idea; he sensed I loved it more than he did, and that I would not hesitate to run with it. For him, it was in the ‘I’ll get to it someday’ bin.

From Andrew’s idea came my story “After the Martians.” In partial payment to him, I named a character in the story after him. If you add the value of that to the value of whatever silly gift I gave him that year, you’d still fall far short of what he gave me. I was out-gifted, plain and simple.

As Andrew so eloquently put it in his blog: “’Ideas rot if you don’t do something with them,’ said the writer Edd Dumbill. I agree. By keeping a creative idea locked away in your head/on your hard-drive/in your notebooks, it’s not free to enrich the world. Think about it this way: you may be fated to conceive of the idea and to give birth to it, but not to be the one who raises it to maturity. That may be someone else’s task. So, if after a period of sober reflection, you come to the conclusion that you’re not going to make use of an idea, give it away—throw it to a creative friend, put it on your blog, launch it out into the public sphere—and give someone else the opportunity to enrich the world with it.”

For completeness, I should mention another, earlier example of giving an idea as a gift, though this still causes me anguish and shame.

Many years and several critique groups ago, I was in a group with Raymond (not his real name). Each month, Raymond contributed a new chapter of the novel he was writing. One day, we found out Raymond had died. I don’t recall the circumstances, whether illness or accident, but he was far too young.

I got a letter from his widow saying that in his final days, Raymond had told her he wanted me to finish his novel, and she was asking if I’d do that.

Wow. Tough dilemma. On one hand, I couldn’t refuse a request from the widow of a friend and fellow writer, could I? She wasn’t asking for that much—just complete the story he’d almost finished and send it out for publication. She wasn’t asking for a portion of the payments, if the novel made money.

On the other hand, I didn’t have the passion for the story that Raymond did. I didn’t think I could do it justice. The novel involved a plot and genre type that had already saturated the market. It didn’t seem to me that readers were begging for another such novel.

In the end, I turned down the offer, with regrets. Perhaps I should have taken it, but I didn’t. Raymond’s idea deserved a champion who cared about it as deeply as he had. I was not that writer.

As you can see, it is possible to get wrapping paper, ribbons, and bows around something as insubstantial as an idea, a whim. If you’re struggling to do it, and can’t quite figure out how to cut and enclose, fold and tape the darn thing, if you need an expert guide, call—

Poseidon’s Scribe

June 11, 2017Permalink

Wagging the Long Tail

A few authors sell vast numbers of books, while most authors sell very few. If you could amass accurate data on that, it would probably look like a decaying exponential curve. It would have the Pareto property, where 20% of the authors sell 80% of the books—those on the left. However, today we’ll focus on the right side of the curve. Statisticians, with their penchant for arcane, hard-to-understand terminology, call that part “the long tail.”

The curve I present here is approximate and intended for illustrative purposes only. Note the vertical red line. Believe it or not, the number of books sold to the left of that line equals the number of books to the right.

Out on the tail of that curve are many, many authors who sell very few books. Looks a little lonely out there, doesn’t it? Most of those authors would love to move left on the curve, ideally all the way left. Readers only have so much money to spend on books, though, and they’re more likely to read books by authors they know.

Very few of those “long tail authors” will move much further left from where they are now, and only a tiny fraction will make it near the vertical axis into the stratospheric heights of the best-seller lists.

That may sound depressing, but let’s squint and take a closer look at that long tail. Each author represents a single point on that curve, but book distributors look at the curve differently. These days, they see the near-infinite length of the long tail as a new profit opportunity.

Distributors have realized we now live in the age of instant and easy searches for obscure information. With the ability to print books on demand, it doesn’t matter how few readers seek, for example, alternate history books about trips to the moon. What matters is that the book “A Tale More True” pops up in response to that search and a sale ensues.

In Wikipedia’s article on the long tail, they quote an Amazon employee as saying, “We sold more books today that didn’t sell at all yesterday than we sold today of all the books that did sell yesterday.”

You might have to read that again and let it sink in. I’ll wait.

In fact, now is the best time to be a long tail author. Let’s consider the set of those readers searching for steampunk books about planet-threatening comets. They easily find my book, “The Cometeers.” Among that admittedly small set of readers, I’m a best-selling author!

Here are a few more examples included for instructive purposes, and certainly not for crass self-promotion:

Readers search for books about: They find and buy:
Alternate histories involving the Ottoman Empire “To Be First”  
Romance stories taking place in Ancient Greece “Against All Gods”  
Stories involving Leonardo da Vinci’s inventions “Leonardo’s Lion”  
Sequel to War of the Worlds “After the Martians”  
Shakespearean clockpunk “Time’s Deformèd Hand”  

If you’re a long tail author, don’t despair. You have plenty of company; readers can find your books more readily than ever before; and book distributors now regard you as a profitable part of the book-selling enterprise. Happily wagging my tiny part of the long tail, you’ll find—

Poseidon’s Scribe

March 26, 2017Permalink

P&E Readers Poll Results

The folks at Critters.org have announced the final results of the Preditors & Editors Readers Poll for the most popular fiction of 2016.

My story, “After the Martians” tied for third (with two other stories) out of thirty-nine entries in the Science Fiction short story category. That’s wonderful! The story earned a Top Ten Finisher emblem, and it ended up in the top eight percent of the entries.

Thanks to everyone who voted for my story.

The anthology In a Cat’s Eye (in which my story “The Cats of Nerio-3” appears) didn’t do as well, placing seventeenth out of sixty in the Anthology category. Still, that’s in the top third of many, many entries. Thanks also to those who cast a vote for that anthology.

You readers did me a great honor by voting. Now I need to get busy, working to ensure the best fiction of 2017 gets written by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

January 22, 2017Permalink

Last Chance, the Final Day to Vote

You meant to vote in the Preditors & Editors Readers Poll, you really did. But time slipped away and you kinda forgot.

Wait! It’s not too late! There is still time to vote, if you do it now. You can vote for my stories, or you can vote for those of another author. It doesn’t matter. Just vote!

Of course, I’d be grateful if you’d cast a vote for my story “After the Martians” in the Science Fiction Short Story category, and for the anthology In a Cat’s Eye, in the Anthology category. My story “The Cats of Nerio-3” appears in that delightful anthology.

According to the latest vote count, “After the Martians” is fifth out of thirty-seven, and In a Cat’s Eye is tied for  thirteenth out of sixty. Let’s vote them each up to number one!

Since you’re almost out of time, click on any of the links or pictures in this post and vote. If it seems confusing, see the more explanatory instructions here.

You can stop reading this post, because this is not the time for reading. This is the time to vote for—

Poseidon’s Scribe

January 14, 2017Permalink