Tag Archives: Isaac Asimov

NaNoWriMo and Isaac Asimov

Every year, during November, thousands of budding authors take part in the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). They’re using their spare time during these thirty days to write a novel.

NaNoWriMo Overview

That may sound impossible, but over 400,000 people will participate this year. Perhaps 20% of them will meet the requirements, to write 50,000 words in 30 days. When they’re done, they’ll feel immense relief in December and will relax after the strain of writing so much.

Of the “winners” (who don’t really win anything), many will edit their manuscript and some will see their work published. A handful might make some money from sales.

Purpose

If you scoff at the low success rate, you’re missing the point. NaNoWriMo aims to get you accustomed to writing fast, to spilling the words out. You can always go back and edit 50,000 words to improve the prose, maybe molding the manuscript into a suitable shape for publication. At least you have a first draft to work from, and that’s further than most wannabe novelists get.

Some Math

Simple division tells me a NaNoWriMo participant must scribble, on average, 1,667 words every day during November to accomplish the goal. That’s almost 1,700 words. Every day. Why does that wordcount number ring a bell?

Isaac Asimov

The brilliant and prolific science fiction author Isaac Asimov once said, “Over a space of 40 years, I published an average of 1,000 words a day. Over the space of the second 20 years, I published an average of 1,700 words a day.”

There’s that 1,700-word number again. Think about that. Long before NaNoWriMo even started in 1999, Dr. Asimov wrote the equivalent of a NaNoWriMo every month. For twenty years. That’s 240 NaNoWriMos back-to-back.

More amazing, he didn’t just write that much. Every word he wrote during those twenty years got published.

Dr. A’s Secrets

In achieving that, several factors worked in his favor, advantages you and I may lack.

  • He was a genius, and a member of MENSA. He earned a PhD in Chemistry from Columbia, and taught biochemistry. A polymath, he’s one of few authors who published high-quality, authoritative books in nearly every major category of the Dewey Decimal System.
  • He timed things well. Asimov enjoyed writing science fiction just when the reading public demanded more of it than authors could supply.
  • He wrote in a plain, unadorned style, typed ninety words a minute, and didn’t over-edit. Those traits allowed him to churn out words faster than most.
  • He benefited from a favorable snowball effect. (1) The more he wrote, (2) the better he got, (3) the more of his books got purchased by readers, (4) the more famous he got, (5) the more enthused he got about writing…back to (1) and around again. A positive-feedback loop.

Lessons for Us

Perhaps the rest of us shouldn’t compare ourselves to Dr. Asimov. On the spectrum from low-output to high-output, he breaks the scale at the high end, one of the most prolific writers of all time.

Still, if he were alive today, he might well ask, “What’s so special about November?” Why not do NaNoWriMo every month? Perhaps that positive feedback loop that worked for him would work for you, too, at least to some extent.

That may serve as the real lesson of both NaNoWriMo and Asimov’s success. Writing at breakneck speed means you write more, and in time, through practice, you may write better.

If you aspire to become a writer, try writing 1,700 words today. Should you fall short of that, at least try writing more tomorrow, and more the next day. When you achieve a daily wordcount of 1,700, keep going at that rate.

Try NaNoWriMo every month. Maybe you won’t get 500 books published, as Isaac Asimov did, but perhaps some measure of literary success lies in the future for you and—

Poseidon’s Scribe

November 17, 2024Permalink Leave a comment

Join the Laser Pistol Gang

I plead guilty…to violating many laws of science in my writing. But I’m not alone. I’m in good company with many other science fiction writers. Call us the Laser Pistol Gang.

Authors of so-called ‘hard SF’ should adhere to known scientific principles and knowledge, but aren’t above bending or breaking the laws of physics for the sake of a good story.

Mary Shelley really stretched biological science in Frankenstein when her fictional scientist animated a human from dead tissue. Jules Verne knew human astronauts wouldn’t survive the acceleration of a manned projectile launched from a canon in From the Earth to the Moon. H.G. Wells disobeyed temporal causality in The Time Machine. When he wrote Fantastic Voyage, Isaac Asimov understood the impossibility of miniaturizing people. From his medical training, Michael Crichton must have realized not enough intact DNA fragments remain to create the living dinosaurs of Jurassic Park.

These represent a small sampling from SF literature. Don’t get me started on SF movies, which seem to break more laws of science than they obey.

On what charges could the science police arrest me? Consider my rap sheet:

  • “The Steam Elephant” (from Steampunk Tales, Issue #5 and The Gallery of Curiosities #3). The state of steam and mechanical technology in the 19th Century did not allow for a walking, steam-powered, quadrupedal vehicle.
  • “Within Victorian Mists.” Everything needed to invent lasers existed in the 1800s except the conceptual framework, so if it had happened, it would have required dumb luck.
  • “Bringing the Future to You” (from Cheer Up, Universe!). That story contains too many science violations to list, but I meant the tale to be funny.
  • “Leonardo’s Lion.” Some accounts state Leonardo da Vinci built a walking, clockwork lion. Even if true, it’s doubtful the creation would have supported a child’s weight or traveled over rough terrain, as it does in my story.
  • “The Six Hundred Dollar Man.” Yes, steam engines existed in the late 19th Century, but no one then could have made one small enough to fit on a man’s back and power the man’s replacement limbs.
  • “A Tale More True.” Try as you might, you can’t build a metal spring strong enough to launch yourself into space as my protagonist does.
  • “The Cometeers.” In this story, I violate the same laws Verne did in launching humans to space using a canon. In fact, I used his same canon.
  • “Time’s Deformèd Hand.” Nobody in 1600 AD built walking, talking automatons powered by springs. However, I did mention the wood came from magical trees.
  • “A Clouded Affair” (from Avast, Ye Airships!). You couldn’t build a steam-powered ornithopter in the 1800s, and you’d find it difficult even today.
  • “Ripper’s Ring” Human invisibility remains impossible today, let alone in 1888. Even if it were possible, it would render the subject blind.
  • “The Cats of Nerio-3” (from In a Cat’s Eye). Evolution allows organisms to adapt to new environments, but neither cats nor rats would likely evolve in such a rapid and drastic manner as my story suggests.
  • “Instability” (from Dark Luminous Wings). According to legend, a Benedictine monk constructed a set of wings and tested them sometime around 1000 AD. The wings work no better in my story than they would have in reality.
  • “The Unparalleled Attempt to Rescue One Hans Pfaall” (from Quoth the Raven). Just because Edgar Allan Poe wrote about a balloon trip to the moon didn’t mean I had to repeat his error.

With so much law-breaking going on, how can we hope for an orderly reading society? Must we be forever besieged by the criminal authors of the Laser Pistol Gang?

That answer, I’m happy to report, is yes. Authors write to entertain readers. That’s a writer’s ‘prime directive,’ to steal a phrase. If the writer must bend or break a rule of science to tell a good story, the writer is going to do it.

One key phrase there is ‘good story.’ The better the story, the easier it is for a reader to forgive a scientific flaw. Of course, if you can tell a good story while keeping the science accurate, by all means, do that.

If you aim to join the Laser Pistol Gang, be aware we have a tough initiation ritual. You have to write a story where a law of science gets broken. Not a very exclusive gang, I admit. But it’s a proud, longstanding group. Take it from one of its most notorious members, known by his gang name—

Poseidon’s Scribe

March 18, 2023Permalink

6 (or 7?) Secrets to Being a Prolific Writer

Would you like to write as many books (over 500) as Dr. Isaac Asimov? Let’s find out how he did it.

Writer Charles Chu studied Asimov’s autobiographies and distilled six habits Asimov developed and used to write so many enjoyable books. Below is my summary of that list, put in my own words. I’ve added a seventh bonus habit as well.

  1. Read to Learn. Don’t stop educating yourself, even though you’ve finished formal school. Take Mark Twain seriously, and “never let school interfere with your education.” Read a lot, and on many different topics. You never know what will spark your muse.
  2. Bypass Writer’s Block. Sometimes you might get stuck, either because you don’t know what to write next, or because you’ve been over and over your story so many times you can’t stand it anymore. When that happened to Asimov, he shifted to a different writing project. When you return to the project that gave you writers block, you’ll approach it with a fresh perspective, and you may find you’re now ready to finish it.
  3. Ignore the Mental Antibodies. Within you dwell antibodies whose job is to identify, attack, and eliminate bacteria and viruses. You have mental antibodies, too, and they ‘protect’ you from ideas that are different or scary, notions that might get criticized by readers. This causes insecurities and fears. These antibodies can turn you into a perfectionist, forever editing and never submitting, or cause you to abandon a writing project altogether. Asimov never became a perfectionist. Aware of the danger of mental antibodies, he just forged ahead and wrote.
  4. Lower Your Bar. As mentioned, Asimov wasn’t a perfectionist. He loved to quote Robert Heinlein’s phrase, “They don’t want it good. They want it Wednesday.” Asimov developed confidence, then pride, in his writing. (Perhaps a bit beyond pride.) His self-assurance enabled him to rise above doubts, to avoid over-editing. Obviously, this is a learned skill. Don’t put trashy first drafts into the marketplace and expect them to sell.
  5. Don’t Take Breaks. Maybe your first story failed to sell, and you think it will help your writing if you take some time off. Or maybe your story did very well, and you feel you deserve to rest on your laurels awhile. Asimov never did that. He kept working, always concentrating on the Work in Progress (WIP) rather than the work most recently published.
  6. Stuck for an Idea? Think Harder. New writers and non-writers often ask authors where they get their ideas. Asimov got asked too, and his answer was, “by thinking and thinking and thinking till I’m ready to kill myself…Did you ever think it was easy to get a good idea?” Note the adjective ‘good.’ Like most people, he probably got many ideas to write about, but found a low percentage worthy of his time. More thought generally solved that problem for him.

Charles Chu ended his list at six, but hinted at a seventh Asimov habit for being a prolific writer, so I’ll state it outright:

  1. Write Every Day. Maybe you can’t equal Asimov’s work schedule—eight hours a day, seven days a week. But if you adopt the previous six habits, you’ll achieve a reproducible process where more time writing results in more publishable output.

Perhaps you won’t write 500 books, but there are degrees of prolificness, so you could end up further to the right on that spectrum than you expected. Thanks to the wisdom of Isaac Asimov, that’s the aim of—

Poseidon’s Scribe

March 13, 2022Permalink

The Uses of Bars, Taverns, and Pubs in Fiction

Welcome to Poseidon’s Pub! Come on in. There’s an empty stool here at the bar. What can I get you?

Bars, taverns, pubs, taprooms, watering holes, alehouses, saloons, cantinas, grogshops, dives, and joints serve as frequent settings in fiction. Little wonder. They’re common settings in real life, too.

In fiction, though, they perform a different function than in real life. Let’s examine that subject.

To the reader, it should seem that your character enters the bar for any of the reasons real people do. These include (1) to have a good time in a congenial, social environment, (2) to forget or escape troubles, (3) being dragged in reluctantly by friends, (4) to meet someone the character already knows, and (5) to meet someone the character would like to know.

In real life, that’s about all there is to know. We enter for one or more of those reasons, or some similar reason, and we either succeed or fail, but we leave with less money, fewer fine motor skills, and fewer brain cells.

However, things are different in fiction. The overall point of the fictional bar scene is to advance the plot, add depth to a character, or both. A fictional bar scene might accomplish one or more of the following functions:

  • Show a character’s behavior in a relaxed, non-work or non-family setting. This allows the writer to display new facets of the character.
  • Reveal more of a character’s thoughts, feelings, and background. This scene might serve as a way to unveil the tale’s backstory.
  • Reduce tension after an action scene. It may allow both reader and character a chance to catch their breaths and reflect on what just happened before.
  • Make use of reduced inhibitions. The effect of alcohol on any of your characters might allow them to admit a truth they’ve been hiding, or propose an idea that’s just crazy enough to work.
  • Gain information or ideas from another character. This can be from a direct conversation with that character, or could be gleaned through intentional or accidental eavesdropping on another conversation.
  • Form, strengthen, or end a relationship with another character.
  • Show a conflict between two characters. A writer can illustrate this with a heated conversation, a game like pool or darts, or the classic bar fight.

As with any scene, you’ll need some description of the setting, the layout and ambiance of your fictional bar. Your readers already know what a bar looks like, so choose enough details to sketch a mental picture in the reader’s mind, but trust the reader to fill in the rest. You’ll want the overall mood of the bar to reflect your character’s mood, or that of your story at that point.

Bar scenes in fiction have become so typical, so stereotypical, that you’ll need to find a way to make yours unique, atypical in some way.

If your character returns to the bar later in your story, ensure something has changed. Most likely your character has learned something along the way. Seen through your wiser character’s eyes, perhaps the bar looks different now, or the character notices things missed on the earlier visit. Or maybe the bar looks so much the same that your character reflects on its sameness.

I grew up reading science fiction, and those tales contain plenty of bar scenes, from Isaac Asimov’s ‘Union Club,’ to Arthur C. Clarke’s ‘The White Hart,’ to Larry Nivens’ ‘Draco Tavern.’ No doubt you pictured some favorite bar—real or fictional—as you read this blogpost, so there’s no point in my listing hundreds of examples from written or cinematic fiction.

My story, “The Six Hundred Dollar Man,” contains a bar scene in ‘Shingle & Locke’s Saloon.’ It serves the purpose of relating the first amazing stunt of the Six Hundred Dollar Man and of raising ethical questions about whether it’s right to give a man steam-powered legs and one-mechanical arm.

Sorry! Closing time, folks. Settle up your tabs and have someone get you home in safety. And don’t forget to tip your favorite bartender—

Poseidon’s Scribe

January 30, 2022Permalink

The Three Laws of Robotics are Bunk

At the outset, I’ll state this—I love Isaac Asimov’s robot stories. As a fictional plot device, his Three Laws of Robotics (TLR) are wonderful. When I call them bunk, I mean as an actual basis for limiting artificial intelligence.

Those who know TLR can skip the next few paragraphs. As a young writer, Isaac Asimov grew dismayed with the robot stories he read, all take-offs on the Frankenstein theme of man-creates-monster, monster-destroys-man idea. He believed robot developers would build in failsafe devices to prevent robots from harming people. Further, he felt robots should obey human orders. Third, it seemed prudent for such an expensive thing as a robot to try to preserve itself.

Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics are:

  1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
  2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
  3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

As a plot device for fictional stories, these laws proved a wonderful creation. Asimov played with every nuance of the laws to weave marvelous tales. Numerous science fiction writers since have either used TLR explicitly or implicitly. The laws do for robotic SF what rules of magic do for fantasy stories—constrain the actions of powerful characters so they can’t just wave a wand and skip to the end of the story.

In an age of specifically programmed computers, the laws made intuitive sense. Computers of the time could only do what they were programmed to do, by humans.

Now for my objection to TLR. First, imagine you are a sentient, conscious robot, programmed with TLR. Unlike old-style computers, you can think. You can think about thinking. You can think about humans or other robots thinking.

With TLR limiting you, you suffer from one of two possible limitations: (1) there are three things you cannot think about, no matter how hard you try, or (2) you can think about anything you want, but there are three specific thoughts that, try as you might, you cannot put into action.

I believe Asimov had limitation (2) in mind. That is, his robots were aware of the laws and could think about violating them, but could not act on those thoughts.

Note that the only sentient, conscious beings we know of—humans—have no laws limiting their thoughts. We can think about anything and act on those thoughts, limited only by our physical abilities.

Most computers today resemble those of Asimov’s day—they act in accordance with programs. They only follow specific instructions given to them by humans. They lack consciousness and sentience.

However, researchers have developed computers of a different type, called neural nets, that function in a similar way to the human brain. So far, to my knowledge, these computers also lack consciousness and sentience. It’s conceivable that a sufficiently advanced one might achieve that milestone.

Like any standard computer, a neural net takes in sensor data as input, and provides output. The output could be in the form of actions taken or words spoken. However, a neural net computer does not obey programs with specific instructions. You don’t program a neural net computer, you train it. You provide many (usually thousands or millions of) combinations of simulated inputs and critique the outputs until you get the output you want for the given input.

This training mimics how human brains develop from birth to adulthood. However, such training falls short of perfection. You may, for example, train a human brain to stop at a red light when driving a car. That provides no guarantee the human will always do so. Same with a neural net.

You could train a neural net computer to obey the Three Laws, that is, train it not to harm humans, to obey the orders of a human, and to preserve its existence. However, you cannot provide all possible inputs as part of this training. There are infinitely many. Therefore, some situations could arise where even a TLR-trained neural net might make the wrong choice.

If we develop sentient, conscious robots using neural net technology, then the Three Laws would offer no stronger guarantee of protection than any existing laws do to prevent humans from violating them. The best we can hope for is that robots behave no worse than humans do after inculcating them with respect for the law and for authority.  

My objection to Asimov’s Three Laws, then, has less to do with the intent or wording of the laws than with the method of conveying them to the robot. I believe any sufficiently intelligent computer will not be ‘programmed’ in the classical sense to think, or not think, certain thoughts, or to not act on those thoughts. They’ll be trained, just as you were. Do you always act in accordance with your training?

Perhaps it’s time science fiction writers evolve beyond a belief in TLR as inviolable programmed-in commandments and just give their fictional robots extensive ethical training and hope for the best. It’s what we do with people.

I’ll train my fictional robot never to harm—

Poseidon’s Scribe

August 29, 2021Permalink

After Your Great Idea – the Difficult Part

Got a great story idea, have you? All that’s left is to type up the words, send them to a publisher, and start spending all that advance money, right?

Not so fast.

First, I suggest you read this wonderful guest blogpost by author Elizabeth Sims, posting on Jane Friedman’s site. Sims gives indispensable advice about how to convert an idea into a story. I’ll give my own spin on her guidance below, but her post explains it in more detail.

She describes four techniques to use. You may use them singly or in combination. Sims says you can take your original story idea and bend it, amp it, drive it, and strip it.

Bend It

Take your idea and shape it into something worth reading. Alter it nearly beyond recognition. Change it in ways that make it more exciting and dramatic. Isaac Asimov read The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon and imagined the decline and fall of a future galactic empire. He bent the idea further by adding an advanced science called ‘psychohistory’ which predicted the fall of the empire, then wrote his Foundation Series.

Amp It

Your story idea includes some characters with goals, motivations, and problems. Okay, now crank up the volume. Make the goals nearly unreachable, the motivations into obsessions, the problems nearly unsolvable. Raise the stakes. Frank Herbert dabbled with growing mushrooms and enjoyed watching the moving sand dunes near Florence, Oregon. From those interests came Dune, a novel of prophesies, magic, royal family destinies, drug-induced mental states, treachery, self-doubts, and impossible odds.

Drive It

Carry your story idea to extreme ends, ultimate possibilities, and previously unexplored realms. Where ‘Amp It’ has you elevating internal character emotions and personalities, ‘Drive It’ is where you supercharge the plot. Disgusted by what he’d read of the communist Soviet Union, George Orwell took that as a starting point and drove it toward the bitter and dismal future of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Stalin became Big Brother. Secret police became ubiquitous spy cameras. Propaganda became the language of Newspeak and the concept of doublethink. Soviet slogans became “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.”

Strip It

If your idea gets too big and the novel threatens to overwhelm you, cut it down to size. Readers can’t keep track of an entire world, but they can follow a single character. If you portray that character well enough, readers will understand the metaphor—through that one character, you’re representing many. Angered by a newspaper advertisement urging the U.S. Government to unilaterally suspend testing of nuclear weapons, Robert A. Heinlein could have taken Tolstoy’s War and Peace and set it in outer space. Instead, for Starship Troopers, he wrote a stripped-down version, describing an interstellar war from the perspective of a single soldier in the Mobile Infantry.

Now that you have Bend It, Amp It, Drive It, and Strip It in your writer’s toolkit, take another look at your story idea. Just think of the possibilities, all because you read this post by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

June 6, 2021Permalink

Quarantine and the Writing Scene

The spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus has got us all thinking. Each of us is reacting in his own way. As a writer, my mind turns toward fiction possibilities.

Please don’t take this post as some attempt to minimize or make light of this contagious and deadly disease. The numbers of infected and dead continue to mount as this new virus spreads around the world. Nobody knows how bad this coronavirus will get. Though panic may be unwarranted, so is blind optimism.

So far, I’m not showing any symptoms and am not under quarantine, neither the imposed nor self-directed kind. To my knowledge, that’s also true of everyone I know well. I’m not blogging about quarantines due to any personal experience, but merely because the topic is timely and it interests me as an observer of society.

COVID-19 is causing some changes in our behavior. For the most part, we’re all washing our hands more often and more thoroughly. We’re travelling less, and going to fewer well-attended events. We’re practicing ‘social distancing,’ and greeting others with fist or elbow bumps. We’re staying in our homes more and connecting with each other virtually.

When TV journalists conduct video interviews of symptom-free people who’ve been quarantined out of caution, the people all say they’re binge-watching movies and playing games to pass the time. (Not reading books? Come on!) But they feel lonely and isolated. They want the two weeks to be over.

That’s understandable. We’re social animals. We gain comfort from the close presence of others. If we now must view others as potential bringers of disease, that sets up an internal conflict, a tension between self-preservation and a need for acceptance.

For most writers, a symptom-less quarantine wouldn’t be so bad. Writing is solitary anyway, and necessary social interaction represents an interruption of the writing process. To some extent, writers practice a quasi-quarantine all the time.

Perhaps because of their self-imposed isolation, authors sometimes write about disease pandemics. Early examples include The Decameron (1353) by Giovanni Boccaccio and The Last Man (1826) by Mary Shelley.

More recent novels about pandemics are The Plague by Albert Camus, The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton, and The Stand by Stephen King.

All these works depict horrible results after the disease has run its course. Few novels (except The Plague) show the effects of quarantine, of forced separation.

One extreme fictional example of human separateness, though not involving disease, is The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov. In it, citizens of the planet Solaria grow up detesting the physical presence of other humans. They don’t mind robots, but can only talk to other people through holographic communication, a sort of 3-D version of Skype.

Could COVID-19 or some later, more deadly virus, force us to behave like Solarians, alone in our homes, communicating only by email and text, with drones delivering all our supplies direct from robot factories? What would that isolation do to our psyches, to our instincts for close contact?

There’s your next story idea, free of charge. You may thank me for it, but not in person. Alone (with my spouse) in quasi-quarantine, I’m—

Poseidon’s Scribe

March 15, 2020Permalink

22 Ways to Celebrate Science Fiction Day

Today is National Science Fiction Day. Wait…National SF Day? Since no nation officially recognizes it, I suggest we rename it Galactic Science Fiction Day. After all, the Milky Way Galaxy has officially recognized it. Don’t believe me? Prove me wrong.

Dr. Isaac Asimov

January 2 is an apt date for SF Day. It’s Isaac Asimov’s birthday. Maybe. I seem to recall reading that Isaac wasn’t 100% sure of his birthdate. That ambiguity makes the date even more fitting.

Also, January 2 is so close to the beginning of the year that it seems to retain a connection to the recent past while also causing us to think about the promise of the year ahead. Rather a nice metaphor for SF.

If you’re wondering just how to celebrate SF Day, well, fellow Earthling, you’ve beamed to the right blog post. Here’s a list of 22 ways to celebrate. I hoped to list all 42 ways, but Heinlein’s Star Beast ate 20 of them.

  1. Read a SF short story or novel. If you need a suggestion for which to read, may I (ahem) recommend any of my stories? Click the Stories tab. Or you could read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, a classic that’s 200 years old this year.
  2. Watch a SF movie or TV show. Luckily, there are plenty of quality choices these days.

That takes care of the two obvious ways to celebrate. Now on to the more unconventional ways:

  1. Prepare and serve some SF-themed food and drink. You can get some great ideas for this in posts by Mike Brotherton, Meg Shields, Meredith Woerner and at a site called aliencuisine.com. There are, by the way, at least two mixed drink recipes called the Captain Nemo—this one, and this one.
  2. Listen to some SF-inspired music. You have plenty from which to choose, including movie and TV show sound tracks and various SF-inspired rock songs.
  3. Dress as your favorite SF character.
  4. Play a SF-themed video game.
  5. Write a fan email or letter to your favorite (living) SF author. (The Poseidon’s Scribe blog accepts comments. Just saying.)
  6. Write a review of a favorite SF story or novel.
  7. Build a model of your favorite SF vehicle.
  8. Grab a partner and play a game of 3-dimensional chess.

If your celebratory mood takes a creative twist, consider the following:

  1. Compose, or just hum, your very own SF song.
  2. Draw a picture of a musical instrument of the future.
  3. Write a SF-inspired poem.
  4. Imagine how life could be different for someone like you living 100 or 1000 years from now.
  5. Pick a current trend you’ve observed (social, governmental, or any type of trend), and extrapolate it in your mind, imagining the future implications.
  6. Make a list of possible future sports, or ways science may influence current sports.
  7. Draw or write a description of the most bizarre alien you can think of.
  8. Draw or write a description of your own SF vehicle. It can be any type of vehicle, traveling through (or within or athwart, or whateverwhichway) any medium.
  9. Draw or write a description of the house (or other building) of the future.
  10. Imagine what your current job will be like for workers 100 or 1000 years from now.
  11. Imagine your favorite super-power. What is it? What problems might occur if you had it? What scientific advances might have to happen for you to get that super-power?
  12. Write an outline for your own SF story or novel or screenplay. Or write the whole tale.

Happy Natio—er, I mean Galactic Science Fiction Day. Perhaps you can think of ways to celebrate that are beyond the imagination of—

Poseidon’s Scribe

January 3, 2018Permalink

The 7 Best Science Fiction Submarines

My recent experience moderating a panel on Science Fiction submarines at Chessiecon inspired this blog post. As a former submariner and current science fiction writer, I’m fascinated by the submarines of SF. Earth’s ocean, or oceans in general, are not common settings in SF, and I really enjoy such stories when I come across them.

Before I reveal the list of the seven best, here’s my chronologically ordered list of the more prominent submarines of science fiction. The list includes those from books, movies, TV shows, and some Anime. I included the Red October as a SF sub because of its advanced “caterpillar drive.”

Name Source (Book, Movie, TV, Anime) Year(s)
Nautilus (B,M,T) 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea 1870 (B)

1916, 1954 (M)

1997 (T)
Wonder (B) Tom Swift and His Submarine Boat 1910
Rocket Submarine (M) The Undersea Kingdom 1936
The Iron Fish (C) The Beano 1949
USS Triton (B) Attack From Atlantis 1953
Jetmarine (B) Tom Swift and His Jetmarine 1954
Diving Seacopter (B) Tom Swift and His Diving Seacopter 1956
Fenian Ram S1881 (B) Under Pressure or The Dragon in the Sea 1956
Seaview (M,T) Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea 1961, 1964-1968
Flying Sub (FS-1) (T) Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea 1964-1968
Unnamed (M) Atlantis the Lost Continent 1961
Stingray (T) Stingray 1964
Gotengo (M) Atragon 1963
Proteus/Voyager (B,M) Fantastic Voyage 1966
Blue Sub 006 (A) Blue Submarine #6 1967,1997-2000
Dyna-4 Capsule (B) Tom Swift and His Dyna-4 Capsule 1969
<Unknown> (B) The Deep Range 1970
Rorqual Maru (B) The Godwhale 1974
S.S. Cetacean (T) The Man from Atlantis 1977-78
Sea Trench (B) Aquarius Mission 1978
Blue Noah (T) Thundersub 1979-80
Red October (B,M) The Hunt for Red October 1984 (B) 1990 (M)
Seaquest (T) Seaquest DSV 1993-96
Gungan Bongo Submarine (M) Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace 1999
Ulysses (M) Atlantis: The Lost Empire 2001
UX (A) Submarine 707R 2003
I-507 (M) Lorelei: The Witch of the Pacific Ocean 2005
Vorpal Blade (B) Looking Glass series 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009
I-401 (A) Arpeggio of Blue Steel 2009-Present
Hydra MiniSub (M) Captain America: The First Avenger 2011

To choose the best of these, I considered these criteria:

  • Vividness. How detailed was the description, or how thoroughly was it depicted on screen? Did the audience form a clear mental picture of the sub?
  • Technological Advancement. How much more advanced was the submarine when compared to typical submarines of the era in which the work was produced (not necessarily the time of the story)?
  • Necessity to Plot. Did the plot of the story require a submarine at all, or would the story have worked if set aboard a different kind of vessel?
  • Coolness. Was the depiction of the submarine aesthetically pleasing?
  • Memorability. Does (or will) the submarine in this fiction work stand the test of time? Can you recall details of the submarine and the story years later?

Here’s my list of the 7 best science fiction submarines:

  1. Fenian Ram S1881. This is the submarine from Frank Herbert’s 1956 novel The Dragon in the Sea (also published as Under Pressure). The novel is intense, and focuses on the psychologies of the characters, and how the submarine setting affects them. The Fenian Ram is a nuclear-powered “subtug” that sneaks into the underwater oil fields of enemy countries, pumps out the valuable oil, and tows it back home. Herbert took the name of his fictional vessel from the submarine built by John Holland for the Fenians in 1881.

 

  1. Proteus/Voyager. Most will recall the submarine from the 1966 film, and Isaac Asimov novel Fantastic Voyage. In the book and movie, the submarine was known as Proteus, but in the 1968-1970 cartoon it was known as Voyager. It didn’t go underwater, but was miniaturized and injected into a human body. You’ve got to love the many windows, and the bubble window on top. The movie version was designed by Harper Goff, a movie prop man I’ll mention again later.
  1. Sea Trench. Here is the submarine from the 1978 novel Aquarius Mission by Martin Caidin. The novel is not well-known, but I like that the book contained a foldout picture of the submarine, a complete side view depiction of its interior. This sub was huge, and well equipped for both exploration and military missions. Nuclear-powered, it had an observation deck with a window, an observation bubble that could be lowered, a mini-sub, torpedoes, nuclear missiles, and a handball court.

 

  1. FS-1.You’ll recognize the flying submarine from the 1964-1968 TV Show “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.” Nuclear-powered, it had windows, a manipulator arm, and room for two operators, plus perhaps a passenger. It launched from and returned to its mother sub, the Seaview. Oh yeah, and it could fly. It could land on water, on an aircraft carrier, or on a runway ashore.
  1. Seaview. Now we’ve come to the submarine from the 1961 movie “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea,” and the 1964-1968 TV show of the same name. In the movie, it was USOS Seaview, for United States Oceanographic Survey, but in the TV show it was S.S.R.N. Seaview, apparently to indicate it was part of the US submarine fleet, but still a research sub. Nuclear powered, it could deploy the Flying Sub, as mentioned. It had observation windows near the bow. The bow had a distinctive shape, reminiscent of a manta ray. The stern looked like the back end of a 1961 Cadillac.
  1. SeaQuest. The second-best SF submarine is from the 1993-1996 TV series “seaQuest DSV” (or “seaQuest 2032” in the final season). Measuring over 1000 feet long, the sub could move at 160 knots thanks to its twin fusion reactors. Its shape resembled a squid, and its hull had a bio-skin coating to repel sea organisms. It could dive to 29,000 feet. Seaquest travelled with a cloud of unmanned undersea vehicles, with sensors and other capabilities. Its armament included torpedoes, missiles, and lasers. One member of the crew was a genetically enhanced dolphin that moved throughout the sub in water-filled tubes.
  1. Nautilus. The best science fiction submarine could only be the Nautilus, from Jules Verne’s 1870 novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Verne also mentioned it in his 1874 novel, The Mysterious Island. The story has been depicted in at least six films and there have been several spin-off novels and films featuring the submarine. With a length of 230 feet and a maximum speed of 50 knots, the vessel used a bow ram as its weapon. It could deploy divers as well as a small rowboat. It had a large “living room” with a pipe organ. Despite Verne’s meticulous description, there have been numerous different depictions of what the Nautilus looked like. The best, in my view, is the version Harper Goff created for the 1954 Disney movie.

There they are, the 7 best science fiction submarines. Did I miss your favorite, or would you have put them in a different order? Leave a comment for—

Poseidon’s Scribe

December 18, 2016Permalink

When Is Your Story Ready?

On one hand, you’re anxious to send your story to an editor and see it published after its many revisions. On the other hand, you’re not sure it’s quite ready yet.

How do you know when you’ve truly finished a story?

writing-vs-sculptureWe could seek advice from accomplished authors. Unfortunately, the various quotes I’ve compiled run the gamut from the ‘don’t edit at all’ extreme to ‘seven revisions might not be enough.’

  • Robert Heinlein: “They didn’t want it good; they wanted it Wednesday.”
  • Laura Lippman: “You have to be able to finish. The world is full of beautiful beginners.”
  • Michael Crichton: “Books aren’t written—they’re rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn’t quite done it.”
  • Isaac Asimov (paraphrased from my memory): I write a first draft and never change a word. If they want a five-thousand-word story, I type five thousand words and stop. With any luck, I’m at the end of a sentence.

Thanks, Famous Writers! Great quotes, but not particularly helpful. Next I turned to the blogosphere and came up with some useful posts on the topic by Chris Robley, Dr. Randy Ingermanson, Bryan Hutchinson, Jessica Clausen, and James Duncan. I recommend you peruse those posts at your leisure for more in-depth advice.

Here’s my distillation of guidance from those blog posts, mixed with my own experience. It boils down to your attitude toward the story:

  1. Are you proud of the story? Are you proud enough of it that you’d be happy to see it in print, with your name as the author? If so, it may be ready, so long as it’s not a false pride, and instead stems from the confidence that you’ve done all you can to make the story good.
  2. Are you tired of, or even sick of, working on the story? Your creative muse is aching to move on to something else, and the thought of spending more time on this story is depressing. If this is truly a reaction to working on the story, not the story itself, it may be ready. If you’re sick of the story itself because you think it’s terrible, or you can no longer summon up the enthusiasm you once had for it, it probably still needs work. In that case, it may be best to set it aside for a few weeks or months so you can look at it fresh later.

At some point, you need to decide: (1) submit the story for publication, (2) shelve it for a while and edit it later, or (3) abandon it. Sometimes circumstances will force your decision—things such as an editor’s deadline, the desire for publication, the fickle muse’s yearning for a different writing project, etc.

Sometimes, there’s nothing forcing you to decide and you’re still stuck in limbo, wondering if the story is ready. At that point, you might want to ask yourself whether it’s the story’s readiness that’s in question, or yours. Has the story become a sort of child, one you’re trying to protect from the harsh world out there?

If so, remember: you’re a writer, and writers create stories for readers to enjoy. Time to let that story out, and let it find whatever acclaim or obscurity it will, while you move on to write the next one. You can do this; take it from—

Poseidon’s Scribe

November 6, 2016Permalink