Friday, September 28, 2007

Eetoo

I had told myself I don't have time to be starting on a new novel. I have ideas for several more, and when ideas come, I simply open up a file containing my plot outlines and ideas, and add them in. I even had opening chapters for three of them. One of them had been getting so full that I started writing a second chapter, then a third, and now, of course, I'm hopelessly in the middle of a Space Opera type SF narrative.

The setting is actually in the past, about first century, but it takes place in space. The premis is that an ancient civiliation predating the Egyptian rise to being a world power, discovered technologies that enabled space travel, and even relocating their nation, topsoil and vegitation to a new planet.

The narrative shifts constantly between two viewpoints: Eetoo, always written in present tense first person, and that of Heptosh (later in the novel, by a different charracter), who gives a third person viewpoint with the understanding of the technologies and other factors involved (which Eetoo can't do as he's the member of a primative tribe.

Anyway, I'll past in the opening two scenes below:


Eetoo’s story: This is the third time I've seen a light moving about in the sky.
The first time, I told Uncle Oo Paw about it. He said it was only a shooting
star. I thought it was too slow for that, but I figured maybe he was right and
my mind was playing tricks on me. The second time was a week ago. I knew it was
definitely too slow to be a shooting star. I didn't tell anyone though. They
wouldn't believe me.
Now I know it isn't a shooting star. Shooting stars don't stop and go back the way they came. But they'd probably say I was lying. They already say that knowing how to read the ancient writing makes my head too cloudy.
They just don't take me very seriously -- even though I've had my manhood ceremony. I'm supposed to be a man. I'm what they call 'thirteen years old'. A 'year' is the amount of time it takes for the earth to go around the sun, plus three tenths of that. Our ancestors once lived in a place where the earth went around the sun in exactly one year. It got cold during part of the year, and hot during another, so it was easy to tell when a year went by. Also, they had a big round light in the sky that would change into something real thin, and round only on one side, and then back again. It did that twelve times in a year. That must have been weird to look at! Even though we don't live there any more, we still count time like that. It's the way of the Fathers, they say.
That really bright star there is part of something called the 'Zodiac'. Where our ancestors lived, they could see the whole thing. That star was the faintest. Here, it's one of the clearest, but it's the only star from the Zodiac that we can see. I know all that from reading the Writings. I just don't get it. If our ancestors came from the stars, how did we get here? Venerable Too Da says, 'In ships.'
Couldn't that light I've been seeing be a ship?
Venerable Too Da is different from the others. He take me seriously,
probably because he can read, and knows it isn't bad for you. He taught me to
read. He wanted to make me the next Keeper of the Writings. Noo Paw and Noo Maw wouldn't have it though. They wanted their son, Noo, to be, even though I'm a
better student than him. I can read all the tablets now, and I can understand
them too. Noo doesn't even know the whole Nepteshi alphabet yet. He fools around
too much. He only knows some of the pictographs, and even then, he says them in
Fa-ti-shi that we speak every day. That upsets Venerable Too Da no end.
Ha ha! I remember when Ni and I spelled out some Fa-ti-shi words using the
Nephteshi phonetic letters. We thought t was the funniest thing, but Venerable
Too Da got real upset. 'It's a sacred language,' he said. He would have given us
a beating, but he said we were young and didn't know what we were doing. He let
us off with a warning.
Then I asked Uncle Oo Paw why we don't make up some new letters to use for Fa-ti-shi. He just got real uptight, and said that reading and writing things in our own language would make people think more than what's good for them. Then he started scolding me for being too cloudy headed from too much reading of Nephteshi. He's glad they picked Noo to be the next Keeper of the Writings and not me.
Venerable Too Da's afraid he won't live long enough to teach Noo properly. He says maybe I could teach him more if only Noo weren't such a proud little brat. He couldn't understand why the village elders picked Noo and not me.
I think it's because Noo Paw and Noo Maw have such a big flock of sheep and a big house, and I'm only an orphan.
Ni could have been it as well, but he got sucked down the whirlpool. We never even found his body again.
Ni and I did everything together; we fished together, did
traditional wrestling together with Mo Paw, studied the ancient text with
Venerable Too Da.
Venerable Too Da has always been good to me though. He took
care of my Paw and Maw's flock of sheep after they died, and then gave them to
me at my man-hood ceremony. That way, I can at least maintain our family name as a sheep owning family. I could be a village elder one day!
The sheep look like they're doing okay. I think they're all asleep now. I should get some sleep too. It'll be a long trip back to the village tomorrow.
There's that light again...

Heptosh scanned the surface once more, this time at an altitude from which he could make out individual features. It was night on this side of the planet so his activity shouldn't raise any undue alarm from the inhabitants. They'd mistake him for a shooting star.
At least those on this side of the mountain divide. They were mostly primitive tribesmen. Here and there, he could pick out shepherds minding their sheep, or a caravan camped out for the night. These were harmless, but it wouldn't be good to interrupt their peaceful existence by suddenly appearing to them out of the sky.
It was those on the other side he was worried about. They were a more advanced
civilisation. At least they used to be.
If they were as they used to be, they'd present no problem either. The Klodi were a friendly nation, and there had been many happy interactions between them and the Toki human population. Then, there was some sort of struggle. The Klodi had sent out a warning not to enter their solar system until they had got their problem sorted out. They didn't say exactly what the trouble was, so the sector council issued a restriction, and waited. Then they went silent. That was many years ago.
Now, the restriction had expired. There was still silence.
Heptosh was here on a scouting mission.
So far, he had determined, the Famtishi half of the planet was safe. Civilisation was carrying on as it always had. Heptosh had spend the last several weeks making observations of life on the ground -- nothing to worry about here.
The worrisome bit was, what was on the other side of the divide?
Heptosh would fly at a low level across Famtishi territory towards the mountain range and sort of creep over in stealth mode below the range of their scanners.
He viewed the countryside below through his night viewing screen. He'd make his approach over an uninhabited bit of landscape.
What would he find on the other side?
He hoped very much it wouldn't be the Bionics.
They hadn't been detected in this sector of the galaxy as yet, but there were those little signs that made them wonder.

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

Scientific Science Fiction

The blogsite Website at the End of the Universe has an entry providing links to lists of science fiction novels that apply real science to their stories. There's also a link to an Outer Space Science Textbook for science fiction writers to check their accuracy. How close to real science a science fiction novel should adhire is still an open question with opinions on both sides. As for myself, I'm not a scientist, but I still like to write, and I only hope my ideas are interesting enough to merit forgivness on the part of realists. In a way, science fiction is simply a sub-branch of fantasy.

Monday, June 25, 2007

Pepe accepted for publication

I've been offered a contract for my manuscript of Pepe. That is very good new for me, as it will mean I can soon update my resume to include a published work.

The publisher is an online company called Writer's Exchange. They sell their books on Reader's Eden.

I think I said something about online publishers a few entries ago. I won't be getting a big advance up front like the big New York companies give. It will be for electronic media rights only, unless I later exercise the option of POD (see my previous blog entry for what that means). As I said then, e-publishing is beginning to come into its own as a viable venue for becoming an established author. Some on-line books verge on being best-sellers in their own right. For authors looking for a place to publish their first novel, I'd recomend it. One online publisher I looked at warned that they accept only about 30% of their submissions. I thought "Wow! That's high!" A typical New York publisher, even one that accepts individual submissions, the rate is more like .1%. At that rate, one could have the best manuscript that was ever written and spend ones whole life fruitlessly trying to break in to the publishing field.

I don't expect to generate a big enough income to quit my day job very soon. However, that would be a blessing, as that would enable us to branch out into other types of ministry that are out of reach at this moment.

Anyway, keep your eyes on this spot for further news...

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Post Science Fiction?

I think I've found my genre. Michael Moorcock's blog of 18, June, talking about pre-generic prototypes for various genres, in which he suggests Jonathan Swift's third book of Gulliver's Travels as a possible candidate, suddenly starts talking about post-genre:
... Ah, and what of the post-generic form? Assuming that post-generic modes
must not necessarily (or invariably) lead to postmodernism, what might a
post-generic mode look like? Post-science fiction? Post-swords and
sorcery?
I would propose that in the case of Science Fiction, a post genre novel would simply treat the futuristic type technological backdrop as simply that. The story isn't specifically about the high tech device that saves the day, but about the same things that make any other story work, be it self sacrifice, intense love, brawn and wit, whatever. However, the rule of the genre is, the sci fi backdrop must be necessary to the story, so that the plot couldn't possibly happen in any other setting. In other words, you can't simply rewrite Romeo and Juliet with exactly the same plot Shakespeare used. but set it in an interplanetary setting, using light sabres instead of swards.

-- Or maybe 'post -' would imply breaking that rule as well? Maybe if what was previously written about as science fiction, suddenly appears to be reality in the very near future, one could get away with that and call it "Post Science Fiction". William Gibson has written some stories that I would class Post Science Fiction, but has been called "cyberpunk". He writes about the culture that is presently immersed in high tech, but setting their technology just slightly into the future by about 10 years. I don't think he breaks the rule regarding the link between plot and high tech setting though.

I think Pepe would fit into that genre.

Monday, April 23, 2007

Charles Dicken's Satire

I read this bit in Charles Dickens' preface to his 1847 edition of Pickwick Papers:

Lest there be any wellintentioned persons who do not perceive the difference (as some such could not when Old Mortality was newly published) between religion and the cant of religion, piety and their pretence of piety, a humble reverence for the great truths of Scripture and an audacious and offensive obtrusion of its letter and not its spirit in the commonest dissensions and meanest of affairs of life, to the extraordinary confusion of ignorant minds, let them understand that it is always the latter, and never the former, which is satirized here. Further, that the latter is here satirized as being, according to all experience, inconsistent with the former, impossible of union with it, and one of the most evil and mischievous falsehoods existent in society -- whether it establish it head-quarters, for the time being, in Exeter Hall or Ebenezer Chapel or both. It may appear unnecessary to offer a word of observation on so plain a head. But it is never out of season to protest against that coarse familiarity with sacred things which is busy on the lip and idle in the heart, or against the confounding of Christianity with any class of person who, in the words of Swift, have just enough religion to make them hate, and not enough to make them love, one another.

Friday, April 20, 2007

Silent Comix

I've now completed my Silent Comix page.

It started with an idea for teaching my private English students. I penciled some drawings in a comic strip format, but without any captions or dialogue, so my students could look at the pictures and then tell me the story in English. Later, I inked over the pencil drawings, and later sill, scanned them in. I've finally got them formatted for the Internet, and they can be viewed here.

They're good for teaching English, for illiterates, or for those too lazy to plow through a lot of text. I think they're good stories, worthy of any comic book. My favourite is the series on Cornelius the Genius.

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Online Publishing

Just to add to my last blog, what I said about Internet publishers deserves more comment.

A few years ago, when I published The Story of St. Catrick, ebook publishers weren't something you could take all that seriously. Especially, what they call subsidy publishers, like the company where I published Catrick.

A subsidy publisher is one where the author pays a fee, and the publisher does just whatever the auther pays them to do. Unless you're absolutely sure that you have something that will sell, that doesn't need editing for grammer and style errors, and you have a budget to pour into marketing, I'd advise going with a publisher that doesn't charge a fee, but is picky as to what they'll publish -- in other words, they more often than not, send you a polite email saying your manuscript doesn't fit into their publishing agenda. When they do accept you, they take a personal interest in whether it sells or not. It doesn't just sit there, like Catrick did.

'More often than not' is a far better ratio than 999,999 times out of a million, which is more like what you get from standard 'New York' publishers. By 'New York', I don't mean they're necessarily situated in that great city, but that they are a standard paper-only publisher that has to print about a thousand copies of their first editions, and therefore must be absolutely sure that your book is going to sell a big enough persentage of that for them to make it profitible. New York has more than its share of those types, and the top ten lists are done from there.

In a few short years, times have changed. More authors are now making a sizable income from books published on-line. Some best sellers are in the ebook cattigory.

A side product of the downloadable book file (in PDF format or whatever) is P.O.D., or Publishing on Demand. Some publishers do it for you, some rely on a third party to do it. The company where I did Catrick also happens to do POD for other publishers, including one that is now deciding on my Pepe manuscript. POD is where they use ultra modern printer-copiers and desk size book binding machines to print only as many books as have been ordered, be it one, ten or 100. They don't have to pay storage cost, and they have less to loose if your book doesn't sell at all.

However, the non-subsidy companys are still picky, because they edit your book for you, they design a cover, and they market it, which still requires an investment on their part. The fact that they are picky also means that the book buyer can be sure that the books listed will be of a standard quality, and not the rants of some half literate crack-pot as they might find in a subsidy list.

As an author, you do, after all, want a market full of confident buyers.

The biggest obstacle you'll probably find is that a publisher is presently closed to submissions. They'll open again when their present pile of manuscripts get low enough to where they feel they can realisticly tell you they'll look at yours within the next six months to a year. They might say on their site when they expect to open.

The length of time that they take to review your manuscript is the other obstacle, but that's also the case with 'New York' publishers.

Anyway, here are some links. This one is for some articles about the state of internet publishing. Here's another one by author Piers Anthony, author of Zanth, with a list of both subsidy and non subsidy publishers. He comments on each one, giving negative views on some, forwarding his readers comments, and tells you which are subsidy publishers.