19 Sep 2005

Which Book, Which Book?

posted in: science fiction, writing | 0

Okay, I haven’t actually abandoned this blog, though you might be forgiven for wondering. Just had a really busy week, is all.

So, my last entry netted a number of questions, which I’m now going to take a shot at answering. Note: I going to be making a lot of this up as I go.

Tsmacro asks what’s the best order to read the books of the Star Rigger universe in. Good question; I’m not sure I have a good answer. If you’d like to follow the chronology of the universe in order (sketchily filled in by the books), then you ought to start with Panglor, then follow with Dragons in the Stars and Dragon Rigger, then move on to Star Rigger’s Way followed by Eternity’s End, and finally end up with Seas of Ernathe. (They’re all described on that same page–see link above–just scroll up and down.) Panglor starts you before star rigging has been discovered, and leads you toward the discovery. Seas of Ernathe happens after the secrets of star rigging have been lost, and we’re trying to rediscover them.

That’s chronological within the universe. But if you’re more interested in following my development as a writer, then you might do it differently. I wrote Seas of Ernathe first, when I barely knew anything about the universe; I’d only written the short novelette “Alien Persuasion,” which later became the basis for Star Rigger’s Way. Plus I was a very young writer. After that, I wrote Star Rigger’s Way and Panglor, then left that universe for a little while, before coming back to write the two dragon books. (The main thing that places the dragon books earlier in the universe than Star Rigger’s Way is that the heroine, Jael, is abused by her ship’s owner in a way that would never be tolerated by the RiggerGuild described in Star Rigger’s Way.) Finally, I wrote Eternity’s End in answer to my editor’s question: “Whatever became of that character in SRW—Legroeder? We last saw him a captive of pirates, and probably in trouble because he helped his old friend to escape…”

In general, I feel that the later books are a lot better written and more satisfying than the earlier ones. But is that a good reason to read them in the order written? I don’t know. What do you people think?

Tomorrow I’ll answer (or try to answer) Tim’s question about the movie potential of my books.

11 Sep 2005

Write SF

posted in: science fiction, writing | 0

Some years ago, I created an online course in SF and fantasy writing, aimed primarily at high school and middle school students, called Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy. It was published on CD by a company called MathSoft, and eventually put online by them, also. (It actually grew out of a distance-learning TV broadcast I hosted, which was beamed into middle school classrooms for two seasons.)

It’s been unavailable except on the used-CD market for a while, but that’s about to change. I’m refitting the course for online viewing, and hope to have it up again and open to the public in the next week or two. It’ll be free of charge, and as friendly to the user as I can make it. The URL will be writeSF.com. If you’re an aspiring writer, or know one, come check it out in a week or two.

27 Jul 2005

Galactica One Step Closer

posted in: Battlestar Galactica, personal news, science fiction, writing | 0

I finished correcting the proofs for Battlestar Galactica today. A book always feels different when you see it typeset, and I’m happy to say that it I was pleased by the way it came out. I enjoyed reading it (not always true of reading my own stuff), and I got excited in the right places, and felt for the characters in the right places. So my hopes are high. Still no official word from the studio yet, but assuming nothing goes wrong there, it’s in Tor’s schedule for February 2006. If the Good Lord’s willing and the creek don’t rise.

At the same time, life just got busy on another level: we started dress rehearsal for Bye Bye Birdie at the Arlington Children’s Theater, and as I’m the head sound guy, I have to be there a lot, trying to get the sound to work out right and training a couple of new people—other parents who want to learn sound. That’s going to take up a lot of time for the next two weeks. My own kids are in four performances of the blue cast, plus there are four other performances by the red cast. It’ll be fun, but tiring.

I haven’t forgotten that I promised to write about rewriting, per Harry’s query. Just haven’t had time to do it yet.

21 Jul 2005

Rocket Ride, Redux

posted in: science fiction, writing | 0

My short-short story, “Rocket Ride: a Short Day’s Journey Into Space,” saw its second publication (slightly updated) last weekend, in the travel section of the Dallas Morning News (sans title). It’s a fun little piece that I wrote originally on commission from the Boston Herald travel editor, at a time when the Ansari X-Prize deadline was looming. Now, that prize has been won—which was why I had to update the story slightly.

Funny how these things happen. I’ve probably earned more per word, and per hour, on this story than on any other piece of fiction I’ve written. (Which tells you that, by and large, fiction doesn’t pay all that well.) I wrote it while on vacation at my in-laws in Puerto Rico, sitting under a cork tree.

Oops. I see you need to be registered to get to that link I put up above. Odd, I viewed the story just fine by following links to the travel section. Oh well, you can see the same story on my web site, if you’re interested. The pre-updated version, at the moment. Until I get around to uploading the changes.

14 Jul 2005

Hal’s Worlds

posted in: science fiction, writing | 0

Hal Clement was a towering figure in hard science fiction, probably best known for his seminal novel, Mission of Gravity, recently reissued as part of Heavy Planet: The Classic Mesklin Stories. I was awed by his work when I read it as a young adult, and I still point to Mission of Gravity as a classic example of SF world-building in the truest sense of the word. Hal’s real name was Harry C. Stubbs, and his life experiences ranged from World War II bomber pilot to high school science teacher. He lived in the Boston area, where he had more friends than wildflowers in a meadow. Not long after his death a couple of years ago, a particularly close-knit group of his friends, a writing group called “Hal’s Pals,” put forth the idea of a memorial anthology which would include essays about people’s memories of Hal, as well as short stories in the Hal Clement tradition.

That book is now a reality. Called Hal’s Worlds, it has just been released by Wildside Press in trade paperback. I’m happy to have been asked to contribute a piece, and so it includes a short essay I wrote on my personal interactions with Hal. I held the book in my hands at Readercon, but don’t yet have a copy of my own. It’s a fine-looking volume, with quite a lineup of writers who wanted to offer a tribute to Hal. You can buy a copy directly from the web site of Wildside Press.

All author and editor royalties from the book are being donated to two charities selected by Hal’s widow.

12 Jul 2005

Byron Preiss (1953-2005)

posted in: farewells, science fiction, tributes, writing | 1

Science fiction publisher/editor/writer/packager/entrepreneur Byron Preiss died in a car accident last Saturday, while driving to his synagogue in New York. He was a significant figure in the SF publishing world (and not only SF—he published in many areas). I learned of his death from my agent, who said, “It is shocking beyond belief and the entire publishing community is stunned. Although Byron was controversial in many ways, he was a friend, and he left a wife and two young children.”

I didn’t really know Byron personally—I think I met him only once or twice. But recently he brought out a new edition of my novel From a Changeling Star under his iBooks imprint, and he was planning to do the same with Down the Stream of Stars. Years earlier, I wrote my novel Roger Zelazny’s Alien Speedway: Clypsis under the aegis of Byron Preiss Visual Productions. It was a quick project that turned out to be great fun in much the way the Battlestar Galactica novel was, and a project that brought me new readers and more fan mail than I’d gotten from all my other books combined. I had had hopes that he would one day reissue it through iBooks.

Byron had a wife and two daughters, just as I do. One of them was 16 years old—the same age as my older daughter, as of two days ago. That’s what hit me the hardest.

There’s a fuller tribute to him at comicon.com.

8 Jul 2005

Readercon

posted in: science fiction, writing | 0

I’ll be at Readercon off and on this weekend. Readercon is one of the best conventions for people who really love written SF and are interested in hearing serious discussion of SF as literature. That doesn’t mean it’s above silliness, mind you. One of the major events is the Kirk Poland Memorial Bad Prose Competition, which is a combination of total silliness and an appreciation of the finer points of style (bad style). If you’re in or near the Boston area, check it out (click the link above for more info).

I’m on a panel tonight (Friday) on the Hal’s World memorial anthology, a tribute to the late great Hal Clement. I’m autographing Saturday at noon. And moderating a panel Sunday at 1 p.m., called “If This Goes On.”

See you there!

25 Jun 2005

Writing Question #6: What’s It Like to Write a Movie Novelization?

posted in: Battlestar Galactica, personal news, science fiction, writing | 0

Battlestar Galactica: the Miniseries was my first movie novelization, and a refreshing experience. First off, it gave me a welcome breather from working on the long-delayed Sunborn, coming as it did just as I finished the first draft of that book. Secondly, I enjoyed the miniseries and loved the acting (Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell were terrific, and so were the others). It was just plain fun to work in that world and sort through the details of the story. (Sidelight to that: my daughter Julia is homeschooling, and we made it an assignment for her to watch the DVD with me, and compare the action onscreen with the written script. Many differences.) Third, it forced me to work at a fast and furious pace, which was good. I didn’t have to make up the story—it was already there. Many of you have probably already seen it. If not, I recommend it, from the SciFi Channel.

But that doesn’t mean it was all easy-sailing, either. I found some unique (to me) challenges in writing this book. Turning a story on screen into a novel is not a simple matter of transcription, even though I was working from the actual show on DVD—and even though I tried hard to be faithful to the story as it appeared, including the dialogue.

When you’re writing the novel, you have to flesh out things that go by quickly onscreen, or get left out altogether, perhaps due to time constraints. This was a 4-hour miniseries—3 hours, without commercials. They had to work very hard to squeeze the story into 3 hours, and a lot wound up on the cutting room floor (either literally, or figuratively—in scenes not shot or perhaps not even written). This meant writing new material to bridge gaps or abrupt transitions, and there were many. Or to fill in background.

What surprised me more was the amount of… how shall I put it?… re-imagining needed to tell on the page a story that’s already been told on the screen. Things happen fast onscreen, and as a viewer, you don’t always have time to think about what you’ve just seen, and whether or not it makes sense. I’m not talking about large plot elements, so much as details and pieces of dialogue and motivation. The show’s writers are trying to compress the action, and sometimes the results—which might be perfectly acceptable to a viewer—are less persuasive when you see them laid out on the page. (This is not a criticism; it’s a fact of life.) Things have to be explained. Motivations for even small actions have to withstand a reader squinting at the page and going, Hmmm.

The challenge, then, is to tell the story without changing it (much), reproduce the dialogue without changing it (much), and tweak it or bolster it in just the right ways to make it work on the page as well as it worked onscreen (or better, if possible). It’s not always easy. But it’s generally pretty interesting.

Oh—and it gave me an excuse to write about flying. I always love writing about flying.

24 Jun 2005

Galactica’s Done! Plus Other Cool News

posted in: Battlestar Galactica, personal news, science fiction, writing | 0

That’s all she wrote: Battlestar Galactica: the Miniseries: the Novel is finished and turned in. Big sighs all around. Initial reaction from my editor is very positive. (He’d read the whole thing less than 24 hours after I sent it to him—a first for either of us.) The book is going into an accelerated production schedule for publication next winter. I’ll post more definite details as they become official. The publication stuff is all tentative right now.

Meanwhile, the other cool news is that my younger daughter, Julia, just won national ranking in the middle-school category of an international SF short-story writing competition. The competition is sponsored by Eurisy, which as far as I can tell is an educational consortium of many European space organizations, including the European Space Agency. Students in 18 nations are submitting SF stories depicting life in space, each to go through a selection process at the national level, with each nation’s top two in middle school and high school going on to the international competition. The U.S. entries were judged through the National Space Society. Julia’s story is one of two selected by the U.S. judges to go on to the international competition. Excited she is, yes. And so are we.

26 May 2005

Revenge of the Sith

posted in: science fiction | 0

So last weekend the whole family went to see the new Star Wars, and we had a rousing good time. To my surprise, the theater wasn’t particularly crowded (a rainy Saturday matinee show, just 2 days after the movie opened). We got good seats without knocking ourselves out. Trusty light sabers in hand (younger daughter had been busy custom-manufacturing props), we settled in for the show.

Definitely a major improvement over the last two, and a mostly satisfying completion of this part of the circle. (Satisfying enough that we sat down that evening with a tape of the original and picked up where the new story left off.)

Quarrels and observations:

*SPOILER WARNING*

(It’s not like anything I’m about to say will surprise anyone, because we all know the ending; but still…if you’d like to see it before I talk about the crucial bits, you should stop reading now.)

Aside from the stilted dialogue and predominantly wooden acting (even from the good actors), the only two things that really bothered me…

(I thought you were going to stop reading now. Oh, never mind.)

…were Anakin’s easy conversion by the other Darth, and Obiwan’s leaving him alive in agony on the hot lava (not just stupid, since Obi was trying to make sure the galaxy was rid of the danger, but unJedi-like: he should have finished him off as an act of mercy.)

As for Anakin’s turning, I thought they did a good job of laying the groundwork: fear that he would lose Padme the way he lost his mother, guilt over Windu’s death, distrust of the Jedi, etc. But the final, actual conversion, where he went from “What have I done?” to “Yes, master,” was much too facile. They missed a chance for a really powerful scene, I thought.

Having said all that, you don’t go to see Star Wars for the sensitive acting (not since Alec Guinness, anyway), you go to see it for the larger-than-life story and the visual imagination and the music. And there it delivered.

The political undercurrent was interesting, if unsubtle. The Boston Globe reviewer thought Lucas was making an anti-Bush statement, and that’s definitely one possible reading. The gradual accumulation of power through preying on people’s fear for the safety of the Republic…the fake humility while engaging in deceit…Padme’s comment that this is how democracy is lost, through wild applause (Patriot Act, anyone?)… the war based on pretext…. It could also be seen as a retelling of Hitler’s rise to power (and that real-life similarity is probably the most chilling thing).

One satisfying side note: in the end, Lucas did answer one of the most nagging questions of the series: Why did C3PO not remember Anakin in the original trilogy?

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