Joseph Dooley Fiction: November 2018

Archetypal characters and family update

I expressed a desire to my editor for the characters in my upcoming book Seeds of Calamity to be more archetypal. Readers connect quickly with people they recognize, so by using archetypes I could quickly establish character dynamics and reader expectations.

I can think of few examples where deliberately eschewing archetypes for the main character succeeded. But the best example would have to be Die Hard. Every time I rewatch that Christmas classic, I'm fascinated with how unheroic John McClane seems in the first 20 minutes. He's afraid of flying. He interacts stiffly with the airplane passenger and the limo driver. He fights with his wife within minutes of meeting her at her office. He quips about Ellis's cocaine use and fruity Californians. The movie goes out of its way to make you think twice about liking this man. The filmmakers may have been motivated to purposefully break the audience's prior identification with Bruce Willis, who was known as a comic actor in the '80s, not an action star. Nevertheless, they did a super job introducing that character.

In my first book, Tendrils to the Moon, Ames is the hero, but I didn't initially present him as such. He comes off as an uptight, no-nonsense everyman, who happens to be XO on a spaceship bound for the Moon. His character arc is to become the magnanimous leader that his boss proves not to be. One of my readers thought Sheridan, not Ames, was the hero until roughly halfway through the book.

Anyway, my editor was skeptical. She likes my characters and thinks I shouldn't try anything different with them. They're interesting without seeming fake, she said. I'll lean on her judgement for now. She is my wife, after all!

This Thanksgiving is special for my family because last Friday we welcomed our second daughter into the world.

Life has been pretty full since Diana was born, and the writing has not come as quickly as I would like. But I wouldn't trade this child for 20,000 words of clean prose.

Let me know what you think in the comment section below! I'll reply to you as soon as I can. I invite you to read the first three chapters of Tendrils to the Moon for free, and see if the last 9 chapters are worth your time. The paperback version is on sale at Amazon for $8.99. The ebook is only 99 cents.

On colonizing Mars

I wish to quibble with a point in the BBC's write-up of the TV series Mars:

Colonising Mars would provide humankind with a lifeboat, ensuring our species' survival if some giant catastrophe were to befall civilisation - let's say an asteroid strike, or an ecological breakdown.

Realistically, there is no circumstance that could make Mars a more attractive destination than Earth to perpetuate mankind. A "lifeboat" biodome on Earth has the advantage in every aspect. To name a few:

Atmospheric pressure: Even if Earth's atmosphere turned poisonous, it would be no less deadly than the near lack of atmosphere on Mars. An Earth biodome wouldn't have to solve the challenge of containing a pressurized system.
Known resources of organic life and minerals: There is no native life on Mars, nor oil for power generation or plastics. Nor is it Earth's equal in mineral diversity. All these resources would have to be substituted.
Proximity: Until costs for space travel are lowered from the billions of dollars to "mere" millions, simply getting to Mars is an enormous expense, considering all that you have to bring with you. Such an expense, as well as those of time and effort in planning the expedition, are not required to sustain life in a biodome on Earth.

If we're talking strictly in the near-term, before space travel is thoroughly commercialized, I think the only reason man would seriously settle Mars would be to flee the global reach of oppressors. Imagine the Republic of China fleeing to Taiwan in 1949, but on a larger (yet, smaller) scale. If circumstances materialized to that extent, identifiable people groups such as nations or religious sects would already be organized for their self-defense. Only the most affluent and learned groups would attempt an extraterrestrial colonization, with Mars being preferred over the Moon.

Ron Howard is producer of the Mars TV series, and he had some comments that I wish to analyze.

I wasn't sure I believed in the idea of going to Mars. I knew I believed in the idea of space exploration… and any show that advocated that was making a statement that was healthy and positive for human beings - to inspire their imaginations to look outward.
But as I have gone through the process of working on the show and interviewing some of the big thinkers, I now really do believe in it strategically - I don't mean that from a military standpoint, I mean it from the point of the ongoing evolution of the human species… I not only believe it's viable, I'm a big supporter.

This idea of mankind evolving--not just physically but in the way individuals relate and rely on each other--is a fun idea to play with. It sets up a conflict of visions--whither should mankind evolve?--that all readers can be stimulated by because it's fundamental to the human condition. Given current political trends, I think people are increasingly conscious of it as well.

In my book Tendrils to the Moon, the antagonist is taken with the idea of mankind maturing beyond what he sees as its fatal flaws, namely nationalism and religion, which gave rise to the conflict that killed his parents. That the antagonist has that ideology is not an indictment of the ideology, but it gives him a motivation that the reader can relate to.

I tried to write a book back in 2011, a murder mystery/thriller set in an underground colony on Mars that had an almost Communist vision of man. The lack of capitalist/liberal alternatives, the necessity for communal living (contra individual and nuclear family), and the lack of privacy in such dense quarters all could contribute to a Communism organization of society prevailing, at least for a time. The book failed because of a convoluted plot that was impossible to execute, but I wouldn't mind returning to that idea someday.

On artificial atmospheres

I happened across this interview of sci-fi/fantasy author Richard K. Morgan. I haven't read any of his books, but he seems to have a strong sense for hard sci-fi. Excerpt:

In Black Man, I posited that one of the things they would be doing is sending Andeans—Andean Native Americans—to Mars. Because one of the things obviously is if you’ve got a very, very thin atmosphere, then guys who are used to living at altitude are going to be genetically predisposed to cope with that better. So in Black Man, the Western world has built its Mars prep camps in the Andes, because you get the altitude there, and also something of the bleak environment these people will be going to. So the idea is you’ve got several generations of grunt labor coming from places like Peru and Bolivia, and they’ve brought their culture with them. So that’s one of the baseline cultures that operates on Mars.

Kinda like how the grunt labor for Himalayas Mountains climbers are local Sherpas who are genetically adapted to the altitude.

In my book Tendrils to the Moon, one of the dangers facing the characters is decompression of the artificial atmospheres that keep them alive. I even mention that the dropping air pressure in one situation is equivalent to the atmosphere in Tibet. Survivable for your average Westerner, but some people do get altitude sickness at those heights.

If you're writing hard sci-fi, you have to consider how artificial atmospheres are maintained. With current technology, a low-pressure atmosphere is easier and less costly to maintain than a high-pressure atmosphere. Therefore high-altitude adaptation is ideal for people living on alien worlds.

You also have to consider the composition of the artificial atmosphere. There is a minimum partial pressure of oxygen that could sustain a colony. That pressure is unique to every individual, and it's the pressure of oxygen in the alveoli in the lungs. If the partial pressure of oxygen in the atmosphere is too low, oxygen is physically incapable of passing through alveoli into the arteries. For most people, that pressure is about two-thirds of the partial pressure of oxygen at sea level on Earth. Furthermore, there also must be a significant trace gas, like nitrogen or argon, present in your artificial atmosphere, since a pure oxygen atmosphere presents a significant fire hazard.