Hobbit sex

A Twitter mutual brought to my attention a 1958 essay by Murray Rothbard about naturalism, or realism, in modern literature. It's one of the most succinct and pertinent articles written about its subject matter that I've read, right up there with C S Lewis's The Abolition of Man.

But first, a quote from George R R Martin, to give fuller context to Rothbard's observation.

Martin's stock and trade is "humanizing" his characters by shining a light on their most intimate, often illicit, activities. Tolkien, a devout Catholic, leaves it to our imaginations what hobbits do in the bedroom. I wouldn't categorize the writing style as asexual or celibate, but rather chaste in the sense that sex is best undertaken within the frame of conjugal love as part of God's created order.

In answer to Martin's challenge, I find it almost too easy to imagine hobbits falling in love, getting married, and having lots of baby hobbits. They're farmers, and farmers get it on more than any other profession.

But let's get back to this preoccupation with representing sex in detail in fiction. It's indicative of a certain type of writing that leaves no privacy to the characters or to the reader, that relies on carnal impropriety to pivot the story this way or that. It's been known a long time that man is fallen and, left to his own devices, perverts God's order. Why then has this writing style become more popular since Tolkien's heyday?

Rothbard writes (click to enlarge):

By employing this rationale, the GRRMs of the world absolve themselves of responsibility for the contents of their books. "Are people, especially those in power, not depraved?" they argue. "If so, you have no reason to object. I'm just writing to reflect reality."

Not so fast. One of the most underrated responsibilities of the writer is to choose what to put in and what to leave out of his book. Chekhov's gun dictates that every story element should contribute something to the story. If you fail to discriminate what goes in your book on large scale, everything will come out looking muddy and meaningless.

For the sake of argument, let's say Middle-Earth appeared to Tolkien's imagination fully formed, hobbit sex and all. He left that part out, preserving the characters' nobility in a tale of epic moral scope. As difficult it is for Martin to imagine hobbits having sex, can you imagine how absurd it would be to read about how Sam ravaged Rosy Cotton after years of pent-up longing?

Those who have waited to be inspired to write a book know that's not how it works. The writer creates what goes on the page. It's hard enough work to not take credit, whether the audience loves or hates it.

Rothbard continues:

The fact of the matter is Martin writes about sex because he wants to write about sex, and he'd rather you not treat him like a guy who likes to write about sex. So he employs a red herring, detracting from Tolkien because the latter, to his credit, didn't write about sex.

I suspect the reason we have more popular writers like Martin and fewer popular writers like Tolkien today is because atheists and secularists subverted the art landscape and reshaped readers' expectations. There's no time like the present to reverse that trend. I encourage you to patronize indie creators listed or otherwise engage their work, as they have engaged mine.

As always, let me know what you think in the comments. If you like science fiction, check out my books Seeds of Calamity and Tendrils to the Moon. You can find extended previews for each here and here.

What killed the pulps

King Solomon said it's foolish to long for the old days, but I say it's doubly foolish to idolize the present. The fact of the matter is we have made mistakes and our world is worse because of them. My running hypothesis is the Boomers were the first generation to be raised in the epistemological shift after the two world wars and the Great Depression. The theology of the reconstructed man spread like a virus in the '60s. By the '70s the foundation was completely unearthed and was beginning to erode. The cultural superstructure that stood upon it would come next.

Not by accident, art was among the first endeavors to experience the decline. (See "Relativism sucks") The effects of this colonization are examined in part by Jeffro Johnson in his terrific book, Appendix N:

Back during World War II, C. S. Lewis wrote in The Abolition of Man, "We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst." From a cultural standpoint, we've been laughing and sneering for a long time. These now utterly predictable mutilations of classic adventure fiction are a direct result of decades of this sort of mentality. And what are the scriptwriters and directors laughing at when they foist these revisions on us?

...

Of course, the best days of this type of story [planetary romance] are long gone by now. It was practically ubiquitous up through the sixties, but today it's shocking to see it delivered with not even a hint of snark or irony. Mentioning the very idea of this sort of thing in mixed company is liable to produce a whole raft of negative responses. We live for the most part in a culture where people are primed to turn up their noses at this sort of thing.

Pulp fiction that comprised the bulk of Gary Gygax's literary influences, no matter how popular, was anathema to the new regime. It could not be published anymore without the publisher paying a steep social cost. New art had to portray man as his own creation, with "modern" values. Old values are unevolved, unrefined, illiberal, and other euphemisms for "bad."

As if trying to prove his point, negative reviewers of Johnson's book predictably attack it on ideological grounds. They're not just "turning up their noses"; they're murdering the past with slander.

To be sure, good science fiction and fantasy stories continued to be written after the '60s, but the tide, as they say, was going out. A big reason Star Wars, released in 1977, was a smash hit was it mimicked popular entertainment that wasn't yet a distant memory for its target audience.

There was another factor in the sharp decline of Burroughs-style planetary romance, and it coincides so well with the '60s revolution that it's easy to miss. I'm talking about the Apollo 11 Moon landing. This moment became so stamped in the public consciousness that people were unwilling to entertain the unrealistic aesthetics of a setting like Barsoom or the planets in Lewis's Space Trilogy.

No two properties illustrate this dichotomy better than the movie adaptations for A Princess of Mars (2012's John Carter) and The Martian 3 years later. The former you know is an epic, swashbuckling adventure where the hero saves the world and gets the girl. The latter is basically Robinson Crusoe on Mars, a nuts and bolts survival story where bagging your poop and counting calories were plot elements. One of these movies flopped. The other was a hit and received Best Picture nominations.

I'm not saying The Martian or its movie adaptation sucks. I liked the book very much. I'm saying it owes its popularity to being a product of its time. It leverages what the audience knows about the limitations of space travel, the forbidding environment of Mars, and man's overreliance on technology. Those things weren't commonly understood a hundred years ago. Alien races, a breathable atmosphere, and jumping around like the Incredible Hulk all seemed plausible.

Which leads me to infer two things about the science fiction market:

1. People's imagination is inversely correlated with their knowledge.
2. People really don't hunger for heroes like they used to.

As always, let me know what you think in the comments. If you like sci-fi, check out my books Seeds of Calamity and Tendrils to the Moon. You can find extended previews for each here and here.

Did Han shoot first?

In the 1990s, during the runup to the Star Wars prequels, George Lucas released the special editions of the Star Wars original trilogy. Since then, multiple versions of the OT special editions, as well as prequels, have received DVD/Blu-Ray releases—but not the OT theatrical cuts. In 2012, Lucas sold Lucasfilm to Disney, which decanonized the Expanded Universe and called on Chuck Wendig to write three books to bridge the OT and sequel trilogy. They also scrapped Lucas's notes and script treatments for the ST. For 8 years Kathleen Kennedy has run Lucasfilm and Star Wars, some say (myself included) into the ground.

More people have seen Blade Runner than read Philip K Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? In the book Deckard takes a Voight-Kampff test and passes; therefore, he's not a replicant. The movie's original cut is ambiguous at best, but Ridley Scott's director's cut hints strongly that Deckard is a replicant. Scott has come out and said that's the case, no two ways about it. But Blade Runner 2049, produced by Scott, omits this certainty and embraces ambiguity.

JK Rowling's writing style matured along with her core audience through the late 90s and 2000s. Book and movie ticket sales lifted her from poverty to the most read author in the world. Since the 7-book Harry Potter series concluded, she's maintained Dumbledore is gay, something that's yet to be shown in any of the actual books and movies.

The Wachowski Brothers became the Wachowski Sisters years after the Matrix trilogy came out. Lana Wachowski (formerly Larry) now claims the movies are a trans allegory, not a reimagined allegory of the cave like we all thought at the time. You may assume the trans allegory will be the operating ethos of the upcoming fourth movie. It's unclear how breaking free from machine-induced mind control aligns with using medical technology to posit the will over reality, but what do I know?

I claim ignorance about all things Trek, but more TV and movie content has been produced after Gene Roddenberry's death than before. There's been an alternate timeline with two different Spocks, and a weird IP split that I still don't understand.

The problems with most of these franchises revolves around the legitimacy of canon. What is it, and who defines it?

Is it defined by quality, continuity, consistency, or all three? Is it defined by the IP owner? In Star Wars's case, that would be Disney, who say that Anakin Skywalker didn't kill Emperor Palpatine, and that Luke Skywalker abandoned his friends in their time of need. Or is it defined by the IP creator? Again, in Star Wars's case, that would be George Lucas, who said in 1977 Han shot Greedo first but who maintains for the last 23 years that he hasn't. Is he allowed to change what happened decades after we experienced the story a hundred times over in our imaginations?

"To me, [the original movie] doesn't really exist anymore. ... I'm sorry you saw half a completed film and fell in love with it. But I want it to be the way I want it to be." -George Lucas

For fans, these discussions are not superfluous. Movies and books are content, and what do fans fall in love with but the content? Retcon the content, and you test the fans' suspension of disbelief. It's not all that different from a Christian losing his faith after marrying another Christian. At the very least, it strains the marriage.

I'm not really involved in fandom. I never was. Star Wars mattered the most to me, but now I refuse to care. Nevertheless, Lucas, Rowling, and the Wachowskis have forced me to take the position that even the creators of these IPs can't be trusted to define canon. Creators aren't static, and the successful ones are frequently vain. They change their minds. Are fans supposed to change as well?

For me, canon is the art's content in its original form. Han shot first, Deckard isn't a replicant, and Dumbledore isn't gay. (As someone who saw the director's cut of Blade Runner first, the second statement of these three has been the hardest to accept.) Fans who contend otherwise must reckon with how the creators told their stories the first time. Were they wrong? Even taking into account the compromises inherent in the creative process, I'm not prepared to say they were.

As always, let me know what you think in the comments. If you like hard sci-fi, check out my books Seeds of Calamity and Tendrils to the Moon. You can find extended previews for each here and here.

A lack of imagination

I usually bristle at blowback against writing advice, because the blowback often comes from people the advice isn't meant for. But one piece of writing advice that really is bad is "Write what you know." On its face this advice precludes most genre fiction. For that reason it can be safely ignored.

Writing requires imagination, a mind that ventures outside the known. If I wrote what I knew, there'd be little variety in my writing. My stories would be stale and predictable. So with every story I've written, I've reached beyond my limited frame and learned something. Mostly technology and occupational stuff, but also character types who aren't like me—especially people not ethically like me. To keep it fresh, I have to be able to write more than one type of good guy and more than one type of bad guy.

F Scott Fitzgerald said intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time. I say that's more a necessity of imagination than intelligence. The writer creates drama and tension by bringing characters who believe in what they're doing into conflict. Neither one of them has to be right by the writer's personal standards, but they should think and act as if they are.

There is a stunning lack of imagination in "mainstream" science fiction and fantasy today. It shows in the puritanical and Pharisaical attacks from today's celebrated writers and publishers on dead writers and dead editors who built the market for the former to sell books to. Today's supposed standard bearers cut off their literary ancestors because of their transgressions against the idols of the present age.

Modern sci-fi/fantasy writers seem really intent on just hating on the people that paved the way.

— Vik and Me (@ViktorGorchev) February 28, 2020

Can such narrow-minded, reactionary writers faithfully explore the range of human experience that connects with the broadest possible audience? Can they characterize a patriotic soldier, religious disciple, or Brexit voter without inserting their contempt? Or, will they "write what they know," effectively cutting their readership by 80% before the book goes to print?

I don't pretend I don't have a point of view, but I'm humble (and hungry) enough to know my point of view shouldn't be the only flavor in my writing. It would bore you. It would bore me as well.

As always, let me know what you think in the comments. If you like hard sci-fi that's neither didactic or boring, check out my books Seeds of Calamity and Tendrils to the Moon. You can find extended previews for each here and here.

Over the hump

I'm 14,000 words into drafting The Water Siege, the first book of my as yet unnamed epic fantasy trilogy. It will really be one long book that I intend to release in three ~50,000-word installments. The Water Siege will be the hook, and I'll give it away for free while charging for the second and third installments. I've seen other authors try selling books this way, with varying level of success.

It's taken me awhile to get this far. I took up this new project in January, took a long break in February (during which I vacationed in Chile), and resumed writing with gusto in March. This past weekend put me over the hump and gave me the confidence I need.

Having written two books in 2 years, I have a feel for the process of writing a book. For me there's usually a point of crisis as I'm bringing the first act to a close. The idea that motivated me to write is depleted, and I'm forced to reckon with a lack of narrative momentum. Without momentum to propel the rising action, exposition and climax are all there is, which is to say not enough.

Getting over this hump is the difference between merely having an idea for a book and writing a book.

Here's how I know when I've gotten over the hump: When I've fully realized the setting and characters, and there's enough promising stuff to keep the reader's attention while I execute the plot.

There's a lot of risk in writing this part of the book. As I throw in various elements, seeing what sticks and what doesn't, it can get long and messy. Editing these "early middle" chapters will be important when I finish drafting.

Here's a rough sample from the start of chapter 6, which I drafted this morning:

After serving dinner, Gwen went onto the roof of inn, took the linens off the clothesline, and made up the beds in the attic and second story apartments. Her father liked to spread the guests out even if it meant having to clean the inn top to bottom every day, and tonight was no exception. He had even made Gwen move into Xavier’s old room so he could convert her room into additional guest space.

Xavier hadn’t liked it when she came in and touched his things, but that never stopped her. She often would find him stooped over his child-sized drafting table he used even as a young man, looking out the window at the buildings for inspiration. Like her, he was keen on their uncle’s trade, more so on the design side than on stonecutting. Still, his interest had given Gwen a plausible cover story for why there was an old set of stonemason tools in his room.

Now that he was gone and the room was hers, she tried to keep everything as he’d left it when he was pressed into the king’s service. The drafting table still stood before the window curtain. The chest of drawers still held his clothes, neatly folded. And his books, which she’d read through twice, still lined the shelf above the bed.

All her things she kept in a trunk by the door. She lifted a heavy satchel out of the trunk and touched the tools to ensure each one was in its proper place.

Quiet as a mouse she returned to the attic. Thomas’s bed was the farthest from door. She ducked under the gabled roof and spread the satchel under the top sheet next to the headboard. Satisfied no one would see it but him, she returned downstairs.

As always, let me know what you think in the comments. I'll reply to you as soon as I can.

I have made available the first 4 chapters of my second book, Seeds of Calamity, for free. If it piques your interest, get yourself a copy at Amazon. I appreciate the support!

Embrace tropes in your writing

I've written about stereotypes before and how my writing would benefit from using them. I came across this writing advice video about fantasy tropes and thought it deserved a response.

Many of the character stereotypes, or tropes, she hits on apply to Harry Potter. Let's say she's right on all of them. You'd think, if tropes were a bad thing, this would have held the Harry Potter series back.

Why didn't it? Because JK Rowling used these stereotypes to create an identifiable and memorable character. She didn't just use tropes to construct Harry. Hermione, Ron, Snape, Dumbledore, and others are etched into my generation's cultural memory in a way that Luke, Han, and Leia are etched into the cultural memory of my father's generation. It's an achievement that deserves in-depth analysis, not scorn.

The best advice with regard to tropes is to study them to understand how they work so you can create the effect you want for your readers. If you don't give readers something they recognize, they can get lost and confused, if not upset. Furtheremore, there's a ton of wiggle room to mold a stock character into a fully fleshed person. No one mistakes Harry Potter for Pip in Great Expectations because they're both orphans.

Funnily enough, the writer/former literary agent giving this advice admits at the 19-minute mark that a lot of readers like their expectations to be fulfilled (i.e., they like tropes), but you're not going to snag a agent unless you shun tropes in your writing. That's the failure of tradpub in a nutshell: middlemen refusing to give readers what they want.

In my last book, Seeds of Calamity, I brought more craft to my characters and plot. This included intentional use of tropes. My hero is, you guessed it, an orphan. He's also kind of a hothead. His older brother is more mature and deliberate, a point of tension between them. Their best friend is a sage/surrogate father type. The two main bad guys are an officious weasel and a cunning rogue. Someone the brothers are forced to work with is a driven career woman and love interest.

These tropes serve as markers for the reader, which I think is more important in fantasy and sci-fi than in other genres. I don't have to explain the character dynamics for you to understand them. The act of explaining would just dull the emotional edge. You can predict how the characters get along in the beginning, but you can't as easily predict how the plot will change those characters and their dynamics.

Read and see for yourself. I've made the first 4 chapters of Seeds of Calamity available for free here. If it piques your interest, get yourself a copy at Amazon. I appreciate the support!

As always, leave a comment below. I'll respond to you as soon as I can.

Announcing Seeds of Calamity

After wrapping Tendrils to the Moon, I thought I might try my hand at fantasy. I wrote a few thousand words and an outline for one-third of a novel before I realized I needed to meditate longer on the characters and how they fit together for the plot I was envisioning.

I shelved the idea for a short juvenile fantasy book. It seemed like something I could write quickly to cleanse my palate of Tendrils. But I stopped about 5,000 words into it due to lack of interest.

Another sci-fi novel, a spin-off from an idea I had 10 years ago (which seems to be where all my sci-fi ideas come from), started to percolate over a month ago. I wrote a snappy prologue and a snappier title: Seeds of Calamity. Despite the plant-based name, it will not be connected to Tendrils. The tone promises to be different, less sciency and more opera. It will have fewer characters and more (more than none, anyway) aliens.

I am focused on developing these facets of my writing with Seeds:

• Outlined start to finish before drafting
• Told from the perspective of just one character
• Prominent female character
• Shorter chapters (average 5,000 words)

I will release the paperback on the same day as the ebook. I have enlisted my wife to edit the book, one chapter at a time as I finish them, so this book will be pretty clean when it goes to production.

The wordcount goal is 80,000, significantly shorter than Tendrils (as well as, ironically, the original wordcount goal for Tendrils; I mean it this time). A publish date in January 2019 is ideal, but we could miss it because our second child is due in November. This is a strong incentive to write as much as possible before Thanksgiving, so it may account for a dearth of posts over the next few months.

Here's the back-of-the-book pitch:

A rogue asteroid with an exotic passenger strikes near a colonial settlement on Mars, killing thousands.

Brother miners Felton and Levi turn to theft in the outer solar system when their accounts are suddenly frozen. When they steal from the wrong man, they're compelled to follow him to the Red Planet, where the most destructive force mankind has ever encountered is gathering strength.

Let me know what you think in the comment section below! I'll reply to you as soon as I can.

What I've been reading while I've been writing

Naturally, when I set out to write Tendrils to the Moon, I surveyed the current market of Moon-focused science fiction. Some of the novels I found looked good and I added them to my reading list. I dared not read them, however. In fact, I've been staying away from science fiction altogether since I started writing Tendrils in January.

I made this decision for two reasons:

1. If I had read something that I liked or admired for its execution, I would have been tempted to either emulate it or do it in a different way, limiting my creativity.
2. If I had read something that I loved, I might have lost confidence that I could ever write anything as good, become discouraged, and given up.

Instead, I've been reading fantasy novels. So far I've read The Shining, Needle Ash, and The Water of Awakening. I started The Way of Kings, but I'm not close to finishing it yet. So far it has the most comprehensive worldbuilding outside of Tolkien's Legendarium.

I prefer reading fantasy over sci-fi because the prose style is closer to my own writing style, and I think overall it's a better genre. Fantasy has more relatable characters and more relatable stories. Most sci-fi is hit or miss. Too often sci-fi uses weird storytelling mechanics that alienate me as a reader. Harvest of Stars is a good example of this: The last hundred pages summarizss the next thousand years in the story, killing any momentum for an enjoyable climax. Take note: Grounded plots with relatable characters make the best stories.

Fantasy as a genre is not without flaws, however. It is notorious for bloat and sequel-itis. Tendrils to the Moon has bloated more than 30,000 words over its target word count, and there could be a sequel in the offing. I think I'd like to try my hand at fantasy first, though. I've already begun working on an outline. Maybe when I start that project, I'll read the sci-fi that's been waiting in my reading queue.

Leave a comment below and let me know what you think! Which genre do you prefer, fantasy or sci-fi? I'll respond to your comment as soon as I can. Also, don't forget to sign up for the mailing list. Members of the mailing list will receive a free digital copy of Tendrils to the Moon when it becomes available on or before July. I'm putting together the last few scenes to bridge the middle of the book and the climax.