Yesterday I made a visit to the academic world. I was invited to make an appearance - as an author! - at a class taught by my former Ph.D. advisor, Claire Kramsch.
She made me feel wonderful by inviting me, and I had a great time.
I got to read the opening scene of my forthcoming story, Cold Words, and then ask her students to analyze it - just in the same way that I do my own editing analysis, and the way I do Ridiculously Close Looks here on the blog. I asked the students to look through the words I'd written and find places where I'd given cues to the Aurrel's invented language and how it worked, and cues for alien point of view.
It was nothing like going to a convention, or even talking with friends who enjoy science fiction. It was all serious. But it was marvelous, geeky fun for me. It really made me feel like I've been doing the right thing all this time by applying my knowledge to science fiction and fantasy. And it made me feel like an author.
Both of those feelings were a thrill.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Gender: real and grammatical
Dave (a.k.a. Meindzai) directed me to this terrific NPR article, and asked me if I had any experience with the idea of grammatical gender interacting with real gender.
Oh, yes, indeed.
In case you haven't gone over to the article, I'll give you an idea of what it says: people who have grammatical gender in their languages will tend to describe nouns in ways that give them characteristics associated with actual physical genders.
I once read a study (and I wish I could now remember which one) that said that young children who spoke languages with grammatical gender were able to identify their own gender earlier than those who didn't. And, no surprise, children who were asked to assign voices to cartoon characters of objects would give male voices to the grammatically male objects, and female voices to the grammatically female objects. This was not the case with English-speaking kids who haven't had to develop such awareness.
Your native language fundamentally influences how you characterize objects and their relations to one another. For example, a picture is "on" the wall in English, but "up (op)" the wall in Dutch. If you ask friends who speak other languages, you'll be surprised how many tiny subtle differences you'll find.
It might be fascinating to consider putting this distinction, or some other seemingly arbitrary grammatical distinction, into a story. I'm guessing you could get cool misunderstandings, or even disasters similar to that resulting from English vs. metric measurement. I remember hearing that a famous linguist got his inspiration from the idea that words had power over thought, such as when people labeled gasoline cans as "empty" and people were negligent around them, believing they were safe when in fact the gasoline vapor made them far more dangerous around sparks than when they were full.
Feel free to comment, Dave (or anyone else!), if you'd like to further the discussion.
Oh, yes, indeed.
In case you haven't gone over to the article, I'll give you an idea of what it says: people who have grammatical gender in their languages will tend to describe nouns in ways that give them characteristics associated with actual physical genders.
I once read a study (and I wish I could now remember which one) that said that young children who spoke languages with grammatical gender were able to identify their own gender earlier than those who didn't. And, no surprise, children who were asked to assign voices to cartoon characters of objects would give male voices to the grammatically male objects, and female voices to the grammatically female objects. This was not the case with English-speaking kids who haven't had to develop such awareness.
Your native language fundamentally influences how you characterize objects and their relations to one another. For example, a picture is "on" the wall in English, but "up (op)" the wall in Dutch. If you ask friends who speak other languages, you'll be surprised how many tiny subtle differences you'll find.
It might be fascinating to consider putting this distinction, or some other seemingly arbitrary grammatical distinction, into a story. I'm guessing you could get cool misunderstandings, or even disasters similar to that resulting from English vs. metric measurement. I remember hearing that a famous linguist got his inspiration from the idea that words had power over thought, such as when people labeled gasoline cans as "empty" and people were negligent around them, believing they were safe when in fact the gasoline vapor made them far more dangerous around sparks than when they were full.
Feel free to comment, Dave (or anyone else!), if you'd like to further the discussion.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Educational Backstory: avoiding arbitrary superpowers
Have you ever noticed how characters in science fiction and fantasy seem to have superpowers? I'm not even talking about the superhero type. I mean special skills - things that nobody else can do, that usually make these people indispensable to the plot. To pull from David Eddings, maybe one guy can steal anything and speak a secret sign language, maybe another can turn into a bear, maybe another never gets scared, etc. The nice thing about Eddings' characters is that he usually has a personal history for the character which explains their terrific strengths (and peculiar weaknesses).
This is really important.
A character who can do unusual things is really great, even if it's something as subtle as being graceful in movement. But without grounding, those special skills can seem arbitrary. When you look at actual superheroes, one of the coolest things about them is that they have special origin stories. Even the X-men's relatively arbitrary powers are grounded in a general tendency for human mutation.
So think through how your character got to be this way. Does she fight well because she was trained in kung fu? Does he have strong arms because he was apprenticed to the blacksmith? Does he know about lightspeed physics because he's a professor, or the ship's engineer? Does he know about linguistics in spite of his young age because he's the son of a famous linguist?
One of the things I always enjoyed about the character Pazu from Miyazaki's film, Castle in the Sky, was that he was a miner. As the movie starts, you see him hefting heavy weights and crawling all over (and repairing) these massive steam engines that bring the miners up from the tunnels below. You also see him being comfortable in dark tunnels - and all this seems perfectly natural. Then later when he's volunteering to repair the engine of a pirate's airship, climbing like crazy over the outside of the actual castle in the sky, and running through the dark tunnels inside it, you have no problem with any of it. You've seen him do it before, and it all works.
This is one of those instances where you can make your world personal. Think about your character's educational background. Is it based in experience? What kind? Is it based in institutionalized education? What kind of people does your character admire as mentors or teachers, and why?
You can even take it a little further - ask yourself what ideologies might come along with your character's experience or education. Was the master abusive, inadvertently teaching hatred of his social group? Did the teacher rescue the student from poverty or some other social situation, leading the student to adopt similar social views? Did the institution teach larger social values, or the values of the particular social group it serves?
Explore the possibilities.
This is really important.
A character who can do unusual things is really great, even if it's something as subtle as being graceful in movement. But without grounding, those special skills can seem arbitrary. When you look at actual superheroes, one of the coolest things about them is that they have special origin stories. Even the X-men's relatively arbitrary powers are grounded in a general tendency for human mutation.
So think through how your character got to be this way. Does she fight well because she was trained in kung fu? Does he have strong arms because he was apprenticed to the blacksmith? Does he know about lightspeed physics because he's a professor, or the ship's engineer? Does he know about linguistics in spite of his young age because he's the son of a famous linguist?
One of the things I always enjoyed about the character Pazu from Miyazaki's film, Castle in the Sky, was that he was a miner. As the movie starts, you see him hefting heavy weights and crawling all over (and repairing) these massive steam engines that bring the miners up from the tunnels below. You also see him being comfortable in dark tunnels - and all this seems perfectly natural. Then later when he's volunteering to repair the engine of a pirate's airship, climbing like crazy over the outside of the actual castle in the sky, and running through the dark tunnels inside it, you have no problem with any of it. You've seen him do it before, and it all works.
This is one of those instances where you can make your world personal. Think about your character's educational background. Is it based in experience? What kind? Is it based in institutionalized education? What kind of people does your character admire as mentors or teachers, and why?
You can even take it a little further - ask yourself what ideologies might come along with your character's experience or education. Was the master abusive, inadvertently teaching hatred of his social group? Did the teacher rescue the student from poverty or some other social situation, leading the student to adopt similar social views? Did the institution teach larger social values, or the values of the particular social group it serves?
Explore the possibilities.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Spaces Open for Worldbuilding
Hey, everyone!
There are still spaces open for the workshop, so if you have something you were thinking of submitting, now's your chance. The discussions will be much more fun if we have a diversity of worlds to look into.
So that you can feel like this is a reasonable possibility, I'm going to extend the deadline by a few days, to April 17th. I don't want to conflict with tax day! I've also been having a hectic week (thus the lack of blog posts), so it will help me too.
I'll try to get some blog posts up in the next few days, and check back for the workshop on the 17th. Thank you again to all the people who have already posted!
There are still spaces open for the workshop, so if you have something you were thinking of submitting, now's your chance. The discussions will be much more fun if we have a diversity of worlds to look into.
So that you can feel like this is a reasonable possibility, I'm going to extend the deadline by a few days, to April 17th. I don't want to conflict with tax day! I've also been having a hectic week (thus the lack of blog posts), so it will help me too.
I'll try to get some blog posts up in the next few days, and check back for the workshop on the 17th. Thank you again to all the people who have already posted!
Sunday, April 5, 2009
(Re-) Announcing the April Worldbuilding Workshop
April has well and truly begun, and I can now make this announcement with no fear of being taken for fooling.
Some of you may already know this, but for those who don't:
I will be hosting a free worldbuilding workshop on TalkToYoUniverse. Those who wish to participate should submit the following to me in my Comments area by April 10th:
1. A short piece, up to 500 words, which begins the main conflict of a story and demonstrates the world as it introduces readers to that world. Assume your reader has no prior information.
2. A 1-paragraph description of the main conflict of your story. If you have a query paragraph, that might work for this; if you don't, you might want to try writing one. Include: protagonist, setting, conflict, and something unique about the story.
As with the last workshop, I will be reviewing all comments before they are posted publicly, so your work will not automatically appear to public eyes. However, those who are selected to participate should expect their excerpts, questions, and comments to become public after a cursory inspection :-).
I will then post blog discussions and expect all participants to comment and push their worldbuilding forward. Because I will be "digging in" and being very involved in the work that is submitted, I will need to keep the number of participants to five.
If you are at all curious as to what "digging in" means, I encourage you to take a look at the discussions on the last worldbuilding workshop, which began December 7th of last year. The first post can be found here.
Some of you may already know this, but for those who don't:
I will be hosting a free worldbuilding workshop on TalkToYoUniverse. Those who wish to participate should submit the following to me in my Comments area by April 10th:
1. A short piece, up to 500 words, which begins the main conflict of a story and demonstrates the world as it introduces readers to that world. Assume your reader has no prior information.
2. A 1-paragraph description of the main conflict of your story. If you have a query paragraph, that might work for this; if you don't, you might want to try writing one. Include: protagonist, setting, conflict, and something unique about the story.
As with the last workshop, I will be reviewing all comments before they are posted publicly, so your work will not automatically appear to public eyes. However, those who are selected to participate should expect their excerpts, questions, and comments to become public after a cursory inspection :-).
I will then post blog discussions and expect all participants to comment and push their worldbuilding forward. Because I will be "digging in" and being very involved in the work that is submitted, I will need to keep the number of participants to five.
If you are at all curious as to what "digging in" means, I encourage you to take a look at the discussions on the last worldbuilding workshop, which began December 7th of last year. The first post can be found here.
Friday, April 3, 2009
Declines in Technology
Worlds full of high technology are nearly ubiquitous in science fiction - but in a few cases, authors choose to focus on worlds and people where technology is in decline. I find the question of decline in technology fascinating, and in fact my Varin world is in a state of technological decline. So I thought I'd share a few of my thoughts on the subject.
How do declines and losses occur? There are, I suppose, lots of possible ways for this to happen.
The one that leaps immediately to mind is some kind of large-scale natural disaster - but for this to affect an entire technologically rich society, it has to be on an extremely large scale. The book Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer is an example: a meteor hits the moon and changes its orbit, and civilization basically comes to an end.
Another immediate thought is that of the Luddite rebellion - somehow a group of people comes to power and tries systematically to eliminate advanced technology. It strikes me that they have to have sophisticated enough technology to enforce their aims, but it doesn't take many guns to make a lot of people change their behavior. They might end up scuttling their society more than they'd hoped by cutting off the means of production for modern luxuries.
Both of those are sudden and extreme. What about just plain decadence? Could that alone lead to a decline in technology?
Well, sure. Particularly in a society where resources are controlled by a relatively small group of people, any change that moved those resources away from the maintenance of technology could seriously slow things down. Over a prolonged period, that lack of resources could mean fewer people properly educated to maintain advanced technologies, and the techniques for developing materials or designing technological marvels would slowly die off along with the population that had the required specialized knowledge. Lack of money, or excessive control over, critical substances for research, design and manufacturing could also have a depressive effect.
There are other losses of technology that we don't usually think of as "losses." Take for example the decline of the vinyl record, or the fact that modern firearms have replaced the blunderbuss. While "progress" continues, the older technologies fade and sometimes die. Most people I know have moved away from the expensive but extremely reliable land-line phone services. Many people don't have home telephones at all, but use their cell phones exclusively. The rotary phone has been supplanted, but it won't be the last to go.
In a place where the technology has been continuously developed, generally speaking signs of the old infrastructure will remain. But some countries might come late to technological developments, and so leap straight to the use of cell phones, for example. Why should they then go to the trouble of laying all the land lines in the first place? They shouldn't, of course, because it would be economically impractical.
This leads me to speculate about a different kind of technological decline, which I call technology losing its roots. What if a highly advanced technology - for example in communications, transportation, or medicine - had already supplanted an earlier technology used for the same purpose, to the extent that the old infrastructure had largely broken down, or the old supplies thrown out or recycled. What would then happen if something (information virus, fuel exhaustion, contamination) made the new technology fail? Suddenly the society would find itself having to fall back on a failing system, and wind up doubling its decline, or finding itself helpless, because neither the advanced system nor its immediate predecessor would work properly.
I've talked before about technology sets, i.e. technologies that seem to go together. Both advances and declines can affect a society unevenly depending on its technological needs, thus defeating the typical Earth sets. In my Varin world I use a combination of decadence and loss of roots as the basis of a society in which building intercoms function, but messages between buildings are typically sent by human messenger, and messages between cities are transmitted by radiography.
It's something to think about.
How do declines and losses occur? There are, I suppose, lots of possible ways for this to happen.
The one that leaps immediately to mind is some kind of large-scale natural disaster - but for this to affect an entire technologically rich society, it has to be on an extremely large scale. The book Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer is an example: a meteor hits the moon and changes its orbit, and civilization basically comes to an end.
Another immediate thought is that of the Luddite rebellion - somehow a group of people comes to power and tries systematically to eliminate advanced technology. It strikes me that they have to have sophisticated enough technology to enforce their aims, but it doesn't take many guns to make a lot of people change their behavior. They might end up scuttling their society more than they'd hoped by cutting off the means of production for modern luxuries.
Both of those are sudden and extreme. What about just plain decadence? Could that alone lead to a decline in technology?
Well, sure. Particularly in a society where resources are controlled by a relatively small group of people, any change that moved those resources away from the maintenance of technology could seriously slow things down. Over a prolonged period, that lack of resources could mean fewer people properly educated to maintain advanced technologies, and the techniques for developing materials or designing technological marvels would slowly die off along with the population that had the required specialized knowledge. Lack of money, or excessive control over, critical substances for research, design and manufacturing could also have a depressive effect.
There are other losses of technology that we don't usually think of as "losses." Take for example the decline of the vinyl record, or the fact that modern firearms have replaced the blunderbuss. While "progress" continues, the older technologies fade and sometimes die. Most people I know have moved away from the expensive but extremely reliable land-line phone services. Many people don't have home telephones at all, but use their cell phones exclusively. The rotary phone has been supplanted, but it won't be the last to go.
In a place where the technology has been continuously developed, generally speaking signs of the old infrastructure will remain. But some countries might come late to technological developments, and so leap straight to the use of cell phones, for example. Why should they then go to the trouble of laying all the land lines in the first place? They shouldn't, of course, because it would be economically impractical.
This leads me to speculate about a different kind of technological decline, which I call technology losing its roots. What if a highly advanced technology - for example in communications, transportation, or medicine - had already supplanted an earlier technology used for the same purpose, to the extent that the old infrastructure had largely broken down, or the old supplies thrown out or recycled. What would then happen if something (information virus, fuel exhaustion, contamination) made the new technology fail? Suddenly the society would find itself having to fall back on a failing system, and wind up doubling its decline, or finding itself helpless, because neither the advanced system nor its immediate predecessor would work properly.
I've talked before about technology sets, i.e. technologies that seem to go together. Both advances and declines can affect a society unevenly depending on its technological needs, thus defeating the typical Earth sets. In my Varin world I use a combination of decadence and loss of roots as the basis of a society in which building intercoms function, but messages between buildings are typically sent by human messenger, and messages between cities are transmitted by radiography.
It's something to think about.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
A classic keyboard I'd never seen before
The mother of one of my son's kindergarten classmates is a court recorder. With her in mind, I'd intended to include a mention of the shorthand keyboard in my earlier keyboard post, but it slipped my mind.
That turned out to be a good thing. When I mentioned this to her before school the other day, she took note and the very next day brought me an old stenotype shorthand machine that she'd had sitting around her garage. I got to take a look at it - and also at a textbook discussing the theory of how to use it.
Wow, this thing is cool.
Things I have learned:
1. The keys have no symbols on them. At all. My guess would be that this is because they don't want any reason for the recorder to look at the keyboard.
2. The keyboard has fewer keys. It has two rows of four to be covered by the fingers of the left hand, two rows of four to be covered by the fingers of the right hand, and a single pair of keys in between those two which are not letter symbols but asterisks. Below that are two keys to be accessed by the left thumb, and two keys to be accessed by the right thumb.
3. It is designed so the operator can type entire syllables at once - by pressing multiple keys at the same time. The left fingers do the consonants before the vowel; the right fingers do the consonants after the vowel (yes, there are repeats). The thumbs do the vowels in between.
4. It speaks its own language. This is a terrific example of humans adapting to the requirements of a machine, rather than the machine adapting to them. I guessed, and my friend confirmed, that it would take a semester to learn the theory behind how to enter all kinds of words on this thing. There is a key combination that must be used for the period, for example. Vowels tend to be entered phonetically rather than in accordance with English wacky spelling. This does not count the years of practice to raise your speed.
But of course the result is that these expert people can write down what they hear at an astonishing rate. On the machine my friend lent me, the letters are typed in ink on a paper tape about two inches wide, which used to be "read" and decoded by a computer. She tells me that nowadays these machines have direct USB connections to the interpreting computer, so the shorthand gets reinterpreted into English without the need for the intermediate step.
Cool technology. And it saves some trees.
Having made transcriptions of taped speech myself, I have nothing but the deepest respect for anyone who has the skills to be a court recorder. If you ever get the chance to check one of these machines out, or to type on it, I highly recommend you take it.
That turned out to be a good thing. When I mentioned this to her before school the other day, she took note and the very next day brought me an old stenotype shorthand machine that she'd had sitting around her garage. I got to take a look at it - and also at a textbook discussing the theory of how to use it.
Wow, this thing is cool.
Things I have learned:
1. The keys have no symbols on them. At all. My guess would be that this is because they don't want any reason for the recorder to look at the keyboard.
2. The keyboard has fewer keys. It has two rows of four to be covered by the fingers of the left hand, two rows of four to be covered by the fingers of the right hand, and a single pair of keys in between those two which are not letter symbols but asterisks. Below that are two keys to be accessed by the left thumb, and two keys to be accessed by the right thumb.
3. It is designed so the operator can type entire syllables at once - by pressing multiple keys at the same time. The left fingers do the consonants before the vowel; the right fingers do the consonants after the vowel (yes, there are repeats). The thumbs do the vowels in between.
4. It speaks its own language. This is a terrific example of humans adapting to the requirements of a machine, rather than the machine adapting to them. I guessed, and my friend confirmed, that it would take a semester to learn the theory behind how to enter all kinds of words on this thing. There is a key combination that must be used for the period, for example. Vowels tend to be entered phonetically rather than in accordance with English wacky spelling. This does not count the years of practice to raise your speed.
But of course the result is that these expert people can write down what they hear at an astonishing rate. On the machine my friend lent me, the letters are typed in ink on a paper tape about two inches wide, which used to be "read" and decoded by a computer. She tells me that nowadays these machines have direct USB connections to the interpreting computer, so the shorthand gets reinterpreted into English without the need for the intermediate step.
Cool technology. And it saves some trees.
Having made transcriptions of taped speech myself, I have nothing but the deepest respect for anyone who has the skills to be a court recorder. If you ever get the chance to check one of these machines out, or to type on it, I highly recommend you take it.
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