It was great to get back to the Google+ worldbuilding hangouts after a two-week break for Thanksgiving. I was joined by Kyle Aisteach, Janet Harriet, Harry Markov, and Glenda Pfeiffer for this one, and we had a really great chat.
The topic of colonialism and imperialism is one that I've studied a bit - and found daunting - academically, but one that I engage with in all of my published work involving the Allied Systems universe. The first time I really realized that this was a critical issue for me was in the early drafts of my first story, "Let the Word Take Me" (Analog 2008), when my friend Keyan told me she was worried that the resolution of the story was going to lead to a future "with alcoholic geckos lying around." That really wasn't where I wanted it to go either, so I did some serious revising and kept the issues of colonialism and imperialism at the forefront of my mind thereafter.
In Star Trek, we encounter the concept of the Prime Directive, which demands that the crew of the Enterprise and other ships not interfere in the culture of another people. We all agreed that the pure Star Trek form of this directive is very limiting. It was a concept that came up multiple times in our discussion.
One of the questions that underlies whether Federation folk will attempt to engage with a culture or not, and on what terms, is that of technology level. The idea of a technology "level" is one defined by our own culture and our own world, where we have given names (bronze age, iron age, etc.) to periods of our own history and thus consider them iconic. However, it is a more complex question than this, and we would certainly expect that in dealing with alien societies (either in the science fictional or simply "foreign" sense) technologies would not necessarily conform to our expectations. Certain kinds of materials and innovations are necessary for the technology to develop in a particular direction, but a people will view both materials and technologies through its own lens of value, and that can create significant divergence.
Thus it's difficult, and extremely problematic, to define who has the "more advanced" society. Harry mentioned our current level of technology as being associated with the desire for instant gratification. High levels of technology in one area don't necessarily entail cultural refinement or sophistication. In Alan Smale's alternate history novella, "A Clash of Eagles" (Panverse) the Roman legions are sure they are the superior culture at least militarily, but they are soundly defeated by unexpected military technologies possessed by the residents of North America. My own story "At Cross Purposes" (Analog 2011) involved spacefaring otter aliens with technologies that humans couldn't understand, but they felt that art was more important than technology, and thus had no prime directive at all (they were happy to give tech to artists of any stripe...I can't wait to write a story about that kind of havoc).
Very often we encounter situations where one society feels superior to the other. But how is that enforced? Kyle asked whether it is ethical for a group with higher medical technology to withhold that technology from another group in desperate need, just for Prime Directive reasons. Indeed, this is an area where ethics come into play quite seriously, and Star Trek has driven plenty of episodes with the question of which one will win out (Prime Directive or ethics/compassion).
Janet remarked that in a colonizing situation, one group has something that the other one wants - this can actually play both ways, as sometimes the colonized want the higher tech or whatever it is that the colonizers possess, and sometimes the colonizers are there because the people of this area possess something they are planning to take. An excellent book about the topic of the colonizing of the Americas is Guns, Germs, and Steel, and I recently read a great article online that recommends several books. The article can be found here. You might also be interested in Orientalism by Edward Said.
When writing and worldbuilding, it is very important to avoid stereotypes. The "holy noble simple native folk" will drive people mad, especially since they've seen it so often in movies like Pocahontas and Avatar. Avatar also has the "one white/human guy who shows up out of nowhere and becomes better at native stuff than the natives and saves them all" stereotype, about which I have heard many people scream.
Colonization has happened all over the world, and can take different forms. Harry mentioned that Bulgaria had been colonized by the Turkish. The British colonization in the Americas would have been less dramatically, but still distinctly, different from the British colonization of India, for example.
Colonization also has an enormous influence on language, up to and including language death. Languages disappear when all their speakers are killed, or also when the language ceases to have any functional utility in the surrounding culture. Colonizers also use the standardization of language for writing and commercial purposes to exert control over the colonized. We diverted momentarily into a discussion of how standard language differs from language used on the ground, and Harry definitely saw this as a possible form of power maintenance. As an example of language variation away from a "standard," he gave us the word "pepper," which near the Black Sea means "bell pepper" but 600 km away on the other side of Bulgaria means "chili pepper." Kyle said that we have a "war over 'Next Tuesday.'" [I think the question of the scope of "next" is a discussion for another time, however.] In a colonizer situation, the group in power maintains the standard language and uses it as a gatekeeping device.
Language can also be used as a form of rebellion by the colonized. Kyle told us that during the Holocaust, Jews used "amchu" as a secret way to ask, "Are you one of us?" The Hebrew language was revived from a purely literary and liturgical language to a spoken one for the purposes of unifying the Jewish population. Harry told us that there was a linguistic underground in Bulgaria during the Turkish occupation, when everyone was politically bound to speak Turkish, and bound in religious circumstances to use Greek. Bulgarian was still maintained as a language throughout this time period. Similarly, in World War II the Japanese outlawed the speaking of Korean and Chinese in the areas they controlled, but those languages continued to be spoken in the home and surged back again once the Japanese occupation came to an end. This switch was not peaceful but came to an end as violently as it was initially imposed.
One of the things that can happen in a colonization situation is what I called the aggressive use of stereotyping. Colonizers will create a stereotypical image of the colonized group to associate them with weakness or lack of quality, and those stereotypes will take on a pernicious power both among the colonizers and among the colonized. Harry (I think it was) remarked that sometimes the more oppressed the people are, the more they conform to the stereotype against their own best interests.
Though we spoke mostly in terms of science fiction, all of these principles can also be applied to fantasy. Only the nature of the technology and resources will be different. Even "low technology" is still technology, and a group with iron swords will prevail over a group with stone tools or bronze weapons. Wands can play the same role as guns - so please feel free to apply all of this over whatever colonization scheme you're working with, fantasy or science fiction.
At the end Harry proposed our topic for the next session (today, December 7, 11am PST): the culture of death. I hope to see you there!
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Tightening your plot by layering
There is something to be said for having everything happen at once.
Often we think of the climax of a book as the place where everything comes together and starts happening at the same time. However, we shouldn't necessarily restrict ourselves to the climax; layering can be beneficial at other points in a story as well.
I mention this because of my own experience. I had a sequence of events in my WIP as follows: the protagonist had to go to a political event; thereafter my bodyguard character had to follow a nefarious character to prevent an assassination; thereafter my bodyguard had to come home and find a conflict going on between the master and mistress. It wasn't bad, but when it came to dramatizing the whole thing, I found it was dragging. I was struggling to get the protagonist out of previous plot points and over to the political event. I was daunted when I tried to imagine all the details of the political event. Then I couldn't figure out how to make the opening of the prevent-an-assassination sequence different from all the previous interactions between servants that I'd been working with (I try to make every interaction unique - something I'll be writing about soon in another post).
Over this weekend I realized what the problem was. Everything was strung out, all the events coming one after another like beads on a chain. That simultaneously put too much importance on each individual event, and made me work too hard to keep them connected.
I therefore decided that as many things as possible needed to happen at the same time.
I can get away with this in my novel, because it's supposed to be complex. It is certainly possible to overload a scene with too much stuff. However, if you can find a way to concatenate instead of stringing, the result can be amazing. In the case of the sequence I describe above, I decided that the political event and the assassination attempt had to happen at the same time. This accomplished several useful things for me.
1. Because the assassination attempt had to occur in a specified location, I suddenly had a place to put my political event that was more effective than the white-room-ish space I'd been fighting against previously.
2. Because the new sequence placed both my protagonist and my bodyguard in the same location, it allowed me to do a direct point-of-view handoff (I love those).
3. Because I could do the point-of-view handoff, I could shift to the bodyguard's perspective early in the political event, thereby making it unnecessary for me to elaborate on all the details of the event. In fact, the ceremonial details of what's going on are much less important than the bodyguard's attempt to foil the assassination. Layering allows me to place focus on the more important element and stick the less important element in the background.
4. Suspense went through the roof. Instead of having the bodyguard out attempting to stop an assassination on his own terms, he's right in the middle of a public event trying to figure out how to save the target from the assassin without having any means to reach the assassin (who is hundreds of feet away) or the target (who is at least fifteen feet away).
5. Consequences also became much more dire. The bodyguard won't be able to take action without hundreds of people seeing him, and this will result in entanglements that delay his return home, providing a perfect reason for him not to be where he needs to be when the conflict between master and mistress begins.
It's worth keeping an eye out for opportunities to do this. Especially if you are being told by critiquers that your story is wandering, that the pace is slow, or that it's one thing after another after another, consider whether layering might be the right answer.
You might also want to look out for this if you're trying to figure out how to shorten a work. What if you feel like you've taken out as many words as you can and the book is still "too long"? Maybe you're aiming for 90-100K words but you're stuck at 127K. Usually at that point it's the structure of the story which has to change - and if you can take a step back from your outline and create clusters of events that can either closely follow one another, or happen concurrently, then the layering effect will save you a lot of words that can't be "pulled out" any other way.
It's something to think about.
Often we think of the climax of a book as the place where everything comes together and starts happening at the same time. However, we shouldn't necessarily restrict ourselves to the climax; layering can be beneficial at other points in a story as well.
I mention this because of my own experience. I had a sequence of events in my WIP as follows: the protagonist had to go to a political event; thereafter my bodyguard character had to follow a nefarious character to prevent an assassination; thereafter my bodyguard had to come home and find a conflict going on between the master and mistress. It wasn't bad, but when it came to dramatizing the whole thing, I found it was dragging. I was struggling to get the protagonist out of previous plot points and over to the political event. I was daunted when I tried to imagine all the details of the political event. Then I couldn't figure out how to make the opening of the prevent-an-assassination sequence different from all the previous interactions between servants that I'd been working with (I try to make every interaction unique - something I'll be writing about soon in another post).
Over this weekend I realized what the problem was. Everything was strung out, all the events coming one after another like beads on a chain. That simultaneously put too much importance on each individual event, and made me work too hard to keep them connected.
I therefore decided that as many things as possible needed to happen at the same time.
I can get away with this in my novel, because it's supposed to be complex. It is certainly possible to overload a scene with too much stuff. However, if you can find a way to concatenate instead of stringing, the result can be amazing. In the case of the sequence I describe above, I decided that the political event and the assassination attempt had to happen at the same time. This accomplished several useful things for me.
1. Because the assassination attempt had to occur in a specified location, I suddenly had a place to put my political event that was more effective than the white-room-ish space I'd been fighting against previously.
2. Because the new sequence placed both my protagonist and my bodyguard in the same location, it allowed me to do a direct point-of-view handoff (I love those).
3. Because I could do the point-of-view handoff, I could shift to the bodyguard's perspective early in the political event, thereby making it unnecessary for me to elaborate on all the details of the event. In fact, the ceremonial details of what's going on are much less important than the bodyguard's attempt to foil the assassination. Layering allows me to place focus on the more important element and stick the less important element in the background.
4. Suspense went through the roof. Instead of having the bodyguard out attempting to stop an assassination on his own terms, he's right in the middle of a public event trying to figure out how to save the target from the assassin without having any means to reach the assassin (who is hundreds of feet away) or the target (who is at least fifteen feet away).
5. Consequences also became much more dire. The bodyguard won't be able to take action without hundreds of people seeing him, and this will result in entanglements that delay his return home, providing a perfect reason for him not to be where he needs to be when the conflict between master and mistress begins.
It's worth keeping an eye out for opportunities to do this. Especially if you are being told by critiquers that your story is wandering, that the pace is slow, or that it's one thing after another after another, consider whether layering might be the right answer.
You might also want to look out for this if you're trying to figure out how to shorten a work. What if you feel like you've taken out as many words as you can and the book is still "too long"? Maybe you're aiming for 90-100K words but you're stuck at 127K. Usually at that point it's the structure of the story which has to change - and if you can take a step back from your outline and create clusters of events that can either closely follow one another, or happen concurrently, then the layering effect will save you a lot of words that can't be "pulled out" any other way.
It's something to think about.
Monday, December 5, 2011
An Excerpt from "Cold Words" in honor of Analog's first e-anthology
If you follow me on Twitter or are a connection of mine on Facebook or Google+, you may have seen my announcement that I had a story anthology come out today. My story, "Cold Words" (Analog Oct. 2009) is now appearing in Analog's first e-anthology now available on Amazon. I was incredibly honored to be included in an amazing Table of Contents with authors like Mike Flynn, Harry Turtledove, Marianne Dyson, Brad Torgerson, Robert J. Sawyer, and many others.
Amazon allows you to look inside the ebook, but doesn't actually give excerpts from all the stories, so for those who are interested I thought I'd put up a teaser excerpt of the story.
Rulii is a wolf-like native of the planet Aurru and the only member of the downy-furred Lowland race on the Majesty's Cold Council. He is brokering a deal with the Allied Systems to bring a human spaceport to his region, hoping this may bring the riches his oppressed Lowland people need to improve their lot. Problem is, the new negotiator Hada must speak the Cold words dialect well enough not to insult Majesty - her language sounds wrong and he can't figure out why. The human linguist Parker is trying to help him, but Parker's friendship may put Rulii in an entirely different sort of danger...
Click here to start reading!
Amazon allows you to look inside the ebook, but doesn't actually give excerpts from all the stories, so for those who are interested I thought I'd put up a teaser excerpt of the story.
Rulii is a wolf-like native of the planet Aurru and the only member of the downy-furred Lowland race on the Majesty's Cold Council. He is brokering a deal with the Allied Systems to bring a human spaceport to his region, hoping this may bring the riches his oppressed Lowland people need to improve their lot. Problem is, the new negotiator Hada must speak the Cold words dialect well enough not to insult Majesty - her language sounds wrong and he can't figure out why. The human linguist Parker is trying to help him, but Parker's friendship may put Rulii in an entirely different sort of danger...
Click here to start reading!
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Two excellent links on how far to take links between grammatical and actual gender
My two friends, Keyan Bowes and Aliette de Bodard, contributed some very interesting thoughts to the online discussion of grammatical gender and its links (if any) to actual genders and actual gender attributes. I found their position particularly interesting because of the implication that Americans tend to anthropomorphize more than other cultures (not something I can recall seeing any studies about, but it may indeed be the case), and that that influences us to give a greater significance to grammatical gender than it in fact merits.
I encourage you to go and read their arguments, here (Aliette de Bodard) and here (Keyan's response).
While the link between language and thought is undeniable, it is also subtle. Thus it can be easy, when saying something like, grammatical gender influences the way we think about objects, to overstate the case. Much of our language use is subconscious, and in particular it would be a mistake to assume that the presence of a grammatical feature in a language means that a speaker of that language will think about reality in a particular way all the time, or with intent, or on a conscious level. As Keyan notes, in Hindi there can be one masculine and one feminine word used for the same object - so clearly there can be no underlying assumption of gender being literally possessed by that object. Furthermore, as Aliette remarks, the characteristics that we assign to one gender or another vary widely across cultures.
If it were so simple, then it would have been a matter of much less debate, and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis about the links between language and culture would not have been so heavily disputed. It's important to remember that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis had a "strong version" and a "weak version." As Wikipedia would have it:
"(i) the strong version that language determines thought and that linguistic categories limit and determine cognitive categories and (ii) the weak version that linguistic categories and usage influence thought and certain kinds of non-linguistic behavior."
In the end my best suggestion if you are curious about the links between language and thought is to go to the actual studies. One of the current leaders in the field is Lera Boroditsky, assistant professor of cognitive psychology at Stanford University. In looking directly at the psycholinguistic articles, you will be able to see how studies were conducted and upon whom, and get into the real subtleties involved. It's a fascinating field to delve into.
I encourage you to go and read their arguments, here (Aliette de Bodard) and here (Keyan's response).
While the link between language and thought is undeniable, it is also subtle. Thus it can be easy, when saying something like, grammatical gender influences the way we think about objects, to overstate the case. Much of our language use is subconscious, and in particular it would be a mistake to assume that the presence of a grammatical feature in a language means that a speaker of that language will think about reality in a particular way all the time, or with intent, or on a conscious level. As Keyan notes, in Hindi there can be one masculine and one feminine word used for the same object - so clearly there can be no underlying assumption of gender being literally possessed by that object. Furthermore, as Aliette remarks, the characteristics that we assign to one gender or another vary widely across cultures.
If it were so simple, then it would have been a matter of much less debate, and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis about the links between language and culture would not have been so heavily disputed. It's important to remember that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis had a "strong version" and a "weak version." As Wikipedia would have it:
"(i) the strong version that language determines thought and that linguistic categories limit and determine cognitive categories and (ii) the weak version that linguistic categories and usage influence thought and certain kinds of non-linguistic behavior."
In the end my best suggestion if you are curious about the links between language and thought is to go to the actual studies. One of the current leaders in the field is Lera Boroditsky, assistant professor of cognitive psychology at Stanford University. In looking directly at the psycholinguistic articles, you will be able to see how studies were conducted and upon whom, and get into the real subtleties involved. It's a fascinating field to delve into.
Link on how manners continue to change
How digital assistants are affecting the way people talk in public. What is polite?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/03/technology/virtual-assistants-raise-new-issues-of-phone-etiquette.html?_r=1
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/03/technology/virtual-assistants-raise-new-issues-of-phone-etiquette.html?_r=1
Friday, December 2, 2011
Fun link on Japanese Ghosts and Monsters
I ran across this one on Facebook this week. It's quite a long and interesting list, and though I'd quibble with some of the pictures, a lot of them are great. Plenty of ideas here!
http://www.tofugu.com/2011/10/29/super-ghouls-n-ghosts-from-japan/
http://www.tofugu.com/2011/10/29/super-ghouls-n-ghosts-from-japan/
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Culture and language in The Fallen Queen by Jane Kindred
I met up with agent Sara Megibow (I almost typed "angel," and while she's lovely, you'll see why that's funny in a second) at World Fantasy Convention a few weeks ago, and while she and I were talking about my interest in language and culture in fantasy, she handed me an ARC. "You might like this," she said. She was right.
The book in question is Jane Kindred's newly released novel, The Fallen Queen. While I won't attempt to review the whole book, I'll tell you what I thought was fun and fascinating about it. Kindred has taken Heaven and turned it into a mirror of Tsarist Russia - and she also taken the main character, an angel, on a trip into Earthly Russia, complete with Russian language and tapochki slippers.
Very careful attention is paid to creating parallel levels of reality in this book. Not only is the geography of Heaven carefully analogized to the geography of Russia (the river Neva in Russia=the river Neba in Heaven), but Heaven isn't just a bin full of angels. It's carefully divided into layers of angels characterized by different elements (fire, water, earth, air), who don't necessarily understand each other. Those who appear human are the Host of the Fourth Choir, while the Ophanim and Seraphim each have supernatural behaviors and qualities that make them distinct. What's even more fun is that the powers of the angels and demons are relative to where one stands in the layers, and which layer one happens to be occupying at the time. Demons are those of mixed blood and "impure" behaviors, keeping the spirit of angel versus demon and also setting up a rather deft allegory related to race and to purity of blood.
I got a special kick out of the way the Russian was used. I don't speak any Russian, but I sure want to now that I've read it! The language never interfered with story comprehension, but the author used it with finesse. For one thing, the angel doesn't speak Russian when she first arrives in Russia, and she has no Heavenly power that grants her language skill. For this, Kindred gets a cheer from me! I'm willing to grant that the angel Anazakia will have some ability to pick it up quickly, and this is used to advantage. It's great, because when she first arrives, the things she doesn't understand are related in Russian, so if you really don't understand Russian, you understand precisely the same things she does, i.e. not much. If you do understand Russian, no doubt you'll get a lovely little sense of confidentiality with the author. The use of Russian goes down as the book progresses and Anazakia understands more, but it is still retained for flavor in a lot of contexts.
One last issue I'd like to mention is that this book engages with questions of virtue, vice, and sexual taboo behavior in a really interesting way, by juxtaposing the behavior of humans, demons and angels, and setting Anazakia's fall - and the attendant changes in her own choices - against that. While there were a few places where I felt the author's views intruding, the overall treatment of the topic I felt was very good, and readers may find it tittillating in some places, appalling in others, and overall quite thought-provoking.
I'd like to thank Sara Megibow again for handing me the ARC. It's really fun when I can discover a book that is both enjoyable and engaging on multiple different levels.
The book in question is Jane Kindred's newly released novel, The Fallen Queen. While I won't attempt to review the whole book, I'll tell you what I thought was fun and fascinating about it. Kindred has taken Heaven and turned it into a mirror of Tsarist Russia - and she also taken the main character, an angel, on a trip into Earthly Russia, complete with Russian language and tapochki slippers.
Very careful attention is paid to creating parallel levels of reality in this book. Not only is the geography of Heaven carefully analogized to the geography of Russia (the river Neva in Russia=the river Neba in Heaven), but Heaven isn't just a bin full of angels. It's carefully divided into layers of angels characterized by different elements (fire, water, earth, air), who don't necessarily understand each other. Those who appear human are the Host of the Fourth Choir, while the Ophanim and Seraphim each have supernatural behaviors and qualities that make them distinct. What's even more fun is that the powers of the angels and demons are relative to where one stands in the layers, and which layer one happens to be occupying at the time. Demons are those of mixed blood and "impure" behaviors, keeping the spirit of angel versus demon and also setting up a rather deft allegory related to race and to purity of blood.
I got a special kick out of the way the Russian was used. I don't speak any Russian, but I sure want to now that I've read it! The language never interfered with story comprehension, but the author used it with finesse. For one thing, the angel doesn't speak Russian when she first arrives in Russia, and she has no Heavenly power that grants her language skill. For this, Kindred gets a cheer from me! I'm willing to grant that the angel Anazakia will have some ability to pick it up quickly, and this is used to advantage. It's great, because when she first arrives, the things she doesn't understand are related in Russian, so if you really don't understand Russian, you understand precisely the same things she does, i.e. not much. If you do understand Russian, no doubt you'll get a lovely little sense of confidentiality with the author. The use of Russian goes down as the book progresses and Anazakia understands more, but it is still retained for flavor in a lot of contexts.
One last issue I'd like to mention is that this book engages with questions of virtue, vice, and sexual taboo behavior in a really interesting way, by juxtaposing the behavior of humans, demons and angels, and setting Anazakia's fall - and the attendant changes in her own choices - against that. While there were a few places where I felt the author's views intruding, the overall treatment of the topic I felt was very good, and readers may find it tittillating in some places, appalling in others, and overall quite thought-provoking.
I'd like to thank Sara Megibow again for handing me the ARC. It's really fun when I can discover a book that is both enjoyable and engaging on multiple different levels.
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