Monday, September 17, 2012

NPR Three Minute Fiction Submission

The New Boss, Same As...?


The alley is long, and George walks it twice a day. Once in the early morning, as the sun stretches his shadow down the pavement, and once in the evening, as he returns from a long day maintaining the president.

If you or I walked George’s alley, there would be little to see. A right turn here, a left turn there, and then, nothing. A soot-stained brick wall, and perhaps some trash, accumulated in the corners. No doors or windows opening into it. Only chipped, dirty bricks, and above the bricks a jagged ribbon of sky visible between the eaves.

But George knows a deep secret. He knows of a particular brick, hidden in the last wall, which, if the right person presses in the right way, opens a hidden door.

Behind the door is what George worked ceaselessly to support for the past 24 years. The last six presidential terms. The tenure of the last three presidents of the United States of America.

He does it for his country. He does it because he believes it’s the only way to fix America.

Today, George descends the stair behind the hidden alley door, and enters the server room. There is someone there who shouldn’t be. An assassin. George infers this from his clothing, which is mostly black, and the sleek, simple pistol in the assassin’s hand.

At the sound of George’s footsteps, the assassin turns. Raises the pistol. He asks George a question. “Who’re you?”

George can see nothing of the assassin’s face. A dark, smooth, reflective piece of plastic covers his features.

“Just a programmer,” George answers. “What do you want?” He fights the urge to run.

“Where is he? Where’s the president?” the assassin demands.

“The president of what?”

“Don’t play dumb. Of the United States.”

George gives an incredulous shrug. “How should I know? In the White House, making breakfast with his kids. On Air Force one, teleconferencing with some diplomat.” This is likely pointless, but worth a try. George hopes he won’t be shot.

The assassin gets impatient.

“Look buddy, I know the masquerade. That silly fool in the White House is not the president. The real one’s here, somewhere. Take me to him.”

“If I refuse?” George asks, sure he knows the answer.

“Take a guess,” the assassin says, and George can see his grip on the pistol tighten.   

George makes his decision.

The truth.

“Follow me.” He turns and strides out of the server room.

The assassin doesn’t have far to walk. George leads him down a short hallway, past two doors, and into a white room at the end of the hall. The room contains a few sparse decorations, a vending machine, and a single, ornate desk with a large computer. He can almost feel the assassin’s confusion. There’s nobody in here.

George turns part-way around, looks at the assassin, and indicates the computer with his left hand. He takes a breath and licks his lips. “I’m pleased to introduce ... The President of the United States of America.” Despite his predicament, amusement tugs at his lips. He’s always wanted to say that, ever since he got this job.

The gun lowers.

“It’s not entirely true, of course,” George continues. “The president is much more than a single computer. This is just my user interface. He, it, really, resides on hundreds of hidden servers around the country. Secret servers – the new Secret Service,” he adds, smiling.

The assassin is slowly shaking is head. “They won’t stand for this...” he trails off.

“They won’t believe you,” George whispers.


Thursday, September 6, 2012

The Eye of the Toilet Bowl

I am confused. I just finished reading The Eye of the World. Did I enjoy it? Occasionally, but mostly no. What did I enjoy? Well, I'm a sucker for fantasy, so I like swords and magic and old wise men and such. The world is well-built, and Jordan's ideas regarding magic feel original and enthralling.

What didn't I enjoy?

Oh boy.

For one, his writing is frequently opaque. I had to re-read many sentences to reach comprehension. This was a simple word-order issue in most cases. As a general rule, one could improve half the book by rearranging his sentences. Move the last four or five words in a sentence to its beginning.

That's a pretty niggly complaint though. Worse than his writing, I couldn't stand his characters. It seems as though every single one of them is bigoted, closed minded, foolish, and full of mind-numbing stereotypes.

The reader virtually never gets the whole story on anything that matters, but we get paragraph after soul-less paragraph describing the most mundane aspects of surroundings and internal thought.

Normally I enjoy delving into character's minds. Here, this exercise became redundant, as none of the characters grow in any way, or think anything to themselves apart from "I don't trust the Aes Sedai, why is this happening to me, I want to go home, and I better not tell anyone anything that's happening to me because I don't want anything to get any worse." I'm sorry, but suddenly developing wolf powers is really cool. Why not give Perrin some kind of explicit internal conflict where part of him revels in his new abilities, and part of him worries about never fitting in again in the Two Rivers? Instead, anytime Perrin realizes he's communicating with wolves, all we hear from him is "Oh, wait, I don't want to think about that."

None of the characters have to do anything to get through their struggle, apart from Moraine. None of them get stronger through any work of their own. Even at the end, *SPOILER ALERT* Rand just suddenly gets fed up with his entire situation, grows a glowing cord of power to the male source for no discernible reason, other than the fact that he clearly needs to, and "defeats", in some very nebulous way, the dark one.

There is no growth in understanding among any of the characters regarding the nuances of the land's political situation (which, by the way, seems like would be quite interesting if only we could hear something substantial about it.)

We're constantly excluded from Moraine and Lan's discussions throughout the entire book. What is the point of that? Regardless of whether I accept that this is a reasonable way for these two to behave, it would have been far more interesting to give us a window into what they're discussing. Instead, it's always, "oh, we have a difficult decision to make." Moraine and Lan went to discuss. Egwene and Rand avoided each other's eyes. The Wisdom scowled. Mat clutched his bow. Moraine and Lan came back, Lan also scowling, and Moraine proclaimed what they were going to do.
Way to go. You just told us all the most boring things about that scene, and none of the most interesting.

Mat...oh gosh, Mat. Don't get me started on him. Dumbest character ever. Also the most obvious and predictable, yet no one around him seems to foresee or understand his problems.

I could go on, but I won't.

What I don't understand is how these books are possibly so successful and popular. Are there things to like? Yeah, a few. Like I said, the world itself hold so much promise. But it's torture actually reading them. There's just no soul. So why are the jackets just covered with praise? I don't understand...

Eragon has soul. The Hobbit has soul. Name of the Wind has soul. The Golden Compass has soul. Not Wheel of Time. Even The Magicians had soul, despite the fact that I didn't like it very much. It was still a good book, a good read, and well done. But this...

Submission for Writing Group - Driven, Chapter 1


Mariset was finished with Hellems Station. She was finished with it physically, emotionally, and, she decided, spiritually. Finished with the rough and uncompleted walls, the rusting pipes and metal grates, the dim lighting and long, jagged corridors. Finished with the men and women on the lower decks, whose accents were like ice in her ears, and whose demeanors always left her feeling unwelcome. Finished with the atmosphere of the place, something that coalesced into a physical pressure boring into her mind. It was a creeping empathy with those who had lost their purpose, and the dread that somehow by proximity she would lose her own; the silent screaming of people who know they’re headed nowhere, but are unable to change course. 
Or, perhaps, it was just the years of failure, a failure she had begun to project onto others. Three, long years of a search for something that no one, not even those who originated her orders, expected her to find. While she slept, she had dreams that she’d find the object of her search in unlikely places. She’d draw a bath in her room, though her room had no tub, and when she turned around she’d find a microdrive submerged in the water. She’d walk around a blind corner in the station, and a meteor would crash through the ceiling and lay smoldering in the metal grating at her feet, and when she looked closer, the meteor would be that remnant of ancient Peshmaria she sought for so long.
How many scouts, including herself? Thirty five? And how many stations had they collectively floundered through, only to leave, empty-handed? She couldn’t remember them all. The stations had begun to merge in her memory. Three years asking herself the same question, each day her discontentment growing stronger. Why? Why do I persist? But always the answer. The answer that drove them all, though for each of them any hope of success had long since faded to a dull ache, like the early-morning remembrance of a lost first love. They promised us peace, still promise it, if only we can find a Peshmarian microdrive.
Mariset’s brief excitement soured over the past week. Zenfried called her secure line from Triad Station eight days ago. Not that a day had any real meaning on the stations. Well, that’s not true, Mariset thought. Radioactive decay has meaning, but it’s not the same as seeing the Sun. She knew which method of time keeping she preferred.
Mariset had been preparing for another day in Greg’s salvage shop when her phone lit up, and Zenfried’s face slid across the screen. She answered the call.
“Another day, another scavenge drone, eh Z?”
“It’s nice to see you too, Mariset.”
“I’m tired. I’m so tired of this.”
“I know...I know it so well my toenails ache. But an end to the violence, dare you imagine it? True peace! To be able to stop pretending...”
“I’ve imagined it ceaselessly for three years. It’s pretty peaceful here you know. I mean, relatively speaking. There was a murder yesterday. On the lower decks. But it’s not a suppressed warzone. It’s not like home.”
“I know you hate Hellems station. You despise each one more than the last. Triad’s not any better, believe me. But it’s worth it.”
“I don’t know, Zenfried, do you still trust them? The Skippers? Haven’t you wondered if they aren’t stalling? What if it’s all a distraction?”
Zenfried was momentarily silent, and Mariset could see him on the tiny screen, chewing his lip. She watched as Zenfried glanced around, almost furtively, though he was clearly alone in his compartment. Then, he bent close to his camera, and quietly said, “This is going to end soon.” He took a breath, and seemed to have difficultly picking his next words. “You’re okay, right? You haven’t seen, I mean, you haven’t skipped town?”
Off guard and slightly confused, not quite daring to hope, Mariset said, “Yes, of course, and you know exactly where I am, I ... are you trying to tell me something? Zenfried, have you found -”
At that moment, the door to Zenfried’s compartment banged open. He gave an involuntary jump, mastered himself, loudly proclaimed that watermelon was too expensive on Triad Station, and then said, “Sorry Sweetness, but I gotta run. Check-in again in a few weeks.” Mariset’s last view before the feed terminated was Zenfried turning to give someone named “Dayve” a firm handshake and a pat on the shoulder. A flurry of motion. A blank screen. She wasn’t sure if she was supposed to call him back in a few weeks, or vice versa.  
At the time, Mariset imagined the words “this is going to end soon” could only mean that Zenfried, against overwhelming odds, had found an authentic Peshmarian microdrive. The search might be over. She was elated beyond all reason. The morning after, having slept on it for a night, she worried that Zenfried may have meant something else entirely. Unable to withstand the suspense, Mariset finally tried reaching Zenfried a few days later, but his old connection protocol was no longer active. Her thoughts automatically snapped to the Shrouded Fellowship, though she couldn’t imagine why they might be involved.
A nightmare from childhood, the Fellowship supposedly employed alien races for assassination and subterfuge. Their motives were opaque and indecipherable. Regional governments blamed the Fellowship for every catastrophe, no matter the size. Parents warned children against misbehaving by invoking their name. By now it was nearly reflex to assume that the Shrouded Fellowship was behind everything from interstellar cruiser collisions and high profile fatalities to a piece of burnt toast.
As Mariset continued to work in Greg’s salvage shop on Hellems Station, and The Skipper’s secure channel relayed only silence after her call with Zenfried, Mariset was forced to assume he hadn’t found a microdrive after all. She would have heard by now. All scouts would have been recalled. There would have been a celebration.
Instead, Mariset sat on her cot, in a tiny compartment on the inner ring of Hellems Station. A single room, her compartment included a sink, toilet, and stove that all folded with a jarring clang into the wall. The cot was little more than a slab of smooth, cold metal, suspended by two chains coming down at an angle from iron rings. A thin and threadbare green cushion laid over the top. Initially she wondered why The Skippers couldn’t have sprung for nicer quarters, but then she saw her room was more or less standard for Hellems. Five more weeks and The Skippers would move her to another system, another station, and she would start the process anew. She prayed her next assignment would be closer to the core, on a station that didn’t seem like it was cobbled together from whatever pieces of space trash that happened to float by.
A chime sounded on Mariset’s work permit, signifying the start of her shift. She made her way out of the residential blocks, and walked down the corridor to one of the station’s central elevators. The elevator’s glass cylinder provided an unobstructed view of the station’s inner workings, which Mariset found disconcerting. Unfinished spaces filled with industrial machinery stretched into the background, giving her the impression that the station was ultimately still open to vacuum. 
It was a ten-minute ride to Hellems’ outer shell, to the docks and their corresponding salvage yards. The outer shell was also home to the Human Integration Authority, which explained why a man with a birdcage nearly as tall as the elevator itself got on halfway through the ride, and stayed in the elevator until they reached the end of the line. Flying mammalian creatures flitted from one wall of the cage to the other, periodically making tiny squawking noises.
“Vespions!” Mariset exclaimed, recognizing the creatures in the cage, which were roughly twice the size of squirrels. “I’ve always loved these!”
The man raised an eyebrow. “You’ve always loved Vespions? Ever since their discovery, oh,” here the man pretended to check a watch, “five months ago?”
“It’s just a figure of speech.”
“Looking for a pet?” His tone was condescending. “Think they’re cute? Hey, I wouldn’t do that!” he said suddenly, as Mariset reached towards the cage.
Mariset drew back with her hands on her hips. “No, I think they look tasty. I was hoping to make sandwich. Would probably beat the stuff in the food court, though that’s hardly a challenge, eh?”
The man with the Vespions did not find this funny. He clearly thought Mariset an ignorant tourist. “Listen, ma’am. The Human Integration Authority classified Vespions as teshen: alien race of uncertain capabilities, and possessed of uncertain motives. They are neither to be kept as pets nor served as food. These three,” he indicated the cage, “will serve as ambassadors to their species in a hearing this afternoon.”
“I was only joking about...never mind.” Mariset eyed the cage. A Vespion stared back, clinging to the cage wall. It had six legs. She could not picture the creature sitting in a courtroom for questioning. “How will they, uh, testify?”
“Vespions are smarter than they look.” As if Mariset should have known. The elevator reached its destination. “Decades of dealing with aliens, not to mention the Himsi crisis, and people still underestimate.” The man rolled the cage out of the elevator, and to Mariset’s relief, turned in the direction opposite the salvage shop.
“The Himsi had spaceships and beam weapons!” Mariset called after his back. “Sounds a bit more advanced than oversized flying squirrels!” The man did not bother to acknowledge this, but Mariset could hear the Vespions chittering loudly in their cage.
Floor-to-ceiling windows lined the corridors here, at the outer edge of the station. Interstellar vessels, too large to dock with the station directly, hovered some distance away. A steady stream of shuttles transferred personnel and materials between Hellems and the constellation of ships. She could make out the standard shapes of military corvettes and their larger cruiser counterparts, the unwieldy bulk of mining frigates, sleeker trading freighters, and even a handful of enormous private yachts. Private yachts...she couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to come to Hellems station for anything other than business or government matters. Perhaps for them Hellems was a pit stop on the way to more exotic locales. 
Mariset watched the traffic as she strolled towards what she thought of as Salvage Shop D, her fourth shop in about as many months. The way she jumped from shop to shop might look suspicious to anyone looking closely at her history. Either no one had noticed, or, more likely, no one cared. Turnover in the salvage shops was so high that no one questioned the arrival or departure of a shop hand.
Mariset arrived to find the Overseer waiting for her. The Overseer was a short, round man. He arrived every morning wearing suspenders over a white tank top, which was always stained with grease and sweat though the day had yet to start. A welding mask continually hid his face, regardless of any actual welding taking place. His full name was Gregory Middlun, but his ego required that the shop hands address him either as Overseer, or, in an eccentric bit of hierarchical nostalgia, Your Eminence. Mariset knew of no one in the shop who addressed Greg by the latter.   
Greg liked to watch the salvage drones deposit the morning hauls, and Mariset found herself agreeing to accompany him to the viewing port. Metal shavings crunched beneath their feet as the two threaded through the bulky shop equipment. Mariset’s thoughts drifted back to Zenfried.
“...do you? Mariset?”
“I’m sorry, Overseer. Pardon?”
“I said, you don’t much like the work here, do you?”
“I like it well enough. You do what you have to, yeah? I mean, you could always replace me with a Himsi.”
The Overseer laughed, loud and deep. “As like to chop me in half as cut metal, all the same to the crabs. Shouldn’t even be on the station, you ask me. A revan species like the Himsi don’t belong here. No question. Nor do the teshen. Honestly, I don’t like them pacha neither, when it comes to it, though they’re supposed to be safe. They don’t really know. How can they know?”
“That’s every alien classification there is. Revan, teshen, and pacha. Hostile, undetermined, and friendly. You just don’t like aliens.”
“No, I reckon I don’t. Can’t know what they’re thinkin. Can’t really understand ‘em. Not really. Not ever.”
Mariset recalled the Vespions, a teshen race, and pictured the one from the elevator, staring her in the eyes. What had it been thinking? Was Greg right? That cage, had it been for her sake or for the Vespions’? She wondered.      
   The shop, which was about 200 yards deep, terminated in a viewing window above the salvage bay. Mariset rested her hands on the metal railing beneath the window, and peered into the rubble. Greg stood next to her, watching the sorter sift through the rusted detritus, a mixture of space debris from interstellar battles, and ruined material from the surface of that region’s colonies.
This pull like was any other: a pile of wrecked metal, valuable only once melted down and its impurities removed. Why was she still here? Right. Peace. But there would be no peace in this salvage pull, nor the next, nor the one after that. Greg droned on about spot market prices for recycled salvage metal. Mariset wasn’t listening. She was doomed. Doomed to skip from shop to shop, never finding what she needed.
Then, Mariset’s stomach dropped out. A perfect Peshmarian microdrive, sitting in the middle of the rubble.
Greg saw it too, but obviously did not know what he was looking at, because he said the same thing he always said whenever Peshmarian artifacts appeared in his cache. “Ooh, that’s a juicy one! See if there’s a core! If it still works, it goes in the usual place.” Mariset struggled to hide her disbelief as a mixture of emotions coursed through her.
The Shrouded Fellowship offered a small fortune for certain Peshmarian artifacts, and the markings on the microdrive’s casing identified it as obviously Peshmarian. Intricate patterns inlaid with exotic red and blue minerals traced a latticework of vines and other foliage across the outer shell. No one knew whether the decorations held any deeper meaning, but they did cause Peshmarian salvage to stand out from the rest of the salvage, and the detailing also usually indicated the presence of a meridian core.
Mariset knew The Overseer intended to sell the core on the lower decks, assuming its sheathing wasn’t cracked. Trading Peshmarian cores on the black market instead of declaring and turning them over to the Colonization Bureau wasn’t exactly legal, but Station Security had enough to worry about without chasing down every shady deal the salvage shops made. Meridian cores were relatively rare, but there was just too much salvage to follow every piece of ancient Peshmaria coming onto the station. Besides, core-bearing artifacts almost never appeared in salvage pulls. The chances that a microdrive would appear in the salvage pull was astronomically small. By the core, how did it get there?
   She descended the steps leading to the salvage bay, turned off the sorter, and climbed the pile. She picked out the microdrive, which was shockingly light, and carried it like a baby back into the shop. Greg clapped her on the back and said, “Glad we saw it before the bureau did, huh? Best part is, everyone’ll get a cut. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a call to make.” Greg sauntered to his office.
Mariset carried the microdrive to her bench in a state of shock. Not only was she holding something whose value was several times greater than that of Hellems Station itself, but Greg, who ran with a certain kind of crowd, somehow hadn’t recognized the microdrive for what it was. Not that there were many people on the station who would know a Peshmarian microdrive from a Peshmarian toaster. Her brain was still trying to process what this meant. She was done. She was DONE! Right now, right here, in this stupid salvage shop, this moment marked the end of the search! What will the others say? What will The Skippers say?
She wanted to tear around the shop, laughing and crying and hugging the other shop hands and whoever else came within arms reach. Instead, she stood over her bench, trying not to hyperventilate. If Greg knew what this was, no, if anyone found out... She’d imagined this moment for three years. Time to do what she had to do to protect it. Act like everything was normal. What if the Colonization Bureau saw it? Would they see just another Peshmarian curiosity? How would she get the microdrive out of the shop without Greg noticing, and then out of the station without the Colonization Bureau noticing?
When she accepted The Skippers’ proposal three years ago, she imagined this moment ceaselessly. She would dream up complicated escape sequences, usually picturing herself tearing through a space station with the microdrive held snug under her arm. Sometimes she’d pelt into a shuttle set up in advance, laser fire and explosions from Colonization Bureau weaponry missing her by inches in her desperate bid to escape. Or perhaps she’d pack the microdrive into her luggage, and book a fake ticket for a vacation on a distant planet, only to stow away on a smuggling vessel in an effort to throw her imagined pursuers off her tail. But Mariset’s experiences had shown her that real life was nothing like the vids. None of this would really happen. In all likelihood, the Colonization Bureau would get wind of her find, and confiscate it. She couldn’t let that happen.
Mariset should have had a plan already in place. The truth was she had given up hope of ever finding a microdrive in the first place. But here it was. The Skippers needed it, and now it fell to Mariset to figure out how to get it to them. The first step would be to remove the meridian core to distract Greg. Actually, no. The first step was to calm down and get some lunch.  

Reducing Traffic Wait Times


I was watching traffic today, and I noticed yet again a phenomenon that I've thought about many times before. It happens when a long line of cars is stopped, bumper to bumper, and then the car that's first in line begins to move. It always takes a moment for the car behind the first car to start moving. And then it takes another moment for the third car to start moving, and so on, back down the line of cars. These "moments before moving" get magnified the more cars there are, so that cars further back in line have to wait for every car in front of them to go through their moment before moving.

The observation is that tiny spaces of time where one car has to wait for another get compounded such that they have disproportionately huge effects on the cars in the back of a line. Theoretically, in the situation outlined above, if every car in a line began to move at the exact same moment and with the exact same acceleration as the first car in the line, no one would have to wait at all. Everyone would advance at the same time, much the same way train cars all move together. Of course, this idealized situation is probably impossible, especially with human drivers behind the wheel.

Enter Google's self-driving cars. NPR informed me (yeah, NPR again, look, as much as I love FM 93.3, 99.5, 103.5, and 106.7, there's only so much I learn from those stations...) that the self-driving cars can predict traffic patterns by bouncing signals off the pavement and underneath the cars in front of it. Suppose everyone had a self driving car - I imagine we'd be able to get pretty close to a line of cars all starting to move at the same time. Do it, Google!

This Exploitive Life


Things are rarely black and white (Apart from Panda Bears and Yinyang symbols). There is a degree of nuance in everything, as NPR reminded me this morning. It's always better to try to get the entire story before acting on a piece of the story that grips your emotions and temporarily drives you to thoughts of eternal activism. I'll give you an example.

I listened to This American Life during my morning locutions today. The narrator was, from what I understand, a sort of self-employed investigative journalist. I missed the introduction, so I'm not certain how precise that characterization is. He recounted his experiences traveling around China and visiting the large factories where most of the components in our laptops and cellphones come from. In short, I got very indignant very quickly. The stories he told of the working conditions and other such topics were so upsetting that I wanted to write and submit an op-ed to the paper calling for everyone to boycott Apple's products (for all the good something like that would do). 16 + hour days, 13-year-olds working on the lines, a cheap and abundant labor force keeping workers from having the leverage to change anything, systemic fraud a part of all the external audit safeguards, it was all so depressing that I lost even more of what little faith I have in the human race. Why is it our inclination to get what we want through exploitation first rather than through fairness and humanity? I guess because those tendencies led our species to survive in the past, and brought us to where we are today. Are we okay with these things? I'm not certain. Some of us are. For some of us, it's the only we know how to get by.

Once the investigative journalist finished his story, I very nearly went straight to my computer to write a scathing blurb denouncing electronics companies, libertarians, and probably also the very nature of our society. I'm glad I didn't (and not just because I briefly forgot my hypothesis that these kinds of problems arise neither from the private sector nor the government, but rather from a certain kind of human being who is apparently pretty ubiquitous in our world). Instead, I continued listening. I learned the following:

Apple releases numerous, publicly-available reports describing the great lengths that Apple takes to maintain transparency in their supply chains. They contract independent auditors to check up on their suppliers overseas, and work with their suppliers to fix "bad" working conditions. They provide mental health counselors. They try to avert under-age working and force suppliers they catch employing children to send the children back to school and pay for their education. According to Apple, if things are bad enough and the supplier isn't responsive to Apple's requirements, Apple drops them.

Some of my faith in humanity returned once I learned these things. Does Apple do as good a job as we would like? Probably not. Is this their fault, not entirely. Many consumers don't know (and a small percentage probably don't actually care) about poverty-stricken workers in China dying from exhaustion on the job as they try to make our iphones and laptops. Part of me suspects that even if these problems were common knowledge in the States, our society is so dependent on the technologies and the exploitive systems on which their production relies that we may not stop buying the products anyway. Maybe that's not true. Companies like Apple are at least making effort, and I think they deserve credit for that. Although I think that the person who has the power to stop someone from mugging someone else but who instead just stands by and watches bears some of the responsibility for the crime, I'm more interested in why the crime needs to happen at all. Maybe we see a part of ourselves in the mugger. We can imagine being driven to such extremes by a few consecutive strokes of really bad luck. I may not agree with most of Ayn Rand's theories on how we should act and behave, but I think her observation that we are driven only by self-interested is perfectly accurate.

One last thought before I ramble too far. Thinking about the people and systems that let the story of Chinese factories happen reminded me of the lunch line in middle school, and the dynamics of cutting in line. I was not one of the lucky popular kids in middle school. I also had a strong inclination to follow the rules (don't cut in line). But, there was a limited number of the good non-school pizza slices. Everyone knew this. Often though, I would wait my turn in line, and hope there was pizza left. What usually happened was that other people would cut the line and get the last of the pizza. Terrible feeling. No one REALLY monitored the line, and the lunch ladies only selectively tried to keep people from cutting (which led to some very unfair situations). The whole system taught me at that age that there was no point in following the rules, and furthermore, you usually would get burned if you did. So I thought maybe I'd try cutting. It didn't work. All the popular kids who cut the line all the time, and who you couldn't call out on these things, would make a huge scene if they saw you trying to cut AND they would get the lunch ladies to put you at the end of the line. But they cut the line to stand with each other every day.

I didn't know what hypocrisy was at that age. All I felt was the crushing injustice of it, and my complete impotence to do anything about it. But you know what? I still wanted to be one of them. If I had been at that age, I'm pretty sure I would have done the exact same thing, even just to fit in. It's a startling realization, that I might not be all that different, or at least in middle school I wouldn't have been. I think the same kind of dynamic is at work in all places where people ignore the rules and take advantage of the system. We're wired to take advantage when we can, and to do everything we can to maintain the advantage. I can think of no other way to get past this than by having an incorruptible enforcement mechanism, but no such thing exists. What is the solution? I have no idea. 

No Ideas


I wish I knew where my story ideas came from, and why it feels like I've run out.

The beginning of Andrew Luckless came from such an unassuming beginning that one would suppose I could generate story ideas out of anything. Granted, at the time, I was supposed to be formulating plot lines. The goal was to observe something, anything, around Charlotte, NC, and turn it into a plot.

I saw a dead fly lying on the sidewalk.

My initial plot was very similar to the initial plot in Andrew Luckless: some kid finds a dead bug, which turns out to be mechanical. A secret organization manufactures these mechanical bugs for *insert nefarious purpose here* and the kid has to link up with them for some reason to stop the *generic nefarious purpose*. That was as far as I got. The assignment was to come up with something like 5 of these plot lines over the course of the evening, so I didn't wind up developing any of them properly.

Now that I'm faced with actually developing a full plot-line, I'm having trouble. My boss recently sent round the office a compendium of useful writing advice from other authors. I love every suggestion, and I'm convinced that my troubles would be over if I could only adopt them. Yet, it's a struggle to even want to sit down and write. A writer is supposed to have some idea, even the vaguest of notions, what he or she is about to write about before he or she sits down at their escritoire. I cannot seem to formulate any idea what-so-ever. That's not entirely true. I can't seem to formulate an idea that I like.

It's the accursed third chapter. At least, that's what I'm blaming it on. The problem probably runs much deeper. I haven't developed my world enough. I haven't truly decided how the story ends, or what Andrew's main struggle is. I think the main struggle is how Andrew deals with his gift, but I'm not sure. And I know I haven't really come up with the Embracement Society's main struggle. These may be the reasons I'm stuck. Until this point, I knew exactly what happens. Andrew finds the bug. He discovers its nature. The Embracement Society finds Andrew. Then I have a loose idea that the Embracement Society happens upon Andrew's gift by chance. Then there are all these random notions of things I want to have happen, but that I haven't really worked into a true plot yet.

Perhaps I should go back and re-write the first and second chapters based on everyone's critiques. That's probably a good idea. I can do away with the third chapter and try again. The assassination attempt just doesn't work out the way it's supposed to, and Andrew turns into a good little boy when he meets Neverwell. He should probably be more desireous of the mischief and adventure that Neverwell represents. Neverwell probably shouldn't have to drug Andrew to get him to come along. Well, there's a plan at least. Perhaps I can implement it in my writing in the next few days.

A good next step should be to set aside the same time to write every day, and adhere to my schedule. If I can't write, then it should at least be to generate ideas. A dedicated idea notebook would probably not go awry. Maybe I'll use the journal Melanie gifted me.

Feels better to have a plan.

Once Upon


Once upon an afternoon
I decided to try to bend my spoon
I grasped it firmly betwixt my hands
But the wily spoon had other plans

It wriggled free and then did fall
upon the floor with a parting call

"You've doused me in your soup so hot,
 and scooped ice cream with me a lot
and now I've had it up to here
another utensil you'll need I fear."

I chased my spoon outside the house
with speed it darted just like a mouse
it turned the corner of my block
but then received a nasty shock.

the sewer grating was spaced just so
and down it fell with a cry of woe
I dove to save it from the drain
and skinned my knees with the strain

I caught it with my hasty lunge
and pinned it hard above the sludge
I saved it before it all but went
but when I drew it out it came out bent

And so I did achieve my goal
And saved my spoon from a nasty hole
Perhaps this poem has struck a chord
and saved my reader from being bored.

Fooling Around


Dusk, and billowing clouds sprawl across the horizon. Bright blue contrasts with the grey of a janitor's uniform. The line of the storm approaches. Sheets of rain slant down, a wall of water draws nearer. As the edge of the storm tumbles through the sky over my head, I being to think I should seek refuge inside.... whoa, hey, I'm writing in present tense. I made a pact with myself to only ever write in past tense. It's not my fault. It just slipped out. What would the first few sentences sound like in past tense?

Dusk, and billowing clouds were sprawled across the horizon. Bright blue sky contrasted with the grey of a janitor's uniform. The line of the storm approached. Sheets of rain slanted down, a wall of water drew nearer. As the edge of the storm tumbled through the sky over my head, I thought perhaps I should seek refuge inside. I turned in a slow circle, looking for shelter in my surroundings. There was no 'inside', not exactly, but there was 'underneath'. Underneath was a downgrade from inside, but it was decidedly better than 'in the open.' I jogged across the meadow towards the enormous slab of granite, which poked from the ground at an angle so as to form an overhang. The first raindrops, harbingers of an awesome storm, pelted my increasingly viscous vicinity. Wait. Viscous vicinity? No. Vicious vicinity. That's better. My surroundings were not made of molasses. In fact, quite the opposite. The lighting threw all lines into sharp relief, including the wrinkled edges of a crushed beer can. Someone had gotten drunk in this spot. This boulder offered all sorts of refuse. I mean refuge.  

"Hey!" I shouted at the storm. "Knock it off!" The storm could hear me, I was sure, but it paid me no mind. Perhaps I had not been specific enough. "Knock what off?" it may have wondered. "I am doing many things. I am raining, I am hailing. I am blowing, I am sailing. Through the sky. I'm under a lot of pressure." This last reproach reached my mind, and I yelled, "False. You're a low pressure system."

The storm thought about that for a moment, and then broke down in tears at the realization of how deceived it had been. Unfortunately, this ended our discourse, for the sound of the storm's tears pounding the ground, the rock, all of existence, drowned out anything else I would have liked to say.

A Review of "The Magicians" by Lev Grossman


A New York Times best seller, the book jacket states if you loved Harry Potter and Narnia, then you have to read this. Glowing reviews from a myriad of papers and authors crowd the initial few pages. George Martin, of the Song of Ice and Fire series, tells the reader that this book is to Harry Potter as a shot of strong Irish whisky is to cup of weak tea.

I love a well-done fantasy novel. Judging by all the accolades and recommendations on its cover, as well as by the few paragraphs my girlfriend typed to me over skype, it seemed certain that I would love this book. To be sure, Lev's writing is top-notch. The story itself, if I consider a summary of the themes and the plot, seems like it would make a fantastic novel. So why, when I was finished with it, did I feel so mixed?

As I do with all the books I read, I brought it to every meal and read a portion before going to sleep at night. Unlike some books I've read recently, I had a strong urge run straight home after work and pick it up. I frequently thought about stealing time to go read it. But overall I don't think I liked it very much. It is a strange book that ropes me in such that I want to steal time from my work day to go read, but that I also wind up having such a healthy loathing for.

This is not a book I want to read more than once. I'm relatively certain that I don't want to read the sequel. This is for the simple reason that I couldn't stand Lev's main character, Quentin.

The unashamed theme for the story is that life is life, no matter where you are. Happiness and fulfillment are hard to find, whether you live the daily grind in your cubicle, or you get accepted into a prestigious school for magic. Everything requires hard work and misery, and no amount of pursuing a dream will leave you with contentment if you don't know why you're pursuing the dream in the first place. Lev forces every character to deal with these lessons to some extent, but Quentin, his main character, is the epitome of self-loathing and is constantly being reminded of how all the things he thinks will make him happy are actually devoid of meaning. While I agree that finding true fulfillment in life is a difficult endeavor, Lev explicitly throws this fact in the reader's face so often that reading the book begins to feel like a constant exploration of hitting bottom, which isn't fun to read. It's hard to believe that Lev didn't do this on purpose, and again, I think his point about happiness is a good one, but I don't think it's necessary for me to hate the main character, and large parts of the story, to get it across.

There are allusions to other works throughout Lev's story. Some of them are simple nods, but others make me wonder if Lev thinks that other authors let their characters get off easy with regard to learning magic, or finding happy endings. I get the feeling that Lev thinks these other fantasy stories aren't "true". And yet, parts of Harry Potter are quite dark. The characters have to deal with many facets of real life, as Lev would define it. Perhaps the point about life's struggles doesn't come across so clearly, but the themes are still there, AND they're fun to read. The parts of The Magicians that are uplifting and fun to read are few and far-between, albeit some of the best and most enjoyable writing I've read recently. Quentin's time as a goose is especially delightful. But they're so buried by depression and misery that it was a struggle to finish the book. By the end, I have so little regard for most of Lev's characters that I don't particularly care what he does with any of them. When you have everyone experiencing such loss and emptiness throughout the story, it's hard to feel any lower when you start killing them at the end. Instead of feeling the tragic sense of loss when Sirius dies (I actually cried at that part), I just thought to myself - yes, of course so-and-so was going to die. It was just another event in a litany of misery and unhappiness.

Quentin himself is so devoid of any sort of real, positive, self-appraising thought that it takes an effort to stay with him. Making a poignant point about the world is great, but if you do it in a way that revolts your readers, then I don't think as an author you're serving your own interests. In addition, Quentin is so incredibly useless in every situation that he only serves as a pitiable clown, instead of something driving the story. In fact, by the end of the novel, I got the sense that Lev himself was getting tired of it all, because he started throwing in numerous meta-ironies about writing, lambasting his own story IN the story. This type of writing is creative, and fun for the author to write, but reading it is incredibly annoying. It's like the reward for getting to the end of his book is that he starts playing an elaborate joke on his readers, which may or may not go over their heads. Are you in the "I'm so tired of it all?" club yet?

Also, why does Lev have such contempt for the idea that doing magic could be relatively easy to learn? Not everything in life requires hard work to master. I like the idea that learning magic in The Magicians is more complicated than in other fantasy stories, and that idea should provide some great material to explore. But I don't like to feel like Lev looks down on these other works for the way they treat their magic system. I think each interpretation is equally valid. It's magic for god's sake.

At the end, I'm not sure what I'm more disappointed by: the taste in my mouth when I finished reading, or how much I feel like Lev missed some golden opportunities to write a deep and satisfying book. I brought up the dark parts of Harry Potter earlier to show that there were probably ways for Lev to still make his points about life, but leave the reader wanting to stay in his world. I couldn't wait to get out. I understand that others may have a different philosophy regarding what a book Should Do, and if you are content with reading something that leaves you thinking more deeply about life, but doesn't necessarily leave you feeling fulfilled, then this book is perfect. I, on the other hand, want to enjoy the book first and foremost. There were sections here and there I enjoyed as much as anything, but at the end, I'm not sure it was worth it. As Quentin himself sort of learned but then suddenly didn't for some reason, perhaps I should have just stayed home and done (read) something else.

Being Wordy


Paul has noted that my posts are too wordy. So wordy that he doesn't want to finish reading them. I know he's right, because when I looked back at them, I didn't want to finish reading. But that's what this blog is for: to teach me to write efficiently. Props if you got through my three posts about the writing class! I'll aim to make future posts more readable. Goodness.

OSC said to read Bradbury for an example of clean prose. Sounds good. Martian chronicles, here I come.

Part III: Ender, Orson Scott Card, Sound Writing Advice and Strange Opinions


As promised, this post is going to summarize some of the odd things that OSC criticized during the writing course, and discuss why his personal views shocked me so. But before I go into that, I do want to list a few more pieces of writing advice, in bullet form. These have no particular order.


Crafting a story is about deciding what matters and what doesn't.
Conflict drives a scene, but struggle drives the story. These are different, because struggle doesn't require an antagonist.
Don't bloat your writing with unnecessary description. OSC likes to include the bare minimum necessary for comprehension, and let the reader's imagination fill in the rest.
The author should always know what the struggle is, and what the characters are trying to achieve (on every level).
Do not TRY to include symbolism or foreshadowing, and lecturing is something to especially avoid.
Don't be narcissistic. The story is not about ME as an author, is about my protagonist, and my protagonist is not a writer.
Intrusive narrators are annoying.
Fiction is NOT for preaching. The choir doesn't like being preached at any more than the non-choir members. (I'm still really trying to learn how to stay away from that).
Don't write an essay in the middle of the novel *cough* Rand *cough*, only relate character's views as they matter to the story. If world causality is believable and works, then the writer's views should come across anyway.
Don't assume the reading audience is a community of shared attitudes.
Fiction is nice, because we get to live in a world where things make sense, where people do things and we find out why they do them (usually).
For dialogue, concentrate on being clear. You have to approximate the way people talk, because you can't actually write dialogue the way people truly speak. 
Clarity of writing comes from clarity of thought. 
Withholding information is bad. You can't have the character knowing something that the reader doesn't know. Characters do withhold information from other characters. (This tends to drive stories, especially in TV shows. "Imagine how a TV series could keep going if everyone just told the truth all the time."
Don't worry about recycling ideas. No idea is truly "new", there's always been something like it.
With regard to stories - reasonable, good people respond differently to the same situation.
The fewer supernatural/magical things that there occur without a good explanation, the better. He gave the example of Lord of the Rings, where there isn't actually that much overt magic, and magic is almost never the solution to a problem. (me speaking: )My suspicion is that Harry Potter works because Rowling does such a good job creating her 'magical system'. You get a wand that has some very specific characteristics, you learn the correct words, and you wave the wand in the proper patterns. Alright, I'll buy that that's a reasonable way to do magic. In other words, there are magical/fantastic/supernatural phenomenon, but they all have reasonable explanations.
Show don't tell is really dumb. When you're little, you don't get shown why not to run in the street, they tell you not to run in the street. 99% of story telling is telling. Showing is what you do when you want to extend a scene. This is a powerful choice. You decide which things to show, and then tell the rest. If you could never just say "they drove to the store", you would never get anywhere in the story, because you'd be trying to describe the entire process of getting the car keys, walking to the front door, opening the door, stepping outside, closing the door, locking the door, walking to the car...etc


I think a lot of this advice is really useful. There are exceptions to every rule, but for the most part, I think many of the truly excellent stories I've read adhere to these ideas. What makes George Martin so successful? The themes aren't unique, in fact, they're quite the opposite. He's writing about a war in a fantasy land between kings and other kings. As Fallout so aptly stated "War ... war never changes." No, George Martin just does a truly stellar job of telling a complex and interesting story with absolute clarity.

Then we get to what OSC said about anything other than writing. I think bullet form works for this, and keep in mind, not all of them are ridiculous.

"There is just a pile of crap in every movie."
"College life is artificial. It's not a real life, and you can't write productive stories about that environment. I'm so tired of writing professors writing the story about the aging writing professor falling in love with a co-ed." (um, aren't there a lot of successful stories with the main character in some kind of school or university? Rowling even made SITTING IN CLASS exciting...)
"Clearly you have to decide on clarity."
"We don't care who governs us." (For all the focus we, as a society, put on our political leaders, I've been wondering if this might actually be true. Sure, we say we care, and we certainly have opinions and feelings, but in our individual lives I'm not certain that that much changes from president to president. Eh. Interesting thought experiment, but I'm not sold on it by any means.)
"George Lucas is an idiot, as he's proven over and over again."
"The hangover just made me embarrassed."
"His Dark Materials is an evil and hateful work. Phillip Pullman must have been raped by an Episcopalian." I was especially confounded by this one, because I freaking LOVE His Dark Materials. Then again, my beliefs aren't at stake when I read it.
"I just had to flush and get off." (regarding readings something he didn't like)
"If you want to be a writer, taking an English-writing course is the worst thing you can do.
Writing teachers, when they say "I don't know much about plot, so we're going to focus on style." are telling you that they are going to teach things you don't need, and critique the things instead that flow from your soul. What they are really saying is "I'm not capable of teaching you something you can use."
With regard to those sites that make fun of people at walmart: "Poor, ordinary people do not deserve your ridicule" I kind of agree with this actually...
"There is not a single kernel of truth in any of Elements of Style."
"Most human behavior is baboon behavior with a good story."
And then there is the gigantic list of items he can't stand: Wikipedia exists to mis-represent things. He really can't abide: Lady Gaga, Kraemer, Anthropogenic Global Warming, culture of waste and overpackaging, Peter Jackson and the LOTR movies, baseball statistics, freud, star wars and star trek are the same thing and are both disgusting (specifically he mentioned that the concept of irresistible grace is what's disgusting: the idea that Darth Vadar can murder an entire planet and yet be redeemed at the end.

What was most shocking to me about all of this is how intolerant he sounded when talking about these things. We all have opinions on these things and that's great, but his closed-mindedness was so inconsistent. He did say that you can't get to know someone by reading their writing, but still, if you write an entire series of books where one of the themes is the folly of human bigotry and intolerance, I don't understand how you can also hold these other views. Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind are the books I'm thinking of specifically. It's all about how humanity's tendency to reject what we don't know/don't understand, and do this to extremes, leads us to disaster. This manifests itself in many ways in all three of the books.

Anyway, in the end, I loved taking the class. It was really interesting getting to know OSC after reading Ender so many times, and the writing class portions by themselves were beyond helpful. I loved hanging out with the other writers too, it was so much fun to be around other people who appreciate my sense of humor, and who enjoy talking candidly about absurdly nerdy topics. At the end of the course, I found myself wishing I could keep meeting with all the other students.

With that, I think I'll conclude this topic thread! Hope it's been interesting.