Tag Archives: culture

Part and parcel

news, society, , , , ,

A pop musician or movie star gets arrested for driving under the influence and being in possession of an illegal controlled substance. When he or she is sentenced to nothing more than some hours of community service, there may be a bit of an outcry from the public, but thousands still attend the concerts, buy the music, see the movies.

If questioned, the fans might claim that you have to separate the art from the artist. They’re more likely to simply say, “Yeah, but I love the music/movie.” But it’s the same argument. Things that an artist does in their real life has nothing to do with the quality of product itself. Just as it would be inappropriate to claim that a painting is less than worthy of appreciation because the artist happens to be a member of a race other than the majority, a particular piece of art should stand upon its own merits, alone.

That doesn’t mean that we can’t argue that the celebrity doesn’t deserve special treatment before the law. We can compare the punishment given to the celebrity to those typically given to non-celebrities charged with the same crime. We can point out that this prominent person was given a punishment at the very lowest end of the first-offenders sentencing range, even though this is their fifth or sixth or twentieth run-in with the law over substance abuse issues.

We can demand that the special treatment stop. Yes, maybe that movie we’ve been waiting for will have to be delayed (or more likely, made with a different actor), but crimes and irresponsible actions should have consequences, and sometimes those consequences impact people other than the perpetrator.

The aforementioned situation is pretty clear, and not likely to draw a lot of argument on the principles.

It gets less black and white if the actor, musician, or artist is arrested for assault, or worse. How much that changes our perception of his or her work depends upon the nature of the crimes and the nature of their work. It may become difficult to listen to a singer crooning love songs when you know he has been convicted multiple times of domestic abuse against multiple partners, for instance.

Painting is an infinitely minute part of my personality.—Salvador Dali

So far our hypotheticals have been about what an artist does during aspects of their lives that would otherwise be private. What happens when it happens on the stage? Say, for instance, that you’re a C- or D-list singer-songwriter who, early in your career, made statements indicating you were lesbian, and for a couple of decades your fanbase has been predominately lesbian, and you’ve continued to cater to that fanbase even though in your private life you’ve married a conservation fundamentalist Christian man and joined an evangelical church.

And then one night, on stage in a city that most of the world equates with gay people, in between songs you start going on a long, screaming rant about how gay marriage is going to destroy the world, how decriminalizing abortion is the signal of the collapse of civilization, and screaming at the audience members who start walking out that “God hates fags!”

I don’t think anybody would argue that other venues you were scheduled to appear at are within their rights to cancel your shows. Politics aside, no one wants to deal with all those angry customers.

Issuing statements afterward that it was meant to be ironic (yet another assault on that poor, abused, misunderstood word), or taken out of context, afterward isn’t going to undo the damage. Particularly with the full video available on the internet and it is quite clear the the context is only hate, hate, more hate, and crazy.

And you can insist you have freedom of speech all you want. Freedom of speech means that you can say what you want without intrference from the government. It doesn’t mean freedom from people being so offended that they choose to stop listening to and buying your music. It doesn’t mean freedom from being criticized. It doesn’t mean freedom from being seen to be a hateful hypocrit whose career is based almost entirely on milking an ambiguous statement that you might be a member of a group of people you despise. Nor does it mean freedom from being labeled a self-loathing closet case in addition to the hypocrit charge.

Assaulting your audience and essentially admitting that you’ve been scamming them for years is another case where things are pretty black and white. There is no reason to separate the art from the artist, because the art is an inherent part of the crime the artist committed.

While I think that Ms Shocked’s tirade was deplorable and revealed that she is a reprehensible, malicious, vulgar louse deserving of our scorn, that wasn’t her biggest crime.

The most awful thing she has done is to produce all that disingenuous music. It is a sin to be a hateful bigot. It is a bigger sin to intentionally produce crap that you don’t believe and call in art.

The dust of daily life

writing, , , ,

A number of years ago a reader wrote in to tell how much they had enjoyed a specific story I’d written, which was very flattering. Unfortunately, he also said he was happy that I had returned to writing something “more realistic.”

Now, since the story he was praising was a science fiction murder mystery set 1500 years in the future, and my detective was a genetically engineered lioness, I was more than a bit curious about what, exactly, he thought was so much more realistic about it than anything else I had written. And so, perhaps foolishly, I wrote back to ask.

His reply was a long, polite, and extremely thoughtful email. The first story of mine that he recalled reading had been co-written with two of my friends. It was an epic action adventure tale about the crew of a cargo ship who discover that the containers of farming equipment they have brought into port are actually full of weapons intended for a local revolutionary army. The crew is soon running from both the law and the terrorists. Not surprisingly there is more than one gunfight and a lot of people die. The story includes a lot of grim moments.

He loved it.

Then he cited several more things I had written, all of which he categorized as “light and fluffy,” which he didn’t like. Since one of the stories involved an astronomical disaster in which an entire inhabited planet is destroyed, and another one was a murder mystery, I was a little confused as to why he considered them light and fluffy. Fortunately, the rest of his email explained it.

All of those stories, he wrote, had an unmistakeable air of optimism about them. They generally had happy endings, for instance. He disliked such stories because in reality, he said, nothing good ever lasts, people fail far more often than they succeed, and bad things happen to people who don’t deserve it.

I had more than a few quibbles with what he said, but there was one thing I knew he was right about: my stories probably do all have an underlying thread of hope. I realized a long time ago that a fundamental part of my temperament is an unshakeable certainty that there is no problem that can’t be solved. Worse than that, there’s no problem that I couldn’t solve if only I had the time and the resources. However much I may know, intellectually, that lots of problems are unresolvable, at a deep, emotional level I seem to be incapable of accepting that.

It’s not that I set out to prove that with any of my stories. The dichotomy between optimism and pessimism is usually the furthest thing from my mind when I’m working on any given tale. However, since a hopefully arrogant perspective is a fundamental part of my personality, it will always color things I write. Because, no matter what the goal of a particular story, painting, song, or other piece of art is, no matter what topic the artist is tackling, no matter what things he or she may have the characters say or do in the story, some aspects of the artist’s core beliefs will manifest in the art.

It’s a not that it’s a conscious decision on an artist’s part. These core beliefs are seldom significant plot points, for instance. We are certainly capable of writing stories (or songs or movies or plays or comics) that seem to argue persuasively against our core beliefs. The specific story which started this conversation with this reader has prompted other readers to write me to argue about completely different things which they felt were “the message” of the story simply because one of the main characters espouses a particular belief or philosophy in the dialog, for instance.

The type of core belief I’m talking about informs how an artist sees the world. In some works these things manifest most prominently in minor aspects of the work rather than the major theme. I suspect that is why my story about the disaster which kills one billion people came across as light and fluffy to this guy, even though I thought it ended on an ominous, rather than hopeful, note. There are probably aspects of the ways some of the characters go about trying to figure out what happened that provided some hint of a glimmer of hope. I’m guessing.

Because these core beliefs inform and color the way a creative person sees everything, it is impossible to completely separate a work of art from the artist who created it.

A work of art is more than the person who made it. And in an ideal world, a work of art should be judged on its own merits, without regard to who made it, or to other things which that person made. All humans, artists and audience alike, fall short of our ideals.

The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls. —Pablo Picasso

I thanked the reader for explaining. I said I was sorry he didn’t enjoy some of my stories, and that I hoped he would occasionally enjoy more of my stories in the future. But I suspected he wouldn’t, because I could see that we had diametrically opposed perspectives on the world. And even though I have written plenty of tales since then which have included things I think are far grimmer than anything that was in the two stories he liked, I also know that the glimmer of hope I always believe will be there is bound to continue cropping up in my work.

I myself had found writers and artists whose work, while technically good, even excellent, just rubbed me the wrong way. Sometimes I was able to put my finger on why they did so, but many times not.

Art should move us. Art should also challenge us. I don’t think that we should always agree with everything a piece of art appears to be saying, any more than we should demand that an artist agrees with all of our opinions. But challenging art should engage us in a re-examination of our beliefs, or prompt us to see things from a new perspective. It should act as a lantern illuminating different paths which we may or may not choose to follow.

Sometimes the way that a particular piece of art challenges us does not wash the dust of daily life from our souls; it hammers us down and grinds our souls into the dust. And no one should feel obligated to submit to such hammering.

Abyss gazing

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It was 1986 and I was twenty-six years old, attending a regional science fiction convention with a bunch of my friends. One of the guests of honor was an author (we’ll call him Mr. C) that two of my friends were very fond of. I had read a couple of his short stories and thought they were good, but he hadn’t really wowed me.

But hearing Mr. C talk about the writing process, his influences, and so forth, made me much more intrigued. It didn’t hurt that when another panelist made a disparaging joke about my favorite science fiction author (who was not in attendance), Mr. C rather emphatically jumped to the defense of my favorite author.

After that panel, one of my friends commented that Mr. C’s takedown of the other panelist had been mean. It was true. Mr. C had ended the rebuttal with something along the lines, “…and it infuriates me when writers who don’t have a fraction of his understanding of how to write or a sliver of his talent make thoughtless critiques.” But, she had called my favorite author a fossil, I pointed out. Once one makes an ad hominem attack, you invite something similar in return. Since it was my favorite author being defended, I was more than a bit prejudiced.

So I wound up standing in line with one of my friends, clutching a pair of just-purchased books of Mr. C’s work, waiting for his autograph. That is the one and only time I have met Mr. C in person. He was pleasant enough, despite having had to smile, listen, and sign however hundreds of times.

After the convention, I tried to read one of the books. It was a collection of his short stories, which included the couple I had read before. They weren’t bad by any means, but after reading a few in a row, an unsatisfying feeling was developing. I sat the book down, not quite sure why I wasn’t enjoying the reading.

A few weeks later, I picked it up again and started on the next story. Again, the story itself was well written and interesting. I read another, then started on the next after that and, well, a few paragraphs in I realized that same feeling of wrongness was building up.

I did eventually finish the collection, but it took a few months, reading only a few stories at a time. And by the end I couldn’t really say that I’d enjoyed them all, but I also couldn’t put my finger on their shortcomings.

The other book was a novel. A novel for which he had won a lot of awards. It was based on one of the short stories in the previous collection. And the short story in question had been one of those I had enjoyed more than the others. Plus, I had friends who swore this book was a masterpiece. And it had garnered all those awards, so it had to be good, right?

I couldn’t finish it. I don’t think I’d even gotten a quarter of the way through before I found myself intensely disliking it.

I tried explaining what I didn’t like about it to one of my friends who loved it. As we were talking, I kept finding myself talking about abstract concepts, rather than actual events in the story. My friend said it sounded more like my baggage than the story. So I started explaining how a similar philosophical assumption underpinned one of the short stories. And that’s when I finally managed to connect the dots and say what was bothering me about all of the stories.

There was a fundamental notion forming the foundation of all the tales: if you don’t know your place and stay in it, horrible things will happen to you. A corrollary was that if you prevented someone else from achieving what was “rightfully” theirs, even more horrible things would happen to you.

When I articulated that, my friend began to argue. That wasn’t what was going on at all, he said. So then I made a guess at how the book I hadn’t finished would end. Specifically what would happen to certain characters.

My friend blinked. “How did you know?”

“Because, if you don’t know your place and stay there, forces, whether they be social, cultural, or fate, will strike you down. And if you stand in the way of someone else’s destiny—”

My friend grinned and interrupted. “Oh, wow! You’re right! That’s so messed up, because it’s like the opposite of what the main character says, but it’s really what happens!”

“Mr. C believes in hierarchical, patriarchic societies in which you behave according to societal expectations, and people who have the temerity to want to choose their own way of living are evil,” I said.

My friend shrugged and said, “You’re probably right. But I still love the stories.”

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you” — Friedrich Nietzsche

Just a few years later, a controversy erupted in a forum dedicated to Mr C on the (now long defunct) Prodigy network. The controversy was about a protagonist in another of Mr. C’s novels who experimented with gay sex midway through the book. Some people were angry Mr. C had included an “abomination” as a sympathetic character. Others thought people who thought gay people were abominations were bigots.

As the arguments raged, Mr. C waded in with a rather long discussion about the sin of homosexuality, why he felt he had to include it in the book (his reasoning, as I recall, was that in any community where people amass power there will be people who must dominate, possess, and destroy others, and of course homosexuality is all about dominating and destroying each other), and then had the gall to claim that anyone who called him homophobic were themselves bigots. Because he didn’t hate any gay people. They were just sinners, and if they refused to repent and stop being gay, well, they would face consequences.

His comments were quoted far and wide. And he got angrier and angrier as people “mischaracterized” his comments. He repeated, again and again, that he didn’t hate gay people. He wound up writing (in 1990) a long essay and getting it published in a magazine that catered to the members of the church Mr. C had been raised in, in order to explain his side in context.

While the essay repeatedly said that he did not condone violence against sinful people, it talked about how just as children must be punished in order to learn right from wrong, then adults will face greater penalties when they continue to act outside the bounds of propriety. He talked abstractly about the “day of grief” that each homosexual would eventually experience if they did not repent. He talked about the horrible consequences homosexuals face if they refuse to adhere to propriety. But he was not advocating violence even then, he said. If the faithful, such as himself, had been compassionate but firm in condemning the sin, they would “keep ourselves unspotted by the blood of this generation.”

It’s an old lie that bigots of a religious persuasion tell themselves all the time. They don’t advocate or condone violence, it’s just that god’s law causes these things. And when it happens, they pretend that the people who did resort to violence never took all the words of condemnation as permission to commit violence.

Think about it: if it’s god’s will that homosexuals should experience a “day of grief”; if god’s law demands that “blood of this generation” must be shed, then the person who inflicts the violence is doing god’s will. They are a special tool of god!

Heck, it isn’t just permission to commit violence: it’s encouragement!

I had already guessed most of this about Mr. C before he began writing publicly about his reasons for opposing the decriminalization of gay sex and other topics back in 1990. And so I had already made my decision not to buy any more of his books. I didn’t post rants about him, nor try to organize boycotts of his work. If I was asked, I would say that I disagreed with what I perceived to be the underlying philosophy espoused by his work.

Once he did make his very public statements, I felt it was appropriate to go a step further and point out that Mr. C was a hypocrite and a bigot who advocated against the rights of myself and others. I would suggest that perhaps there were other writers whose works were more deserving of people’s money, but wouldn’t go further.

In the years since, he has continued to write and speak out against gay rights of all sorts, eventually becoming an officer for a large organization that says it is out to protect “traditional marriage.” They try to portray themselves as narrowly focused on marriage, but anyone paying attention to their rhetoric and some of the other causes they support, can see that they want to roll back the few rights gay people have won. He donates his own money to the cause, he has organized efforts that have raised millions of dollars for the cause. He has claimed victory for every anti-gay amendment, law, proposition, or initiative that has been passed in the last ten years.

He has, now, gone far beyond the point of simply stating his opinion and trying to persuade others to it. He has gone beyond that disingenuous tactic of saying he was opposed to violence while providing double-speak that actually encouraged it. He has helped spread distortions and outright lies about all gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender persons. His organization has refused to obey public disclosure laws regarding their election activities in several states. He continues to fight to prevent gays, lesbians, trans people, and bisexuals full equality before the law. He continues to put forward arguments to take away what rights have been extended.

So, for that reason, yes, I agree with the people who have been disappointed that DC Comics hired him to write a prominent new Superman series. Yes, I support the comic book shop owners who have said they will not sell comics written by him. I support the artist who decided not to illustrate his stories after learning of Mr C’s views and activities. I urge everyone I know not to buy things he writes, not to go see the movie that is being made of his most famous novel.

I re-iterate: this isn’t just about a difference of opinion regarding marriage equality. For over 20 years he has advocated for restoring laws that made it a crime for consenting adults to have gay sex in the privacy of their own homes, and against laws that protect people from being fired, evicted, or denied medical care just because they are gay. And he has done more than just advocate those things, he has taken action to make them happen. It is not hypocritical of us to advocate a voluntary boycott of his work, it is hypocritical of him and his apologists to decry a voluntary boycott while they are campaigning for laws that will take away jobs, housing, health care, and more from entire classes of people.

Orson Scott Card is a hypocrite and a bigot who uses distortions and outright lies to hurt innocent people. Those are the facts.

It’s been done

movies, , , ,

I watched a teaser for a movie I’m looking forward to seeing later this year, and accidentally got sucked into the comments.

As a rule, I try to ignore comments on the internet. Wiser people than I have written extensively about why some of the worst humanity has to offer seems to congregate in the comments sections of articles and the like. Sometimes, on some sites, you can’t help be see at least the first few comments while you’re looking at the actual content.

This comments section began with someone writing a long rant about how the movie, and previous entries in the related franchise, were not original. They had borrowed this element for an older series, and that element for an older movie, and so on and so forth.

Except, of course, none of the things he cited had been original in their use of those elements, either.

Humans have been telling each other stories, constructing various finds of flights of fancy, for tens of thousands of years. Every twist of plot has been thought of, in some form, thousands of times before, for instance. Technology and cultural changes allow some of the details and contexts to change, but in some ways only on the surface. If you abstract any idea out far enough, it becomes a trope or cliché that’s been around for ages.

Which doesn’t mean that it isn’t possible to distinguish between a genuine effort to tell a story that is yours, and a lazy copy of someone else. But it does mean that pointing out some element or bit of a story “has been done before” isn’t saying anything terrible profound.

And certainly not original.

Things I never believed I would see

society, , , , , ,

A lot of gay news blogs are sharing the video below this week. And to most people it probably just seems like a kind of silly video with these two guys talking.

But to folks like me? Gay men who no longer can be described as “young” by any definition? It’s amazing. I literally never believed I would see the day when someone would so casually create a show about them self that included the phrase “Your Favorite Gay Marine.”

The fact that Russ and Matt are just two adorable young guys in love, who just happen to both be in the Marines, and happen to be in love with each other, and how matter-of-fact they can be in this very public way is just mind-boggling for an old fart like me:

Public notions

society, , ,

My old bus route was replaced recently with a so-called Bus Rapid Transit. I say “so-called” because it’s still in with the rest of the traffic, which means it is not true rapid transit. It is merely slightly more rapid bus.

They achieve the faster trips through several clever tricks, one of which is having pay stations at several of the bus stop (it’s supposed to be at every bus stop, but they haven’t gotten them all installed yet), so people who have bus passes can just board through any of the three doors on the bus without waiting in line behind the people paying cash. It really does make loading the bus go much faster.

As I was taking a seat on one bus recently, a lady in a nearby seat was ranting to the guy next to her about how the new buses must be rampant with cheating. “Us honest folks are paying for the other riders! Look! Look! How can they tell which people have actually paid before getting on! It’s such a waste!”

Since I could hear her clearly through my headphones, I knew she was talking very loudly, so I didn’t feel that this counted as a private conversation. I leaned forward and said, “Random fare inspections.”

She looked utterly shocked that a stranger would actually talk to her, though the guy next to her just grinned and said, “See, he’s got your answer.”

She blinked and said, “What?”

“They have guys that come on board with a scanner and ask to see everyone’s card or transfer. I’ve had it happen several times. They can scan your card and verify that you paid. So cheaters get caught.”

She nodded. Then she said, “Wow. Don’t you think Seattle is getting too Big Brother? I mean, scanning your card…”

Just a second before she was angry because she thought people were taking advantage of the public transit she was paying for. But rather than get into an argument with a stranger (I really had just been trying to be informative), I said, “Oh, no! Not at all!” And pulled my headphones back up onto my ears.

She shook her head, said, “You don’t?” Then turned to the guy and went back to talking. But I couldn’t help but notice that she’d switched to an indoor voice. So I guess my attempt to enlighten had at least made her think about how loudly she was talking.

I understand that relying on an honor system means that some people will cheat. On the other hand, I have seen Fare Officers remove someone who hadn’t paid from the bus. I know that when they do that they write you a ticket and it’s handled like a traffic fine. So there is a penalty that cheaters risk facing.

I’m sure some cheating still happens, but similar systems in other transit systems collect an awful lot of fees matching fairly closely to ridership numbers gathered other ways, so the honor system isn’t a failure. And mathematic models have shown that the savings from the shorter trip times more than make up for the theoretical revenues lost through uncaught cheaters.

And in what way is verifying that passengers on the bus have paid through random sweeps “being Big Brother”? She had just been angrily ranting about how “they” have instituted a system that she thought wasted tax dollars because “they” weren’t making absolutely certain that each and every passenger had paid. “They” should do better!

It’s like the people who scream about “guv’ment regulations” hindering business, who then scream “how can they let people sell that?” if there is a salmonella outbreak and their favorite food is being recalled.

Confirming that someone has paid for the bus ride they are currently taking hardly counts as “Big Brother.” And if you think it does, I shudder to think what sort of aneurism you’ll have if I explain to you precisely how cellphone companies figure out which signals are coming from authorized phones. Or how quickly your position can be pinpointed, even on old, cheap phones that know nothing about GPS. Hint: In order to get your 9-1-1 call to a local emergency operator, they have to be able to figure out your position before you hear their first ring.

What’s it about?

writing, , , ,

A friend recently asked our monthly writing group for advice about a novel idea that he had been struggling with. His specific question was whether the story was worth finishing. I asked him what the story was about.

He began explaining about the story’s setting, the history of the planet, and a number of complications. If I reproduced it here, it would have gone on for several paragraphs.

At a point when he paused for breath, I interrupted to say, “You haven’t told me what the story is, yet. All you’ve given me are complications. Who is your protagonist? And what problem is he struggling with?”

Another friend participating in the conversation put my same question a different way. Referring to a story we had just finished critiquing. “That story, even though it was only 10,000 words, had a lot of complications and subplots, right? But what the story is about is, ‘Ian gets suckered into delivering a stranger’s ashes to a temple.'”

That summary evokes a story. You don’t have to know who Ian is. You don’t have to know exactly what culture he lives in. You don’t have to know what sort of temple it is. “Character gets suckered into delivering someone’s mortal remains somewhere,” sets up a dramatic situation.

What will make the story interesting and uniquely yours are, indeed, all those background details—the character’s personal history, the importance his society places on funeral rites, the character’s acceptance or rejection of those expectations, any difficulty or surprises he or she encounters on the way, and so on—that make the tale an entertaining or enlightening experience.

But the spine that holds it all together is that central dilemma. In that particular example, the word “suckered” tells you that he is at least somewhat reluctant to be doing it. It also tells you that the person who tricked him into it must have had reasons they were even more reluctant to undertake the journey. The fact that it is someone’s mortal remains and there is a temple involved hint at some of the kinds of difficulties the character may face along the way.

When I asked the original question, this is what I was really looking for: did the author know what the spine of his story was? Exactly what the spine is doesn’t matter when asking whether the story was worth finishing. Neither do all of those other details, background information, and complications tell us whether the story is worth finishing.

What tells us whether this is a story that you need to tell, is if that central nugget is at the forefront of your mind when thinking of what the story is about.

From all the information he gave us, I could come up with such a central, one sentence, summary of what that story might be about: John receives a message from the heavens that reveals his whole life is a lie.

But that’s the conflict I pulled out of it. If that isn’t the story which my friend wants to tell—nay, needs to tell—then it isn’t his story.

And even after all that, the original question of whether the story is worth pursuing has to be answered by the author. Does re-evaluating the unfinished work he has now make some sort of central dilemma jump out at him? Perhaps a completely different central dilemma: maybe the story he needs to tell is the story of John’s sister, who is dealing with her brother’s sudden onset of insanity, then begins to wonder if he really is insane; or perhaps it is the story of a city elder who has to deal with this fanatic, John, who is trying to destroy civilization.

If such a dilemma jumps out at him, if he feels the need to tell that story, then yes, absolutely, it’s worth finishing. Otherwise, it’s probably time to set it aside to work on something else.

Names, names, names

life, , ,

In the last two weeks I’ve gotten into at least three conversations with friends and acquaintances about names. Then a long-distance friend explained his names in response to a writing prompt, and I figured the universe was trying to tell me something.

I’ve had a bunch of different names, some given names, some nicknames, some family variants of names, and then there’s an interesting twist on the legal names. Probably best to start at the beginning.

Continue reading Names, names, names →

Head spaces, part 2

literature, , , , ,

There’s a particular TV show that I like, but don’t watch often. There are certain lazy tendencies in the writing that rub me the wrong way, such as treating technology as magic whenever convenient for the plot. There are other aspects of the show I really enjoy, so I tend to let episodes accumulate on the TiVo, saving them for times when I’m in the mood for some mindless action and adventure.

There’s another show which also uses technology in improbable and impossible ways that I watch faithfully each time a new episode comes out. One of the diffences between the shows is that the second one states its premise upfront, and then tries to stay consistent with that. Yes, what they’re doing is impossible, but it’s the same impossible everytime, and the stories revolve around the question of how people might behave if computers happened to work this way. The first show just plays fast and loose without any thought about whether they’re contradicting something they did in a previous episode.

Neither show is packaged as science fiction. The first one definitely isn’t sci fi. It’s a cop/action show whose writers don’t understand or care about what computers and crime labs really can do and what they can’t.

I have seen discussions on science fictions forums where some fans have objected to the inclusion of the second in a list of sci fi shows currently airing, primarily because the show doesn’t claim to be set in the future, and acts as if all the things they’re doing are possible with our current technology. But the show postulates the existence of a computer that can do things currently impossible, and then it explores what might happen if that were so. That’s the epitome of science fiction.

I can only enjoy the first show if I’m in the right head space. I have to be in the kind of mood where I can give my inner critics the night off, kick back, and just watch a group of interesting characters run from one dangerous situation to another. I have to be in a “I don’t care if it’s wrong” head space.

The second show puts me into its head space. Regardless of whether this is wrong, what might things be like if it were?

That’s not just good science fiction. That’s good fiction. The goal of a story teller should be to draw people into the story. Make this imaginary situation or world so enticing that the reader has to step inside to see what it’s like.

The other kind of story is like mass produced snack food. If it’s there where we happen to be and when we’re hungry (or bored or at least not feeling too full to eat), we’ll pick it up and munch away. But later we may not even remember what it was we ate.

The other kind doesn’t just pull us away from whatever we were doing to check it out, but it leaves us thinking afterward. Like an extremely good meal, we want to linger in the head space of the story after it’s ended.

And that’s the best kind of head space.

Head spaces, part 1

writing, , , , ,

Many years ago I noticed that when my dreams included my workplace, the workplace was a weird amalgam of all the places I had worked at previously. Usually it was populated with the people I worked with at the time, but furniture, physical layout, and so forth, would include things from older work places.

Lots of dreams are that way. Frequently when I dream about family, any family, a lot of the dream will be set in the living room of my paternal grandparents. Except that the carpet is usually the giant persian rug that had been on the floor of Great-grandma S.J.’s living room. And often the ugly orange couch from the house Mom, my oldest sister, and I lived in after my parents’ divorce makes an appearance.

Over time my dream workplace has morphed, taking on some physical characteristics of each office or building I’ve worked in since. The resulting space is one that only makes sense in dream logic.

I could spend a lot of time trying to figure out why one detail is kept from one building and not another. Some people spend a lot of time mapping out the symbolism of their dreams. But while our subconscious includes details for a reason, the reason isn’t always SYMBOLISM. My dream workplace always has desks, presumably because pretty much everywhere I have worked there was a desk somewhere. I didn’t always have a desk of my own. Most of my jobs back in my teens didn’t require desks, but there was always someone at the work place whose job did require a desk.

A desk, then, is a prop that adds verisimilitude to the notion of workplace. Most of the time.

Certain desks may have slightly deeper meanings. I’m pretty sure that the desk with tons of drawers that never contain what I need represents frustration, while the emaculate immaculate desk with a place for everything and everything in its place represents insecurities.

If you thought that the clean desk would represent something positive, you don’t know how my brain works. See, the only way a desk of mine would be that organized were if I had just cleaned it out because I’m leaving the desk and/or job, or because someone else has messed with my stuff. Yeah, because of clean desk policies, I have had to move the piles off my work surface… But that just means that my sedimentary filing system has been moved out of sight.

Symbolism is always subjective, so if you’re looking for the meaning behind a set of choices your favorite writer or artist or director has made, just remember the words of Freddy Mercury: “If you see it, darling, it’s there.”