…I often don’t. Of course, because the NY Times is part of the NYC publishing elites, dominated by the Big Five publishing conglomerates, the newspaper coddles and caters to those publishers and ignores most everything and everyone else. I sometimes peruse the NY Times Book Review to see which books to ignore (because they generally don’t entertain or enlighten me—that’s what you get from companies who are arrogant and too big); I rarely read it, though (if we still had birds as pets, a better use would be found at the bottom of the bird cage).

But it’s not only the Times editors and reviewers or Big Five conglomerate that irk me. I don’t like to be told what to read. Period. I ignore that hyped phrase “Everyone’s reading X,” or use it as a guide to what I should not read. I “discover” my own reading material. I’m also a smart consumer and value my time and money. I want to make sure my reading time isn’t wasted. I’ve learned it too often is with books from the Big Five, especially those lauded by the NY Times’s editors and reviewers associated with the Review.

So…what do I read? Books just about in every fiction genre, with the exception of bodice rippers and cozies (those are subgenres of the romance and mystery genres, although the first could also be erotica too). Lots of non-fiction books too, ones I personally choose because they interest me, not because they have a lot of hype (the latter makes me choosier—I ignore any and all ad campaigns). I recognize that reading choices are subjective; all appreciation of art is. You can make your choices; I’ll make mine. And I assure you, what you choose won’t influence me one bit (although I might say it does just to be nice).

I’m a weird chap, so our choices probably wouldn’t overlap much. I prefer books that stretch my mind with important themes or unusual plots (even better, make that “or” an “and” and I might be hooked). I find that in some recently published books (including my own, of course); I “discover” that more in “evergreen books,” ones that are as fresh and current as the day they were published (like most of mine) and happened to miss. Even as a speed-reader, I can only read so many books, so I know the number of good evergreen books is always increasing even if the number of quality current books is decreasing. I’ll always have plenty of reading material that the NY Times mostly ignores; those books won’t waste my time.

Is this attitude arrogant? Possibly. As a writer, I’m qualified to determine whether a book is worth my time, so I don’t need much help from anyone else. While I sometimes change my mind about a book’s worth after starting it, the book’s blurb and a “peek inside” are indicators that usually work well enough for me, i.e. my own browsing in either an online or brick-and-mortar bookstore or in a public library works just fine. I’m not in the habit of consulting third-party opinions, including reviewers and editors associated with the Times’s Review.

And isn’t it the epitome of arrogance, exhibited by the Times’s reviewers and many others, to tell people what they should read? I learned ago that doesn’t work for me (even before I became a full-time writer). I don’t write reviews with that in mind. I’m only providing an information service because nearly every book I read and review is one that the NY Times has ignored. And the Times’s reviews don’t provide useful information. Their reviewers are as egotistical as their restaurant reviewers.

***

Comments are always welcome.

Rogue Planet. A murdered king’s son fights to free his people from an oppressive religious tyranny. An epic military and romantic sci-fi novel with Game-of-Thrones and Star Wars fantasy elements awaits you. Set in the same universe as The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection and A. B. Carolan’s sci-fi mysteries for young adults, this book is available at Amazon in print and ebook versions, and at Smashwords and its affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and lending and library services (Scribd, Overdrive, Baker&Taylor, Gardners, etc.).

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

No, this isn’t about the idiots with automatic weapons in Michigan’s capitol rotunda. Nor about the Turtle (McConnell) not wanting to bailout blue states, even though they put more into the Fed than they take out (CA and NY had economies bigger than most nations’), while his state (Kentucky) always takes out more than it puts in (and horse racing and liquor aren’t exactly essential industries!). While those and many other knucklehead antics associated with COVID-19 enrage me, this post is about mortality.

Let me continue the quote in the title: “…against the dying of the light.” Celtic poet Dylan Thomas’s poem is one of the most famous in the English language…and one of my favs. (Yes, he’s Welsh, but Ireland, Scotland, and Wales are all Celtic.) What Thomas is fundamentally protesting is that voyage we must all take to that “undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns….”

Many people (like me), with fewer days ahead of them than behind, become aware of their mortality as the years pass. (In these days of pandemic, probably more so.) People rage at Death in different ways. That rage is quietly evident in their efforts to leave a lasting legacy, for example, to their immediate circle of family and friends, and beyond to the public at large through creative works. The first might be futile if a virus or climate change destroys most human life on Earth. Why waste the time? Those family members and friends might be dead anyway! But the second is futile too. Beethoven’s Fifth is remembered more than Beethoven’s life, after all (and Thomas’s life pales in comparison to his poetry). Some people don’t even know that Beethoven’s last magnificent works were composed when he was deaf, but Beethoven was alive and kicking in Vienna only a few hundred years ago. Will his symphony be remembered in one thousand years? Maybe, if human beings are still around then and are interested in ancient music, but ETs visiting a dead Earth in a thousand years wouldn’t hear it or care. Or even be familiar with any of the instruments he used in his orchestra.

While leaving a lasting legacy might motivate some writers—an expression of their quiet rage at Death—I doubt it motivates true storytellers. No, while these writers are typically reclusive introverts, their storytelling reaches out to human beings in the here and now who read stories that entertain, and yes, discuss grand issues like mortality, morality, and rage at the killer light other evil human beings cause.

While “evergreen books” show that books can live on a bit (they’re “out there” even if no one reads them), far beyond an author’s journey to that “undiscovered country,” good fiction is for the here and now and treats universal themes as they appear in our milieu, their universality understood by all. Evergreen books just do that a bit longer.

I have no delusions. I don’t expect that my stories will live on. I frankly don’t care. I get my kicks telling my stories in the here and now. My rage is more like Thomas’s: I lament that I can’t write them forever.

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Comments are always welcome!

Rogue Planet. A murdered king’s son fights to free his people from an oppressive religious tyranny. An epic military and romantic sci-fi novel with Game-of-Thrones and Star Wars fantasy elements awaits you. Set in the same universe as The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection and A. B. Carolan’s sci-fi mysteries for young adults, this book is available at Amazon in print and ebook versions, and at Smashwords and its affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and lending and library services (Scribd, Overdrive, Baker&Taylor, Gardners, etc.).

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

All elements of storytelling are important, but (to echo Orwell), some are more important than others: plot, themes, characterization, settings, dialogue, narrative, and so forth all need careful attention, but plot is the most important, then characterization. Many authors put characterization on an equal pedestal with plot, though. It takes two to tango, of course, and the marriage of plot with characterization is also important.

Many writers, fiction writers and screenwriters, make mistakes in characterization. Screenwriters are often more guilty of that. Here’s an example (and then I’ll leave the realm of TV and movie land): I watch Magnum occasionally (in its new reincarnation), when my eyes get tired from reading, although its time slot flops around like jello. The entire multi-episode (why do screenwriters want to make crime dramas into soap operas?) substory of Higgins’s forgetting to renew her visa was one big screenwriting mistake (yes, I edit TV shows as I watch!). For those who don’t watch the series (in its new reincarnation), Higgie is a cerebral ex-MI6 agent who acts as the adult in comparison to the more immature and devil-may-care Magnum, so this visa business is completely out of character. And there’s no intentional shock value here to make a mystery-style twist—like I said, it’s just a terrible mistake in screenwriting. In other words, it’s not showing Higgie as more human; it’s just out of character. (With COVID going on, that has to be your movie-review fix from this blog for a while!)

I’ve seen many authors mangle characterization with abrupt changes of point of view (head-hopping), even changes from paragraph to paragraph. That’s most obnoxious when character X had thoughts in one paragraph and Y has them in another (which is why it’s called head-hopping). Even when the point of view (POV) is constant during a section or chapter, as required, there can be changes in POV in one character. This can be intentional, of course—character X isn’t quite the upstanding gentleman the reader thought he was, as the mystery’s plot moves forward—and that’s okay. But in can be damaging to the story when it’s not. The reader has developed an image of a character and his behavior as the prose goes along, and then that character does something completely out of character (like Higgie), showing lack of consistency and story-building skills on the part of the author.

As they develop characters, authors must ensure that each character doesn’t get out of character…unless discovering that is part of the plot. In other words, they shouldn’t create character traits and then contradict them. They should let the characters fill the plot in a consistent, logical fashion, letting the two grow together. An out-of-character action isn’t a shock a reader needs, even if the story is a mystery. The reader can slowly discover the peccadillos of a character ahead of the detective, after all, playing armchair-sleuth. An out-of-character reading experience in the extreme would be like Poirot suddenly becoming a murderer. That’s not a twist; it’s just sloppy writing!

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Comments are always welcome!

The “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” Series. Do you want to read some mystery/thriller novels that motivate you to keep turning the pages? Wags at Scotland Yard call Esther Brookstone Miss Marple and Bastiann van Coevorden, her beau, Hercule Poirot, but their adventures are very twenty-first century. In Rembrandt’s Angel, Esther obsesses with recovering a painting stolen by the Nazis in WWII. In Son of Thunder, she obsesses with finding the tomb of St. John the Divine. Both obsessions lead her and Bastiann into dangerous situations. Available in print format from your favorite local bookstore, Amazon, and the publisher, Penmore Press; and in ebook format from Amazon and Smashwords and all the latter’s affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and lending and library services (Scribd, Overdrive, Baker&Thomas, Gardners, etc.).  A third novel featuring this crime-fighting duo is in the works.

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

Writing gurus often say this. While they state many things that are complete garbage, like “write what you know” (I’m not an ET, for example, nor know anything about real ones—that’s also a great rebuttal to all the anti-cultural-appropriation idiots out there), let me give all those so-called gurus the benefit of the doubt here and try to make sense of this advice.

I believe my first published novel Full Medical (2006) is as current and entertaining as my last, Son of Thunder (2019). (There’ll be more, of course.) They’re all fresh because I write stories like those I love to read (for that reason, I do very little fantasy and horror, and eschew pure romance and erotica—I’m just not that interested in reading such stories…or writing them).

And while my main motivation for writing these stories is to tell a good story that entertains my readers, a secondary motivation is to entertain myself while writing them. As a result, I constantly put myself in the readers’ point of view: what turn of phrase will resonate most here, what character’s action is appropriate, what plot twist will wow the reader, and so on? For me, “write for your audience” means to write for those imagined readers, myself included. Fundamentally, that’s all it can mean, all you gurus who read this.

Let me embellish that a bit. For so many authors (including me), our audience is just too varied. While a how-to book or novel about a drug addict might have an audience we can focus on, general fiction usually cuts across many demographics. At a book event, a tween wanted to read The Midas Bomb (I had the print edition on sale). Because it treats some very adult themes, I conferred with the girl’s mother. “Oh, she reads all mysteries and thrillers.” Case closed, because Mommy gave it the okay. (Maybe she wouldn’t be as quick to do so with Teeter-Totter between Lust and Murder, but who knows?) In that same event, or another (they’re all blurs now), an octogenarian wanted me to sign the copy of Rogue Planet she’d just purchased—she loved sci-fi. As I write this article, I can only ask: What would the gurus say about that?

They’d have to admit at least that my audience is rather general. If I twist the gurus’ arms a bit, I could probably get them to admit that my tactic for writing to my audience is correct: Imagine my general reader, from twelve to eighty-two, and without considerations for race, religion, sex or sexual preferences, and so forth, write stories that I believe will entertain that general reader.

As a matter of fact, that’s easy to do! I am one of those readers. I got turned onto writing as a kid because I was an avid reader and figured I could write books like the ones that I enjoyed reading. It took me a while to do it because life events got in the way, but now I’m doing it full time…and loving every minute of it.

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Comments are always welcome!

More than Human: The Mensa Contagion. Another “evergreen book” from yours truly, that is, as current and relevant as the day it was published, and just maybe a story that might make you feel better during the pandemic (maybe COVID will force us to make some positive changes in our society?—it has certainly revealed some flaws!). An ET virus comes to Earth and creates Homo sapiens 2.0. What do the new humans do? They don’t go to Disney World after that big win—they colonize Mars! This is an epic sci-fi saga all in one novel. Available in .mobi (Kindle) ebook format at Amazon, and in all ebook formats at Smashwords and its affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and lending and library services (Scribd, Overdrive, Baker & Taylor, Gardners, etc.).

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

From Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain to Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, and in many other examples, sci-fi authors have written apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic tales about pandemics. Most can be considered warnings, and I doubt few are popular now. We’re fighting a real pandemic, after all.

Some of these tales are about the outbreak itself, like the first example; others about the aftermath; and still others consider both. The main villain is usually the contagion, although it might only lurk in the background like in the second novel. But human beings can play secondary roles as villains too, even if they’re just incompetent (so much incompetence has been and still is being revealed with COVID-19).

As an ex-scientist and a writer (the authors named above don’t possess that first advantage), I can perhaps examine these tales more objectively and less emotionally than most readers (of course, that might not save me from the virus). These stories invariably contain the ubiquitous thriller elements: the authors put the protagonist through hell on Earth, and they either survive or don’t. The aftermath stories follow that same formula, but they can be a blend of post-apocalyptic and dystopian.

Some of these stories are even examples of noir humor, sarcastic comments on human beings’ foibles. And others can even be uplifting. But all these stories are answers to the fundamental sociological question: What if a pandemic occurs?

Now we are living in times where real-life answers to that question must occur. In a sense, we can conclude that sci-fi authors’ warnings weren’t heeded. There’s a ready villain besides the virus in this case, because China, at the very least, hid the facts and didn’t close their borders until after the virus already escaped (remember Chinese New Year?). But let’s not consider what happened as a biological attack, though (if it was, it backfired big time on China!). Instead, we have to continue to answer that fundamental question.

We’re entering the post-apocalyptic story now (by the time you read this, that should be even more true). In my stories, More than Human: The Mensa Contagion (a novel that considers both pandemic periods mentioned in the first paragraph) and The Last Humans (post-apocalyptic, i.e. about the aftermath), the tales end on a positive note.

Let’s make sure the real-life one does too. Mitigation techniques are working—social distancing and staying at home if you can; and using masks, gloves, and hand sanitizer when you can’t—but we have to stay the course. We must do a careful balancing act walking that line between restarting our local, state, national, and global economies, and continuing those good practices.

Please stay the course…and do all you can to keep everyone safe so we can be victorious in this war against this very real menace we’re facing.

***

Comments are always welcome.

More than Human: The Mensa Contagion. Another “evergreen book” from yours truly, that is, as current and relevant as the day it was published, and just maybe a story that might make you feel better during the pandemic (maybe COVID will force us to make some positive changes in our society?—it has certainly revealed some flaws!). An ET virus comes to Earth and creates Homo sapiens 2.0. What do the new humans do? They don’t go to Disney World after that big win—they colonize Mars! This is an epic sci-fi saga all in one novel. Available in .mobi (Kindle) ebook format at Amazon, and in all ebook formats at Smashwords and its affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and lending and library services (Scribd, Overdrive, Baker & Taylor, Gardners, etc.).

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

I don’t like to watch baseball games—they’re just too slow—but I liked to play baseball. As a big, clumsy, six-foot-three kid, I didn’t qualify for JV basketball and didn’t even try out for varsity later on, but I still played a lot of basketball half-court games in our high school noon league. I didn’t go out for track, but I could beat my older brother in shotput, who did.

Reading and writing are like that in the sense that writing is more active than reading. In playing a sport, you have to be creative. Writing is playing the game; reading is watching it. Both playing and watching can enrich our lives, but I could hardly wait to progress from watching other authors play as far as books go. Being young and naïve, I decided early on that I could be just as good a storyteller as the authors I was reading. Two things stopped me: (1) I had to provide for my family (that’s hard to do as a writer, especially early in one’s writing career); and (2) there’s a lot that goes on between ideas for a story and a finished manuscript that requires practice, no matter how many skills a writer starts with.

Practice to improve your game is as important in writing as it is in sports. Skills have to be honed so the transitions from ideas to manuscripts become smooth and automatic. Although I often state that storytelling is what makes us human—sitting around a campfire with a mastodon steak sizzling on the spit and telling the story about the hunt is maybe how it all started (apologies to vegan and vegetarian readers, but our ancestors were omnivores)—but the road from ideas to finished manuscript isn’t an easy one today. Each novel is a new adventure, of course, and a writer needs to reset a bit when changing games or playing a new game, but experience counts.

I’m guessing the ladies in my reading audience probably object to these sports analogies, so let me discuss other events in my past. I was a 4-H club member—the San Joaquin Valley where I grew up is where agriculture reigns supreme—and one of my many 4-H projects (not the most time-consuming or most difficult) was to help my mother can that wonderful California fruit or turn it into jellies and jams. I never considered that to be sissy work—it’s work, to be sure, and was a reflection of how my mother helped the family survive the Great Depression and World War II scarcities, and how my father instilled in us a work ethic that focused on providing for the family, ours and others in time of need. There was always extra to give away to people, especially old-timers in the church congregation living on Social Security. Of course, there was an ulterior motive: I liked to eat the canned fruit and jams and jellies, and so did my father and brother.

Those who have done any of that know it’s all like sports: I practiced to improve my game. So it’s also just like writing. Orange marmalade and canned apricots (we had one of each tree in our backyard) are akin to sci-fi and mysteries—different, yes, in that the set of skills are different, but similar in the sense that those skills need to be honed through practice. I never received any trophies for my sports activities, and I haven’t won many writing contests, but my canned fruits, jellies, and jams won blue ribbons at the county and 4-H fairs.

Maybe I’m in the wrong business now. My excuse is that I no longer live in California. Here on the East Coast fruit is too expensive! But my observation remains a valid one: There are many activities in life where playing the game is often more interesting and rewarding than watching, but practicing and honing one’s skills is necessary to improve one’s game. With every word, paragraph, and chapter I write—indeed, with every novel—I’m creating but practicing as well…and enjoying every minute of it!

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Comments are always welcome!

The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan. This is one of my “evergreen books,” a novel as exciting and current as the day it was published; it’s also a bridge between two series, “Detectives Chen & Castilblanco” and “Clones & Mutants.” A DHS agent looking toward retirement finds a lot of excitement as she uncovers a conspiracy and meets a new love. The conspiracy answers the following question: What will a future US government do with its old retirees who know too many secrets? The romance answers the question: Can a divorced woman heading for retirement find love in her golden years? DHS agent Ashley Scott is the main character. She had important supporting roles in the “Chen & Castilblanco” books, so I thought it was only fair to give her a starring role! Available in .mobi (Kindle) ebook format at Amazon and in all ebook formats at Smashwords and all its affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and lending and library services (Scribd, Overdrive, Baker & Taylor, Gardners, etc.)

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

Like it or not, authors’ backgrounds influence their writing. In fact, this is so obvious, why even mention it? After all, perhaps this is mostly transparent or irrelevant to readers—the general theme of good vs. evil, for example, is common to most fiction, not just Christian lit. It might be diluted in some genres—romance and erotica come to mind—but then other universal themes come to the fore that are often dependent on writers’ backgrounds. They experience life; they write about it in their fiction in one way or another.

I’m no sociologist, but practice enough self-analysis that I know my background affects my fiction. That background is so varied that it’s more like an Irish stew and not limited to a particular region, era, ethnicity, and so forth. I suppose that helps make my fiction a bit more universal, but who knows if that’s appealing to readers? I suppose my complex worldview might turn come readers off, but I can’t help it—I write from experience, my own.

Like Asimov, my hero from my early years, I had a career in academia and R&D before I became a full-time author. That might not influence my sci-fi that much—so much of it is outside my scientific specialization—and it certainly doesn’t influence my mystery or thriller writing. Perhaps the only thing notable about that per se is that I tend to spin complex yarns—I don’t coddle lazy readers.

But there’s a lot of diversity in my stories, reflecting my upbringing in California, long sojourn living in Colombia, and travel for work and pleasure around Europe. That’s given me a worldview that can be best summarized as follows: We’re all on spaceship Earth together and had better get along. It also means my characters can cover the whole spectrum of the spaceship’s passengers, including their names. Some readers might think the characters’ names in my stories are difficult, but they are never stereotypes from a different culture—I don’t like stereotypes because my experiences have shown me that everyone is unique.

At a lunch one day, I remember talking to a fellow physicist in Colombia, a Latino and Princeton graduate on sabbatical at the university where I worked. We could have spoken in Spanish at that lunch—he was Colombian and I was fluent in Spanish by then—but he wanted to have a private conversation (the other customers at the restaurant were speaking Spanish), so we spoke in English. During one lull after soup and salad, he leaned toward me. “I can tell you’re from the Midwest,” he said. He was then surprised to learn I was born in California and grew up there. I admitted I had some roots in Kansas because both my parents were from there. I’d spent some time in Indiana too. His conclusion? My English had something of that je-ne-sais-quoi that told him I was a Midwestern chap.

I’ve lived in several places in the US and abroad and traveled to many others. I observe people’s similarities and celebrate their differences. I hope my varied background filters into my stories, even the sci-fi tales. I hope that makes them more appealing to all readers. I insist that my fiction reflects the realities of human experience…and mine. Some readers might object to that. They probably shouldn’t read my stories….

Authors usually don’t shine a spotlight on their backgrounds in their stories. Maybe they used to do so—Jack London’s are about the frozen north and Harper Lee’s magnum opus is quintessentially southern US. But the world seems smaller now, so we all should recognize our similarities and celebrate our differences, if only to appeal to all the readers of the world who can see themselves in our stories.

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Comments are always welcome.

The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan. This is one of my “evergreen books,” a novel as exciting and current as the day it was published; it’s also a bridge between two series, “Detectives Chen & Castilblanco” and “Clones & Mutants.” A DHS agent looking toward retirement finds a lot of excitement as she uncovers a conspiracy and meets a new love. The conspiracy answers the following question: What will a future US government do with its old retirees who know too many secrets? The romance answers the question: Can a divorced woman heading for retirement find love in her golden years? DHS agent Ashley Scott is the main character. She had important supporting roles in the “Chen & Castilblanco” books, so I thought it was only fair to give her a starring role! Available in .mobi (Kindle) ebook format at Amazon and in all ebook formats at Smashwords and all its affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and lending and library services (Scribd, Overdrive, Baker & Taylor, Gardners, etc.)

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

[Note: This article is the third part of a three-part series on the topic of reading and writing sci-fi. In the first part, I discussed my sci-fi blues. In part two, I discussed some non-fiction sci-fi reading—is that possible? You can find out why I think the answer is yes in that article. In this part, I’ll talk about my solution to my sci-fi blues—writing a new sci-fi novel that’s also a rom-com.]

I’m not a good sci-fi writer if “good” is measured by sales numbers of my books. That’s certainly the definition the Big Five and its lackey, the NY Times Book Review, use. I have two consolations at least: First, I don’t give a rat’s ass about being a best-selling author according to the Big Five and the NY Times; and second, I consider each of my books to be a success if it entertains at least one reader. I’ll accept the fame and glory if I become a best-selling author—who wouldn’t? Even more modest success, as determined by commercial considerations, is welcome too. Moreover, I often write stories, especially now when I’m in a more experimental stage of my writing career, because I want to stretch my wings a bit and fly to other realms.

I started publishing in the sci-fi genre. I suppose my first book Full Medical (2006, now with an ebook second edition) might be considered more a thriller than sci-fi, but it and the series it’s part of, is sci-fi. To put that in context, Teeter-Totter between Lust and Murder (2013) was the first book that was more mystery than thriller, although the first two books in the Chen and Castilblanco series certainly have mystery elements. Teeter-Totter was an experiment. Young adult literature was an experiment too, but the “ABC Sci-Fi Mysteries” (from my alter-ego, A.B. Carolan) is sci-fi mystery.

Obviously some experimenting with genres is going on, perhaps more along the lines of crossovers. I’ve never written fantasy, but Rogue Planet has fantasy-like Game-of-Thrones elements (no dragons!). I’ve never written romance or comedy, although almost every novel has some romance simply because fiction has to seem real, according to Tom Clancy (he probably violated his won maxim, though) and romance is definitely part of real life. So my next experiment is a combination of three genres—romance, comedy, and sci-fi! Let’s call it a sci-fi rom-com.

In the second article in this series, I mentioned Brian Greene’s new book. He has a lot of words about quantum mechanics. It’s strange that he only mentions the “Many Worlds Theory of Quantum Mechanics” in the notes at the end. Ever since I learned about Hugh Everett III’s interpretation (in the QM courses I taught, I spent considerable time on interpretation, primarily because I did some research on that and taught the students the Feynman path integral), it has fascinated me. Einstein struggled with those interpretations, but I thought Everett’s was the closest to providing the best, far better than the Copenhagen one that many professors still teach (the wave packet mysteriously collapses because it interacts with the observers conscious mind—I don’t think so, because quantum phenomena even takes place at the center of stars). Everett’s interpretation couched in terms of quantum histories (Feynman’s famous path integral is a complex sum over a particle’s possible trajectories) was used by Hartle and Hawking to discuss quantization of gravity, which would reconcile Einstein’s general relativity with quantum mechanics (still an unsolved problem for the most part, by the way, if you’re looking for something to do).

(more…)

[Note: This article is the second part of a three-part series on the topic of reading and writing sci-fi. In part one, I discussed my sci-fi blues.  In this part, I’ll discuss some non-fiction sci-fi reading—is that possible? You can find out why I think the answer is yes in this article. In part three, I’ll talk about my solution to my sci-fi blues—writing a new sci-fi novel that’s also a rom-com.]

Asimov wrote the End of Eternity, so you might think Brian Greene’s lengthy tome Until the End of Time, is good sci-fi. (You can find my Bookpleasures review here: https://waa.ai/T7a8.) It’s not fiction, though, but it considers themes that we need to see more of in sci-fi today, where there’s a lack of good novels. And, like all good books, it left me thinking about what I’d read. There is a lot about mind in it—the Human mind. I write that with a capital H here (and in many of my sci-fi stories) to distinguish us from other intelligent species we might encounter if and when we leave Earth to explore the far reaches of our Universe, or if and when ETs come to visit us.

While author Greene has a similar scientific background to mine, he’s a bit myopic when it comes to mind. Better said, he’s anthropomorphic or Human-centered. In his defense, the Human mind is better known to him—he has a fine one of his own, after all. And he’s a fine writer, but he’s not a sci-fi writer. It’s not hard to imagine the powers of Darwinian evolution creating intelligent species where “mind” acquires a strange yet wonderful meaning.

The first sci-fi writer to do this, as far as I know, was Fred Hoyle, an astrophysicist (Greene and I were also trained as physicists) who wrote some good sci-fi. He’s been reviled and ridiculed for creating the steady-state theory of the Universe, but he also created the first example of a collective mind in his novel The Black Cloud, a classic sci-fi novel…and one of the best.

You see, the point Greene misses in his discussion of consciousness and self-awareness is the role complexity plays. No one believes a single computer can become self-aware, but a network of them could, and many computer science papers and sections of books have been written about how complex such a network has to be to become a conscious entity. Indeed, the Human brain is self-aware because it is so complex.

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[Note: This article is the first part of a three-part series on the topic of reading and writing sci-fi. In part two, I’ll discuss some non-fiction sci-fi reading—is that possible? You can find out why I think the answer is yes. In part three, I’ll talk about my solution to my sci-fi blues—writing a new sci-fi novel that’s also a rom-com.]

Maybe readers have noted that I haven’t reported on reading a good sci-fi book lately (such reports are often called reviews [chuckle], especially when I like the book). The truth is, I’ve already scraped the bottom of the barrel. Maybe I’m just asking too much, but the sci-fi published today is mostly drivel and/or techno-babble, even the Hugos. The threshold a novel must cross to make me buy a sci-fi novel might be too high, I’ll admit—being a sci-fi writer myself creates that high threshold—but I don’t think so. Let me state what I think is going on—you can always go after me for my hubris in your comments to this post. I accept that your opinions and tastes might differ.

I grew up during the golden era of sci-fi: Asimov, Heinlein, and many others were already well-established novelists, and their novels usually seemed to be reasonable albeit surprising extrapolations of current science and technology. Both Hogan and Pohl considered black holes in their Giants and HeeChee trilogies, respectively (they’re still a subject of scientific inquiry), while the first-named authors were ex-scientists like I am now (with all his pop sci works, Asimov was arguably always a scientist). Theodore Sturgeon, probably more famous now for Sturgeon’s Law (google it), invented the idea of spread-spectrum communications, and Atwood, Bradbury, Dick, Kornbluth, and many others pointed out the sociological dangers of how autocrats can exploit science and technology to further their evil agendas. Some of these novels are being reborn in streaming-video spectaculars that, for all their glitz and special effects, are faded shadows of the original stories.

That golden age of sci-fi has passed, its fantastic authors often considered dinosaurs, and new authors are offering us new sci-fi stories. Most of those stories can’t compare to those of the golden age, though, because first, the writers haven’t read those classic sci-fi tales; second, don’t have the background or skills to write new ones, and third, have been influenced too much by fantasy movies from Hollywood posing as good sci-fi.

Space opera and militaristic sci-fi dominate now—the first is often too close to fantasy, the second often a hidden celebration of nationalism, but making military campaigns against ET armies (Niven and Pournelle’s Footfall is a prime example)—so much so that the central theme of a novel all too often seems like a slap in the face to good sci-fi (I’m guilty of using that militaristic theme myself in some parts of The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection, but, in my defense, there are good ETs fighting with us against the bad ETs, and these parts aren’t fantasy like the Star Wars movies).

And now we come to the usual suspects for the downturn in sci-fi quality—indeed, for the downturn in reading material in general—the Big Five. Sci-fi novels tend to be long. While agents and acquisitions editors often call that verbosity or excess narrative, world-building is required. But some novels are still published, and the Big Five takes advantage of everybody and slaps a huge price on the book, calling it “epic” or a “saga,” code words for overblown verbosity describing real or fake science (Weir’s The Martian is an example—you can learn in excruciating detail how to grow potatoes in your own crap). Moreover, authors with more original stories never get past the slush-pile.

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