Ask Unca Mike

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Science fiction and fantasy writers are a group are extraordinarily generous with advice to new writers. A moment's thought, however, reveals that this is just encouraging talented young people to occupy the publishing niches and win the awards that would otherwise go to to us Old Hands. Ask Unca Mike is an attempt to rectify this deplorable situation.

Stealing From Our Betters

Dear Unca Mike,

     My stories aren't selling and I think it's because my ideas are old and stale. I have a friend who works at a library where the private papers of a famous dead SF author are stored and and being cataloged and they have seen a fat file labeled "STORY NOTES". They say the contents range from rough outlines of unwritten books and stories to little slips of paper with possible names for cats written on them. They offered to get me into the stacks and get a peek at that file. I am tempted, but worry about the morality of this idea.

     Obviously, I would never steal the idea for, say, a sequel to one of the author's published works about Dick Derringer where his wife's evil twin kidnaps her and changes places with her to kill Dick, but maybe she really wants to seduce him first, or just seduce him, but AAARRGGHH! See, that's the kind of lame story I would write! Okay, but if I saw a note that said, say, "A neutrino flash bomb that converts all the heat energy in a 50-meter sphere into neutrinos and everything in that sphere instantly freezes down to near absolute zero!", that idea I would swipe because it's an anonymous idea. What's your take on this?

                                            Sincerely,

                                            Tempted Author    

Seriously? Ideas can't be copyrighted, though the words into which they're incorporated can. If things like characters, plots, and such are enough to make a reader familiar with the writer say, "Huh," you can get in trouble. But ideas? Steal away. Particularly since their source is dead.

There's are two exceptions to this rule of thumb: You can't swipe an idea from a fellow writer who's told you it in confidence (I once told Gregory Frost that if he didn't write Shadowbridge, I would; but only to motivate him to get it down on paper so I could read it), and you can't swipe an idea from a new or unpublished writer, period. Those of us fortunate enough to have taught at one of the Clarions occasionally gossip about a great image or idea one of our students came up with and how easy it would be to turn it into a story. But I have never seen one of them swiped and published.

That would be evil. 

If you have a question for Unca Mike you can post it below. Or write to AskUncaMike ("at" sign) gmail.com. I'll respond to those I have the best answers for.

Ask Unca Mike appears here on selectFridays.

An Eileen and Michael Christmas!

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It's the holiday season, so it's time for a holiday story. And not just any story! "The Trains That Climb the Winter Tree" combines Eileen Gunn's twisted sensibilities with the warmth and compassion that are the hallmark of my own work.

The story was published a couple of years ago at Tor.com and the link to it is below. Looking over the comments, I was struck by how bleak many readers thought it was. One, who was kind enough to say he liked the story anyway, thought it was "the very antithesis of Christmas."

So, for those who are interested in learning my understanding of the story, an explanation is below. Nobody has to read it. But if you do, it's best that you read the story first.

You can read "The Trains That Climb the Winter Tree" here.

And a previous blog post explaining how it came to be written here.


And the explanation . . .

So why is this not what Marianne likes to call "one of Michael's bleak little fables?" It certainly begins bleakly, and that was all my fault because I was trying to start the story off with a bang. As usual for my collaborations with Eileen, we went into the story with no idea of where it was going to end up or what it was going to mean. We were just egging each other on, trying to surprise one another, playing little pranks on the partner-in-literature.

But all the time we were working on it, I was trying to figure out what the story meant.  And when I finally did figure it out, it was possible for the story to end.

There were two insights. The first was that Lord Snow, merciless, brutal, and unstoppable by anything short of an angel (which Mr. Chesterton was; there was never any doubt of that), was Entropy. The second was that the elves that served him were time.

So it was time that killed all the adults. Once I realized that, a happy ending became possible.

That, anyway, is my reading of the story. You don't have to agree with it if you don't want to. I've never asked Eileen what she thinks was going on.

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A Weekend in the City

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Some time back, I met an old college friend who now lives in in a part of Virginia that appalls most of those living in the Blue Mountains with its isolation. "People ask me why I live where i do," he said. "It's quiet. Very, very quiet."

De gustibus non est disputandum. I live in the city for different reasons entirely. I had a relatively quiet weekend, but it was still colorful.

Friday night was spent at the Pen & Pencil Club, America's oldest journalists' club, hanging out with  the usual, admittedly rather louche crowd.

Saturday, Marianne and I went to the Punk Rock Flea Market for a little Christmas shopping. Parking was tight, but we found a place outside the Electric Factory, which was having its annual Running of the Santas. There were literally hundreds of young people dressed as Santas, Santettes, and elves.  Just seeing them had to raise one's spirits. It made the warehouse full of young people dressed in a style that peaked before they were born look downright stodgy by comparison. Later, we ran past Big Blue Marble, one of my favorite bookstores, to buy more presents.

Sunday morning, I went out for bagels and noticed that the Roxborough Ridge Runners (restorers of classic and antique cars) were gathering for an event in the Acme parking lot. In the afternoon, we visited Tom Purdom and then drove to Trinity Church where, many years ago, I was the unpaid volunteer half of the staff for the Wilma Project, back before the Zizkas took over and turned it into a theatrical powerhouse with a bright, shiny home on the Avenue of the Arts. The Philadelphia Chorus presented their Winter Concert, including selections from Benjamin Britten's A Ceremony of Carols and Will Todd's Mass in Blue.  Tenors Aaron Jones and Justin Gonzalez were knockouts.

This last, I was almost late for -- I arrived on the minute -- because driving to the concert, I got caught behind the First Troop Philadelphia City Cavalry and so was slowed to a horse's pace. That's them up above. The First City Troop was founded in 1774 by the First Continental Congress, so this was a delay that literally could not have happened anywhere else.

As I said, it was not a particularly busy weekend (though busy enough that I couldn't participate in the cookie exchange at the Spiral Bookcase, another favorite). But neither was it quiet. Some like it quiet. But others, like me, go for that joyful noise thing. To each according to their tastes. This is why I live in Philadelphia.


And speaking of Tom Purdom...

The dean of Philadelphia science fiction is still in rehab, though there remains a chance he'll be home for Christmas. You can -- and should -- send cards, letters, fruitcakes, whatever to him at:

Tom Purdom
The Watermark at Logan Square, Room 221
Two Franklin Town Boulevard
Philadelphia, PA 19103

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Flying Over Occator Crater

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This is just wonderful: Real visual footage of a flyover of Occator Crater on Ceres.  Occator is, you'll remember, the site of mysterious bright spots on the dwarf planet's surface. There was much speculation as to their nature. Ice? Salt? Effluvia from environmentally irresponsible alien factories?

And the answer is... (drum roll, please!) ... "hydrated magnesium sulfates mixed with dark background material." But before you get too disappointed over it not being water, there's more. A bright pit in the crater shows signs of sublimating water, including "afternoon haze." Taken together, these may mean there is s sub-surface layer of briny ice in Ceres. An underground frozen ocean, if you will.

Gizmodo has quite a nice overview article covering all this, which can be found here. Or you can read the abstract of the original paper, published in Nature  here.

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Putting Things In Perspective

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I had a conversation with Tom Purdom the other day, during which he observed that the "winner take all" economy is nothing new to writers.  There are a small number like George R. R. Martin and Stephen King and Neil Gaiman who get pretty much all the money they deserve (and rightly so). Then there's a larger but still scandalously small number, such as myself, who make an okay living out of it. And then there are the vast majority of writers who will never come close to being able to quit their day jobs but keep plugging away in the hope that someday they'll break big.

Which is such a depressing thought, I decided to share with you today's Astronomy Picture of the Day.

This shows Arp 87, a pair of galaxies (NGC 3808B on the right, and NASA inexplicably didn’t identify the other one) engaged in a dance of death. The bridge of stars, dust, and gas stretched between the two are the result of the pair having passed close to each other, as are the many blue star clusters in NGC 3808B, which are new stars resulting from strong gravitational interactions. Billions of years from now, the galaxies will collide and merge, resulting in an extravaganza of destruction and creation.

Which kind of puts things into perspective, dunnit? Even the problems of writers are small potatoes by comparison.


And as long as we're talking about Tom...

Tom Purdom, who published his first stories in the 1950s and was still writing when a criminally careless bicyclist smashed him to the concrete, remains in rehab. He is making slow but steady progress and there's a chance he'll be home for Christmas. In the meantime, his worst enemy is boredom. Why not send him a card, a letter, a joke, an autographed copy your most wonderful (if you're an author) or favorite (if you're not) book? His mind is as sharp as ever, so feel free to be as erudite as you like.

His address is:

Tom Purdom
The Watermark at Logan Square, Room 221
Two Franklin Town Boulevard
Philadelphia, PA 19103

But not, his friends all hope and pray for too many weeks longer.

(Note that the room number is different from the one published in Locus. He was there but got moved to a better room.)

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Seven Words of Wisdom From Alexis Gilliland

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"NEVER LET A BIBLIOSEXUAL INTO YOUR LIBRARY"

And in case you're wondering...

In my infallible and indisputable judgment, Alexis Gilliland is one of the very best cartoonists most people have never heard of. Mordant, witty, and very very funny. An extremely small fraction of his prolific output is collected in three books: The Iron Law of Bureaucracy, Who Says Paranoia Isn't "In" Anymore?, and The Waltzing Wizard, any one of which will set you back a pretty penny, provided only you can find someone willing to part with it.

My second favorite, after the above shows a bureaucrat sitting behind a desk with a small box on it. "This box of gravity-proof material contains a micro-black hole," he says, smiling nastily. "Doubters open it every time!"

Alexis is also a novelist and as such won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, beating me out for the honor the one year I was on the ballot. But I have long ago forgiven him that.


Above: Yes, this sage counsel resides in my library.

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Is Clarion West Right For You? Maybe Yes, Maybe No

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I just this morning received Clarion West's annual notice that they're accepting applications for next year's workshop. I've taught at Clarion and the now-defunct Clarion South and it was always a great experience. But I have a particular fondness for Clarion West in part because it was the first such workshop I taught and in part because it was Lucius Shepard who convinced me to accept their teaching invitation, "You gotta do it, Michael, he said. "Helping new writers warms the soul. It'll make you feel like Mr. Chips."

This was a startling thing to hear coming out of the mouth of the legendary wild man of science fiction. But of course Lucius was right.

So, assuming you're an unpublished new writer... should you prepare to empty your bank account, quit your job, and apply?

Well, maybe yes, maybe no.

Partisans of the Clarion method (six weeks of story critiques; a different teacher each week; a new story expected to be written every week; I oversimplify) hat it when I suggest it may not be for everybody. But it's true. And it may even be necessary that it's true. A workshop has something like eighteen students. If it worked for everybody, that would be thirty-six newly published writers a year. An editor once estimated that there are only one hundred writers making a living solely by writingf fantasy, SF, and/or horror. That includes both Steven King and the guy who's living in a cardboard box but brings in just enough to keep from starving. All the rest -- many of them big-name people whose work you love -- are in academia or doing editing work or are supported by spouses with good jobs that include medical benefits.

So there's that. But there's also you.  Before you fill out the application, you should ask yourself three questions:

1. How well do I work under pressure?

There's a lot of pressure at Clarion or Clarion West. When they call it "boot camp for writers," they're not exaggerating how it's going to feel by Week Four. Some people discover that they don't want to learn to master the drive and discipline it takes to make a living from writing. They want to write leisurely and at their own pace. And there's nothing wrong with that. Some of your favorite writers are like that.

2. How fast can I write?

I'm not talking about writing well here. The point of writing a story a week is not to come up with something publishable but to make mistakes which the instructor (and other students) can explain to you how to fix. Can you turn out a crappy story every seven days for six weeks? Or, if you're not sure of that, does the prospect of trying to do so excite you? Then you're probably okay.

3. Am I already publishable?

I've known writes who came into a workshop with stories that could be sold to a major market -- and which did sell, substantially unchanged, after they came out. To be fair, they'll all tell you it was a wonderful, formative experience. But I have to wonder if they wouldn't have been better off taking that time and money and hitch-hiking across Siberia or having a mutually destructive love affair in Paris. Not that I'm urging you to do so. I'm just pointing out that the Clarion West or Clarion experience is not mandatory.

Which is all I have to say, really. You're an adult and can be trusted to decide what's best for you. In the meantime, if you're curious, the notice is immediately below. That's a really good lineup of instructors, by the way.

Level up your fiction in 2016

Clarion West is pleased to announce that applications are now open for its 2016 Six-Week Workshop. You can apply today at http://www.clarionwest.org/workshops/summer/apply/.

Apply by February 10, 2016 and get $20 off the application fee.

All applicants are encouraged to apply for scholarships. For more information about the workshop, the Clarion West experience, and the application process, please see the workshop page and the workshop FAQ. For a taste of the summer workshop experience, download our 2015 Workshop Report.

2016 instructors

Paul Park • Stephen Graham Jones • Elizabeth Bear • N. K. Jemisin • Sheila Williams • Geoff Ryman 
Find out more on our instructors page.

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