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Code Sliding

Posted on by Tobias Buckell

Over at Transterrestrial Musings Simberg has a post about human tribes without the words for larger numbers and how it impacts their ability to count, but then follows it with something I want to quibble with. So first he notes:

Here’s an interesting article that says that human tribes without words for numbers larger than very small numbers (e.g., one) have trouble counting:

Gordon gave the Pirahã people in his Science study may have seemed alien to them. In one typical test, the researcher set out a group of one to 10 nuts and asked each participant to place an equal number of batteries–used because of their availability and size–on the table. The participants performed perfectly when matching sets of up to three batteries, but at four batteries the accuracy rate dropped to about 75 percent, and by nine none of the Pirahã got the right answer…

The idea that learning a linguistics has a major impact on the very way we think has been around since I took Intro to Anthropology. Chomsky spends time on it, if I remember right, and it’s one of the reasons I want to learn more languages (I know some Spanish, a wee bit of Latin from a class, and knew a little French and German as a kid), particularly ones outside of latinate derived ones I’ve studied (Chinese would be a good start).

So far so good.

But Simberg’s next is this piece that I feel the need to dissect and challenge him on:

We’ve been told for years by the politically correct that “ebonics” or “black English” is as legitimate a form of the language as standard English, and that black children shouldn’t be penalized for using it (even though such usage could cripple them in the potential range of employment and social opportunities in which they might otherwise engage). That it had its own grammar, but was just as useful a language, with the ability to express just as complex concepts, as the norm. Well, maybe. But consider this thesis, based on the article cited. If the grammar (and vocabulary) of a language can restrict the ability to deal with mathematical concepts, isn’t it possible that an inner-city patois is similarly unable to allow the mind to grasp concepts that are necessary for life in a highly technological society?

1) The piraha are an isolated group. Inner city youth are not. They are watching TV and using technology. Less than their richer suburban counterparts, but if you’ve ever looked at the wiring job on a modded ghetto blaster car, they do shit with technology that I have to hire pros to travel to my university to do (ever see MTV’s Pimp My Ride?)

2) To believe what Mr. Simberg says you’d then also have to believe that all the wiggaz out there (white suburban kids who talk, dress, and sound like urban youth as so excellently parodied in Malibu’s Most Wanted) would be unable to understand the high technology all around them. That is demonstrably not so.

3) What about other non-urban people incapably of proper grammar? It isn’t just eubonics, have you ever spent time in rural America? The same grammar deconstruction is applied among the older, and younger folks that I have observed out here in the boonies of Ohio, and it’s just as much a dialect as eubonics, it’s just that rural folk aren’t black, so there is no conservative distaste of ‘rural speak.’ What about Scottish accents, or any of the harder to understand Irish or English dialects as featured in your average Guy Ritchie film? Should we undertake to eradicate these dialects as well in the name of helping these people understand their world better?

4) I grew up in the Caribbean and spoke dialect that most Americans couldn’t understand when I was among my friends, and proper Queen’s English when with my mother. This is called Code Sliding and is fairly common among many people. I notice people in rural America here doing it all the time, talking in one particular modal manner with the good ole boys and changing to corporate america when back at work talking to the boss.

Eubonics won’t stop you from being able to grasp a high tech society. It can change the way people view you though, which is why I learned to code slide consciously at a very young age in order to 1) not be looked at as snotty by my friends and 2) to gain respect from westerners who thought speaking in dialect was ‘bad english’ and a sign of reduced intelligence.

Remember, I had to learn language all over again when I came to the states. The dialects and modes of english here are different.

Just some stuff to rebutt his initial argument and let people mull over…

Why I Write Caribbean Futures

Posted on by Tobias Buckell

Geoffrey Philp is a Caribbean author with a story in ‘Whispers From the Cotton Tree Root’ called Uncle Obadiah and The Alien, which I really enjoyed, and I found his website this week and was perusing through and was quite taken with this quote of his:

When would we write stories that liberated us from such narrow vision of our past and ourselves? When would we write stories that portrayed us as shapers of our future and not merely passive agents in our own existence? We still bought and sold novels with characters that were locked into the badman/cocksman stereotype of Caribbean/ black manhood. In other words, our literature had not filled in the gaps in Caribbean life that remains locked into the vision of outdated stereotypes or themes of exile.

I guess the line that burrows right into my brain in a good way is When would we write stories that portrayed us as shapers of our future and not merely passive agents in our own existence? Because this same reason was why I got fired up to start writing some sort of Caribbean SF, or playing with the idea. I’d read Bruce Sterling’s Islands in The Net, and while I wasn’t happy with some stuff, I thought the idea of dynamic forward looking islanders tinkering with technology and riding the edge of the future was compelling, and I wanted to take that further and start writing about how the “3rd World” participated, and would participate, in the future.

We’ve taken language and added our own vocab, linguistic stylings, and forms (you all know what ‘bling’ is now, don’t you?) that has hit mainstream. Caribbean rhythms are found all over the top 20, since the middle 80s or so. So why not the future? Doesn’t the future also belong to islanders?

I certainly think so.

How Long Should a Novel Be?

Posted on by Tobias Buckell

I’ve told a number of people starting novels or thinking about them or shopping them that shorter is better these days, and the old adage about needing to write a big first book is totally not true. There seems to be a persistent meme going around about needing to pad novels.

It’s not true.

First off, you should be more focused on writing the novel to the length it needs to be. That’s the primary concern, I think.

Secondly, it’s not true. Particularly if you’re going to be coming out in hardcover first.
First piece of evidence: me. I am involved in cutting out some words in my novel. Why? The more I can cut the cheaper the hardcover will be, the more likely people will take risks both in carrying it and buying it. That’s how it has been explained. However, I am told not to harm the book to cut stuff…

Second piece of evidence: Peter Watts. In the intro to B-Max he writes:

Behemoth is being released in two volumes, several months apart. I wish this were not necessary, but new policies have resulted from recent changes within the publishing industry. Henceforth, books by midlist authors will not receive wide distribution if they cost too much — that is, if they weigh in at more than about 110,000 words. “Behemoth is over 150,000 words long, and was almost complete by the time this policy came into effect. Hacking away a third of it was not an option (believe me, I tried)…A two-part release was the only alternative.
“Fortunately, Behemoth was conceived and written as two contrasting halves from the outset…If you’re the kind of reader who gets off on cliffhangers, this may work just fine for you. If not, you have been warned: you’ll have to read Volume Two to see how it ends.”

So there you go, a cap of about 110K could be the ‘industry hard cover standard’ if you’re interested in numbers. But there are certainly longer books than that in the Fantasy genre (see Brandon Sanderson).

Third piece of evidence: Cory Doctorow’s first book was just over 50,000.

Fourth piece, this musing by Michelle Sagara

The submission criterion has changed in many ways since the time I submitted my first novel. I don’t believe that Del Rey now accepts unsolicited submissions, for one. When I submitted my novel, length was an issue. In the intervening years, for a while, it was vastly less of an issue — and now it’s an issue again, with a vengeance.

Which is to say: There was a period in which publishers were actively looking for “Big” books from new authors. They’re now actively looking for small books — as in short — from new authors. (Keeping in mind that my last book was over 400,000 words, short for me would be the 140K that is currently the high end of acceptable new-author word count for the largest of the SF/F publishing houses).

There are many reasons (given) for this change, one of the largest having to do with production costs, and the P&L statement. Profit and Loss statements are done for each book at each publisher; I would guess that some of the details differ from house to house, but regardless, there are some base expenses that will be added to the cost side of the ledger. Cover art. Type-setting. Copy-editing. Printing costs. House overhead (which would be the percentage of the book’s sale price that goes towards things like paying the rent, the utilities, the salaries of the editors/reps/etc). In order to keep costs -down- (and cover prices), one of the things that has to go down is page count.

Realize of course, that if you are submitting to a paperback release first house it doesn’t seem to matter as much.

Realize of course, that if the editors -really- like your book, it doesn’t seem to matter as much, and you might get them to take a gamble.

Realize of course, that writing the best novel that you can write should be the primary goal, not writing the novel that falls into the best length for what may… or may not… be the current spread for lengths.

Should I Not Change POVs a Lot if I Want My Novel to Sell?

Posted on by Tobias Buckell

At Neil Gaiman’s weblog someone asked:

But all the advice I’ve found says to stick to one point of view, anything else annoys editors. If you’re a first time author, do publishers just reject books like this?

If that was the case I’d be fucked. I move around POVs every couple thousand words or so in my last novel, it seemed. The first novel has some chapters that are 400 words. When I wrote CR I didn’t question the length, I just wrote the chapter as needed and skipped out of the character to another the moment I got what I needed accomplished done.
In my second novel I began by attempting to stick to just a few POVs, and stay in them for long chapters to enrich my characterization and really hunt for voice. My goal was to stretch myself a bit.

However it fell apart and I started hating writing it. It was beyond pulling teeth. So I slipped POV to someone else and was back in motion.

I think it is useful to me because I gain depth by looking at something from more than one side. I’m not black/white, but love shades of gray, and it’s fun to show even plot from multiple sides. I also get to introduce more complications this way. All the books I enjoy most use this method as well.

Ultimately I know I alienate some readers by this hopping about. I know of some people who had trouble with it. I also endanger the novel by headhopping too far at the start without as much to hold the reader along, which is something I’ve worked hard at fixing, and have thought about much on the second novel.

But moving POVs is not a problem in and of itself.

Really.

A Random Encounter in a College Bathroom Where I out Myself As Atheist

Posted on by Tobias Buckell

So at lunch today I nip into the bathroom and am standing in front of the urinal, like most men, minding my own business, staring dead straight ahead, when someone comes and stand next to me to do likewise.

So far so good. But then I hear the dreaded ‘throat clear.’

Oh man, this dude is going to start chatting with me, I think. I hate that. It was a long busy day already, and now I’m going to have to field questions in the bathroom. But I put on a forced smile because there are prospective students all over the campus today, and this is a parent of one of them probably as I’ve never seen the chap.

So he clears his throat again and kinda faces me and says:

“I saw some obscene word scratched on the stall upstairs,” he tells me.

“Oh, really. That’s a shame,” I say. “I’ll make sure I tell one of the guys who works in this building about it. It doesn’t happen very often here.”

Pause. He clears his throat again.

“Yeah,” he says. “I told an admissions counseler, and they said they’d do that. But I saw your keys and thought maybe you worked in here.”

Okay… I nod, understandly. I’m wearing jeans and a T-shirt today, so I don’t look like a Tech Dude. Fair enough.

“Oh, no, sorry, I work at the Technology Center,” I explain. “I’m over here trouble-shooting a problem with the AV system here. But I will tell someone about the graffitti, that’s a real shame.”

So I finish, head towards the sink, and he leans towards me again.

“Well,” he says. “It’s a Christian college, but I guess that doesn’t mean everyone here’s Christian, does it.”

I freeze in place. Now, I know I’m a representative of the college, and that I should just smile and move on. That’s what I usually do when I get those kinds of comments at the college.
But I was tired from being up late, and it had been a busy day, so I just looked this guy in the eye.

“I’m an atheist.” (I’m actually more of an agnostic, but I was not going to go into semantics)

“Uhhh…”

“And I think carving obscenities into the bathroom stall where you attend school to be entirely pathetic and somewhat immoral by my standards, and I’ve never done anything like that in my entire life.”

“Well, I meant…”
“Most students here are Christian, as are most people in the US, so the chances are, the person who did that act was Christian, believe it or not.”

He zipped up, backed away from me, and got the hell out of the restroom before I could even form the next sentence. I wasn’t even mad, just very matter of fact, somewhat offended, and tired of hearing shit like that.

So maybe that person’s kid won’t be coming to Bluffton.

My Favorite Rejection Letter for a Short Story of Mine

Posted on by Tobias Buckell

I’m 17 years old, a sophomore in college, and I’ve just begun my 100 rejections a year or bust routine, severed all connections with writers who haven’t sold anything and were giving me bad advice, and started a weblog at geocities (yeah, I’ve been blogging/journaling for 7 years and I’m not famous like slashdot or instapundit yet, damnit!). I’m a nobody, and all I have to mention in my cover letter is that I’m 17 years old.

Here it goes:

Dear Mr. Buckell:
Thank you for showing us “Eckman’s Starship.” Unfortunately, it’s not for us. Although we haven’t accepted your submission, I was impressed by not only your imagination, but your level of prose style and grammatical proficiency-far better than much older writes.

Author comment. I have trouble believing that. I get so much assistance with my drafts from Emily, other writers, editors, and copy editors. I’m constantly working on this stuff. Particularly considering the way they formatted the 3rd line of the following paragraph made me twitch my eyebrows about the grammar statement. But to continue…

You maintain a developed narrative control over your story, but we feel it loses it toward the end as you try to wrap everything up. Parts of the story are good, but we think it’s a victim of overkill. You know the phrase, “Everything, and the kitchen sink”? Try cutting down on subject matter. Assassination and political upheaval are hard enough to pull off in short story form. You took on those topics, plus the Internet and an alien space craft in 3,200 words. If I had to write a blurb for this story: Dr. Sterlingstein’s Monster meets Neuromancer meets Deserted Cities of the Heart meets Independence Day.
Sincerely…

What can I say in my defense? I dreamed big! 🙂

To be honest, I kinda wish the story hadn’t gotten lost in the great hard drive crash of ’97. After rereading this rejection I’m actually kinda curious to go back and read the story after all these years!

But I did reexamine my short fiction methodology after that and started trying to cut down. Maybe focus on just social upheaval and assissination without the Internet and alien Starships 🙂

How Writing Late at Night Helps Me Believe in the Fantastic

Posted on by Tobias Buckell

I prefer to work late at night. As I slide towards sleep, and hover in that odd zone, I could begin to somewhat believe in a ghost that I’m writing about. My imagination is much more likely to engulf my consciousness.

I can, between 11pm and 8am, convince myself on a level that I can’t during the day, that dryads exist or that a man could be seduced by cockroaches, something that my mind balks at even now, at 2:13pm at work.

That being said, I have some other coping mechanisms during the day for sliding in. Notes from the night before, written impressions, and music.

I’ve had to rely on music very heavily to drag myself into a half hypnotic state of belief in the irreal. And trust me, I don’t go there easy.

On the other hand, it always reveals to me a significant difference between me and most people in the world. I don’t believe in ghosts or anything supernatural, though I will tinker with the idea for fun on occasion in the name of literature. But many people do. In fact, my cold rationality is the minority, as is Pullman’s. When Chris Carter did the X Files half the episodes were supposed to have Mulder right, and the other half Sculley right, but ratings pretty much drove the rational answer epidosdes into oblivion in favor the of the weird and supernatural ones. Like Mulder, people ‘want to believe.’

We Have to Better About Writing the Other

Posted on by Tobias Buckell

 I’ve had some writers who say to me ‘I’m white, I grew up in (insert location here), I know nothing about other cultures/races/societies, I’m not as ‘lucky’ as you are to have experienced these other things.’

For this I’d like to refer them to this artice by Nisi Shawl: Transracial Writing for The Sincere. I personally have never experienced living in China, or Japan, but that would hardly stop me from writing a story either set there, or with characters from there. It takes honest research, and tons of it. Truthfully it’s probably easier to do a story based on stuff I know and have experienced, but I’m into stretching myself as an individual and as a writer, so I regard the world as my oyster.

So can anyone else, I believe.

The other odd objection I’ve heard a few times from some authors, but not responded to, is market doesn’t like it. They’ve tried to write a story, or a novel, and it either hasn’t sold or once out gotten dim reviews or low sales. Therefore, non-white characters have no market.
I’m a bit dubious of this claim. It floats around Hollywood too, so here is my reply:

Notice that Nisi doesn’t just call it transracial writing, but transracial writing for the sincere. Just tossing in an obligatory black men on a space ship in a story because it’s February isn’t sincere transracial writing. I think readers sniff insincerity a mile away. Besides, if you’re making a character who’s of a different race out of mere obligation, can that author really be putting their all into the work? I think a project like that would be tainted. And the righteous outrage afterwards is just annoying as a some wannabe’s outrage at their stunning work not selling. It’s a conspiracy, they howl.

Ok, maybe it’s true, and maybe it’s going to take work of extra calibre to get people to sit up and take notice of a black SF character for it to sell. But how sincere can someone be if they just throw up their hands? How far can any social cause, or even personal cause, get if someone gives up that easily? Do we give up the first time our story gets rejected? So why in this case? How sincere is someone at transracial writing if they do give up this easily?

Besides, we’re spec fic writers, correct? How in the world can we expect to create and explore ‘alien’ societies, mind-shattering experiences, new thoughts, looks to the possible future, if we can’t even begin to try for an honest, sincere attempt at transracial writing?

Just some thoughts. Just some challenges.

Addendum. The potential writer should at least consider reading Writing the Other by Nisi Shawl.

Thoughts on Being Paper Free

Posted on by Tobias Buckell

In Greg Van Eekhout’s latest journal entry He talks about a really nice notebook that he just got. Nice pens, nice notebooks, are also linked in his comments area. Which got me thinking about my own writing tool journey…

I think the only reason I wrote on paper was b/c it was during class and I had to -look- like I was taking notes… once my mum gave up her brother typewriter (with the 4 lines text preview screen), I was heading down the paperless path with a mad glint in the eye my freshman year of high school.

The ribbons (or something) on that machine, got too expensive and were discontinued, so I moved to a large typewriter/monitor brother combo that was a gift to me that wasn’t really a gift (I wasn’t allowed to keep it in my room, and the whole family got to use it whenever). I did manage 2 short stories on that, on floppy, one of which was my first submission to WOTF summer of ’93 (I think).

That last machine succumbed to a ‘coke failure’ which I swear wasn’t my fault. I did write a 3rd short story on my stepdad’s b/w apple laptop that his school let him take home. _That_ machine had a cool civ-like game on it, but I remember it most because it was on this machine my stepdad brought back the gif animations of the impending hurricanes that were to hit the VI and change my life (summer of ’95, for those still following).

Annoyed at having to share writing resources, I spent the summer of ’95 working 3 part time jobs, putting aside $860 towards buying a 486DX Tandy (the brand was promptly discontinued that year). I spent a lot of time reading pc mags, and was going to buy a cheap 286 plasma laptop, but my parents talked me into a warrantied desktop. I still have the monitor, it is sitting in the closet here across from my desk. The desktop itself lasted until ’97 when the hard drive took 30 or so K of a novel and all the short fiction I had at the time with it.
The idea forming in my head when I got the Tandy was that I would write a novel my senior year of high school. After all, I’d written a few short stories, and started some novels on paper. Why not? Plus, I’d heard of this one kid who got into Harvard for writing a novel.

I spent the first 3 weeks playing Sid Meier’s Civilization. I didn’t sleep for days on end, and I think I remember hallucinating square pixelated phalanxes. After that the hurricanes hit, and the Tandy and I ended up living in my step-grandparents basement in Akron, Ohio, where I had ample time to work on the novel, a novella, and lots of short fiction because after moving in this manner I had no friends, no way of transporting myself anywhere interesting, and no desire to socialize. Brooding and depression where the staples of my senior year, and the theme taken up well in scads of unfinished, poorly written stories, and a novel segment, all of which we’re better off having lost in the great Tandy crash of ’97.

But you know, all through this time, the school notebook was a primary weapon. The idea often developed first in class while bored, sketched out, outlined, and then was transported back to the computer. I did some work straight on the computer as well, but the goal there was mainly to get my stuff readable and submittable.

It really wasn’t until I went through a laptop that replaced the failed Tandy, learned touch typing, went through a pentium tower, and then onto an Apple Laptop, that the computer started being the main writing tool.

I think it was the laptop/touch-type transition that moved me much closer, and then finally the move to using windowshading in apple that made me more able to manage my computer workspace in a non-linear fashion.

So yeah, almost no paper anymore.

Huh.

Maybe it would be fun to go back to class again sometime.

The Most Essential Gift For an SF/F Writer

Posted on by Tobias Buckell

The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof shit detector.” – Ernest Hemingway

To which I would say:

“The most essential gift for an SF/F writer is a built-in, shockproof, shit creator.”

I like creating all sorts of neat shit. Right now I’m still working on the synopsis/proposal for a new novel. I’ve got about one thousand words slotted into Omni-outliner and I’m moving forward. And I’ve got all sorts of neat shit planned for it. Okay, so I’m not following in the heart of Hemmingway’s intention with the quote, but that was what occured to me when I saw the quote today.