What is the perfect length for a story? Well, I’m sure there is no agreement in the world on that. And I must confess I have enjoyed books that go over a thousand pages (counting the “Lord of the Rings” as one story) and short stories that barely cover a handful of pages.
But I have an opinion and since I get to throw it out onto the internet for as long as I can pay for my hosting costs, I feel I should elaborate. After all, I have to write my five hundred words tonight. Although that length is hardly a perfect length for a work.
I believe that between 10,000 and 35,000 words is the sweet spot for telling a story. I think that’s somewhere between a long short-story and a good-sized novella. So, I’ve rejected the majority of modern novels and definitely all of the thousand-page potboilers that have been in fashion for the last few decades. And look, that rejects the “Lord of the Rings!” Well, hear me out.
I think long books are by nature composite creations. They consist of a bunch of chapters strung together to get our hero from Point A to Point B. And in my opinion each chapter (or at most a few chapters together) is a separate story. This is like a play or a movie having multiple acts or scenes. You string those together and you tell a larger story. But usually in a movie or a play there is a climactic scene when all of the emotional power of the story is unleashed. If the writer is exceptionally skilled, he can drag out the emotional interest from the beginning of the story until this climax. But no matter how well-written the longer story is it doesn’t have the same impact as a shorter work that can be digested in one sitting. Even a long movie has the danger that it can overtax the watcher’s attention and patience.
I think that if I kept my work within that 10,000-35,000-word range I could make the maximum impact on the reader. Of course, 10,000 is really close to the minimum that can result in a rich word-picture. But I think if an author works carefully to paint a vivid sketch of a scene even the 10,000 should yield a memorable story.
Of course, I am painfully aware that the commercial market for shorter fiction is essentially nil. I was reading recently that science fiction short story magazines and collections don’t sell at all. So that guarantees that authors will continue to pump out door-stops. And honestly, the longer episodic genre books are perfectly enjoyable just as they are. But in my opinion the true masterpieces of writing are a shorter type of story that weaves a tapestry in front of the reader’s mind in a unified effect that goes from beginning to end in a single story arc that satisfies the reader’s interest in the subject and provides a legitimate conclusion to the story.
“Project Hail Mary” is an sf novel by Andy Weir. It’s currently finishing off a theater run as a motion picture made by Amazon (MGM). And in fact, this is Weir’s second book to be turned into a motion picture (the first one was “The Martian”).
Just to start with the most important question, I think this is an excellent book.
(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)
My review will have spoilers but I think I’ll be cagey about some of the plot elements because they’re pretty important to the way the story unfolds for the reader and I think they shouldn’t be sacrificed for the sake of my plot synopsis.
The book’s protagonist is Ryland Grace; a biology PhD who now teaches Middle School science because a paper he wrote about the possibility of extraterrestrial life in the absence of water was severely criticized. As the story unfolds an autocratic European Space Agency administrator named Eva Stratta whose been given almost unlimited authority commandeers Ryland into a multinational science and engineering project that is studying a mysterious non-terrestrial organism that is absorbing an enormous amount of energy from the sun and threatens to throw the Earth into a cataclysmic ice age.
Ryland discovers that the lifeform (which he names astrophage) has a life cycle which sees it looping around between basking close to the sun in order to store up enormous energy traveling to Venus, reproducing in the atmosphere of Venus and then returning to the neighborhood of the sun. And it travels back and forth in this cycle at speeds approaching c (the speed of light). And the explanation for this capability is that astrophage can convert energy into matter and matter into energy. There’s some hand-waving about neutrino production creating matter/anti-matter annihilation but of course there’s nothing that makes any sense. Anyway, the astrophage is increasing its numbers asymptotically and within thirty years Earth will freeze and mankind will disappear.
And it is discovered that all of the stars in our neighborhood are also dimming because of astrophage. All except one Tau Ceti. So, a star ship will be built by the combined technical skills of humanity and staffed with a crew of three including a scientist trained on the current knowledge about astrophage and hopefully they will discover why Tau Ceti is immune to the dimming and use this to find a cure for our solar system. And the star ship is powered using astrophage as fuel. Well, actually the light that the astrophage produce for motion is the propellant pushing the ship through space. Unfortunately, in the short window they have to create the ship and breed the enormous amount of astrophage needed, they cannot make enough for a round trip. This is a suicide mission (thus the name “hail Mary”).
And in order to keep the crew from killing each other in the tight confines of the ship for four (relativistically speaking) years, they are in a coma state. When the ship reaches Tau Ceti, Ryland is awakened and doesn’t remember who he is or where he is or why. He discovers that aside from robotic presences he is the only living human aboard. His two crewmates have long ago died during their coma states.
Gradually Ryland’s memory returns and he realizes that he must carry out the mission unassisted by the deceased pilot and engineer. Slightly later on he realizes that another star ship is in his neighborhood and he discovers that the inhabitants of another local star system (40 Eridani) have also sent a mission to Tau Ceti to solve the problem of astrophage. The alien is a sort of five-legged giant crab with an outer shell of metallic minerals. His atmosphere is ammonia at twenty-nine atmospheres and 200°C and so Ryland cannot go into his ship but must allow the alien to come to the Hail Mary in a protective suit.
The remainder of the book is a journal of Ryland and Rocky (the name he gives the Eridian engineer who is the only surviving member of the 40 Eridani mission) learning how to understand each other and cooperate to combine their highly complementary skill sets to solve what should be an impossible problem; translating the resistance of the Tau Ceti system to astrophage into a practical solution for Earth’s sun and 40 Eridani. And after many setbacks and several acts of selfless friendship by both partners they overcome the challenges and solve the problems and save Earth and Erid (Ryland’s name for Rocky’s home world). Now Rocky’s ship has an enormous surplus of astrophage and he is able to provide Ryland with enough fuel for a return trip to Earth. But after they separate for their voyages home Ryland discovers that a flaw in a containment tank will mean that Rocky’s ship will be out of fuel and doomed. Ryland reverses course and rescues Rocky and returns him to Erid in the Hail Mary and must therefore abandon his own return to Earth. He is able to send the solution to Earth’s problem (another single cell lifeform that Ryland dubs Taumoeba that eats astrophage and can be inoculated into the atmosphere of Venus) in four robot ships that will return to Earth on their own. In the last scene of the book Ryland is living in a special enclosure on Erid that protects him from the atmosphere, temperature and pressure conditions that would kill him instantly. But he has his friend Rocky around to keep him company and he has returned to his former occupation as a school teacher to Eridian children.
Okay. This guy Weir doesn’t kid around when it comes to detailed scientific descriptions. He’s got two different artificial gravity mechanisms (centrifuge and continuous acceleration/deceleration travel) and he describes their successful and unsuccessful usage in the story. He goes into gory detail to show how his astrophage can be used in a stellar drive. He goes into gory detail to describe his efforts to get Taumoeba to “evolve” into a population that will survive the atmospheres containing nitrogen on Venus and the planet near 40 Eridani. He goes into gory detail to discuss his efforts to isolate and remediate the contamination of his fuel by Taumoeba. This guy love technobabble. But I guess most people reading science fiction love technobabble too so it’s a forgivable sin. The other thing I notice is that Weir writes characters that correspond to millennials. They’re much more touchy-feely and prone to virtue signal than I care for. In other words, he’s writing for a modern audience, not a caveman like me. In fact, even though she’s very much a girl-boss, the character I most closely relate to was the autocratic administrator, Eva Stratta. My verdict is this is a very inventive and entertaining science fiction story and well worth the reader’s time. I highly recommend it.
I’ve been reading Andy Weir’s book “Project Hail Mary” and I’ll finish it soon and put out my review (which will be quite favorable). But while working my way through it I was impressed by how the improbability of some of the “science” in a story doesn’t spoil the enjoyment garnered by its use. After all, the premise of the story requires that Earth send an interstellar mission twelve light years away in order to move the story forward. So, the “MacGuffin” has to be accepted to go forward with the story. But what’s the formula for inventing an acceptable MacGuffin?
I suppose there are several methods. The simplest is don’t explain anything. Figure out a way for the main character to be unaware of any of the “technical” details for the MacGuffin. Maybe he’s a completely non-technical individual; a grade school dropout or a literal caveman. Or the technology is owned by an alien race that we can’t interrogate.
A more common way is to build up some technology based on a breakthrough in physics and other sciences. And because it’s fictitious the main requirements and advantages of the explanation would be that it’s self-consistent and allows some very convenient short cuts in the plot. This is the avenue Weir goes down. His MacGuffin is both the problem and the solution to the problem. He has built up a scenario that creates an existential catastrophe but also provides a mechanism for solving the problem and also turning the danger into a potential boon.
And that’s what’s extremely clever about this plot he’s invented. It mimics the idea of the double-edged sword that some new discovery can be, for example, nuclear energy. That was something that both threatened human extinction and promised the solution to the energy crisis.
As much as the mechanism Weir invents for his MacGuffin is intensely improbable, still, once accepted as fact, the rest of the story follows logically and satisfyingly from this premise. He has this new “fact” introduced into the world and then spins that world around on it until he gets the wild ride that ensues.
So now he has interstellar travel at a respectable fraction of the speed of light, a reasonable excuse for an intelligent alien first encounter and throws that together with a likable protagonist who is swept along against his will by this cosmic catastrophe. What’s not to like?
But what I realize is that I’m going to have to up my game when I write my sequel. I’ve never fleshed out the rationale behind how Connors’ mining drone is able to do what it does. I just sort of waved my hands around and said “abracadabra!” Weir is careful to count up the zeros when he describes the amount of energy that his “astrophage” is able to store and discharge as the basis of his star drive. Sure, attributing a neutrino-based energy storage system to a one-celled animal living in the hard vacuum of space in the vicinity of a star is pure nonsense. But he does acknowledge the magnitude of the nonsense. And that does make it fun.
So, I’m a week in on the Kindle Unlimited program and I’ve got about a thousand pages sold. Now that’s like five books worth. Which is not much but the curve has been increasing for the last five days so I’ll keep an eye on this for a few weeks to see if it goes anywhere. If any of you guys currently uses Kindle Unlimited explain how it works. Do you read it on the website one page at a time or how does it work? It seems kind of clunky to me.
So, Camera Girl and I went to the Dunwich Spring Middle School Concert which includes both band and chorus sections at both the upper and lower levels. This is a remarkable experience because the range of accomplishment varies from fairly good to nonexistent. But realizing that the teacher has managed to get these children to even organize into an orchestra is almost inconceivable. The choral songs aren’t mostly to my taste. They tend to try to introduce a foreign language song that doesn’t translate to an American audience. One exception was Wimoweh (The Lion Sleeps Tonight). The Tokens version is a favorite of mine so I was excited. But something went wrong with the arrangement. As is typical in these school choruses the ratio of girls to boys is seven to one. So, the deeper voices are always practically missing in the song. But Wimoweh famously has a towering falsetto section and of course all those girls should have been able to translate it into a powerful soprano part. But instead, they had the three boys with their barely audible tenor voices whispering through this part. Oh, the pain.
But the highlight of the evening was the band giving their rendition of the theme to “Jurassic Park.” And the kids did a serviceable job of John Williams’ Fanfare for the Common Dinosaur. But the funniest thing was a kid sitting behind me. He must have been three years old and he started exclaiming loudly, “Giraffic Park, Giraffic Park!!!” at the top of his lungs and all the parents in the front rows started laughing. But the Conductor/Music Teacher never missed a beat and her band performed the miracle of producing a recognizable version of the popular melody.
I’ve started reading “Project Hail Mary.” My oldest grandson has loaned me his copy and I’m treating it with kid gloves since I remember what it was like when I had a mint hardback copy of an sf favorite. I’m a hundred pages in and it’s interesting. It’s definitely a millennial book. There’s a difference in the voice. It’s a kindler, gentler voice. There’s much more emotion. Now the protagonist is a Middle School teacher so you can say this is just the consequence of this particular character. But the choice of the character is part of this younger generation of readers and writers. Well, the book is good so far. It’s inventive and well-paced and has an interesting manner of unfolding the story. It starts in the middle and flashes back to the beginning but one flash at a time. Weir has come up with an interesting twist on an interstellar drive. It dovetails with the crisis that is forcing the need for a trip to Tau Ceti. Now I don’t think it’s a particularly plausible mechanism but it is entertaining for sure.
In the 1960’s and ‘70’s the science fiction that seemed to be the most interesting was as much about inner space as outer space. And even space stories like “Dune” were as much about human social interaction as they were about technology. Altered consciousness and new social norms in stories like “Stranger in a Strange Land” were what was in the air. As a kid and young man, I was more interested in science (meaning star ships and time travel!) but now that I’m old and disillusioned by how messed up our government has become, I think the kind of speculative fiction I’m interested in now is social science.
I’ve always made fun of Plato’s Republic because listening to him construct straw men and then knock them over with arguments that don’t hold water seemed beyond ludicrous. But I think we’re somewhat back to where the Greeks were sometime around the time of the Peloponnesian War. We’ve managed to lose social cohesion and the institutions and methods we use for choosing leaders and making laws have completely failed us. It’s not hard to see that we’re not far away from a crack-up that could do horrendous damage to our economy and the lives of everyday people.
I think it’s probably time for speculative fiction writers to start taking a few swipes at either predicting the future or at least providing cautionary tales about it. And that’s what I’m thinking of concentrating on in some of the stories I’m outlining right now. I’m interested in imagining what kinds of new arrangements people can organize to make their lives better. For instance, when local, state or federal governments start failing to secure the basic requirements of safety from theft and bodily injury for the citizens they supposedly serve, private entities could step in to secure these services. And once these non-governmental corporations start branching out the current arrangements we’re used to could cease to exist in ad hoc areas of the country without any formal acknowledgement of the change. This is not that different from what happened in the later Roman Empire. When Gaul started slipping away to the Franks the authority of the “Caesar” over the “Legions” who were mostly Franks became almost farcical.
So, I need to think a little bit about what kinds of new social and economic arrangements might be interesting and novel in the “world” I’m imagining. I’ve poked some holes in the American Empire and now I want to see what kinds of new things might grow up inside these holes. So, I have a locus of power (Connors’ network of enterprises and human assets) and someone running it who thinks on a larger basis than just building up tech monopolies to monetize what’s left of the American people’s legacy capital. What I want to see is if I can come up with some believable innovations that would lead people to rearrange their allegiances and social and commercial actions in ways that build something new and better than what we’ve been stuck with for the last fifty years.
What I’m trying to decide is whether Connors will try to control several states under his umbrella without outwardly absorbing these political jurisdictions. After all, voting for the interests of the company you work for is nothing new. Remember “What’s good for GM is good for America.” So that’s what I’m working on. The problem is I’m making it up as I go along.
I was just reading about the second serious scandal concerning AI generated fiction being published by experts in the world of publishing. In the last scandal Hatchette bought a self-published book because the author managed to attract a very large number of readers on her own. After they republished the book, it was discovered that there was a lot of very obvious AI generated content in it.
In the present scandal a prestigious contest that accepts fiction from amateurs living in the countries of the British Commonwealth had three of the five winners flagged by readers as being AI generated by a capable software used for this function.
Here’s a sample of the text:
“Wilfred’s rum-shop leaned into the road like a rotten tooth. Inside, boards blackened by smoke and sweat, the air sweet with cane and forgetting. Coins meant for rice or kerosene slid across the counter and came back white rum hot as apology. One drink opened the chest, two turned fear into courage’s cheap cousin, three steadied the hand enough to write the future in invisible ink.”
Okay, what the hell does “white rum hot as apology” mean? It doesn’t mean anything. It’s AI slop that it thinks sounds “poetic.”
Now five “Experts” picked this gibberish and declared it worthy of a prestigious award. Why? Well, the only thing I notice that both scandals include are woke publishing “experts” selecting the work of minority writers without bothering to see if it’s any good or even written by human beings.
The most hilarious aspect of the latest scandal is that the contest judges refuse to admit that they’ve been made to look like fools and the stories are still up on their site as the winners.
I watched a YouTube video by a young woman who considers herself a seasoned editor and although she agrees that the text is extremely unlikely not to be AI slop she does add the obligatory warning that we should remember that minority writers must not be singled out as more highly suspect just because they always seem to be the ones whose work slips through the editors who are afraid of being called racists if they look too closely at their work and find it’s not very good.
I guess it’s not enough that the publishing world gives precedence to any writer who isn’t a straight white man. Now they add robots as long as they’re not straight white male robots or at least not working under one of their names. Well, be that as it may, today I officially began work on the sequel to my book. I began the outline by writing out a bunch of plot lines to choose between.
Plot Threads
Update on Bogey and his life
Update on Grace and her boys
President Chastain’s crises
Constitutional Convention
Seceding States
Potential Military Insurrection
Personal Problems (health)
Relations with Connors’ Group
Connors’ crises
Disaffected Groups with His Organization
Relations with federal and state officials
Connors’ indecision and doubts
Disagreements with Cutter and others
Personal Problems (Grace, Bogey)
America’s Crisis of Instability
World’s Crisis of Instability
Technical Instability
So that’s a lot of stuff. I’m not sure all of these will be included but it’s always best to start with the kitchen sink and pare it back. Well, take that Chat GPT.
My experience with PKD through The Man In The High Castle is similar. It is beautiful prose and a fascinating idea but the sheer unpleasantness of the reading experience is off-putting. This is not to say I totally hate Dystopias. I think one of the most beautiful pieces of Science fiction (let alone Dystopias) is Walter M. Miller’s A Canticle for Liebowitz . With it’s Sarcastic Humor, and it’s crazy story that interweaves (Spoiler to a 60+ year old story the Wandering Jew wanders through all three sections and it MAKES SENSE) all sorts of mythology and Catholic and Christian trivia into a very odd resolution it is very compelling. I reread it, but not too often, it tears at the soul. Both PKD and Walter Miller (who later commits suicide likely due to PTSD from being a B-17 gunner in WWII in the raids on Dresden) were clearly troubled men. They are also very skilled writers. Their writing, to some degree, drags you into their madness, and this can be a very uncomfortable place to go. I do not find The Man in the High Castle compelling enough to experience the discomfort where A Canticle For Liebowitz seems to ultimately yield some release,
So, I wrote that review last night about “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.” And afterwards, I was surprised at just how negative my review was. I went to great lengths to stress that I thought it was a well written story. But I couldn’t disguise how little I liked the reading experience. I characterized the problem as being a matter of story type. It was an extreme example of dystopia where all the characters reflected a dismal outlook and nothing happy or positive intruded on the gloom.
And that got me thinking. Maybe my dislike of this genre was short-sighted. Possibly I was shutting myself off from treasures that lurked around every corner. And in agreement with that idea, I remembered how I had never been able to get myself to finish 1984. I skimmed through it several times but always got bogged down by just how depressing and irritating I found all the characters and plot.
So apparently, I am a literary lightweight. My guess is that I read fiction for enjoyment. And apparently, I don’t enjoy being depressed. That must explain why I gravitate toward action/adventure and scientific razzmatazz. I like reading stories where things happen and even if the bad guys are winning the good guys don’t roll over and play dead. Even better, I like it when the good guys are also the smart guys and win in the end. But either way I want there to be someone I can empathize with. And no one can empathize with someone whose highest aspiration is to own a sheep (living or mechanical) and have it live on the roof of his apartment building. PKD’s world is made up of mental cases of one type or another and while you may pity some crazy people, they’re really no fun to read about. Unless they’re somehow funny. And these people weren’t.
Maybe that makes me shallow but that’s where I stand. If I was writing 1984, I’d have an underground that did more than just exist as a shadow. I’d have them organize and expand and then one day rampage through the politburo and have Big Brother’s head nailed to the highest flag pole in the capitol. Or even if they fail, I’d have them go down fighting, not meekly cower under their beds waiting for the thought police to drag them off to the dungeon.
But I do wonder whether that puts me in the majority or the minority. Possibly I’m in the majority among my age group but in the minority among the current cohort of readers. So, I’m very interested in how the rest of you out there come down on this question. Are dystopias fun or not? And I’m talking about the real dreary, hopeless worlds. No shreds of joy or hope. Just misery and dysfunction as far as the eye can see. Tell me what you think and list a few examples of the various levels of joyless horror and how you would characterize the experience.
I won’t give a synopsis of the plot. If you’ve seen the movie “Blade Runner” then you have an approximate idea of the world and the action of the story. Rick Deckard is a bounty hunter who kills androids that break free of their service as bond slaves for humanity on Mars. He lives on an Earth where a remnant of humans remain who haven’t emigrated off-Earth. The Earth is contaminated with radioactive fallout called “the dust’ that is slowly mutating and killing every living thing. And many species have gone extinct and there is an almost cult-like love for animals that is expressed by owning farm animals like sheep and goats. And the extension of this cult is something called Mercerism that expresses empathy for all living things (except androids).
Let me give my impressions of Philip K. Dick’s writing and style. He is a very effective writer. His characters are sparingly but clearly represented and his narrative is interesting and cleverly crafted. He has carefully thought out many details of how this strange world works. The interpersonal interactions between Deckard and his wife, his boss, the androids, the other people in his surroundings are all consistent and keep you immersed in the story. He is a very talented science fiction writer. And if this book is representative of his type of story, he is not for me.
If I would sum up this book in one word it would be “dystopia.”
Everything in this book is downbeat. Deckard is depressed. His wife is practically suicidal. His boss is bleak. The owner of the corporation that makes the androids is harried. And finally, the androids are schizophrenic. The only ones who seem cheerful are the tv comics meant to sedate the populace and the pet salesmen who sell overpriced animals and fake animals to the desperate remnant of Earth’s human population.
So, here’s the thing. I think PKD is a major talent and I’m sure his reputation as a talented author is well deserved. And I’m sure there is a large audience for his type of fiction. Unfortunately, I’m not a part of that audience. I’m not a hopeless dystopia kind of guy. That doesn’t mean I need utopia. I don’t mind crises and catastrophes. But a story that has absolutely no one to root for just doesn’t inspire me to keep reading. If everyone in the story is a neurotic basket case and no one can summon the will to try and overcome the awful things that are happening in the story; or if morally speaking, the “good guys” are completely indistinguishable from the “bad guys” then why the hell should I care who wins or loses?
So, yeah, this is a good book. But it’s not for me. I’ll probably read a few more PKD “masterpieces” to see if there’s anything for me. If they’re all like this then I’m going to assume that the author was an extremely unhappy man and if I don’t want to end up that way myself, I should move on to greener sf pastures.
I was listening to an interview that Philip K Dick (PKD) made back in May 1979. Now I’ve never read any of his stories. Of course, I’ve seen Blade Runner and I have heard him described as one of the best science fiction writers of all time so I’ve always meant to get ahold of a few of his books and read them but between work and wife and kids and life I’ve just never had a chance.
So, when I saw this YouTube audio-file I listened to it. It’s two hours long and some of it is kind of hard to believe. But it is extremely interesting. I would say PKD was a very intelligent man but I’m pretty sure his grasp on reality was extremely tenuous on certain subjects. He believed that at one point he was possessed by some kind of spirit or intelligence that controlled him and fixed a lot of his financial and even health problems. And listening to him describe this chapter in his life it’s hard not to assume that either he was dealing with some kind of split personality or he was suffering from schizophrenia.
Now based on what I’ve read about PKD’s fiction he was intrigued with the idea that reality wasn’t what we think it is. That different people experienced radically different perceptions of reality and maybe none of these perceptions were particularly accurate. And so, with this type of belief I could see how he might accept versions of reality that most people would find absurd.
Now, in the audio-recording he is asked by the interviewer about his use of drugs and their impact on his mind and writing. PKD goes to great lengths to deny that he used LSD more than once. He claimed that the drug he abused was an amphetamine that he used to be able to produce prodigious amounts of fiction writing. The implication was that his drug use did not affect his writing by altering his mind. And maybe this was true. But listening to this man I got the distinct impression that even if LSD wasn’t the source of his delusions, that he was indeed substantially untethered from reality in a lot of his beliefs about the world around him. In short, I think he was in some sense insane.
So, how does this jibe with his undeniable creative talent? I think that both these things can be true at the same time. Look at Vincent van Gogh. He was undeniably a creative genius in his field of art but he was also a tortured madman who finally killed himself to escape his mental anguish. So, whether PKD was driven insane by his drug use (of whatever substances) or whether his mind was damaged for whatever other reasons there might have been, his grasp on reality (or lack thereof) did not stop him from producing very entertaining science fiction. And perhaps it was his delusions that actually made his stories so interesting. Strange man. Well, I’ll start with “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” and see how I like it. Maybe I’ll read some more.