I’ve mentioned the movie “Constantine” tangentially while discussing comic book movies and some other topics that occupied me back a few years ago. This 2005 movie stars Keanu Reeves as a Los Angeles based exorcist and general enemy of demonic forces. He’s a sort of angsty noir character who is angry at heaven since he is doomed to hell because he attempted suicide as a teenager over the horror he experienced as a psychic.
The movie follows a “logic” about the rules in place for angels and demons that makes absolutely no sense but allows for the plot devices that move the story along its arc. And much of the action is plodding and mechanical. And yet I find myself watching this turkey (or parts of it) over and over again. Why?
Well, the two aspects of the movie that stand out in my head are two very different things. The first item is the visualization of Hell. You could say this is just a special effects technique but it really is a rich imagining of the underworld. The idea of Hell as our own world but turned into a burned-out husk makes for a vivid background. And then the demons as these mutilated corpses with the tops of their heads sheared off is bizarrely fitting.
But the second item is, I think, the more compelling. It is the representation of Lucifer during his arrival to harvest the soul of Constantine. As promised in the country song, the devil wears a white suit. As played by Peter Stormare, Lucifer is a witty, amiable fellow who enjoys chatting with his old acquaintance Constantine prior to bringing him back to Hell where he claims he has “a whole theme park full of red delights” for Constantine to “enjoy.” He even helps Constantine light his cigarette when the exorcist can’t manage his lighter because of the cut finger tendons incurred when he slit his own wrists in order to summon up Lucifer. Of course, the devil can’t help pulling the flame away two or three times just for fun. It’s this pettiness and banality that adds interest to the part. It’s contrasted with the menace that shows through whenever Lucifer’s plans are challenged either by demon, angel or divine law itself. But it’s the human face of evil that makes Lucifer compelling. His vindictiveness, cruelty and pride show up as the proof that angels, devils and man are all creations of the same maker. We all have the same stamp. We’ve been given free will and we can use it to reach a higher ground or fall off the mountain.
So that’s why I guess I enjoy watching this silly movie (or at least parts of it). Not for the absurd plot or the goofy take on Christian theology as it relates to Hell. I guess I just like to think about Satan being this provincial, bureaucratic apparatchik fighting with humans and God to protect his turf and cause as much mischief as he can. It just seems to fit what I’ve seen of human nature. At least some of it.
Well, I’ve been having so much fun with the recent science fiction discussions I thought I’d reminisce about the science fiction stories that had the biggest effect on me when I was first starting out reading science fiction. And the one that really impressed me the most early on was Heinlein’s short story collection “The Green Hills of Earth.”
I think it was my introduction to his “Future History” stories. And I remember that reading these stories was different from anything else I had read up to this point. With the space opera stories even as a child I could sense that there was a lot of handwaving going on to justify all the faster than light travel, humanoid aliens and super-duper energy weapons and shields that somehow translated 19th century naval exploration and warfare into interstellar adventure.
His stories attempted to describe the nuts and bolts of building space stations and lunar colonies based on the best information that existed at the time. Some of the stories (about Mars and Venus) were highly inaccurate. But the stories about the Moon are still quite close to what could and maybe will be accomplished. In that vein I think the story that exemplifies Heinlein’s ability to make believable his picture of a lunar human environment is “Gentlemen, Be Seated!” And the plot and characters are both so skillfully sketched that disbelief is completely suspended right through to the end.
Now some of the stories aren’t that believable. “—We Also Walk Dogs” involves a very clever story about a consulting business that accepts the assignment of inventing artificial gravity in order to accommodate aliens from worlds that have both higher and lower gravity than Earth during a conference on Earth. Basically, they bribe a brilliant physicist to accomplish this “simple” task by stealing a museum artifact that he covets. As I said, it’s a ridiculous premise but Heinlein portrays the Machiavellian machinations of this seemingly unlimited consulting firm very skillfully and with great gusto. So that even a story as unbelievable as this one is enjoyed on its own terms.
And that’s the thing with most of these stories. The writing is so skillful that the reader never feels let down by the quality of the stories. The characters are interesting and for the most part believable. The plots are clever and as I said in many cases plausible. And at the time this was far from typical in the stories that could be found on the science fiction shelf in the library or book store.
Here’s a list of the stories that were in that collection. See if any are or were favorites of yours.
“Delilah and the Space Rigger” (1949; originally published in Blue Book)
“Space Jockey” (1947; originally published in The Saturday Evening Post)
“The Long Watch” (1949; originally published in The American Legion Magazine)
“Gentlemen, Be Seated!” (1948; originally published in Argosy Magazine)
“The Black Pits of Luna” (1948; originally published in The Saturday Evening Post)
“It’s Great to Be Back!” (1947; originally published in The Saturday Evening Post)
“—We Also Walk Dogs” (1941; originally published in Astounding Science Fiction)
“Ordeal in Space” (1948; originally published in Town & Country)
“The Green Hills of Earth” (1947; originally published in The Saturday Evening Post)
“Logic of Empire” (1941; originally published in Astounding Science Fiction)
Long ago my wife and daughters found my pronouncements amusing. I codified them in a set of rules (which became referred to as the Rules of Acquisition after the Ferengi rules in ST: Deep Space 9). I have three related to fiction and opinions
16. Opinions are like certain bodily orifices. Critically important but not something decent people expose in public.
17. In fiction (Written, Visual, or Interactive) I desire a story and escape. If I want morals I’ll hear a sermon, if I want to work at something I’ll go to work and get paid for it.
18. This is not to say a writer or other content producer may NOT provide meaning or morals. Just don’t shove it in my face unceasingly (Remember that orifice in rule 16? You wouldn’t shove that in my face either).
And yes Clarke and Asimov are far more of the “Idea” arm of SciFi. Asimov often has to work to make his male characters two dimensional. His female characters rarely rose to that and are almost literally paper cutouts. Clarke uses some stereotypes in his early short stories, but almost all his stories even the Big ones like 2001 , Childhood’s End and Rendevous with Rama depend far more on story (and the first two are reusing parts of several short stories pasted together) than on character. I think it is why Asimov and Clarke excel in the shorter forms (up to about Novella) but struggle more ion the longer forms. This may also stem from the fact that from mid ’40s to mid 60’s the primary form (and most financially viable form) of Scifi was the magizines either as short stories or serialized for longer pieces. These forms make character development harder I would think.
Well, that was so much fun I thought I’d try for another one:
photog’s Second Law of Science Fiction – Thou shalt not bore the poor reader to death.
And really this should be the first law because it really is essential. Honestly, if the reader is interested, he will probably forgive anything else; excessive use of time travel, repetitive battle scenes, gratuitous sex and violence, even scurrilous attacks on political enemies. As long as the story keeps the reader’s interest, it’s a success.
Now this is an iron law for any kind of fiction. But because different genres have different readers it behooves the author to pay attention to what his particular genre considers interesting. So, if you write romantasy you must make sure you include plenty of female protagonists being ravaged by minotaurs or some other equally absurd mythical beast.
But if you write science fiction and especially if you write hard science fiction you have to make sure you can pass the science literacy test when it comes to the gadgets and phenomena that you hang your tale on. So, that’s step one.
Step two is to make the characters and the plot interesting. And this is where some of the best hard sf writers are found lacking. For myself, personally, Arthur C Clarke seemed to have a hard time writing characters that were actual people. Most of the time there just didn’t seem to be a recognizable human being on the page. And I’m not saying he was a bad writer. He wasn’t. He was quite skilled. It just seemed that he didn’t care about the human aspect in the story. Now compare this to Isaac Asimov. When I recently (four or five years ago) reread the Foundation books I thought the plot was at times marginal. But even the less developed characters seemed to have recognizable voices and personalities. Asimov managed to make the characters seem somewhat alive. And live humans are interesting to live humans. And since the people buying books are (for the most part) live humans it becomes critically important to write characters that appeal to the book buying public.
And that is why even the most technically savvy sf author must (in my opinion) learn how to simulate human characters. And that is okay. Because we don’t expect Tolstoy. You can make the characters resemble almost any humans you’ve ever met. In fact, it’s better if you mix it up and include a bunch of different types. This will help to avoid the serious problem of all your characters sounding and thinking exactly like you. And believe me, that is a big problem.
So, I guess the second law means that a good science fiction writer must also be a good writer in general if he doesn’t want to fail miserably.
Last week I reviewed “Project Hail Mary” and I approved of it as high quality science fiction. But am I being consistent? Should I be calling it fantasy? In other words, can a story based on a completely impossible premise be considered science anything? So, let’s talk about this.
Andy Weir used a microorganism of extraterrestrial origin as the basis for his story. This lifeform which he called astrophage had a complement of remarkable properties that made it both the source of an existential threat to human existence on Earth and the key to human interstellar travel. Astrophage can convert light into mass and it can also convert mass into light. This is “explained” by claiming that it can harness the energy produced when neutrinos and their anti-matter opposites (which apparently are also just neutrinos) annihilate each other forming light. So somehow, the living cell can store neutrinos and then harvest them to produced light that can be used as a motive force to propel the astrophage at velocities approaching light speed.
Okay, this is gibberish. None of those things can be done in a particle accelerator, never mind inside the protoplasm of a cell. So, all of this is no different than E. E. Doc Smith pointing to his “inertialess” drive that allows the Galactic Patrol and their Boskonian enemies to hurtle through interstellar space at many time the speed of light. It’s just hand-waving to allow the action in the story to occur in a time period that allows for a fun story.
Now, granted, Weir at least restricts his velocities to the limit that General Relativity permits. And he allows time dilation and other relativistic effects to govern the fate of his astronauts. But having his starship reach 0.92 c is based on an energy production method that is completely inexplicable by any physics or biology that we can point to.
So, why isn’t that fantasy?
I think I’m going to invent a rule of science fiction.
photog’s First Law of Science Fiction – Thou shalt not change more than one basic law of physics when making a good story.
So, if Andy Weir wants astrophage to have a biological basis for matter/antimatter conversion then everything else about his story has to be “legit.” So, he can use astrophage as his workaround for amazing energy density for things like interstellar flight but everything else still requires the laws of physics, chemistry and biology to work the way they do in the real world. Now some folks might begrudge him xenonite because somehow, he turned a noble gas into unobtanium but there’s enough wiggle room in chemistry so that depending on what else besides xenon is in xenonite we could imagine all the properties of this make-believe material without calling down the lightning of the gods of the periodic table.
So, I think that’s fair. If you only make up one crazy make-believe MacGuffin to allow for the action in your story then I won’t cry foul and demote the story to the depths of the fantasy dungeon. I mean, who could ask for more than that.
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.
