Category: photog’s Corner

Here you will find the stuff that shouldn’t be mixed in the other categories but interest me. caveat emptor.

photog’s Second Law of Science Fiction

photog 3 Comments Book Reviews, My Fiction, photog's Corner, Reviews, Science Fiction / Fantasy, SF&F Book Reviews

Yesterday I formulated my first law 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.

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.

Word Count

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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.

Well, anyway that’s how it seems to me.

Antifa and the Hidden Hand

photog 5 Comments Current Events, My Fiction, photog's Corner, Trump , , ,

So, I saw this article:

Bessent says IRS and FBI investigation into antifa has made ‘substantial progress’

“What to know

  • Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confirmed progress in the IRS-FBI antifa investigation.
  • New IRS guidance will hold grant-making organizations responsible for violent recipients.
  • Antifa is labeled a militant anarchist organization by the Trump administration.
  • The executive order cites antifa’s violent activities and attempts to overthrow the government.

The memo and the antifa executive order targeted the tax-exempt status of foundations funding civil society groups. The memo instructed the IRS commissioner to ensure that no tax-exempt entities are directly or indirectly financing political violence or domestic terrorism.”

So, the gist of this investigation is identifying NGOs that are providing funds and other aid to antifa and use it as a reason to strip them of their tax-exempt status and then prosecute them for the aid they’re providing antifa in its illegal activities.

It sounds like a good strategy.  Of course, the various antifa legal fronts will challenge all this in every commie-sympathizing jurisdiction (NY, CA, D.C., OR, etc.) but the Supreme Court has been very supportive of the administration’s attempts to go after rogue elements of the Left so there’s a good chance all this will move forward.

Based on the assassination attempts against Trump, Charlie Kirk and that healthcare CEO, these antifa psychos are extremely dangerous and need to be defunded, rounded up and put away for a very long time.

On an unrelated and much more positive development my Kindle Unlimited page views have continued to increase:

Tonight, has been the highest page count to date (407 pages) and that curve looks pretty encouraging (so far).  I won’t try to make too much soup with such a little bit of meat but we authors have to take our solace where we find it.  Now, I’d prefer that it was 407 million pages but we all have to start somewhere.

Now based on my years of experience extrapolating curves based on limited data it’s obvious to me that the next data point will be 800 pages followed shortly by 1,600 pages and by obvious curve fitting this will turn into an asymptote by June 7th at which point the number of pages will reach infinity and Amazon will have to proclaim me the new James Patterson.  Of course I shouldn’t say this quite yet.  You never know.  I could be wrong.  It might take all the way until June 15th for all of this to reach its crescendo.  So, I’ll just bide my time and maintain a humble façade.  I’ll practice my gracious acceptance speech, “Oh no, I’m not worthy!  I’m not worthy!  I’d like to thank all the little people.  If I’ve seen farther, it’s not because I’ve stood on the shoulders of giants but rather, because I am a super-giant.  And I want to cast aspersions on those who tried to hold back my reputation.  All those who claimed I wasn’t greater than their favorites; all those fanboys of Shakespeare or Tolstoy or Tolkien or whomever!  Bah!  Tired hacks and amateurs.  Their memories will be swept away like chaff from the wheat in the glorious sunshine of my new day.”

Or something like that.

29MAY2026 – OCF Update – This’N’That

photog 2 Comments Book Reviews, Current Events, OCF, photog's Corner, Reviews, Science Fiction / Fantasy, SF&F Book Reviews , , ,

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.

Well, that’s enough.

Robert’s Rules of Order, Optional

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So we’re in the thick of this mid-term election cycle here in Dunwich.  And just as all over the country election holders that have strayed from what their party wants are being primaried out of their candidacies, so there have been several candidates who showed up at the Town Hall to take out papers to run against the First Selectmen.

Now this isn’t unprecedented.  Every few years someone moves into town and after experiencing just how “difficult” conditions are in town government, decides to throw his hat in the ring.  Now usually after seeing that First Selectman Cthulhu’s hat is thirty feet in diameter the incipient “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” type picks up his hat out of the ring and slinks back home.  But this year’s Mr. Smith (specifically a fellow named Ned Parson) was made of sterner stuff.  He paid his registration fee and showed up in front of Town Hall and challenged the First Selectman to a debate.

Cthulhu nodded his head and told his secretary to set up a public meeting on Sentinel Hill on the following Monday.  Sentinel Hill is convenient for meetings involving the First Selectman because if the humans are standing on the top of the hill and Cthulhu stands at the base, his head is only slightly above their level.  Also the acoustics are such that Cthulhu can usually hear mostly everything spoken by the humans.  And this is important.  Because if he can’t hear what’s being said, he tends to think he’s being disrespected and that usually ends poorly.

Last Monday it was cold and cloudy but there was a decent crowd, maybe fifty townspeople milling around the podium at the top of the hill.  And on the podium Ned Parson was dressed as Uncle Sam including the beard.  He was throwing buttons to the crowd that said “Be Led by Ned!!!” along with shooting off some confetti poppers.  He seemed confident, almost jubilant.  As the noon hour approached the First Selectman rumbled up to his station on the valley floor.  His facial expression was as usual unreadable but his breathing seemed to be a little noisier than usual.  There might also have been a certain grinding of his teeth audible but not very loudly.

At noon the Town Clerk climbed the podium and read the description of the event; “Debate for First Selectman Office.”  She added that Ned Parson had one the coin toss and would speak first.  Ned proceeded, “My fellow Dunwichians, I stand before you today prepared to finally convert this town from a weird dysfunctional outpost into a modern, progressive New England town.  For too long you’ve all suffered under the inefficient, corrupt and depressing administration of my opponent.  For too long you’ve been unable to get town services or even the comfort of knowing a constabulary stood ready during outbreaks of vampirism or lycanthropy to protect life and property.  I have the support of the local surrounding towns and I will bring our standards up to those of our neighbors.  I will not stand still.  I will move forward and I will make a big splash in this little place.”

The Town Clerk thanked Ned and then asked the First Selectman for his rebuttal.  Cthulhu reached down to the podium and closed his hand around Ned, winding up he threw a perfect strike.  Ned splatted against the rock face of Mt Bishop leaving a sizable red stain.  Cthulhu guffawed, “That little man was right, he made a big splash.”

Well, as debates go, it was to the point.

Relevant Science Fiction – Part 1

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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, Robot Author

photog 4 Comments Book Reviews, Current Events, Literature, My Fiction, OCF, photog's Corner, Reviews, Science Fiction / Fantasy, SF&F Book Reviews , ,

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
    1. Constitutional Convention
    2. Seceding States
    3. Potential Military Insurrection
    4. Personal Problems (health)
    5. Relations with Connors’ Group
  • Connors’ crises
    1. Disaffected Groups with His Organization
    2. Relations with federal and state officials
    3. Connors’ indecision and doubts
    4. Disagreements with Cutter and others
    5. 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.

Catching Up with Becky

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So, now I have to start writing my next book.  And as I decided after finishing the last one, this time I must outline the story ahead of time.  Sure, it’s less fun than just starting to type and see where it ends up.  But it’s also so much less dangerous.  I remember in the last third of “The Sniper” I painted myself into a corner and I had to delete five thousand words and start off in another direction.  And I got seriously confused and had to do a bunch of outlining anyway, so I might as well do some big picture plot planning at the beginning and leave the fine tuning to my unconscious while it’s flowing through my fingertips.

But it’s funny.  It’s not plot events that have been running through my head lately.  It’s characters.  I feel like I want more people and different people showing up in the story this time around.  I want some humorous characters showing up.  I might even want a joke or two being told.  And I think I want an academic type and maybe even an actor.  I was listening to some Shakespeare recently.  It was John Gielgud reciting “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” from Macbeth.  And it struck me that a little poetry and a little philosophy might be a lot of fun to write into even a story like mine.  Now, mind you, I said a little poetry.  And it doesn’t have to look like poetry.  It just has to signify to me that maybe the character on the page has an immortal soul after all.

And as for philosophy, well, it can be practical philosophy.  It can be political philosophy.  And what could be more timely than political philosophy in this time of collapsing republics and demagogues.  Who knows, maybe Connors and Cutter may discuss the application of artificial intelligence to the problem of optimizing life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in North America after the end of Boghadair’s War.  Perhaps a completely impartial intelligence could be conjured up to play Solomon to modern day Americans who no longer seem able to live and let live.  Maybe it can cut the baby in half in some modern sense and return us to a functioning society again.  And when I mention Solomon, I think it’s partially because I think there’s a religious (or at least spiritual) dimension to our problems and for which a spiritual solution is necessary.  And Christian revivals are a recurring theme in American history.  And I’m sure I’m not the only one thinking we all need a spiritual boost just about now.

So, yeah, I haven’t got a working plot outline yet but I think it’s time to start.  As I’ve said, I think Bogey will not be dragged into the main action any time soon but personally he’s tied intimately to several important characters and I’m sure he’ll interact with them.  Plus, I have to find out what happened with him and Becky.  That sounded interesting.

Fame and Fortune

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So yesterday I finally got my book onto Kindle Unlimited.  Huzzah!!!

An then I waited.  And I waited.  And I waited.  A day later the page counter for KENP stood at zero.  This seemed unpromising.  So, I closed down the laptop and did something else.

I took a juvenile milk snake that I found hiding under the famous copper sheet and shot a photo shoot of his best profile.  And then we had lunch and worked on some other projects.  I put an air conditioning unit in one of the windows and I started weeding the raspberry patch and I helped clean some kind of ooze that had accumulated on the new fish pond.

And when I checked the KENP after all that, the counter was at one!  Now that’s not one book that’s one page.  So, if a book pays me forty cents what does a page earn me?  Well, you can do the math.  If the book is about two hundred and fifty-two pages long then that page is worth 0.15873 cents in cold hard cash.  If Jeff Bezos took a penny and a pair of tin snips (zinc snips?) and did some rudimentary trigonometric calculations he could probably nip off an arc from the edge of the coin that would somewhat represent this hefty sum.  So, I shut down the laptop again and began to recalibrate my plans to purchase that summer home on Martha’s Vineyard.

I began reading some more of “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.”  You know this PKD is a very talented writer but I don’t think he spent a lot of his life smiling.  In fact, I think WWIII was probably one of the lighter topics he thought about.  He’s got the extinction of most animal species, widespread human chromosomal damage, widespread human brain damage and bizarre religious tendencies as the window dressing of his highly depressed main characters.  After a little of this I decided to take a break.  Apparently, this wasn’t going to be Harrison Ford and Daryl Hannah.  It’s going to be a lot less chirpy.  So, I got in touch with the First Selectman and arranged a special meeting to discuss my succession plan as his special assistant in charge of burying the bodies.  Unfortunately, the committee was unable to locate anyone stupid enough to agree to the position.  I came home a few hours later and checked my KENP counter.  It was seventeen pages.  That’s 2.6984 cents.  Well!  Now we’re getting somewhere.  At this rate I’ll be able to afford my favorite Dunkin Donuts donut (an old fashioned) by Fall.

And I think my addition to the Kindle Unlimited rolls has netted me my first troll.  He was pretending to be a fairly successful non-fiction author but was unaware that he wasn’t supposed to be a fiction author so his answers didn’t track with that.  I brought this to his attention and he started making incoherent sentences.  Well, what can you do?  Now that I’m on the road to fame and fortune everyone wants a piece of me.  J K Rowlings eat your heart out.