I have a pet peeve about stories with aliens. It's when I read about aliens that are described in loving and extensive detail as incredibly, immeasurably different from humans - and then they have a recognizably human culture. My brain rebels, and I feel I want to apologize to the author for being unable to stay in the story, after this person went to all the trouble to give these creatures the marvelous alien science, the ecology and physiological background. But if I can hardly comprehend the alien physiology, then I feel I should hardly be able to understand their sense of self and culture, either. If I can, there's a problem.
So is the solution to take our lovingly crafted aliens and give them a wildly different culture?
Not necessarily.
In any SF/F story, it's important to consider the information burden you're placing on your reader. It's not that readers can't handle complexity - in fact, SF/F readers are generally unusually receptive to complexity and difference - but if that complexity goes in all directions, then you have a problem. The story seems to be all over the place.
So ask yourself, "What is my story about?"
This isn't an idle question. It's an issue of focus. If your alien's culture is the central issue of the story, as it usually is with my stories, then there's no point in distracting from the cultural issues by making their physiology vastly different. The culture and the physiology have to match, but they needn't match precisely - as long as the two can fit together acceptably, that's all you need. So I personally try to use familiar knowledge sets on the physiological front, and build the culture outward from there with the quirks that I want to focus on.
On the other hand, if alien physiology is the central issue, then you don't really need that much complexity in culture - just make sure that the culture fits the ecology and the physiology and don't worry about delving into complexity. Of course, there are happy mediums on both sides.
I would say that my story, Cold Words, is an example of a story where culture is central and physiology is matched to it, but kept relatively simple. An example of a story that focuses on divergent alien physiology is the story "Doctor Alien" by Rajnar Vajra (Analog Jan/Feb 2009). In that story, there are four different types of aliens, each of which has vastly different physiology - but Vajra keeps his focus. How? By making the whole point be "we know nothing about these guys and their culture." The alien merchants are a mystery - tentacles are involved - and though their behavior is adapted to fit ours in a highly amusing way, they're capable of unpredictable and dangerous behavior and you'd better not cross them because we don't know how they think. Oh, and by the way, they're asking the doctor about the behavior of three other aliens, each one with a vastly divergent physiology. Here, Doctor, figure these guys out because we don't know how they think. It works brilliantly, because the divergences are the point. They are the puzzle that the doctor has to figure out. The story is focused.
Think about this as you're designing a story. Don't necessarily shrink away from making the world as complicated as you want to, but when you go setting a story there, keep the focus small. I have some very complex aliens that I'm working with now (otters!), and while their physiology is otterlike and thus predictable in some respects, they have more than one major cultural thread that can influence their behavior. I tried to put both together into a story and it got out of hand. So I changed the whole scenario, so that both of the threads are present, but only one is the source of the main story conflict. Only one is really at stake. I can save the other one for later.
Think through the focus of each story you write. If you can keep all of its complexities matching up in such a way that they serve the story's main conflict, then your readers will be able to tell, and be able to follow better.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
World Fantasy Convention is coming!
I'm not sure if this precisely counts as an appearance, since I'm not going to be on any panels, but I'm headed for World Fantasy Convention this coming Halloween weekend. There will be lots of interesting panels and interesting people there. I'm hoping to hear two of my favorite authors read, Kij Johnson and Patricia McKillip. I'm really lucky that it's in San Jose this year - right around the corner!
If any of you are also going, let me know and we can try to cross paths there.
If any of you are also going, let me know and we can try to cross paths there.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Ursula K. LeGuin's birthday
I learned online today that it is the birthday of Ursula K. LeGuin - and I feel that this isn't something that should pass without comment, at least by me. I don't remember quite which day it was, or precisely how old I was, but I remember reading LeGuin and being terribly impressed with how real everything felt in it. When I mentioned this to my mother, she told me it could have something to do with the fact that Ursula K. LeGuin was the daughter of an anthropologist, Alfred L. Kroeber (her mother was a writer).
When I think about this now I wonder if it wasn't a moment that planted a seed in my head. Not that I detected it at the time.
I heartily recommend LeGuin's work to everyone, from her Earthsea books to The Left Hand of Darkness, The Telling, and Changing Planes... The list goes on and on. Her style is generally straightforward rather than florid, but the way she puts things will make you think. I did an analysis of her writing (a Ridiculously Close Look) earlier in this blog, which you can check out if you're interested, here.
In The Left Hand of Darkness she takes on the question of gender. This is central to our way of thinking, and she's put together a story that questions all of that by dealing with a people who have no gender - or who have both, depending on how you view it. One of the things I like about the story is that she uses multiple different means to convey her extensive thoughts on the subject of the people of Winter and their gender. She shows a human man's viewpoint on these people, and how he struggles with things like pronouns etc. But she doesn't stop there. She also takes us into the native perspective, allowing us to forget about the difficulty of pronouns and consider another view of human behavior. And she tells myths of these people, which speak volumes to a reader about what kinds of things are considered basic traits of human behavior in a vastly different model. There's too much richness here to consider it merely a feminist piece. If you never read it, you'll really be missing out.
When I first started writing, I thought to myself that I wanted to write like Ursula K. LeGuin. I discovered thereafter that my natural style wasn't much like hers - so I'm a bit more realistic about that at this point - but the fact remains that she was my first inspiration. The world is a richer place for her being in it.
Happy birthday, Ms. LeGuin, and thank you.
When I think about this now I wonder if it wasn't a moment that planted a seed in my head. Not that I detected it at the time.
I heartily recommend LeGuin's work to everyone, from her Earthsea books to The Left Hand of Darkness, The Telling, and Changing Planes... The list goes on and on. Her style is generally straightforward rather than florid, but the way she puts things will make you think. I did an analysis of her writing (a Ridiculously Close Look) earlier in this blog, which you can check out if you're interested, here.
In The Left Hand of Darkness she takes on the question of gender. This is central to our way of thinking, and she's put together a story that questions all of that by dealing with a people who have no gender - or who have both, depending on how you view it. One of the things I like about the story is that she uses multiple different means to convey her extensive thoughts on the subject of the people of Winter and their gender. She shows a human man's viewpoint on these people, and how he struggles with things like pronouns etc. But she doesn't stop there. She also takes us into the native perspective, allowing us to forget about the difficulty of pronouns and consider another view of human behavior. And she tells myths of these people, which speak volumes to a reader about what kinds of things are considered basic traits of human behavior in a vastly different model. There's too much richness here to consider it merely a feminist piece. If you never read it, you'll really be missing out.
When I first started writing, I thought to myself that I wanted to write like Ursula K. LeGuin. I discovered thereafter that my natural style wasn't much like hers - so I'm a bit more realistic about that at this point - but the fact remains that she was my first inspiration. The world is a richer place for her being in it.
Happy birthday, Ms. LeGuin, and thank you.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Hockey games and societal release of energy
I said I'd write a post about going to see the Sharks play hockey, so here I am. I'm not a typical sports fan, myself - I like to watch superb athleticism, teamwork, and coordination with as few breaks as possible, but I don't tend to get heavily riled up if the Sharks lose a game. In a way I suppose it's my tendency to distance myself that makes me good at seeing things from an anthropological perspective. I feel the disappointment, but I say, "It's a game; it's not that important." And it works.
On the other hand, there's something wonderful about being a part of an enormous crowd. When the Sharks score a goal the surge of noise is incredible, and I stand and shout and jump with everyone. That thrill isn't feigned. It's the same kind of transport I feel when I listen to a taiko drum concert. Being picked up and carried by the noise, and the rhythms. Feeling a part of something enormous. It releases a particular kind of energy that can't be released in any other way I know of. This is an energy that is visceral, and when it comes in enormous crowd form, it's most often channeled to keep it from getting ugly (but not always, as with English soccer hooligans).
The crowd-scale expression of visceral emotion performs a vital function in a society - so if the society you're creating lacks this, you might want to consider filling the gap with something. Gladiator spectacle. Sports. Drum or rock concerts. Massive dance gatherings. Something.
Here's a pet peeve of mine. In Star Wars: The Phantom Menace you had this incredibly oppressive society, and everyone got together to watch pod races in which participants could quite easily be killed. And everybody was smiling, silly and excited, and the movie spent tons of time showing us how amusing all the pod racers were. My brain said, "No way." I think Anakin's mom and I were some of the only ones who knew what the more realistic scenario would have been. Exhilaration and terror. A crowd on the verge of murder.
Societies will tend to control personal behavior to different degrees. And each society will control behavior to a different extent at different times of life. Very often you'll find that there are opportunities for extravagance and deviant behavior built into a particular life model. Japan puts a lot of stringent controls on children up until their graduation from high school, and again following their entry into the workforce - but they relax those to a maximal extent in the college years, for those who attend college. In my story, "Let the Word Take Me," I built a society that had extremely strong rules about speech behavior, requiring speech to occur only in certain ways under certain conditions - and to counter that, I built in a coming-of-age period in which new discoveries and new uses for speech were not only allowed, but required.
I'm not saying we should all have worlds that contain sports. But it is important to realize that human energy doesn't always stay in a highly organized form, and as we build societies, to include opportunities for that more chaotic side of human energy to show itself.
On the other hand, there's something wonderful about being a part of an enormous crowd. When the Sharks score a goal the surge of noise is incredible, and I stand and shout and jump with everyone. That thrill isn't feigned. It's the same kind of transport I feel when I listen to a taiko drum concert. Being picked up and carried by the noise, and the rhythms. Feeling a part of something enormous. It releases a particular kind of energy that can't be released in any other way I know of. This is an energy that is visceral, and when it comes in enormous crowd form, it's most often channeled to keep it from getting ugly (but not always, as with English soccer hooligans).
The crowd-scale expression of visceral emotion performs a vital function in a society - so if the society you're creating lacks this, you might want to consider filling the gap with something. Gladiator spectacle. Sports. Drum or rock concerts. Massive dance gatherings. Something.
Here's a pet peeve of mine. In Star Wars: The Phantom Menace you had this incredibly oppressive society, and everyone got together to watch pod races in which participants could quite easily be killed. And everybody was smiling, silly and excited, and the movie spent tons of time showing us how amusing all the pod racers were. My brain said, "No way." I think Anakin's mom and I were some of the only ones who knew what the more realistic scenario would have been. Exhilaration and terror. A crowd on the verge of murder.
Societies will tend to control personal behavior to different degrees. And each society will control behavior to a different extent at different times of life. Very often you'll find that there are opportunities for extravagance and deviant behavior built into a particular life model. Japan puts a lot of stringent controls on children up until their graduation from high school, and again following their entry into the workforce - but they relax those to a maximal extent in the college years, for those who attend college. In my story, "Let the Word Take Me," I built a society that had extremely strong rules about speech behavior, requiring speech to occur only in certain ways under certain conditions - and to counter that, I built in a coming-of-age period in which new discoveries and new uses for speech were not only allowed, but required.
I'm not saying we should all have worlds that contain sports. But it is important to realize that human energy doesn't always stay in a highly organized form, and as we build societies, to include opportunities for that more chaotic side of human energy to show itself.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Weddings, speech acts and symbolism
My kids participated in a wedding over last weekend. It was great fun, we got dressed up, and they got the honor of walking down the aisle. They took it so seriously, and they did a lovely job.
Weddings are fascinating from an anthropological and linguistic point of view, too. They represent a complete change of state, but not one that can be physically measured. The change is entirely intangible, but changes everything about the way society treats the married couple. The way they are referred to by others, the way they speak to one another, the kinds of expectations that are held for them by family and friends, the kinds of rights granted to them by law, etc.
At the center of the ceremony is a sequence of speech acts. I may write more about them in another post, but for now if you're curious, you can go look them up, along with John Searle, a pragmaticist who worked with them quite a bit. Effectively, speech acts (also called illocutionary acts) are actions that are done by being said: requests, invitations, refusals. By saying it, you've done it. The speech acts of marrying include the vows: "I do," "I, XXX, take you, YYY...etc." and the pronouncement of the marriage by the celebrant. "I now pronounce you husband and wife."
The entire change of state, and all of the changes of behavior that follow, hinge upon this sequence of acts. As a result of this, there have been a good many story plots that depend for their suspense upon this sequence of speech acts, particularly upon the arrival of the good guy to save the girl before the critical sequence of speech acts is finished. A speech act of great import, like marrying, must also be associated with certain conditions of time, place, and person. The person making the pronouncement of marriage must be ordained with this power by the church and/or the state, or the whole act falls through (insert more story plots here). The bride and groom must meet certain requirements, such as not being currently married to anyone else, or not having anyone in the congregation object at the point in the ceremony where that is possible, or, depending on where you're getting married, being one male and one female (insert many more story plots here).
Of course, if you're working with a setting in the sf/f genre, then elements of this can be changed. If there is a wedding, ask who's involved and how they're qualified to be involved. What the requirements are for participation by a bride and groom, and by a celebrant. What kinds of speech acts might be involved, and whether they would be the same or different - and whether there would be more of them, or fewer. You can also reconsider the details of this change of state in terms of how society recognizes it, and what its impact is on the people involved. Is it a love marriage? Is it most important to the couple or to their families? Or to the society as a whole? What is considered natural and wholesome about it? Is there anything that might be considered unnatural or unwholesome yet not destroy the validity of the marriage speech acts themselves?
Weddings are also full of symbolism of all kinds. The order in which things are done suggests value placed on each participant. A little girl, if she becomes junior bridesmaid, would be first of the bridesmaids to come to the front of the church; but if she becomes the flower girl, she's the last of them, because her job is to strew the path of the bride with flower petals. The flower petals suggest freshness and beauty, and springtime, which is a time of fertility. There's color symbolism in the white dress of the bride. There are the rings, which have no beginning and no end and symbolize the connection between the two people being married.
In the wedding we attended, there were elements added from Filipino culture. The couple had "sponsors," or people they knew who were there to support the marriage. At a certain point in the ceremony, both bride and groom were covered with a veil, then encircled with a white cord symbolizing their connection, and once those had been removed, the celebrant poured a handful of coins into the groom's hands, and he poured them into the bride's (she thereafter handed them to one of the bridesmaids). The coins were to symbolize their good fortune in the future.
In our wedding, there was an Australian element - not in the ceremony, but at the reception where we had one fruitcake and one American style wedding cake. I've seen photos of Indian weddings, and the clothing and other parts of the ceremony are entirely different. Japanese weddings have lots of different parts, and each part has a particular appropriate costume. The Shinto tradition has the bride wearing a beautiful white kimono with a hood that goes over her immaculately styled hair. Japanese brides will often wear an American style wedding dress at a different point in the day as well.
There are the speeches, too. But the best man's humorous speech at the wedding reception in America or Australia isn't at all like the long series of formal speeches in a Japanese wedding, all of which are executed in front of a gold folding screen.
I'm not saying everyone should go out and write wedding stories. But memories of weddings can be relevant in some stories, and wedding symbolism can percolate outward through different cultural practices, and of course as I said above, the way married people are treated differs vastly from the way unmarried people are treated. I hope this post can give you some ideas not only for weddings themselves but for ways to diversify the symbolism in your stories.
I'll end this post by extending my heartiest congratulations to our lovely Sheryl and her new husband Robert. Many thanks for including us in your special day.
Weddings are fascinating from an anthropological and linguistic point of view, too. They represent a complete change of state, but not one that can be physically measured. The change is entirely intangible, but changes everything about the way society treats the married couple. The way they are referred to by others, the way they speak to one another, the kinds of expectations that are held for them by family and friends, the kinds of rights granted to them by law, etc.
At the center of the ceremony is a sequence of speech acts. I may write more about them in another post, but for now if you're curious, you can go look them up, along with John Searle, a pragmaticist who worked with them quite a bit. Effectively, speech acts (also called illocutionary acts) are actions that are done by being said: requests, invitations, refusals. By saying it, you've done it. The speech acts of marrying include the vows: "I do," "I, XXX, take you, YYY...etc." and the pronouncement of the marriage by the celebrant. "I now pronounce you husband and wife."
The entire change of state, and all of the changes of behavior that follow, hinge upon this sequence of acts. As a result of this, there have been a good many story plots that depend for their suspense upon this sequence of speech acts, particularly upon the arrival of the good guy to save the girl before the critical sequence of speech acts is finished. A speech act of great import, like marrying, must also be associated with certain conditions of time, place, and person. The person making the pronouncement of marriage must be ordained with this power by the church and/or the state, or the whole act falls through (insert more story plots here). The bride and groom must meet certain requirements, such as not being currently married to anyone else, or not having anyone in the congregation object at the point in the ceremony where that is possible, or, depending on where you're getting married, being one male and one female (insert many more story plots here).
Of course, if you're working with a setting in the sf/f genre, then elements of this can be changed. If there is a wedding, ask who's involved and how they're qualified to be involved. What the requirements are for participation by a bride and groom, and by a celebrant. What kinds of speech acts might be involved, and whether they would be the same or different - and whether there would be more of them, or fewer. You can also reconsider the details of this change of state in terms of how society recognizes it, and what its impact is on the people involved. Is it a love marriage? Is it most important to the couple or to their families? Or to the society as a whole? What is considered natural and wholesome about it? Is there anything that might be considered unnatural or unwholesome yet not destroy the validity of the marriage speech acts themselves?
Weddings are also full of symbolism of all kinds. The order in which things are done suggests value placed on each participant. A little girl, if she becomes junior bridesmaid, would be first of the bridesmaids to come to the front of the church; but if she becomes the flower girl, she's the last of them, because her job is to strew the path of the bride with flower petals. The flower petals suggest freshness and beauty, and springtime, which is a time of fertility. There's color symbolism in the white dress of the bride. There are the rings, which have no beginning and no end and symbolize the connection between the two people being married.
In the wedding we attended, there were elements added from Filipino culture. The couple had "sponsors," or people they knew who were there to support the marriage. At a certain point in the ceremony, both bride and groom were covered with a veil, then encircled with a white cord symbolizing their connection, and once those had been removed, the celebrant poured a handful of coins into the groom's hands, and he poured them into the bride's (she thereafter handed them to one of the bridesmaids). The coins were to symbolize their good fortune in the future.
In our wedding, there was an Australian element - not in the ceremony, but at the reception where we had one fruitcake and one American style wedding cake. I've seen photos of Indian weddings, and the clothing and other parts of the ceremony are entirely different. Japanese weddings have lots of different parts, and each part has a particular appropriate costume. The Shinto tradition has the bride wearing a beautiful white kimono with a hood that goes over her immaculately styled hair. Japanese brides will often wear an American style wedding dress at a different point in the day as well.
There are the speeches, too. But the best man's humorous speech at the wedding reception in America or Australia isn't at all like the long series of formal speeches in a Japanese wedding, all of which are executed in front of a gold folding screen.
I'm not saying everyone should go out and write wedding stories. But memories of weddings can be relevant in some stories, and wedding symbolism can percolate outward through different cultural practices, and of course as I said above, the way married people are treated differs vastly from the way unmarried people are treated. I hope this post can give you some ideas not only for weddings themselves but for ways to diversify the symbolism in your stories.
I'll end this post by extending my heartiest congratulations to our lovely Sheryl and her new husband Robert. Many thanks for including us in your special day.
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