New Feature

Today I'm trying an experiment. I've added a new gadget in my left navigation bar with a list of popular posts in my archive. I hope this will give visitors a nice sampling of what people are hoping to find when they visit TalkToYoUniverse, and encourage them to spend time exploring the site. If you haven't read the posts, feel free - I hope you enjoy them.

How will they pronounce it?

You can never really know.

You craft your world with care. You name your characters and locations, and usually you hear the sounds of the words in your head. Maybe you become highly attached to a name, as a particular character grows into it. You've given it a careful spelling, of course, to represent as closely as possible that perfect name that resonates in your head.

Then, say it gets published. Someone walks up to tell you how much they liked the character, and they get it wrong. Badly wrong, so wrong you can hardly recognize what they say.

I suggest that you appreciate the person greatly. After all, they went to the trouble of reading your story, telling you how great you are, and liking your character so much.

You don't have to imitate their pronunciation of the name, necessarily, but don't try to correct them. It's not their fault. English spelling wasn't designed to indicate spelling unequivocally, and fantasy names often use European or other foreign sound systems anyway.

Blame it on the limitations of orthography, not on the person. We don't write in IPA - and if we did, nobody could read it.

I won't blame you if it gives your gut a twinge to hear a name pronounced differently. When I wrote my first novel (still in revisions, because I've learned a lot since then), I created a character and named her Catin. Can you guess how I pronounced it? Well, I got together with friends and discovered they were rhyming the name with the word "satin." I went "aigh!" I asked them for help. I said, "How the heck can I spell this so it will sound like....?" We tried. Since then it's been spelled Catín - but fortunately I've also adopted a new attitude of curiosity rather than prescriptivism.

I'll be looking forward to hearing what you think it sounds like.

What Authors Control

I came across this interesting article today. Cherie Priest writes about what aspects of a book the author controls, and what they don't. Interesting for all of you who may someday be getting a book published... The article is here.

The Reader as World Builder

Here's a fascinating article from Tor.com that takes worldbuilding and turns it around, seeing sf/f readers as bringing a toolkit with them for the purposes of world construction as they read.

See what you think, here.

Maybe we can discuss it...

The Power of Culture

Culture is stronger than you think.

Culture comes with metaphors for understanding life - ways to make sense of our drives and desires, ways to understand right and wrong, ways to categorize the familiar and the unfamiliar. It's evident in our thought, even if it doesn't actually limit the way we think.

I think there's no reason why anyone shouldn't use it as a tool in their writing - not just science fiction and fantasy writers, but mainstream writers as well. The people you write have a personal history, and a way of acting, that comes from their culture.

I've seen many sf/f stories that take non-human behavior and essentially say "these creatures act differently because their physiology or their dimension or their physics work in a way unlike ours." I'd like to argue that this is rarely necessary.

I don't mean that alien physiology shouldn't be taken into account when you're figuring out how an alien group acts. Of course metabolism (as in my earlier post) and body structure will have an influence over the kinds of infrastructure built by this group of people. Of course different behaviors might grow out of that.

The problem, for me, arises when culture gets omitted. A direct link is drawn between the physiology and the behavior. "Well, members of this group must behave this way because otherwise they'll burn up." It creates a rule that isn't really a rule, but a law of nature - and leaves out the people's ability to create rules for themselves.

If you've got a law of nature, then great. Take it and make it into a general principle within your culture. See if it can be extrapolated across contexts - whether the danger of some particular location gets turned into a general fear of locations resembling it, or whether stories grow up around the physical limitation that affect behaviors across the board for this society. The culture of the wolflike aliens of Aurru had a giant social and linguistic division that had grown up around the distinction between people who shivered in the cold (those with less fur) and people who didn't. The physiological fact was there, but its consequences were more than just physical. And it could influence behavior, as when Rulii took drugs - a choice based on a physiological fact that nevertheless brought significant social consequences along with it.

If you don't have a law of nature, you might not need one. Look for a law of culture. My otter aliens have very high technology, but they don't have virtual reality. It's not because their brains can't process it. It's because their societal structure is based on the idea that people operate in pairs, and one will vouch for the other in all situations. If they wanted virtual reality, it would have to take a form that could be witnessed by both members of the pair. A holodeck maybe, or some form of large-scale projection. It could never be something like headphones or a VR visor that would only be usable by one individual. Superstitions don't always have a basis in fact, but they have a powerful influence on behavior.

Keep your eye out. Look for cultural explanations for behavior, and cultural implications of difference. They will make your world feel much more real.

It's something to think about.