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Book Review: Julian Comstock by Robert Charles Wilson

David Halpert — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 00:08:04 +0000

Julian Comstock isn’t a book, it’s a force, plain and simple. The fictional biopic of Julian Comstock written by his long-time friend, Adam Hazzard, is far from science fiction in my opinion. While the book utilizes tropes from the post-apocalyptic sub-genre it doesn’t dwell on them, nor does it exploit them to either further the plot or drive the action. Simply put, Wilson makes a blunt statement in his writing by omitting much of the details that led to the catastrophes of the past in his novel. Sufficed to say, sometime within the mid-21 century shit happened, and here’s where we are now.

The book is told through five parts each representing a part of Julian’s life. Without giving too much away these include his child and teenage years growing up out West, his conscription into fighting against the Dutch in Montreal, a later military campaign down the road against the Dutch once again in Labrador, and finally his rise and reign as president of the United States in Manhattan. I think what’s most scary about this book is its plausibility, the realization that it could actually happen. There’s a worldliness and a staunch attention to detail in every facet of this American landscape that at times is both hauntingly beautiful and eerily sublime.

Julian Comstock isn’t a book that’s meant to be rushed but savored. Readers of Wilson’s previous works will recognize the subject matter is quite a departure for the long-standing Canadian author. Whereas most of his novels tend to blend hard science fiction with very real, sympathetic characters, we don’t get that here, but that’s certainly not a disadvantage. Instead we’re propelled to an era where humanity has devolved back to anarchy, and having once again risen to resemble a Victorian setting. The humor of Wilson’s prose might be lost on some people but one gets the sense that the author had a lot of fun writing this book. I doesn’t do this book justice simply labeling it science fiction, it’s closest genre would be steampunk, and similarities can be drawn from other recent novels including Brian Francis Slattery’s Liberation, or Ian MacDonald’s Desolation Road.

Wilson has expressed during tours for this book that Julian Comstock will be a standalone novel as he currently finishes writing the final novel of his Spin trilogy. And while there is sufficient material to begin a sequel (or even a trilogy) I’d rather the book stand as a masterpiece on its own merits, rather than rest on its laurels as a series. Simply put, if this novel doesn’t get nominated for a lot of awards next year, this reviewer would be very shocked indeed. An excellent read.

Click Here to View the Works of Robert Charles Wilson on Amazon
Click Here to View the Works of Robert Charles Wilson on Ebay

ChiZine Publications Expands Its Distribution Options

David Halpert — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 23:28:45 +0000

Independent speculative genre publisher ChiZine Publications announces it is expanding its distribution options to increase the availability of its books through various channels.

Signing a deal with The Literary Press Group of Canada (LPG), all of ChiZine Publications’ titles are now available via the LPG sales force. In addition, this deal results in all of ChiZine Publications’ now being available through Amazon and Chapters/Indigo.

In addition, The World More Full of Weeping by bestseller Robert J. Wiersema (Before I Wake) will be placed in airport bookstores across the country.

Finally, as a result of its growing success and in an effort to remain competitive, ChiZine Publications has made all of its titles available through its site with a 30% discount off the cover price with transactions handled via PayPal.

“This is a major step forward,” says Brett Alexander Savory, co-publisher of ChiZine Publications along with Sandra Kasturi. “For any small press, distribution is a challenge. Signing with the LPG gives us a national sales force selling and promoting our books. Having one of our books available in airport bookstores is an opportunity for exposure a lot of genre publishers might not get.” Speaking on the discount through the site: “Amazon and Chapters offer discounts, so we need to be competitive with that. Sure, Amazon has warehouses and deals and membership points—but buying directly from us is the best way to support us. And you still get the book in the mail.”

ChiZine Publications was founded in 2008 and published its first book, the dark science fiction novel Filaria by Brent Hayward, in the summer of that year. Since then, it had published eight other novels and short story collections with several more works scheduled for late 2009 and early 2010.

For more information go to http://chizinepub.com.

What Can We Expect From Baen Books in the Future?

David Halpert — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 23:49:35 +0000

While attending Worldcon in Montreal I had the fortunate pleasure of attending Baen Books publisher’s presentation. Similarly, prior to the event I had a writer’s workshop with one of their authors, Mark L. Van Name, who I can’t help but thank for his insightful criticism from the nearly finished novel. Nevertheless, the following is a list of books comprising what we can expect from Baen Books for the following publishing year.

The Vorkosigan Companion, by Lillian Stewart Carl and John Hellers

Article of Faith by Mike Resnick

In the Stormy Red Sky by David Brake (Hardcover, 2009)

Diamond Star by Catherine Asaro (Softcover)

The Last Centurion by John Ringo (Softcover, September 2009)

Live Free or Die by John Ringo (Hardcover, February 2010)

Longeye by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller (Softcover, TBA)

Fledgling by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller (Hardcover, September 2009)

Saltation by Sharon Lee & Steven Miller (Hardcover, April 2010)

Exodus: The Ark by Paul Chafe (Trade Paperback, November 2009)

One Good Soldier by Travis S. Taylor (Hardcover, December 2009)

Strip Mauled by Esther Friesner (Mass Market Paperback, October 2009)

1635: The Tangled Web by Virginia De March (Trade Paperback, December 2009)

Citizen, edited by John Ringo & Brian M. Thomsen (Trade Paperback, April 2010)

Torch of Freedom by David Weber & Eric Flint (Hardcover, November 2009)

Worlds of Weber by David Weber (Paperback, October 2009)

The Complete Hammer’s Slammers, Vol. 1 by David Drake (Trade Paperback, October 2009)

Cobra Alliance, Cobra War, Book 1 by Timothy Zahn (Hardcover, December 2009)

The Cobra Trilogy by Timothy Zahn (Paperback Omnibus, November 2009)

The Tuloriad, John Ringe & Tom Kratman (Hardcover, October 2009)

The Lotus Eaters by Tom Kratman (Hardcover, April 2010)

The Sorcercess of Karres by Dave Freer & Eric Flint (Hardcover, January 2010)

Darkship Thieves by Sarah A. Hoyt (Trade Paperback, January 2010)

Captain Fandry: The Technic Civilization Saga by Poul Anderson, Compiled by (?) (Paperback, February 2010)

Bound in Blood by P.C. Hodgell (Trade Papberback, March 2010)

The Turkey City Lexicon (Part 6 – Character and Viewpoint)

David Halpert — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 23:29:34 +0000

Alas we come to the final section of the Turkey City Lexicon, character, viewpoint and other miscellaneous things. Sufficed to say if these are your only problems with the story after managing to accomplish every else in the other five parts of the turkey city lexicon then fixing these mistakes should be a cakewalk. On the other hand, a good, well-rounded, or even flawed character is the solid foundation of any good story. Take these suggestions to heart and with any luck you’ll be published soon enough too.

Click Here to view the Turkey City Lexicon in its entirety

• Funny-hat characterization
A character distinguished by a single identifying tag, such as odd headgear, a limp, a lisp, a parrot on his shoulder, etc.

• Mrs. Brown
The small, downtrodden, eminently common, everyday little person who nevertheless encapsulates something vital and important about the human condition. “Mrs. Brown” is a rare personage in the SF genre, being generally overshadowed by swaggering submyth types made of the finest gold-plated cardboard. In a famous essay, “Science Fiction and Mrs. Brown,” Ursula K. Le Guin decried Mrs. Brown’s absence from the SF field. (Attr: Virginia Woolf)

• Submyth
Classic character-types in SF which aspire to the condition of archetype but don’t quite make it, such as the mad scientist, the crazed supercomputer, the emotionless super-rational alien, the vindictive mutant child, etc. (Attr. Ursula K. Le Guin).

• Viewpoint glitch
The author loses track of point-of-view, switches point-of-view for no good reason, or relates something that the viewpoint character could not possibly know.

Part Seven: Miscellaneous
• AM/FM
Engineer’s term distinguishing the inevitable clunky real-world faultiness of “Actual Machines” from the power-fantasy technodreams of “Fucking Magic.”

• Consensus Reality
Useful term for the purported world in which the majority of modern sane people generally agree that they live — as opposed to the worlds of, say, Forteans, semioticians or quantum physicists.

• Intellectual sexiness
The intoxicating glamor of a novel scientific idea, as distinguished from any actual intellectual merit that it may someday prove to possess.

• The Ol’ Baloney Factory
“Science Fiction” as a publishing and promotional entity in the world of commerce.

What can we expect from Tor Books this season?

David Halpert — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 23:46:30 +0000

While at Worldcon in Montreal I had the opportunity to go to the publisher’s presentation for Tor Books with all of their editors (including Patrick Nielsen Hayden, David G. Hartwell, and Tom Doherty) present and I can honestly say that if Tor delivers on the goods this year in terms of their books we can expect a very interesting and exciting season for science fiction literature this year. The following is a list of books we can expect in the near future.

Makers by Cory Doctorow (Hardcover, October 2009)

Twilight Zone Anthology edited by Carol Serling (Paperback, September 2009)

The novelization of the video game Bioshock, developed by 2K Studio (TBA)

The Golden Shrine by Harry Turtledove (Hardcover, October 13, 2009)

Canticle by Ken Scholes (Hardcover, October 13, 2009)

Imager’s Challenge by L.E. Modersitt, Jr. (Hardcover, October 13, 2009)

The Matters by Mansfield by Carrie Bebris (Paperback, September 29, 2009)

Neuropath by R. Scott Bakker (Hardcover, October 13, 2009)

Conjure Wife by Fritz Leiber (Reprint Edition, TBA)

The Ghost in Love by Jonathan Carroll (Paperback, September 29, 2009)

The Stars Like Dust by Isaac Asimov (Reprint Paperback, September 29, 2009)

The Comet’s Curse by Dom Testa (Hardcover, January 20, 2009)

The Box by Richard Matheson (Reprint, TBA)

Eve: The Burning Life by Hjalta Danielsson (TBA, based on the popular video game)

Orson Scott Card: The Authorized Ender Companion by Jack Black (Hardcover, November 10, 2009)

A Young Magician Without Magic by Lawrence Watt-Evans (Hardcover, November 10, 2009)

Destroyer of Worlds by Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner (Hardcover, November 10, 2009)

Wings of Creation by Brenda Cooper (Hardcover, November 10, 2009)

An Evil Guest by Gene Wolfe (Paperback, November 10, 2009)

Indigo Springs by A.M. Dellamonica (Paperback, October 27, 2009)

Reborn: Book IV of the Adversary Cycle by F. Paul Wilson (Paperback, October 27, 2009)

Boneshaker by Christopher Priest (Paperback, September 29, 2009)

The House of Stag by Kage Baker (Paperback, TBA)

Hidden Empire by Orson Scott Card (Hardcover, December 22, 2009)

Puttering About in a Small Land by Philip K. Dick (Hardcover, December 8, 2009)

Suicide Kings: A Wild Card Novel by George R.R. Martin (Hardcover, December 22, 2009)

The Light of Other Days by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter (Paperback, December 8, 2009)

Muse and Reverie by Charles de Lint (Hardcover, December 8, 2009)

The Domino Pattern by Timothy Zahn (Hardcover, January 5, 2010)

Sword of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley (Paperback, September 9, 2009)

Burning Shadows by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro (Hardcover, December 8, 2009)

Shadow Prowler by Alexey Pehov (Hardcover, February 16, 2010)

Brian Thief by Alexander Jablokov (Hardcover, January 5, 2010)

The Jewel in the Skull: The First Volume in the History of the Runestaff by Michael Moorcock (Reprint, TBA)

Truancy by Isamu Fukui (Paperback, TBA)

The Turkey City Lexicon (Part 4 – Plots)

David Halpert — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 23:01:23 +0000

Plots are the cousins of story ideas. Well, not really, but in terms of crafting a good short story (or novel) they are important. Just as any story need a plot that is original and not cliched, plots need to be well formulated, concise, and, most importantly, they need to make sense. So here is a list of the common pitfalls that aspiring writers tend to fall into with their short stories. For those that want to view the entire Turkey City Lexicon Click Here. To view the other parts of this series Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

Abbess Phone Home

Takes its name from a mainstream story about a medieval cloister which was sold as SF because of the serendipitous arrival of a UFO at the end. By extension, any mainstream story with a gratuitous SF or fantasy element tacked on so it could be sold.

And plot

Picaresque plot in which this happens, and then that happens, and then something else happens, and it all adds up to nothing in particular.

Bogus Alternatives

List of actions a character could have taken, but didn’t. Frequently includes all the reasons why. In this nervous mannerism, the author stops the action dead to work out complicated plot problems at the reader’s expense. “If I’d gone along with the cops they would have found the gun in my purse. And anyway, I didn’t want to spend the night in jail. I suppose I could have just run instead of stealing their car, but then … ” etc. Best dispensed with entirely.

Card Tricks in the Dark

Elaborately contrived plot which arrives at (a) the punchline of a private joke no reader will get or (b) the display of some bit of learned trivia relevant only to the author. This stunt may be intensely ingenious, and very gratifying to the author, but it serves no visible fictional purpose. (Attr. Tim Powers)

Idiot Plot

A plot which functions only because all the characters involved are idiots. They behave in a way that suits the author’s convenience, rather than through any rational motivation of their own. (Attr. James Blish)

Kudzu plot

Plot which weaves and curls and writhes in weedy organic profusion, smothering everything in its path.

Plot Coupons

The basic building blocks of the quest-type fantasy plot. The “hero” collects sufficient plot coupons (magic sword, magic book, magic cat) to send off to the author for the ending. Note that “the author” can be substituted for “the Gods” in such a work: “The Gods decreed he would pursue this quest.” Right, mate. The author decreed he would pursue this quest until sufficient pages were filled to procure an advance. (Nick Lowe)

Second-order Idiot Plot

A plot involving an entire invented SF society which functions only because every single person in it is necessarily an idiot. (Attr. Damon Knight)

The Turkey City Lexicon (Part 3, Common Workshop Story Types)

David Halpert — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 00:51:18 +0000

Despite the common belief, editors do a lot more than simply correct spelling and grammar (which is more suited for a copy editor). In truth the editor works in the best interests of a writer to ensure that their work is the best piece of fiction it can be before it is manufactured and placed on the shelf.

Many aspiring writers can’t handle criticism well and as a result are resistant to editors opinions, corrections, and suggestions when it comes to editing their work. However, if there is any frustration on the editor’s part rest assured it’s simply because many have experienced the same clichéd plotlines, characters, and storylines to the point where they can read a page and immediately see where a story is going.

Be sure to avoid this as best you can with your writing and take notice of some of the most common workshop story types listed below.

Adam and Eve Story
Nauseatingly common subset of the “Shaggy God Story” in which a terrible apocalypse, spaceship crash, etc., leaves two survivors, man and woman, who turn out to be Adam and Eve, parents of the human race.

The Cozy Catastrophe
Story in which horrific events are overwhelming the entirety of human civilization, but the action concentrates on a small group of tidy, middle-class, white Anglo-Saxon protagonists. The essence of the cozy catastrophe is that the hero should have a pretty good time (a girl, free suites at the Savoy, automobiles for the taking) while everyone else is dying off. (Attr. Brian Aldiss)

Dennis Hopper Syndrome
A story based on some arcane bit of science or folklore, which noodles around producing random weirdness. Then a loony character- actor (usually best played by Dennis Hopper) barges into the story and baldly tells the protagonist what’s going on by explaining the underlying mystery in a long bug-eyed rant. (Attr. Howard Waldrop)

Deus ex Machina or “God in the Box”
Story featuring a miraculous solution to the story’s conflict, which comes out of nowhere and renders the plot struggles irrelevant. H.G. Wells warned against SF’s love for the deus ex machina when he coined the famous dictum that “If anything is possible, then nothing is interesting.” Science fiction, which specializes in making the impossible seem plausible, is always deeply intrigued by godlike powers in the handy pocket size. Artificial Intelligence, virtual realities and nanotechnology are three contemporary SF MacGuffins that are cheap portable sources of limitless miracle.

The Grubby Apartment Story
Similar to the “poor me” story, this autobiographical effort features a miserably quasi-bohemian writer, living in urban angst in a grubby apartment. The story commonly stars the author’s friends in thin disguises — friends who may also be the author’s workshop companions, to their considerable alarm.

The Jar of Tang
“For you see, we are all living in a jar of Tang!” or “For you see, I am a dog!” A story contrived so that the author can spring a silly surprise about its setting. Mainstay of the old Twilight Zone TV show. An entire pointless story contrived so the author can cry “Fooled you!” For instance, the story takes place in a desert of coarse orange sand surrounded by an impenetrable vitrine barrier; surprise! our heroes are microbes in a jar of Tang powdered orange drink.

This is a classic case of the difference between a conceit and an idea. “What if we all lived in a jar of Tang?” is an example of the former; “What if the revolutionaries from the sixties had been allowed to set up their own society?” is an example of the latter. Good SF requires ideas, not conceits. (Attr. Stephen P. Brown)

When done with serious intent rather than as a passing conceit, this type of story can be dignified by the term “Concealed Environment.” (Attr. Christopher Priest)

Just-Like Fallacy
SF story which thinly adapts the trappings of a standard pulp adventure setting. The spaceship is “just like” an Atlantic steamer, down to the Scottish engineer in the hold. A colony planet is “just like” Arizona except for two moons in the sky. “Space Westerns” and futuristic hard-boiled detective stories have been especially common versions.

The Kitchen-Sink Story
A story overwhelmed by the inclusion of any and every new idea that occurs to the author in the process of writing it. (Attr. Damon Knight)

The Motherhood Statement
SF story which posits some profoundly unsettling threat to the human condition, explores the implications briefly, then hastily retreats to affirm the conventional social and humanistic pieties, i.e. apple pie and motherhood. Greg Egan once stated that the secret of truly effective SF was to deliberately “burn the motherhood statement.” (Attr. Greg Egan).

The “Poor Me” Story
Autobiographical piece in which the male viewpoint character complains that he is ugly and can’t get laid. (Attr. Kate Wilhelm)

Re-Inventing the Wheel
A novice author goes to enormous lengths to create a science fictional situation already tiresomely familiar to the experienced reader. Reinventing the Wheel was traditionally typical of mainstream writers venturing into SF. It is now often seen in writers who lack experience in genre history because they were attracted to written SF via SF movies, SF television series, SF role-playing games, SF comics or SF computer gaming.

The Rembrandt Comic Book
A story in which incredible craftsmanship has been lavished on a theme or idea which is basically trivial or subliterary, and which simply cannot bear the weight of such deadly-serious artistic portent.

The Shaggy God Story
A piece which mechanically adopts a Biblical or other mythological tale and provides flat science-fictional “explanations” for the theological events. (Attr. Michael Moorcock)

The Slipstream Story
Non-SF story which is so ontologically distorted or related in such a bizarrely non-realist fashion that it cannot pass muster as commercial mainstream fiction and therefore seeks shelter in the SF or fantasy genre. Postmodern critique and technique are particularly fruitful in creating slipstream stories.

The Steam-Grommet Factory
Didactic SF story which consists entirely of a guided tour of a large and elaborate gimmick. A common technique of SF utopias and dystopias. (Attr. Gardner Dozois)

The Tabloid Weird
Story produced by a confusion of SF and Fantasy tropes — or rather, by a confusion of basic world-views. Tabloid Weird is usually produced by the author’s own inability to distinguish between a rational, Newtonian-Einsteinian, cause-and- effect universe and an irrational, supernatural, fantastic universe. Either the FBI is hunting the escaped mutant from the genetics lab, or the drill-bit has bored straight into Hell — but not both at once in the very same piece of fiction. Even fantasy worlds need an internal consistency of sorts, so that a Sasquatch Deal-with-the-Devil story is also “Tabloid Weird.” Sasquatch crypto-zoology and Christian folk superstition simply don’t mix well, even for comic effect. (Attr. Howard Waldrop)

The Whistling Dog
A story related in such an elaborate, arcane, or convoluted manner that it impresses by its sheer narrative ingenuity, but which, as a story, is basically not worth the candle. Like the whistling dog, it’s astonishing that the thing can whistle — but it doesn’t actually whistle very well. (Attr. Harlan Ellison)

The Turkey City Lexicon (Part 2 – Words & Sentences, Cont’d)

David Halpert — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 23:40:16 +0000

Here is the second part of my six-part series entitled the Turkey City Lexicon. Click Here for the first part.

While many aspiring writers have no problem writing short stories, most seem to have a problem with reading short stories, a feature evident upon reading their works. Many aspiring writers assume that writing short stories is easier than writing a novel but in fact its opposite is true, since a short story condenses the breadth and depth of a novel into a few short pages. Without prattling on for too long here are some more common mistake that many a first-time writers fall into.

Bathos
A sudden, alarming change in the level of diction. “There will be bloody riots and savage insurrections leading to a violent popular uprising unless the regime starts being lots nicer about stuff.”

Countersinking
A form of expositional redundancy in which the action clearly implied in dialogue is made explicit. “‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said, “urging her to leave.”

Dischism
The unwitting intrusion of the author’s physical surroundings, or the author’s own mental state, into the text of the story. Authors who smoke or drink while writing often drown or choke their characters with an endless supply of booze and cigs. In subtler forms of the Dischism, the characters complain of their confusion and indecision — when this is actually the author’s condition at the moment of writing, not theirs within the story. “Dischism” is named after the critic who diagnosed this syndrome. (Attr. Thomas M. Disch)

False Humanity
An ailment endemic to genre writing, in which soap-opera elements of purported human interest are stuffed into the story willy-nilly, whether or not they advance the plot or contribute to the point of the story. The actions of such characters convey an itchy sense of irrelevance, for the author has invented their problems out of whole cloth, so as to have something to emote about.

False Interiorization
A cheap labor-saving technique in which the author, too lazy to describe the surroundings, afflicts the viewpoint-character with a blindfold, an attack of space-sickness, the urge to play marathon whist-games in the smoking-room, etc.

Fuzz
An element of motivation the author was too lazy to supply. The word “somehow” is a useful tip-off to fuzzy areas of a story. “Somehow she had forgotten to bring her gun.”

Hand Waving
An attempt to distract the reader with dazzling prose or other verbal fireworks, so as to divert attention from a severe logical flaw. (Attr. Stewart Brand)

Laughtrack
Characters grandstand and tug the reader’s sleeve in an effort to force a specific emotional reaction. They laugh wildly at their own jokes, cry loudly at their own pain, and rob the reader of any real chance of attaining genuine emotion.

Show, not Tell
A cardinal principle of effective writing. The reader should be allowed to react naturally to the evidence presented in the story, not instructed in how to react by the author. Specific incidents and carefully observed details will render auctorial lectures unnecessary. For instance, instead of telling the reader “She had a bad childhood, an unhappy childhood,” a specific incident — involving, say, a locked closet and two jars of honey — should be shown. Rigid adherence to show-don’t-tell can become absurd. Minor matters are sometimes best gotten out of the way in a swift, straightforward fashion.

Signal from Fred
A comic form of the “Dischism” in which the author’s subconscious, alarmed by the poor quality of the work, makes unwitting critical comments: “This doesn’t make sense.” “This is really boring.” “This sounds like a bad movie.” (Attr. Damon Knight)

Squid in the Mouth
The failure of an author to realize that his/her own weird assumptions and personal in-jokes are simply not shared by the world-atlarge. Instead of applauding the wit or insight of the author’s remarks, the world-at-large will stare in vague shock and alarm at such a writer, as if he or she had a live squid in the mouth. Since SF writers as a breed are generally quite loony, and in fact make this a stock in trade, “squid in the mouth” doubles as a term of grudging praise, describing the essential, irreducible, divinely unpredictable lunacy of the true SF writer. (Attr. James P Blaylock)

Squid on the Mantelpiece
Chekhov said that if there are dueling pistols over the mantelpiece in the first act, they should be fired in the third. In other words, a plot element should be deployed in a timely fashion and with proper dramatic emphasis. However, in SF plotting the MacGuffins are often so overwhelming that they cause conventional plot structures to collapse. It’s hard to properly dramatize, say, the domestic effects of Dad’s bank overdraft when a giant writhing kraken is levelling the city. This mismatch between the conventional dramatic proprieties and SF’s extreme, grotesque, or visionary thematics is known as the “squid on the mantelpiece.”

White Room Syndrome
A clear and common sign of the failure of the author’s imagination, most often seen at the beginning of a story, before the setting, background, or characters have gelled. “She awoke in a white room.” The ‘white room’ is a featureless set for which details have yet to be invented — a failure of invention by the author. The character ‘wakes’ in order to begin a fresh train of thought — again, just like the author. This ‘white room’ opening is generally followed by much earnest pondering of circumstances and useless exposition; all of which can be cut, painlessly. It remains to be seen whether the “white room” cliche’ will fade from use now that most authors confront glowing screens rather than blank white paper.

Wiring Diagram Fiction
A genre ailment related to “False Humanity,” “Wiring Diagram Fiction” involves “characters” who show no convincing emotional reactions at all, since they are overwhelmed by the author’s fascination with gadgetry or didactic lectures.

You Can’t Fire Me, I Quit
An attempt to diffuse the reader’s incredulity with a pre-emptive strike — as if by anticipating the reader’s objections, the author had somehow answered them. “I would never have believed it, if I hadn’t seen it myself!” “It was one of those amazing coincidences that can only take place in real life!” “It’s a one-in-a-million chance, but it’s so crazy it just might work!” Surprisingly common, especially in SF. (Attr. John Kessel)

The Turkey City Lexicon (Part 1 – Words and Sentences)

David Halpert — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 23:44:01 +0000

In anticipation for Anticipation (WorldCon ‘09) in Montreal, I decided to take it upon myself to sign up for a writing workshop to get some insightful criticism on my latest novel, “The Seducer’s Handbook” before I go about editing the second draft. The five-person writing workshop set to take place at this year’s Worldcon involves two professional authors (in my case, Elizabeth Bear and Mark L. Van Name respectively) and two other aspiring authors (who will remain nameless) whose stories I’ve read and critiqued.

So what is the Turkey City Lexicon?

In its most basic form, the Turkey City Lexicon is a glossary of terms that lists a lot of the pitfalls and traps that many aspiring writers fall into with their novels and short stories. While this material is not copyrighted, I don’t want to make it appear as though I had any hand in the creation of these terms. This glossary has evolved over the decades from authors, editors, publishers, and workshops as an aid for aspiring writer to hone their writing abilities.

I only heard about the Turkey City Lexicon last week having written for six years now, so I can only imagine the thousands of aspiring writers out there that don’t know that this primer already exists. The Turkey City Lexicon will be released as a six-part series over the next week or so but for those that are eager feel free to Click Here to View the Turkey City Lexicon in its Entirety.

This first part focuses on the words and sentences that make up a short story and the common pitfalls into which many aspiring writers fall.

Brenda Starr dialogue

Long sections of talk with no physical background or description of the characters. Such dialogue, detached from the story’s setting, tends to echo hollowly, as if suspended in mid-air. Named for the American comic-strip in which dialogue balloons were often seen emerging from the Manhattan skyline.

“Burly Detective” Syndrome

This useful term is taken from SF’s cousin-genre, the detective pulp. The hack writers of the Mike Shayne series showed an odd reluctance to use Shayne’s proper name, preferring such euphemisms as “the burly detective” or “the red-headed sleuth.” This syndrome arises from a wrong-headed conviction that the same word should not be used twice in close succession. This is only true of particularly strong and visible words, such as “vertiginous.” Better to re-use a simple tag or phrase than to contrive cumbersome methods of avoiding it.

Brand Name Fever

Use of brand name alone, without accompanying visual detail, to create false verisimilitude. You can stock a future with Hondas and Sonys and IBM’s and still have no idea with it looks like.

“Call a Rabbit a Smeerp”

A cheap technique for false exoticism, in which common elements of the real world are re-named for a fantastic milieu without any real alteration in their basic nature or behavior. “Smeerps” are especially common in fantasy worlds, where people often ride exotic steeds that look and act just like horses. (Attributed to James Blish.)

Gingerbread

Useless ornament in prose, such as fancy sesquipedalian Latinate words where short clear English ones will do. Novice authors sometimes use “gingerbread” in the hope of disguising faults and conveying an air of refinement. (Attr. Damon Knight)
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Not Simultaneous

The misuse of the present participle is a common structural sentence-fault for beginning writers. “Putting his key in the door, he leapt up the stairs and got his revolver out of the bureau.” Alas, our hero couldn’t do this even if his arms were forty feet long. This fault shades into “Ing Disease,” the tendency to pepper sentences with words ending in “-ing,” a grammatical construction which tends to confuse the proper sequence of events. (Attr. Damon Knight)

Pushbutton Words

Words used to evoke a cheap emotional response without engaging the intellect or the critical faculties. Commonly found in story titles, they include such bits of bogus lyricism as “star,” “dance,” “dream,” “song,” “tears” and “poet,” cliches calculated to render the SF audience misty-eyed and tender-hearted.

Roget’s Disease

The ludicrous overuse of far-fetched adjectives, piled into a festering, fungal, tenebrous, troglodytic, ichorous, leprous, synonymic heap. (Attr. John W. Campbell)

“Said” Bookism

An artificial verb used to avoid the word “said.” “Said” is one of the few invisible words in the English language and is almost impossible to overuse. It is much less distracting than “he retorted,” “she inquired,” “he ejaculated,” and other oddities. The term “said-book” comes from certain pamphlets, containing hundreds of purpleprose synonyms for the word “said,” which were sold to aspiring authors from tiny ads in American magazines of the pre-WWII era.

Tom Swifty

An unseemly compulsion to follow the word “said” with a colorful adverb, as in “‘We’d better hurry,’ Tom said swiftly.” This was a standard mannerism of the old Tom Swift adventure dime novels. Good dialogue can stand on its own without a clutter of adverbial props.

How to Deliver the Perfect Elevator Pitch

David Halpert — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 01:33:36 +0000

A week ago, I bookmarked a post on io9.com on Delicious entitled “Make You Epic Space Novel Live Up To Your Elevator Pitch” and didn’t look at it until yesterday. Expecting to read an article on how to deliver the perfect elevator pitch I was presented with something verydifferent, leaving me to scratch my head and ask myself WTF? The comments reflect this, so does the title (in fact it’s probably better to pitch your novel once it’s completed, as manuscripts change further down the writing process). Nevertheless, as a person actually trying to get published it disheartens me on how many readers were given this poor advice, so I decided to do something about it, a simple blog post on how to deliver a great elevator pitch.

1) Keep it Short

An elevator pitch is exactly as it sounds, it’s a pitch for your novel that can said in thirty seconds, or the length of an average elevator ride. Elevator pitches are often given to editors/literary agents at trade shows and conventions. They remain short because agents/editors are busy people and expect a barrage of aspiring writers to swarm them with similar elevator pitches (in addition to other events going on at said event). If you can’t pitch your novel in thirty seconds than you’re taking too long. Revise and try again.

2) Keep it Sweet

If you can’t distill the plot of your novel in one short paragraph (four sentences max.) than your elevator pitch is too long. There should be no fluff in your pitch either. Here’s the perfect elevator pitch: a two-sentence plot synopsis, one sentence describing it in relation to other novels so they have an idea of what to expect, and maybe a few short sentences describing any publishing credits that would be helpful. Here is the elevator pitch for my novel, ‘Second Death‘:

“‘Second Death’ is a blend of Richard Morgan’s ‘Altered Carbon‘ and Raymond Chandler’s ‘The Big Sleep‘. Harlan Novak is a twenty-eight year old private investigator hired by Luna Veca, who’s investigating the murder of her former boss, J.T. Blithe. However, their investigation soon uncovers a secret underground experiment known as ‘The Lazarus Project’ and both quickly discover the lengths their enemies will go to keep it a secret.”

Simple yet effective!

3) Offer to Buy Them A Drink or Dinner

We all like free stuff, and one of the perks of being a literary agent or editor is not having to pay a cent for meals and drinks. If they are too busy to hear your elevator pitch or you want more time to pitch your novel and list your credentials, offer to buy them a drink or even divver. If you’re sitting there telling yourself “Why should I spend money trying to impress someone, my novel can be published on its own merits?” consider that you can cement a life-long professional relationship with an editor that can get you published right there on the stop, and for a measly $20-30 will pay off a hundred (or even thousand) times more in the long run.

4) Prepare a Media Kit For Your Novel Beforehand

For me this shows how an aspiring writer can go above and beyond when it comes to pitching a novel, a one-page double-sided paper that includes, in my case, a two-sentence plot synopsis, general facts and figures, my publishing credentials, information pertaining to my blog, information on my forthcoming novel, and a full-page synopsis on the back. Why, you might ask, do I do this? Because while an elevator pitch can get you published, people are very forgetful.

Ask yourself this, what did you have for lunch yesterday? If it took you more than a minute to figure it out, that is the very reason you create a media kit. Imagine you’re an editor that, in addition to attending several panels, seminars, and workshops, have to remember ten other novel pitches, who are they going to remember, the person that talked to them for two minutes, or the person that gave them a piece of paper they can peruse and read at their own leisure.

While it may sound simple, I guarantee you will be put in front of the pack just on your initiative alone. Take this advice to heart and consider whether or not your elevator pitch is perfect.