I’ve posted the preview for Perfect Justice. You can read the first half of the story here or request a copy of the full manuscript here.
New version up
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Category Archives: Science Fiction
Spore is AWESOME. Spore SUCKS.
Never before have I had such an intense love/hate relationship with a game as I have with Spore.
Part of this could undoubtedly be attributed to the hype it received before release. But not all of it; I was personally eager for it long before it received mainstream media attention.
For those who don’t know, Spore allows you to control the evolutionary journey of a cellular creature to a land-faring animal, eventually developes enough sentience to form a tribe, then cities, conquer or unite its home planet, and then travel off into space. You can do it once, you can do it a hundred times.
You can invent practically any creature you can imagine, and many that you can’t imagine, and the game does a brilliant job of bringing animating these creatures to life in a wonderful and believable way. Along the way, you can design their tanks, boats, and planes, or if you prefer, chariots and flying machines. You can design their buildings to look like anything from gingerbread houses to gothic architecture to Dr. Seuss-ish bells and whistles to stucco california houses to … you name it.
Eventually, you even get to design your own spaceship.
Almost everyone who plays Spore for the first time falls in love with it immediately. The controls are easy, the objectives are easy, the game is easy. In seconds, people begin cheering on their little cell’s survival in the primordial ooze, already choosing between pacificism and aggression (a choice which deliciously impacts later play in a variety of ways).
Each time I play the game from start to finish, I become repeatedly enamored with whatever new race I’m evolving. They’re my creations and I’ve guided them every step of the way towards galactic dominance.
What the game lacks, and severely lacks, is replay value. No matter what kind of creature you evolve, your choices are between the same 8 buttons in the creature stage, the same 3 weapons/3 religious instruments in the tribal stage, and three unit types (air/land/sea) in the Civilization phase. No matter how excited I am about each new critter, that kind of repetition just gets old.
Space phase is the most interesting, but the missions are pre-stocked text, and there aren’t all that many of them. Even self-invented missions like getting extremely wealthy, terraforming the whole Galaxy, or defeating an enormous enemy empire, are not challenging intellectual projects. They are “rinse and repeat” projects of mind-numbing repetition.
Furthermore, MANY features evident in a demo of the game Will Wright performed fully THREE YEARS before its release are missing from the game entirely. Water phase: Gone. Creatures which explode when placed in a vacuum: Gone. Cells with MANY more parts than just 12: Gone. Drums in the tribal phase: Gone.
There were some implied features, not specifically demoed, but from Wright’s commentary “understood” to be present in the game. They are conspicuously absent. Among them, the ability to negotiate treaties, to form a galactic federation (or governing body of any time), to visit strange planets and walk upon them, to see your tribal creatures react when given a new tool, to threaten or intimidate your enemies into submission when you’re the more powerful.
Furthermore, a lot of things you’d think would have meaning really don’t. For instance, in Tribal phase, you advance to Civilization phase when you either conquer by force or religiously convert five other tribes. Why? In Age of Empires, you got to advance to another Epoch when your food supplies reached a certain level, and that was only possible after you researched such technologies as farming instead of hunter/gathering, increasing your tribe’s self-reliance. This was the way it happened in Earth’s history. Why was it changed for Spore?
This is just one example from many of an incredible “dumbing down” of Spore according to gamers everywhere. Getting another creature to socialize with you in the creature phase is the simplest version of “Simon” you can imagine: Other creature does X, you respond with X. You don’t even have to memorize the moves and repeat them all correctly. If you fail, it won’t be because of your lack of skill, memory, or intellect: It will only be because your creature lacks a certain evolved part.
In space, you can’t tax your colonies for income; you have to play “delivery boy” by selling spice to each planet via insane micromanagement. Even though you can have a “fleet” of allied ships, you’re apparently the only spaceship ANYWHERE IN THE GALAXY capable of helping your allies out of certain jams (and the more allies you gain, the more annoying this becomes). By default, you can only have 3 trade routes open a time.
What kind of galactic empire only has three trade routes?
I still love Spore, even after being so thoroughly disappointed with it, and I still pick it up and play it now and again. But it would have been so simple to do so much more with it. Even simplified dumbed-down versions of things we’ve already seen in other games would have been preferred to just not including basic gameplay or roleplaying elements.
Now my hope lies only in the knowledge that EA Games and Maxis will eventually try to squeeze more dollars from it with expansion packs which may fix some of these problems, and hopefully eventually with a Spore 2.
In the meanwhile, community modders have done all they can to make the game actually enjoyable beyond the first play-through.
Almost finished
…and so I’ve decided to go ahead and post the preview of Woman’s Best Friend, since I’m anxious to share. You can access it via the new link under “Short Stories” to the right.
If you like what you read so far, I’ve now added a form to request the full text of each new story. In the past I have just mass emailed them to everyone I think might be interested, but this is very unsatisfying.
For one thing, I feel like I’m spamming people. I hope that everyone on the send list is interested, but I don’t really know.
For another, it gives me no idea how many people actually read something. I usually get 2 to 3 replies several weeks later with suggestions for improvements (always welcomed), even if I sent the story to 40 people or more.
This way, you only get the stories you request, and each time you do, I get the encouragement of knowing you liked the first half. I think it’s win/win. (Unless the website collects dust for two years and no stories are ever requested…but then again…that should tell me something, too, right?)
Woman’s Best Friend is currently 4,306 words, well beyond my original goal at 3,000, and is about two scenes from being finished (95% or so).
Dodging the Sci-Fi stigma
There is a certain aversion to fantasy and science fiction by those who aren’t outright fans of those genres.
And yet there are some sci fi authors among the best-selling writers in America — of any genre. And somehow, their books aren’t kept in the “science fiction” section near the back of the bookstore, but rather among the cool kids up front with “popular fiction”. What’s the difference?
Consider Stephen King: It is a giant spider demon from another planet in outer space. You can’t get anymore ‘sci-fi’ than that. King has also delved into wizards, vampires, ancient kingdoms with honor codes, and even dragons.
Dean Koontz is another. His work is filled with talking animals, magic powers, demons and other strange monsters.
You can’t find these two authors in science fiction with Asimov and Heinlein and Card and Sanderson.
But…uh…why?
Is it because they are SO successful, they now transcend genre? They are now somehow ‘better’ than science fiction?
Could it be the other way around: Their success is thanks in part to the fact they were never relegated to those back shelves at all? King is an impressive writer, but he can’t get me to turn pages nearly as fast as Orson Scott Card or Brandon Sanderson or Dan Simmons.
And I can’t think of any reason why Dan Simmons shouldn’t be more popular than Stephen King, given the quality of work and depth of story and strength of character I’ve seen in both of their writing, except this: Dan Simmons is “science fiction” (though he has won awards in every genre) and Stephen King “isn’t”.
To a sci-fi fan, aversion to science fiction is bizarre, especially given the number of ‘exceptions’ allowed by non-fans of sci fi. A look at Rotten Tomatoes’ top movies of all time reveals any number of movies are technically science fiction or fantasy by any definition.
#2: Toy Story Two: A movie beloved by all, I can’t think of a single person who didn’t like it; kid or adult. The premise is that toys are magically living beings which spring to life when their owner isn’t around.
#7: The Wizard of Oz. Come on, now; “WIZARD” is in the title.
#15: Toy Story (the original)
#18: King Kong
#20: Seven Samurai
#28: Aliens
#30: The Evil Dead
#36: The Adventures of Robin Hood
#39: The Bride of Frankenstein
#49: Mary Poppins
#60 & #61: The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day
There are more, but the point is made. Furthermore, while some of these are genre-classified as ‘science fiction’, you won’t find others of them (such as Mary Poppins or Toy Story) relegated to such a back aisle of the video store. (Although a story identical to Mary Poppins in every way except set in Middle Earth instead of London would be thus punished.)
The dogfight sequence at the end of Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope is indistinguishable from World War II dogfights for one simple reason: Lucas used WWII footage and movies as templates for his storyboard, camera angles, cuts, and even dialog. Heck, he even named the imperial armies ‘Storm Troopers’ after Nazi Germany’s armies.
Plenty of people who “hate science fiction” loved The Matrix. Plenty of people who “hate fantasy” loved Braveheart.
Some have said that ‘horror’ or ‘thriller’ doesn’t fall under the science fiction umbrella. This argument certainly lends credence to Stephen King’s inclusion with the cool kids, but it doesn’t explain why Ann Rice is stuck in the fantasy section.
Some have said that if your story falls in modern times, then it isn’t fantasy or science fiction. Bullsh–evik. Do you mean to tell me that Terminator and Predator aren’t out-and-out science fiction? What about E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, or Spielberg’s version of War of the Worlds? Of course these are sci-fi. And every last one of them is set in the present day.
Furthermore, ‘horror’ isn’t even a genre, properly speaking; indeed, neither are science fiction and fantasy. If they were, where would steampunk fall: Into science fiction or fantasy? What about a story where wizards fight off a zombie invasion: Horror or Fantasy? What about I am Legend? Horror or science fiction?
No, together these three genres are considered speculative fiction, and they are nearly indistinguishable when you consider them together.
Vulcans/Elves
Romulans/Dark Elves
Klingons/Orcs (or by TNG, more like Dwarves)
Starfleet Federation/Council of Elrond
Stargates or portals to other dimensions? Advanced technology or magic spells? Nanotechnology or innate superpowers? Evolution or deification? These are the dilineations between science fiction and fantasy, and yet none of them are mutually exclusive.
Furthermore, the concepts of science fiction aren’t exclusive from those of ‘popular’ fiction either. A Sheriff from a western plays much the same role as a Jedi or a Starfleet Captain or a Captain of Gondor. Guns, phasers, and blasters serve identical purposes in action scenes.
Sometimes normal stories are classified as ‘science fiction’ for no discernable reason. Rotten Tomatoes lists The Truman Show as science fiction/fantasy even though there isn’t a single alien, space ship, sword, magic spell, or laser in the entire movie. Cube is similarly categorized.
So what’s the difference? If there’s space travel in a movie does it automatically carry the sci-fi stigma? What about Apollo 13? Deep Impact? Armageddon?
If a work is ‘science fiction’ or ‘fantasy”, is it now impossible for it to be a Romance or a Comedy? I doubt it.
I don’t have the answers to all of these questions. If I did, I’d make sure to always call my work “thriller” or “popular fiction” instead of “science fiction” when trying to promote my work to anti-geeks. I’d sell my romantic science fiction stories as “Romance”, the humorous ones as “Comedy”, the character-driven stories as “Drama”, and the action-based stories as “Action Thriller.” It’d be much nicer to be included on those shelves instead of stuck among the Trekkies.
But I’d be lying. Because science fiction is exploration of the imagination, asking the question, “what if?” and that’s what I write, no matter where or when it’s set.
While I was wondering how to classify my stories which take place in present-day America, I wondered where Dean Koontz and Stephen King were first published. I looked up their bibliogrophies and checked their earliest published short stories.
As I said, you can’t find them in the ‘science fiction’ section. They’re too cool to be included with the real freaks and geeks who worship dragons and space and go to conventions.
But they were originally published in magazines of science fiction. Go figure. I guess the marketing companies think they’ve returned to planet earth. They were just allowed to bring their imaginations with them.
It’s already helping.
Some writers dread the blank page; not I.
I love the blank page. A whole world of possibilities awaits, and not one clumsy phrase yet clutters the concepts. Drafting the opening line of a story may well take me several hours, but it’s a process I enjoy.
For me, the challenge is the middle of a project. I find myself awash in a sea of words. The opening glow has been lost, and no fruits of my labor are in sight. Minor changes to the first paragraph can send ripples through the rest of the work causing untold grammatical or continuity errors until each is painstakingly fixed. I recently found a sentence in Perfect Justice that lacked gender agreement from the first half of the sentence to the next. That’s a pretty basic mistake, and I’m pretty sure one I’ve NEVER made in stream-of-consciousness writing. It occurred only because at some point, I changed the gender of a minor character, and failed to correct all the related pronouns.
Last night I wrote for about two hours, working on Woman’s Best Friend. Afterwards, I logged into the site and updated my wordcount.
Now when I look at it today, that progress bar has leaped forward. Before when I worked on a story, particularly the first draft, I got no sense of progress or accomplishment. Even now, I still don’t know how many drafts it will take before I submit for publication, and afterwards it’s anybody’s guess how many rejection slips it takes before publication. (And some stories may never see print.)
But the progress bar is something and it’s giving me a sense of achievement and more motivation to go back tonight. It’s made my progress quantifiable at a glance (if not qualifiable).
Quite likely 3,000 words will be too short for that story, but I wanted a very attainable goal for the first project undertaken along with the website. And it will make a good benchmark to try and stay within before going longer to make sure I’m no wordier than necessary.
The votes are in…
…all two of them. (I’m not even sure if the 2nd comment was a ‘vote’, strictly speaking.)
Nevertheless, any input is better than no input at all, and someday when I’m a bestseller, I can say thanks to all of my fans…both of them!
If you can’t already tell from the progress bar on the right, I’ve begun additional work on Woman’s Best Friend and am already well underway.
Evenings spent in 2009:
Jason’s Writing Career: 1
World of Wacraft: 0
EDIT: No, the dog isn’t mine. There’s a golden retriever in the story, hence the mascot of this post.
The Continent of Lost Ideas
Some people believe that coming up with ideas for stories is the hard part. I disagree. In fact, I have ideas for new stories several times a day.
The hard part is taking the idea for a story and molding it into some meaningful presentation. There’s a big difference between, “He finds an evil ring of power” and The Lord of The Rings.
I’ve met hundreds of people who aren’t writers, but have ideas for a novel or a movie. (Sometimes they want me to write the story and then split the credit 50/50 if it’s wildly successful.) I’ve also been asked whether I’m afraid of anyone stealing my ideas.
/scoff
It takes more than a really good idea to write a bestseller or blockbuster. A lot more. No, the only intellectual property concern I have is for full text completed works. Besides which, there’s nothing new under the sun and every idea you can imagine has been done to death. It’s how the story is told which makes a good read.
I’ve lost thousands of ideas in that gap between idea and story. If I don’t have something down on paper (literal or digital), the concept is eventually lost. (This has happened with musical compositions as well as story ideas, which makes me sadder because those are rarer.)
Perhaps these lost ideas wander the earth and congregate in some far off mystical place. Hopefully I’ll be able to visit eventually and get some of those ideas back.
But in the meanwhile, the blog seems like an appropriate place to share my ideas. First, I can create a record of them, and someday when I’m bored and looking through old posts, or just want to work something but don’t know what, I can call up all the posts of story ideas and see what tickles my fancy.
It also will allow feedback from you if one of these suddenly appeals to you.
Two ideas that I want to get down immediately have both come from dreams. (Dreams are a superb and source of raw ideas, but they have a poor story structure; again, the hard part comes in the craft.)
- Post-apocalyptic search for his life-mate
- There has been a major catyclism; war, natural disaster, whatever. Whatever it was destroyed whole cities and ruptured the fabric of society. In the midst of this chaos, our hero has taken leadership over a small band of people and helped them survive. But he was seperated from his lover before the disaster. Once he has decided that his ragtag band can now survive without his leadership, he prepares to depart. “Where are you going?” they ask. “To find _______.” (The name of his true love.) “That’s crazy!” they protest. “She must have died! Even IF she survived the initial disaster, there’s no way she can survive the current aftermath of (insert other dangers, radiation, wild animals, bandits, confused attack robots). And even IF she survives it, there’s no way YOU’LL survive (current dangers) and even IF she survives AND you survive…you’ll never find her.” He responds, “Well, I have to try,” and leaves anyway.
- The dragon thief
- In this particular world, there’s a fantasy airforce of sorts, dragonriders who make up an elite corps of soldiers like modern Airborne Rangers or something. The protagonist of this story isn’t one of these soldiers, but he is a daredevil thrillseeker. He decides to steal one of their dragons right out from under them. The modern equivalent would be a mobster trying to steal a jet out from under the airforce. This is even further complicated by the fact that in the story, the jet (dragon) actually has loyalties to its rightful owners.