Star Wars, Pressure and Thoughts

Today has been a good day - I got to see Star Wars: A Force Awakens and despite my massive misgivings about the continuation of the saga I loved it. Can't claim it's perfect but it comes close enough for me. Fear not - no spoilers here. But if you haven't seen it and you loved A New Hope, you have to watch this one; you're going to love it.

I'm in the process of clearing out the many emails I have as I'm terrible at keeping up with them. This has resulted in a present I was buying not being sent, as apparently I had an invoice sent to me a week ago which I didn't see. Why businesses can't just take the money when I've given them my Paypal details I don't know, but here we are; one pleading email of "please charge me again, I promise I'll pay this time" and now waiting for a response. Fingers and toes are crossed.

One email that got my attention was from Goodreads, "Your year in books". It listed how many books I've read, how many I challenged myself to read, how many I added to my "To Read" pile... essentially a lot of numbers that told me I've not been particularly productive this year. That got me to thinking, Why do we put this pressure on ourselves?  It makes sense for companies to bombard us with messages and what better way to prompt someone to interact with their product then setting goals, otherwise known as "gamification". But why do we so willingly play? In my case I think it's a fear of missing out, of not doing enough in my life and just turning into a couch potato mindlessly consuming and never creating. We see so many inspirational stories of people who turned their life around through hard work and dedication, so many examples of how good it could be if we only put a bit of effort in. In reality though "effort" can often translate into burning out or being unhappy. Spending hours on something that you don't really enjoy all in the hope of a pay off at the end, whether that's setting up a small business, or trying to read your way through a Colossus sized pile of books.

This is not me saying it's not worth it; it is. Of equal importance though is your sanity - I've been much happier since I put the brakes on my writing and instead focused on doing little things one at a time or one big thing over a period of time, rather than everything plus day job, plus reading, plus games, plus keeping up with TV shows... There's only so much the brain can cope with. So this year coming will be my year of focus on only one thing at a time, with no guilt if I change my focus to relax or to learn or to grow in other ways. Because while there are many paths to success, you can't walk all of them at once. Sometimes you've just got to stick to the one your own and not worry about what you might be missing.

Happy Winter Solstice!

Reboots, Remakes and Nostalgia

Summer blockbusters this year seem to all be about nostalgia. First there was "Mad Max: Fury Road", bringing the road warrior back to the big screen for the first time since 1985. Then we had "Jurassic World", to enormous blockbuster success. Now we have "Terminator: Genisys", living up to the eternal promise of 'I'll be back'. Like a lot of people my age (let's say, thirty-ish) I remember the original films from the first time around (except for Mad Max, which I watched in the Nineties) and have a lot of warm and fuzzy feelings about them. I was too young to see Terminator until about a decade after its release but I watched T:2 when it came out on VHS and absolutely loved it. Of the three franchises, it was Jurassic Park that held a very special place in my heart; I saw it four times in the cinema when it came out in 1993 and loved every minute of it.

I'll admit, I'm still a little sad that movies aren't all that original anymore and rely on glories of the past to get bums on seats. If it's not superhero movies getting a reboot every two years, it's sequels to franchises that have been out of the limelight for two decades. Saying that, I have been thoroughly enjoying the current wave of sequels. Watching the latest Terminator addition got me thinking about this; I should probably hate all these films, for not living up to my memories of their founders, for trying to ruthlessly cash-in on established franchises with a strong fan-base. But I don't. All have been entertaining, all have made going to the cinema something I wanted to do (it's rare for any film to make me want to spend the cash for the big screen anymore) and most of all, I've felt that all have respected their origins. Some have done it better than others but none have made me feel like they're shitting all over their roots. In fact one of the things I like best about Terminator: Genisys is that it removes films 3 and 4 entirely from the timeline, two films that did not respect the original at all. Still hate the title though.

How to Blow Your Mind in One Easy Step

I read a thing about artificial intelligence here and here. And I can't recommend enough for you all to do the same. It took me about 40 minutes to get through it all, mostly with this facial expression:

It's seriously terrifying shit. If you can't be arsed to read it all, it boils down to this:

1. Scientific advancement increases exponentially (the more you know, the easier it is to work shit out). So what we did in the whole of the 20th Century will probably take us, ooh, ten years to do now.

2. AI comes in three types: stupid, human level, and super. So far we only have the stupid kind, that can be really good at one thing and one thing only (think Siri, Google Cars, anything where computers do the thinking for you). But we are in the process of creating human level AI. But...

3. The rules of 'exponentiality' means that as soon as we do, that human AI is likely to turn into Super AI in about an hour, real-time.

4. Super AI is going to make us like ants looking at the Hadron Collider and being totally unable to comprehend what it is, let alone how it was built or what it does.

The smartest people on the planet seem to be in two camps; one side see super AI as the saviour of not just humanity but of the Universe. It will be able to manipulate matter at an atomic (or even sub-atomic) level. It will be able to solve all of the puzzles of physics and the universe, even the ones we don't know about yet. It will be able to make us immortal. And all this in less than fifty years from now (at optimistic estimates).

The other group of super smart people... well, they're not so happy-flappy and ready to welcome the computer deity we'd be creating. They point out that while humans have mushy things like feelings, empathy, morals, ethics, etc, a computer wouldn't. This could be the extinction event for humanity. Maybe all life on earth.

Now, while a part of me is all like "Oh, shit!" another, bigger bit of me is thinking of all the stories I could make out of this. Which probably says a lot about my tendency to retreat into fantasy rather than deal with reality, but is also a demonstration of something I think may be the key to stopping the AI destruction of the world. Make the thing love stories, particularly stories about people and then it will have a good reason to keep us around.

Unless we all end up having to reenact Game of Thrones for the computerised overlord's amusement...

Can Art Be Separated From A Flawed Creator?

Trigger warning: This post features links to accounts of sexual abuse and rape, though details in the actual post are minimal.

Here in Britain we're currently going through seemingly never ending discoveries of sexual abuse at the hands of people in powerful positions. Rolf Harris, the much loved presenter of Rolf's Cartoon Club and Animal Hospital, was convicted on twelve counts of indecent assault and sentenced to five years and nine months. Prior to that Max Clifford, was sentenced to eight years for a string of indecent assaults and it's common knowledge now what Jimmy Saville was up to, though without a trial his accusations will remain forever unproven.

Gathering less attention, but certainly something that seems fatefully timed, has been the revelations about the science fiction and fantasy writer Marion Zimmer Bradley. There had been conjecture about her, and even certainty that she'd covered up her husband's crimes of rape and abuse of boys.  She admitted as much in her deposition in 1998, with the transcript leaving no room for doubt. But far more shocking, to me at least, is the heart wrenching account from her own daughter, Moira Greyland, revealing that Marion Zimmer Bradley herself was committing sexual assault, among other types of abuse, towards her throughout her childhood. And that there may be others. It isn't easy reading and I felt physically ill reading Greyland's poem, "Mother's Hands", but Greyland's words are incredibly moving and brave and deserve to be read.

So far I've never read any of Bradley's works. Interestingly she was never a writer my mum rated much, and as I experienced Science Fiction and Fantasy through my mum's collection it meant I wasn't really all that aware of her. There was a copy of Mists of Avalon on mum's shelf but I never got round to it. I have it on my wish list but I'm in no hurry to read it. I'm not in favour of blacklisting artwork even if it's created by a monster though. Sometimes even the most evil of people can create something of worth or meaning to others. I can't imagine what these revelations will do to those who loved Bradley's writing, who got started on the writing path because of reading her work or submitting stories to her anthologies. One has pledged to give all of her profits from the stories she got published that way to RAINN, America's largest anti-sexual violence charity. It's a wonderful way to handle the dichotomy of being proud of work you've done, even though it's connected to someone who has done such terrible things.

Australian councils are working to remove all Rolf Harris artwork from their buildings and in the local areas, and the price of his art has plummeted since his conviction. Likewise, I imagine less SF and Fantasy fans will be interested in reading Bradley's works. But I don't think what someone does in their life, no matter how horrendous, means their creations should be destroyed. If that were the case we wouldn't have a lot of the classical music, paintings or stories we have today. Then there's the question of the value you can get from art created by undesirables. My mum's response when I told her about all this was that she'd always felt there was something a bit "off" in Bradley's works, even though she fit the feminist, female, science fiction writer mould that my mum prefers. She couldn't put her finger on it, but said she wasn't entirely surprised by the revelations about Bradley.

It's often claimed that art can reveal far more of the artist than they intend, and for that reason alone I won't write off the chances of me reading a Bradley book one day. My interpretation of her works will be heavily influenced by what I know, just as reading Mein Kampf or looking at one of Hitler's paintings is impossible to separate from what he was responsible for. It's also a lot easier when the perpetrator is deceased; because no matter what you think of their art, at least you know they aren't benefiting from your purchase. At the same time though I can completely understand people never wanting material near them that was created by someone who committed terrible crimes or atrocities. Because even though art can exist on its own merits, it is always, inevitably, entwined with the person who created it.

Writing Trials: How Long Is a Piece Of String?

I've been wondering lately how authors know how long the thing they are about to write will be. Or even if they try to. How do they set out to write a short story, or a novelette, or a full-blown novel?

This came up because of the story I'm plodding along with which has not turned out how I expected . It seemed to be a 5000 - 8000 word story in the initial idea stages, even when I started plotting it out. Now? It's looking more like a 20,000 word story, or even longer. I'm about three scenes in and I'm already at 6000 words with about ten more scenes to go. Assuming I don't come up with any more whizzy dizzy ideas for it...

This has told me one thing: I am rubbish at working out how long a story is likely to be before I start writing it. This shouldn't really be a problem, as a story needs to be what it will be and I fully embrace that. But I want to write more short stories (5000 - 8000 words), so I can send them out and get feedback (read: rejection slips) before I finally manage to sell one or two to short story markets. This is very difficult to do when you continually end up writing longer pieces. Not to mention frustrating.

I've found the planning tools in Scrivener has helped me see when a story is likely to be on the longer side, but it doesn't really cover the fact that I come up with most of my good ideas during the writing process itself. I pull a scene here, add another there and before you know it: *POOF* I have a novel on my screen. I've seen a lot of advice on various blogs and sites saying that new authors should write some short stories, and to keep novel length on the shorter side for the first go. But none that I've found have explained how you can predict how long your story is going to be or techniques to try to limit yourself to working on shorter stories.

I suspect I'm thinking the wrong way about this; if a story needs to be 5000, 10,000 or 50,000 words than it needs to be that length. The one thing I can say I have learned is not to give up - I've left the detritus of a couple of tales lying in my files because they were taking too long to finish and I ended up lost in a quagmire. But this story I'm working on now; nuh uh. Not giving up. I'm enjoying it too much and despite the surprise over the word count I still know where it's going and can't wait to get there.

Maybe that's all the trick is; keep writing, don't give up and eventually you'll have a whole bunch of stories of varying length to send out into the big ugly. Something is better than nothing after all.