Tag: scifi

Continuing Mulling On A Second Creative Track

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’ve decided that given the potentially lengthy post-production process of the whole getting traditionally published thing that I need to back up and start working on other novel ideas (and maybe a short story or two.) I keep saying this and then, lulz, don’t do it.

But this time, given how much my looming 50th birthday sucks, I’m really going to do it. Or, at least, try again.

I have two really good scifi novels concepts, but no plot. One has to do with global warming and the other is a pandemic novel. I’ve mentioned the global warming novel concept to a manuscript consultant and she flipped out with excitement to the point that I’m worried SHE is going to write it. I think she monitors this blog now and again and she has the means, motive and opportunity to scoop up my general plot idea and get it published.

That sounds pretty paranoid, but the older I get, the more I realize that that is exactly how showbiz actually works. It’s very competitive and people will cut you for no reason if they think they can get something out of it.

It is because of my paranoid fears about the manuscript consultant “stealing” my global climate change themed story that I’m going to also work on the pandemic novel. I’m going to use all the experience I have about how *I* write a novel to hopefully speed the process of writing these novels up considerably.

But there is the issue of focus.

I have a lot of momentum when it comes to my first novel and I don’t want to stop cold working on it. I need some way to multitask between different projects that allows me to progress apace with the first novel. I THINK what I’m going to do is pick a specific day of the week where I piviot to working on something besides the first novel so I can actually have something brewing when I begin the beta reader process then querying when things are pretty much out of my hands.

Anyway.

I have a very limited amount of time on this earth. I really have gotten to the put up or shut up point fo things.

The Paradox Of Plenty

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have a long-running scenario in my mind that involves turning the traditional idea about humans leaving the planet on its head. Instead of just a few survivors, what if a few BILLION people could survive, but they would have to establish some sort of common human civilization on whatever new, habitable planet they colonized?

The reason why I have often called this the “impossible scenario” is despite what Americans might think, there is very little done by all humans across the globe in the same way. Even things connected to the body — like how we use the toilet — can be very, very different depending on where you are.

As such, I’ve long been fascinated by how you might settle a new livable planet if all of humanity had to co-operate using nothing more than the technology we currently have. The only advanced technology used would be zapping a few billion people to the new solar system.

This is a very, very interesting problem that I have thought about a great deal over the years. Just as I think I have it figured out, I change the conditions or make elements of the scenario stricter and i have to think about it from a different direction. It’s a lot of fun and unless I sit down and finally give the whole thing some sort of plot — a huge waste of time. Though, to be honest, it does keep my mind in shame because I push my imagination to the limits.

Anyway.

This Novel Project Has A Dollop Of Speculative Fiction To It

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

One of the reasons why I’m feel pretty good about this novel series is I’ve finally — finally got it through my thick skull that your protagonist can not, should not be in any way passive. As such, I’ve figured out a way that a novel scifi / speculative fiction element of this project can be a real integral part of the plot because we see its use through the eyes of our Amerasian heroine.

Even though I don’t have a wife or a girlfriend to be a “reader” to tell me I’m full of shit in this regard, I do think the speculative fiction part of the story makes it a bit more interesting, a bit more spicy than it might be otherwise. This particular plot point is found in another series of novels, but it’s used in a magical mystery way, while my use of the trope is set very much in speculative fiction.

I hope there isn’t too much comparison between the two uses of this little bit of scifi / fantasy. I suppose it’s inevitable that it will be. But there’s nothing new under the sun as they say. But anyway, as I’ve said before, the framework, at least, is there for a pretty good pop novel.

A lot of what happens next is out of my hands. I need a lot of luck. I need to strike the zeitgeist in just the right way in about a year. The idea that anyone with a traditional career would take my little dream seriously is kind of deep. It would be one of the greatest — if not THE greatest — event of my life to date if I managed to get an actual normal person to take my novel seriously enough that they would be my literary agent.

I’m still concerned that, of course, if they do due diligence on me they’re going to think I’m completely bonkers. Which, maybe I am. But I make no apologies for who I am. I’m an eccentric. I get drunk and rant on this blog — and on Twitter — sometimes.

But as the late Annie Shapiro said of me, I’m a “delusional jerk with a good heart.”

Settling A New Planet Would Be Incredibly Difficult

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have an idea for a novel that would take the principles of The Martian and apply it to not just one person, but, say, 1 billion. If an Alien Empire could zap a big chunk of Humanity to a new, inhabitable planet on the conditions that we work together and we could only use existing 2022 technology to do, how would you do it?

The answer, after thinking about this for 15 years is — it would be very, very hard.

The chief reason is bootstrapping a new civilization on a new planet would take far, far longer than you might think. Think of all the different products we use everyday that would be extremely difficult to build without a number of years of development to get there.

Even under the best of conditions — say, the Alien Empire gave us the absolute basics of electricity and the Internet — where would people live? You might have a very surreal situation of people using laptops and cellphones while otherwise living in some pretty primitive conditions. A least for a few years, maybe a few decades.

And then, there’s one of the biggest issues — how do you organize your new global government and society? The most obvious answer is you use the USA as the basis of your new mega colony. If you were trying to settle that 1 billion people on a new planet, you could use 200 of the 335 million Americans as the core of the settlement.

But that, unto itself, would be the source of a great deal of conflict. Which, if you were trying to use all of this as the basis of a novel or a movie would be GREAT. And, of course, using the USA as the basis of a global civilization would allow you to pander, hard, to your American audience.

The whole thing is a lot of fun to think about because there are so many different ways to look at it.

Someone Remake ‘Dark Star’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Before there was Alien, there was Dark Star. It’s a difficult movie to explain. It’s sort of a comedy scifi movie with very bad special effects. Like, piss poor. But the overall effect of the movie is quite good. It ends with the memorable scene of an astronaut surfing his way into a planet’s atmosphere.

Anyway, it seems like just the type of movie that you could use as a stepping off point for a new, big budget Hollywood movie. It would be a lot of fun.

How Humanity Might Settle And Govern A New Planet


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

One thing I’ve always thought was interesting was the specifics of how humanity might settle a new planet. I’ve come up with a very elaborate scenario that would allow humanity to settle planets in a solar system that, say, a galactic empire gifted us as a “homeland.”

But how you would go about settling and governing any of these plants is very, very difficult to figure out. Let’s take earth — in real terms, there are two USA size places that dominate the entire planet — North America and Europe. There are a few other first world nations, but they’re very small in population. While China is growing in economic and military power, the world is still pretty much controlled by the “Western World” of the USA and Western Europe.

Why is this?

Well, let’s talk the Pacific Ocean. The world we live in has more to do with the size of the Pacific Ocean than you might think. It’s this huge ocean that prevented China from settling the New World and makes the type of climate necessary to establish and grow a First World nation so precious. (In other words, it’s easer to warm machinery up than it is to cool it down during an Industrial Age.)

Imagine, however, if there was an Africa-size continent between East Asia and North America. If it had a geography and climate similar to Europe’s, then the world we live in now would be dramatically different. You could probably fit another billion+ people on such a huge landmass.

Anyway, if you take that idea and apply it to a new planet that is empty and ready for humanity to settle, you have a shit tone of problems. On earth, you could literally organize North America and Europe such that you had only two nations that everyone lived in. I mean, we’re not doing the globe’s environment any favors by having so many people live in South America and Africa.

But it’s easy to imagine that if humanity was “gifted” a few planets for our homeland, that there would be a fundimental problem: who gets to settle such a homeland? There are 1 billion Chinese and 1 billion Indians. They’re just as human as anyone else, why would you automatically say the West should get the opportunity to settle new planets?

I go over this problem again and again in my head because it’s impossible to solve using the conditions of the scenario. The USA makes the most sense as the basis for a planet wide settlement, but everyone hates the USA and a lot of MAGA New Right people would hate the idea of the States having to absorb a lot of non-Americans (Read: non-white).

I really want to give this scenario a plot and characters and write something using it, but it’s still impossible to figure out at the moment.

A Critique Of Space The Nation’s Deep Dive Into Orson Scott Card’s ‘Ender’s Game’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’ve been a fan of Ana Marie Cox’s since she was at Wonkette many moons ago. So, I really like her scifi podcast that she does with Daniel Drezner. I was really impressed with their take on Alien. But, I have to take issue with some of their hot takes on Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game.

The key thing about the book for me is while it’s a very influential, popular and well-regarded book, in some respects there’s not a lot of there there. As I recall, it’s almost all dialogue and what really makes the book meaningful is the shocking twist ending.

Meanwhile, I have always really like the sequel to the book, Speaker For The End. I read as a young man in the 80s and it changed my life. As such, I found it really annoying that Drezner shat on that book for some weird reason. Speaker For The Dead is an actual novel novel while Ender’s Game is, if I remember correctly, kind of half-assed in some respects. Even Cox observed that much of the third act is “telling” not “showing.”

So, Ender’s Game unto itself, at least for me, isn’t all that big a deal other than it’s really popular. It’s Speaker For The End that really shines in how it talks about if we ever encountered an alien species we really would need to walk a lightyear in their shoes before we came to any snap judgements about them. (A theme that is also found in Ender’s Game.)

Overall, I really like their podcast. It’s not too often that scifi nerds get a chance to geek out.

James Bond Has Really Let Us Down In The Gadget Department


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

My novel is growing far more scfi in nature far earlier than I predicted. Or, put another way, my heroine’s interaction with advanced technology is beginning to become a central part of the plot sooner than expected.

Right now, I have two major issues to deal with — how often we get to see the heroine’s POV and how often the “embraced and extended” gadgets of James Bond I’ve given her influence what she does as part of the plot. I also have the issue of the nattering nabobs of negativism at VOX waiting to pounce on my pop-lit novel if it doesn’t fit their corporate liberal metrics.

But I’m being both “delusional and stupid” about even selling this novel at this point. I’m an untested, unknown male author who probably comes off as just a well-meaning Internet crank if some lit agent looked at my online ID at this point. I can always self-publish if need be.

Anyway, I’m very pleased with the gadgets I’ve come up with for my heroine. They’re very innovative, next generation and kick ass. And, in the second book, some REALLY cool things are going to happen because of them. I’m really into flipping the script as much as possible, so a lot of themes one might expect in a novel such as this are implemented in an unexpected fashion.

I at least hope so.

The point of all of this is I feel the folks at Eon have let James Bond — and us — down. Bond is about girls, gadgets and guns. While the girls are still hot, the gadgets these days are so so. Just turn on the TV for your inspiration. There’s some seriously cool things being cooked up in tech right now, why not use it?

I guess some of it is producers and screenwriters just aren’t woke to some of the cooler things being designed right now. So, I guess, in a sense, I have my in to entertain readers in an unexpected fashion. I’ll put a move on you, as they say.

V-Log: The State Of The #Scifi #Novel I’m #Writing As Of Oct. 21st, 2018

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Some rambling about my big creative project of the moment.

V-Log: The State Of The #Scifi #Novel I’m #Writing As Of Sept. 12, 2018

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

The premise of the scifi novel I’m writing is a mysterious wall appears in Virginia that surrounds the rural Piedmont region. The story is what happens after the wall is built and its consequences. While it sounds a lot like Stephen King’s Dome, there is much, much, much more to it than that.

I just don’t feel like telling you right now.

But I’ve reached the point in the story where I need to explore the world that the Wall has created. That’s my immediate goal — figuring out which character is going to be the reader’s avatar in exploring that world.