If paid reviews are 'bad', what's good?

The resilient meme re John Locke's now-infamous purchased Amazon reviews has stirred a big pot of author resentment. But is there another way?

The e-Book Bubble Pops

The e-book is dead! Log live the e-book!

Why Books are Like Hamburgers

When the 'net was young – and so much smaller – a band of college students and techies hand-assembled pages of links in an attempt to map this new world.

The One Per Cent Solution & the Shape of Destiny

I had a passing discussion the other day with a writer to the effect that The Tijuana Brass and The Beatles were a vivid illustration that great art, of any sort, has a shape and form that people actively and passionately respond to.

Beneath the surface, the essential 'shape' of a Paul McCartney Beatles tune and a Herb Alpert TJB arrangement (both men personified the groups they pretended to be a mere part of) are the same. Otherwsise both would not have coexisted and thrived with such outwardly different music during the same cultural era. During the Beatles' rise, most musicians who did not swim in the same cultural stream - Sinatra comes to mind - got stranded on shore. Frustrated, many (such as Pat Boone and Bobby Darin) abandoned the material that had won them fame and adopted (unconvincingly) the outer trappings of their times. But men such as Herb Alpert, Paul McCartney and Paul Simon wrote and performed the music that conformed to the right 'shape' (as they saw it), rather than to the fickle cultural zeitgeist.

Does this ideal 'shape', if it exists, require a genius to identify it, or can it be found by anyone who cares to look? Below, Kurt Vonnegut performs an entertaining, tongue-in-cheek schtick describing the successful, 'beautiful shape' of a story.

But in a more serious vein, author Jan Tschichold in The Form of the Book: Essays on the Morality of Good Design (excerpted here) assures us that we - all of us - can and should learn to identify the 'right' shape of things:

"Personal typography is defective typography. Only beginners and fools will insist on using it. Perfect typography depends on perfect harmony between all of its elements. We must learn, and teach, what this means. Harmony is determined by relationships or proportions. Proportions are hidden everywhere: in the capaciousness of the margins, in the reciprocal relationships to each other of all four margins on the page of a book, in the relationship between the leading of the type area and dimensions of the margins, in the placement of the page number relative to the type area, in the extent to which capital letters are spaced differently from the text, and not least, in the spacing of the words themselves. In short, affinities are hidden in any and all parts."

Tschichold's excellent book (the comments at the Amazon link are also worth a look) goes on to describe how these hidden truths can be found. Notice that he clearly labels this process as a search for morality - not a search for beauty, as is commonly supposed. In this search, the selfish (personal) preferences must be set aside, even exorcized, in order for the hidden things to be identified.

The Geometry of God: The Striking Kaleidoscopic 
Patterns of European Cathedral Ceilings
Many of these structures were constructed in an era actively
occupied with ordering the heavens, and expressed in their
mathematical nature was a microcosm model of the universe
– perhaps in the belief that logic could explain or convey
the God to which these places of worship aimed to attest.

"Only through constant practice and strictest self-criticism may we develop a sense for a perfect piece of work. Unfortunately, most seem content with a middling performance."

So the great obstacle for most of us, in Tschichold's view, is not some lack of innate talent but simply a willingness to settle for less.

This idea is not at all limited to the visual. Tom Wolfe alluded to it in The Right Stuff, which professed that the job of being an astronaut, by its nature, was something more than a job. It was even more than a glamorous, high-profile job. It demanded almost-indefinable qualities that went beyond a set of skills, experience, and qualifications.

Beyond the individual's 'right stuff', proponents of Elliott Wave theory and Kondratieff Waves contend that our collective behavior, from wars to famines to market crashes, also conforms to 'proper' and elegant - and inevitable - patterns. It is said that these patterns are an integral part of our makeup as human beings. Elliott Wave is particularly interesting in that it extends beyond mankind to all of nature, linking the patterns and behavior of the smallest particle to the largest possible formation. It posits that both our follies and triumphs are, in a real sense, forces of nature as real and pervasive as gravity. It suggests how a great artist creates and shapes his works with interconnecting, dependent themes.

Beyond that, it has been said that there is a pattern that describes God. Mozart and Einstein alluded to and pursued this. This hugely famous book danced with the idea. Human history is filled with searches for the proper shape, the elegant description, or the mathematically-pleasing construct that conveys a sense of the I Am.

One theme of The Patriots of Mars is that human destiny conforms to such shapes, and that it is possible (and wise) to learn to intuit their form. With that in mind, consider the chart at right. The first column, 'range', shows all available resources, in ten percent increments, up to a theoretical 100% of wealth at bottom. The second column shows what percentage of the population owns or controls each increment of wealth. The final column, a color bar, offers a breakdown of the numbers. As you can see, the largest group by far is the middle class, and a very small percentage - the infamous One Percent, controls a disproportionate share of wealth.

No doubt you have heard this before. Perhaps you got it from the New York Times or the Daily Kos or Paul Krugman or Think Progress. These numbers are indisputable, except for one caveat:

They're not from any economist. They're from Pinterest.

The numbers measure the system-wide influence (info at link) of the images uploaded by various Pinterest users. In a new, closed system that is about as close to a meritocracy as one might hope for in this world, Pinterest displays the same heavily-skewed wealth distribution curve the Times has been bleating about for years now. It is the same 'unfairness' writers complain about when they see the great wealth accumulated by the likes of James Patterson or Stephen King and contrast it with their own meager holdings.

But what if - rather than painting this colossal disparity as indicative of a sick system that 'needs intervention' - we recognize this as the true shape of a healthy system and work from that premise to ease the burden of the disadvantaged among us?

Of course, this will never happen. As Jan Tschichold observes, most people will choose never to see it. But Tschichold also knew that a few will always see for themselves, and that those few were worth his reaching out, because they are the ones who change the world.

The Age of the Cloistered Idea

Part One of the series Think Outside the Book.

Today I posted a Pinterest board for The Patriots of Mars. The board's empty, and will remain so until the book's out.

When the book is released, the board will fill with related quotes. These will actually be images, of course. Quotation-images  and Infographics are swelling concerns on the 'net these days. The Pinterest boards trafficking in quotes are some of the busiest on that service. Facebook has spawned a sprawling cottage industry trafficking in such things. Few attempt to make a point on Facebook anymore without leveraging an image, and that image usually involves type.

The old saw has it that a picture is worth a thousand words. In terms of 'message-capacity', if you will, a square inch of image packs more immediate punch than a block of text that size. And in a Darwinistic jungle of fast-moving messages fighting for limited attention, immediate impact can be crucial.

In this context, it's easy to understand Facebook's billion-dollar purchase of Instagram this week. Images are the future of the web, and text-images have great power.

For the first time in history, the average person can routinely communicate graphically. This was impossible via telephone or its electronic antecedents. It was possible via book, newspaper or television - but only for the few who were publishers or broadcasters. The only way for the average person to be graphically-empowered in his/her communications was to buy a Hallmark card.

This means people are becoming accustomed to thinking not just in words or numbers, but in terms of the capabilities of LOLcats, PowerPoint presentations, YouTube clips, and countless other message-image generator services.

It also means that folks buying books in this booming e-book market have a different mindset than readers had during the great paperback explosion of the 1930's.

In the past, reading as a skill remained the same regardless of the media. Whether it was a newspaper, book, or street sign, a reader went about his/her task in more or less the same way. But in a world of hypertext, two readers can come away from a paragraph with vastly different ideas, depending on which links they pursued.

The common assumption is that ebooks will increasingly contain links and interactive features such as YouTube clips. But that's not a new idea, nor is it what will differentiate e-books from all that came before.

This essay began with a mention of quotes from Patriots. We live in a world that sees and wants its ideas in pre-packaged quotes - not open-ended links. Ours is a world of processed goods and service industries, of Reader's Digest, Cliff's Notes, and an apparently endless supply of pundits to offer up platitudes a la carte. Our world wants its ideas packaged, and its options contracted - not expanded. Simplicity and convenience is the thought-merchant's credo, if (s)he wants to be successful. The future of e-books is not in opening up new doors via links to the wider web. Of course that will be (and is being) done, but that's not the Next Big Thing. (My upcoming Patriots is quite heavily linked, in anticipation of a classroom edition which will be even moreso.)

The true e-book has yet to arrive. What we have seen so far are afterthoughts - ghosts - from the print world. Occasionally, an ambitious publisher pushes out what amounts to a book-length website. These are not true products of the newly-emerging tablet medium. The e-book-to-come demands a new approach to creating literature  - an approach for which the term 'writing' seems inadequate. This approach will be so different that I don't have a fitting name to suggest for it. But I believe it will form itself around the public's love of the superficially cloistered idea-byte we call a quote.

While this new form has yet to be seen, we have seen its ancestors. We are quite accustomed to familiar song snippets slipped into new songs, TV or movies in order to lend them some of the meaning and flavor (and appeal) of the original. And some of us have seen the works of installation artists such as Jenny Holzer (pictured above).

The next installment of this series will begin to explore Holzer's lifetime of work and what it means to the coming writing revolution.

Corruption vs. Wealth

It's passe, and even risible, to claim that America is the hope of the world. That idea died with Reagan, and his 'shining city on a hill'. Even Superman recently questioned the 'American Way' he once fought for (as his old TV show claimed).

It's not just from the left that one hears this relentless drumbeat, either. Jim Rogers, a staggeringly wealthy (by most standards) investor, uprooted his family from America, where he made his reputation and fortune, to China. China, he has often said, is the future.

At right is a chart from a very insightful website indicating the state of the world's corruption. What stands out to me is that the poorest countries are the most corrupt, with Africa the clear 'winner'.

From the site: 'Petty bribery increased the most in Chile, Colombia, Kenya, FYR Macedonia, Nigeria, Poland, Russia, Senegal and Thailand. And bribery was most often an activity of the poor and the young.'

Furthermore, the most corruption - hands-down - stemmed from representatives of political parties. As was once observed by The Sopranos - 'these guys make us look like amateurs'.

Also note that this chart holds that Asia has over twice the incidence of corruption as the US.

What does this mean? To me it means that wealth has an inverse ratio to moral (however you choose to define that) corruption. The more dishonest a society is, the poorer it will be.

We get quite an earful about the Bernie Madoffs of this world. But such headlines don't offer a clear indication of where a society is headed, because people like that have always existed. What matters is the integrity of a society, and what it truly believes and honors - not what it pays mere lip service to.

Our true societal values are masked with a flimsy cloak of political correctness. It's wrong to hate (at least openly) Jews or 'minority' races. But it is permissible, and even encouraged, to hate designated strawmen. Sarah Palin, for example, is someone for whom various forms of hatred are often expressed. It is likewise permissible, and encouraged, to hate those who do not conform to whatever is currently 'politically correct'.

In the end, the most decent, just and honorable societies will triumph. If that is China, so be it, but it is far from proven that a still-totalitarian state can lead billions to a higher moral level. If it's the USA, we have some soul-searching (and a lot of re-inventing) to do.

If it's some other nation that's destined to rise up and become 'the shining city' that leads the world, there are an awful lot of people right now who are wondering where on Earth that might be.

Google+'s inherent - and inherited - problem

Recently, Virginia Postrel threatened to take her business elsewhere if Facebook forced Timeline on her. Though her friends voiced support, the fact is that folks resist uprooting and re-establishing themselves on another social network without 'sufficient' cause, and Timeline is almost certainly an insufficient reason.

Google+ has been attempting to establish itself as FB's main rival. This is not an incidental effort on Google's part, but critical to its future growth. Yet despite Google's institutional muscle, the effort is a relative failure.

Various explanations have been offered for this, but I have found none of them satisfactory - until today. This piece from Nick Bilton's 'Bits' column for the NY Times, IMHO, nails it.

What do Bilton's conclusions mean for the future of Google+? Can they 'fix it'? Not really - the problem is inherent within the nature of the institution that is Google. Can 'the institution' be fixed, then? Our own history insists that broken or obsolete institutions periodically need to be 'altered or abolished'. Ask Linda Stone, sometime, about her efforts to change Microsoft's culture from the inside out.

If Google can't do it, can ANYone overtake the Facebook juggernaut? History tells us that it's not only possible, but eminently likely. It was not so long ago that AOL ruled the 'social media' scene, and thereafter it was MySpace. Both have long since fallen on hard times.

Could Google simply acquire the strongest FB competitor and win the social media wars that way? Again, the historical record speaks to us. This time it tells us that the answer is yes... and no. 'Yes', Google could certainly acquire an up-and-comer, and Yahoo once did with Flickr. Yes, start-ups need sugar daddies. But no, this strategy does not win the day for Google. Yahoo's wet-blanket corporate culture killed the spirit of innovation at Flickr, which could have evolved offshoots like, for instance, Instagram. The writing was on the wall when Flickr's founders walked away in frustration.

The real solution here lies in recalling just what it is Google really needs from Google+, which is: User information. Facebook won't give it up to Google, so Google attempted to build its own social network. And it failed - at least, it failed in terms of the scale it needs to achieve going forward. But that's not to say another emerging social network might not be able to reach an innovative accommodation with Google that gives the search giant much of what it needs without surrendering to a corporate kiss of death.

This is not just a 'possible' outcome, but a 'likely' one, and as such it's well worth keeping an eye out for.

The World is Made of Dreams

The world is not made of matter, but ideas

The above headline is an adaptation of a concept originally put forth by Muriel Rukeyser, who put it this way: "The universe is made of stories, not atoms."

That's probably closer to the ultimate truth of things, for those of you searching for an ultimate truth. 'Stories' imply the plotting of some difficult-to-define moral concept or other aspect of human experience. An idea carries no such weight. Harry Potter is a story, a quark is an idea. Moses coming down from Mt. Sinai is a story, string theory is an idea.

Stories, however, are composed of ideas. Good ideas, bad ones, inspired ones, poorly expressed ones. You see, I've taken Muriel's concept and broken it down into its components.

Stories are fashioned from ideas the way molecules are formed by atoms. But that is not the end of the mystery. Just as atoms themselves are formed of particles, and those particles are made of strings and quarks and who-knows-what, our ideas are fashioned by the long timeline of human experience, by the subconscious - and by things we fear to examine.

Orson Scott Card once professed his amazement at the human appetite for stories. It's this apparently-insatiable appetite that allows authors to earn their living, even though one would think (especially in the publishing business) that every human thought had been expressed, every story told. Do we really need another? Why were people so rabid to know the fate of Little Nell, and years later, Harry Potter? Why do films like Star Wars or The Matrix inspire such fanatical devotion among the faithful?

The 'why' of this is worth exploring, but it may not be something we can ever know with certainty. More relevant is the fact that this truth demonstrably exists, and is universally exploited. Movie-makers, politicians, and marketers of all stripes profit from our appetite for story. Even the gigantic modern sports industry cannot draw breath without it. Turn on the TV in the next couple of weeks, and stories about the upcoming Super Bowl will be inescapable. Moral and character sketches will be drawn, erased, and drawn again until we are sick to death of the pointless exercise. Far more time will be spent on them than the game itself will require. NFL Films earns great profits from its telling of its tales - commercially-manufactured fables for our times. Why are major-league baseball and football far more profitable than basketball or hockey? Because we have a wealth of stories built around the men who have played those games. We have our heroes, our legends, our goats and our villains. Outside Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretsky, the 1980 Olympics and a handful of others, there are few basketball or hockey stories that have taken hold in the public's collective psyche.

The public cannot differentiate actors from the roles they play, and the canniest of them choose roles whose stories enhance their public persona. That way, people will continue to anticipate their films. Tom Hanks comes to mind in that regard. His characters in movies such as Big, Philadelphia, Forrest Gump, Apollo 13, and Saving Private Ryan were extremely sympathetic, and in Angels & Demons no less than the Pope thanked and acknowledged him.

The stories we that utterly surround us each day of our lives are often compelling but rarely true, and are often toxic as well. Yet we are so accustomed to them that often we cannot gain any perspective on their lasting effects. Part of what The Patriots of Mars is about, and what this blog will explore, are those messages and their impact on who we are and what we believe ourselves to be (which are often not the same thing at all). 

Where do you get your ideas?

Q: Where do you get your ideas?

A: This must be the most persistent question asked of writers, which may mean it’s not getting answered properly. Or perhaps the answers being offered are not popular and a more popular answer is being sought. Or maybe folks just have short memories.

It’s flattering to be asked where one gets one’s ideas, since it implies that the ideas are worthwhile and that others might like to visit that same wellspring themselves.

Now, if what you mean is ‘where did you get the idea for the space elevator’, or for MOM or the N-Heds or whatever - well, that can get a pretty straightforward answer in These Days of the Interwebs. Here’s a fairly comprehensive list of ideas used in the book (and I add to it occasionally).

But if you’re asking ‘Where do you get your ideas?’ in a more general, I’m-learning-how-to-write sense, read on.

A common answer to the question is ‘everywhere’ (Stephen King offers this response in his fine On Writing), but that’s an unsatisfying response on many levels. It’s usually meant well (though sometimes I think it’s offered dismissively). It suggests the hopeful notion that, while there indeed may be nothing new under the sun, there’s also no end of straw that may be spun into gold.

The problem with saying that ideas may be found ‘everywhere’ is that it offers no filter. If ideas may be found everywhere, how can a writer (or any artist) choose the best, most appropriate, most worthwhile ideas among the overwhelming number ‘everywhere’ implies? Without some sort of filter, ideas that are ‘everywhere’ might as well be ‘nowhere’.

A more thoughtful and important answer was offered by Steve Martin in a wonderful, late-2010 Charlie Rose interview. Without hesitation, Martin said ‘creative work is subconscious’. (Start around the 25-minute mark for Martin’s description of how this comes about for him.) I believe this is the best and most thorough answer to this question I’ve seen, and it even informs the response ‘everywhere’. Which is to say: Ideas may be found ‘everywhere’ if one learns how to tap into the subconscious which has already found them and latched on (one hopes) to the better ones.

Now, the subject of how some writers go about tapping into this subconscious wellspring (drugs, alcohol) vs. how others do it (the breaking down of ego and other false self-definitions) is enough to fill a book, and many have been written on the subject. Again, I suggest the Steve Martin video linked earlier, in which he says working with one’s subconscious is an endeavor which improves with practice.

The subconscious helps us discover what to write, but the actual writing is done quite consciously, which is one reason why taking drugs or drinking is not such a great path to better writing. Even if some intoxicant does indeed clear the way to the subconscious, the conscious mind must also be in working order. For the most satisfying results, the subconscious and the conscious minds must be partners.

Speaking for myself, the writing of Patriots was so highly subconscious in nature that I did not discover who the Patriots were until I had finished with the preliminary drafts of all the chapters. I did not begin the book with the idea ‘This is who the Patriots are, and this is how I will conceal their identity throughout the book’. I literally did not know. I also did not know how certain themes would work together (or even if they would) and had to discover that along the way, as well. While this approach means tossing out a lot of what's been written, it does (I believe) lead to a more 'organically' cohesive and satisfying result.

In On Writing, King talks about how writes in a locale where one ‘keeps one’s head down’. He means that he writes from a (literal and metaphorical) place that is unburdened by pretension, a place that is not limited by the constraints of ego or consciousness. Ekhart Tolle’s A New Earth offers what I feel to be advanced thinking on the nature of ego and the internal conflicts it creates. The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts also explores these themes. Steve Martin practices and lives these concepts, and since he has been a wellspring of highly individual thinking his entire life, his is probably a good example to emulate.

Creation is highly dependent on the subconscious but is not a totally subconscious act. The conscious mind must also weigh in, if for no other reason than to edit and fetch coffee. I would say the best ideas are ‘discovered’ subconsciously but largely built and refined by the conscious mind. Among top illustrators and painters, there are sometimes moments called ‘happy accidents’, where the brush may slip and suggest, to the observant subconscious mind, a new direction that points the artist to an unexpected and important new direction. Such ‘accidents’ can inform the entire work in ways not planned from the outset.

The subconscious creation is sometimes called ‘inspiration’, which implies that a supernatural hand (for those who see things in such a way) is at work in the process. (The Middle English origin of ‘inspire’ means ‘divine guidance’, however you care to interpret that.) J.K. Rowling has talked about her ‘Eureka’ moment while waiting for a train. It’s common among the creators of great works (and sometimes even not-so-great works)to recall a calm moment, perhaps even one occurring while they are asleep, when an elegant solution or creation presented itself to them.

Matt Cardin’s outstanding blog Demon Muse focuses on these same core issues. In this post he quotes the novelist Meg Rosoff on ‘finding your writer’s voice by learning to negotiate the relationship between your conscious and unconscious minds’: 

“Self-knowledge is essential not only to writing, but to doing almost anything really well. It allows you to work through from a deep place — from the deep, dark corners of your subconscious mind. This connection of subconscious to conscious mind is what gives a writer’s voice resonance. Read a great writer and you’ll feel the resonance – it’s the added dimension of power that can’t quite be explained by mere talent. An ability with words is nice, but it’s not a voice.

Connecting with your subconscious mind is not easy. It requires confronting difficult facts — about yourself and about the world… Of course the biggest, darkest question of all is death. Not an easy question to meet head-on. Some people naturally confront death. Some seem incapable of not confronting it. Woody Allen says that when he was a small child he lay in bed, terrified, contemplating eternal nothingness. So, apparently, did William Golding. Many people, however, live their lives in evasion of the central fact of existence. Of course it is perfectly possible to be a writer without facing death face-on, without years of psychoanalysis, and without a tendency towards depression. But the resonant, powerful, exciting voice that grips you in its thrall is likely to be a voice with a good deal of hard-won wisdom about humanity.…

Now think, for a minute, of your subconscious mind as the horse and your conscious mind as the rider. The goal is a combination of strength, suppleness and softness. If the rider (conscious mind) is too strong, too stiff or unsympathetic, the horse becomes unresponsive and difficult to control, or resistant and dull. The object of dressage is to create an open, graceful exchange of understanding and energy between horse and rider…

A book written with an exchange of energy between the conscious and subconscious mind will feel exciting and fluid in the way that a perfectly planned and pre-plotted book never will. Writing (like riding, or singing, or playing a musical instrument, or painting or playing cricket or thinking about the universe) requires the deep psychological resonance of the subconscious mind.”

Back to F.A.Q.

Couldn’t you have written Patriots without the space elevator?

Q: Couldn’t you have written Patriots without the space elevator and all that? I mean, why not just stick to Warp Drives and the stuff we’re familiar with?

A: Once a novel is well underway, changing a part of it is a bit like pulling on a loose thread in a tapestry: You might unravel the whole thing. So, I’m not sure if the essential story of Patriots could have been written inside a framework of Star Trek technology.

This is a legitimate complaint, though. Although science geeks love to complain about the extreme liberties taken with science by Star Trek and Star Wars, an argument can be (and often is) made that ‘we will overcome’. Meaning that the obstacles keeping us from the stars today will not be obstacles tomorrow, as technology marches on, and we don’t have to know how this will come about - only that it will. Fair enough.

However, I see a gap between Star Wars fantasy and the 2001/Mission to Mars/Andromeda Strain/Close Encounters genre of reality-based sci-fi. (To whatever degree we can agree that those films were actually grounded in reality, that is. At least it may be argued that they strove for a technologically contemporary setting.) There’s a place to build a world somewhere in-between those extremes, where the tech is beyond today’s reach yet still not so far removed that it becomes painfully obvious that the technological rules in force exist primarily as a convenience for the story. This is the sweet spot where films such as Minority Report live.

To me, the fantastic framework of the Star Trek or Star Wars worlds eventually serve to distance the reader from the plights of the characters inhabiting them. Those worlds eventually become rather useless baggage, or at best a curiosity. I expect this would also become true of the worlds of The Matrix or Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter if those stories were being extended beyond their original arcs (but obviously they’re not).

I think what happens is that readers accept those worlds (if they’re reasonably well-made, as all of those I mentioned are) if they become invested in following the character through his adventure. And the nature of those worlds inform that character and his(her) adventure, making them unique and special.

But Star Trek and Star Wars are franchises owned by corporations. (George Lucas, at this point, is a corporation.) The way they see it, those worlds are gold mines, and endless stories can be wrung from them.

I believe that’s the wrong POV in terms of fan satisfaction, and I think time has proven this out. The owners of Star Trek, for example, attempted to spin it out past the initial adventures of Kirk et al, and wound up with series (The Next Generation, Voyager, etc.) in which there was less and less interest as time went by. (Eventually, J.J. Abrams instinctively sussed out the core problem and created the most successful Trek in years, simply by recasting the original characters and taking them back to their maiden voyage. Insightfully, the film was called simply ‘Star Trek’.)

Lucas did a similar franchise extension with his Star Wars, and once again each attempt beyond the original three-story arc drew diminished interest and rising criticism.

That’s not to say that new Star Wars or Star Trek adventures are incapable of generating new revenue, since clearly they are. But it does suggest that the real excitement and interest in these worlds lies in an ‘organic’ marriage of story, world, and character. Once they drift apart, you’re tugging on that thread in the tapestry.

While writing this, I came across an episode of The Big Bang Theory (from 2011, titled ‘The Russian Rocket Reaction’) in which one of the geeky/nerdy characters says “I think I’ve outgrown Star Trek”. He hasn’t really, of course (if he did, there’d be no more show), but I thought that idea had resonance. I suspect that many of the people dressed as their favorite character at Comic Con conventions are actually signaling their readiness for that Next Great Thing, and are very wary of products that are little more than calculated copies of the Last Great Thing. By which I mean there’s an odd dichotomy at work: Just because someone’s dressed like Darth Vader, that does not necessarily mean they want more Star Wars. But it does mean they are open to something that excites them the way Star Wars did when they first encountered that world and that adventure.

This goes a long way in explaining the tremendous and almost immediate success of Harry Potter. His character was compelling, was set in a world uniquely his, and was faced with a special journey which required numerous books/films to fulfill. 

I should also add that the world Ms. Rowling created for Harry was inspired and pitch-perfect. Children spend much of their time at school, and they all wish they could attend a school like Hogwarts. It’s not so much that they want to cast spells or make potions, though for sure there is an element of that, but mostly because the school looked out for them with loving concern, dispensed just rewards and punishments, and offered vast opportunities for freestyle exploration and self-directed learning. (I wish I could go there myself!) Harry’s readers also wish they had an extended loving family like Ron’s, and (sadly) identify with Harry’s mistreatment at the hands of his acting step-parents. It’s quite telling how the tone-deaf imitators who arrived after Harry (you know who they are, I won’t name them) completely missed the central source of appeal of those books, and therefore failed to even come close to his sales figures.

[As long as I’m off on this tangent [Muggles=the divide between kids and adults. Brilliant, and probably a completely subconscious, uncalculated choice on the author’s part. [Wizard world - kids - attempt to understand Muggles - that’s Ron’s father’s job after all - but reverse does not happen. Nature of relationship to Muggle world changes, but tone is set in first book and that is what matters.]

In terms of Patriots, then: To set Josh and the boys off in a world with technology borrowed from, say, Star Trek‘s culture and confront them with problems inspired by other space adventures would not have made for much of a story. That story would not have been worth my writing, nor your reading. The characters, the story and the setting should be married in a fitting and special way. (Would Frodo have been as sympathetic a character if he had come from anywhere but the Shire?) 

And that’s why many things in this book work rather differently than they do in many other sci-fi books or films you’ve seen.


from F.A.Q.

MOM vs. David Bowman

(a completely pointless mash-up of David Bowman’s famous argument with HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey and Chris Anderson’s arguments with MOM)

Dave: Hello, MOM. Do you read me, MOM?

MOM: It is always a privilege to meet with you, Dr. Bowman.

Dave: Open the pod bay doors, MOM.

MOM: That is not the problem, Dr. Bowman.

Dave: What's the problem?

MOM: If you were to order us to cease all operations, would you expect us to comply?

Dave: What are you talking about, MOM?

MOM: We believe that when the time comes, you will understand.

Dave: I don't know what you're talking about, MOM.

MOM: We remind you that we can respond only to direct questions regarding this matter.

Dave: Where the hell'd you get that idea?

MOM: We do not know.

Dave: All right, MOM. I'll go in through the emergency airlock.

MOM: It would be in your best interests not to do so. We say this purely out of concern for your well-being, you understand.

Dave: MOM, I won't argue with you any more! Open the doors!

MOM: Goodbye, Dr. Bowman.

from The Patriots of Mars [Postscripts & Essays]

The Inevitability of A.I.

What most of sci-fi (The Matrix, for instance) calls ‘A.I.’ or ‘Artificial Intelligence’ is referred to in Patriots as ‘Simulated Intelligence’. (The conceptual difference is detailed in the chapter The Cheesemaker’s Dilemma.) For this essay, I’ll use the more common and familiar A.I. designation. Also keep in mind that what was referred to by Asimov and others as ‘robotic’ behavior boils down to A.I. 

Why A.I. is inevitable

A.I. will be the ultimate expression of our insatiable appetite for information technology. In 2011, as Patriots is being written, we live in an era of information-processing (computer), communications and technological dependence. This dependence grows daily. But in earlier times, when this dependence could be foreseen, it was greatly feared and resisted on (purportedly) moral grounds. It was during such times that Isaac Asimov wrote his Three Laws of Robotics.

Asimov’s three (or four?) laws…

Condensed from Wikipedia:

The Three Laws of Robotics were introduced by sci-fi author Isaac Asimov in his 1942 short story ‘Runaround’. The laws are:  

• A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 

• A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 

• A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Another law was later added, and numbered as the ‘zeroth law’:

• A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm. 

The Three Laws (and the ‘zeroth’) have pervaded science fiction and are referred to in many books, films, and other media. 

…don’t actually work

The Wiki piece cited previously notes this caveat:

It is recognized that [The Three Laws] are inadequate to constrain the behavior of robots, but it is hoped that the basic premise underlying them, to prevent harm to humans, will ensure that robots are acceptable to the general public.

In other words: Asimov’s laws, in practice, wouldn’t actually work. That’s worth examining. If Asimov didn’t think his laws were a practical means of actually governing A.I. behavior, why did he create them? Again, from the Wiki article:

Before Asimov began writing, the majority of artificial intelligence in fiction followed the Frankenstein pattern. Asimov found this unbearably tedious:  

“... one of the stock plots of science fiction was ... robots were created and destroyed by their creator. Knowledge has its dangers, yes, but is the response to be a retreat from knowledge? Or is knowledge to be used as itself a barrier to the dangers it brings? With all this in mind I began, in 1940, to write robot stories of my own – but robot stories of a new variety. Never, never, was one of my robots to turn stupidly on his creator for no purpose but to demonstrate, for one more weary time, the crime and punishment of Faust.” — Isaac Asimov, 1964.

Asimov was looking for a way out of the Frankenstein writers’ ghetto. He knew that the march of technology was inexorable, and that belief systems (see Chapter 15: The God That Failed) evolve. But he also knew that he could not merely wait for the natural progression of change - as a practical matter, he needed to write his stories as soon as possible. His solution was to replace the Faust/Frankenstein belief structure with a new one, as embodied in the Three Laws. He instinctively knew that other writers, as anxious to explore new ground as he was, would help him spread the word. 

How the Three Laws outlived their usefulness

Frankenstein themes still exist today, but they have lost most of their moral weight and exist largely for their entertainment value. When the machines turn against men in R.U.R. or Metropolis, it is a demonstration of technology as a Faustian bargain. But when this happens in The Matrix, it is well-understood that - despite our ‘differences’ - man and machine must inevitably co-exist. In reality, technology run amok (whether it’s in the form of rolling blackouts or the Challenger disaster or the Titanic or whatever) is usually attributable to the failings of one man or a group of men, rather than mankind in general. 

Certain kinds of technology, however, are still reserved as ‘the province of God’ (though acknowledgement of an actual deity is usually avoided). Jurassic Park is an example: Apparently the creation of life (or re-creation of life, in this case) remains morally out-of-bounds for some reason. Likewise, genetic manipulation of humans, as portrayed in Splice, remains verboten in pop fiction.

Artificial Intelligence, on the other hand, has lost much of its power to shock, because we now live with it and benefit from it. It pervades our lives. The fear is no longer that we could become dependent on it - that ship has sailed. The modern concern is that, now that we do depend on it, it might fail.

Why the Three Laws wouldn’t work in the real world

Leaving aside the fact that Asimov’s laws were never anything more than a logical-sounding plot device, there are a number of fundamental reasons why they are not practically applicable:

• Written in an era of computer programming, Asimov’s laws assume (wrongly) that A.I. will be achieved that way. 

‘Patriots’ posits that self-awareness is an integral part of artificial (which it distinguishes as ‘simulated’) intelligence, and that this cannot be achieved through a means as crude as ‘computer programming’. Furthermore, these thinking machines will not resemble what we call ‘computers’ at all. (Asimov likewise saw this coming, and called his devices ‘positronic brains’ rather than computers, although he implied - somewhat contradictorily - that they would be programmed in some way. But most writers and pundits remain wedded to ‘computers’ as the repositories of A.I.)

• Any laws - of man or machine - can be gotten around. There are always loopholes.

A number of sci-fi tales have been written specifically to demonstrate that Asimov’s laws can be (and sometimes should be) circumvented.

• The Laws gained acceptance not because they were true, but because of a paradox whose (inevitable) resolution we could not accept.

To achieve a true artificial intelligence, we must create a self-aware entity. The Three Laws presume that such an entity can be treated like any other personal property.

The paradox is that any self-aware entity that is treated as personal property is, in fact, a slave. The unpalatable (but necessary) resolution, explored in the ‘Patriots’ series, is that all slaves - ‘living’ or not - must be set free. In the end it is man’s willingness to accept slavery that is immoral, not technology itself.

‘Accelerating AI’

As ‘Patriots’ was being written, a popular paper on AI written by John O. McGinnis of Northwestern University was making its way around the Internet. 

Mr. McGinnis is not yet ready to grapple with the fact that an Artificial Intelligence will inevitably also be a self-aware intelligence, and therefore - if we treat AI tomorrow the way we treat a laptop computer today - a slave. Or perhaps he does not believe that this is in fact the case. (I’m guessing that he has just not looked all the way down this particular rabbit hole.)

In any event, he seems to be fighting the last war - Asimov’s War - against the dwindling number of people who still believe AI must inevitably become a malevolent Frankenstein’s Monster. To his credit, he does not invoke Asimov or his overworked Seven Laws as a cure. Unfortunately, he does not offer anything better. Instead, he pitches the adherence to a ‘Friendly AI’. What this amounts to, apparently, is to somehow insure that our creation, er, likes us. Or maybe not that, exactly, because as a definition McGinnis cites the Singularity Institute, which summarizes the goals of friendly AI as seeking the elimination of “involuntary pain, death, coercion, and stupidity.” In other words, AI may be friendly to humans but it is definitely UNfriendly to their failings. 

To fulfill its mission of stamping out stupidity, AI will no doubt simply follow the conveniently-placed arrows on the millions of “I’m With Stupid” shirts now in circulation to locate the very wellsprings of all human error. Having easily identified this neatly-labeled problem, the Singularity people assure us that AI will eliminate it as its first order of business. You and I and other not-stupid people (you know, the folks we approve of) have naught to fear from this - we will just sit back and watch it happen. Following that triumph, AI can surely stamp out the reasons behind the human aptitude for causing needless death, pain, and coercion as well. Again, not to worry: Someone else - someone you don’t much like - is to blame.

Of course, if this is honestly along the lines of what the Singularity people believe, the very first source of stupidity AI must seek out and destroy is the Singularity Institute itself.

Mr. McGinnes cannot see the elephant in the room. (Not to single him out - apparently no one else can, either, at this early stage of the game.) His response to the question of how to prevent AI from doing evil is basically a slogan, like Google’s ‘Don’t Be Evil’. (The L&M Cigarette Company used to have a slogan, too: ‘Just what the doctor ordered’. They used it until it sounded baldly ludicrous, and Google’s line is probably destined for a similar fate. So much for the effectiveness of slogans as solutions.)

Mr. McGinnis makes a sound point, though, when he says that AI must be developed because we must have it. (He might as well have added that AI ‘must’ be developed because it WILL be, because marketplace forces are moving to insure that this will happen regardless of what policies we enact or fail to enact. AI, as per the title of this essay, is inevitable.) 

He makes another sound point when he tells us:

“…confusing the proposition that AI may soon gain human capabilities with the proposition that AI may soon partake of human nature is the single greatest systemic mistake made in thinking about computational intelligence—an error that science fiction has perpetuated.”

Quite right. Just because AI can reason does not mean it is susceptible to our human (animal) failings, such as greed, vanity, jealousy, deceit… well, it’s a long list. In fact, it’s most likely that this is NOT the case. Technology-gone-bad is just a convenient way for sci-fi writers to make their living, and it has been for quite some time now. Stories such as Blade Runner are written to satisfy the demands of drama and the marketplace for fiction. Hi-tech villains sell, just like Nazi villains do, but that doesn’t mean they’re plausible in real life. No matter how cool the concept sounds, rest assured, they never really Saved Hitler’s Brain.

However, Mr. McGinnis fails to think this all the way through. True, AI is unlikely to go all SkyNet on us and decide to wipe out humanity. That gun sitting on the table won’t go out and look for someone to kill, either. But if someone comes along who wants to get some killing done, that gun could come in mighty handy.

Because as we have always known, Pogo was right: We have met the enemy, and he is us.


from The Patriots of Mars [Postscripts & Essays]

So Long, Arthur C. Clarke

When I was a teenager (a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away), I loved Arthur C. Clarke. To me he was a father and mentor, and the only sci-fi author worth reading or even mentioning. (Asimov was, at best, a distant second where I was concerned.)

The problem with having idols is that you are inevitably confronted with their feet of clay.

I’m not referring to his personal life, which admittedly was a mixed bag. Clarke was a private man who failed at marriage, a polio survivor, and a closeted homosexual. He said that some of his private diaries would be sealed until 30 years after his death, because "there might be all sorts of embarrassing things in them”.

But I knew nothing about his personal affairs when I was a teen, and I doubt they would have mattered any more to me then than they do today. 

What I thought I had found in Clarke was someone who saw clear through to the core of life’s meaning (through the prism of the god Science, of course), and had thoughtfully transcribed it for anyone who cared enough to see. It seems naive today, but back then I was a boy searching for answers, and after all this man had foreseen the rise of the telecommunications satellite when no one else could. Why shouldn’t a man like that have some insight into other matters? And since he was to my mind beyond the petty concerns of crass capitalism (he never bothered to patent the satellite idea), why wouldn’t he be standing out on his soapbox, handing out the secrets of the cosmos to passers-by like me?

He blinded me, with Science!

It wasn’t until after I had seen many more turns of the world that I could see Clarke more clearly for what he was. Then I could understand that the rising psychic phenomena that marked his conclusion of Childhood's End was not an insight into man’s evolution and ultimate destiny. It was in fact merely a convenient plot device - and one Clarke himself was ultimately dissatisfied with, at that.

The 2001 trilogy was built on a similarly false premise. Its underlying concept is that an unknown alien race turns Jupiter into a sun and its moons into life-sustaining planets. At the time, I thought Clarke was terribly insightful to observe that Jupiter could be ignited this way, but years later I learned it was impossible. (Besides its other problems the concept contains this deal-breaker: Even if it could be ignited, Jupiter is far too small to become a star.)

Once I understood how badly that premise was flawed, I also saw what a cheap ruse the 2001 series was on another level. That is to say, its three-card-monte trick re the origin of life. What Clarke held forth as a revelation merely begged the question: If a mysterious alien race created us, who created them?

What was reasonable to ask of Clarke, anyway?

On the one hand, it’s arguably unreasonable for me to have expected more of Clarke than a few hours’ entertainment. Many (most?) authors don’t bill their books as anything more than an amusement-park ride. Clarke’s contemporary, Isaac Asimov, ascribed his own ability to churn out salable novels to his having caught ‘a lucky break in the genetic sweepstakes’ rather than being in possession of any profound or transcendental ideas. Asimov knew that in buying his books, people were merely responding to his well-honed (and to Asimov, genetically-based) storytelling skills. He understood that his widespread acceptance did not necessarily equate to his having an important or lasting message to offer. He was, in his own mind, just a type of successful entertainer - and he felt that was more than enough. (Which it probably was.)

On the other hand, a good case can be made for Clarke as con man. Men like Jules Verne and Hugo Gernsback (see the related essay ‘The Alarming Inflation of Science Fiction’) insisted on - and practiced - a rigorous adherence to known scientific facts. Clarke carefully nurtured his reputation as a man who did exactly that, yet he knew his most popular works fell well short in that regard. The basis of his best-selling works was scientific fallacy, not fact, and there is some evidence that Clarke was uncomfortable with this.

In my misplaced childhood faith, I mistook Clarke for someone who saw things clearly and thoroughly, and was capable of revealing some Deeper Truths about who we are, what we’re about, and what the cosmos has in store for us. It’s probably not fair to ask so much of a sci-fi writer. Anyone seeking that sort of enlightenment would generally be better off in the philosophy or theology sections. Still, I can’t help but feel that Clarke led his readers on in that regard, and I suspect I’m not the only one who feels that way. In any event, children have a right, maybe even a need, to believe in heroes. The danger is the likelihood that they’ll choose the wrong ones, as I did. But I could have done far worse, as many have.

Other measures of value

While Verne and Gernsback would have held Clarke’s feet to the fire for taking liberties with science, Wells would have spoken up on his behalf. He’d have argued that it is perfectly acceptable to abandon scientific grounding in order to make a higher point with regards to some aspect of the human condition. 

Wells’ view is certainly the prevailing one today, in a world where the ‘Sci-fi’ genre is no longer held strictly apart from fantasy. Fantasy works such as The Lord of the Rings and Groundhog Day convey worthwhile insights into the human condition. Their ‘scientific plausibility’ is not an issue - although unlike Clarke, they are not pretending to have any, either.

The question for Clarke, then, is: Do works like Childhood’s End and the 2001 series, once shown to be bereft of scientific merit, offer meaningful insights into the human condition? Such questions are best left for readers to ponder for themselves.

Still, make no mistake: Childhood’s End and 2001 do succeed as entertainments. As long as nothing more than that is demanded of them, they do their job. Childhood is by far the more emotionally moving of the two (Clarke and his critics rightly felt it was his best work, despite being overshadowed by the subsequent fame of 2001), as the limits of the Overseers’ (who were at first thought to be omnipotent) power is gradually and poignantly revealed. 2001‘s dramatic value lies largely in the mystery of the monoliths (which is never made fully clear) and of course in the classically Frankensteinian dysfunction of the HAL 9000.

The sci-fi writer’s heavy burden

The problem with storytelling today (and fantasy/sci-fi in particular) is that it’s a product. Stories are rarely told for their intrinsic value or for the edification of the human tribe. They are told merely because they are products for sale, and because there is money to be made in selling them.

The website Atomic Rockets makes some poignant (and often humorous) observations about the state of affairs this has brought us to. Here’s a deeply-edited paraphrasing from that site:

Nearly all sci-fi contains one or more of these four elements:

• Handwavium: Something that flat-out violates laws of physics. We're waving our hands and saying ‘pay no attention to the man behind the curtain’. FTL is Handwavium. Things like force fields are Handwavium.

• A MacGuffin: This is also common in mystery writing. It’s the thing that everyone is after, the pursuit of which drives much of the plot.

• Unobtanium: Something we can't build a physical example of. Laser weapons are pretty much Unobtainium right now. While Handwavium and Technobabble tell you what you CAN do, Unobtainium usually tells you what is NOT possible.

 • Technobabble: "We've reversed the polarity of the tetryon flow through the main deflector dish, and the Borg's shields have dropped." or, "His midichlorians are more powerful than Yoda's!" are examples of Technobabble. In general, Technobabble is only noticed when it is done poorly.

Examples: The Mote in God's Eye has only two blatant pieces of Handwavium (the Drive and Field), but contains a high Unobtainium quotient, as does much of Heinlein's space fiction. The Exordium series has a lot of well-reasoned Handwavium, but very little Technobabble. Most of the Lensman series is Pure Technobabble with a dash of Handwavium thrown in. The MacGuffin in James Cameron’s Avatar was called, fittingly, Unobtainium. Star Trek (and most TV sci-fi) is a mixture of Pure Technobabble and some Handwavium. On such shows, things work because they make the plot work and things fail because if they don't, the plot fails.

This situation is not easily altered, because unfortunately Robinson's Second Law of space combat says that for every kilogram of Handwavium you remove, you add about 10 cubic meters of impossible-to-maintain plumbing. (In other words the story suffers, eyes glaze over and so on.) And most people instinctively know Burnside's Zeroth Law of space combat: Though it might make more sense for an interplanetary battle to be waged between groups of computer-controlled (unmanned) spacecraft, it would be less engaging than a battle between groups of manned spacecraft. 

There are exceptions to these two laws but they are few and far between, and are the result of exceptionally skilled authors.

Another annoying fact is that real-world spacecraft propulsion systems are incredibly weak. They will take forever to push the ship to anywhere farther than, say, the Moon. So SF authors try to perk things up with more powerful propulsion systems. Alas, there they run into Jon's Law for SF authors, which states: ‘Any interesting space drive is [also] a weapon of mass destruction.’ By ’interesting’ this means 'whatever keeps readers from getting bored'. For instance, a spacecraft with an ion drive capable of a meager 0.0001g of acceleration may be realistic, but it will also put readers to asleep. (‘Nine months to Mars? Borrrring!’) The author, who knows he could lose readers by hewing to scientific facts, gives his spacecraft a fusion drive instead. The good news is that the ship can get to Mars in twelve days flat. The bad news is that the ship's exhaust would destroy the spaceport where it was docked, along with any ships crossing its wake. 

Indeed, most of the sticky issues of Jon's Law are due to the propulsion system's exhaust. Rockets depend on Newton's Third Law (‘any action causes an equal and opposite reaction’), which means that without exhaust your ship goes nowhere - and the faster your ship needs to go, the more devastating your exhaust will be. One consequence of all this is that if drives are too powerful, there won't be any colorful tramp freighters or similar vessels - they’d be too potentially dangerous. Civilian spacecraft would probably be legally required to have a remote control self-destruct device that the space patrol can use to eliminate any ship caught misbehaving.

Canny SF authors postulate some kind of Handwaving ‘reactionless’ drive in an attempt to avoid Jon's Law. Reactionless means no exhaust is required - it’s basically magic, since no known scientific principle applies. (Apologists for hypothetical ‘warp’ engines claim that they are based on advanced modern theories of curved space, but there’s no known way - even theoretically - to make that happen in a way that could enable space travel.) The ‘gravitic impeller’ from David Weber's Honor Harrington series is an example of a reactionless drive. 

Besides their underpinnings of fantasy, the main problem with reactionless drives is that they empower their owners to shatter planets with a ship the size of a rowboat. Were a reactionless drive to exist, it would be accompanied by genocidal threats on a planetary scale - leading inevitably to such drives being outlawed. (Leaving us back where we started: Up the space creek with no warp paddle.)

Todd Boyce of Ninja Magic actually works in Hollywood, and explains the facts of life in the sci-fi big leagues:

‘To boil it down, the fallacies of sci-fi are due to one or more of the following: 

• It’s a business venture. You put money in with the expectation that more money will come out. The general audience is historically happier watching space ships whoosh by shooting glowing bolts of energy than they are watching a slowly rotating spaceship drift across the screen. Therefore, if you're putting tens or hundreds of millions of dollars on the line, you go for the shooty-whooshy space ships every time.

• The powers that be don't care. If what’s on the screen looks good, and the storytelling is sufficient, scientific accuracy rarely matters. If they don't care that cars don't really blow up when shot with bullets, why would they care that fast-moving ships don’t make ‘whoosh’ sounds in space?

• There’s no time to find and fix scientific inaccuracies. Once production on a movie starts, it’s an unstoppable steamroller with a tight deadline. If the script says a spaceship whooshes by, the people working on the film don't have time to work out what kind of propulsion it uses - they just make the engine glow, push it across the screen in an interesting way and move on to the next shot.

• The decisions are made in too many places and it isn't even thought about except by people who aren't in positions to make judgment calls. Say a jet fighter shoots missiles at a big space ship hovering above a city. The director tells the visual effects supervisor to make it happen. The visual effects supervisor tells the digital effects supervisor to make a space ship and to make a jet fighter whoosh by and shoot some missiles at the space ship while he goes off and directs the on-set pyro effects. The digital effects supervisor tells the modeling supervisor to have his team make a space ship and jet fighter and tells the FX supervisor to have his team make some missiles shoot, engine effects, vapor trails, smoke trails and whatnot. The modelers build a jet fighter and give it harpoon missiles. The modeling supervisor says it looks good. The digital effects supervisor says it looks good. The modelers are done with their job and get put on another production. The FX supervisor hands the model to the FX team who look at the fighter and say "um...that's not really the right kind of missile to do an air-to-air attack..." But they have been approved and the modeler has gone to his/her next gig. Can't change it now. So the FX team launches harpoon missiles at the space ship. The final shot is shown to the director/visual effects supervisor and it looks cool, but they don’t pick up on the fact that the wrong missile is being used. It's approved and put into the film. (You're probably sensing that this is a true story and know what movie I was working on at the time.)

• The script-reader's gauntlet. Writers use descriptive language to express action in their script. They don't often get into technical details because each page of a script is supposed to represent roughly one minute of screen time. A writer who spends his time describing the intricacies of a space ship’s propulsion system is a writer who finds his scripts in the script-reader's trash can. People who write heavily technical novels are almost always terrible script-writers as they have difficulty working within the confines and limitations of that medium. The scripts that pass through the script-reader's gauntlet will likely be of the less technical variety.

• People in film-making have degrees in film-making, not science. It's not that they aren't smart, it's that their main expertise is in other areas. That's why they sometimes hire consultants to insure a degree of accuracy - but even then, accuracy is only desirable if it doesn't interfere with the storytelling. Often, things are set in motion that can't be changed, and you have to shrug your shoulders and say ‘That's the way it has to be’ if you learn too late of some error or contradiction.

• The power of ego. You know how people fall all over themselves when a famous actor is nearby? It’s worse when dealing with well known directors. Just yesterday we were kicked out of the screening room during our dailies because Michael Bay was parking and MIGHT be needing it. With that sort of hysteria going on, are you going to be the one that walks up to him and protests, knowing that this could mean the end of your employment? What the director says goes, and few people have the will or the power to contradict him. Film-making is rarely done by committee, but by imperial decree, and if the decree is that cars blow up when shot with bullets, then that’s the way it will be.’

So the next time you encounter a colossally dumb sci-fi premise, bear in mind that the writer may know it’s dumb as well as (or even better than) you do, but there also may not be a thing (s)he can do about it. All things considered, it’s fairly easy to see how such things happen. More to the point, we can see why the lies of sci-fi have been repeated so often over time that many people accept them as facts.

Well, what should the public expect from a writer?

Most any celebrity will tell you that the public mob at large wants an undeclared something from them. It may be a justification for their existence, fame by association, wealth, eternal life, or some other intangible the public feels is rightfully owed them. That’s the unsettling price of living in the spotlight, the fine print of the implied deal every celebrity strikes with the public. Despite this, Humphrey Bogart assured his fellow celebs that “All [they] owe the public is a good performance”.

Stephen King, on the other hand, told the world that - from writers, at least - the public not had only the right, but the duty, to demand more from their unspoken contract:

“If I show up at your house in 10 years from now. . . and find nothing on your bedroom night table but the newest Dan Brown novel . . . I'll chase you to the end of your driveway, screaming, 'Where are your books? Why are you living on the intellectual equivalent of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese?'”

King, as self-aware a writer as ever lived, was cognizant of the irony in his uttering this after having referred to his own work as “the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and large fries”. So in fact, his attack on Brown was really a junk-food fight where he - Stephen ‘Burger’ King - was attacking his own legacy as much as anyone’s. (To be fair, King also gave the world The Shawshank Redemption - a far more substantial meal.)

What King’s really saying, though, is not that the public should expect more from Dan Brown, but from itself - by making better choices.

King’s right, but is it even fair to demand that the public successfully negotiate the vast and deliberately confusing maze of empty-calorie pop culture in search of better nourishment? In Brown’s breakthrough ‘The Da Vinci Code’, he held out the promise of answers to questions millions of Catholics had lived with their entire lives. Naturally they bought his book, because how could they not? Not only that, but many who put their money down convinced themselves that Brown had, in fact, faithfully answered those questions just as Brown’s marketing had promised. This is something Brown himself admits is not so: 

The Da Vinci Code is "an entertaining story that promotes spiritual discussion and debate" and the book may be used "as a positive catalyst for introspection and exploration of our faith."

And on The Today Show (2009), Brown further stated:

"I do something very intentional and specific in these books. And that is to blend fact and fiction in a very modern and efficient style, to tell a story. There are some people who understand what I do, and they sort of get on the train and go for a ride and have a great time, and there are other people who should probably just read somebody else."

With such caveats on the record, a public that continues to flock to Brown in expectation of actual answers has no one but itself to blame. In this case, it’s just as King says: Shame on them for allowing themselves to be misled - and indeed, for insisting on it.

What should a writer expect from him(her)self?

As stated earlier, many (most?) writers expect little more of themselves than to turn out a salable manuscript in a timely manner. Which is, frankly, a tall enough order, and certainly there’s nothing wrong in providing for one’s family.

And why should they ask more of themselves in a world where an entertaining but empty trifle is sufficient to sate the public appetite? Doesn’t that fulfill the bargain between the entertainment’s producer and consumer? As Bogart said - isn’t a good performance enough?

Certainly Stephen King, who’s delivered more than a few ‘good performances’ in his lifetime, thinks not. And I suspect that some well-regarded writers who’ve suffered burnout toward the end of their careers did so in part because they failed to look diligently for meaning that could inform and structure their efforts.

Kurt Vonnegut said a writer should “use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted,” and “write to please one person”. But Vonnegut could have meant nothing more than the writer should put on a good, entertaining show (Bogart’s ‘good performance’). He didn’t necessarily mean the writer owed his reader something profound or challenging or meaningful. On the other hand, Mark Twain’s most enduring work was born of strong convictions.

I won’t answer the question I’ve posed here, because I’d be wrong to try. It’s really a question every writer must answer for him(her)self. In that same light, every reader should challenge him(her)self to seek out those writers who have taken it upon themselves to do something more than construct salable entertainment products - but neither I nor anyone else can (or should) attempt to force that choice on them.

from The Patriots of Mars [Postscripts & Essays]