I am a psychologist by training. Due to very bizarre circumstances, partially my fault, I never received my PhD, though I received all the formal training and clinical experience to earn that degree. One thing that really interested me in graduate school was the role of stereotypes in our thinking processes. Stereotypes, assumptions, prejudices. They all had a useful role in our survival at one time, or they would not have developed. Today they are not as useful, but also not totally without utility. We are limited in the information that we can process at any one time, and by using stereotypes and making assumptions we are able to make decisions. Maybe not the best, but the best we are capable of making at the time.
Back in prehistoric times is was a useful paranoia to believe that those who were different were bad. It was hard wired into us to be for our side and against the OTHER. The OTHER might be fine people, deserving of survival, maybe even more deserving than we are. But to think this way is not to give our all to our own society. And not giving our all could mean that we fail, and the OTHER survives on the resources that we need. In much of human prehistory the word for stranger was the same as that for enemy. And very true. OTHERS were competitors, and competitors were to be destroyed so that we could prosper. Now in more civilized times things changed a bit. Not by a whole lot, but a bit. Not every stranger was an enemy. Some were allies, trade partners, or even just curiousities. But there were still dangers. If we saw a large number of furred horsemen coming our way, bows across their backs, swords in hand, it was assumed that they were a threat. It was a safe assumption. To assume they were a threat and act accordingly was to survive, or at least have a chance to. To act as if they weren’t a threat was to risk being killed, or worse, captured and tortured for the information we might have. Now this is a stereotype, that all furred barbarian horsemen were a threat. Now Bob the barbarian might be a great guy, as signified by the way he wears his enemies’ fingers around his wrist instead of his neck. But in scanning the horde, even if we possess that bit of information, we really don’t have time to catagorize each and every rider. Same as when captains were plying the South Seas in the 18th and 19th centuries. If dark skinned people with bones through their noses were said to be canibals, it was a smart decision to treat all such people one met as someone who might wish to have one for dinner, and not as a guest. It might not be fair to all people with bones in their noses, but it is definitely safer. And safer equals survival.
Now where stereotypes and assumptions, and the prejudices they lead to, break down, is when we start looking at all people of a certain racial or ethnic group (which are two different things) as all the same. All black people are faster than white people. All Jewish people are doctors and lawyers. Now place groups on a bell curve and there may even be some truth to the stereotypes. The bell curve for Jewish people is heavily weighted toward the doctor/lawyer/scientist spectrum. But some of the most brilliant mathematicians come from India, even though the bell curve for the general population of the sub continent would not be that impressive. There are more black speedsters in the NFL, but there have also been some exceptionally fast white people. There is something to say for the notion that stereotypes are bad. But there is still something to say about their usefulness. We still don’t have any more mental resources than Cro Magnon man did thousands of years ago. When I have time to judge a person individually, I will try to do it. If I’m walking down a street and see a bunch of kids coming toward me, black, white or brown, with pants almost hanging around their ankles and wearing baggy shirts, the safe bet is to go with the stereotypes and be cautious. Maybe that isn’t fair to them, but my survival is more important to me than how I am perceived to be thinking about someone. If I see the same kids in suits and ties and carrying bibles, I will probably feel relieved. I might end up getting jacked by the bible toting gang, but the odds are in my favor that I will be safe letting them walk around me.
As an addition to this post, while I was in my car just a moment ago another thought occured to me. I was reading an article by another writer, who stated that one of the problems with fantasy today was that the authors tended to think in terms of today’s values, with a politically correct slant to them. There was no political correctness in Medieval times, or even the early to mid 20th century. Strangers were still people to be suspicious of, and life was a lot cheaper than the cost of keeping prisoners. People were killed for just about anything that the people in charge didn’t like, and there was no appeal. People were seen as Barbarians if they observed different customs than the society around them, and trying to worship in a way not endorsed by the public could be a death sentence. As far as the mid 20th century Chinese were considered Wogs by the British, and there were many other unsavory names for people with darker skins around the world, and even some perjoratves for people of the same general racial group as those casting the aspersions. I remember watching the movie, The Color Purple, and cracking up when Sophie hit the white lady, while my mom and aunt’s all took in a breath of horror. They understood those times as I didn’t. I had grown with some black people, and seen many black versus white fights on TV boxing, and thought nothing of it. To women raised in the south in the 1930s and 40s, that scene was one they knew would have grave consequences for Sophie. We can think differently today, at least I hope most of us can, but just remember, people didn’t always think like this.
Past
About a month ago I decided to give Dungeons and Dragons a try. Now, I have played a couple of RPGs (Role Playing Games) in the past, D & D one time while in the National Guard, and some futuristic game one time. Besides that I have played a lot of CRPGs (Computer Role Playing Games). The old D & D Gold Box games, Neverwinter Nights, Might and Magic, Wizardry, and of course Morrowind and Oblivion, two of my favorites. The cool thing about computer games is you can play them whenever you want, without having to round up a group of real people. The bad part is it’s still a game against the computer, with all its limitations of tactical thinking, and it doesn’t have a personality. And of course, good and bad, is that I have total control over all the characters in my party. I can guarantee I won’t fire off an area spell that takes out my own characters, or stumble into one. I also enjoy the books by R A Salvatore, and some others who write in this world. Some are world class, some are really bad. Avoid the bad and embrace the really good.
So I thought that playing real D & D, with real people involved playing other characters, might be good for the imagination. And was it ever. I started off one night at the local Gamescape at Tallahassee Mall, which has an open game night on Wednesdays, and made up a quick character on their computer. And then jumped into tthe new 4.0 rules, which were really beyond me at that moment. I was used to the old rules from the computer games, but found the at will powers to be a great improvement over the old 3.0 and 3.5. I really hated playing mage characters under the old rules, since once a wizard fired off his last magic missile spell he became a very weak and useless melee fighter. Now, with the at will powers, you wcan fire off magic missiles all the way to the grave. I learned very quickly that a good Dungeon Master (DM) could really make the game fun. He could make things occur that you didn’t expect, good and bad. And the game became both fun and humorous. Someone might throw a spell at the bad guys, only to have it miss and splatter a table all over the room. Or a player might swing at an Orc, and hit his compatriot standing next to him. On the second night I played a woman decided to fire a cone effect spell at the monsters, which wiped them out, while also taking out my character. She then decided to loot the bodies, including the one of the characters her boyfriend had played who had died the round before. Instead of helping the surviving characters fight the still extant monsters. Something that never would have happened in a computer game. Talk about a true mercenary.
Playing D & D with live people has worked beyond my wildest dreams. Seeing how people interact in this fantastic playground, how their own wants, desires and plans shape the adventure, has given this writer numerous ideas. I was going to base the third book in my Refuge series entirely on the campaign of the legions of the Earth people. Instead I have decided to split the book much as was done with Lord of the Rings. Part will still follow the campaigns of the legions, while the other will be the story of a quest to find the artifacts of the Gods, to keep them out of the hands of the evil bastards the Earthers are fighting. I will continue to play a D & D character through another round of encounters, using those interacts to come up with ideas to use in my work.
Welcome to the first of what I hope will become a weekly blog entry on movies, fantastic and otherwise. Since I went and saw this movie in Imax yesterday I thought I would start out with this one. Of course I went and saw Jurassic Park at the theater when it first came out. And then bought the DVD as soon as it came out (or was it a VHS, I really can’t remember). It was much better than either of the sequels, which is not unusual. I have always been a big dinosaur fan, growing up like most kids with a love of the big guys. Of course, at that time most believed that dinosaurs were slow moving, cold blooded creatures. I read a book called Hot Blooded Dinosaurs by L. Sprague de Camp (yes, the scifi and fantasy writer) in which a new viewpoint was put forth that the creatures were actually warm blooded and quick moving. I embraced this theory, and was ridiculed by many friends. I was later vindicated, as now most scientist believe dinosaurs were indeed warm blooded and fleet of foot. So I grew up watching all the dinosaur and other big creature movies. My father told me about seeing King Kong in the theaters, and how the Willis O’Brien ape and dinosaurs looked very real to him. O’Brien did many other animated features (moving models around and photographing them) over the years, as did his protege’, Ray Harryhausen. Harryhausen extended the art to its ultimate, and the dinosaurs in The Valley of Gwangi looked very real to this child when I saw that movie. And of course there were the monsters that were nothing more than men in suits, Godzilla, Gamera, and the English takeoff, Gorgo. And I remember the awful slow moving animatronic beasts in The Lost World with Doug McClure. Like most zombies, you could slowly walk away from these creatures. And then along came Jurassic Park, and Dinosaurs were made real on the big screen. Of course there were some very well done beasts in movies before this, the dragon in Dragonslayer comes to mind, but most were only good because we hadn’t seen anything better. (Saw Dragonslayer recently and the dragon holds up well in modern times). I remember reading somewhere that originally the movie was to use animatronics, though I hope better ones than The Lost World (or was it The Land That Time Forgot?) And then someone told Spielberg that they could do something much better with computers. And now we have all those wonderful BBC dinosaur shows.
The dinosaurs in the new presentation of Jurassic Park looked much like those in the old one. Very well rendered, they looked like living creatures. I remember when I first saw them on the big screen I thought we had arrived, now we had animals that looked real. So Jurassic Park Imax 3-D did not really improve on the animals. They were on a larger screen, which made them look bigger, and the 3-D to me really didn’t improve on the experience. Oh, it was good 3-D, but again 3-D sometimes looks really cool, and at other times just seems like a wasted trick. And it still had the one complaint I had about the original presentation (since that’s basically what it was). There were not enough shots of the dinosaurs. I wanted to see more Brachiosaurs, Duckbills and others. Instead there was a lot of talking, with Laura Dern telling the old park developer how he had made a fatal error. If you liked the original Jurassic Park (which I did) the movie is still good. I really didn’t think the 3-D and the larger screen did anything for it though. You can buy the original movie on Blue Ray for just a bit more and watch it as many times as you want.
Up until a month ago I had never seen Game of Thrones, the HBO series based on the work of George R R Martin. Then I saw the first season on sale at Walmart on Blue Ray. Since I have a blue ray player and an HD TV, I am always on the look out for bargains to play in high definition. The first season was on sale for less that forty dollars, so I snatched it up, took it home, and put it in the player. Wasn’t really sure what was going on at first, though I knew the idea of medieval kingdoms on a world that had multi year summers followed by multi year winters. And it had Sean Bean in it, one of my favorite actors since his days of playing Richard Sharpe. There were some characters I really like from the start, including most of the Starks, Tyrion of the Lanesters, and Daenerys, the woman whose brother married her off to the horse barbarians so he could take the throne he thought was his. There were also a lot of scumbags, and nobody seemed to keep their word about anything unless it was in their interest. Not really my idea of good fantasy, which should have at least some noble souls in it, loyal to a fault. And some magic. the magic came later, along with the dragons, also a favorite of mine, but the lying stinking betrayals just increased as time went by. I bought the second series before finishing the first, and then was horrified when they took off Sean’s head, and one of my favorite actors was no longer in the series. I was pissed off, and I didn’t watch the second season for almost two weeks. Still populated with people I despised. Joffrey, the little useless shit who was now the king, Melisandre, his incestuous mother, and Jaime, his uncle/father, Theon, who seemed a good guy and then turns into just another scoundrel.
I realized about the time I was hitting episode 9 of season 2, hoping that Joffrey would be killed in some horrible manner, that the series was doing its job. I was emotionally invested in the characters. I may not have liked all of them, and in fact despised most of them and their actions. Tyrion was still the only Lanester I thought much of, since he had a wisdom and a total lack of blood thirstiness about him, the Starks, and Daenerys, the mother of dragons. And I really loved the little beasts that were her children. I am in her corner, cheering that one of the little guys will grow up to immolate and eat Joffrey. In fact, I was so invested now in the characters and the story that I added HBO to my cable just so I could see the new season and not have to wait until it came out on Blue Ray. Bravo, Game of Thrones. And more about the Dragons please.
I remember watching the movie Logan’s Run back in the 70s. Also read the book and saw the not so good TV series. In Logan’s Run people were only allowed to live to 30 (in the book it was even younger). Then they faced Last Day, the day they were killed in a ritual, from which the people were told their souls would ascend and then reenter the body of a newborn.
Today was my Last Day at the State of Florida, though I didn’t have to attend a ritual that killed me. No, I walked out the door with my belongings, walked to my car, and drove away from what was a very difficult period of my life. Department of Children and Families Abuse Hotline was not an easy master. We did some good, but I also believe we hassled some people who really didn’t need us in their lives. Add to that low pay, no raises for five years, and directives that seemed to have been written by a thousand monkeys on typewriters, and made as much sense, and I am very happy to have walked out of that place of employment alive. Along the way I learned a lot, about people, about bureaucracy, about the evil that people do to their own. And about the craft of writing. I left some good people there, friends that I had seen every week for the last seven plus years.
Like the people in Logan’s Run, I entered Last Day expecting a rebirth. In my case it came true, and I leave this day as my own boss. I am now a full time author, able to make use of my time as I wish. If I want to be a successful author I will use that time wisely, to produce as much as I can, while I can. This weekend I will be completing the purchase of a motorcycle, and will be back on two wheels after a two year hiatus. That is part of this lifestyle as well, to get some enjoyment from each day that is not work related. I will also be setting up a work computer at home that should keep me near the cutting edge for the next couple of years.
I see big things for this blog in the near future as well. I have let it fall off a bit as other tasks took up my time. In the future I would like to have four entries a week. One will be about movies I have seen, and not just new releases, but also old classics. Another will be a blog on books, mostly in the realm of the fantastic, though maybe also something to do with history or science. The third entry will be about tropes, or science fallacies, or anything else that strikes my fancy, enrages me, amuses me, whatever. The last will be a shameless promotion of my own writing. It really is funny how I hated that kind of promotion when I started the self publishing thing in December of 2011. Writer friends of mine think it had a huge part to play in successfully selling lots of ebooks, and I can’t say that they’re wrong. Now I enjoy promoting, to a point. As long as it doesn’t interfere with all the other tasks required to put out a good science fiction or fantasy book.
Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of my writing career. Follow me on this blog and see how I do.
My science fiction novel Afterlife will be a free promotion on Amazon this Friday through Sunday. I wrote Afterlife in 2010, when I was still producing novels for submission to agents, and had to write them to a certain format. When I decided to self publish I had to take out the underlining, single space the type, change the font, and on and on. Now I write everything for self publication, with the proper format to start. I wrote Afterlife, Daemon and Aura in 2010, as well as the very long first drafts of Exodus and Refuge. Some of my books are doing really well, starting with Exodus: Empires at War: Book 1 and Book 2, which have sold over 12,000 copies between them. The Deep Dark Well has sold almost twenty-five hundred copies after a giveaway of over four thousand. Refuge: The Arrival: Book 1 and Book 2 are both in the thousand range, and even Doppelganger and Shadows of the Multiverse are over five hundred sales. So then I have my problem children that are simply not pulling their weight. Being on the electronic bookshelf they can stay, but I would like to see more from them. So back to the promotions that did so well for the other books in 2012. Will probably do The Scorpion, my worst seller, next, and then on to the others. Now I believe in all these books. Not all are of the same quality, I will grant that, though the drop off is not too severe. All are good stories, with mostly quick moving plots. And all contribute to my portfolio as a whole. Of my other books, most have done well after their promotion, some better than others, and Exodus took off without any kind of giveaway.
Now to Afterlife. Afterlife is set in the near future, about fifteen years from now. A method is discovered for uploading minds into computers. Unfortunately, the technique involves scanning the brain with a laser, a catastrophic procedure that destroys the brain in the process. Not to appealing to most people, but what about those who are terminally ill and don’t buy into the life after death offered by the world’s religions. The Afterlife Corporation is started to offer these people a virtual life after death that is, if anything, more interesting that life. And they are in a world where their mental processes are faster, their memories perfect, able to accomplish things their purely organic forms weren’t. Some of the finest minds on Earth take advantage of the process, scientists, philosophers, engineers, generals, until ten thousand of the best and brightest are existing in this virtual world. But many of the living, the organics as they come to be called, are not happy at this state of affairs. The World’s religions, who see the uploading process as suicide and damnation for the souls of the virtuals. And family members who see the inheritances they believe theirs still in the hands of simulations of their loved ones. Led by a fundamentalist United States President the World declares war on Afterlife. But the virtual minds are not helpless, and develop weapons of frightening power that threaten the existence of the world. And now for the excerpt.
I love this, thought the virtual personality that called itself Stuart James. He had spent the entire night, nine hours since he had been uploaded, using almost the full capacity of the system in the Arizona complex. That had equaled over a hundred days of real time to learn the systems and the weapons he would use to defend the complex. And now he was running on overdrive again in the actual defense of the complex.
So far he had not had to use any of the other personalities, including the copies of himself, in the defense. They were active, but mere spectators at the moment. They could be given active control of weapons whenever needed, but so far there had been no need.
James watched another wave of artillery rounds coming in, a slow motion swarm of seventy-two shells. A group of sixty-four mortar shells arched over the sound screen, while several dozen rockets left their launch racks on helicopters and flew a high angle attack profile. Meanwhile, the tanks were cycling through armor piercing discarding sabot rounds as fast as they could. And all were crawling across his perception.
The defense algorithms were good, good enough in many respects to handle this defense. But James’ personality in overdrive was even better. He spotted the leakers that would have made it through the curtain and allocated the defenses to take them out, shifting resources to cover the new gaps that appeared because of that shift. This went on for hours, as the guardsmen expended ordnance and James stopped it. He could see from his sensors that they were getting tired. The barrages were coming in a bit more ragged and spaced further apart. He, on the other hand, felt no fatigue. He could keep going for many more hours, or the subjective week he had already been at it many times over. He smiled to himself again, looking forward to the next phase of the assault, like a video game’s next level.
* * *
“And we were attacked today by forces of the United States Government,” said Travis Fulcher, his image on TV, beamed from the Montana Complex to a Geosynch satellite and down to the Atlanta studios of CNN. “This was an unprovoked assault upon our persons and property.”
“The government is saying little about this assault on your Arizona complex,” said the CNN anchor, looking up from her desk on her side of the split screen. “We’ve only heard from them that there was action taken in Arizona, but nothing about the results.”
“We were not harmed in any way,” said Fulcher, a smile on his face. “And we harmed none of the Federal forces. We simply used defensive systems to stop their ordnance before it could impact on the mesa under which our complex is built.”
“The Arizona National Guard has claimed that there were casualties from today’s exercise,” said the anchor woman, her face serious. “They claim to have lost six people due to the actions of Afterlife. How do you answer that claim?”
“With this satellite footage,” answered the spokesman for Afterlife. The screen switched to an overhead view. Two attack helicopters collided as they maneuvered for shots at the Afterlife complex. One moved away with smoke trailing from its engines, still under control. The other, two of its rotor blades snapped and the remaining four twirling off balance, twisted in the air as it fell. It landed on top of a Bradley IFV, turning both air and ground vehicles into a ball of flame.
“The Guard lost its people due to an accident over the battlefield,” said Fulcher, his face grim. “An accident they could have avoided if they had just left us alone. Which brings me to my second pronouncement of the day.”
“And that is,” said the CNN anchor woman, her eyes narrowing.
“We of Afterlife hereby declare ourselves to be the citizens of an independent nation,” said Fulcher, his eyes looking with intensity from the screen. “The territories occupied by our Arizona and Montana complexes have seceded from the United States of America. We seek the confirmation of the other nations of the world, through the United Nations, of our status as a free and independent nation. And we offer this warning to the Government of the United States of America. You have seen what we were capable of today. Don’t push us, or you will be sending letters to the homes of young service men and women.”
The image of Fulcher went away and the screen expanded to show only the anchor woman.
“And the government had this response,” said the woman. The screen switched again to show a severe looking white man in his fifties, the triple stars of a general on the collar of his camouflaged fatigues.
“For all we know they knocked one of those helicopters out of the air and made them collide,” said the man, chin jutting out in defiance.
“And what about their warning, General Mitchell?” asked the off screen reporter.
“They’re only two small compounds with what, fifty or sixty square miles under their control,” said the General with a smirk. “Not even that in Arizona. We’ve taken all but a couple of square miles away from them there. And they’re threatening the most powerful military on Earth. Just who in the hell do they think they are?”
The scene switched back to the anchor woman in Atlanta, her intense eyes looking out from the screen as she looked up from some papers to her front.
“In related news, National Guardsmen and women from the land and air National Guard have been called to duty and activated to Federal service. Guardsmen from Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Montana, Idaho, North and South Dakota and California have been called to active duty. Regulars are also getting ready for this developing national crisis.”
The screen switched again with the placard Foot Hood at the bottom. Occupying the screen was a young black man, microphone in hand, train cars with tanks in the background.
“Everett Murphey here,” said the man, looking into the camera. “Behind me are tanks from the First Cavalry Division, which are being mobilized for deployment to Arizona. I will be embedded with the First of the Seventh Mechanized Infantry of the First Brigade. We are expected to cross the state lines out of Texas by evening, and be in Arizona by the next day.”
Fulcher continued to watch the TV broadcast, as well as all the other newscasts, on a separate channel of his mind, just as he was sure all the other virtuals in the room were doing.
“What do you think?” he asked of the other virtuals, and the avatar of General Maxwell, who had joined the meeting from the real world board room.
“I think they’re getting ready to stomp us with ten league boots,” said Jasper Delaquort, a journalist who had made his company into a worldwide megalith. “It might have been a mistake to make that declaration of independence.”
“But we’ve gotten some results already,” said Marlene Joaba, a billionaire who had been the US Ambassador to the UN for over a decade. “China and Russia have both acknowledged our existence.”
“Only because it discomfits the United States,” said Lucious DeFaulq, the automobile maker. “It really does no practical good. Those countries aren’t willing to go to war with America over a virtual country.”
“I think our response is more important than their response,” said Walt Disney, his young voice firm. “We have what, four weeks and some off days before Odyssey orbits. And then we’re home free.”
“Maybe not home free,” said Ted Williams, dressed in his officer’s dress uniform. Not the uniform of the United States Air Force, which was no longer his service. The new uniform of the Afterlife Air Force, which was much more twenty-first century. “We still have to stand off the world’s most powerful military.”
“Half of which is deployed overseas,” said Fulcher, calling up a rotating globe of the Earth over the conference table. Red dots flashed all the US Military assets, and there were indeed a lot of them off the North American Continent. Most at sea, but many in the Middle East and Asia.
“Still,” said Disney, looking up from something he had been studying. “Half is still a lot.”
Gary had been listening to the others with half an ear. Of course, with a virtual that meant that he heard exactly everything said, and could play back the conversation in his mind verbatim, with all nuances and tones intact. There was never a misunderstanding in the virtual world of anything anyone said. He had loved that part of it with Elaine, no arguments. But it had hurt politicking as usual here. It was hard to lie, and then say you didn’t.
“What about that special project Dr. Frankle has been working on?” asked Walt, looking over at Fulcher. “That held some promise, did it not?”
“Probably not enough to help us through this current crisis,” answered Fulcher, the defacto President of Afterlife. “We could still probably develop a weaponized version of the device, even if we can’t teleport ourselves out of here.”
“I, for one,” said Disney, his eyes growing fierce, “will not countenance the use of extra-dimensional weapons on Earth. The horror and devastation we unleash could be unprecedented. I’ll not see that done to my home.”
“Even if it could save your virtual skin?” asked Fulcher, looking Walt squarely in the eyes.
“Some things come with too great a cost,” said Walt, looking around the room as several others nodded their agreement.
“What do you think, Jeffers?” asked Fulcher, breaking Gary away from the project he was still caught up in.
Gary left the project with his copy in the lab and turned all his attention to the meeting. He thought for a moment before answering. Frankle was a genius in astrophysics and cosmology, who was working on practical applications of twenty-one dimension theory. Some of those applications were wonderful, possibly opening up faster than light travel by way of the almost infinitely small dimensions. Some were terrifying, such as the creation of singularities, and could be used as the most destructive weapons imaginable. Gary couldn’t even follow some of the math involved, but was gratified to find that the brilliant scientist couldn’t make heads or tails of some of the magnetic field equations that Gary used in his work. But all in all.
“I agree with Walt and Ted and the rest,” said Gary, nodding to those around the table who thought it too risky. “Maybe when we get into space we might want to fool around with some of the theory. I would say far off from wherever we happened to be at the time, since I don’t want to see the inside of an event horizon. But right now I would say, no. Don’t use that stuff on Mother Earth.”
“Even if it saves your life?” said Fulcher, his eyebrows raised.
“Not even if it saves my life,” said Gary, looking at the man’s eyes and not liking what he saw. “Some things are not worth that kind of risk, including all of us.”
“OK,” said Fulcher, in a tone that meant it was anything but. “We’ll table the development of extradimensionals for the time being, and concentrate on what we already have in hand. How about the development of the battle robots?”
“They have advanced about as far as they are capable at this time?” said Gary, smiling as he looked at what he had developed for the common good. “We will have infantry support that is every bit as intelligent and mobile as the human forces we might face. And much more mobile in other respects.”
“Invulnerable warriors?” asked Walt with a laugh that spread around the room.
“Not invulnerable,” said Gary, shaking his head. “But damned tough. You’ve all taken rides in the last model, but these are much more agile. You might want to run some sims and see how they handle. The real deals are undergoing the last of the modifications. In other words, the bugs are working on them, and they’ll be ready and able to go by tomorrow.”
“And how do you feel about releasing them on living humans who are trying to destroy you?” asked Fulcher, a tight smile on his face as he looked at Gary.
“I have no problem with that whatsoever,” said the electronics expert, returning the smile in kind. “If they want to end me, I say bring them on.”
Gary stopped and thought for a moment while the conversation continued in the virtual room. He replayed that last sentence he had said in his head, and the thoughts and emotions that had gone along with it. He didn’t think he had been that gung ho a month ago. He was sure he worried more about the well-being of his fellow man, especially those vulnerable specimens out in the real world. When had this change of attitude come about? Had he changed, as people were wont to change in the real world as they went through trials and tribulations? Or had he been reprogrammed without his consent?
I’ll think about it tonight, he thought, also resolving to discuss it with Elaine, to use her as a sounding board. And if he figured that someone had been changing his mind for him? He would consider his options then.
Gary looked at Fulcher as the man continued to speak. How had he become our leader? He thought. Had it been because Fulcher had been a big wheel with the Afterlife Corporation? Or because he had been the first of them to be uploaded? Or something else? Again Fulcher looked at Gary, his eyes gleaming with predatory intensity. Gary felt himself shudder for a moment, then looked away. Tonight would be soon enough for these thoughts. Today was time for the strategy of survival.
I received a review lately on Exodus where the reader stated that it was obvious that I had read David Weber and John Ringo. Guilty as charged. And Robert Heinlein and Poul Anderson and Jerry Pournell. And if you read my fantasy you may see Robert E Howard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Michael Moorcock, some Robert Adams, and a fight scene or two choreographed like R A Salvatore. And in the military aspects of my fiction you may recognize a bit of Tom Clancy and Harold Coyle. You, see, I didn’t learn to write by attending a Master of Fine Arts program, or by taking online classes (though there were some of those). I studied and obtained degrees in Psychology in College, and also studied and majored, at times, in Biology, Geology and Chemistry. I learned to write by reading for enjoyment and sitting my ass in a chair to write. Maybe that causes me to lack some of the polish of an MFA, but I know what I enjoy, and I try to do the same in my stories. If I enjoy something of the above mentioned authors it will enter my tool box without thought. It’s normally not a conscious decision what style to copy where. Just something I do. And as long as the readers enjoy it then I am accomplishing my primary task.
I have also had some reviewers say that I did something in a book that was done before, and therefore dismiss it. I mix and match themes, and sometimes do something similar to what was done in a book or movie, especially if I thought the original was really poorly done. I will also add some things from stories that I enjoyed, but in a new setting, and with a new mixture of elements. One reader noted this in a review, stated that, sure, I used themes that had been used before, but added some interesting new themes involving wormholes and black holes.
Some of my novels have been confusing to some readers. If both my series, Exodus and Refuge, I use a number of POV characters and jump all over the place. Also not an invention of mine, I credit the technique to both James Michener and Harry Turtledove. Michener told stories across centuries of time with different characters for each era. Turtledove, mostly, tells stories with ten or more viewpoint characters, each involved in their own part of a larger story, sometimes revolving around a major war. The scenes switch through the book telling the story from the progression of characters. Every once in awhile a main character will die, and his part is taken by a secondary character in his story. It can be confusing, but can also be interesting. Now I do listen to my readers, and to the reviews good and bad. That doesn’t always mean I’m going to make changes based on their suggestions, but it might. Hopefully I will keep progressing with my writing. I plan on doing this for a long, long time.
Napoleon was once asked during a battle by one of his Marshals for more time to maneuver his unit and carry out his part of the plan. To which Napoleon answered, “ask me for anything but time.” Napoleon knew that the battle was progressing according to many factors outside of his control, and he couldn’t manufacture more time. The same is true for most of us. I know I never have enough time. I am kind of a one man publisher these days. I write, I edit, I revise, I make my own covers, then I format the books to put out online. Then there is Twitter, and blogs, and promotions, and all the things I have to do to actually get some notice. Add to that a full time job, taking care of pets, and taking care of myself, and there never seems to be enough time. The full time job requires my presence forty a week. I can take some vacation days, or call in sick, though often that means I really am sick, and really not good for anything at that time. I have diabetes, and if I don’t take care of myself I can get really sick, so that also takes priority. But I love writing, really almost every aspect of it (though I am not that enthused about reading a manuscript for the seventh or eighth time to make sure I’ve gotten all the errors. And getting all the errors almost never happens to any of us, even those published by big name houses). It is what I want to do as a full time job, and now that dream seems to be opening up before my eyes.
I have a lot of books on Amazon already, the result of years of writing. Seven of those represent three series, which was probably too much to have going at one time, but it is what I have. Exodus is doing very well, and I have received emails, replies to blog entries and reviews calling for more, and as soon as I can produce it. The Deep Dark Well also did pretty good, and several reviews asked for more. More is now out in the second book of the series. Refuge is doing OK, not as well as I want, but it is selling and is generating some interest and reviews, including several who have asked for the next book. The smart business decision would be to concentrate on the two series that are doing so well and just put Refuge on hold (despite the fact that I have an emotional investment in Refuge from developing the world over such a long time, fourteen years). But I feel it is my obligation to continue all the series, so I will be working on the next book this year and hopefully have it out before Fall. From then on all new writing will be on these series until they either end or I need a break to do something else. I have two more books on the harddrive that are first draft finished, and I may work on getting them out as well, but there is also a first book of a fantasy trilogy that will not see the light of day for several years, as I don’t have time for another series right now.
There is never a guarantee that a series will end. Some go on long after they should have reached a stopping point. There is also no guarantee a series will continue to a logical conclusion. Some authors get bored with the characters and storyline. Sometimes other things get in the way. I was a great fan of Robert Adams and his Horse Clans series. He had finished twenty some books, with a developing storyline that promised many more. He died before he could write any more books, and the series just ended at a point where there were so many unanswered questions. Hopefully that will not happen with any of my series.
I have been keeping track of my sales on Amazon through the month. You could almost say I was obsessive about it, clicking on that damned refresh button several times an hour every night. I even made a little spreadsheet to track domestic and overseas sales for each month, as well as how each individual book is doing and how many I have given away. The numbers are looking very good. Including giveaways, which account for over ten thousand ebooks, I have put over sixteen thousand copies into the hands of my readers. The Deep Dark Well leads the pack of the freebies, with over four thousand given away, and it has still sold over twelve hundred copies since the promotion. I am hoping that will pay big dividends when I release To Well and Back, the sequel, sometime in January. Some I gave a lot away, like over two thousand of The Hunger and almost as many of The Shadows of the Universe, for mediocre results. Shadows has at least sold a couple of hundred since its promotion, but The Hunger hasn’t even made it to the twenty book mark. The big surprise was Exodus: Empires at War: Book 1, which has sold over two thousand copies with no promotion, and the sequel is about to crack the one thousand mark any day now, after having been out less than two weeks. But I have a feeling that the promotions of the other scifi books really helped Exodus. For a while there I was wondering about Exodus, which was jumping off the digital shelves with very few reviews and only one like. And those reviews were one 5 star, one 3 star, and one 1 star, not exactly stellar. Now it is up to 15 reviews, but still only one like, and the reviews have all been 5 and 4 star. Still, that one like makes me wonder if that even has a bearing on how well a book is doing, since two thousand have sold and the sequel looks to do just as well. To date, across all my books, I have gotten 54 reviews, 32 5 star, 16 4 star, 2 3 star, 3 2 star and 1 1 star. That’s an average of 4.39, and no book falls below a 4.0 average. This lets me know that I am doing well, that not everyone likes my books, but probably the majority of the readers find them acceptable material for their enjoyment.
The great thing about the digital bookshelf is that the books can stay there forever, waiting for their chance to take off. Unlike the brick and mortar stores, where a book must do well right out of the gate or get pulled, they can sit and wait for discovery, and if enough people make that discovery, or just the right person, like a big time book blogger or a top reviewer, they can take off. The Deep Dark Well spent 8 months on the digital bookshelves of Amazon and Smashwords and sold about twenty copies. Then I switched it to KDP Select, ran a promotion, and it caught the attention of enough readers to make it and several other books popular. In a traditional bookstore it would have been sent back to the publisher, or at least the cover would have. I have other books that really aren’t doing much, despite large giveaways. Part of that is probably due to their not being many reviews returned. I think these books are just as good as the ones doing well. They might be different enough that the readers of the popular books wouldn’t like them, but I do believe they will someday find an audience. I have started to ask for reviews on the last page of all my ebooks. How has that gone? I really don’t know, but it can’t hurt. At least from the reviews I have been getting I can be fairly confident that I might just make it at this writing thing. Coming soon will be a Newsletter, then the thoughts of quitting the day job may become reality, and I can spend each work day doing what I really want to do.
I recently did a guest post at Linda R Harley’s Site, Rosebuz. My post, entitled How much is too much science?, is a post on my theme of getting the science right in science fiction. I am appreciative of Linda for allowing me to guest post on her blog, that of a book blogger who reviews books and gets the word out about independent writers. She performs a great service for independent authors and the reading community, and I look forward to the review she has promised of The Deep Dark Well. I have contacted several other book bloggers who have agreed to do author interviews or reviews in the future, depending on their schedules. I hope that happens, as it is a great boost in publicity. I have also had some who promised to do something and then didn’t. I sent a great deal of information to two bloggers, as well as a copy of one book for review, only to hear nothing after. For one I actually bought a webcam for a video interview. I tried to contact that blogger (though they actually called themselves a promoter) and kept getting a reply that they were still interested. I finally gave up. If they want to contact me that’s great. If not, I move on.
I still am not really sure how much publicity or reviews play into the success of a book online. One book, The Shadows of the Multiverse, has five 5 Star Reviews and went through its five day promotion on Amazon. I had planned for it to be the next book to take off after The Deep Dark Well, only it hasn’t happened. So far less that a hundred sales, though I still have hopes that it will someday take off, and even if it only sells forty books a month for the next couple of years it will have been worth the effort. Another science fiction novel, Exodus: Empires at War: Book One, just seemed to take off on its own. 1,300 sales in seven weeks, without the benefit of reviews or likes, though it has some of each now. I can only figure that a lot of the people who downloaded The Deep Dark Well when it was free, or bought it afterwards, wanted another of my books to read, and skipped over The Shadows of the Multiverse. Currently I have my Steampunk Fantasy, Daemon, on promotion, and based on past performance, I have no idea how it will do afterwards.
Is the effort of publicizing a book, whether through promotion, reviews or book blogging, really worth it? All I can say is it can’t hurt. Over the weekend I tried another method. I put a list of all of my current book on a page at the front of each ebook, with hyperlinks to their sales page on Amazon. I have also placed a The Favor of a Review section at the end of each book, along with a hyperlink to that book’s sales page where the reader can easily post a review. Will that help? I have no idea, but again it can’t hurt.
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