Tag Archives: sci-fi

World-Building and the “Yes, And”

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My own writing lately has been a broad adventure story, hopefully of novel length and hopefully better than some of the junk I’ve been writing lately. Part of the process of writing a science fiction or fantasy story of any kind is to do what’s called world-building. For some people, it’s the most fun part of writing and it’s all they ever really do – these people often become game designers.

But I’m interested in telling a story about a particular kind of character best served by the genre of adventure genre fiction. He’s a character that has been gnawing at my brain for almost two decades and I think I finally have the skill to write a story about him.

But rather than just write about the character I also have to build a universe around him, or at least create a universe in which that character can live and thrive and suffer and succeed and and fail and all that exciting drama stuff.

Here’s the next layer: a genre universe must operate on a definable set of rules. The rules are what mark the boundaries of drama – there’s no point in mentioning the rules if the characters aren’t going to encounter them. These rules can be outlandish and ridiculous, but they must always be internally consistent. If these rules are broken then the tension is hopelessly broken, not because of a resolved dramatic moment (which is how the author wants to break tension), but because the tightened band suddenly has too much slack. If I tell you that the only thing that can kill a werewolf is silver and then depict a werewolf being killed by a golden bullet, then what was the point in telling you the rule in the first place? When another werewolf appears and the character has nothing made out of silver within reach, then any tension created by that drama is practically nonexistent.

The question facing me tonight is how much of the world to build before I write the narrative. I know that the world and its rules will have a bearing on the narrative – I know that the characters will operate within and encounter the edges of what their universe allows, but I am hesitant to establish too many of those rules in advance.

Creating the universe first is supposedly what Tolkien did before writing the Lord of the Rings. it’s also the legendary origin of the Star Wars universe – fans often reference the three-ring binder that held all of George Lucas’s ideas for a vast, multi-trilogy series of movies and of which the two trilogies we have are all he saw fit to make.

The result is the appearance of a handful of characters crawling across the surface of a massive history. The stories read more like nonfiction than anything else, which is precisely what the authors had in mind. The universe becomes more important than the story, which is fine for a multipart franchise, but it doesn’t matter as much as the story you’re trying to tell in the moment. It’s hard to keep an audience’s attention when you’re teaching them history.

This isn’t what I’m going to do because I can spend days or weeks making a universe and lose sight of the story I was trying to tell in the first place – a story about characters and plot rather than the universe around them.

So, I’m thinking I’m going to do it the fun way and just create the world as I go.

The fun part is doing it like one does improv theater – the “Yes, and -”

Improv theater is ostensibly a bunch of performers adding to a collective narrative. One person adds one aspect, another person adds the next, etc. You never say “no,” to someone’s input. It’s the piling of one incongruous element on top of another that makes it fun to do and fun to watch.

A good example of how not to improv is illustrated perfectly in this clip from 30 Rock:

In the context of a fully-realized narrative, you have the luxury of not being forced into anything – instead of the above example, you can have Sling Blade meet Darth Vader, or have them fight or whatever. Writing is a solitary effort, and completely independent of the wishes of anyone but the author.

My wishes are that I’m going to make a whole, big universe around my characters and hope the whole thing makes sense when I’m done.

Review: The Middleman!

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It’s like Doctor Who meets Men in Black meets Pushing Daisies meets the Gilmore Girls.

Or, it’s: clever sci-techie sexless man and cute girlie companion fights evil monsters and alien creatures with a lot of fairy tale whimsy and lots and lots of smart, fast dialogue.

It’s about a plucky, young artist and her employment as the assistant to the eponymous Middleman, a lantern-jawed asskicker former Navy Seal who never swears and takes on every otherworldly menace with robotic precision and a slightly psychotic disposition. And his assistant/secretary/electron miscroscope is a robot old lady named Ida.

Like so many sci-fi projects similar to it, The Middleman’s cleverness comes not from its pedestrian premise but from its execution. The dialogue is snappy and long-winded in a way that’s both endearing and hard to follow, but ultimately very clever. The whole show is clever, but its weird plots are often ripped from old sci-fi novels (the pilot episode depicts hyper-evolved gorillas with voice boxes). Even so, the writers seem to be well aware of this and almost revel in its ripped-from-the-paperbacks style (witness such inside references as Shadam of the House of Corrino, Frank Herbert Middle School and 1965 Caladan Lane).

I’ve long wondered about an American answer to Doctor Who, and The Middleman is definitely a contender. Who-like longevity is another question; it only has, oh, about 747 episodes to go.

Doctor Who Dates His Daughter. Gross.

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It’s not like I can blame him, though.

This season’s Doctor Who episodes saw a brief return of Martha Jones ((who is easily my favorite of the doctor’s recent companions – read her Wikipedia entry)), the continued annoyingness of Donna Noble ((the Doctor’s newest companion, who also has a wikipedia page)) and the introduction of the Doctor’s sorta-daughter, Jenny ((who, you guessed it, is also on Wikipedia)).

As you can see from the picture, she’s totally doable.

They showed up on a planet, and a person was grown from the Doctor’s genes. She isn’t a clone, exactly, but they don’t really explain it. If she has more than half of his genes, then she’s got to be closer to a clone than a daughter, right?

Anyway, her introduction took place in an episode that otherwise sucked ((an episode titled The Doctor’s Daughter)), where fish people battled humans for – well, for nothing, really. There’s something about terraforming, and Jenny does some cartwheels and you think she’s dead at the end but she isn’t and – whatever. It seemed like an excuse to work the whole Doctor’s Daughter thing into an episode they had already written, which made both of them seem kind of lame.

Why go to the trouble? It’s clever, see – the girl who plays Jenny, the fake Doctor Who’s fake daughter is the real daughter of the real guy who played the Doctor in the 80s.

And now, according to a newspaper in the UK, the dude who plays the newest fake Doctor is dating the real daughter of the fifth fake Doctor.

Got it?

“The biggest episode of Battlestar Galactica ever.”

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That’s what Aint It Cool News’s Hercules the Strong has to say about this Friday’s installment.

Here’s a bit from his question-and-answer style review:

Are you sure this is the biggest “Galactica” ever?
Yes.

Bigger than the episode that ended with Boomer putting two bullets in Bill Adama’s chest?
Yes.

Bigger than the episode that leapt ahead a year?
Yes.

Bigger than the episode that revealed the Watchtower Four?
Yes.

The episode is titled “Revelations,” which is apparently a fitting title, though he won’t say why, exactly – he refuses to elaborate on any spoilers, as he and other screening attendees were implored by the showrunner to keep the big ones to themselves.

I’m excited for it. Having seen every episode this season, I would implore my fellow nerds to give the series another shot.

Why Doctor Who Is Awesome

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For all the belly aching about the newer, “darker” Doctor Who, it really isn’t very dark. It still clings to the brightness and hope of its predecessors but without straying too far into the blackness of the human condition. More on that in a bit.

The other big sci-fi franchise to get a reboot, Battlestar Galactica, is more black than bright. No character is without a serious flaw, and most have more than one. As the last season continues, the two primary groups of characters who began the series as two distinct groups are no longer as easily described along the lines described drawn by whether they’re Cylon or human. Dark is one thing, but as of now there is really nobody to root for, no cause to support. While things got VERY dark for the characters in the Lord of the Rings, for instance, the audience always had the bucolic innocence of the shire to reconcile against the warfare.

But Battlestar gives us nothing to hope for, no wagon to hitch our horses to. It’s mature and serious and offers no easy answers – you might even walk away from Season 3 thinking that outlawing abortion is a good idea or that suicide bombing isn’t always such a bad thing. But the characters are so dirty that they have more dirty than clean on them. These folks are going to reach earth, but I’m not sure I want them to.

But this is about Doctor Who, not Battlestar Galactica.

I know that Doctor Who, the man, is simply another avatar of Rhodesian Britain. I am well aware that the Doctor represents the English, white-skinned, erudite savior of the world, using his formidable mind and boundless empathy (he has two hearts, you see, which makes him twice as compassionate as any human) to save the savage, stupid races from themselves. He is always a he and always travels with an attractive girl. He is such a representation, such an avatar, such a Platonic ideal that he doesn’t even have a name – he’s just The Doctor.

I know all of these things, but I still love his show.

I can’t speak for the show that most people knew as Doctor Who before 2003. I didn’t see any of those. I don’t think I’ve ever seen those. Every thing I know about these characters and this world is what I’ve learned by watching the first and second seasons of the rebooted show (and a little more from Wikipedia’s voluminous stockpiles of information). Even with that scant survey of the vastness that is Doctor Who, I still love it.

Positive reviews aren’t nearly as fun as negative ones, either to read or to write. I’ll try to condense what I like about the show into something palatable.

- Saving the Universe is Fun. The stakes in a Doctor Who episode can be as small as a single person’s life, but they’re usually way higher – like the lives of every living creature. The Doctor takes things seriously when he needs to, but usually he’s just sort of prancing his way through the universe and its many dangers. It’s this cheerful, fearless, gleeful reaction to new experiences that endears this Doctor to the audience – we discover as he does, though it’s not very often that he’s surprised by something.

- Humans are the Key. One thing that always seems to surprise the Doctor is the ability of human beings to vastly exceed their potential, both as a race and as individuals. When he learns that a group of explorers is risking everything for the sake of a scientific discovery, the Doctor very sternly asks their stoic leader if he can give him a hug. This is not unique to this series – human-centric storytelling colors most modern science fiction. But Doctor Who, as British as anything comes, wears his heart on his sleeve. Even if humans are largely incapable of taking care of themselves without a lot of help, the Doctor is always grinning over the shoulders of humans who manage to do it anyway.

- Science is the Best. Many episodes of Doctor Who resemble episodes of Buffy or the X-Files. The main difference is that there is nothing inherently supernatural going on, despite all appearances. For instance, if the Doctor must rescue Queen Victoria from a rampaging Werewolf, there is a scientific explanation for it. Where Buffy uses Demons as a rubber-stamp explanation for the weird stuff going on, Doctor Who uses Aliens. Lycanthropy is actually an infestation of alien bacteria, for instance.

As I said before, Doctor Who isn’t dark, but it feels mature. It’s not afraid of approaching the darker aspects of its subjects, but it never stands too long in the shadows.

This begs the question, though: who would win in a fight, Starbuck or Rose Tyler?

My money is on Rose. She’s cockney.