What if prose were written like music? What if, instead, of a common world, stories in an anthology were steps on a share emotional path? Those are the questions the upcoming anthology Score is attempting to answer.
Emotions are a key part of our experience of art. The books that stick with you are often the ones that made you feel something. Even when we don’t recall the details of a plot (or painting, or movie), we’ll often recall how it made us feel. Even if you don’t recall the details of Watership Down, for example -“” the names of the rabbits, the original warren, etc. “” you probably remember how you felt about the rabbits and what happened to them. You remember how you felt when you closed the book. Even if you mislay every detail of a book, you’ll remember whether it made you laugh or cry or feel wistful.
Score is an attempt to tackle the emotional side of writing head on. A group of almost 20 authors set out not to write about robots or aliens or magic “” though we have all of those “” but to write from emotion.
What does that mean, and how does it work? It means, simply, that each of the authors worked from a coherent emotional score, knowing the emotions in the piece before and after theirs, what emotions they were to emphasize, and … nothing else. They had complete freedom of genre, topic, tone, approach, etc. “” so long as they worked with the emotions they were assigned. The result is a fascinating collection of stories with a distinct emotional progression.
Putting together the score was challenging. As the editor and ‘composer’, I defined fairly early on the emotions we would work with. I knew the direction I wanted to score to take – an overall path of ascending hope that I thought a good fit to the times “” but choosing emotional terminology that would work consistently across many different writers took some work.
In the end, we worked from a palette of six emotional ranges – six emotions with four variants each, two positive, two negative. For example, Hope ranges from Hope at the positive end to Despair at the negative end. These aren’t quite the emotional pairs used by social scientists, and we could have ended up with a wide range of others, but these six emotional ranges allowed ample scope for ups and downs. The emotions are loosely grouped into two sets – the Hope set (Hope, Curiosity, Awe) and the Joy set (Joy, Love, Lust).
Each writer was assigned a specific major and minor emotion, and the score has distinct movements. Using musical terms very approximately, there’s an Overture, a Hope triad, a Joy triad, a Bridge, a Joy triad inversion, a Hope triad inversion, and a Coda. There are high points and low points, but … spoiler alert… it all ends with Hope and Joy.
It’s been a lot of fun putting this together. While I personally often write from an emotional basis, putting together an entire score was an intriguing and challenging exercise. Each writer interpreted the task in their own way, putting their own distinct stamp on it, as artists will. The result is intriguing, and I hope will be as much of an adventure for readers as it was for all of us.
This was a guest blog post. Interested in blogging here?
Assembling an itinerary for a blog tour? Promoting a book, game, or other creative effort that’s related to fantasy, horror, or science fiction and want to write a guest post for me?
Alas, I cannot pay, but if that does not dissuade you, here’s the guidelines.
Guest posts are publicized on Twitter, several Facebook pages and groups, my newsletter, and in my weekly link round-ups; you are welcome to link to your site, social media, and other related material.
Send a 2-3 sentence description of the proposed piece along with relevant dates (if, for example, you want to time things with a book release) to cat AT kittywumpus.net. If it sounds good, I’ll let you know.
I prefer essays fall into one of the following areas but I’m open to interesting pitches:
Interesting and not much explored areas of writing
Writers or other individuals you have been inspired by
Your favorite kitchen and a recipe to cook in it
A recipe or description of a meal from your upcoming book
Women, PoC, LGBT, or otherwise disadvantaged creators in the history of speculative fiction, ranging from very early figures such as Margaret Cavendish and Mary Wollstonecraft up to the present day.
Women, PoC, LGBT, or other wise disadvantaged creators in the history of gaming, ranging from very early times up to the present day.
F&SF volunteer efforts you work with
Length is 500 words on up, but if you’ve got something stretching beyond 1500 words, you might consider splitting it up into a series.
When submitting the approved piece, please paste the text of the piece into the email. Please include 1-3 images, including a headshot or other representation of you, that can be used with the piece and a 100-150 word bio that includes a pointer to your website and social media presences. (You’re welcome to include other related links.)
Or, if video is more your thing, let me know if you’d like to do a 10-15 minute videochat for my YouTube channel. I’m happy to handle filming and adding subtitles, so if you want a video without that hassle, this is a reasonable way to get one created. ???? Send 2-3 possible topics along with information about what you’re promoting and its timeline.
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"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
~K. Richardson
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Guest Post from Luna Linsdsey: Putting the Mind Sciences in Science Fiction
Google’s predictive powers cause this question to answer itself.Hard science fiction tells stories based on the hardest of hard sciences, particularly on the engineering and technological application of these sciences. If a story doesn’t have space ships, terraforming, anti-grav, robots, or semi-accurate descriptions of planetary orbits and atmospheres, it cannot join the elite ranks of hard SF.
Any story which dips overly much into issues of society, culture, or what it means to be human, is often tagged as soft science fiction. Even cyberpunk, a high-tech genre, is usually considered soft, because of its thematic commentary on the fallen state of mankind.
The implication is that hard SF is somehow “better”, just as the hard sciences are “better”. Physics is a hard science. Psychology is not. Psychology is assumed to be flimsy, weak, inaccurate, and easy. “Soft.” Therefore, SF that deals with it is equally easy.
This division seems a little unfair, because to me the “soft” sciences are arguably far more complex than hard sciences. Physics and chemistry picked up the low-hanging fruit of empirical discovery, those aspects of our universe that could easily be discovered by looking through a microscope, telescope, or mass spectrometer. But understanding the interplay of synaptic pathways? That takes advanced tools like fMRIs and scanning electron microscopes, which have only recently been invented.
Your brain is looking very, very closely at a brain.]
All Freud and Jung had in 1900 was instinct and anecdote. So their research consisted of conjecture. Conjecture which has been built upon and advanced greatly since their time.
Access to technology is now blurring the line between soft and hard sciences. Soft SF concepts that used to require a certain amount of hand-waving can now be written about with a foundation in actual research.
It should follow that the line between soft and hard SF should also blur. And in many ways, this process has already occurred.
I remember reading my father’s shelf of classic authors, like Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke (but also soft science-fictionist Bradbury). My young mind didn’t care that all the characters were cardboard cutouts, barely-human actors there only to convey the ideas. Because for me, the ideas were most important.
But mere ideas, as cool as they are, flicker over the surface of our minds, the frontal lobe of the neocortex. They fail to reach into the occluded recesses of emotion and subconscious. They fail to spark our deeper neurological wiring.
Some golden era stories did dabble in psychology, but they did so at a clinical distance. For example, the classic novel Foundation depicted a science called “psychohistory” ““ only at arm’s length. Psychohistory dispassionately crunched numbers to predict how people in masses move inevitably towards some end. But these stories weren’t really about the people themselves.
As I grew up, and as SF grew up, readers began to demand real characters. They wanted to see how the technology affected human beings. There was a realization that without people, science was meaningless, and the outer space we sought to explore would simply be an empty, darkened void.
Mainstream fiction has always focused on an exploration of humanity. The golden age of SF set itself apart as a genre by instead exploring ideas about the future. Since then, it has come back around to become a reflection of ourselves via an exploration of the future. The future has become ancillary to the purpose of SF.
A story that doesn’t mean something beyond the idea is not likely to be published. It’s not enough anymore to fire off dopamine in a reader’s neocortex. A story that doesn’t also evoke some emotion or spark some unknown “thing” in the hidden depths of our hearts is unlikely to be noticed.
Psychology and neuroscience has grown up, too. But we’ve never needed it to. Psychology is often discounted as “squishy,” but that’s because the mind itself is squishy. Many of Carl Jung’s insights 100 years ago still apply today. Modern science is simply discovering how the underlying cells and chemicals work to create the behaviors and mental dynamics he and his contemporaries observed.
And we’re discovering more parts of the mind than even Jung’s two-part consciousness vs. unconsciousness model suggested. An engineer or astrophysicist might prefer the simple, predictable mechanics of a one-brain, one-mind model, (hard science!), but to accept that would be in denial of the facts.
Many may be tempted to laugh at the hand-wavy woo of Jung’s “collective unconscious.” But is it really so silly now that we’re learning about how culture spreads and how about “memes” may be thought of as living creatures that reside in our minds and self-replicate to everyone who comes into contact with them?
Getting a bit meta here (because a mind exploring the mind is intrinsically meta), science fiction has always unconsciously acknowledged psychological principles. By way of example, dreams are a common fictional vehicle to represent thematic elements of a character’s past. This is classic Jungian psychology, and as authors and artists, we know the power of symbolic metaphor firsthand.
Yet how often do we address these ideas head-on, with self-awareness, making the reader aware of the processes of her own brain as she’s reading? Wouldn’t such stories act fully in the spirit of science fiction, which has always asked the reader to ponder her place in the universe, to ponder her own relationship to the ideas of the story?
It’s time to consciously embrace the mind sciences in science fiction. It’s our responsibility, because as a society, we will soon begin to feel the impact in our own lives. Science fiction needs to step up and fill its predictive role, both warning us and giving us hope. Warning us of the dangers of advancement, while simultaneously inspiring future engineers in how to apply the discoveries we’re making right now.
Because what could be more disruptive (both constructively and destructively) than a comprehensive understanding of the human mind? I’m not just talking about obvious technologies, like neural implants, but also developments in how we practice the art of existing in fully understood self-awareness. How might we structure society to account for a better understanding of what nature has already given us?
Moreover, in past-SF, we’ve treated the obvious tech (like neural implants) like toaster oven technology (nifty conveniences) ignoring the probable fact that these technologies will change us at our innermost core. Just as social media has transformed how we relate to one another, “upgrading” ourselves will transform what it means to be human.
And though these scenarios are difficult to imagine (because how else can we relate to our fiction except through our current understanding of humanity?), it’s our responsibility to close our eyes and imagine it. We need to grapple with these disruptions via fiction before the changes come.
Here are just a few questions we ought to explore:
As we discover more neurotypes and cease to pathologize them, how will society change?
What if we could all see a live map (fMRI-style) of our minds on our smartphones?
Forget flying cars ““ how would the world be different if we could end the cycle of abuse, both in homes and in our public institutions? And how can we end those cycles of abuse? (Yes, this is science fiction!)
How can we explore newly discovered aspects of the human brain by telling stories of alien beings that take those aspects to extremes?
As we gain a better understanding of psycho-social manipulation, can we develop technologies (in the form of memes perhaps) that counter it?
Discoveries now tell us that the digestive tract literally is a mind of its own, and that the nerves throughout our bodies may play a much larger role in memory and thinking processes than previously thought. My words in this post may have triggered neurons in your left elbow. This point alone is worth a hundred science fiction stories.
And if that’s not hard SF, I’m not sure what really is.
Bio: Luna Lindsey lives in Bellevue, WA. Her first story (about a hippopotamus) crawled out of her head at age 4. After running out of things to say about hippopotami, she switched to sci-fi, fantasy, and horror. She also became an accidental expert on mind control, autism, computers, and faeries. Her stories have appeared in The Journal of Unlikely Entomology, Penumbra eMag, and Crossed Genres. She tweets like a bird @lunalindsey, intermittently blogs at www.lunalindsey.com, and publishes entire novels and nonfiction tomes at http://amazon.com/author/lunalindsey. Her novel, Emerald City Dreamer, is about faeries in Seattle and the women who hunt them.
#sfwapro
On Eating Frog Legs and White Asparagus by Jennifer Brozek
Imagine this. You are nine or ten or eleven years old. In your “tweens” as the hip kids call it. Or is that “cool”? You have moved to a foreign country “overseas” because your father was stationed there and you are experiencing non-American food for the first time. Belgium. A little country partially notable by the fact that NATO exists within it. (And so much more…)
First, it is all hotel food because there are no quarters available for you and your military family in SHAPE, Belgium (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe). And the food is good. I mean, really good. We’re talking fresh fruit, chocolate croissants, and Belgian waffles. My mom complained that she gained a pound for every day we were required to stay in that hotel. I don’t remember how long. It was too long for nine-year-old me. I just wanted a home and my things around me.
Then we were there. Living in a 300-year-old manor house in Brugelette, Belgium in 1979 because “the franc was so good.” The backyard was bigger than any school playground I’d ever played in before. The house had history. Real history. This is where “Dear Penpal, Belgium 1980” was born. “Dear Penpal, Belgium 1980” is a unique, middle grade-appropriate ghost story told through 24 physical letters that I am kickstarting from March 26th to April 26th.
In the letters a recipient will receive, I’ve included description of fritz. Real fritz (I’m convinced that Belgium is the only place to get this near-mythical food) and fritz stands with their paper cone conveyances for food beyond fritz. The only thing I really remember were the fried meatballs my father loved so much with a condiment concoction we called “goopy.” We recreated it at home with a mixture of ketchup and mayo. Dad insisted on having goopy with his fries for the rest of his life.
I also remember going to 3-hour long meals at a tiny Belgian restaurant…whose name I never knew…that had maybe five tables, where I ate all manner of things. In this place, we were known as “the polite American family” and they would bump other reservations for us if Dad called. It was within this restaurant that I learned to be fearless about “foreign” cuisine. I would willingly taste everything at least once.
I had two favorites: Frog legs (that really did taste like gamy chicken) in the most delicious sauce and white asparagus. The frog legs were a treat. A birthday meal. The same with the white asparagus that I thought was a special type of asparagus. It took me into my adulthood before I looked up how white asparagus was made. (I’m not going to tell you. You need to look it up yourself.) But, since then I have always loved asparagus and I consider any restaurant to serve white asparagus high class indeed.
My time in Belgium gave me a boon. That boon is the ability to say “yes” to whatever local cuisine is offered to me. As a Guest of Honor at GothCon in Gothenburg, Sweden, I was offered smoked puffin as an appetizer at a restaurant that was located at the corner of Baldur’s Gate and Odin’s Way. I accepted. It was fine. Not really to my taste, but I’m glad I did taste it. As a Guest of Honor at Tracon in Tampere, Finland at a Viking feast, the interesting food I was offered included duck heart (so tasty) and tar ice cream (a campfire in ice cream form). Both of which were marvels to taste. My hosts were so pleased that I was willing to try the food from their country. American GoHs have a reputation of being shy around “exotic” food.
Living in Belgium during my formative years gave me a willingness, and a fearlessness, to try foods outside my comfort zone, and I have been richer for that experience. My rule is: I am willing to try anything once. Twice if I am in a bad mood the first time. It’s a rule I encourage others to adopt. Otherwise, you won’t know what you are missing.
Jennifer Brozek is an award winning author, editor, and tie-in writer. A Secret Guide to Fighting Elder Gods, Never Let Me Sleep, and The Last Days of Salton Academy were all finalists for the Bram Stoker Award. She won the Scribe Award for best tie-in Young Adult novel, The Nellus Academy Incident, and won an Australian Shadows Award for best edited publication. Visit Jennifer’s worlds at jenniferbrozek.com, or follow her social media accounts on LinkTree.
![Your brain is looking very, very closely at a brain.]](http://www.kittywumpus.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/neuron-300x188.jpg)
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