some comments on chap 8

I've rewritten the bulk of chapter 8 several times, more violent, more sexual tension, less of both, lots of different versions of the dialog.

Part of the problem is a perennial desire to be logical, when the 'logic' is full of my own biases and views and sensibilities. Of course with aliens more than in other kinds of fiction, the meanining of 'logic' will shift. The senior interrogator will have a different set of logic formulas, so I decided it made sense, followed an appropriate degree of reason, that he would be appalled at the recording or sharing of recordings of prisoner's vulnerable moments, searches, bathroom visits, but perfectly happy to conduct an invasive search in person as if that were more appropriate.

I was also tempted to use it as a forum to comment on my disapproval of the excessive airport security and the new machines that constitute a virtual strip search, overly thorough wand searches with no privacy at all, and other inappropriate behavior they call airport policy, but for the most part I refrained. At this point I hope only to leave open, perhaps encourage readers to ask themselves the question, how much is too much, and do the circumstances make a difference? All very subtly, of course.

And I want it to be entertaining. Sometimes going too far is not so much entertaining as merely vulgar and uncomfortable. A little discomfort is good, especially in a scene like this where the main character is supposed to be more than uncomfortable, leaning toward terrified and on the verge of losing control, without my using those words in the story. Discomfort means there is enough tension and specifics to cause an emotional reaction; but it doesn't necessarily take much to make the reader uncomfortable. It is always hard from the writer side, with my imagination barely captured in words, to know what is enough or too much for the reader. And of course, ideally there will be many readers, each with a different point of discomfort. If there is a formula for taking the bulk of those potential readers to the right point, I don't know it. Feedback and opinions to help me find it will always be welcome.

observations on sex in stories

Every tv show seems to assume that young handsome men and pretty women must be having sex with someone, each other or unnamed persons off stage, and rarely, if ever, married. And that's as true of supposedly realistic shows and stories (it's not onlyon tv) as on fluff shows. The sexy leads these days are never shown as married, as if being married is uncool and marriage the death of a sex life rather than an appropriate place for a rich one. In my own experience, the reverse tends to be true, with the most desireable men in my work and social circles “already taken”. If they are married on the tv shows and movies, and the characters are still desireable, then affairs are all but inevitable, as if physical beauty and desireability were 1) both the same and 2) incompatible with the CHOICE of fidelity.

I do find unmarried characters interesting, and Candice is classic in having sex in my book (nearly the only book I;ve written where the main character has anything but marriage-like relationship or none) but I really must make sure I'm not stuck in the same clche in Cerel! There's no reason some of my officers couldn't be, realistically they would be, married, traveling with spouses, and it would be interesting to show them dealing with separation, a measure of romance that would be a good ballance to Candice's troubled life... hmmm... a bit of a soft side...

End of year wrap up

i end the year with some dark thoughts, spurred by the recent air travel and other issues that leave me lamenting the conitinuing loss of rights and liberties, the unenlightenedness of the world--our way must be the right way because it is ours, reason and common sense no where to be found being just one element of it all.

Of course, the desire to “enlighten” is probably nearly as dangerous. How much of that is “my view” too? Except that my view of enlightenment allows others to live in peace almost entirely as they like, so long as they do the same for me. Is that bad for them? Does it allow me to still offend and harm them, just by being, living my own life my way? I suppose it's possible.

All in all, the world is still open to dreams, it's just that the dreams of space travel and utopian futures requires more enlightment, more sense, more cooperation to even approach. it's a big task that can't be achieved by one or even one nation or several nations without solid commitment. Solar energy as a twenty year commitment in Germany is big, and yet it is so small compared to the visions offered by space fiction. Even my own, sometimes dark, Cerel Gold can’t even approach happening (or just the nice parts) without the leaps of technology and cooperation and advancement in certain fields (solar power and energy common sense being the smallest fraction of them).

Cerel puts Earth in the place it has earned: a third world of potential instead of a leader. We can’t even attain that measure of galactic role in the foreseeable future, though fifty years ago it seemed something that we should be able to achieve this century, or the end of the last. Nothing new there, I suppose. Life progresses apace, but not always where we would like it to go. And for now, it isn't toward new planets across the galaxy.

The computer world has gone places most of us didn’t imagine, but it remains a virtual world, and one with as many problems as benefits, giving us the illusion of increased communication (the news calls it vastly increased communication , but it is vastly increased data flow, and that is a universe apart from communication. The messages, if anyone is bothering to send them, are lost in the noise, and most don’t even try. The e-mails that substitute for letters of the past are full of trivia of the day. Over time we might get some sense and hints of the nature of people’s lives, but I have yet to receive one that contained the depth of feeling of even a bland summary letter. Many who were poor letter writers are even worse as e-mail writers, though they can write to everyone at once and hit send. It all gives the illusion of communication at every level, from family and friends to international news. Yet all level have also lost, with news reports lacking substance or even the attempt at balanced reporting that was standard at the end of the last century. Recently, my sister and I might agree with a opinion and still rebel at the report because it is so obvious that they made no effort to convey the other side, which had value too, reasons, if not enough reason for the cost. We are surrounded by trivia in the name of facts while missing utterly any truth. We get the bits and pieces of data on a thousand topics, and not enough substance for any of them to give us the smallest measure of understanding.

Still, it offers a vast opening for writers: many issues to address ala the anti-utopians of the past. Now it's the nightmares and possibilities of the future: virtual life, the computer generation youth who think they are communicating even while their ability to interrelate with people in person deteriorates with lack of excercise to the necessary parts of the brain. Genetic coding is a nightmare to personal rights, privacy, insurance, adjusting, while potentially an aide to preventive medicine (if it is understood correctly and not misapplied as seems more likely in my gloomier moods). The stories are there to be written and I begin to understand the interest in near future speculative fiction, (even if I still don’t consider most of of it science fiction). It has the better chance of sliding into literary, nongenre fiction and popular atrention. In the end, that can be good for the future of the genre fiction, too, if it it prods the readers to ask the questions that have gone too long unasked about where technology is taking us and how can it get us to where we should be aiming.

Having someone to skate with

On my recent travels, I noted a couple holding hands, mostly because it has been an unusual sight, lately. Public displays of affection have come to be uncool, I guess. Then i saw an advertisement that had a couple skating and my thoughts wandered in a similar direction... Having someone to hold hands with, to skate with has many advantages beyond the obvious romantic ones:

: someone to cling to, hold hands with during a firghtening movie or a walk through a rough neighborhood

: someone being there makes us braver, stronger,

: widens our view of the possibilities,

{ presents alternatives when we can't see any

: helps us through the day to day trials and annoyances with cheerful words, helping hands, pleasant distractions,

: someone to lean on, fall back on, offering freedom to take modest risks, knowing that someone else is there to catch us

Faith can sometimes take the place of a romantic partner: God as our our safeguard, our help in troubled times. But faith, too, is stronger shared, and being physical beings, a physical hand to hold can go along way in helping us take that first frightening step on the ice.