Money Makes The Universe go Around

So economics may not seem like something you want to work into your story, especially when you consider the short shrift given to the whole 'trade dispute' idea that opened 'The Phantom Menace'. In the real world though economics is at the heart of major historic events. Hitler's rise to power was fuelled by the economic disaster of the Great Depression. The American Revolution was set in motion by a dispute over taxation(which may have been what Lucas was trying to invoke). So if economics can be an intimate part of  real history surely you can weave into a fictional universe?

For Secession Campaign I have a major power(the Alliance) taking on a band of rebels(the Pioneer Republic) where the numbers stack up heavily in favour of the Alliance. In theory the alliance can afford to take the long view and fight a slow steady war of attrition against the rebels. Dramatically that wouldn't have been very satisfying, something had to put the Alliance under pressure to win the war fast. The answer I came up with was economics, the territory controlled by the Republic created the wealth that propped up the economy of the rest of the Alliance. Take that wealth away and the Alliance is facing a crash on the scale of the Great Depression.

In a universe of interstellar travel and trade there are other economic issues that have fascinating implications. We're living in a world where currency is increasingly digital, but that depends on a global computer network able to handle transactions in a fraction of a second.  If your universe lacks Star Wars instantaneous communications (or Star Trek replicators for that matter) what happens when you have to pay for something one planet and your bank is on another? Your going to need an honest to goodness hard currency, it may even be the case that your currency has to revert to the ancient system where coins had to made of something intrinsically precious, Silver, Gold, Unobtanium. Of course what if what constitutes precious differs from place to place? Perhaps your interstellar civilization runs on a barter economy.

All of this has potentially dramatic implications. In a fictional universe where currency is dependent on some precious material then a major find of said precious material could be the catalyst for competition and conflict. Where there is no currency any interplanetary power may behave in a thoroughly feudal manner, with taxes paid with foodstuffs, raw materials, manufactured goods, or even labour if a world has nothing else to offer. Tax collectors in that situation won’t be accountants sat in an office building, they’ll be the kind of people willing to make others part with their worldly goods to keep the state running.

 

Even if you have no interest or need to work economic matters into your story itself it can still play a valuable part in world building, helping to add texture and context to the back story. It can provide motivations for your characters and obstacles  for them to overcome. In the immortal words of the Notorious B.I.G. "Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems" and problems help to drive plot.

Prequels

Two of may favourite series of books have acquired spinoff prequels in recent months, Jack Campbell's 'Lost Fleet' and David Weber's 'Honorverse'. Both these prequels are set centuries before the main series and attempt to flesh out the history of their respective universes. The big difference is that where I really enjoyed Campbell's 'Genesis Fleet: Vanguard' I gave up on 'Manticore Ascendant: A Call to Duty'. There were a couple of minor reasons for my different reaction and one major reason. the minor ones were that unlike Lost Feet the main Honorverse series is still full of loose ends that need tying up and this is the third or fourth spinoff that's been launched, also in in contrast to previous Weber stories where the protagonists tend to be charismatic and super competent this time he, perhaps deliberately, has gone against type and created a protagonist who isn't at all charismatic, in fact a character I found positively aggravating

Neither of these things would have been a deal breaker, what made me give up was the book's continual attempts to build up dramatic tension around the fate of what amount to fixed points in the Honorverse, that is things which fans know full well are going to survive until the time of the main series books. it just struck such a false note with me that I couldn't finish the book. Now this isn't an issue specific to Manticore Ascendant, it seems to be a common problem with prequels, a genre which seems to be on the rise recently.

I had much the same problem with the Gotham TV series, the show set when Bruce Wayne is still young and centred around Detective James Gordon. It also insisted on cramming the cast full of characters from the future Batman canon. This meant that every time on placing some character in peril it's invariably one that we know is still around in the future and after a while it just becomes irritating.

Prequels don't have to be fall into this trap, I enjoyed the Genesis Fleet novel and Rogue One was a great movie. Both created an array of new characters and locations where the individual outcomes were unknown even if when you where it all ultimately leads. I suppose its the difference between real danger like skydiving versus the illusion of danger you get on a rollercoaster.

In essence I guess my view is that if you're going to create a prequel either avoid characters protected by the plot armour of future events or at the very least acknowledge their invulnerability and avoid putting them in phony peril.

Word Count

So after a long time I've finally decided to revive the blog. In the interests of full disclosure I'm finally about publish my first book on Amazon so I'm in desperate attention seeking mode. Now why didn't I just keep the blog going all this time instead of letting it lapse? Well to put it simply I work full time so there's only so many opportunities to sit down and write. That creates a dilemma, do I spend the time working on the next chapter of the book? Or do I put up a blog post, or respond to the latest posts on my Google + communities, or that alternatehistory.com thread that's grabbed my interest? Every word I write for one option is one less I'm going to have to time to type for the other, not to mention the time taken to come up with an idea for what to write.

Throw in the fact that I'm not the most social of creatures and the problems multiply. other people seem to have endless energy for talking about themselves, but I'm just not that interesting. That by the way turned creating an 'about the author' for the book something of a challenge, so I basically wound up writing about the things that influenced my writing in thoroughly meta manner. The practical upshot is I can't guarantee I'll be posting every day, but you can be sure when I post it will because the subject interests me, not just to fill the awkward silence.

...And the Kitchen Sink

I wound up reading some comics that were a spinoff from a popular fantasy show that shall remain nameless. I had avoided this for some time but I finally checked out a couple of digital copies. I didn't make it to the end of them alas. It wasn't the characterization or dialogue that dismayed me; it was the sheer sensory assault of the plot. In addition to the original fantasy premise the comics had apparently thrown James Bond(the OTT Roger Moore era Bond), Star Wars, Back to the Future, and a large measure of soap opera. It had everything bar the eponymous kitchen appliance, and then as the title says chucked that in as well.

I've written fan fiction based on TV shows in the past and I know that one of the pleasures of it is being able to open out the universe. On the page you have more time to flesh out characters and you don't have to worry about the cost of effects, location shooting, and a huge cast. This of course can also apply with your own original works; you start off with a plot that's compact and a handful of characters and as you write the plot opens out and you start having to create flow charts to keep track of the characters.

This is no bad thing of course but the problem comes when, as with the comic, more and more ideas just get thrown in without any consideration for the effect on the reader. The first thing that happens is the author starts to break the rules of their own fictional universe; a character suddenly acquires telekinesis or the power to fly where there had never even been a hint such an outcome was possible, and then character number two suddenly becomes a vampire to offset the powers of character number one and then character three becomes a time traveling cyborg because now they look a bit bland, and so on and so on until you have a mad melee of plot elements all competing with one another for the reader’s attention.

In the end this will destroy the readers suspension of disbelief and involvement with the characters, they spend their time wondering things like, 'if the character used X to get out of a situation on page 100 why don't they use it to get out of the similar situation on page 200?' instead of getting involved in the intricacies of the plot.

Ideas are a wonderful thing but you do need to spread them out.

No Fly List

So previously I dealt with the issue of why aliens haven't come visiting but reading this article at Cracked written by ISS astronaut Chris Hadfield(Note some NSFW language in the comments section) and I realized that there was one assumption that I hadn't addressed; that our eponymous aliens could actually travel into space to begin with.

It is in fact pretty astonishing that humans can survive in space, and I'm not talking about the machinery that provides air and water and heat to keep the astronauts alive. We are a species that evolved on a planet under 1g of gravity. When we travel into space that gravity goes away and somehow the human body puts up with the this. Your bladder may not work the way nature intended, your reflexes and instincts are all completely wrong and have to be relearned and yet somehow people manage.

Now barring miracles of technology an alien race is probably going to be following the same path as earthly space flight. That means chemical rockets launching cramped vehicles whose crews will have to endure zero gee on their flights. What if they simply can't endure? What if the myriad of symptoms that sometimes afflict human space travellers were endemic and permanent for our alien friends?
It maybe that with sufficiently advanced technology the aliens could overcome such difficulties but what are the odds they would ever make the necessary breakthroughs if they never take those first steps?

Perhaps the galaxy will belong to mankind not because of our intelligence but because of our cast iron stomachs...

Logically Wrong

When it comes to designing characters for your story it's a bit like a jigsaw puzzle; finding all the pieces and making them fit together into a coherent whole. As I discussed previously you need to avoid making characters too 'good' or too 'bad' but the jigsaw analogy is also flawed; if someone tried to put together the jigsaw of your life I'm pretty sure they would wind up with several pieces that just refused to fit the big picture.

The thing is people are notably inconsistent and prone to irrationality; and that doesn't allow for the simple action of chance in everyone' lives. I've personally spent almost my entire working career in the electronics career, either repairing computers or working in technical support, except for the three fairly random months I spent selling pensions back in the 90's. It was the product of a fairly odd chain of events; the sort of thing that probably wouldn't occur to you if you were designing me as a character and that's the problem of course; when you design something you expect all the pieces to fit together and in real life they just don't.

The best way to avoid this unnatural consistency is try to be a bit random yourself; visit Amazon and pick through their departments and select some random thing to include in your characters life. or you could just go for a walk and match off people walking by into random, unlikely pair and come up with an odd reason why that you can work into your story and character design. However you go about it try adding a little randomness to your characters and it will bring them that bit closer to reality.

Lack of Faith

"I find your lack of faith disturbing' Darth Vader announces just before he chokes an imperial officer with a display of force power in 'A New Hope'. Now on one level Vader is completely correct; this is after all only 20 years since the Jedi were wiped out. The Force should be something that's still a matter of fact to the citizens of the Imperium even if its fading into history. That of course though is also where Vader is dead wrong; the force isn't a matter of faith its an objective reality no different from gravity or magnetism. Star Wars is hardly alone though in this misuse of the ideas of 'faith' and 'spirituality'.

Now its not to say that religion and faith aren't discussed in some works of science fiction in a serious manner; or even just assumed to exist without making a huge deal of the subject. In the 'Lost Fleet' series for example you have a form of ancestor worship being the dominant religion and we see the characters take it seriously but there's no treatise as to how this came about and I'm fine with that, not being remotely religious myself.

What is noticeable in 'Lost Fleet' is at no point do the ancestors turn up and intervene to help the good guys out; they are genuinely a spiritual concept that provides solace for some of the characters but there is nothing to provide evidence that they have an objective reality. This alas is not a courtesy always extended  to faith by other popular science fiction media; with Star Trek being one of the worst offenders.

In Star Trek: Deep Space 9 we encounter the Bajorans. They are a people with a pervasive faith in what the call the 'Prophets' who are gods by any other name. Much is made of the spiritual nature of the Bajorans and their faith; much like the Force however faith doesn't come into it as much as you might think. The fact is that periodically the Prophets send the Bajorans orbs possessed of fantastical powers(up to and including time travel). Call me cynical but how much faith is involved when your 'gods' periodically send you presents. If this wasn't enough in the very first episode of DS9 Starfleet find out where the Prophets live and meet with them. From this point on faith becomes something of a moot point; when the priesthood has god's address not believing becomes a delusional act.

This is hardly the only time Star Trek decided that 'faith' and 'spirituality' need a helping hand. Commander Chakotay in Voyager meets his ancestor's 'sky spirits', who of course are aliens that periodically visited Earth. Kirk met the gods of ancient Greece and blew up more than one computer playing god. Trek is hardly alone in this either; Stargate SG-1 built an entire series around the idea of gods being objectively real and even Babylon 5 had an actual demonic possession.

So why do writers keep trotting out this idea of 'real' gods? Well leaving aside simply lazy writing(and seriously this is such a tired cliché that if it forms part of any story you are writing you should start redrafting now) I can't help but think that for some of them it's a form of wish fulfilment. We live in age where the Red Sea stubbornly refuses to part and manna does not rain down from the heavens. At the same time science keeps chipping away at the space in which a god might still exist. Perhaps there's a vicarious thrill in having a religion where the believers can turn to the sceptics and heathens and say, 'I told you so'.