In Flanders fields the poppies blow, Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place, and in the sky, The larks, still bravely singing, fly, Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie, In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields. John Macrae
Remembering Armistice Day…and may there be an armistice all over the Earth next Armistice Day.
Originally the last word in Triangulation: Dark Skies, now available for the first time standing on its own.
Five thousand years before the end of the Earth, the star called WR-104 went supernova. Over the intervening centuries, its deadly gamma-ray burst hurtled across silent planets and empty space on a death-errand to that distant world. And, in the intervening five thousand years, Earth learned to listen, and learned to see, and learned to contemplate its coming demise.
Robinson and Campbell are the last two astronomers left at Mount Pleasant Radio Observatory as downtown Hobart, and the whole world, descend into chaos. The Earth’s biosphere is coming to an end, thanks to a gamma ray burst five thousand years in the making. There will be nothing left. Except that the two astronomers might, just might, be able to leave a message encoded in Earth’s Sun, a message to whoever is out there, and whoever comes after…
What message do they struggle to gift to a vast post-Earth universe? Find out in “Earth Epitaph” on Amazon.com.
A few weeks back on Twitter, in the great quiet of year’s end, the writerly discourse turned to the demographics of fantasy protagonists. Most of them are in their early 20s, same for science fiction, and at least a few of us would like to see some older protagonists, in the fullness or twilight of life, so they can share in the grand imaginative adventures, too.
I pointed out, at the time, part of the problem is structural. “It’s easier,” I said, “to write Luke Skywalker leaving the farm than Uncle Owen.” Indeed, a few dead parents, a bildungsroman call, and your youthful protagonist is out on the road to adventure (whether the hyperlanes outward or some imaginative quest inward). It’s harder to disentangle a middle-aged protagonist from their mortgage, their children, their established career, their set habits. The usual ways of ‘freeing’ such characters from their bonds, like fridging, are generally considered hack and in bad taste.
Twitter, of course, moved on to the next sexy Discourse like a throwaway line in a Barenaked Ladies song. But I kept thinking about it, and brought it up to a few of my slower-paced communities, and we discussed the elders’ equivalents of the bildungsroman and the Call to Adventure – ways to get our older protagonists out on the way to their own fantasies and science fictions. This list is by no means comprehensive, but a few ideas to get us all started.
Ebenezer Scrooge
An older person has a lot more time to get stuck in their ways than a young person does. Indeed, part of the appeal of a younger protagonist is seeing what ways they’ll get started on, what habits and ideals they’ll choose. The appeal of an Ebenezer Scrooge is watching them change their ways, usually for the better, before it’s too late. The Ghost of Christmas-Yet-To-Come must loom large here, the ultimate ‘too late’ to change before, for our putative Scrooge to realize what looms just before them. Whether your Scrooge is visited by three literal ghosts or not, they’re stuck in their ways and must be dislodged from them, forced to mend the habits and attitudes that have served them so well for so long and now trap them. Before it’s too late.
James Bond
This is the man (or woman, or enby) who spent A Bad War, and has no place in the peace that has settled since. They were probably on the winning side, but they never won the peace. Theirs is a thousand yard stare, an affected disaffection, and a host of terrible coping strategies. The literary James Bond is a fragile creature, an object of some pity to the people around him, a man a bit out of his time. His quest is to come to terms with what he’s seen and done in the horrors of the war (whatever war, however metaphorical, it was), whether that’s clinically aided by a therapist’s office, or tying up loose ends, or coming to a (quasi-)religious epiphany that yes, he can live with it,
Perhaps like Sisko here
…but that’s not his real work, now, is it? His real work is coming to grips with the peace, the world made in the shadow of the old war, where poppies grow and children play where the horrors were. The world here now and the world to come, born of the world he knew and can’t reconcile. That is the master-work, the relationship to his anima to the war’s relationship to his shadow.
My friend Michael Martin noted a variation, the Jason Bourne, an older figure who’s been carrying on a personal vendetta so long the world has moved on without them and trying to settle it long after settling it was of any good to anyone.
Martin Bishop (Michael Martin)
This is pretty much every role Robert Redford played after 1980, but I single out Martin Bishop of Sneakers. He is the mentor to a new generation, but this is his story, tying up the loose ends he left behind from his youth. He needs to resolve them, or fail to do so, while handing the reins to the next generation. This is Indiana Jones in Crystal Skull, however ineptly that story was handled: reconciling to Marion, finishing Oxley’s work as Oxley has long descended into madness, inducting his son into the ways of archaeology, coming to terms with the fact that his father and his friends are gone, and he will soon follow. It’s every damn thing a Martin Bishop has to cope with, all at once. Pick one, or at most, two of those, and let your own Obi-Wan tell his story and go into his own double-sunset.
Jake and Elwood Blues
We all remember this one from every heist caper from 1980 to Ocean’s 13.
He needs to come out of retirement for One Last Job, and, usually in the course of it, Get The Band Back Together.
This elder’s adventuring career is long behind them, but their current reduced circumstances or beaten-down moral compass demands they come do just one more before they fade into a comfortable, yet irrelevant, retirement. Whether it’s putting down the last of the old evil (or its attempted imitators, because the kids Don’t Understand), boosting the biggest score of their career, or putting on one last show to save the orphanage where they grew up, this is the last job, and meeting (or recruiting) the people they lost contact with, left behind, who changed in the years since, is a key component, facing our elder with how different the world has become without them.
John Perry
“On his 75th birthday, John Perry did two things. First, he visited his wife’s grave. Then, he joined the army.”
Old Man’s War, John Scalzi
Their partner is gone. For some, their career. But a huge part of their life, something that gave them meaning and cadre and comfort, is gone. Like the Scrooge, they must change. Unlike Scrooge, the change has come upon them, and now they must wrestle with a life already changed, rather than drift toward a certain fate.
Forty years go by with someone laying in your bed/ Forty years of things you say you’d wish you’d never said/ How hard would it have been to say some kinder words instead?/ I wonder as I stare up at the sky turning red…
I personally don’t much care if they find a new love, or come to terms with the pain of widowhood, or go join the army. Let them find something. Let them grow meaning back from the tender place where there used to be someone, something. Let them grow and change into something new.
The examples I’ve given are men, mainly white. That’s because the archetypes and examples I know are from another age, an age dominated by men, mainly white. I hope with some applicability, better writers than myself can use them as a springboard for stories about their own identities, or about Others than themselves. There is no reason for Scrooge to be Episcopal or Bond to be male, or for their stories to follow well-trodden Campbellian paths.
I offer these as ideas and places to start, a list intentionally incomplete, a page left half-written, for others to finish and to build on.
Now then, let me get back to my submissions to Gargantua, where somehow all these figures have sprung up at once…
That’s right, two of my classic stories are available for free, for réveillon de Noël and for Noël (24/25 dec) only! Don’t wait for Boxing Day to collect your gifts from me. 🙂
I can’t remember the first time I met myself, but I’ve passed along the story to my younger self when it came to be my turn. I do remember the year I decided to come home every Christmas. I was ten years old, and my parents were away at the office Christmas party, and Nina was downstairs watching TV. I was feeling lonely, as it was Christmas Eve and every other year we’d all have been putting presents under the tree and dropping hints about the contents by now.
That’s when I walk in.
The Christmas tale of a young man haunted by his own holiday traditions.
Ethan’s parents have left him in the house on the eve of his tenth Christmas, with nobody but Nina the babysitter for company. But Ethan has a secret – he can time travel, and every year for the rest of his life, he returns to this night to have a party. Every year, though, it’s always the same – the insecurity, the stupid mistakes, the arguments. But this year might be a better Christmas…maybe….
It’s over 6000 words of unexpected Christmas angles. Joyeux Noël et bon Nouvel’An!
I’ve been coping with a swollen jaw since last Thursday and the pain, while low, has been a constant in my sleeping and waking life since then. I look forward to a proper update next week, I have three or four started. Until then, read short fiction, imagine stranger futures, and enjoy this picture of my roommate.
“Write about what scares you, what inspires you, and what turns you on.”
Laurie Bland
This whole last sorry two years of writing (or not writing) have all been leading to this. It just took me this long to get over myself.
Two nights ago, my wife and I went out for our first date night since the baby. On the second or third toast, we raised our glasses and she looked at me expectantly, and a funny thing happened. Being a Quaker, I am well-versed in what it feels like to give vocal ministry. One is moved, there is something rising out of your soul and toward your lips, with immense pressure to be spoken, through you, and you have to work harder and harder to not say it, though you have no idea what it even is. I felt it behind my soul then, pressing on my teeth, and I opened my lips.
“I vow to write most of my SF/F/H either by Bradbury or as written ministry.”
We clinked glasses and I broke out in a cold sweat.
I’ve spent the better part of two years unable to write anything. No stories. No revisions. One or two drafts that are lifeless, inert, and enervating. Stillborn stories. Ever since I burned out in the post-NaNoWriMo funk two years ago, that’s been my life, with occasional outbreaks of radioactivity near the things I used to love. I’ve slowly regained freedom of movement there – cleaned out the radioactive storm near Marybeth, cleaned up the crater of Doña Ana Lucía. But actual writing? Or even revising? Just because I can reread now doesn’t mean I can produce.
But then I wrote something funny.
Or, rather, I didn’t, but the Divine did. The Muse, God, what you will, I believe it has no name and refer to it as “the sound of distant laughter” most days.
I wrote a story for Unidentified Funny Objects, a humor anthology, the day before it was due. I watched the days tick down, couldn’t get away from wife and family to sit down to compose something as I used to could. So I woke up early, the morning before the deadline, went downstairs, opened my computer, opened a document, and prayed. “The God who inspired ‘Suit of Mirrors,’” I called, “let your words flow through me, I’m ready to stand aside and give the written ministry.”
The story was done two hours later. It needed no revising, just a better title.
Being a humor story, someone provided the better title five minutes after I sent it off, but that’s why my God is the God of distant laughter.
It’s a damn good story, and I had nothing to do with writing it. I just allowed it to write itself, using my hands, my computer, while my playlist played through my earphones. And, just like ‘The Suit of Mirrors’ all those years ago, it came out almost perfect on the first try.
The next night, we had our date night.
It’s terrifying, what I propose. I propose to write most of my SF/F/H this way, stories new and old, shorts and novels, even blog entries. This is written ministry, right now. I planned none of this, don’t rightly know where it’s going. But I know, and trust, it’s going somewhere, it will get there, and then if I have any sense in my head, I’ll shut my mouth and sit down and let the Quaker meeting go on.
It involves giving away control of my writing, my precious writing, the place where I should by rights have the most control over my life. But God afflicted me with another sickness of the soul two years ago, same as God did years ago at our Pacific Yearly Meeting of Quakers. And now I realize why. We Friends speak of “tender” and being “made tender,” and I was being made tender, so this way could open before me, this opening arise. So that my writing itself is dependent on the still, small voice that I, as a Friend, am supposed to listen for.
Bradbury is just another road to this place. He wrote those lists, one of which I shared last week, let a prose-poem arise out of one of the words, let a character arise out of the prose-poem, let a story leap out of the character, with only the barest control over any of it. And it’s what made him Bradbury. I’ve Bradburyed story after story through the years.
What I’m giving up (not permanently and not entirely! But giving up) is the other way, the way you know: the careful construction, the assembly of tropes like troops and drawing-up of battle plans to occupy the territory of a pre-determined story. The self-led, rather than Divine-led or subconscious-led, way. The violent way. Instead, I am to turn to the garden way, allowing things to grow in my garden and run wild and then harvest them in delight and anticipation.
“The Suit of Mirrors” is the best short story I’ve ever written, and I never wrote it. I should have learned my lesson then, but it took some humbling for me to give up having my own way all the time on these blank pages.
I wonder where the Divine will lead me next. I think I hear the still small voice in one ear.
Sorry for the lack of updates, all. Don’t know if you noticed, but it’s been a hell of a year.
First – my wife and I are indeed pregnant. She’s eleven weeks along now, and we found out yesterday morning that we’ll be giving birth to a baby girl. My wife’s (and daughter’s) Jewish tradition prevents us from revealing the name yet, but rest assured, we have one in mind. I addressed her in French by her name, and felt power there. I don’t want to loose that upon the world until she’s ready.
Until then, we’ve been calling her la Pousse: the Sprout.
If you’re interested in helping us out, my wife has a registry together here: Our BabyList Registry. If you’re American, I’ve got quite a list of French books over at Amazon.com.
We call her the Sprout because the day before the strip turned blue, my seeds sprouted. I started an autumn garden, un jardin potager, of Japanese and Chinese greens I ordered out of Kitazawa. And that day, the komatsuna greens and the hidabeni radishes pushed their first tiny leaves out of their Dixie cups.
They’ve grown a bit since, the komatsuna and hidabeni in particular bursting out into huge shaggy growths I had to harvest back just to give everyone else room.
That harvest ended up in here:
My wife’s first Japanese meal since the morning sickness started, and she used my own greens for it.
And she’s getting a story published! Her first in SF/F/H. She’s been beaming around, “just like my hubby!” The story is called “Yerushalmi,” about a family in genderqueer future Jerusalem, and it’ll be published in Solarpunk Sunscapes in 2022.
And …oh yes.
I’m writing again myself.
I was able to wring a first draft of a short story out in August, but it needs time to heal before I go after it again. In October, my friend in London recommended The Screwtape Letters to me. “Interesting,” I said as I closed the book, “but I wonder what it would be like with Buddhist mara instead of Anglo-Catholic devils?”
So, for NaNoWriMo, I worked on what I’ve worktitled The Gandharva Letters. Tahna, who is Thirst, sits on high in the divine realms, instructing her two sisters Raga, who is Desire, and Arati, who is Aversion, in the proper tempting of the Soul. The Soul might escape, you see, from the cycle of death and birth, and their father Mara would be most displeased to lose even one small soul.
I did not follow the 1667 words/day NaNoWriMo plan, though. Still healing. So I promised myself “just one sentence.” Because that one sentence always becomes more. Just one sentence per day. A different stint …but a good one. I keep writing sentences, you see.
And last, I am practicing again. Not Roscoe Learns to Think, not yet, but…getting there. As with everything, more on our story as it develops.
My friends diagnosed burnout, and that’s definitely how it feels: grey, ashy.
Which is why I was surprised when, on a whim, I decided to watch Heavy Metal, and colors came back. My beloved wife and I had watched other things the past few months, and none of them really struck the same chord.
I kept experimenting, seeking out the sense of what I can only call “trippy wonder”. So far, this is what I’ve found that really brings the colors out, that creates mindscapes, that awes. I would love to find more, if you have recommendations. (And if you have a better word for what these things all share than “trippy wonder,” that would help, too)
If not, enjoy this sampling. It’s trippy. And pretty wonderful.
Music:
Kate Bush (especially her earlier albums, such as Hounds of Love)
WARNING: MAY CONTAIN KATE BUSH.
Pink Floyd (though each era has its own flavor)
Barrett
Waters
Gilmour
Movies:
Istvan Banyai’s Zoom
The Mind’s Eye series
Heavy Metal
Fair warning: Heavy Metal. NSFW.
Disney’s Alice in Wonderland
Literature:
Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poetry
Nezahualcoyotl’s poetry
Things I’ve experimented with and didn’t quite work:
It was not for the reasons I feared, but because everyone who knows me needed to alert me all at once to the fact that a TikTok phenomenon of people singing “The Wellerman” had exploded on social media, leading to a surge of interest in sea chanties. Which was amazing, even with the blowing-up of my inbox.
In spirit of having been “the shantyman” on both ship and shore, I share with you this short essay on the nature of sea chanties. I wrote it in response to a question on the National Novel Writing Month forums about writing airship chanties, and I hope you enjoy:
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