The Mythmaker Canon: No. 4 in my New Series of Mythmaker Posts

       

Suitable Illustration for Las Almas qui bailaron
(Dancing Souls) 
by Pete Linforth on Pixabay

       In an earlier post I mentioned that during the Second Dark Age (mostly in the 25th and 26th centuries), a group of writers and artists (later called the Mythmakers) arose out of the preservers of culture who were known as the Underground Archivists.  Fantasy was their genre of choice –for what is fantasy but myth and myth but fantasy? – and the writers remained totally anonymous even into the 30th century.  As their works came to light, they were studied by the scholars of the day and became the basis for the humanist ethic of the 27th century and beyond.

       I thought it would be enlightening to put a little flesh on these unknown artists before we go on to discuss their philosophy.  They were given numbers according to when they were discovered, not by when they wrote.  About 100 individuals are known.  The breakdown of the Mythmaker Canon is as follows:

197 pieces of literature (dramas, novels and shorter narratives, narrative poems)

681 lyric poems, 97 with musical settings

213 pieces of graphic art

89 major musical compositions

8 operas

Some of them have been cited in my published and unpublished books.  Here is a sampling with some examples from my fiction.

Mythmaker 27:  Kaitrin refers to him/her in The Termite Queen, v.1, ch. 21, as “one of the gentle ones who wrote for children.”  In a later part of The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars (hereafter referred to as MWFB), I spoke of the Mythmaker clown Tiffis, a character in a children’s play by Mythmaker 27 called “Conjunctions:  Ifs, Ands, and Buts.”  A popular children’s ditty called “The If Song” comes from this,  Unfortunately, I’m cutting out the character who referred to this song in MWFB because of length considerations.  That character was expendable.   

        Mythmaker 46 composed a triad of beautiful love poems that have been frequently set to music.

 Mythmaker 50 was a musical composer who wrote the oratorio entitled Temporal Resurrection.  It will be mentioned in Part Two of MWFB at an honors ceremony:

“The Protocol Chief said, ‘Gentlemen and ladies, as a conclusion to our ceremony today, the Senior Choir of Karlinius University will sing the fugal chant from the oratorio Temporal Resurrection, by Mythmaker 50.’

“As the sweeping lines and staccato accents of that magnificent composition filled the silent Hall, Robbie sat with his head bowed.”

Parenthetically, when Robbin is planning his wedding in a later part of MWFB, here is some advice he receives on what music or readings would be appropriate:

 “Mythmaker 50 wrote some beautiful nuptial songs called ‘The Epithalamia’ that can be sung to a big orchestra or electronic background or just a little guitar accompaniment.  And Mythmaker 46 composed a triad of beautiful love poems that have been set lots of ways, but they can just be recited, too.”

     Furthermore in MWFB a Mythmaker opera is mentioned called Las Almas que bailaron (the souls who danced, or dancing souls -- see picture at top of this post), and it includes a wedding tune called the “Laughing March.”  No Mythmaker number is mentioned, however, although if I keep this part of the story, I might add it.

Mythmaker 85:  He is believed to be a Jew, and he was one of the later ones to be discovered.  Here is a passage from Fathers and Demons (extract from a later part of MWFB) where Mythmaker 85 is discussed:

It was Chaim who returned to the topic that Lazy had introduced.  “Are either of you gentlemen familiar with the work of the Mythmaker designated No. 85?”

Robbie and Yow looked at each other.  “I can’t say I am right off,” said Lazy.  [...]

“The Mythmakers were numbered in the order in which they were discovered, so obviously No. 85 came to light late, but it is thought the author lived at a much earlier time and was perhaps even the very first one of them to write.  Those scholars you mentioned have identified him as a Jue by his style and by various references, and it’s believed he may have written in the second half of the 24th century, shortly after the founding of New Verser.  He wrote only one known work – an Inge fantasy called The Book of New Consecration.” 

“Blasphemy, Chaim!” said Ben-Ari in obvious distress.  “There can be no new Torah!”

“May HaShem forbid I would equate it with Torah, Natan!  But I insist you allow me to say my piece, because the work has much merit!  Now I’m going to say the Inge form of the Name and you and Ely can stop your ears if it bothers you.  The narrator who speaks this tale is Jehovah – there! – that is, God himself – and the gist of it is that the whole of Earth is consecrated land and humanity doesn’t need to look back in nostalgia and vengeance, trying to find the entire meaning of life in what occurred in one small place and time.”

“You know, I have heard of that one,” said Dr. Yow, “although I’ve never read it.  That was the work that spurred the composition of the 17th Precept.” [Study history and learn from it, but look to the future and do not let yourself be trapped by nostalgia or revenge.]

“Exactly!  Mythmaker No. 85 actually speaks of Jerusalem and the Holy Land of Tzion, and what he says is, we make our own Temples and our own Jerusalems wherever we may go.  By that author’s lights, this piece of Earth on which we are sitting at this very moment is the Land of Tzion and the Temple in its center is Jerusalem, even as we named it.  Who knows?  Perhaps that writer was aware of what we had done here in Istria and took his inspiration from it. 

“So when we say, ‘Have you been to Jerusalem this Shabbat?’ it has validity beyond simply a name, because it implies that wherever we go, we stand on consecrated ground.  We know that at least for centuries to come, nobody will set foot in the original Jerusalem, and maybe that will never happen.  If someone could walk there, they would find nothing, anyway – not one tree or rose bush or living thing – not one stone standing on another, or even any stone that has not been superheated and fused into glass.  Human cultures have to adapt or be extinguished.  We can love and keep and honor the old ways, but we must look to honor and preserve life above all else.”

Mythmaker 89 wrote operas and oratorios in Inge in the early 26th century; he wrote the oratorio call Striving that was first performed at the celebrations surrounding the ratification of the Unification Charter in 2690.  The “Planetary Anthem,” Earth’s official song, was adapted from that work.  Here it is referred to in Part One of MWFB, in the scene where the Starchasers are welcomed home after their first triumphant flight beyond the solar system:

“The avenues of New Washinten were dense with enthusiastic spectators who had come from all over the world to welcome home their heroes.  The people cheered and waved banners and tossed confetti and flowers as bands along the route played enthusiastic renditions of the Planetary Anthem.  The line Look back for warning, look ahead for wonder had never seemed more appropriate.”
It is referred to in other places as well.

Mythmaker 96:

Arguably the most important of the lot, this writer composed the drama The Valley of the White Bear, considered the greatest piece of writing in the Canon.  I’ve decided to put my discussion of this piece in the next post, because if I include it here, the post will be too long.


Links to other posts in this series:

No. 1: What Can We Expect from the Future?

No. 2: How Will Humanity Lift Itself out of the Second Dark Age?

No. 3: Humans Are All the Same Species!

What Can We Expect from the Future? My New Series of Mythmaker Posts

The current stressful political climate in the United States has stimulated me to make a new  attempt to expound on my concept of future history and how the Mythmaker philosophy fits into it.  The best (and most painless) way to learn about my thinking is to read my books, particularly The Termite Queen, v. 1 and 2, and Fathers and Demons.  The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars still hasn’t been published, but it will contain the best exposition yet of my vision of the future.  Even my termite series The Labors of Ki’shto’ba Huge-Head contains passages that reflect my thinking. 

The Termite Queen contains a somewhat lengthy section that encapsulates the future history of Earth.  I’ve excerpted that in a separate page of this blog.  Find it on the Pages cross-column above.

Lately I’ve seen three foreshadowings of elements that I predicted in my future history.  The first is obvious – the prevalence of religious fanaticism leading to vicious wars. To quote my own writing in The Termite Queen: “The militant religionist movement that began early in the 21st century resulted in a succession of conflicts known as the Zealot Wars.”  I’ll address that problem in later posts. 

 The second element is what I called the Fractures, and the third is the rise of the TWLs (the Techno-Warlords).  To quote again: “In the 22nd century the period known as the Fractures began, when time-hallowed nation-states – the ironically named ‘Great Powers’ – of Earth began to break apart and make war with each other and within themselves.  It was the time of the Techno-Warlords – the TWLs – dictators who sought to seize for themselves the remnants of the petroleum reserves and who lived by advancing technology exclusively for the purpose of producing an increasingly horrific war machine.”

So are the Fractures already beginning?  The European Union is in trouble, and lately there has been secessionist talk in California, which is certainly big enough to be a country to itself.  Texas has always wanted to be its own country.  French-speaking Canada might like to go it alone if it were encouraged. 

And then comes Donald Trump, who wants to wall off the United States and ban immigration as much as possible (or at least so he says – no telling what he will really do).  At a time when we should be encouraging globalization and a unified Earth, he and a lot of people whose livelihoods are threatened want to retreat from it.  We need to become expansive and inclusive – to learn to work together, not bicker with each other and fight and kill our own kind.

Fractures encourage the rise of the TWL.  In my conceptualization, Hitler is considered the first Techno-Warlord because he was the first to use rockets as weapons.  There is a passage on this in Fathers and Demons (laid in the 28th century), where Chaim Oman is recounting the history of the Jewish people post-20th century:

Everybody stirred a little, because the atrocities of the 20th century were tenaciously included in the history curriculum.  Linna said, “That marks the onset of humanity’s descent into the Second Dark Age.  It’s not only because the first radiant bombs were exploded then.  It’s also because of that Uropian dictator – I don’t recall his name right off – who set out to cleanse the human species of elements he judged inferior.  I think he murdered around ten million people.”

Dr. Yow added contemplatively, “His name was Hitler.  He used the primitive technology of the time for his racial purification and he was the first tyrant to use rockets as weapons.  For those reasons he’s known as the PTWL – the Proto-Techno-Warlord.  He wasn’t the one who exploded the first radiant weapons, though.  That honor goes to the government of the Old Ammeriken States.”

That’s why anybody with a sense of history is afraid of Donald Trump, because he has seemed to encourage his followers to commit violent acts and to hate those who are unlike, and because he exhibits demagogic tendencies, to want to be able to dictate rather than cooperate and legislate (his overweening battle cry “I alone can fix it.”)  Again, I’m not really sure whether he is serious in these statements or whether he is a clever actor, playing the “sucker born every minute” card, and playing it very well.  After all, Mr. Bloomberg didn’t call Trump a conman for nothing.

Basic to my future history is the depletion of the Earth’s oil reserves.  When I first wrote my future history (around 2002), I checked on the amount of oil that was left and it was about 50 years worth.  I was appalled.  Do you know how short a time 50 years is?  It passes in an eye-blink!  I’m 76 and it seems like just the other day that I was 26.

So just now I checked the figure again to see if it had changed.  See this post from BP where it is stated  “In June, BP provided an intriguing update to its global oil reserves estimates in the company's yearly review of energy statistics. It raised its reserve estimate by 1.1% to 1,687.9 billion barrels – just enough oil to last the world 53.3 years at the current production rates.”

So I figured that unless the Earth gets its act together, we’d better find other means of producing the power that our ultra-high technology consumes, or we’ll be in real trouble.  My view is pessimistic.  We’re going to use up all the oil and have nothing ready to replace it by the beginning of the 22nd century.  At that point the electrical grid collapses, communication and transportation break down, and we head for a return to the Stone Age, or very near.

Of course, run-away climate change plays its part, too, with coastal cities disappearing under the sea, along with drought and water-famines and the rise of mutated disease organisms ...  However, I’m not getting into all that here.  Let me just say that all that will feed into the Fractures and the rise of the TWLs.

So, yes, I’m a pessimist about the future of Earth – in the short run.  But I have not been pessimistic about the nature of humanity (although I’ve been having my doubts lately).  There will be people who keep the best aspects of humanity alive throughout the coming Second Dark Age.  And that will be the subject of later posts.

Fathers and Demons: Another New Review

At this point in time, Neil Aplin's new 5-star review of Fathers and Demons has appeared only on Smashwords.  I'm hoping he puts it up on Amazon soon.  Here is the review:

       In Fathers and Demons; Glimpses of the Future, Lorinda J. Taylor develops the character of one of her most fascinating protagonists, the Captain Robbie Nikalishin, who despite constant mispronouncements of his surname conquers this as well as the traumatic initial journey into the depths of the galaxy from a previous novel to find himself strong enough to accept the offer of a second mission, whilst at the same time learning more of the nature of the remnants of religiosity in the 28th century, particularly the Jewish culture and faith, interlaced with a generous helping of ruminations on the father-son/mother-son relationships.

       Perhaps an unusual juxtaposition for a story to start from, but Lorinda J. Taylor's imagination never strays too far from the unusual, and never fails to extract empathy and interest in equal measure from the reader. It is a concoction worth the sampling. Looking at the world through Robbie's eyes can be frustrating and indeed sometimes challenging, but never dull!

       We await the next episode of the Nikalishin saga with anticipation, not a little dread but the hope of some success.

The "previous novel" that Neil Aplin mentions is my WIP The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars.  I'm definitely planning to publish the opening segment of that marathon opus as soon as I can fit it into my schedule.  At the moment I'm still working on the sequel to the series The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head.  More information will be forthcoming.

New 5-Star Review of Fathers and Demons

Here is a new review by Christopher Graham (aka The Story Reading Ape).  Amazon seems to be playing around with reviews again, because if you want to see this review there, you'll have to click on the 5-star bar.  It won't come up if you click on "See all reviews." 

       As with her series about Intelligent Termites, the author has researched deeply and given great consideration regards how to best use the knowledge she has gained.
       In this book (a precursor to her next story in this new series), the author has surmised how religions may have evolved by the 28th Century, particularly Catholicism and Judaism.
       Two characters, the Captain and the Chief Engineer, are survivors from a previous (failed) attempt to achieve deep space / intergalactic travel and the experience left them profoundly scarred mentally.
       However, with time and treatment, they have both been finally deemed fit to lead another attempt to conquer space.
       This book chronicles their individual journeys to understand and overcome their lingering fears regarding a malevolent 'something' they feel exists in deep space and is waiting for them.
The Captain, who has no religious beliefs of his own, has already learned some things from Catholicism that have offered him limited comfort and he now attempts to learn from Judaism.  I learned much from the wedding scenario being performed according to 'Judish' customs and beliefs, even more during the reception.
       The Chief Engineer, however, feels a strong need to meet and reconcile with his strong willed, opinionated Father and the Mother who ran away when he was in his early teens.
       It is true that there are no 'action packed moments' in the story, but that does not detract from the skill involved in building up the background of these two characters and help us understand their decisions and actions in the next book.

 

Thanks you, Chris, for great review!

 

Buy this book at the following sites:

Amazon

Amazon UK

Smashwords

Barnes & Noble

 

 

 

Sneak Preview of Father and Demons

PUBLICATION DATE


SET FOR APRIL 9, 2015!

COME TO MY LAUNCH PARTY

FRIDAY, APRIL 10

ON FACEBOOK!

COPIES OF FATHERS AND DEMONS

WILL BE GIVEN AWAY AND

ALL MY BOOKS WILL BE 99 CENTS!

 

My next publication (due to be released sometime in the next six weeks) is entitled Fathers and Demons; Glimpses of the Future, and it doesn't have any giant termites!  In fact, it’s a serious work of speculative fiction about future human beings.  For the first time the general reading public will get to meet Capt. Robbin Nikalishin, the protagonist of my still unfinished opus, The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars.  The best way to introduce my new book to you is to present excerpts from the book’s introductory matter.

A Note from the Author

When I set out to write the life story of Capt. Robbin Nikalishin (the first starship commander to make contact with extraterrestrials), I intended it to be one longish novel entitled The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars.  Among other goals, I wanted to depict the history and state of Earth’s future civilization in greater depth than I had been able to do in my novel The Termite Queen.  This included recounting what had become of certain remnant elements of society – specifically, defined religious populations.  The Jews constituted one of these populations.

So I introduced a Jewish character who was about to get married.  I began to research Jewish weddings and ended spending a good three months immersed in all aspects of Jewish religion and culture.  I even studied a bit of Hebrew.  This new fascination caused the Jewish wedding section to expand into a lengthy tome that encompassed not only an exposition of Judaism but also a probe into the nature of gods and their relationship with human beings. 

Obviously, a chunk this weighty could not remain part of the basic novel.  However, the piece contains many striking and provocative elements, so I have extracted it, shortened it by some 10,000 words, and turned it into a separate “novel.”  In fact, it is not exactly a novel, since it starts and stops in medias res, with only enough explanation of what has gone before to make it comprehensible.  It consists of several sections, some that elaborate on the future history of Earth; some that illuminate Jewish faith, philosophy, and culture and the future history of religion in general; and some that detail the stories of certain individuals, both Jewish and secular.  The theme of fatherhood and the connections between fathers and gods form the mesh that binds the book together. 

The most appropriate designation to accord this piece is speculative literary fiction; it is science fiction in that it takes place in a future time, at the very inception of interstellar travel, but it also deals with demons and gods that may or may not be real, introducing an element of the supernatural.  The style varies; within a framework of omnipotent narration, certain history and tales are told through conversation or related by one of the characters, and there is even a venture into epistolary form.  It is a bit like a musical work, with each segment having its own tempo, theme, and mood.  …

Lorinda J. Taylor

Colorado Springs

April, 2015

By Way of Introduction: Earth and Space, 28th Century

       All human beings must live with demons, but those demons are unusually powerful when they are summoned by the sort of catastrophe that happened aboard the Darter in 2761.  Robbin Nikalishin, the Captain of that interstellar ship, had succeeded, by dint of much help and a determined will, in subduing his own demons, but no member of his crew had completely escaped being affected.  That was especially true of Cmdr. Ian Glencrosse, the Darter’s 2nd Assistant Engineer.  Nevertheless, when the rehabilitated Captain received command of the first real interstellar mission under the new Phenix Project, he selected Ian Glencrosse to serve as his Chief Engineer.  The choice was limited, because few officers expert in temporal quantum drive were still alive; furthermore Nikalishin and Glencrosse had become close friends.  And in spite of (or perhaps because of) his own demons, Glencrosse had accepted the appointment.  After all, he had saved his Captain’s life during the catastrophe.  A proverb says, when you save someone’s life, you become responsible for that person forever. 

       As the launch date for the “Big Mission” approached – the day when the IS Ariana would depart for Epsilon Eridani – the crew took leave time.  The excuse was the wedding of the Communications Officer, Lt. Avi Oman, and Capt. Mercedes Tulu, Administrative Aide to Adm. Sergey Malakoff, the Phenix Project’s Mission Director.  Lt. Oman hailed from the Istrian Judish Enclave, a place of origin mysterious to most 28th-century Earthers.  Mercedes was Midammeriken, born in the citrus-growing regions of Teyhas, but her father had immigrated from Ethopa in East Afrik.  Since she had Flasha ancestors, Avi’s family had blessed the marriage.

       Cmdr. Glencrosse did not accompany his fellow crewmembers on this happy excursion to the Adriantic Sea’s northern coast.  He had something other than recreation on his mind.  He had long been haunted by visions of a malevolent entity that inhabited the depths of space – the very entity that was responsible for destroying the Darter as the ship emerged from a temporal quantum pod.  Both his Captain and the team psychologist, Dr. Gill Winehandle, knew about this aberration; in fact, the doctor had at one time improvised an unfortunate nickname for the entity – “the god in the pod.”  While the Engineer’s peers thought his delusions were under control, Ian still secretly believed in the reality of this demon space-god – that it disapproved of humans’ invasion of its territory and therefore had doomed the upcoming mission to destruction.  Ian was convinced he would not survive the voyage and so he was heading home to Mitchican Prefecture, where after a long separation he would confront his parents and make his peace.

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Writing Progress: So What's Next on My Agenda?

       For a while now, I've been playing up Fathers and Demons as the next book I planned to publish, but now I've changed tactics.  I mentioned that Fathers and Demons was a big chunk of my WIP The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars, too long to leave within the boundaries of that book.  I've long been thinking that I might never get around to making MWFB publishable, and Fathers and Demons somewhat summarized the plot of the longer book, thus at least getting a bit of it preserved.

I published this drawing once before
but I thought you ought to know
what Robbie looks like at the time
of Fathers & Demons.

       But working on the shorter book rejuvenated my interest in MWFB and I realized that F & D was going to play the spoiler for the parent book if I do publish it.  It reveals an important plot point that I'd rather people didn't know before they read Man Who Found Birds.

       So I've decided to delay publication of F & D until I approach the point in MWFB where the Jewish section occurred.  I had already formatted it completely for CreateSpace, but so what?  It will just sit there in my computer until I'm ready for it.  I hadn't done the Kindle and the Smashwords, so I'll put that off.  I apologize to the people who have expressed interest in Fathers and Demons and in my future Jewish history.  I assure you that sooner or later this piece will get published.

       In the meantime I've begun the daunting task of restructuring and reworking and especially abridging MWFB.  I won't tell you how long the original MS is, and it isn't even finished!  However, the first chunks are readable in and of themselves, so I'll at least plan to publish those.  Even at that, it will have to become a series.  But I think I can work it out so that each volume is self-contained and not too long.

 

       Some of you know that I've been posting chapters of MWFB (I'm up to Chapter 12) here on this blog.  I get a lot of pageviews on the chapters, and I had hoped that I would get feedback comments, but I've hardly had any, except from one person who has fallen in love with this book and impatiently begs for the next chapter!  I want to thank this very loyal fan for his support!  It's really gratifying and it played a part in my decision to work on the book.  I had never planned to continue publishing chapters forever, and I'm about to stop.  I mean to complete Chapter 12 and I do plan to post Chapter 13, because it finishes something left hanging in Chapter 11, but that will be the last.

       One reason for stopping is that I'm restructuring the book, eliminating the flash back/flash forward organization.  I had originally thought that I could do the whole book that way, but I ended up running out of material for the future part and extending the early part almost endlessly.  So a straight chonological organization will function better and help to shorten it (I hope).

 

        So how would I characterize The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars?  It's a fictionalized biography of the spaceship Captain Robbin Nikalishin, who commanded the expedition that made first contact with extraterrestrials.  With my usual intent of keeping the future context, I set it up as a piece written by an Oxkam Professor in commoration of the fiftieth anniversay of the Captain's death.  Personally, I like that ploy, and I'll probably keep it, adding an extra title page from the future, the way I do with the Ki'shto'ba series.  This future author will not be narrating the story, however, and there will be no footnotes or other scholarly apparatus -- just a straightforward, mostly omnipotent-narrator piece of storytelling in the third person.  It should be eminently easy to read, at least until the aliens appear (when the conlang they speak becomes an essential part of things), but that's so far off I'm not even going to think about it now.  We have to get through the many problems of Robbin Nikalishin's early life first!

       I'm going to leave the Prologue (the martial eagle story) intact, and then pick up from that, calling the first three sections of the book "Eagle Ascending," "Eagle Falling," and "Survivor." 

       (Disclaimer:  Any and all of the above is subject to change at any time!)

       I also may work occasionally on The Valley of Thorns (Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head, v.3).  The text is pretty much ready, but the cover is only about half done and the map isn't ready at all, except as part of a larger map.  And that reminds me -- I don't have any cover art for MWFB, or rather, I have a cover but it's no good -- one of my hopeless attempts at figure drawing.

       That sounds like I have a lot to do, doesn't it? !!  I guess it's time I quit dithering and got busy!

A Jewish Parable, and a Cover Drawing

Click for larger view

Click for larger view





      


















[I've removed the first version, left the second, and added a third version (on right).  I've changed the title to simply Fathers and Demons and used a fancier font.  I've also made the demon more sinister-looking.  The purpose of the stars is to show this is a space demon/god and, by using six-pointed stars, to suggest the Jewish G-d may be out there, too.  Furthermore, the book is a preamble to humanity's first interstellar voyage. ]


“Truth, naked and cold, had been turned away from every door in the village. Her nakedness frightened people. When Parable found her she was huddled in a corner, shivering and hungry. Taking pity on her, Parable gathered her up and took her home. There, she dressed Truth in story, warmed her and sent her out again. Clothed in story, Truth knocked again at the villagers’ doors and was readily welcomed into people’s houses. They invited her to eat at their table and warm herself by their fire.”  -- Jewish Parable

Quotes for PublicSpeakers, No.82

(From http://mannerofspeaking.org/2011/04/05/quotes-for-public-speakers-no-82/)

 

The question is, What is Truth?

The Mythmakers say (Precept No.  10)

The Right Way is universal; the Truth is parochial and divisive.

 

As the Parable says, we can only explore these questions through story:

What is the difference between gods and demons?

Is God a father or a demon?

Are fathers demons or gods, or something better than either?

Are both gods and demons products of the human mind?

 

The story I'm preparing for publication is called Of Fathers and Demons

and it explores some of these questions.

 

Above is my conception of the cover art (still tentative, and very symbolic)

Please give FEEDBACK!  What do you think of this cover?

I hope you think it's weird, because it's meant to be.

At this point I will not explain the symbolism.

 (And no, that is neither a termite nor a kitten!)

 

What Kind of Books Can You Expect Me to Write?

       My last post on this blog concerned writers who suffer from lack of confidence.  Today I want to talk about the type of book that I write.  When you buy one of my books, what can you expect?

       First, I'll tell you want not to expect.  Don't expect anything trendy.  You won't find vampires, zombies, or werewolves here.  You won't find paranormal elements or tales of horror.  You won't find Young Adult themes, with teenage characters.  You won't find superheroes, shoot-'em-up space wars, or bone-crunching car chases.  You won't find superficial, easily understood characters, either.  You won't be spoon-fed simplistic events and personalities.  You will have to exercise your brain.

       Here's what you will find:  psychological treatments of real people who have been placed in difficult situations.   You'll see the characters react to these situations and struggle to solve the problems that arise.  These principles apply to all my characters whether they are Earthers or extraterrestrials, humans or isopteroids or avians.  After all, Mythmaker Precept No. 17 says: There are creatures in the universe who speak, form symbols, and share emotions; these may be called human.  This is the way I view all my characters.  Intelligent termites are not immune to inner turmoil any more than human beings are.

       So a lot of the action in my stories is internal, inside the characters.  That doesn't mean that I don't write about physical actions and adventure, but those action parts should be in support of -- or the outgrowth of -- what's going on inside the characters' psyches.

       It all boils down to the fact that I write literary science fiction, not  commercial fiction.  I wouldn't know how to go about writing a piece of pulp, something likely to end up as a mass market paperback in the supermarket. What I want to do is appeal to other people who like literary fiction.  A lot of those people don't read science fiction, but I think many of them would like my books if they got into them.  These are the people who read Ursula K. LeGuin, Mary Doria Russell, and others who write with a deeper purpose.  I would expect many of these people to criticize elements of my writing, but I would bet that they would also find something to intrigue them and to bring them back. 
 

       As an example of my statement that the adventure is internal as well as external, I'd like to speak a moment of The Storm-Wing, v.2 of the series The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head.  In v.1 we met Ki'shto'ba's twin, A'zhu'lo.  They hatched from the same egg, but obviously they are fraternal twins -- it seems two eggs somehow got crunched together (of course, the intervention of the Sky-King may have had something to do with it!)  A'zhu'lo has always been smaller and less aggressive than its sibling and there is a classic little brother-big brother rivalry.  A'zhu'lo is frustrated because it knows it will never be equal in strength or fighting ability to Ki'shto'ba -- it will never be a major hero in the tales of the Remembrancers.  In v.2 A'zhu'lo keeps getting into difficulties and being rescued by Ki'shto'ba.  A'zhu'lo would give anything to be able to rescue Ki'shto'ba at least once in its life, but it knows that's pretty unlikely.  So when A'zhu'lo gets a chance to rescue another Champion, Zhu'zi'a'ro'a of the Marcher Shshi, and is successful, it and Zhu'zi'a'ro'a become close friends.  Then  a Seer makes a dire pronouncement: "One of the Twelve will bring about the death of the Champion."  Nobody knows which Champion this refers to, since each has twelve Companions, but A'zhu'lo, with its feelings of inferiority, is convinced it will be that one who causes Ki'shto'ba's death.  Therefore, A'zhu'lo leaves the quest and throws its lot in with Zhu'zi'a'ro'a and the Marchers.  This act will produce the direst of consequences in v.3.  So you can see that the outer action of the story is linked intimately with the inner state of mind of the characters.

 

       Now a word about the piece I'm preparing for publication right now.  I've mentioned my interest in Judaism and how I took what I learned a few years back and incorporated it into my WIP,  The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars.  If I ever fix MWFB, that chunk (about 100,000 words) will have to be cut, so I'm turning it into a book in its own right, because it has material in it that is too good to be lost.  However, it will definitely be classed as a work of literary fiction, because it can't really be called either science fiction or a novel.  It's part of my future history -- what happened to the Jewish people during and after the Second Dark Age? -- and it's SF in that the events happen just prior to the launch of the first interstellar mission and follow on a major space disaster -- but outside of that, it's totally laid on Earth, among real human beings (no extraterrestrials -- no termites here!) 

        And it doesn't even have a well-defined plot. A lot of people sit around and do a lot of talking.  In the second chapter, one character narrates the PDA history of the Jewish people.  Then there is a Jewish wedding, which is described in great detail, followed by a conversation among several characters wherein the whole of Jewish belief is discussed and argued over.  There are a lot of verbal fireworks here, but no physical action.  Finally a character narrates the story of one of the Rabbis (see my rendition at left), by way of explaining why he is such a gloomy fanatic.  That in itself is a fascinating story, but again, it's static.

       Finally the second part of the book details the psychological situation of the Engineer who will help fly the new spaceship to the stars.  This again forms an absorbing story and will probably appeal more to the general reader than the Jewish parts.  The Engineer has seen a demon -- the "god in the pod" -- which he believes was responsible for the earlier space disaster, and he needs to figure out how to protect the ship.  His feelings are mixed up with his feelings for his domineering father, and in the Jewish part there is also much talk of fathers and sons, of gods and fathers -- hence the title, Of Fathers and Demons.  (I would have liked to use the title of Of Gods and Fathers, but I think a book with this title was just published.)  Anyway, this theme links the two sections.  And there is no real end to the book, either -- it remains hanging, right before the launch of the Big Mission. 

       So I can't really call it a novel, with a defined beginning, middle, and end; a carefully constructed plot; a nice flow from incident to related incident -- it's really a collection of parts (almost essays) woven together by a theme; and it's a treatise on Judaism -- you can learn a lot from reading it.  The one novelistic thing about it is that it includes some great characters, and that alone makes it worth publishing.   I just hope I can find somebody who will want to read it. 

 

       People bring their own experiences, preferences, and personalities to the books they read, so a writer can't hope to please everybody or be all things to all people.  Therefore I write the way I want to write.  Slowly but surely I'm picking up readers and reviews.  Please give some of my books a try!  The references are all in the sidebar.

So What's Next, Now That The Storm-Wing Is Published?

       This piece will be a kind of roadmap of what I intend to do in the upcoming weeks and months, both on my blogs and in the area of writing and publishing.

 

       First, I should say that I won't be publishing anything for a while.  I plan to let readers get caught up with the verbiage I have already produced! (LOL!)  And the third volume of The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head isn't anywhere near ready (I've shortened the name from The Tale of the Valley of Thorns to simply The Valley of Thorns.  I think, since I've chopped this into so many volumes, shorter is better). The text is in partially formatted shape, but it needs a good bit more editing and polishing, and I don't have a map or cover drawn.  That is, I have a large map of the whole Quest but I'll have to cut it down to fit the setting of this particular book, which will cover only a small part of the termite world.  I want to come up with a different way to show the mountains.  I don't like that hatched background -- makes the place-names hard to read (see the map for The Storm-Wing here).

       As for the cover ... well, I have only one drawing for this part of the book and it's very stiff and not to my liking.  Here it is (comments?):



Click for a larger view

       Actually, this picture isn't as bad as I remembered, but obviously it's oriented wrong to be a cover picture.  Also, you can see by the date in the left corner that I drew this way back in 2003.  At that time I was outlining all my termites in black.  Now I do them in orange -- it softens the effect.  I also don't like the canyon walls, so I would need to find some photos of rocky cliffs to use as models.  But "Lug'tei'a Battles the Demon-Sorcerer" may very well be the subject of the cover, although I have another idea that would require a brand-new drawing.

 

     So!  I will be working on all that off and on.  First, however, I'm going to take a break and do some reading.  I've promised several people to read and review their books, and also one person is waiting for me to read her WIP and comment on it.  I need to get caught up on all that.  I'm afraid my rather ambitious intention of analyzing all four of Evangeline Walton's Mabinogion retellings is going to have be put on the back burner.  I've only done the first one -- Prince of Annwn (see all four posts here, on my other blog) -- and I do intend to get back to it someday, but I need to do some other things first.

       One of these things is to extract a section of The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars that deals with what happens to the Jews in my future world and also with the psychological struggles of the first star-mission's Chief Engineer.  Most of that will have to be dropped from the final book if I ever get it published because it's somewhat peripheral to Capt. Nikalishin's life, but it's too compelling to leave on the cutting room floor.  So I intend to work seriously on that and it will probably be the next thing I publish.  It will have to be drastically shortened and condensed, with a lot of rewrite.  It will be a complete change of pace from my termite SF/fantasies and maybe that will be good -- show I can write about something besides termites and conlangs and introduce some variety into my backlist.  The book will probably be called Of Fathers and Demons.

       Betwixt and between, I want to keep posting chapters from Man Who Found Birds (in spite of the fact that I still don't know whether anybody is reading them), and I want to do more Mythmaker explication and also some more Olde Grammarian posts, etc., plus other less ponderous stuff.  On the termitespeaker blog, I have more bird myth material to post (people seem to like that), and I may put book reviews on both blogs.  I will also keep updating my progress on formatting The Valley of Thorns.  And there will always be promotional tasks to undertake.

       So I think I'm going to keep busy, don't you think?  Stay tuned!  And keep trying my books!  Read sample chapters!   Download samples from Smashwords!  And please do comment more!  I really enjoy your opinions!

 

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Potpourri of Posts: Ribs, Publisher's Block, and Jewish Future History

The Saga of the Fractured Rib

 

       To bring this topic to a conclusion and to use my probably least favorite cliche: What a difference a week makes!  Last week at this time I was contemplating a visit to the ER.  By now, the rib has mostly stopped hurting.  I don't holler any more when I twist or bend or get up and down or even when I sneeze (I've only produced one serious sneeze; otherwise I've tried to surpress it).  Deep coughs are still forbidden, so I've been trying hard not to swallow anything the wrong way.   I found that Vicodin doesn't do a damn thing for arthritis pain.  I think the fall made the arthritis worse -- jars every joint in the body.  And so that's that -- enough of boring senior citizen topics!
       PS (added the following day):  I'm starting to get some unusual lower back pain.  I hope that's not some ominous aftereffect that was late showing up.

 



Publisher's Block

 

       I have been threatening for some time to publish v.2 of The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head, but I can't seem to get myself into the frame of mind to do it.  The cover and the map are finished, and the book is completely formatted for print.  I'm still contemplating the Glossary -- it's inserted but needs a second look to make sure there are no problems (unless I decide to omit the Glossary entirely -- can't make up my mind). 

       Anyway, I think the reason I can't make myself get into CreateSpace and upload everything and hit that publish button is that nobody is buying v.1.  I am truly puzzled by that fact.  So I'm going to put a question out there to anybody who reads this blog:

 

What is it about the retelling of myth within a termite culture that doesn't seem to turn people on?

 

       I would really like some comment on this.  I may have had a couple of comments on Twitter or elsewhere saying things like "Sounds fascinating!" but nobody wants to read it.  People seems interested in myth in general if the pages on my termitespeaker blog are any indication.  I get lots of views on my discussions of myth and on the Bird Myth recountings and on my reviews of books that deal with myth in literature, so I can't think it's a disinterest in myth itself. 

       I have two theories.  First, I keep saying that The War of the Stolen Mother is a spoiler for  Termite Queen, so maybe the people who have bought TQ want to read it first, and it's so long that they don't get to it very quickly.  Maybe after they finish, they will proceed to buy Labors.  Second, people read the sample chapters on the termitespeaker blog and they're put off by the footnotes or by the scholarly apparatus that opens the book.  I admit that my books don't always have slam-bang openers ("Monster Is in the Eye of the Beholder" is another case in point), but I really don't apologize for that.  I happen to like scholarly apparatus.  It gives the book a sense of its time and place.  After all, you're certainly aware that I neither wrote nor edited The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head.  Di'fa'kro'mi the Remembrancer composed it and Prf. Kaitrin Oliva translated and edited it.  All I did was channel it from the future!  (Tongue-in-cheek there, in case you couldn't tell.)

       Maybe I should post up the two opening chapters from v.2, The Storm-Wing.  It starts out a lot faster, especially after you reach Ch. 2.

       So what do you think?  Why does nobody want to read what I think is the best stuff I ever wrote?

 

Jewish Future History  

 

       My latest post over on the other blog (Bird Myths, Pt. 3: The Jewish Ziz) is attracting a good bit of attention and an exchange of comments got me to thinking about the section of The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars that deals with the saga of the Jewish people after the Second Dark Age.  For some time I have been pondering the idea of extracting that section and publishing it as a novella.  After the exchange on that post, I did copy the text into a different document and I was appalled to find out it was 123,000 words!  That just goes to show how out of control MWFB really became, and why I could never publish it as it stands!  The Jewish section seemed to me short enough for a novella -- no more than maybe 30,000 words! 
       However that may be, I have gotten interested now in possibly whipping it into publishable shape, so that's another reason I've lost enthusiasm for preparing The Storm-Wing for publication.  I think I would call the book something like Of Fathers and Demons.  I need to shorten it drastically -- I'd like to get it below 100,000 words at the maximum.  Some characters who pertain to the larger novel but have no real function here need to be eliminated.    One of the problems is that it's not really a novel -- a book with a coherent plot; developing, interacting characters; a climax or climaxes; and a true beginning, middle, and end.  It certainly isn't science fiction (although it's future history) and it certainly isn't fantasy.  Its style is really uneven.  It has portions that are compelling renditions of character and it has one sequence where one character tells the life story of another (an absorbing novella in itself), but a lot of it is exposition -- an info dump, if you will, although I hate that term.  The original purpose was to show what became of the Jewish people after the Second Dark Age and what is happening with them by the time of the 28th century.  So there is a lot of one character sitting there and narrating that history to others who aren't familiar with it.  There is much philosophical argument in another section.  Will anybody want to read that sort of thing?  I don't know.  But some parts of it are really good, if I do say so myself, so I may persist.  I think if I ever publish MWFB that section will have to be eliminated for the sake of that coherent novel business that I spoke of above.  And I don't want what I wrote there to be left on the cutting room floor.

       So what do you think?  Would any of you find the story of Judaism in the 28th century interesting enough to read?  Give me your views on this, too!

       I'm going to post this now, and it was hastily put together, so forgive any typos.