I'm Smarter Than You

It is at this point indisputable, and it's taken me five years to come to this conclusion, that I am almost certainly smarter than you. I started smart and I am hypomanic, devoting my maniacal intellect directly to learning more than you could ever hope to know with your mere eight hours of sleep a night. I have read books that are smarter than you will ever be and discarded them in favor of other books that are even smarter. I devote my entire being to the question "Does it work?" and get the right answer every time. I am also experienced. While you were sitting around in your hometown, I've been wandering the world applying my intellect to massive problems and deep cultural issues. I'm the guy they warn you about in genius school: I will always be smarter than you. The next five years of my life will be devoted to knowing this and subsequently not being a jackass.

All that's to say that I drink heavily for the express purpose of slowing myself down enough to associate in a normal way with the rest of you. And I'm still always (always!) the most sober person in the room.

#

Actual Quote:
071 Drunken Rambling

This has been a good day.

----
250 words? Yes
Project "Untitled"
- - - -
Reading - "Screwtape Proposes a Toast" (C.S. Lewis, as performed by John Cleese)

*071

Snake vs. Octopus

Snakes have venom. Octopi have tentacles.

Stay with me people.

A story will either have a emotional punch for the reader, or be intellectually interesting to draw the reader in.

If your story is emotional, keep the plot simple, direct: like a Snake. Don't clutter it up with a lot of appendages, let emotion seep through the reader like venom, but in a way that keeps them from sucking it out.

If your story is intellectual, make the plot complex, indirect: like an Octopus. Send the grasping tentacles of plot arcs and characters groping towards the reader. One of them will latch on, and then the rest can drag the reader toward the mouth.

If your story is both emotional and intellectual, you've either got Snake vs. Octopus (bad) or some sort of mythical Octopus with Snake tentacles working together to paralyze the reader with venom and drag him screaming into the story maw (good).

#

Arrgh! Permanent cornea damage!

----
250 words? Yes
Book "Lived Too Long To Die"
- - - -
Reading - ?

*070

I Ain't Writing a Damn Thing

Today I've been focusing on the Business Side, in this case really much too boring to blog about. I've also been wearing the Editor's Hat almost exclusively, which is an obsessive and lonely pursuit that, while interesting, is not interesting enough without putting an example of a paragraph on the chopping block. I'll do that post later demonstrating the life-cycle of a paragraph from rough to final, but I've lost the first three of ten versions of these projects, so it wouldn't be fair. So, anticipate that!

And do call, because David's phoning in his blog post today.

Here's an excerpt from "Jeremiad" to tide you over:
069 Jeremiad 1

Link

#

It was such a coincidence finding this picture at the same time as I'm reading "The Postman Always Rings Twice" that I just got to share it. The book is on the table! Also there's a classy woman in the picture who I am assured is quite conducive to the prurient interest.

This is why I became a Writer.

----
250 words? Yes
Project "Untitled"
- - - -
Reading - "The Postman Always Rings Twice" (James M. Cain)

*069

Extrapolate to Possible

Here's how I write: I get an insane dream or vision from whatever muse most fit into your metaphysics, and then I interpret that through the lens of character. It's all about character, but let's leave that aside as a given.

Sometimes it's just too insane. It's impossible, but I just keep on going on until I make it right. You take a dash of history and a bit of science, then take it a few decades in the future and it's perfectly plausible.

It might help at this point to lay some Science on you: Nothing is impossible, it's just that some things are more improbable than other things. Frankly, your provincial insistence on penguin servility is more a judgement on you than on me. Sapient penguins, to me! Damn.

Here's the actual point. If things didn't progress, we'd still be wearing powdered wigs and beating our wives for fun.Once things progress a little bit, that means the groundwork has been laid for things to progress a lot. I'm not sure we realize how far Science has come, because we're so busy playing with our iPads (sorry, 1 iPad blog viewer. Also shout-out, whoo!).

It's annoying to me, as a science fiction writer who bothers to do the research, that current scientific trends are implausible. It's also scary.

#

Solve this problem!

----
250 words? Yes
Project "Untitled"
- - - -
Reading - ?

*068

Write What You Dunno

Prepare yourself for "The Adventures of Chet Olmec". He's the Aztec Eagle Warrior who never asks "Mother, Maya I?" Thrill as he faces off against Lord Hueyibad to rescue his seductive and witty lover Nahuan Carlos! Chill to the spectacular feast afterwards! Feel your heart pound and then realize that it is caused by the heavy footsteps of 10,000 stampeding Meso-American Elephants, slightly smaller but no less impressive than their Old World counterparts! And they have pouches!

Introduce yourself, Chet.

067 - Chet Olmec

My point is: Writing What You Know is boring. This is speculative fiction and it's your duty to speculate. You can write about things you know, but take it a bit further, or you can write about things other people know and be wrong in a good way. Or you can be goofy and make silly voices. All Good, so long as you have at least one foot out of your comfort zone.

Also, if you don't know it all, you're less inclined to bore your reader by showing your work. Nobody likes a lot of info-dumping, and your readers will forgive a few minor factual errors if you've got a good story going. And the ones who won't wouldn't really be your target audience anyways. You can rope them in with your dry articles in Harvard Business Review.

Link

#

I'm going to double down on the Meso-American elephant, a species of elephant obviously hunted to extinction by the cursed conquistadors. There is no way that this did not exist and I'm sure we'll find proof of it at some point, wait for it...

Gasp! Absolute proof as long as you do no basic research!

----
250 words? Yes
Flash - "Chet Olmec"
- - - -
Reading - ?

*067

Earth!

Earth is pretty neat, and not just because I live here.

Thanks to bad TV scifi series, it's hard for me to imagine another world without trees, even if I can imagine a world without humans (or equivalent aliens). I mean, what's a world coming to without some form of flying critter to squawk at the camera while perching on the branches of some sort of tree-analog. Perhaps giant mushrooms and a red sky peppered with a thousand friendly moons? Yes, that pleases me.

Still, the topic is Earth! and we're sticking with it, no matter how mundane (har!) it is.



And no, I'm not playing "Baba Yetu" as a passive-aggressive whine about how I'm not able to play Civilization V. This time.

#

I just don't see why Earth isn't like this already. What's taking us so long to really get organized and build a proper society, full of punks and utilizing the energy of every human being to that most awesome of ends: Being Awesome.

Once we've got this sort of thing going on it'll be time to construct the Human Empire and get History moving already. Faster, faster!

----
250 words? Yes
Project "Untitled"
- - - -
Reading - ?

*066

The Future

I take a nuanced view of the future, in the full expectation that I'm going to live in it. All this foolishness about "Leaving a World For our Children!" is inconsequential. They're going to share the world with me or dammit those little whippersnappers will get a job hippies.

My point is I intend to live forever.

The End.

In the year 2525...

#

Well, at least until this happens.We'd better have colonized Gliese 581G by then. I'll volunteer to be on the first colony ship, by the way. Wouldn't want the Chinese to edge us out of a Space Race Victory.

----
250 words? Yes
Project "Untitled"
- - - -
Reading - ?

*065