A New Title for Music Of The Stars

A couple of weeks ago, I stumbled on an idea for a new title to my solitary Science Fiction book.  It had been titled Music of the Stars, which was so non-descriptive it might as well have been Song of the Nightingale.
The new title is:  Music of the Galactic Voyager, which is a little better, but not enormously better.  Here’s the cover:

It hasn’t been changed very much; I’m not as energetic about window-dressing as I used to be!
The story is about actual space travel, as a phenomenon in its own right, and not as a setting for more well, exciting might be the word we want here, adventures.  It is going to take off like a lead balloon in conventional Sci-Fi circles among conventional Sci-Fi readers.  In that genre, I must say, love, and family, and relationships and things that some sorts of people consider mushy are sidelined, so that the politics and the mechanics and other science-fiction-type aspects can come to the forefront.  As for me, romance, and art, and play and curiosity trump all those other things.  One of my favorite fantasy writers is Marion Zimmer Bradley, and her stories are full of the kinds of things that I value highly.  I have read many of her books, if not all, and I love them.  But this story of mine is probably going to be classified as hard science fiction, because the fantasy element is practically absent, and I think that’s the most appropriate description of the story.  Only one person has bought the book, which costs all of two dollars and fifty cents, and I’m only restraining myself from giving it away free because it would be a slap in the face of that noble buyer.

In the story, they discover a planet, which the majority of the Ship leadership think is not suitable for colonization.  But there is a stubborn minority who insists on staying on the planet, which puts serious constraints on the resources of the Voyager.  I finished the story a couple of years ago, only to find, on reading it over, that it had been left in a very unsatisfactory state.  (Okay, yes; I’m rotten to the core, so shoot me.)  I am determined to write what amounts to a new last chapter, which will leave things in a lot better shape, if not perfect shape.  And I will make it free for the one person who has bought the book.  That will take some quite fancy footwork.

Kay H. B.

'Squire': A Keladry Story from Tamora Pierce

I am currently reading this book: Squire, a book in one of the series by Tamora Pierce, set in a place call Tortall.  Ms. Pierce is much loved by young readers, judging from the scores of web pages devoted to her on the Internet, but I must pay my five cents' worth of homage, because I am enjoying the story so much.

Just Google 'Tamora Pierce', and you will learn all you probably wish to know about the author, while doing the same with 'Keladry, Protector of the Small', will give you volumes of detail about the protagonist, Keladry of Mindelan.  Teachers: if you begin to see hordes of young women named 'Keladry', this would be evidence about how much this character--and her creator, Ms. Pierce--is beloved among parents of a certain age.

One thing I must remark on is that Tamora Pierce has the gift of putting words into the mouths of her characters that suit them perfectly.  Of course, without this gift, the author would probably not be widely read; I have read books by some people where this ability is tragically absent.  Tragic not because it is an obstacle to their fame and popularity--some of these authors are top-selling people--but because in my twisted mind, being able to write dialogue that really reveals the character's thinking, and helps us to relate to them via our interaction with people we know, and the things they might say, really makes the story pop out of the printed page.

Pierce's heroine in the first story set in the Tortall Universe was Alanna, a noble girl who aspires to be a knight.  It turns out that there have been other female knights before Alanna, but in this first story, it is as if Alanna is trying something impossible, and Tortall society has taken a conservative turn, and Alanna has to fight like mad.  Pierce gives Alanna an advantage, in that the girl has magic gifts, which she desperately needs in order to battle her magic-wielding adversaries.

A couple of decades later, along comes Keladry, who is as unmagical as she could be, and instead of an advantage, she has a handicap, namely a huge protective instinct, which impels her to take on responsibilities with no regard to how thinly she's going to be spread.  (The illustration shows her holding a baby griffin that inflicts painful bites and scratches on Keladry while she tends it, and while various knights challenge her to trials in the tournaments, which leave her black and blue.)

While Alanna is presented as fighting to be allowed to join the ranks of the forces that have become the exclusive domain of males, Keladry just wants to be qualified to do her thing on her own terms.  In some ways their battles are parallel: they echo the battle in today's world for women to have the same freedoms as men.  But where Alanna became a champion of women in her society, Keladry comes across as someone stubbornly pursuing the right to take on her own low-profile battles to protect every underdog she encounters.  We've all met women of both these types, and neither type is superior to the other.  Many kids of both sexes will probably identify more readily with Keladry's anti-bullying stance--though Alanna faced up to bullies in her time--simply because many of us have met people like Keladry, quiet, unassuming, a little stodgy, and utterly reliable.  We desperately needed Tamora Pierce to give us such a heroine, with just a touch of well-deserved glamour!

A Blog Post for May—Lost In Space

Dear Readers,

It's been some time since I made a post, so here is some news from Hemlock Land!

As I have said, I like to re-read my own fiction, mostly because I get annoyed by the writing of other authors.  Not all of them, mind you; it's just that if I'm annoyed by one of my own stories, I can always go back and fix it, when I have the energy!

I have also found out how to make a paragraph break of less than a line, which I'm going to try out today!  (I don't like full line paragraph breaks.)

Lost in Space:  I just watched the first episode of the new series of Lost in Space on Netflix.  The sets and costumes and special effects are all really wonderful, and there's lots of creativity about how the new series descends from the original children's "Space Family Robinson" idea.  The story is set so far in the future that, according to a principle of science fiction writing established back in the mists of time, the technology of the future (provided it's far enough in the future) may as well be magic to us.

I have a couple of entries in the Science Fiction genre (or SF, as it is fondly called by practitioners of the art, but it seems a little precious to buy a little extra scientific style by just using acronyms gratuitously, as they do in NASA), only one of which is true science fiction, the others being mere fantasy: I'm referring to Music of the Stars.  It's a terrible title, I know, but I just can't think of a better one, other than "Helen in Outer Space", which makes me puke.  Wait . . . I could call it The Galactic Voyager!  Sometimes I am so dense . . .

Note: Music of the Stars was intended to be a story in the setting of science in this century, not super-fantastic, super-futuristic science.  Lost in Space is definitely several centuries in the future, or at least one.  It also (spoiler alert) features a robot that is nothing like the robots we have conceived in the near past, and its design does not appear to have any practical object!  Music of the Stars, at least, never errs on the side of gratuitously exotic features.  In fact, scientifically, we would consider them to be throwbacks to a couple of decades ago!  I began writing it when cellphones were not common, so they do have cellphones, but they're used only for making phone calls!  Anyway, I think it would be boring to write about people who're continually looking at their phones!

Also, the main character is diabetic, an ailment about which I knew very little, and so I did not feature the usual treatments that are used to control the condition.  This makes sense, because the patient was very mildly diabetic, and when the story begins, nobody on board the giant space vessel is diabetic except this one woman, since the others had all been screened for the disorder before being admitted to the project (and she feels horrible when she finds out).  So none of the doctors on board bothered to learn about advanced treatments for diabetes, and did not have the wherewithal to manufacture (synthetic) insulin, for instance, while traveling in space.

Scientific Training:  As a kid, I first started out in what they call today a STEM track, before I switched over to a social science / art / music track, so though I'm not an expert, I actually know a little physics and chemistry.  Some science fiction writers, I believe, have learned their science from reading science fiction.  This encourages them to write fiction where the science tends to be distractingly speculative.  Why not, they probably tell themselves; it may as well be magic!  But science is plenty magical enough anyway; it's the element of reality, of plausibility, that attracts me to this genre.

Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM):  There's a lot of talk and propaganda about there being a severe shortage of college graduates trained in this area.  It is true that for us to compete in technology against the Koreans and the Japanese, and so on, it is important for there to be lots of kids graduating with degrees in exactly these fields.  Especially for disadvantaged kids, it does appear to promise better chances of being hired.  Ideally, an American kid with a degree in computers, for instance, would earn a higher rate of pay than a Chinese kid, for instance, applying for the same job; at least this is what appears to be behind the rhetoric we get from the administration.  But I distrust promises of this sort.

In an ideal technology organization, at the higher level, there would be those who have a broader training.  This is why a lot of companies want to hire managers and coordinators with Liberal Arts degrees, that is, those who have done coursework in languages, writing, history, sociology, yes, and even subjects that seem useless, such as music and theater.  What do you think are the chances that future technology might be relevant to music and the arts--subjects that the ignorant dismiss as merely entertainment?  You tell me.  (The failures of the present administration could be traced to individuals being trained very narrowly; not even in STEM fields, but in business and law, most of them self-taught, in the art of theft and dishonesty.)

Technology in an Isolated System:  On the space vessel in which Music of the Stars is set, The Galactic Voyager, all raw materials are scarce.  The main character, Helen, has done an internship with a maker of musical instruments in her college days.  She recalls having made an instrument a semester.  On the Voyager, of course, it does not make sense to make an infinite number of guitars, for instance, to use and discard.  Everything has to be maintained carefully, repaired as needed, and used for ever.  This is not the American Way.  We're accustomed to buying something new if we need something.  (For the longest time, I didn't have personal transport; I depended on the kindness of my friends for transport everywhere, then depended on public transport, and walked wherever I could.  Then I bought a bicycle, and then a used car . . . you get the picture.  Yes, I was guilty of not supporting American Industry.  Now you know my guilty secret: I refused to burn up the Planet just so I could drive about in style.)  Unfortunately, unlike Helen, I don't know how to make and repair guitars, so if my guitar falls apart, I must either stop playing, or find a replacement.  I found out that even professional instrument repairers are sometimes too impatient with older instruments.

Children:  One way in which my fiction is a little different from the writing of others is that there are lots of kids!  Stars has its quota of kids: I remember seven kids, and a couple more kids in minor roles.

Well, I hope everyone is enjoying a pleasant spring!  Around here, the temperatures have been very variable, and the precipitation has kept us seriously off-balance.  I'm trying to lose weight, because my small circle of friends are all trying to diet, and I decided that I need to as well!

Wishing you a happy Mother's Day,

Kay