Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

Writing Meditations

Put on another record and dance

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Put on a record.

I was dropping in on my various social medias and stopped long enough to check my email and get caught up.  I saw a newsletter post Molly Green had made a couple weeks back about being your own support, cheerleader, life fixer because we lose those that do that for us over time, and sometimes, as Molly said, our friends cannot be there with those wise words to set us gaily on our way again every time.  She started it off talking about her dad which I could tell was hard for her.

In the process of reading her post, I remembered a day my father and I were chatting on the phone.  I was feeling down about not being able to have children.  So many years had gone by, and I had reached the point when life didn’t seem to have room for children any more.  I was sad that I had accepted and moved on.  He said, “Put on another record and dance.”  Molly’s “Buy your own roses” and my father’s long ago advice seemed tied together, saying the same thing.  You have to pick yourself up and get along in life under your own power. 

I returned to school, picked up my bachelors degree and then my masters (carried a full-term pregnancy the last year!).  I just kept putting on another record and dancing my sorrow out and my journey in.  Some records play for quite awhile, some get changed so swiftly the tune doesn’t even get a chance to settle into my heart’s rhythm. 

It’s been nine years since my dad died.  Losing him was one of the worst events in my life.  For some odd reason he called all his children the day before he died.  I was the one that wasn’t home that day and missed the call.  But he had taught me how to stand on my own feet, dance on them when I thought I had lost the beat not just from those words he had given me but also through example. So no “Play it again, Sam” moments when the worst has come. 

Thank you, Molly, for reminding me of a day almost twenty years ago on today of all days: Father’s day.  I thought I would not be able to visit with him today, but that was not the case.  Happy Father’s Day, Dad.

Terraforming a world with shell technology

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Live in a dome; artistic flare w/off-Earth life

I love this idea: terraforming with a shell or dome to hold the atmosphere in and generate heat.  That makes use of local planets like Mars, Venus, and various moons as liveable space very doable.

Miriam Kramer’s article “Incredible Technology: How to Use a ‘Shell’ to Terraform a Planet” on Space.com went into much of the details of the practice.  What I find most intriguing was the independence it gave to expanding off Earth.  If we are limited to earth-like planets, than movement off earth will be quite some ways off.  But if we can terraform the moon, Mars, Titus, we have considerably limited the time spent in space and the amount of preparation or technology needed to make such an expedition and colonization.

As Kramer points out, the need for atmospheric supplies and related resources needed to terraform a planet is considerably reduced when a shell is used.  Certainly, we would have to find ways to generate breathable air on site and soil fit to grow food stock, but waiting for a planet to be modified en mass is both excessively time consuming and considerably demanding of resources that would have to be supplied by Earth.

The plausibility of terraforming through the use of shell technology is a great setting for science fiction stories.  It has been used by Heinlein, Clark, Robinson and others.  I can imagine there would be numerous variables to a story just based on selecting a site followed by beginning the process.  Other issues would crop up if this was the first application of the process.  Of course, there would be mistakes, learning opportunities, sabotage or poor management, etc., the list goes on.  There is certainly plenty of resources online to understand the process thoroughly enough to use it correctly in a story.

I believe Niven used a Dyson Sphere in his Ring World series.  Heinlein used domes in several of his novels and short stories set on the moon (Number of the Beast, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Red Planet), Mars and Venus.

What specific novels and short stories do you remember that made use of this technology?

Learning from the masters series: Ernest Hemingway carries theme

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Let’s face it, Ernest Hemingway does everything right, so I could focus on a variety of qualities in his writing and gain insight.  But for the purpose of this post, I am giving my attention to his use of theme, so I am turning to the high school standard read The Old Man and the Sea.

Loyalty, respect, not giving up, creating one’s own luck, appreciation for life: these are all themes that apply to this book. 

These themes appear in the relationship between the boy and old Santiago.  Their reliance on each other is exemplified in the way they play out the fiction of their hopes versus the conditions of their reality.

“What do you have to eat?” the boy asked.
“A pot of yellow rice with fish. Do you want some?”
“No.  I will eat at home.  Do you want me to make the fire?”
“No.  I will make it later on.  Or I may eat the rice cold.”
“May I take the cast net?”
“Of course.”
There was no cast net and the boy remembered when they had sold it. But they went through this fiction every day. There was no pot of yellow rice and fish and the boy knew this too.

There is loyalty and respect in this exchange, but it also is imbued with not giving up.  The boy does not see the man as not facing the truth.  He sees that the old man will not approach life with a view that there is only poverty to discuss.  He will act as if all is as it should be because it will soon be so even if it does not appear to be likely.

The boy brings the old man food and wakes him up to eat.  And the old man questions him about where the food comes from.  He then asks the boy if they should eat.

“I have been asking you to,” the boy told him gently.  “I have not wished to open the container until  you were ready.”
“I am ready now,” the old man said.  “I only needed time to wash.”
Where did you wash? the boy thought.  The village water supply was two streets down the road.  I must have water here for him, the boy thought, and soap and a good towel.  Why am I so thoughtless?  I must get him another shirt and a jacket for the winter and some sort of shoes and another blanket.

In these two examples, the love the boy has for the old man is clear, and the depth of his loyalty to him is shown in the boy’s effort to see that he eats and the remorse the boy feels for not providing better for him.  The fisherman was his teacher and mentor, and though now he cannot fish with him because the old man’s luck is not good, the boy has not let go of the respect he feels for him and the obligation that comes with having received training that will allow him to make his own luck in the harsh fishing life the two lead.

Hemingway followed a natural path of behavior for these two characters and by staying tight to the simplicity of their honest relationship, he cast hope in what was hopeless.  It had been 84 days since the old man had caught a fish.  Strength, the help of the boy, respect from many of the villagers and the chance of catching any fish were falling away.  There was no great hope that he would break his streak of bad luck, and over the run of the story that lack of chance follows the arc from bad to worse because in the moment of triumph there is also a longer run of defeat.  Yet by the end of the story, the reader is still left with the hope the old man and boy have sustained.

Santiago loses his great fish, but he never loses the boy, the boy’s respect nor his loyalty.  In the village, there is more respect for him though he returns with little to show for all his effort.  Hemingway built a deep, reliable underpinning through the relationship between the boy and the old man.  Through characterization he supported multiple themes and left the reader somber but hopeful in the way the old man was always hopeful because it may not appear that all will be well but it will soon be.  That is the only view the boy will allow: “You must get well fast for there is much that I can learn and you can teach me everything.“

#writing

Learning from the masters: Listen to the voices of Harper Lee’s Scout

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Time links past with present

Harper Lee had quite a task creating the narrative voice of  Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird.  Sure Scout was a six-year-old girl who ages about two years in the course of the book; what’s the challenge?  Seems easy enough — in that short span of years there is not much change.  But Scout is also the narrative voice of an adult, and how does one impart the perspective of a reflective southern woman?  How does it remain evident that young Scout and the reflective adult spring from the same root?

  The following week the knot-hole yielded a tarnished medal.  Jeb showed it to Atticus, who said it was a spelling medal, that before we were born the Maycomb County schools had spelling contests and awarded medals to the winners.  Atticus said someone must have lost it, and had we asked around?  Jem camel-kicked me when I tried to say where we had found it.  Jem asked Atticus if he remembered anybody who ever won one, and Atticus said no.
   Our biggest prize appeared four days later.  It was a pocket watch which wouldn’t run, on a chain with an aluminum knife.
   “You reckon it’s white gold, Jem?”

We have a narrator, the adult Scout (Jean Louise) and the character who supplied remembered dialogue, young Scout.  The two voices are distinctly different ,yet they maintain a connection with the story.  The narrator introduces the event just to where we can imagine the moment, and the young Scout takes over, supplying the in-the-moment reactions and character interactions.

It looks easy when you expose the strings underneath, but it is not easy.

Six-year-old Scout had a pretty good vocabulary, but she also uses country dialect “reckon” and frequently her sentences will be missing the subject and have an abruptness to them as though she is in a hurry to express herself before Jem can shut her down or steal her thunder.  “You reckon it’s white gold, Jem?”  The older narrator Jean Louise takes her time, drawing out the moment.  “The following week the knot-hole yielded a tarnished medal.”  There is an easy, relaxed feel to her sentences, an ownership and a patience the younger Scout had not mastered, but near the end of the book, the reader can see she is beginning to learn that such patience exists and has value and place.

The flow between the two is seamless because the adult narrator’s viewpoint drops off when Scout speaks and picks up after, as though they were twins finishing each one’s sentences, although those sentences are separated by a distance of thirty years or more. 

That is one of the beauties of reading To Kill a Mockingbird:  enjoying the flow and the grace of the connection between the two Scouts.  We see the meaning behind events when Jean Louise speaks and the confusion, fear, surprise and revelation those same events bring out in Scout.  There is no ledge, no separation felt, yet the reader steps back and forth between them.

#narrative voice
#writing

Learning from the Masters: Orson Scott Card and character perception

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building character from within
The variety of ways one can convey a character’s viewpoint are many and challenging.  Dialogue, other character’s  viewpoint, narrator, info dump and internal thought as a type of dialogue and first person speaker and then imbedded thinking stuck right inside the  narration. I find such character reveals, when done well, a form of magic. The reader makes the shift from impersonal narrator to internal character thought and impressions as easy as changing lanes in light traffic. It is a process I continually work at, a type of writing that lies at the level of mastery I wish to attain. 
Orson Scott Card does this as easy as breathing, nearly all fine writers do.  In Ender’s Shadow, Card gives the reader insight into Bean’s fears, process of decision making and guilt.  As a writer, I sit back both impressed and fully involved with the story and character.  I love Bean because I understand him so well.  And you don’t have to like Card’s work to appreciate the skill. 
And as Bean stood there, looking down into the water, he realized: I either have to tell what happened, right now, this minute, to everybody, or I have to decide never to tell anybody, because if Achilles gets any hint that I saw what I saw tonight, he’ll kill me and not give it a second thought.  Achilles would simply say: Ulysses strikes again.  Then he can pretend to be avenging two deaths, not one, when he kills Ulysses. 

No, all Bean could do was keep silence. Pretend that he hadn’t seen Poke’s body floating in the river, her upturned face clearly recognizable in the moonlight. 

She was stupid. Stupid not to see through Achilles plans, stupid to trust him in any way, stupid not to listen to me.  As stupid as I was to walk away instead of calling out a warning, maybe saving her life by giving her a witness that Achilles could not hope to catch and therefore could not silence. 
Card opens this moment of reflection by Bean with a narrative description followed by a simple word realized. The reader is immediately hearing Bean’s thoughts. They throughout the rest of the paragraph. A paragraph break brings the narrator back. And a second paragraph break brings Bean in full throttle, deep in his guilt and misery realizing he could have stopped Poke’s death, given her a chance at survival. We also hear his anger at her trusting Achilles and not following Bean’s advice to kill him in the first place. 
It moves swiftly and smoothly from narrator to character sadness to narrator to full on guilt and rationalization. 
When taken apart, it almost looks clunky, not so amazing after all. But that is how all standout things are. Automotive repair is simple when you know how the carburetor works, but it is astonishing that a little metal shape turned in a slot can cause an engine to rumble and a heap of organized steel to rush forward. 
#writing
#characterization
#OrsonScottCard

Learning from the masters series: Steinbeck’s common man

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John Steinbeck wrote for and about the guy next door, the man that works to pay the bills at the end of the month, for the poor cuss who hopes and hopes even when hope is lost, and loses and loses,  even when he wins.

Tortilla Flat
   He moved slowly and cautiously.  Now and then the chicken tried to double back, but always there was Pilon in the place it chose to go.  At last it disappeared into the pine forest, and Pilon sauntered after it.
   To the glory of his soul be it said that no cry of pain came from that thicket.  That chicken, which Pilon has prophesied might live painfully, died peacefully, or at least quietly.

Okay, so that was not Pilon’s chicken and when he exited that thicket, he had already drawn and quartered that rooster, pocketed the parts and left all evidence of its identification behind.  He had a good day, a good meal and a good rule: chickens just wandering about homeless are best eaten fresh.

The Pearl
   His people had once been great makers of songs so that everything they saw or thought or did or heard became a song.  That was very long ago. The songs remained; Kino knew them, but no new songs were added.  That does not mean that there were no personal songs.  In Kino’s head, there was a song now, clear and soft, and if he had been able to speak of it, he would have called it the song of the family.

Kino was in tune with the flow of his community, the sea nearby and the sleepy contentment of his family in the breaking morning.  And song was his element and his barometer.

Of Mice and Men
   “No. . . you tell it.  It ain’t the same if I tell it. Go on . . . George.  How I get to tend the rabbits.”
   “Well,” said George, “we’ll have a big vegetable patch and a rabbit hutch and chickens.  And when it rains in the winter, we’ll just say hell with goin’ to work, and we’ll build up a fire in the stove and set around it an’ listen to the rain comin’ down on the roof–Nuts!”  He took out his pocket knife.  “I ain’t got time for no more.”  He drove his knife through the top of one of the bean cans, sawed out the top and passed the can to Lennie.

These two migrant workers were keeping the dream of a farm in the future, their own place where they could decide to work or not, stuffed deep in their empty pockets next to dead mice and nicked pocket knives.

And that was Steinbeck, the writer that lived first in the life then wrote the life of those who lived it.  His characters are drawn from people who live in and through hardship, but not the hardship that visits, leaves and sometime later after happy times have worn out their welcome is replaced with another difficult situation to manage through.  His characters are imbued in hardship; that is what life is.  It giveth and it taketh away, and mostly it taketh.

I was driving over a bridge in Bend, Oregon, and a man, layered in several shirts and jackets stepped blithely along the concrete margin that left a tight walkway along the fencing of the bridge.  I looked back (I wasn’t the driver) and watched him until we were out of sight.  He wore a grin on his face, was obviously singing loud and joyfully and looked to have taken his last bath some weeks earlier.  He’s a Steinbeck man, I remember thinking.  You know them when you see them.  It is hard not to be drawn in by their look of hope, their obvious plight, the sorrow you see coming which they don’t seem to.  Steinbeck made me sensitive to them, made me hope and work not to be one, and surprised me when after researching my family tree, I found I was but one generation from them and at times only a paycheck or two ahead of them.

If you want to write about the common man in his glory, in his misery, read Steinbeck first.  Research your family tree.  Look around.  Then sit down and write about the fears that wake you up at night, only let them loose and see what damp place they will land it, dry up, flit about and land in the wet again.

#Steinbeck
#learningfromthemasters
#writing