Hey I was watching that (the world of sci-fi cancellations)

One of the things that annoys me as a science fiction fan is cancellation of television shows that I am watching. (It should be noted that traditional legacy publishing--the Big Five Publishers and their siblings--also annoy me in this fashion, but to a lesser extent.) I have a list of shows that I was watching that ended up being canceled.

[Partial list: Star Cops, Continuum, Lucifer, Defying Gravity, Star Trek Enterprise, Reaper...]

It especially annoys me when a science fiction television show ends on a cliffhanger, one that was meant to set up the next season, and it becomes a "Surprise--you are canceled!"

[Yes, I am really annoyed about Lucifer being canceled with such a great storyline that was about to be opened.]

The really sad part is that often the writers and cast of a science fiction show will get no advance warning that the show is going to be canceled. So more often than not, there are a ton of storylines that are left dangling when a science fiction show is canceled because the season finale was written and filmed months before the cast and crew of a show knows that they are not coming back.

There have been instances where enough advance warning has been given to allow writers to create a season finale that helps wrap things up, but that is the exception and not the rule.

And it seems to happen to science fiction shows a lot.

Why? My current theory (compounded by watching how the Big Six* during the 80s and 90s, and their treatment of science fiction book series) is that it is all about Cost and Eyeballs (aka f***ing ratings). After all, what else could it be?

[*At the time, it was the Big Six, being before the merger of Random House and Penguin.]

Science fiction is a niche audience, a long tail of the dog market; it does not appeal to everyone. Starting off as a smaller audience, it is not as profitable as stuff that "your average man on the street" would watch--therefore, ratings are automatically an issue.

Plus special effects count money. And that means less profit.

And it is all about the profit, or lack thereof.

The entire television industry (outside of PBS) is all about making money. So for a science fiction series to survive, it has to become a runaway hit as soon as the first episode airs. And that is if it hasn't already been canceled before the first episode is aired (sadly many sci fi shows are dead before their first episode airs--Defying Gravity is a good example of a show that was dead on arrival because of how the network treated it--only three weeks notice that it was going to air, so no one, well almost no one, knew that it existed--one could argue that the network did everything it could to kill the show.)

By the way, traditional legacy publishing also does things like this. The entire traditional book industry is based on best sellers--if the first book of a science fiction series does not sell a pubzillion copies, it will never see a second book in the series.

Unfortunately, science fiction is something that often takes time to find its audience.

As a science fiction writer, in the traditional legacy market, your first book is probably going to be your last book.

Both television networks and publishing houses are only concerned with the current numbers, the current eyeballs, and they do not attempt to grow an audience for a property.

All the talk you hear about how traditional publishers cultivates writers is pure nonsense. You either swim or drown the first time you enter the pool. If you are not a success with your first book, you don't get a second chance.

Now, this whole issue of cancellations has been on my mind for the last few months. I have an idea for an extended science fiction book series, but the fact that it is an idea that totally needs a series and cannot be done as an one-off means that there is no way that I personally could convince a traditional publisher to touch it with a ten foot pole. Or at least, not with my current audience size.

Well, it could be done as an one-off, but I think it would suffer for it. The core idea--the situation that the characters find themselves in--creates many possible stories. Limiting it to just one set of characters and one location would totally rob the core idea of its vast potential.

And I honestly think that it is a series that I would have to build up the audience one reader at a time.

Fortunately, I live in a brave new world of indie publishing where I only have to convince two people that it is a project with potential (me and my wife).

And I have been clear that it is going to be a long haul project (the earliest possible wrap-up point is eight books in). [There are also good business reasons that apply to indie publishing that makes a series worth far more than a single book.]

But yeah, if I start to write Icarus, I am in it for the long haul--there will be no early cancellation because I hate cancellations that happen before the main story lines are resolved. 

I am still annoyed by the cancellation of Defying Gravity.

Getting ready for Nanowrimo 2013

It is that time of year again, when writers start to prepare for thirty days of insanity, for the great and terrible NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). The goal for writers who decide to join the insanity of the naNoWriMo is to write the first draft of a novel--aka fifty thousand words (1667 words a day for thirty days).

This will be attempt number seven for me. (And no, I have never succeeded in completing this challenge...which probably makes the Three Critics* very happy.) The first five attempts of the NaNoWriMo for me happened during college/university (which is where I was when I learned about this challenge), so it is understandable that I failed those years. My best year was actually the first year, where my shortfall on word count remarkably was the same amount of words that I ended up writing in various final papers that semester. All the rest of the attempts grew steadily worse...my attempt during my capstone year lasted a single day. And last year...well, in hindsight, it took me much longer to recover from college than I thought it would (plus there was something else going on that kept distracting me from the task at hand).

Will I succeed this year? Unlikely, as the Three Critics are sure to point out. After all, I am a writer of flash fiction and poetry, not a real writer at all. But that is ok, my Three Critics need to remain better than me--the world would not be right if I somehow even managed to match their level of success (not alone surpassed it).

So what am I going to write about this year?

This year (until I change my mind mid-stream...which I have done more than once during the NaNoWriMo...two half-completed rough drafts do not add up to a single rough draft), I am going to attempt a (sort-of) science fiction novel: Farmer Ants.

Here is my current working synopsis:

Luke is just an ordinary boy going to high school in a small town, being bullied is about the only break in the boredom that is Sagebrush. But then he learns that there is something different about himself, something that he must keep hidden--for it is the same thing that fueled the witch hunts of yore--the ability to drain energy from other people. Yet as he tries to survive high school without being discovered, little does he realize that someday he will look upon these days as a happy time before the world changed forever, before the aliens invaded Earth.

Yes, I know...this one is bound to hit the floor like a unwanted piece of liver. But this is not about me, is it? No, it is about the Three Critics. I have to fail to make them happy, don't I? Of course, I do--because after all, they have to be right about me never succeeding as a writer. Their world would make no sense if I accidently proven them wrong and succeeded in finishing the NaNoWriMo challenge this year.

(The only thing worse than me completing the NaNoWriMo would be if afterwards, I cleaned up the rough draft and made it into a successful novel--you know, one that actually kept me out of food service because I made sufficient money from it to live to write another day.)

[* The Three Critics are the three people who shout the loudest that I am a hack, and unable and unworthy of being a great writer. There are some days that I only get out of bed and drag myself to the keyboard, in order to spite them.]

QoD Writing rituals Philip Athans

About avoiding writing rituals at all costs:

"Rituals are excuses for avoiding work and creativity. If you think you can only write your notes in that lovely leather-bound notebook your boyfriend gave you and only when it's dark and only when it's raining, you're fooling yourself. Write anywhere, at any time."

---Philip Athans (The Guide to Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction)

Claiming my blogs---Technorati ranks

I slipped over to Technorati today, and realized that I still had some blogs unclaimed. And some of them are blogs I occasionally think about updating. So I put in my claim form for them.

(I do not claim my blogs on MySpace [which I no longer upadate] or on LiveJournal; they are wastelands as far as I am concerned. Same goes for my blog on Multiply.)

So as of now, my Technorati ranks for my blogs are:

1,112,328 for Gleamings from the Dawn (my blog about Golden Dawn). Interestingly enourgh this is also the rank for the now hidden lulu (MDE) storefront blog.

1,603,173 for Musings from the Pen (this blog).

And my now newly claimed blogs (with absolutely no authority behind them) Dreams of TARDISes, Warp Engines and Stargates (a science fiction blog that I plan on posting Doctor Who fan fiction to...someday when I complete the stories) and Bag Full of Tricks (a political blog that I really should consider updating more often) are at 3,197,294.

Money in science fiction

I started out wanting to be a science fiction writer. There are still days when I dabble in it, mainly those days when I am sitting in class trying to figure out how I am going to get hired by anyone with a degree in literature.

A few years ago, I read an article about what you named the currency in science fiction indicated a lot about the economics of your fictional world. (I would love to be able to cite the author and title of the article, but it has slipped my mind completely.) The example from it that sticks in my head was the "Golden" which indicated a world that went back to the gold standard.

Today while reading the financial articles on MSN, I came across a term that a columnist has been using to describe our own monetary system: Xera.

The exact quote is:

Xera: The dollar is in need of a name change. Xera is a combination of: (a) Xerox -- for the piece of Xerox paper that it is, (b) lira, which in the past was one of the world's chronically weak currencies, and (c) most importantly, the fact that it sounds like zero. Which is ultimately where the Xera is headed.

The scary part is that it is true.

But I digress; it got me thinking about naming money in science fiction. What you name your money in science fiction says a lot about your world.

For instance, in Star Trek we do not hear much about money, at least in classic Star Trek. We know that flame gems and tribbles can be traded, and once we hear Scotty making a joke about his pay, but it was not until the Ferengi come along that we learn of latinum (something that can not be generated by a replicator; ahhh, no printing money for the Federation). There is something to be said about a society (Starfleet Command) where its members care more about starships than they do their paychecks.

In the TV series show The Prisoner, they had work units. The most important inhabitants of the Village, including Number Six, did not seem to work---exactly what that means is unknown to me.

Of course, we must not forget the most commonly used fuctional currency: the credit. Fictional is the sense that it really does not exist, despite the fact that we use it all the time at the shopping mall. Nevertheless, when it comes time to write my next science fiction story, I think that I am going to use the Xera. I hope that Bill Fleckenstein doesn't mind.

Crime in Space!!!

It has been an interesting year for those of us who write about crime in space.

At one time, it was possible for someone to look at us science fiction writers and tell us that crime would never happen in space. Thanks to the events of this year, the sci-fi crime writers can present evidence that we were right all along.

Too bad, all of the evidence is coming out of NASA.

I understand the urge to believe that humanity will clean up its act as it leaves this planet. One would like to think that mankind escaping its ancestrial home as a moment of hope, rather than as the exportation of weeds and pests to lands that has never seen such a scrouge before. I am afraid that one of my friends is right--mankind is about as noble as a cockroach.

This year so far, we had one love triangle with a high speed car ride in an attempt to cut out the competition. We also had sabotage of two computers, and the reports that perhaps shuttle pilots are behind the controls while under the influence.

All of this speaks ill of humanity. And it makes me giddy as a schoolgirl, as I can rightfully exclaim, "Where humanity goes, vice and crime follow."

Sci-fi writers as fortune tellers

Last week, I was over at a friend's house. During my visit, I talked about the outline of a science fiction story that I am thinking of writing. For the most part, it is still all vapor and no substance.

But during the conversation, I mentioned how hard it must be to get computer tech support while in space. I was thinking of the difficulties that a Mars mission would have. And for a Mars colony, I think that tech support should be sent outright to them. Imagine calling India from Mars.

"Hello, this is Earl. How can we help you today?"

"Yeah, this is Mars Colony One, and our life-support computer is down."

"Have you checked to make sure that it is plugged in?"

The conversation promises to go downhill from there, with the predicted ending of Earl (actually Ishivart from India) telling the Mars Colony that it is going to take eight months for the tech support to arrive, so they better start holding their breath.

Now by itself, this whole idea is just an indication that I spent too much of my youth reading science fiction. But a couple of days later, I got an email from my friend who found it remarkable that the international space station was having computer problems. He failed to note that they are going to have to wait for parts.

This whole conversation reminded me how some people think that science fiction is about predicting the future. It is not. Science fiction is always about the present and its ramifications. Which is how I can imagine a computer problem on Mars just days before such an event happens just above us at the current space station.

I suspect that most of the predictions that sci-fi has made that have came true have occurred the same way. I am not a fortune teller--it was just me asking "If tech support is so lousy here, how bad must it be in space?"