{"id":4497,"date":"2012-12-17T17:11:48","date_gmt":"2012-12-18T01:11:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/?p=4497"},"modified":"2013-06-18T12:56:41","modified_gmt":"2013-06-18T20:56:41","slug":"fantasy-andor-science-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/2012\/12\/17\/fantasy-andor-science-fiction\/","title":{"rendered":"Fantasy and\/or Science Fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"

This\u2019ll be my last post of 2012. Lots of family coming to town, hooray.<\/p>\n

We had a festive lunch at the Fairmont hotel in SF this weekend. Dig the Xmas tree reflected in the grand piano. \u201cWhy can\u2019t it always be like this?\u201d\u009d said one of our group.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

My wife and I were out at the beloved Four Mile Beach north of Santa Cruz last week to look at the unusually low tide, a so-called \u201cking tide.\u201d\u009d The surfers were out in the water as usual, working the waves, finding new breaks. I always like to imagine that being a professional writer is a little like being a surfer\u2014you\u2019re out in the gnarl just about every day you can get the chance, taking the flows as they come.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

My writing on my new novel The Big Aha <\/em>has been going well for the last month or two. Unlike my customary practice\u2014at least for the last few novels\u2014I didn\u2019t write up a detailed outline for this one. At the start of my career, I didn\u2019t use outlines either. Back then I just dove in and trusted the muse, making it up as I went along. And now I\u2019m back to that again. So far it\u2019s fun\u2014although eventually I\u2019m likely to hit what Robert Sheckley called a \u201cblack spot,\u201d\u009d which is when it becomes really hard to keep the story going.<\/p>\n

When I get at all stuck, I like to invent semi-bogus explanations for whatever fantastic events I\u2019ve already written in. The explanations themselves may impose constraints or they may open possibilities\u2014in either case, this can lead to new scenes, sequences, and even subplots.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The picture above shows a room at the SF MOMA where there\u2019s a special art installation on the floor this month. Black and white tiles, and as the artist\u2019s crew laid the tiles, they used something like a coin-flip to randomly pick the color of each and every tile as they went along. Patterns emerge. We see things. We hear voices in the noise.<\/p>\n

Just because I invent explanations doesn\u2019t mean I\u2019ll always <\/em>think that they\u2019re true, I mean not for the rest of my life. I do <\/em>like to convince myself that my latest SF gimmicks are true for as long as I\u2019m working on a story that uses them. \u201cProfiting from\u201d\u009d a delusion as opposed to \u201csuffering from\u201d\u009d one.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s maybe a little late for Xmas shopping, but you certainly ought to get a Turing & Burroughs <\/em>for a New Year\u2019s gift\u2014if not for yourself then for one of your friends or relatives. Beatnik SF\u2014today\u2019s reader needs it special.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I read Murakami\u2019s long novel 1Q84 <\/em>this month and enjoyed it a lot. Certainly it could have been about a third shorter, but it kept me reading, and I became fond of the characters. And it had some nice fantasy\/SF action in it. Murakami is one of us. Whoever \u201cwe\u201d\u009d are.<\/p>\n

The title is like 1984<\/em>, but with a Q instead of the 9. The idea is that the main characters spend most of the novel off in an alternate timeline or in an alternate reality. So far as I can tell, Murakami is not <\/em>an author who spends his spare time in figuring out logical and rigorous explanations for his worlds\u2014complete with spacetime diagrams. He\u2019s more on the \u201cfantasy\u201d\u009d end of our field, as opposed to being on the \u201cscience-fiction\u201d\u009d end. <\/p>\n

But that\u2019s fine, Murakami\u2019s book hangs together as well as it needs to, and it has a strong ending.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Out at Four Mile beach, I wrote, as I often do at the start of a novel, a favorite slogan of mine in the sand: EADEM MUTATA RESURGO. It means, \u201cThe same, yet altered, I arise again.\u201d\u009d It was originally meant to be used as the epitaph for a mathematician who did some groundbreaking work on the nature of the so-called logarithmic spiral, the one that swoops out really fast like the exponentially expanding side of a snail shell. I\u2019ve posted <\/a>about this slogan several times,<\/p>\n

Murakami\u2019s 1Q84 <\/em> inspires me to be looser than usual about the scientific logic in my Big Aha<\/em>. At least I\u2019m letting myself be be loose while I\u2019m dreaming up scenes and writing them. Just let whatever seems interesting happen.<\/p>\n

And then later, due to my SFish nature, I\u2019ll skulk back and cobble up an explanation after all. No harm in this\u2014as I say, the explanation will give me an idea for another scene. Like rainwater streamlines angling away from a gutter-stuck leaf.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever dreamed up a weird event for which I was unable to craft some <\/em> kind of bogus explanation. Like taking a random squiggle and fitting it into a sketch of a realistic scene. That\u2019s what it means to be a scientist, no? Rigorous logic.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Have a great holiday season, and all best wishes for 2013!<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll meet you in the heart of the Sun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This\u2019ll be my last post of 2012. Lots of family coming to town, hooray. We had a festive lunch at the Fairmont hotel in SF this weekend. Dig the Xmas tree reflected in the grand piano. \u201cWhy can\u2019t it always be like this?\u201d\u009d said one of our group. My wife and I were out at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-the-big-aha"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4497"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4730,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4497\/revisions\/4730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}