Anime Review: m3: the dark metal

written by Laurie Tom

m3

Don’t let the fact there is a mecha in the opening credits fool you. m3: the dark metal is more of a drama than an action show, and it’s one of those series where what you see in the beginning doesn’t indicate anything about where you’ll be by the end.

At first glance m3 is rather by the book. An eclectic group of high schoolers are brought together in a special class to learn how to pilot the latest technological advance, a combat vehicle called a MA-Vess that is capable of exploring the mysterious Lightless Realm that is slowly swallowing the city they live in. But the story takes a much darker turn than the norm.

The Lightless Realm first appeared ten years ago and anything in its borders slowly becomes corrupted, turning into a crystalline substance called necrometal, and haunting creatures called Admonitions roam within it.

The eight selected students have no memories of what happened to them prior to the appearance of the Lightless Realm, but it becomes apparent that all of them have met before and have a latent telepathic ability. It’s not an accident that the eight of them are in the class because it turns out their shared history and ability to Link with one another is why they, and only they, are able to explore the Lightless Realm without being driven insane as quickly as normal people.

The series is a little slow when it comes teases out the mystery of how the Lightless Realm came to be and how the main cast is connected to each other, but for those who don’t mind the leisurely pace, each revelation feels well earned.

Though there are eight students and the story initially looks like an ensemble (happily gender balanced), Akashi’s story drives the plot more than anyone else’s and he’s initially not an easy character to like. He’s cold, disaffected, and it takes a while for the show to chip away at him, but chip away it does.

m3 is really a show about understanding more than anything else.

Even when Akashi begins to recognize his own flaws and tries to be a better person, he’s constantly failing to understand. He does a lot of things that would be the heroic, the wise, the right thing to do in other shows, and it tends to get thrown back in his face when he realizes that what he thought was brave and caring is actually very selfish and inconsiderate of the other person’s desires. Is asking someone in pain to wait for you until you return an act of kindness, or a selfish request that prolongs their suffering so you can see them again?

Though I mention Akashi specifically, most of the problems in the series originate from an inability to communicate, and not for lack of trying, which is ironic in a story featuring telepaths. m3 is not a happy show (though it does have a happy ending). It’s filled with missed moments, missed understandings, and the tragedy that everything that happened in this series probably could have been avoided if one person did not have a dream to share her culture with a wider world.

The series doesn’t pull many punches either. With eight key cast members m3 isn’t afraid of picking a few off, even when it feels really early to lose someone who still appears in the opening credits. Unfortunately, given the number of them, not all of the main characters are given the same level of character development. They are all visually distinctive enough that they won’t be confused for one another, and most of them are given enough scenes to show who they are outside of critical plot events, but the audience will not get to know them on the same level as Akashi.

This is particularly egregious in Heito’s case. The show makes a pretty big deal out of his insanity early on, and then he vanishes for most of the plot with scarcely a mention that he still exists, which is a wasted opportunity considering what we get to see of his pre-insanity self in flashbacks. I was a little sad that none of the characters seem to reevaluate the difference between his past self (once they get their memories back) and his current one, because what happened to him could have happened to any of them.

Despite its flaws m3 has kept me interested week after week of its 24 episode run, making it one of the few shows I’d watch the night the simulcast went live, and I highly recommend it. There is enough material in m3 that I would like to give it a rewatch to see how everything was foreshadowed, and I think it’s a pity it hasn’t been picked up for US retail distribution as I would gladly pick it up on Blu-Ray/DVD for future viewing.

Number of Episodes: 24

Pluses: Thoughtful story, strong element of mystery, re-examines assumptions for how people should connect with one another

Minuses: It’s not clear whether time passes differently in the Lightless Realm or it’s a narrative oversight, character development is weak for anyone who is not Akashi, some plot details drop off or get ignored entirely later on

m3: the dark metal is currently streaming at Daisuki and is available subtitled.

 

laurietomLaurie Tom is a fantasy and science fiction writer based in southern California. Since she was a kid she has considered books, video games, and anime in roughly equal portions to be her primary source of entertainment. Laurie is a previous grand prize winner of Writers of the Future and since then her work has been published in Galaxy’s Edge, Penumbra, and Solaris Rising: The New Solaris Book of Science Fiction.

 

Interview: Betsy Wollheim

625529_576885235658092_918951020_nBetsy Wollheim has an advantage unique in speculative fiction book publishing. She is owner, editor, and publisher of DAW and it is a private company. She recently won her first Hugo for Best Editor. She tells Diabolical Plots what she wants and doesn’t want from authors.

 

CARL SLAUGHTER: DAW has been described as a place to pursue a career, not just to get published. What happens at DAW that makes authors want to call it their home?

BETSY WOLLHEIM: DAW is a family business, we don’t publish by committee, and we consider our authors part of our publishing family. As a small company, we can’t compete in the “who will pay me the highest advance this time around” game. Not to say that we can’t or don’t pay large, competitive advances, we do, but they tend to be to authors who are loyal to our company. Sheila and I work too hard and care too much to publish authors who change publishing houses with each book or series. We want to know that our work will pay off in years to come for both the company and our authors. We’re in it for the long run and we want our authors to be also.

 

CS: You’ve described Patrick Rothfuss’ The Name on the Wind as the most brilliant first fantasy novel you’ve seen in 30 years. What is it about The Name on the Wind that distinguishes it from other first time fantasy novels?

BW: Prefer not to answer this question, if you don’t mind. After 40 years, you just know when you find something that is extraordinary.

 

CS: Are there any subgenres you are specifically looking for, any you definitely don’t accept, any you like but get too much of, any you like but don’t get enough of?

BW: I look for gripping writing, not specific subgenres. For me, it’s about the quality of writing.

 

CS: How many novel manuscripts submissions do you receive per year? How many of those submitted manuscripts do you buy? How many novels a year do you publish by first time novelists?

BW: Many, many, many submissions–electronic and paper. I don’t count them for sanity reasons. I *hope* to find many new novelists. I’m always happy when I find someone new–the more new good writers the better, I would publish a new author every month if I found one worthy. Most submissions have sub-par, not professional level writing, unfortunately.

 

CS: Do you read every manuscript or use slush readers?

BW: My staff pre-sifts the slush–I have far too much work, and unfortunately no clone.

 

CS: Are you hands on with revision? How extensive and how long is the revision process?

BW: How extensive depends on the novel and the author. Rewrites can take years, or not be needed at all and everything in between. Yes, I’m hands on.

 

CS: How far are you willing to go with a diamond in the rough, whether that diamond be the author or the story?

BW: As far as I need to. When I find a diamond in the rough, I will do whatever it takes if I feel that someone has the potential. I put Pat Rothfuss in the #1 New York Times slot with his second published novel.

 

CS: Do you meet with would-be novelists at conventions? How do you prefer to be approached? Verbal pitch, written pitch, sample chapters, full manuscript? Do you quiz the author about the story? Give them a yes or no answer on the spot or get back with them?

BW: I’ve always thought that “pitches” belong in Hollywood. To publish a novel, the editor has to have the entire thing. If a person has talent and willingness, any problematic aspect can be changed, but if a person can’t maintain for the length of a novel, he or she is not a novelist. Anyone can come up with a pitch. Show me the entire book. Anything else is useless. No, I would never meet with a “would-be” novelist. If you haven’t actually completed a full length work, you have no right to call yourself a novelist! The only “pitches” I consider are from my already published authors–they can sell me a book or a series with one sentence!

 

CS: What are the most frequent questions you receive from writers at conventions/workshops?

BW: What are you looking for? To which I respond: “professional quality writing.”

 

CS: Advice to aspiring writers?

BW: Join a writer’s group. Don’t be defensive about criticism. Don’t try to write like someone else. Write from inside you.

 

Carl_eagleCarl Slaughter is a man of the world. For the last decade, he has traveled the globe as an ESL teacher in 17 countries on 3 continents, collecting souvenir paintings from China, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, and Egypt, as well as dresses from Egypt, and masks from Kenya, along the way. He spends a ridiculous amount of time and an alarming amount of money in bookstores. He has a large ESL book review website, an exhaustive FAQ about teaching English in China, and a collection of 75 English language newspapers from 15 countries.

Game Review: Depression Quest

written by David Steffen

(editor’s note: I am not here to comment on “Gamer Gate”. If you are here to comment on that, don’t. Any comment getting into that topic will be deleted. I only heard about the game due to the debacle, and I decided that I would like to play the game for myself and judge it on its own merits. So here we are. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, and you want to see a big ol’ heap of Internet ugliness, Google “GamerGate”–I think it occupies about half the Internet by now.)

Depression Quest is a multiple choice text game released by Zoe Quinn in 2013.

On the game page is this statement:
The goal of this game is twofold: firstly, we want to illustrate as clearly as possible what depression is like, so that it may be better understood by people without depression. Hopefully this can be something to spread awareness and fight against the social stigma and misunderstandings that depression sufferers face. Secondly, our hope is that in presenting as real a simulation of depression as possible, other sufferers will come to know that they aren’t alone, and hopefully derive some measure of comfort from that.

DepressionQuestThis is a cause that I am sympathetic to. I know many people who have suffered through depression. Some who are still fighting through it, some who seem to have met some kind of livable equilibrium, and others who have died at their own hand. So, I heartily support the goals of this game. Most of the time I play games just for fun and for mental/dexterity and for no other reason, but I am not opposed to other goals.

In the game, you play a person who is struggling with depression, trying to get through everyday life. You have a significant other and a job, but even small things can be a struggle–trying to get your work done or trying to socialize with your partner’s friends.

As the game goes on, you have to make choices, most of them allowing you to either try to actively improve your life by telling people about your depression, by seeking counseling or medication, or to avoid trying to improve your life by telling people there’s nothing wrong, and avoiding your problems.

From the beginning, some options aren’t available to you–usually the suggestion for a solution that someone who doesn’t understand depression would make: “don’t worry about it”, “just go and have fun”, so on. I thought that was a clever way to emphasize how depression can make you feel powerless. If you make choices that avoid your problems, more of the options will be blocked from you as the game goes on. I don’t know from personal experience whether the account of depression in the game is accurate or not, but it seems reasonable from where I’m standing.

I think that the game succeeds at both of the stated goals. It’s free to play, so you can try it out before you decide if you want to donate or not. If you don’t like it, no loss. If you do, consider chipping in. And, it also succeeds at being interactive, so it’s actually a game.

I recommend it.

 

Visuals
Despite being a text game, it does have some visuals–a set of polaroids at the top of the screen showing relevant images, like bottles of pills or something.

Audio
The game suggests using audio, that it’s an important part of the game. But I didn’t, because it was easier to find time to play it with the sound muted, so I wouldn’t bother other people. So I can’t comment on this.

Challenge
Not challenging, per se. It seemed like the “best” choice was always relatively clear.

Story
Good enough story, though a bit on the PSA side.

Session Time
No save feature, but you can leave it running in your browser easily enough and the game won’t be going anywhere.

Playability
As easy as multiple choice.

Replayability
Definitely some, to try to see how your choices affect the outcome.

Originality
This happens to be the second game I’ve played about depression (I reviewed Actual Sunlight right here last week), but this one did it better. So definite points for originality, and for succeeding at making it interactive.

Playtime
I don’t remember exactly, I think it took me maybe a half hour to play through once?

Overall
The game is free to play or you can donate what you like. The website says that a portion of the proceeds goes to the National Suicide Prevention Hotline. I am wary of donations where “a portion” goes to a charity without saying WHAT portion, it could be 1% for all I know. I recommend trying the game. If you feel it has value, consider chipping in some money to support both the developer of the game and the hotline in some undefined proportion.

Game Review: Gone Home

written by David Steffen

gonehomeGone Home is a first person story exploration game released by The Fullbright Company (which has now been rebranded to be simply called “Fullbright” in August 2013.

2014-10-08_00004June 7th, 1995. 1:15am You’ve been traveling Europe for a year. While you were gone your family inherited a house from your weird Uncle Oscar and your parents and younger sister Sam have moved in. You arrive at the new house, expecting a warm welcome from you family, but no one’s there. Why? You explore the house as you try to find out what has happened and where everyone is. You are completely unfamiliar with the house, so you don’t know anything about the layout, how rooms are arranged or anything. The game keeps a handy auto-map to help you keep track of where you’ve been. From time to time you discover a clue that points you to look in a particular part of the house, and the auto-map very handily marks the spot for you.

One thing that set this game apart from me is a storyline with a homosexual character who seems like a real person, not something I see too often.

 

Visuals
A lot of work obviously went into the visuals to make it look really nice and to give the environment ample details. I don’t know if other people experienced this, but my computer was actually a little laggy on the display–seemed like it took a little more resources than a game of this kind really needs.

2014-10-08_00003Audio
Superb voice acting–I felt like I was listening to the journal entries of a real person.

Challenge
Not challenging. If you like exploration and gradual reveal of story, you should like this game, but apart from exploring as thoroughly as possible–some notes might trigger the marking of secret spots on the map or other extra clues so if you missed the note you might have trouble. I found the important notes without any undue effort, they weren’t hidden or anything.

Story
I really enjoyed the story on this one, and tying it into the exploration of the big house was the main appeal.

Session Time
You can save at any time, so easy to set down.

Playability
Easy to play.

Replayability
Not really.

Originality
Not high on originality, but not every game has to be. I appreciated the gay storyline, that did set it apart.

Playtime
It took me about 2 hours to finish the game.

Overall
The list price on Steam is $20. I enjoyed the game, but given the short playtime and low challenge I thought this was somewhat too much. I’d recommend catching it on sale if you can.

Movie Review: Her

written by David Steffen

Back in April I reviewed the Ray Bradbury Award nominees for the years as their deadline for nomination approached–I reviewed all the ones I could get my hands on, but there was one movie that wasn’t yet released on DVD–titled “Her” written and directed by Spike Jonze.

The movie takes place in 2025 in a world that’s very recognizable, but with some differences–holograms being commonplace and artificial intelligence has advanced to stages we haven’t reached yet. The protagonist is Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) who writes heartfelt letters on behalf of complete strangers for hire. He has just upgraded his personal operating system–which is more than just an OS in the way that we use the phrase and more of a personal assistant. He chooses for the OS to have a female voice (voiced by Scarlett Johanssen) and she names herself Samantha. He hits it off with Samantha and soon their relationship becomes more than just user-computer. Theodore is lonely, having little personal contact with anyone and clinging to the threads of an estranged marriage which he has been stalling on signing the divorce papers to end. He does have one friend Amy (Amy Adams) who is also struggling with her relationship.

As Samantha gains experience with the world she grows from a basic and functional assistant into a real person with real desires. The physical angle is a complication, of course, since she has no body, but they try things to work that out. Pretty soon, she starts changing as she develops faster and faster.

I quite enjoyed this movie, in large part because I found the relationship very plausible, and the movie even managed to make it seem not creepy (even though it is rather creepy). What I really liked about the movie is that I thought it was one of the better AI treatments I’ve seen in a movie–it was quite sympathetic to her and her situation–what it would be like to process the world at a much faster rate than the humans you’re dealing with, to try to be a facsimile of a person when you’re really not, and so on. I highly recommend it.

Game Review: Actual Sunshine

written by David Steffen

Aheader ctual Sunshine is an RPG-styled story of depression released by Will O’Neill in April 2014. It follows the life of young single overweight

professional who is struggling with depression. He lives alone, is unsatisfied at his corporate job. Every day is a struggle, trying to get through the day of work, trying to connect with women, trying to do something with his life instead of just sinking into video games to avoid trying to do something with his life. As the game goes on, Evan experiences good days, bad days, changes at work, failed interactions with women, and more. Evan expresses his stories about depression by making up fake scenarios in his head conveyed in text, imagining he was a celebrity being interviewed on a TV show about his depression, talking to an imaginary therapist, etc.

EvanBedAn in-game note suggests that the game is at least somewhat autobiographical, which makes it a little awkward to criticize it. It’s not that I doubt the authenticity of the story, or the difficulty of living with depression. I don’t suffer from depression, but I have close family and friends who do, and some who have given up hope and committed suicide. It is a horrible thing to go through, which is misunderstood by so many. I heartily approve of something which helps spread the conversation about depression so that those who haven’t been through it can understand some small part of what the depressed are going through.

But, and this is a big but for me, this is not a game. Yes, you have control, but as far as I could tell there was no branching of the storyline, nothing that I would do that would make any difference in the outcome. Maybe that’s meant to be a meta-statement about how you don’t have control of your life when you’re depressed? I don’t know, but if you put something up on Steam and charge $5 for it, I want to have some effect on it. To me it was kind of like buying a book online that’s advertised as a novel and only finding out after buying it that it’s a cookbook. It’s not that cookbooks are inherently bad, and the shape of a cookbook is similar to a novel, but I’d be pretty annoyed to find it full of nothing but recipes.

RPGLookIf you’re interested in the idea of a game that simulates the experience of depression, I recommend instead playing Depression Quest (which I’ll review next week). Depression Quest is interactive, and lets you see the choices of your actions trying to cope with depression–you do have an effect and there are choices you can make that will end better or worse than others. It is also free to play with donations accepted, so if you’re not sure what you’ll think about such a game–I suggest you give that one a try and give a donation if you thought the experience was valuable.

Visuals
Typical for the era of RPG the RPGMaker.

Audio
Not a lot of audio that I noticed, but one redeeming factor was a sequence where the protagonist imagines he’s a celebrity being interviewed on TV about his depression and his answers are all humorous-like off-the-cuff comments like you’d expect to hear from an actor talking about their life, but instead are actually dark comments about his depression but made quite creepy by the laugh line audio overlaid on it.

Challenge
No challenge. It’s just going through the motions to pass through the game.

Story
Things happen, and things change in the protagonist’s life, but I think it would be charitable to call those things a story. It’s more of a slice of life than a story to me. The imaginary asides in text about the imaginary tales of Evan’s life I did not find as enthralling as the game seemed to think they should be.

Session Time
Can save at any time you’re not in the middle of a cut sequence, so usually pretty easy to pick up and put down at will.

Playability
Nothing to it.

Replayability
None.

Originality
I admit, it’s the first time I’ve seen a game based around the experience of depression. There’s probably a reason for that–it’s not an easy thing to base a game around. (I’ve since played Depression Quest, so the other is technically the 2nd game on the subject I’ve played)

Playtime
It took me an hour to play through the game–and that was with me exploring everything I could find to explore.

Overall
The list price on Steam is $5. I would not recommend it. If you find the idea of a game experience describing depression appealing, I suggest trying Depression Quest instead.

GAME REVIEW: Papers, Please

written by David Steffen

2014-09-26_00001Congratulations. The October labor lottery is complete. Your name was pulled. For immediate placement, report to the The Ministry of Admission at Grestin Border Checkpoint. An apartment will be provided for you and your family in East Grestin. Expect a Class-8 dwelling.

Papers, Please was released by Lucas Pope in August 2013, a first person multiple ending pattern-matching ethical conundrum game. This is just another one of those games about immigration documentation processing. Exciting, right? Actually, hear me out. I was skeptical, too, but the game came highly recommended. The game is billed as a “dystopian document thriller”.

2014-10-03_00002You work for the government of Aristotska (a country reminiscient of Cold-War era soviet administration), screening people entering the country. Day one is straightforward, because you’ve been told to turn away anyone without an Aristotskan passport. But the government responds to public pressure by starting to allow others through. People start slipping through who don’t belong and the government responds by adding new kinds of documents that you have to check–often checking one document against another for consistent information, checking the sex of the person against the ID (with body scan as a secondary check), scanning for contraband, arresting wanted criminals, etc. You have to pay for food and heat for your family, medicine if your son gets sick, other expenses that you can’t always predict. You get paid for each person you process, but your pay gets docked for making mistakes. The rules change every day, and to support your family you have to be both fast and accurate.

That’s what you might call the main focus of the gameplay, but there are quite a few other elements. A revolutionary group is just starting to get their foundations, and because you hold a position of relative importance they want to pay you to make selective mistakes that favor their group. But the Aristotskan government inspector is watching your every move, so you’d better consider very carefully what kinds of requests you want to take. Meanwhile, there are violent attacks on the border which close the office early for the day and which you can help stop. People coming through the gate may make requests of you–helping a recruiter find workers, offering to buy or sell items. The most poignant are ethical choices where a man’s documentation is all valid, but before he leaves the booth he asks you to let his wife through–you soon find her passport has expired. Will you let her through to meet her husband or will you follow orders and turn her away?

2014-10-03_00003There are some moments of levity in the game–mostly around one guy who is gleefully criminal. After a body scan turns up something suspicious, you ask him what it is, and his response is “Is drugs!” But much of the game is quite dark, thinking about what it must be like for all these people trying to cross from one country to another, and weighing the ethical decisions when you’re torn between doing what’s right and what’s legal according to the laws.

There are twenty different endings, depending on the choices you make. The easiest to reach happens when you run out of money–you are thrown in jail for the crime of debt. You can reach other endings depending on whether you support or reject the revolutionaries (and whether you get caught supporting the revolutionaries), and other choices.

There is so much going on in this game, plenty to keep you entertained. Just the core challenge of checking documents is hard enough with all the changing rules and time limit and penalty for mistakes, and then all the ethical choices and storyline branching makes it all the better.

Visuals
Simple 80’s era visuals, but adequate.

Audio
Music/audio that fits the visuals. I like the inarticulate garble the loudspeaker makes when you call the next person in line.

Challenge
This game is moderately challenging with a reasonable learning curve. The first day is easy–just need to check the country name. As the game goes on there are more things to check and more documents which can reveal discrepancy. I got significantly better with practice, but in the later levels it was still a challenge.

Story
Good story. The main objective of the game is to make sure that you and your family survive by processing enough immigrants and making few enough errors that you don’t get penalized. But there are other branches along the way that can lead to different endings. You can choose to support or resist revolutionaries at several points in the story, you can choose to let people through who engage your sympathies or if you will always stick to the policies.

Session Time
Pretty fast. The game auto-saves after each day. The clock is ticking on each day so if you’re not paused the time is slipping away every moment. Some of the days are cut especially short if there’s an attack on the border. You can get a day in with just a few minutes.

Playability
Easy to learn, hard to keep track of all the little details that change from day to day. If you make a little excess cash you can make your life easier by purchasing some booth upgrades that will give you shortcut keys to cut down on mouse interactions.

Replayability
Quite a bit of replay potential here. There are many different endings which you can reach by making particular choices. Each country in the region also has a special token that can be obtained by helping a person from that country, but the path to those are not always obvious either. Your save file lets you reload from any previous day and it keeps track of multiple different branches, so you can go back to day five and make different choices in that day and try to process more people and after you finish that day you can load from either branch.

Originality
Very, very original. I never would have thought that a game about processing immigration paperwork could be anything but extremely dull, but the game both provides challenge in the manner of attention to detail, but also various ethical conundrums.

Playtime
I’ve spent about 8 hours playing this game, I think I finished a full run through in 5-6 hours, then went back to replay some different paths.

Overall
The list price on Steam is $10. Very reasonable price. Great game. Easy buy.

Interview: Eric Laster

Eric LasterEric Laster is a YA author, former ghost writer, and orphan/homeless advocate. Welfy Q. Deederhoth: Meat Purveyor, World Savior is the first of a trilogy.

 

CARL SLAUGHTER: Before publishing your own book, you were a YA ghostwriter. What are some of the YA novels you worked on?

ERIC LASTER: Actually, I published one book under my own name, through Simon & Schuster, entitled The Adventures of Erasmus Twiddle, which is what led to my being hired as a ghostwriter. I’m not legally allowed to disclose specifically what YA novels I ghosted because I signed an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement). What I can tell you: I ghosted a fantasy trilogy, two volumes of which perched awhile on the New York Times YA bestseller list. More recently, and unrelated to YA, I worked as the unacknowledged ghost/credited editor of a lush photography book entitled 108 Rock Star Guitars by Lisa S. Johnson, the soft-cover of which comes out in November (obviously, I did not sign a NDA).

 

Does an author provide a ghostwriter with a synopsis, an outline, a rough draft manuscript, recorded dictation of ideas? Do you meet with the author for a question and answer session? What type of communication and how much communication goes on between a ghostwriter and the author about what the author wants to accomplish with the novel?

I can, of course, only describe how the process worked for me. When I first met the credited author of the YA stuff I ghosted, she told me the plot outline of what would become the first book in a trilogy. After hearing the outline, I said that it sounded as if she knew the broad gestures of the plot, but little else. Yes, she knew the main characters’ general backstories, but she didn’t have a single scene in which characters spoke or interacted with one another, and I said that she’d have to be okay with me making all of it up. Once we came to terms and everything was official (she hired me, not a publisher), I received notes on various elements of the book’s invented world,weapons, means of travel, that sort of thing. In addition to changing some of the given characters’ backstories, I wound up conceiving of a number of my own weapons, characters, and creatures.

Incidentally, though I didn’t say this to the credited author at the time, I suspected at the outset that the broad gestures of the plot would not fully remain once the characters were going about their business. For me, in this kind of writing, there’s a rhythm to a plot or story, which is dictated by what seems natural for characters to think or do, and which is set going once the writing starts. It’s best to listen to that rhythm rather than superimpose a structure onto their doings. If an element of a preconceived plot works,great. If it doesn’t, forget it. So the first book I ghosted did not follow the original outline, though many of the most important broad strokes remained. For book two of the trilogy, I was left alone,meaning that no plot points were discussed beforehand, no ideas bandied about until I’d already started writing. For book three, I made a concerted effort to involve the credited author more in discussions of plot, etc. But in general, for all three books, I would send new chapters every several weeks or so, and we would then discuss them. I was very lucky in that she seemed to like the choices I made. Overall, we had an excellent relationship and are now friends, though we both admit to sometimes feeling weird about the whole thing. Publishers weren’t keen to have both of our names on the books. A proper, exhaustive credit for the trilogy would be: story by credited author and me, written by me.

We did have some rough patches in the beginning. I mistakenly assumed that because I was being well paid, I had to write whatever she told me to write. At one of our earliest meetings, after she’d read some chapters, she suggested a change that I didn’t agree with. “I’m not going to do that,” I said, being really impolitic, and to which she didn’t take kindly. I thought I would quit and return the advance I’d received. We talked it through: as long as I truly listened to and entertained her suggestions, I didn’t have to use them, provided I made a good case for why I wouldn’t. But sometimes what seems (or is) a bad editorial suggestion leads you unexpectedly to good results. You start asking yourself what about the story caused the suggestion to be made in the first place. If you can find the answer to that question, and rewrite the manuscript to pre-emptively counter it (the revision is pretty much never the original bad suggestion), the rewrite,at least for me, so far,is often an improvement.

It’s important to note that when I was hired, since there was no manuscript, there was as yet no publishing deal. A deal was secured only after I’d completed approximately 150 pages of a manuscript. The verbal pitch to editors had always been excellent, but they wanted to see the quality of the writing before making an offer.

What did the credited author want to accomplish with this project? She had a great, commercial conceit that she wanted to see fleshed out as a legitimate narrative. Not being a writer, and realizing that a great conceit wasn’t enough, she went looking for someone who could pen the books, which have become the Big Bang, as it were, of an imagined universe that has now expanded across a variety of media platforms. Sorry to sound like a marketing guy, but it’s true.

 

Why did you decide to switch from ghoster to author?

As mentioned earlier, I had published under my own name before becoming a ghost. But much as I’d never set out to write for children,Erasmus Twiddle was marketed as “middle-grade” fiction; it came into being after I wrote a paragraph in a voice I didn’t know I was capable of,I never planned on becoming a ghostwriter. I agreed to do it as an experiment, wanting to be less reverential toward what I commit to paper (and yes, I write on actual paper). Not that I ever wished to take less care with what I write. I wanted confidence that, when pressed to revise, I could conceive of word/sentence/plot variants at least as interesting as what I’d originally set down,even more, I wanted to develop the professional habit of always (up to a point!) questioning my choices so as to arrive at more nuanced, more revealing, more fun or dramatic. Five years as a ghost completed, I was eager to publish under my own name again. And while I enjoy writing things like Welfy Q. and YA, I’m simultaneously at work on material for an older crowd.

 

Why did you choose an orphan as a main character?

Welfy Q. pokes gentle fun at the standard conventions of sci-fi while exploiting them. Welfy is the “prophesied one” in an alien world. I thought the pithiest, most dramatic way to counterbalance this was to make him an orphan, a runaway from the foster care system, a kid who has never been the one chosen for adoption by prospective parents. Plus, I think it’s heroic for anyone, but especially a young person, to survive in the face of misfortune, neglect, systematic indifference, or undeserved hostility.

 

Eric Laster cover artWhat are themes/messages you want young people to take away from this story?

I don’t think about infusing messages into the fiction that I write. With Welfy Q., themes and motifs developed the further I got into the story. Once the book was finished, I teased out and/or tightened certain narrative threads, motifs, themes. But as to what, specifically, I want young,or any,people to take from this story, I have no answer. What I read in Welfy Q. is not what others will read. The most I hope for is that people find the book both fun and, for one reason or another emotionally resonant. Obviously, I have certain beliefs, an ethical code, and there are subjects about which I feel strongly and am drawn to explore; I wouldn’t be human if these things didn’t find their way into my writing.

 

Some of the characters’ names are Nnnn and Ffff and Grrrmmph. Is this just for fun or is there a method to it?

It’s “Grrrrmmph” with four r’s. The names are a nod to the great Italian writer Italo Calvino, whose book Cosmicomics features characters with the names “Llll” and “Qfwfq.” Besides, it’s fun to hear Siri stutter over them on an iPhone or iPad. Nor does it seem unreasonable to assume that what we as earthlings might consider goofy names are, elsewhere, to alien ears, not at all goofy. We hear “Ann” and think it’s perfectly normal, but to citizens of distant worlds it might sound just as odd as “Nnnn” does to us.

 

Some of the aliens say things like “gxo rlimoi Tryndian kcjcio,” “am gxo jcml lr gxo Tryndian,” “xoi jlicgalm ah ilmraimol.” Again, is this just for fun or is there a method to it?

Both. The alien language in the book (less than one page total) is not random. It’s a code, systematically translatable into English. As to the rest of the above quotations, here are the translations: “gxo rlimoi Tryndian kcjcio” means “the former Tryndian palace,” the Tryndian being an alien race. “Am gxo jcml lr gxo Tryndian” translates to “in the land of the Tryndian,” and “xoi jlicgalm ah ilmraimol” translates to “her location is confirmed.” Besides patterns in the alienspeak (the repetition of “gxo,” for example), the book contains further clues that the Brundeedle language can be translated,alienspeak followed by its English equivalent.

I don’t think it’s necessary to translate any of the alienspeak to enjoy the story, if readers don’t want to. Again, the total amount of Brundeedle dialogue takes up less than one page of the entire book. It just seemed wrong to have the aliens automatically speaking English when Welfy first appears among them. Often, bi-linguists will revert to their original language when voicing asides, etc. Why should the Brundeedles be different? But because I’m not a linguist and cannot, like Mr. Tolkien, invent an entire language, I decided to have the Brundeedles’ “gibberish” be a code, which kids who are so inclined can decipher. I had a bit of fun with some of what the aliens say in this code, knowing that only a special group of readers would ever likely decipher it.

The first-edition paperback and Welfy Q. ebook don’t explain any of this, by the way. I was leaving it to readers to figure out on their own. Nor are certain Brundeedle letters underlined or otherwise differentiated with asterisks and the like, as they are in the second edition, to help ease translation. But I’ve included a page at the end of the second-edition paperback that explains the Brundeedle language. It reads:

Out of the seventeen English letters that constitute the Brundeedle language, nine of them look as if they can stand for two different letters in English. For instance, an “a” in Brundeedle might either translate to an English “i” or “z.” To determine which English letter the Brundeedle “a” represents, you need to see if it is underlined. Thus, “a” in Brundeedle equals an English “i,” whereas “a” in Brundeedle translates to a “z” in English. Exceptions to this underline rule are “g” and “j.” A plain “g” is equivalent to an English “t,” but the same letter with an asterisk,”g*”,is equivalent to an English “k.” A plain “j” is equivalent to an English “l,” but if the same letter appears as “˘j” (note the strange smiley mark!), then it is equivalent to an English “q.” Proper nouns (names of people, places, creatures) are not translated.

 

twiddle-380x624Are there going to be further adventures of Welfy?

Yes, at least two more books, which I’m currently in the process of writing. But it’s very likely that a different book of mine will be published first. Tentatively titled Aftereffects, it’s a coming-of-age story cum murder mystery, complete with meds, young love/lust, family dysfunction, and an afterlife Walmart. In 2015, I’ll be at BEA and numerous Comicons, both to promote Welfy Q. and to build anticipation for Aftereffects prior to its publication.

 

Tell us about your involvement with orphans and homeless.

At present my involvement is minimal, and though I’ll be traveling a fair amount next year, I hope to rectify that somehow. Previously, I volunteered as a teacher in a Los Angeles literacy program. I grew up in New York City, where the homeless are omnipresent and yet willed into invisibility by those hurrying past them on the streets. Los Angeles too has a large homeless population. I have been around the homeless and hungry for as long as I can remember, and I have a BIG problem with the most vulnerable members of a population,kids,being punished by society because they got a less than stellar draw in the birth-lottery. Consider this dilemma: you’ve told me that some of the orphans you work with are cynical, and suspicious of do-gooders who appear in their midst, because they know that these do-gooders will soon abandon them. But are the do-gooders any less well-meaning because they vanished? Unlikely. They are, I trust, doing what they can, and very few people are able to devote a large portion of their lives to helping strangers, however much they might want to. Yet I don’t blame the kids for being wary of part-time do-gooders. If they haven’t had a stable homelife, or consistent emotional support from dedicated sources, how can they be expected to accept that fleeting emotional attachments to supportive individuals, largely strangers, are better than no attachments at all? How can it not seem just a cruel tease, a reminder of what they haven’t had, especially when hardships have conditioned sentiment out of them as a means of survival? My involvement with orphans and the homeless is a work-in-progress. On welfyq.com, I maintain an ever-expanding list of resources for people in need. Suggestions to add to the list are always welcome.

 

Got any advice to aspiring YA writers?

Read, persevere, read, persevere.

 

Carl_eagleCarl Slaughter is a man of the world. For the last decade, he has traveled the globe as an ESL teacher in 17 countries on 3 continents, collecting souvenir paintings from China, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, and Egypt, as well as dresses from Egypt, and masks from Kenya, along the way. He spends a ridiculous amount of time and an alarming amount of money in bookstores. He has a large ESL book review website, an exhaustive FAQ about teaching English in China, and a collection of 75 English language newspapers from 15 countries.

Game Theory in Writing Part 3: Why Money Should Always Flow to the Writer

written by David Steffen

This is the second article in a series considering the applications of game theory on writing. Game Theory is the study of strategic decision making. I won’t get into the mathematics of it, just high level concepts. The first article in the series discussed differentiating between goals and milestones. The second article in the series discussed ways for writers to keep score on their submissions that will encourage them to reach their goals.

An oft-quoted phrase in writing circles is known as “Yog’s Law”: Money always flows to the writer. I don’t really care for the name, since it’s not a law in either the legal sense or the scientific sense, but it’s an important guideline to keep in mind to help new writers avoid vanity publishers and publications that charge fees for submission.

What does it mean?

When I hear “Money always flows to the writer” out of context in the company of people who are not writers, I always wonder what those writers think. Do they picture the writer as Scrooge McDuck swimming in a vault full of money they never spend? Do they picture the writer’s landlord demanding rent to which the writer will reply “Money always flows to the writer” and slam the door in the landlord’s face?

Obviously writers spend money on goods and services as anyone else does. Yog’s Law refers only to interactions in pursuit of publication. That is, a writer shouldn’t pay submission fees. A writer shouldn’t pay publication fees. The writer is providing value in the form of their writing, and the writer should be paid for that writing.

Note that there are cases that seem to fit this description that aren’t really a problem–especially in self-publishing where the writer may pay for an artist to make cover art or a copyeditor to help them proofread. That’s because in the case of self-publishing the writer herself is also wearing the publisher hat and so the traditional roles are shifted.

Why?

So, why, from a Game Theory perspective, does the money need to flow to the writer? One of the important things I’ve learned from Game Theory is that a system or “game” is that the rules of a game should be designed so that the desired behavior results from everyone acting in their own selfish best interest. If the system is set up in any other way, then you have a conflict of interest that’s going to set the writer in conflict with the publisher rather than putting them together on the same team.

In a traditional sale to a magazine, the publisher will pay the author a one-time fee for publication rights and then the publisher will distribute the magazine either charging for readers to read the issue or taking donations and providing the content for free to recover the costs of paying for the story and other expenses, (and ideally will turn a profit on the deal to sustain the magazine). In this case, both the editor and writer have the same goals from the transaction–to get the story ready for publication as quickly as possible, to get it packaged up in an issue, and getting in front of as many readers as possible.

In traditional book publishing, similar idea, but on a larger scale and with royalties.

But let’s consider a vanity publisher which charges editing fees of the author. It’s in the publisher’s best financial interest to drag that editing process out as long as possible–if you’re determined, you can always find something to fiddle with, but that’s not a publisher you want to work with, sucking away your money in an endless stream of nitpicks that the editor never has an incentive to end. The editor doesn’t have an incentive to get the book in a publishable format in a timely fashion because edits are where the money is at.

Consider next a vanity publisher that charges publication fees. It’s in the publisher’s best financial interest to rush everything to publication, regardless of quality, and to not bother supporting it in any kind of marketing or any other fashion in the future. The revenue stream maximizes by maximizing the number of titles that are published in such a low quality format that probably no one but the author’s family is going to buy. Although this publisher will naturally tend to get stories to publication, they are making money regardless of the quality of the publication and so do not have an incentive to help the writer make the product as good as possible.

Consider a magazine that charges submission fees. The author, in that case, is paying a fee (often on the order of $3 but sometimes higher on the range of $20) to, in all likelihood, get a form rejection. Guess how much effort it takes to send a form rejection? If the system is set up efficiently, probably one or two clicks. The magazine maximizes their revenue stream from that by not bothering to read the slushpile at all, publishing stories they solicit directly and just rejecting the rest.

Note that in these cases, I’m not saying that all publishers who adopt these practices are scammers, or that they have the result I suggest. But with those flawed plans in place, there will be constant pressure toward practices that are directly detrimental to the writer, and a writer would do best to avoid them entirely.

 

Interview: Bud Webster

JoB cover 1When an author stops breathing, the stories stop coming, but the presses keep rolling. Ah, but do the checks keeping coming? Enter: Bud Webster of the SFWA’s Estate Project.

 

CARL SLAUGHTER: Why does the SFWA operate an estate project? How does liaisoning for deceased authors help SFWA members?

BUD WEBSTER: Well, with the advent of e-publishing both online and through Kindle/Nook readers, more and more of the classic sf/fantasy stories and novels are in demand. The Estates Project was created primarily to enable both paper and electronic publishers to approach heirs and/or agents in order to seek permission, sign contracts and make royalty payments. How does that help current members? Well, the glib answer is that eventually they’ll ALL be estates, but aside from that it adds to the list of services SFWA as an organization offers. The more we do to protect authors’ rights, whether those authors are above or below the ground, the better off our members are. Of course, the Project extends to non-members as well, as it should; SFWA advocates for ALL sf/fantasy writers, not just the ones who pay dues every year.

 

CARL: How does the estate project help publishers, editors, agents, and anthologists?

BUD: Publishers come to us looking for contacts with an estate. In many cases, the estate is handled not by an agent but by a family member or other heir. Using the database (over 500 names at this point), we hook the two sides up so they can do business. Some are looking to reprint stories, others want to publish novels. In a few cases, a publisher would like to make a writer’s entire body of work available, and this makes it possible for them to do so legitimately and legally, with benefit to them, the heirs and the readers. Agents are more willing to represent estates if they know that there is a resource for editors and anthologists to use to find them.

 

CARL: What constitutes due diligence when determining whether a story is public domain?

BUD: A good question, but one that doesn’t have a simple answer. You can’t just Google a name, not find anything on the first screen, and assume that the estate is dead. Nor can you find one source offering the work for free and claiming it’s PD and not look further. That ain’t no way diligence, due or otherwise. For me, due diligence is looking for as long as it takes to find an answer one way or another. If that means asking a few people, fine. If it means checking the Copyright Office website for specific renewal notices, searching for the possibility that the magazine that originally published a story may not have registered copyright then looking further to see if the author did at a later time, then that’s equally fine. I will point out here, though, that to my direct knowledge the information at the CO website is not always accurate; in one specific case, an e-publisher checked the status of a novel there, found no notice of renewal, and issued the book. When the author – still alive and writing, I’ll point out – found out about it, he was able to show the publisher his paperwork proving that the rights HAD been renewed. To the publisher’s credit, they immediately issued a check in the amount the writer asked for. So, due diligence? It’s whatever it takes. Now I know that’s not terribly responsive, and it’s certainly NOT a legal definition by any means, but it’s what I do.

CARL: How does the current copyright law place authors and estates at a disadvantage?

BUD: Hard for me to say, as I’m not a lawyer. I consider myself a copyright conservative – I think publishers should always err on the side of the estate – but I do consider the current term of copyright (life of the author plus 70 years) to be unreasonable. It is the law, however, and that’s what we have to deal with, not what we think it should be. I don’t think it places either authors or estates at a disadvantage, though. Again, I’m not a lawyer. The most important thing that the law does, in my distinctly un-humble opinion, is to give the authors or their estates control over what is done with their work. This is more vital than you may think, as there are cases in which copyright has been blatantly violated. A couple of years ago, for example, a photo of two gay men kissing was used, without their or the photographer’s knowledge or permission, in a campaign against a Colorado politician who had advocated gay marriage. The Southern Poverty Law Center brought suit, but it was a split decision. To me, it was clear-cut – no permission, no rights. Until and unless I declare work of mine to be PD, I am the ONLY one who gets to say where, when or if that work is reprinted either in paper or phosphors. Or even mind-control rays from Venus.

 

CARL: Do you provide legal consultation on the copyright status, get involved in dispute resolution between estates and publishers, get involved in the prosecution of copyright violation, or post notice of violations?

BUD: Indirectly, yes, but as I said above, no lawyer be I. I can alert an estate to possible piracy (and do), suggest that they talk to a lawyer and perhaps aim them at one of the legal eagles in SFWA, and I do post URLs of pirate sites for other writers to use to look for possible pirate editions of their own work, but I cannot and do not act as a legal advisor. SFWA itself, in the forms of the Grievance Committee and Writers, Beware does act for the membership and has been very successful in doing so.

CARL: What about relatives who don’t want their names listed on the SFWA website?

BUD: We don’t list the names of ANY private individuals on the website unless they specifically ask to be listed. That way lies potential madness. Estates handled by family or other heirs are listed on the Estates Project page with a link to my official e-mail address. When I get a query, I either forward it to the family or blind-copy them when I reply to the inquirer. That way they can respond directly in their own time.

 

CARL: The publisher’s office, the agent’s office, the copyright office, the Internet, how hard can it be to get information about an estate?

BUD: Ah, there’s the rub. The problem isn’t finding information, it’s finding valid, accurate and current information. That’s tougher than you might think. You have to look deep, find more than one source, and verify verify verify. Anything less isn’t due diligence.

 

CARL: The estate liaison office lists contact information for more than 500 authors and is seeking contact information for an addition 65 authors. Finding and updating information for so many authors must require a huge staff.

BUD: Don’t I wish? Nope, it’s just me right now, and my faithful team of mutants, avengers and super friends. Seriously, I can put out a question to several hundred other people on the listserves I’m on, add to that the occasional notice in LOCUS and other info and news-oriented periodicals in the field and eventually find an answer – most of the time. Those estates I haven’t been able to find in the seven years or so I’ve been doing this are, very likely, orphaned; until I know for certain, though, they remain unknowns.

 

CARL: These names must be very familiar to you because you’ve written extensively on the history of science fiction. Tell us a little about that. Or better still, tell us a lot about that.

BUD: Funny you should ask….One of the reasons I was tapped for this task is my deep interest in and knowledge of classic sf and fantasy writers. It’s my geek, if you will. I started out writing in my own fanzine, Log of the Starship Aniara (later just Aniara), then gradually began writing for other markets beginning with a sercon (read: serious content) ‘zine called bare*bones in 2001, then moving on to paying markets like David Hartwell’s New York Review of Science Fiction and Science Fiction Chronicle a few years later. Those were all articles on sf and fantasy anthologies, an itinerant column I called “Anthopology 101.” In 2008, William Sanders and a few others of us started an onliner called Helix SF, and that’s where I began the “Past Masters” series. We did Helix for ten issues, then stopped; the column continued in Jim Baen’s Universe and when that died, went to Eric Flint’s Grantville Gazette. Both columns have been collected and are available in print from Merry Blacksmith Press. In addition, the Anthopology 101 collection is available in e-book format from ReAnimus Press.

There ain’t a lot of money in this (although I certainly won’t object if anyone reading this, like, buys a copy or two), but there has been an enormous amount of satisfaction and gratification over the past 13 or so years, not to mention the extreme pleasure of interviewing people like Jack Williamson, Phil Klass (william Tenn), Robert Silverberg, Harlan Ellison and Barry Malzberg. The passion I feel when I delve into our shared history, the sheer wonder I experience in digging into Yesterday’s stories of Tomorrow is overwhelming; like a solar flare straight from the heart of the Sun, it brightens my life and fires my intellect. I like to think that I have been able to impart some of that to my readers; and in my work with the SFWA Estates Project, I hope to repay those old masters for the Wonder they have given me over the decades.

 

Carl_eagleCarl Slaughter is a man of the world. For the last decade, he has traveled the globe as an ESL teacher in 17 countries on 3 continents, collecting souvenir paintings from China, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, and Egypt, as well as dresses from Egypt, and masks from Kenya, along the way. He spends a ridiculous amount of time and an alarming amount of money in bookstores. He has a large ESL book review website, an exhaustive FAQ about teaching English in China, and a collection of 75 English language newspapers from 15 countries.