tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post4798540342150423656..comments2024-03-28T02:54:46.537-04:00Comments on The TOF Spot: Dancing with the InternetTheOFloinnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14756711106266484327noreply@blogger.comBlogger36125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-75077295256171188732018-04-08T11:53:41.675-04:002018-04-08T11:53:41.675-04:00This comment has been removed by the author.Will Worrockhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11474218905669062219noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-71369386349147580842018-04-04T20:34:18.468-04:002018-04-04T20:34:18.468-04:00Would you say that his Skylark series is similar, ...Would you say that his Skylark series is similar, considering they were written over a span of four decades?Will Worrockhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11474218905669062219noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-30687725235429835642018-04-04T18:15:05.855-04:002018-04-04T18:15:05.855-04:00I enjoyed them in my youth; but I suspect they wou...I enjoyed them in my youth; but I suspect they would not hold up in my old age. Not only is the science way out of date, but I'm pretty sure the social context would be as well. They belong to the gosh-wow smash-bang era of SF. If you have <i>read</i> the first three and enjoyed them, you will probably enjoy the others. We don't need deep literature for every reading experience. But there are other writers from that era that I find hold up better. Edmund Hamilton wrote some nice books -- <i>The Haunted Stars, City at World's End</i> -- along with his "world wrecker" adventures. TheOFloinnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14756711106266484327noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-57867321265258002472018-04-04T18:10:42.202-04:002018-04-04T18:10:42.202-04:00I should add for science fiction: you should keep ...I should add for science fiction: you should keep current in the realm of popular science.TheOFloinnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14756711106266484327noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-79529449841446440392018-04-04T18:09:54.619-04:002018-04-04T18:09:54.619-04:00Hard to say. It depends on where the writer is sta...Hard to say. It depends on where the writer is starting from. First and foremost (assuming you meant 'science fiction writer') is to study the field. This is primarily to avoid repeating story ideas that have been done to death; but also to find the kinds of stories that excite you. (If they don't excite you, you won't be able to excite others.) In short fiction, it's a way of learning the kinds of stories that appeal to different editors; in long-form it's a way of discovering what novels are popular in the market right now. The point is not slavish imitation, but perhaps to find an entree into the market by introducing your own stories in a particular way. In my own case, I had been reading <i>Analog</i> for years before I sold my first story there. Curiously, reviewers commented that my stories were atypical of the magazine while the editor said that they were perfectly suited for it. <br /><br />The other reason for reading the good stuff is to study how the author worked the magic: look at the plotting and pacing, the characterization. A useful exercise is to take a story (or book) that you liked and start typing it verbatim. At some point you will find yourself taking the story in a different direction, but hopefully maintaining the writing. Do not try to sell the story, because the beginning at least will not be yours; but it may help hone your own writing skilz. <br /><br />Joining a writers group is helpful, too, as long as you don't take their input slavishly -- or reject their criticisms out of hand. It's your story, but an outside set of eyeballs is often helpful. You may ask a friend to do this, but friends are apt to give stamps of approval for fear of offending you, so choose friends wisely. <br /><br />By the same token, there are often seriously good writing seminars for beginners. I had the opportunity to take one many years ago by the mystery writer John Dunning, now alas aged and infirm. It was a gold mine. Be sure the instructor is a published writer, preferably successful, preferably not self-published. (Nothing inherently bad about self-published; but you are not your own best editor.) The local community college often has a decent writing class. TheOFloinnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14756711106266484327noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-45536916720080325122018-04-04T15:10:15.220-04:002018-04-04T15:10:15.220-04:00Mr Flynn, may I ask, what is your opinion on E.E. ...Mr Flynn, may I ask, what is your opinion on E.E. "Doc" Smith and his novels? I have gotten the first three books of the Lensman series and I am wondering that I should get the rest. So what do you think?Will Worrockhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11474218905669062219noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-43681344076838591482018-03-23T05:25:59.082-04:002018-03-23T05:25:59.082-04:00Tom
No argument from me. From the little i've...Tom<br /><br />No argument from me. From the little i've read of Jaki, the key was Christanity with a long gestation period to work out theological questions<br /><br />xavier xavierhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15924047562026242210noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-51197937831771144202018-03-19T09:59:18.547-04:002018-03-19T09:59:18.547-04:00Question 7: What advice would you give to an aspir...Question 7: What advice would you give to an aspiring science writer?Will Worrockhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11474218905669062219noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-44436430134218502382018-03-18T16:32:43.865-04:002018-03-18T16:32:43.865-04:00A chance to exercise a skill and create imaginary ...A chance to exercise a skill and create imaginary worlds.TheOFloinnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14756711106266484327noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-44868995975982606992018-03-18T16:32:04.854-04:002018-03-18T16:32:04.854-04:00Virtually none, from an objective viewpoint. A bit...Virtually none, from an objective viewpoint. A bit of a diversion.TheOFloinnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14756711106266484327noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-84789411056888721672018-03-17T19:12:18.097-04:002018-03-17T19:12:18.097-04:00Question 6: What do you enjoy most about writing s...Question 6: What do you enjoy most about writing science fiction stories?Will Worrockhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11474218905669062219noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-48432590700283904142018-03-16T12:20:00.036-04:002018-03-16T12:20:00.036-04:00Question 5: What do you think is the importance of...Question 5: What do you think is the importance of science fiction in today's society?Will Worrockhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11474218905669062219noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-20557889482526744192018-03-16T10:43:01.567-04:002018-03-16T10:43:01.567-04:00I can only tell you where it was in the 1980s. Thi...I can only tell you where it was in the 1980s. Things may be very different now, and I am no longer a "beginning" writer. Generically, you want a place with an editor. That means someone other than yourself. Self-publishing guarantees acceptance; but it also pretty much guarantees no advance in your craft and no advance against royalties.<br /><br />Secondly, you want an editor with skill. Hack editors can do more harm than good. An editor who was also a successful writer is a good sign, but not a necessary one. The late David Hartwell was a very good book editor; Gardner Dozois now retired from Asimov's magazine was a renowned story editor. There are others. I had a great relationship with Stan Schmidt at Analog magazine. He never made a suggestion that did not improve a story. <br /><br />In SF, the Big Three are: Analog, Asimov's, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Naturally, there is a crowd at the door trying to get in. Then there are a host of smaller 'zines that come and go. The smaller 'zines may be easier to break into, but they often don't pay as well -- below professional rates or only in copies (not money!), especially those with literary pretensions. My first acceptance was a story submitted to a contest at Galileo magazine, which Charlie Ryan accepted for regular publication instead; but the magazine folded before it appeared and I never got paid. After a time in which Charlie tried to shop an anthology, I sent it to Analog, where Stan bought it. In those days, Analog paid on acceptance, so there I was with a couple hundred bucks in my hot little hands. <br /><br />Book publishers do take "over the transom" submissions, but you are usually better off finding an agent first. For a first sale, agents won't get you a better deal, but they can get you noticed. They are beginning to fill the niche that editors used to fill at the big houses. The problem is a lot of agents are full up and aren't taking on new clients.<br /><br />Hence, the recent rise of self-publishing, enabled by e-publishing and short-run presses. It fills the niche once inhabited by vanity presses with the advantage that you don't have to pay the press, or at least not much to see your name in print. The advantage is that you bypass all the agent-editor-marketing stuff. The disadvantage is that you have to be your own agent, editor, and marketing department when you should be writing your next book. It's not enough to write a book and publish a book. You have to get it distributed and you have to get people to take notice of it.<br /><br />These really are different skill sets, and a writer can be so in love with his own words, he can't see that all that lovely prose should be ruthlessly chopped out and left on the floor. (Compare the early Heinlein to the late Heinlein when he had become too big and famous to edit.)<br /><br />A local writers group can be a good place to get in touch with other writers. They often run annual cons where agents and editors show up. TheOFloinnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14756711106266484327noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-17615834682752851032018-03-16T09:55:37.661-04:002018-03-16T09:55:37.661-04:00Question 4: Where would be the place for baginning...Question 4: Where would be the place for baginning science fictiin writers to start out at? Which magazine or publisher, to be more specific?Will Worrockhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11474218905669062219noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-48971905978981588872018-03-16T02:51:20.657-04:002018-03-16T02:51:20.657-04:00Money? Why, we do this for sheer love, with never ...Money? Why, we do this for sheer love, with never a thought to recompense! <br /><br />Well, okay. Editors, in a fit of insanity sometimes insist on pressing silver into our palms or, more usually, a few coppers. It is certainly not the royal road to wealth and prosperity and few indeed are the writers who have ever made a living writing full-time. In fact, you will notice that the short-story magazine, where most writers once learned their craft, has virtually disappeared. This is largely because (imho) that while the Great Inflation reduced the dollar to its intrinsic value as a finely engraved piece of printed paper, payment by the magazines has not changed much from the 1950s. <br /><br />Neither, for that matter have payments for novels. A first-time sale will get an advance of perhaps a couple thousand dollars and unless you are very very lucky, that's all the money you will ever see. <br /><br />Technically, payments for novels are different from payments for stories. The latter are "non-employee compensation" while the former are "advances against royalties." The book publisher agrees to turn over to you an agreed percentage of the cover price of the book. This will vary depending on your perceived attractiveness on the shelf and will often slide as more copies are sold, and different rates for hardcover, trade paper, mass market paper, e-book, etc. This is all complicated by the fact that book marketing is in arrears and on consignment. That is, booksellers don't pay the publisher until after the book is sold but the publisher registers the sale when the bookseller orders it shipped. So there is a time lag when the seller might return unsold copies for credit. The advance is a gamble by the publisher that the book will earn enough in royalties less returns to cover the nut of the advance. Once the book has earned enough in royalties to cover the advance already paid, it is said to have "earned out" and new money is now due the author. These are paid every six months. <i>Sadly, most books never "earn out."</i>TheOFloinnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14756711106266484327noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-26635811396382299092018-03-15T18:33:44.998-04:002018-03-15T18:33:44.998-04:00Question 3: How much money does a science fiction ...Question 3: How much money does a science fiction author like yourself make off your work?Will Worrockhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11474218905669062219noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-11977136510761048132018-03-15T16:12:18.221-04:002018-03-15T16:12:18.221-04:00Robert A. Heinlein
Poul Anderson
L. Sprague deCamp...Robert A. Heinlein<br />Poul Anderson<br />L. Sprague deCamp<br />probably others of whom I am not consciously aware. I have been told some of my stories have "imitated" writers whose stories I have never read, thus proving telepathy! Or perhaps that the <i>kind</i> of story may perhaps shape the style of writing.TheOFloinnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14756711106266484327noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-65730406617657140692018-03-15T15:42:24.578-04:002018-03-15T15:42:24.578-04:00Wow, that's an incredible story. Question 2: W...Wow, that's an incredible story. Question 2: Which author or authors would you say are major influences on your writing style?Will Worrockhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11474218905669062219noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-34995554634815943932018-03-15T15:02:21.376-04:002018-03-15T15:02:21.376-04:00When I was a small child, my father told my brothe...When I was a small child, my father told my brother and me bedtime stories about aliens that turned out (as we learned later) to have been cribbed from Damon Knight ("To Serve Man") and Ray Bradbury (<i>The Martian Chronicles</i>). Good night. Sleep tight. His uncle used to tell <i>him</i> bedtime stories about Gordo of the Moon, illustrated with cartoons, so who knows how far back that goes. Later, we made an 8mm move called "Around the World in 80 Frames" in which my brother and I staffed a wheel-shaped space station (made of a plastic model and superimposed by trick photography (as SFX was then called) over a blackboard and billiard ball-planets, while a third brother played various earth inhabitants over which the station orbited and whom we observed. So it was natural that when we were 10 or 12, my brother and I began writing our own tales -- in pencil, in spiral notebooks, illustrated with cartoons made with Magic Markers, back when Magic Markers gave off genuine volatile organic compounds. Later, we found or Dad's stash of <i>Galaxy</i> and <i>If.</i> At the library, we ran through every SF book in the children's section, then talked the librarian into letting us check out SF from the adult section. I still have some of the "stories" that my mother saved that he and I banged out on an old Smith-Corona manual typewriter. <br /><br />IOW, there was never a time when we didn't imagine that we would one day write SF stories. I still have rejection slips I earned in childhood. TheOFloinnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14756711106266484327noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-80775632049283439082018-03-15T14:12:53.068-04:002018-03-15T14:12:53.068-04:00Reversing Total Depravity into a denial of Origina...Reversing Total Depravity into a denial of Original Sin altogether, is by this point probably <i>the</i> big "post-Calvinist" error. Marx has it too. It's not a coincidence he came from Prussia, the one part of Germany that went Calvinist in the Reformation; it's not a coincidence Rousseau was from Geneva. And both studied history in England, the other big Calvinist center. It's also not a coincidence that all revolutionaries since them have had the Puritan's view of art: it's basically evil unless it preaches a moral. You must've noticed that element in people like the Tumblr SJWs. They also have the mindset found in that other great Calvinist institution: witch-hunts.Sophia's Favoritehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02871625814389904112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-1293335402044819202018-03-15T14:04:55.106-04:002018-03-15T14:04:55.106-04:00Rousseau tapped into the subconscious assumptions ...Rousseau tapped into the subconscious assumptions of the post-Reformation world: he basically preached secularized Calvinism with a reverse Total Depravity (though the Noble Savage actually figured less in his thought than in that of many of his contemporaries). And he asserted a truth then neglected, the Rights of Man, though like all heresiarchs he tried to make it stand alone instead of with countless other truths.<br /><br />Chomsky came along in the heyday of pervasive propaganda (and of the advertising guru), and the death throes of modernism. And all his sins on his head, to assert, in the era of existentialism and postmodernism, that there <i>is</i> human nature, even merely in language, is to assert a truth. Like Rousseau he broke that one truth out of its place among the others and tried to make it a whole worldview, but like all heresies his, too, lived by what it retained.<br /><br />Every era gets the charlatans it deserves, generally people who latch onto one truth contemporary society is ignoring—hence why their dupes experience them as a revelation.Sophia's Favoritehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02871625814389904112noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-24373648587920029542018-03-15T12:55:25.096-04:002018-03-15T12:55:25.096-04:00Okay, Question 1: What inspired you to be a scienc...Okay, Question 1: What inspired you to be a science fiction writer?Will Worrockhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11474218905669062219noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-23336287484150777402018-03-15T12:06:25.343-04:002018-03-15T12:06:25.343-04:00Okay, but I don't think I have had a typical c...Okay, but I don't think I have had a typical career. For one thing, it's never been full time.TheOFloinnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14756711106266484327noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-49891353545386230942018-03-15T09:52:23.064-04:002018-03-15T09:52:23.064-04:00Mr. Flynn, for school I have to do a paper on a ca...Mr. Flynn, for school I have to do a paper on a career I desire to pursue and I chose to be a science fiction writer. One thing that is needed for my paper is a questionnaire of a person who is a science fiction writer. Since your'e a science fiction writer, may I you questions about your writing career?Will Worrockhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11474218905669062219noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-50239595866259359192018-03-15T07:32:05.574-04:002018-03-15T07:32:05.574-04:00And in the 18th century, people mistook Jean-Jacqu...And in the 18th century, people mistook Jean-Jacques Rousseau for a philosopher and political scientist. And nowadays we have Noam Chomsky. The existence of successful charlatans is no index to the badness of life at any particular period.Tom Simonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16067031472666752839noreply@blogger.com