Asimov's Science Fiction 03/01/11

by Dell Magazines

  Long before there was the “new weird,” there was Neal Barrett, Jr. The New York Review of Science Fiction called Neal’s 1988 story, “Stairs,” “possibly the most all out weird story of the year.” Being weird didn’t stop “Stairs” from winning that year’s Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. The aforementioned Dog Quick and Possum Dark are characters in Neal’s wondrous and strange, “Ginny Sweethips’ Flyin Circus.” The wry tale of life after a nuclear war was a finalist for both the Nebula and the Hugo award. Critics have said that Neal’s stories defy any category or convention, but he has also been called a poet of post-apocalyptic fiction. Neal is not afraid to explore the dark side, but Neal’s versions of what follows Armaggeddon differ considerably from Cormac McCarthy or Neville Shute’s visions of the aftermath. In an interview with Nick Gevers, Neal says, “I write deep and dark, and I write light and funny. And, they’re both the same, in my mind. Tragedy contains funny; funny contains tragedy. Serious things happen to my people, and funny things as well. Like life, okay? The way I write is simply my perspective on whatever the hell this living stuff is all about.”

  Neal has always had a keen eye for what this “living stuff” is all about. His 1991 novel, The Hereafter Gang, about Doug Hoover’s transition from life to death, has been called “One of the Great American Novels,” by John Clute. I own the gorgeous Ziezing hardcover with the evocative triptych, and I was calling it one of the greatest novels, ever, long before I became aware of John’s review.

  Neal’s career began over fifty years ago, when his first two SF stories appeared in the August 1960 issues of Amazing and Galaxy. Since then, he’s published more than fifty books. In addition to the post-apocalyptic theme that can be found in novels like Through Darkest America and Dawn’s Uncertain Light, and the personal Armageddon of The Hereafter Gang, these works include the “Aldair” quartet and other types of science fiction, Westerns, YA books, very strange mainstream novels like Interstate Dreams, Perpetuity Blues and other short story collections, and wildly funny novels of mystery and suspense like the unforgettable Pink Vodka Blues. Indeed, I often wish I inhabited the alternate universe where Whoopi Goldberg went ahead and made that wonderful book into a movie—with or without Ted Danson.

  My first memory of Neal is on an afternoon over twenty years ago. We were surrounded by the lush greenery of The Sun Garden, a bar in the Grand Hyatt in New York City, which overlooks the intricate terra cotta frieze of the Chanin Building, but we could have been anywhere. As the afternoon faded into twilight, I sat enchanted with this eloquent story-telling Texan, who, raised in Oklahoma, still thinks of that state as the last stop before Heaven. I’ve been enchanted by Neal’s stories ever since.

  So, when Armageddon arrives, other people can hit The Road or huddle On the Beach. When I face the end times, I’m looking up Ginny Sweethips and taking The Hereafter Gang along with me. Perhaps the end of Doug Hoover’s transcendent journey will give you a little taste of why:

  Doug feels the wind, he feels the power in his bones, he hears the wires begin to whine, he hears the engine start to sing. The sky is sharp and clear with a blue that hurts his eyes; the sun’s as bright as silver with a shine. He sees the wonders down below, he sees the hangar and the Cord, he sees the courthouse and the creek, he sees a pretty spot of pink. He sees Immelmann and Manny up above, sees Boelcke and Doc down below. . . . Off to port he sees the Chief looking nifty in his whites, looking fine with his long hair whipping in the breeze. He gives Doug a thumbs up and neatly peels his craft away a white bird against the blue. Doug rolls and feels giddy in the head, feels dizzy as a duck . . .

  And as he screams through the sky he wonders what he’d like to be, if the flute would treat him right, if the clarinet’s the thing, if he could tap his way to fame. . . . He thinks he’d really try to learn, discover what it’s all about, why everybody wants to go where it’s nicer than the town.

  He thinks . . . he’ll try to understand a cat.

  He thinks he might go to class, or maybe not.

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  DEPARTMENTS

  Reflections

  Robert Silverberg

  REFLECTIONS Robert Silverberg

  THE PLOT GENIE

  Along time ago—1973, as a matter of fact—Sherry Gottlieb, who used to run a science fiction bookstore in Los Angeles, gave me a copy of a book called The Plot Genie, which was intended, an even longer time ago, to provide writers with handy formulas for constructing stories. Sherry inscribed the book to me with these tender words: “To Bob Silverberg—I hope this helps you get through those trying times and slumps. If you learn to use this, you may be able to sell a story or something.”

  I came upon it the other day in a dusty corner of my office. Apparently I haven’t been using it much in the last few decades. Of course, I don’t write as much fiction as I used to, either. But there are plenty of other writers out there trying to make a living by selling stories, and it occurred to me that knowing about this book might be of great value to them.

  The copy of The Plot Genie that Sherry sent me back in the halcyon days of the Nixon administration is the third edition, dated 1932. The author was one Wycliffe A. Hill, described on the title page as “Author Inventor”—from other sources I learn that he wrote screenplays for silent films—and the publisher was the Ernest E. Gagnon Company of Los Angeles.

  Mr. Hill tells us that about 1915 the great movie director Cecil B. de Mille rejected a story idea of his “with the kindly criticism that ‘although an interesting narrative, it contains no dramatic plot.’” This set him searching for an understanding of the difference between narrative and plot. Upon learning that someone had published a book that claimed to list all the basic dramatic situations—thirty-six in number, he tells us—he bought a copy and began “an intensive study and analysis of dramatic plot building,” which led in 1918 to his writing a book called Ten Million Photoplay Plots. He followed this in 1921 with The Art of Dramatic Plot Building, and then The Writers’ Guide (1925), which brought him finally to the creation of his masterpiece, The Plot Genie.

  When I say that The Plot Genie offers a mechanical way to devise plots, I’m not just bandying metaphors. Inserted into the book is an actual machine, which Hill calls his “plot robot.” It’s not really a robot, and not even much of a machine: actually, it’s a cardboard envelope with a peephole in it and a circular wheel mounted inside. When you reach in and turn the wheel, a number appears in the peephole. Proper turning of the wheel will provide you with all the necessary elements of a story plot, according to a method which Hill spends 141 pages explaining.

  “It may or may not have been a mistake,” he admits, “to give the name ‘Plot Robot’ to the device when it was first put on the market, inasmuch as it is not really a robot. Although resulting in a tremendous amount of newspaper and magazine publicity, it also aroused considerable resentment and suspicion among the literati, some of whom were averse to the idea of a robot’s doing intellectual work. Because of this feeling in regard to the name, it was decided to change it to ‘Plot Genie.’” So, back in 1932, hard-edged science fiction—the robot—gave way to misty fantasy—the genie!

  As for using the book—well, listen up, all ye ambitious storytellers. You must first become aware of the “general formula for all types of stories,” which has nine elements, listed by Hill as LOCALE OR ATMOSPHERE, FIRST CHARACTER, THE BELOVED, A PROBLEM, OBSTACLE TO LOVE, COMPLICATION, PREDICAMENT, THE CRISIS, and CLIMAX. You turn the wheel three times to determine each of these elements, then note the number that comes up in the peephole and hunt each one down in the text of the book. “Important!” the author warns us. “Read instructions on the following pages very carefully before attempting to build a plot with the aid of the Genie.”

  Shall we get started? Shall I devise a story plot before your very eyes, making use of this ingenious device?

  I’ll give it a try, anyway, although using the thing turns o
ut to be immensely complicated, and I am a weary guy after having written and sold seven or eight hundred stories myself over the past fifty-five years. So it will be a struggle. “Turn the disk three times and then observe what number shows through the slot, and then write this number in the proper space on the recording sheet. After having obtained the nine numbers—and not before—refer to the index book for your corresponding plot elements, and write these on the Recording Sheet opposite the proper number. The first number obtained by turning the disc three times supplies the locale; the second gives the principal male character, the third, the beloved, and so on.” It sounds like a tall order.

  But here we go. I turn the disc and number 69 comes up. We are provided with a list of 180 story locales, running from “In Asia” to “At a Fraternity House.” Number 69 turns out to be “At a saw mill.”

  Three more turns and I have my main male character—number 80, “Jazz orchestra leader.” Three more and I am given my main female character (the “beloved”)—number 58, a wizard’s daughter or sister. Let her be his daughter, I decide. Now I need to find my story problem. It turns out that there are six lists of problems, and I must turn the disk until a number ending in 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 appears, which will tell me which list to use, and then turn it again to pick a number from that list. I dial up list 3, and then 46, which is “Obliged to risk health in an effort to brave an air voyage.” I think a Hugo winner is shaping up already!

  Onward we go. The next stop is the Obstacle. I land on 51: “Lover and beloved are brother and sister.” Oh-oh—incest; big plot trouble. Incest has never been a favorite theme of science fiction editors. Perhaps a workaround will reveal itself. We keep going to Complications and I get 10, “Revenge is sought against an immortal for having brought loss of loved one.” Ah, a second fantasy element! Good. Now Predicaments: “Madness or mental derangement threatens loss of power.” And, for The Crisis, “Learn that a loved one is a slave to passion or habit.”

  What do we have so far, then? The leader of the jazz orchestra at a sawmill is in love with a wizard’s daughter, and is unaware that she is actually his sister. Okay: now to put some flesh on the bones. The saw-mill is on Mars (an additional complication, because water to drive the mill is very scarce on Mars) and they find themselves obliged to make a perilous journey from the Central Drylands to the Western Mountains by helium balloon to thwart a diabolical immortal being who has taken the wizard’s daughter’s father prisoner. (The wizard was trying to obtain a coveted spell that would provide water to keep the sawmill running.) But the orchestra leader is addicted to kweesh, the sinister Martian narcotic, and has left his kweesh stash behind. He starts to go into withdrawal. As they embark in the balloon he begins acting strangely. His eyes glaze; he nods off at strange moments; he answers her questions with dreamy nonsense. And it all gets worse. By the time they reach the lair of the immortal he is completely wrecked, utterly incapable of functioning as the hero of the story. Thus the beloved one learns for the first time of her inamorato’s addiction, and she is deeply distressed. She also realizes that the job of overcoming the immortal is entirely in her hands.

  And now comes the climax, the surprise twist that saves everything!

  What is required, I see—having had decades and decades of experience at making cockeyed plot elements fit together—is something that will lead our hero out of the state of mental debility that his kweesh withdrawal has induced, free the wizard from captivity, and bring the evil immortal to his knees, so that our hero, our heroine, and her father can wrest the water-conjuring spell from him and make their escape from his fortress in the Central Mountains. We also need to deal with that brother-sister angle, somehow. Will Plot Genie provide us with some magnificent gimmick that will cope with all these problems?

  Well, let’s see. We are supplied with the usual list of 180 possibilities, and all we have to do is spin the wheel—

  No. That makes it too easy. What I think I’ll do instead is look through the list and provide you with seven or eight lively possibilities. You pick the best one, the one that will wrap everything up in one great sweeping burst of narrative ingenuity, okay? Here are some suggestions:

  1. Wherein it develops that a person is impersonating himself or herself.

  2. In which the enemy places himself in a position to incur the enmity of forces aside from the hero and allies, and is therefore overwhelmed.

  3. Wherein a victorious opponent proves to be a friend in disguise.

  4. Wherein it develops that the enemy himself is merely a figment of the hero’s imagination.

  5. Wherein the captor proves to be in the employ of the hero’s parent, who is testing his fortitude.

  6. Wherein the violence of the avenger or enemy brings about a cataclysm which destroys him.

  7. Wherein a vanquished loved one proves to be in reality—

  But that’s enough. It should be but the work of a moment for you to choose the most appropriate of those plot twists, apply it to the previously determined situation the genie has concocted, and turn the resulting outline into a short story worthy of publication in this magazine. The one that I like is the first one, in which a character is impersonating himself, which seems like a nice van Vogtian bit of doubletalk. But I would not want to influence your choice. Go to it, friends. Write your stories and send them to: Sheila Williams, Editor, Asimov’s Science Fiction, 267 Broadway, Fourth Floor, New York, NY 10007.

  Mark them “Plot Genie Contest Entry.” Sheila will read each and every one and will respond with a personal letter of criticism, and the three best submissions she receives will be purchased at our standard rate of payment and prominently featured in the magazine. I guarantee it.

  Oh, and don’t forget to include return postage.*

  *If there are any literalists among you, let me hasten to add that Mr. Silverberg is surely joking—especially about that three page letter! Most of you will have figured this out because you already know that I now prefer electronic submissions. For more information about submitting online see www.asimovs.com/info/ guidelines.shtml.—Ed.

  Copyright © 2011 Robert Silverberg

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  DEPARTMENTS

  On the Net

  James Patrick Kelly

  On the Net

  James Patrick Kelly

  NEW BRAINS FOR OLD

  remembering

  When I began writing this column, what I thought I was about was finding websites that readers of Asimov’s might like to check out. But as time passed it became clear that the net was not only a vast digital library, but also a toolset for remaking culture. E-books and webzines and podcasts and blogs and Facebook and Creative Commons and free content have changed the way you and I relate to one another, to this magazine, to science fiction, and, yes, to society in general. So while the emphasis has remained on poking around cyberspace, from time to time we have stepped back to look at trends and technologies that affect everybody.

  In the last installment, you may recall, we considered the proposition that the net is not only changing what we do, but is changing who we are. Nicolas Carr, in a book called The Shallows: What The Internet is Doing to Our Brains and a website called Rough Type , asserts that, largely unbeknownst to us, the internet is reprogramming our brains and thus privileging certain cognitive abilities over others. While some of his claims are more persuasive than others, his central thesis makes sense not only of social trends but also of some interesting scientific research. If nothing else, Carr’s arguments will tickle your science fiction sensibilities. For over a century now, we SF writers have been thinking hard about what a Posthuman might look like.

  Perhaps all we need do is peer deep into our flatscreens.

  brainy

  In order to understand the implications of what Carr is saying, let’s divide his argument into three parts and consider each separately. F
irst: is the net really reprogramming our brains? Second: if so, then what exactly is changing? Third: are these changes good or bad?

  It may come as a surprise to some readers that our brains can be reprogrammed at all. Until the 1970s, orthodox neuroscience held that the structure of the adult brain was fixed and the only change possible was degenerative. As we aged we would lose mental capacity; the best we could hope for would be to slow the inevitable erosion. This view has been largely discredited. We now know that the brain remains plastic; it can be profoundly remade throughout life. And according to the theory of neuroplasticity, what we experience can change the very structure and functioning of our brains. Connections within our brains are continually being pruned and created. Links can come and go in as little as a week. You will remember during the early days of the world wide web that those annoying Under Construction Icons were everywhere? So it is with your cerebral cortex, which is similarly in a state of perpetual overhaul.

  A key insight of neuroplasticity theory is that our brains are structured and restructured by our experiences. “It’s what you pay attention to. It’s what’s rewarding to you,” according to Michael Mer-zenich , one of the leading researchers in brain plasticity. In a 2004 TED talk , he goes on to say, “It’s all about cortical processing and forebrain specialization. And that underlies your specialization. That is why you, in your many skills and abilities, are a unique specialist. A specialist who is vastly different in your physical brain, in detail, from the brain of an individual a hundred years ago, enormously different in the details from the brain of an average individual a thousand years ago.”

  We interrupt this column for a brief rant. Why doesn’t everyone know about the non-profit TED