In September of 2007, I started this blog
with a bit of writing advice. A little over a year later, I discovered how
little I knew about writing after hearing children’s writer, Lin Oliver speak
at a convention hosted by the Minnesota Society of Children’s Book Writers and
Illustrators. Since then, I have shared (with their permission) and applied the
writing wisdom of Lin Oliver, Jack McDevitt, Nathan Bransford, Mike Duran,
Kristine Kathryn Rusch, SL Veihl, Bruce Bethke, and Julie Czerneda. Together
they write in genres broad and deep, and have acted as agents, editors,
publishers, columnists, and teachers. Since then, I figured I’ve got enough
publications now that I can share some of the things I did “right” and I’m busy
sharing that with you.
While I don’t write full-time, nor do I make
enough money with my writing to live off of it...neither do all of the
professional writers above...someone pays for and publishes ten percent of what
I write. When I started this blog, that was NOT true, so I may have reached a
point where my own advice is reasonably good. We shall see! Hemingway’s quote
above will now remain unchanged as I work to increase my writing output and
sales! As always, your comments are welcome!
I liked this
world, but because it’s so dark, I haven’t gone back since.
Why is it dark? Because
there is still racism; there is still poverty and its attendant violence; there
is still despair; there is still child abuse.
Stan Schmidt didn’t
want it for ANALOG because it was “too bleak”. I wonder what Trevor Quachri
would think now? Bleakness seems to be the name of the game that our
politicians are playing, no matter their stripe. Argument and bad-mouthing seem
to be the order of the day – whether Republican or Democrat, with both loudly
blaming the other for, well, everything.
So maybe “Skipping
School” would play better today. I’ll have to see. You CAN read the story in
its entirety here: https://theworkandworksheetsofguystewart.blogspot.com/2013/12/skipping-school.html
In it, I
postulate matter transmission has become commonplace; but it doesn’t work over
large distances. There are limiting factors, unlike in Star Trek where you can
even do “transwarp beaming”. In my story, you can beam – or “skip” – only a
fifteen meters. Strictly line-of-sight travel.
For safety
reasons, the technology has been implemented as a way of crossing busy streets.
I know, would you REALLY trust a skipgate to transfer you over a busy street
without slowing down are stopping?
Hmmm…I can only
say that it took about a half century for Humans to go from experimental
heavier-than-air flight to commercial trans-Atlantic crossings, and now people
don’t give a second thought to flying from Minneapolis to London, non-stop
fully expecting to get there in eight hours. Few, if any, think of the
possibility of crashing in the North Atlantic because it just doesn’t happen.
In my future, the
skipgate has been accepted as the only way to cross a busy street and no one
gives it a second thought. But there are rumblings that it’s possible to program
the ‘gate to transmit to distant ‘gates.
The information is
underground though probably in labs, too. A former street cop and teacher has
the information, but none of the kids – skipsnatchers – trust her to learn the
technique. They also don’t go to school because in this future, schools are
entirely privatized. The government can hardly afford to feed and medicate the
public, let alone educate it, too. (PS – I don’t see this as an impossible
future. The school I work at is bogged down by both endless regulations and
endless expectations. The system as it is can hardly take any more weight
before it begins to hemorrhage both talent and resources – because the schools
do not produce anything tangible. We can’t even agree on what it means to be “educated”…)
I’ve commented on
“education” in the past: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2011/09/possibly-irritating-essays-educating.html,
https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2014/10/possibly-irritating-essays-science.html,
https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2017/07/slice-of-pie-another-stab-at-teaching.html,
https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2016/08/slice-of-pie-does-science-fiction-still.html,
so I won’t go on a rant here. But in this future, which I admit is bleak,
Jonterrius has only had a rudimentary education because his father was an
English teacher in one of the corporate schools. Also, don’t get me wrong, the
aim of a corporate school would be to create educated workers, so the
curriculum would be slanted at an angle designed to produce the best employees.
This however, is no different from the stated goal of public education as
condensed by Mortimor Adler in 1982: “to the develop citizenship, [stimulate] personal
growth or self-improvement, and
occupational
preparation.”
Is that what we
SHOULD be developing? Or should we be working to create men and women who can
think for themselves? But THAT wouldn’t be testable, would it?
At any rate,
Jonterrius and the “legless woman in a wheelchair” strike a deal: he would lure
homeless kids in with a key code to jump to one other skipgate. She would
educate the kid – hopefully not at a desk and by rote…
It took me awhile
to sell this one because it IS dark. But I think there’s a light at the end of
the tunnel. One commenter noted that the ending was too pedantic and obvious; I’d
have to agree. I need to tighten it and maybe make parts of it more explicit. I
don’t know. I DO know I’d like to update it and sell it again!
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