In 2005, whilst perusing the shelves at the
Hennepin County Public Library, I stumbled across CHANGING VISION by Julie
Czerneda (say it: chur-nay-dah), an author I'd never heard of, and was
intrigued by the aliens on the cover by artist Luis Royo. It didn’t matter that
the book was the second in a series, the cover entranced me and so I read. The
book was spectacular, I read others, and fell entirely in love with another
series of hers called SPECIES IMPERATIVE for its fascinating aliens and
superior characterization. A teacher deeply at heart, Julie Czerneda shares
ideas and methodology wherever she goes. On her website, http://www.czerneda.com/classroom/classroom.html
she shares ideas for writers. I want to share what kind of impact her ideas
have had on my own writing. They are
used with the author’s permission.
“Consequence: The
answer this particular story provides to your ‘what if’ speculation.”
I am at the very
beginning of a story I have waited a long time to write and I can’t get get it
right...
I realized yesterday
that the reason I can’t get the beginning right is that I’m not sure what the
consequences of the “what if” is.
The scenario: In a
universe without intelligent aliens – at least as far as we can tell – Humanity
has created its own aliens through genetically engineering itself for multiple
and extreme environments.
We have done this to
such an extent that a segment of Humanity cried “foul!” and broke off, forming
its own Empire far from this creation of alien life forms. The Empire forbids
this extreme engineering and has come to “grade” Humans based on the amount of
engineering they were created with. If you are 65% “unaltered base Human genome
as compared to the 20th Century Human Genome Project parameters”,
then you are Human. If you are only 64% unmodified, you are NOT Human and are
exiled or terminated.
The story takes
place in this Confluence & Empire universe, on a border world settled by
the most cold-hardy souls from Old Earth.
An ambassador and
his wife had their son gengineered to be a Human translating construct. He wanted
nothing to do with it and became a musician instead, plying his trade on the
superhabitable world Yuán, orbiting Alpha Centauri B. Dad’s career is going
down the tubes, and so he “kidnaps” his son to try to force this cold world to
choose entry in the Confluence.
Success in this
would do nothing to hurt his lapsed reputation, and the presence of a unique
life-extending substance found there would perhaps seal for him a place of
honor in the Confluence. It might also heal their estrangement and allow the
man to return to his wife, who separated from him when he would not release his
son to his own career.
His son is murdered.
Now what?
I seem to have
reached the climax without ever starting the story. But I don’t want this to be
a “simple” palace intrigue story with a sad ending. I want to know what this
man will do, sitting on a windswept, frozen plateau, waiting to be picked up
with the body of his son. What will his ex-wife do? What will his friends do? What
will he do when his pathetic career ends abruptly with this tragedy?
Should he just kill
himself? He has a knife and he understands what he could do. He is sitting
outside on deathwatch over the body. He could simply take off his hotsuit and
let the cold take him – a slow death of increasing numbness followed by a
permanent sleep.
But there is a third
person. An elderly Inuit-Norwegian woman; silent on her ice block stool, she
just watched him. Who is she? Why is she here?
Our “hero” has no
idea. They do not speak the same language – she uses the patois of English,
Norwegian, and Russian with a smattering of French, Urgul, Quechua, Spanish,
and Chinese words thrown in for good measure. That’s why he brought his son. He
can say simple phrases.
So there’s the set
up. Julie Czerneda asks me to determine the CONSEQUENCE of this “what if” I’ve
set up. I know that the consequence is complex. That’s why I resisted writing
this story until I thought I was skilled enough to handle it. It’s also not going
to be a “standard” science fiction story. It leans in the direction of literary
stories. To that end, I’m currently rereading Ursula K. LeGuin’s THE LEFT HAND
OF DARKNESS. It’s science fiction, for sure. It’s characters, while “alien” are
a Human variant that has returned to what we might call a primitive state of
sexuality – in order to mate, they must be “in heat” like a dog or a cat or a
horse. Of course, she stirs the pot more thoroughly by adding that these Humans
can change gender when they go into heat (kemmer,
she calls it). She spends the book exploring the CONSEQUENCES of such a world
and did such a good job, she won both the Hugo and the Nebula – and a place on
the “assigned reading” list of countless colleges.
So – consequences of
the “what if”...
I am still pondering
– but the truth is that writing this essay has given me some ideas and it has
clarified what I am about! So, if you’ll excuse me, I have a story to work on!
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