I may have mentioned that one of my goals is to increase
my writing output, increase my publication rate, and increase the relevance of my
writing. In my WRITING ADVICE column, I had started using an article my sister sent
me by Lisa Cron. She has
worked as a literary agent, TV producer, and story consultant for Warner Brothers,
the William Morris Agency, and others. She is a frequent speaker at writers’ conferences,
and a story coach for writers, educators, and journalists. I am going to fuse
the advice from her book WIRED FOR STORY with my recent trip to South Korea. Why? I made a discovery there. You’ll hear
more about it in the future as I work to integrate what I’m learning from the
book, the startling things I found in South Korea, and try and alter how I write
in order to create characters that people will care about, characters that will
speak the Truth, and characters that will clearly illustrate what I’m writing
about.
“Remember when Luke has to drop the bomb into
the small vent on the Death Star? The story writer faces a similar challenge of
penetrating the brain of the reader. This book gives the blueprints.” – David
Eagleman
In considering my next move with the Korean Solar Expansion series, I’m
going to look at these two elements:
“Cheomsongmae is an ancient astronomical observatory that not only
survived the southern advance of North Korea during the war, but is now a place
Koreans visit. It has existed since roughly since 640 AD – about 1400 years.”
Add that to the first, most important point that I extracted from Cron’s
WIRED FOR STORY: “Story is how a character reacts; to the plot which is what
happens.”
I’m going to add another element to this as well. From this essay https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2019/10/elements-of-cron-and-korea-where-do-i.html,
I’m going to extract this: “He grew up in South Korea, going to schools there
until his family moved back to the US. He enlisted in the Air Force, became a
pilot after going to college and getting his first degree in aerospace
engineering.”
In addition to something like this happening to my grandchildren, I
also have a former student who graduated from high school (not spectacularly,
but he did graduate), who worked at Target. A fine job, but not exactly what he
wanted. That was the problem though. He didn’t know WHAT he wanted. A little
over a year ago, I ran into him at his work and he was excited –
uncharacteristically so. He thought he knew what he wanted in life and he asked
to come and see me at school. We met and he told me he wanted to enlist in the
Air Force and become a mechanic. That was great, but being who I am, we talked
a bit more and I suggested he look higher – maybe even to space.
The thing is, he’d never thought of that.
I remember when the desire of many kids was to “be an astronaut”. I
haven’t really heard that sentiment in recent years. In fact, since the
American Human space program essentially died with the moth-balling of the
Space Shuttle fleet (which needed to happen, by the way. They were old. The
first tested in 1977, the last landing in 2011 – so thirty-four years they flew
the same design with only minor modifications.
Eight years later, and Americans still have not gone into space on
anything but the Russian Soyuz spacecraft (though supplies have been delivered
by the US (Cygnus), Russia (Progress), the European Space Agency (ATV), SpaceX
(Falcon), and Japan (Kounotori).
So, where does story
come in here? What would happen if an amateur built a space craft? This was an “everyday
occurrence” in the stories of Robert A. Heinlein; most notably ROCKET SHIP
GALILEO. Amazon.com has several books delineating the creation of amateur
rockets and pushing the boundaries higher and higher. One article linked below
notes that government agencies actually need to monitor amateur launches.
While nothing like
Rocket Ship GALILEO has happened, the operative word here would be “YET”. Some
years ago, I tried a story in which NASA spread out its satellite and supply launches
by creating a mobile launch platform. This is NOT a crazy idea. The military has
the capability of moving missile launch systems and does so on a regular basis.
The launcher is surrounded by support vehicles like a mobile “mission control”,
tracking radar, and power generators. While the missiles are small, there doesn’t
seem to me to be any barrier to ramping up the size. Also, with the development
of SpaceX’s soft-landing system, completed successfully in 2015, seems to
indicate that while I doubt we’d want to try and land rockets in suburban
neighborhoods, it’s technically feasible.
So, the basis of
my story? A fresh technical college graduate (yes, he understands theory, but
no, he can’t calculate orbits in his head at the drop of a hat and then explain
the physics of rocket launches…) with certifications in several areas pertinent
to space travel; he has ideas and plans but hasn’t had any kind of experience
in space.
Like Tom Godwin’s “Cold
Equations” (ASTOUNDING Science Fiction, August 1954. Read a reprint here in
LIGHTSPEED, http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-cold-equations/),
what if he stowed away? In recent years, there have been profound criticism
leveled at this story. James Davis Nicoll wrote at Tor.com, “But of course, the
point of the story, as determined by the author and his editor, John W.
Campbell, Jr., is to underline a moral: the universe doesn’t care about human
feelings. Natural law dictates that hard men must make hard choices. What the
story actually says is that lousy procedures kill. Just
another instance of humans looking for justifications to be beastly to
each other.” (https://www.tor.com/2019/04/29/on-needless-cruelty-in-sf-tom-godwins-the-cold-equations/)
So, given a smart
enough person (I’d write the main character as female (using my granddaughter
as a template), but I don’t want to appropriate the gender narrative…but I
COULD have my writer/daughter read it and comment! Hmmm…), they could get into
such a ship and stowaway into space, take notes (probably dictating via
cellphone – would a standard cellphone work in space?), return, and then go on to
build an amateur spacecraft; possibly launching it from a balloon…or some such…let
me see…where’s my clipboard? Excuse me while I start a story outline, working
title, “The Manipulated Equations”…
Resource: https://www.creativelive.com/blog/essential-storytelling-techniques/,
https://newatlas.com/homebuilt-single-person-spacecraft-tested/18816/,
https://realdoctorstu.com/2011/01/14/how-to-build-a-spaceship-the-best-and-worst-amateur-astronauts/,
https://www.dailydot.com/parsec/brief-history-amateur-space-flight/
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