"Adeste Fideles" or "A Martian Christmas" by Frederik Pohl

First appeared in Ellen Datlow's Omni. Up for a Locus. Reprinted by Datlow and David Hartwell. The title is Latin for “O Come, All Ye Faithful.”

 

Summary:

 Henry Steegman is a construction engineer--that is, he drove tractors that bore holes through the deep rock of Mars. He and the Mars colonists have accidentally imbibed water contaminated with radioactive products so that they are all dying off. Meanwhile, it's Christmas and the inhabitants are celebrating. Steegman drives off on his tractor to make a number of discoveries.

 

Discussion with Spoilers and analysis:

 The first discovery is what appears to be a department store. Of course, everyone back on Earth is excited about Mars again. After people try to take credit and keep Henry from exploring his discovery for himself, presumably due to the advanced state of his illness, he goes on a second expedition, this time presumably finding the Martians himself where no one else can take credit.

The story defies any wisdom about writing I've heard. First, the character's goal is submerged (not fully conscious) and, if anything, is more ours than his. Second, the plot doesn't follow anything that plotters would say is a good plot--following no real established patterns that I can see. I can't see any literary writers finding it a knockout--and the majority of SF readers probably wouldn't either. It is a kind of literary SF, thought-provoking in a subtle manner. The thought provoked (or theme) is actually far outside whatever goals or conclusion the character himself may have come up with.

But it satisfies, in a few ways that stories have--one of the best of that collection. If I had to throw it against most SF stories, it would be at least in the top 10%. We need a definition of story the encompasses this kind of work.

There is, what may be, a flaw here in the main plot. Why a department store? Maybe because humanity at least used to flock to department stores during Christmas? Or is it because these aliens are just pets of another species? This is a minor blemish and doesn't much distract from the work as a whole.

My own idea about how the story satisfies: 1) mystery. Pohl has mined this territory in the Heechee series. 2) We are affronted on the character's behalf since he doesn't seem to care himself, but clearly Pohl knew we'd feel that way and had a road named after him.

Now the theme--the third way the story satisfies--is weird in that it is not so much connected to the character or our feelings about the character. This theme comes from the title--at least this is my reading. It's the opening story in the collection and the final vignette "The Huddling" (discussed here in a week, more or less) seem to confirm this (the two most important spots in any fiction): We now have a new savior whose ways are superior to ours. We need to learn their ways.

That may be, to wrestle with Pohl's theme, but if one savior failed to convert the masses toward his superior ways, why should we suspect these aliens to be any better at improving humanity?

 

 For links to other stories in this series/novel and comments on the novel they make, follow this link.

Greg Bear on Politics in Writing

"To handle the issue [terrorist action in "The Wind from a Burning Woman"] honestly, I had to make the “Burning Woman” fight for a cause that I, myself, would cherish. One editor, reading the story for an anthology on space colonies, rejected it because it didn’t overtly support the cause. It would have been dishonest to force the story into such a mold; however pleasant or unpleasant the result, my stories must work themselves out within their own framework, not according to some market principle or philosophical bias. It may be remarkable that, with such views, I’ve come as far as I have in publishing."

--Greg Bear from the "Preface" to The Wind from a Burning Woman.

I invited Greg Bear to write for an anthology that proposed a fascinating new ethos. And he said, "Stay away from ethos." My point was an SF-nal one: So many interesting ways of seeing the world. Let's go for a swim. He could have played the game yet opposed the ethos, too. 

His perspective, I think, could be summed up by the above. Each story has it's own way of thinking. Even as I felt he'd misunderstood, I admired as his staunch position about the writer being outside any set of predisposed rules.

Realistic Portrayals of Religion

 A group of us were discussing religion, science and science fiction, and Andy Dibble came up with some excellent rules for portrayal of religion, using Ursula LeGuin's The Telling as an example.

I'd also add one weird aspect to religion. It picks up whatever's around it like Silly Putty--sometimes not contradictory necessarily, but sometimes it is. Christmas trees, Ptolmeic solar system, holidays, etc. 

I forget which illustrated coffee table book it was, but Joseph Campbell pointed Hebrew coins where God had the feet of serpents. This would seem to contradict their religion due to the serpent in Eden. Campbell listed one reason for their inclusion as the bronze serpents they had to kiss thanks to Moses, but other interpretations might be possible. Still did the image seem to conflate the two contradictory images? Or was one trodding on the other? A nuanced view is preferable to the uncharitable.

We have names for things in the culture that are supposedly forbidden, but that isn't quite what happened. Some things are clearly verbotten in religions although contextual clues give a nuanced interpretation. Other times they're a verbal tradition, based on an interpretation that's difficult to pin down.

Within any religion, though, there are selective interpretations that suit believers, and sometimes don't suit them, so that they wrestle with passages trying to understand. This isn't not usually good guy vs. bad guy scenario, although it can be an interpretation that suits one's worldview. Perhaps the aforementioned Silly Putty analogy is the desire not to conform to the text, but to unite with those around them.

This may be perhaps too nuanced for a short story to handle well or a cursory examination of a religion. And my placing this here does not constitute approval or disapproval--merely an observation.

Open for Business--novel openings

Thumbing through a bunch of novels--all varieties--it surprises me at how few make the narrative interesting. They must be decent books. Someone took time to hone it and probably inflicted it on friends and mentors to read. And later, an editor bought it and--one would think--helped hone it further so that you have something interesting happening in the first two pages. Something. I'm not asking for a gunfight or a verbal one, but maybe. Something. 

This scene from Together is amazing on how it engages the viewer, and it's just two people talking to us:

(The first version I watched was cut so that it seemed like she'd just now made this meal for him with the aforementioned mushroom which was even more interesting, but best to cut it since it isn't a part of the movie.)

Presumably the writer has worked harder on his opening than any other part (with the possible exception of the ending), yet as I comb through book after book, here are a bunch of dull starts. I don't get how that's even possible. If I were the editor, the opening would be my first priority. Yes, we need a narrative that flows and makes sense and moves us at the end, but readers have to start somewhere, usually at the beginning.

I used to read Charles Bukowski as a young man--in part because he wasn't me. I liked his devil-may-care attitude, his humor, and his commitment to art despite being destitute and drunk half of his waking life. Honest where most keep silent, he opened life to the seamier side. His perspective should not be construed as matching mine.

But the point here at the beginning of his novel was that it not only hooks but also gets the reader to think about the narrative, about life. He packed more in a few sentences than some writers put into two pages. The following opening from Women isn't the full paragraph but it's enough. Even one sentence is enough, but reader beware. Bukowski is definitely R-rated and not recommended for the woke and the strict religious type--or really anyone who thinks people should only think as they do.

I was 50 years old and hadn't been to bed with a woman for four years. I had no women friends. I looked at them on the streets or wherever I saw them, but I looked at them without yearning and with a sense of futility.

Not beautiful, not evocative, but functional. We get character and struggle immediately in the first sentence. Whether the reader feels for his plight is another matter, but that may say as much about the reader as the writer.

One of my all-time favorites is Of Mice and Men. It starts off with two pages of setting (also theme although I didn't notice that until a later reading), and I was never bored. Rereading, I see that on a surface level, it's about the land and about how it's been used by animals and men before of characters enter. It's not what sells me on the book, but it's interesting enough--for a moment. Steinbeck seems aware of what he can get away with and how much: well written and a touch of interest.

A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green. The water is warm too, for it has slipped twinkling over the yellow sands in the sunlight before reaching the narrow pool. On one side of the river the golden foothill slopes curve up to the strong and rock Galiban mountains, but on the valley side the water is lined with trees–willows fresh and green with every spring, carrying in their lower leaf junctures the debris of the winter’s flooding; and sycamores with mottled, white, recumbent limbs and branches that arch over the pool. On the sandy bank under the trees there leaves lie deep and so crisp that a lizard makes a great skittering sound if he runs among them. Rabbits come out of the brush to sit on the sand in the evening, and the damp flats are covered with the night tracks of ‘coons, and with the spread pads of dogs from the ranches, and with the split-wedge tracks of deer that come to drink in the dark.

There is a path through the willows and among the sycamores, a path beaten hard by boys coming down from the ranches to swim in the deep pool, and beaten hard by tramps who come wearily down from the highway in the evening to jungle-up near water. In front of the low horizontal limb of a giant sycamore there is an ash pile made by many fires; the limb is worn smooth by men who have sat on it.

Simple and effective. 

If you can't sustain my interest for two pages--the two pages you presumably worked hardest on--how can you maintain it for a book? Maybe it picks up later. When you get a sample today, though--you only get ten to twenty pages of the opening--somehow you have to persuade the reader that this book is worth reading. 

I picked these not as exemplary but as simple and effective, picked because they aren't hitting you over the head with their hooks.

Ted Chiang on his Writing Process

Note: I have simplified and organized Chiang's responses. It may alter his intent somewhat. Feel free to consult the originals instead. 

1. I usually think about [an idea I'm interested in] for a long time, and 
2. write down my speculations... about how [they] could become a story. [From the McCarron interview:] I think about different possible stories set in such a world; I can usually come up with a bunch of starting points, but I don’t know where those would go.... 
3. I don't [write] the story... until I know how the story ends.... I write... the last paragraph... or a paragraph near the end.... *
4. The second thing I write is the opening of the story.
5. I write the key scenes or landmark scenes. [From the McCarron interview:] I don’t have the whole story worked out in detail, but I have a general sense of what needs to happen. Sometimes I’m able to borrow elements from the other starting points that previously seemed like dead ends to me, although not always. 
6. Then I just in backwards and forwards [in almost random order].

--Ted Chiang in The Metahack Interview (interviewed by Avi Solomon). The book is "free" through subscription to Amazon's Kindle Unlimited program.

--Ted Chiang in Electric Literature (interviewed by Meghan McCarron)

* The explanation of why Chiang writes the ending first:

"[I]f you’re writing a mystery story and you have no idea who the murderer is and are hoping to figure it out along the way, then the odds are not good that the culprit you eventually decide on will match all the clues you laid out. Not all stories are mysteries or whodunits, but I tend to approach my stories in a similar fashion. I need to know “who done it” before I can start."

--Ted Chiang in an interview with Betsy Huang of Asian American Literary Review

Ted Chiang on Character and Process

"I've tried writing a story when I didn't know where it was going, and it never went anywhere. I'm not one of those writers whose characters take control of the storyline; if a character isn't the sort of person who'd behave in the manner I need, I revise the character's personality to fit."

--Ted Chiang interviewed by Gavin J. Grant for Indiebound

"I'm most interested in writing about characters experiencing a moment of comprehension. Sometimes it's a conceptual breakthrough, sometimes it's just a flash of recognition."

--Ted Chiang interviewed by Jeremy Smith for Interzone 

Ted Chiang on Genre and the Difference between SF and Fantasy--Specifically Magic Vs. Science

"[M]y work remains close to traditional notions of science fiction. I like performing thought experiments, working through the implications of a speculative idea, and I think that’s something science fiction is particularly well suited for. [G]enre is a kind of conversation that takes place between books and authors over a period of years. [Y]our work is in dialogue with earlier work in that genre.... It’s a conversation I am happy to be a part of."

 --Ted Chiang in Unbound Worlds (interviewed by Peter Orullian)

"[T]here does exist a useful distinction... between magic and science. If... just a handful of special people... turn lead into gold, that implies different things than giant factories churning out gold from lead. The difference... is between the universe responding to you in a personal way, and the universe being entirely impersonal."

--Ted Chiang in The Metahack Interview (interviewed by Avi Solomon). The book is "free" through subscription to Amazon's Kindle Unlimited program.

"Science fiction offers... a story where the world starts out as recognizable... but is ... changed by some new discovery or technology. At the end... the world is changed permanently. The original condition is never restored.... this story pattern is progressive because its underlying message is ... that change is inevitable. The consequences ... are here to stay and we’ll have to deal with them."

--Ted Chiang in The Asian-American Literary Review (interviewed by Betsy Huang)

Ted Chiang on his Work, Translation, Philosophy, and Culture

"To the extent that my work is philosophical fiction, it's not reliant on American culture, and that might make it a good candidate for translation."

--Ted Chiang in The Metahack Interview (interviewed by Avi Solomon). The book is "free" through subscription to Amazon's Kindle Unlimited program.

NEWS: Robert J. Sawyer wins Heinlein award, free Pixar writing course

1. Robert J. Sawyer won the Heinlein award for "science fiction and technical writings to inspire the human exploration of space." Other award announcements can be found here at Locusmag.

2. Pixar has a free online writing course.

3. Richard Parks's first book in the Yamada series, which I recommended here, is on sale for $5 at Audible (among other first books in a series). It's worth it.

4. Nebraska Writing Workshops. Laura Madeline Wiseman will be doing a workshop in Chadron, NE. As a poetry workshop leader, she will give you constructive criticism and questions to ponder. If you're a poet in Western Nebraska (or South Dakota, Wyoming), check it out. Other writing workshops, dates, and Nebraska locations listed.

"If You Want" by Luc Reid

Appeared in Flash Fiction Online.

In a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style, Reid presents a second-person character to whom a world of misery slays him: from parents to orientation, to zombies, cryogenics and identity theft. The character is given his choices... (sort of a spoiler)

...and chooses something different. This one becomes powerful on reflection. Sometimes we humans pressure one another into binary decisions when another choice may actually be better. One might say this is about religion, but I think a better fit might simply be the arts (or politics or humanity) in how sometimes we pigeon-hole and limit what and who people can choose. But we have the ability to choose, to write our own stories. Potent.

The character isn't quite as sympathetic, perhaps because we never fully inhabit the character. The issue is the mirror opposite to Steven W. Johnson's "Monoceros, Ptolemy Cluster".

Updates on McLaw & How to Resolve Conflict

The Atlantic updated their article. At last, a good reporter. Thank you, Jeffrey Goldberg. Through no fault of the writer, the article clarifies some things, but not others. He is trying to get to the bottom of this.

Despite all the articles boldly claiming the contrary based on their reading into the lawyer's statement, the school's reaction was, in part, due to parents complaining about the books: "But some citizens did react to [the books], there were citizen complaints based on the book..." which doesn't surprise me. The original article wrote: "some parents tell WBOC they are concerned about safety." Yeah, they were. They probably prepared for the 2012 Mayan Armageddon, too.*

"McLaw had built a model of a school building in his home" -- "a" model, not any particular school, so it was likely research as well. It is not uncommon for writers to build a large database of information about a subject, draw maps, etc. to make sure the world they create is credible. Evidence dismissed.

I'm not sure about this: "asked an administrator to move classrooms, to one near the 'point of ingress and egress' of the school." That is bizarre although it gets more confusing why he would talk about his mother in this context.

One crime he is clearly guilty of: He is too enamored with $4 words**. Probably he should serve hard time in the halls of academia.* That may cure him.

Update updated: A response from McLaw himself this time. 

"I used to be in architecture and engineering. And as a result of that, as a hobby I built miniatures. And I built a miniature of a cruise ship, a miniature of a house, and a miniature school. Now given the situation, they have only focused on the miniature school,"

How did they get a hold of this model? Anyway, it seems even less incriminating than it wasn't to begin with.

It'd be nice to read the actual letter. I'm guessing the recipients didn't understand it due to McLaw's penchant** for $4 words. Maybe, if the letter comes out (not that it should or has to), I will side with those who messed up McLaw's life. But right now, their story is contradictory and incoherent.

* Jokes. 
** I use them, too, sparingly.

Conflict Resolution:

I am not opposed to parents defending their children. The passionate parent sometimes attacks while uninformed. Here's a simple resolution process that has been around for millennia: 

1. Ask your kid to resolve it. Have them call their teacher if need be. You may never need to get involved.
2. Gather information. Get your kid to say everything he knows. Ask, "Why did your teacher do/say that? Did you do something that caused this? What are you leaving out? You know I'm going to ask your teacher, so you'd better tell me everything."
3. Discuss the situation with teacher and your kid (try to understand where your kid's teacher is coming from). 
4. If it's not resolved, go up the chain: Principal, Superintendent, Board. 

Skipping steps in the conflict resolution process may cause unnecessary problems.

More about Education and the McLaw Affair

When I posted a few days ago, I was worried the story wasn't getting enough attention.  That has changed as the news has gone viral.

J D Wolverton makes good points about how McLaw is not a threat.

The Atlantic covered the story:  In Maryland, a Soviet-Style Punishment for a Novelist

A petition is circling at Change.org to reinstate and apologize to him publicly.

Tananarive Due ‏wrote my sentiments best (she should have written the petition): 

 "@DrHenryVWagner Is there more to the #PatrickMcLaw story than #writing a #scifi novel? If not, please reinstate him"

If there isn't anything else, hopefully everyone involved apologizes and feels shame for their mistreatment for this poor man.

UPDATE:  From the LA Times:

"It didn't start with the books and it didn't end with the books.... McLaw's letter... combined with complaints of alleged harassment and an alleged possible crime from various jurisdictions."   

Then where did the journalist get his information?  He made it appear that police turned up nothing.  Either someone led the journalist to believe that it was solely about the books, or the journalist made up the story.

Here's the original:

"He's a man with many names, and the books he has written have raised the concerns of the Dorchester County Board of Education and the Dorchester County Sheriff's Office."

So two things raised concerns, according to the original:  He used an alias and he wrote a book that has a school shooting in it.  The juxtaposition of the next two lines places the blame of the leave of absence on the books:

"he wrote two fictional books about the largest school shooting in the country's history set in the future. Now, Patrick McLaw is placed on leave."

The author spoke to Dorchester County Superintendent of Schools Dr. Henry Wagner and Dorchester Sheriff James Phillips.  How did he get the story wrong?

In other, related news--demonstrating a similar mindless craziness that can infect the American education system--PTA members plant drugs on another.

Teacher and writer-hopeful is whisked away to an unknown location because he wrote fiction.

This poor guy--Patrick McLaw, a middle school teacher--wrote a story set in the future about a school shooting. The opening reads like a classic detective scenario, and the detective is mourning the losses. It is not glorifying. The school not only took McLaw's job, but also banned him from setting foot in any public school and sent him to a mental institution. The book is fictional. Did anyone actually read his book first?*

He does need an editor. Adjectives, adverbs, and Latinate words abound. If he had had a good editor, the negative attention might have brought in a horde of readers.

I do wonder if he wanted some sort of attention. His pen name, Dr. K. S. Voltaer [Que es Voltaire? or what is Voltaire] alludes to Voltaire, who caused not a little scandal with his books. Candide questioned the common assumption of the day that everything happens for the best--prevalent despite the book of Job that explicitly states otherwise (some still hold this view). In the book, Candide, terrible things happen by chance, yet everyone persists in the folly of this perspective.

I hope people help this man stand back on his feet. And get him an editor.

* Granted, I have not either except the openings of his two novels, but from the sample, they seem a serious effort at fiction, not at glorifying destruction. Plus, he's written two books, which shows dedication to the craft at the least.

Reduced ebook lunches

Red Card and Other Stories 

by S.L. Gilbow 

$0.99

Note: I reviewed the title story here.

Spin State 

by Chris Moriarty 

$0.99

The Voyage of the Star Wolf 

by David Gerrold 

$0.99

Wizard's Worlds 

(Witch World Series) 

by Andre Norton 

$0.99

Deeply Odd 

Ian Watson 

$0.99

The Dragonriders of Pern: 

Dragonflight, Dragonquest, and The White Dragon 

(Pern: The Dragonriders of Pern) 

by Anne Mccaffrey 

$1.99

The Maze Runner 
(Maze Runner Series #1)
by James Dashner 
$1.99

World History: 

50 Key Milestones You Really Need to Know 

by Ian Crofton 

$1.99

50 Events You Really Need to Know: 

History of War 

by Robin Cross 

$1.99

Memoir: An Introduction 

by G. Thomas Couser 

$2.99

The New Oxford Book of Eighteenth-Cen​tury Verse 

by Roger Lonsdale 

$2.99

My First Novel 

by Cheryl Strayed, Rick Moody, Aimee Bender 

$2.99

Updated: Cat Rambo's writing advice

Associated Writing Activities

New Classes (hour talks, no exercises)

The Art of the Book Review

Online Presence

Cover Letter

Editing: Arranging Stories

Writing Mentors

Writing Things:

Tools For Writers: Recent Discoveries include AuthorGraph and Buffer

Five Gifts for Speculative Fiction Writers

Writing

Coaxing a Seed into a Story

Class Notes week 1

Titles

Openings: Foreshadowing and Establishing Conflict

5 Things To Do In Your First 3 Paragraphs

Senses

Active Verbs

Frame Stories

Plotting and Re-Plotting Stories

Impact on the Reader

Creating Emotional Impact Through Characters

POV

Male/Female perspective in story

Collaboration

Process

Endings

Theme/Rewriting/Humanity

Random Rewriting Tools

Repository for Other Story Notes

Fiction in Different Sizes:

Flash Fiction

Notes From Michael Stackpole’s “How To Write a Novel in 21 Days”

Lit Reactor articles on writing

How NOT to Get an Agent (And What to Do After You Get One)

Storyville: Ten Tips for Successfully Publishing Your Stories (interestingly suggests that writers simultaneously submit when possible)

15 Unconventional Story Methods

Finding Your Voice (A misnomer. It should be something like "How to Brand Your Work.")

Chuck Palahniuk: Nuts-and-Bolts: “thought”-verbs

36 more from Palahniuk (I'll be reading these that first was so juicy, half of it spilled out.  I'll have to eat it again)

"Jan/Feb 2013 Analog Editorial" by Stanley Schmidt

Analog, January/February 2013

Stanley Schmidt laments SF stories that mimick the fast pace of action movies:

"[T]here's more than one way for a writer or director to grab and hold a reader's or viewer's attention and undivided interest.  Really good writers and directors should be using the whole range of tools at their disposal."

Largely literary links

LA Times' David L. Ulin's perspective on reviews

SF Site Interview with writer/editor Eric James Stone (earlier review of his story collection)

91-year-old writer debuts first novel

Educator and author James Van Pelt on student essays and plagiarism

Charlie Jane Anders on her revision method

WWII bomb detonated in Germany

First-time novelist Eric Griffith on things he learned in the process

Simulating Literary Stories

Using an fMRI, scientists found “Readers understand a story by simulating the events in the story world and updating their simulation when features of that world change.”

Breaking Writing Rules

10 Writing Rules that io9 wants to see broken.

Also, 20 great infodumps.