There’s a standard bit of advice every new writer gets: ‘Show me, don’t tell me.”
As a reader, may I add another request?
Make me feel something when I read a story. Twist the knife a little. Make me laugh, cry, cringe, burst with pride and love. Make me yell at you, dear author – in joy or fury. Put some emotion on every page, every scene. Maybe not every sentence, because some apparently emotionless sentences are freighted with surrounding contexts. If you don’t understand contextual frameworks yet, for the love of Reason and Passion stop writing and go learn them.
When I’m not frantically writing on three separate big projects, I am reading a lot right now: old sf&f favorites, new sf&f thrillers and erotic romances from friends and fellow authors, beta reads for as-yet-unpublished geniuses, non fiction for research. I read online samples of commercial and self-published work, just to get a feel in the first few pages so I know to commit my money or not. I’m even reading fan fiction, in old favorite fandoms and some new ones.
Ted Sturgeon was right, bitches. 90% of everything is crud. It was true in 1951, and it’s true now. But I have hope. Because there is just so much more stuff published now, there is a larger proportion – I trust – that is excellent and worthwhile to read.
I don’t often give fan fiction recommendations, but I stumbled across a series that just blew me out of the water. Over on Archive of Our Own, there are probably more than 50,000 pieces set in the various Avengers milieus. The writer working under the name icarus_chained has a series about the development and possible futures of Tony Stark’s AI JARVIS, that is eerie, gorgeous, and heartwarming. If you follow it through the current chapter you will cry, I promise. If you don’t, you have nothing that passes for a soul.
There’s no sex, either hetero or homosexual. The characterizations are spot-on and faithful to the Marvel universes. The writing, barring some sentence fragments that might infuriate a grammar Nazi (but add to the conversational flow), is magnificent. In honor of Ironman 3 coming out in the States next week, please go read the JARVIS series.
Edited To Add: while you are over at A03, check out some of the other fics by icarus_chained. She’s a remarkable writer across several fandoms.
And now for the philosophical Public Service part of this post.
Humanity stands at a vital crossroads in this century. I think our cleverness and technology, properly applied, CAN save us from the grim challenges ahead. But only if we admit those challenges are real. And only if we regain and advance the Enlightenment ideals of reason, knowledge, and curiosity. Around the world, there are spreading pockets of anti-intellectualism, a distrust of ourselves and our own growth as a species. The trope of the ‘Mad Scientist’ is alive and well, sadly. So are post-Apocalyptic settings in fiction, as if even in our dreams we have already given up on a Good Future (which will be another rant of mine.)
So is the trope of the ‘Bad Robot’.
Artificial Intelligence does not have to be an evil SkyNet or a deranged Hal 9000. Even back in Neuromancer, William Gibson showed that AIs would probably swiftly outpace their creators – and that didn’t have to be a bad thing. In his Culture space opera novels, British author Iain Banks showcases a series of brilliant, quirky, real, and (mostly) benevolent AI Minds I would be proud to call friends. In fact, I’d ditch this mudball for a Culture Orbital right now, if a ride presented itself. But like everyone else, I’m stuck here.
We’re going to need every bit of possible assistance in the next few centuries, if we want to 1) save this planet as a worthwhile home, and 2) find other places to live. AI minds are probably going to be part of that future. Stories like Neuromancer, the Culture novels, and icarus_unchained’s fanfic are possible blueprints for how to deal with those minds in a valuable partnership.
AI minds will be our children, in a sense. We will owe them the same warmth, trust, and teaching we (should) give our biological children.
Author’s note from 8-11-2013: Who are you folks? Are you getting anything useful out of this blog? For some reason that I cannot figure out, this particular post gets so many distinct hits, and I’d love to learn why.