ATTACK OF THE SCENE-STEALERS June 11, 2009
Over the years, a strange transformation has come over me and my
work.
When I started writing novels, they were all about the Grand Idea.
Everything else, the characters, the settings, the circumstances, was
created to highlight and showcase that set of principles that we call
libertarianism. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with any of that, of
course.
I’m not exactly sure when it began to happen, whether it was an
abrupt occurrence or happened gradually — it’s extremely difficult to
tell that kind of thing with your own creations — but somewhere along
the line, I had became fascinated with the phenomenon of _character_.
I never lost sight of the Grand Idea, or tired of lecturing about it
(as many a disgruntled editor will attest) but more and more, it was
conveyed through the ideas and actions of the people inhabiting my
books.
And as that change started seeping into the mix, I found myself
thinking and writing about what makes some individuals capable of
carrying the Grand Idea forward and other individuals incapable of it.
I said once (I forget where) that the great historic failing of this
country is that somehow its people never quite measured up to the
ideal it was built on. Now, perhaps — none of this ever grew out of
any conscious decision I was aware of — I was trying to figure out
why.
At the same time, I was constructing certain characters who were
worthy of the ideals that they stood for, and I struggled to make them
as real, as human as I could (I’d never cared much for the Randian
equivalent of New Soviet Man; I always thought Hank Reardon was much
more heroic — and interesting — than John Galt, who always seemed
like a bit of a store dummy to me), without falling back on the tired
and counterproductive strategy of fitting them out with a “tragic
flaw”.
Being human, my characters all had to have outlooks and opinions,
attitudes and feelings, that accounted for who and what and how they
were. They had to have backgrounds consistent with all of that. Now
that I think of it, I suppose that’s what got me into the Family Saga
business.
Take the current instance, my novel _Ceres_, being published by
installment at
Llyra and Wilson Ngu, its viewpoint characters, are the great
grandchildren of (among others) Emerson, the hero of _Pallas_, and
Rosalie Frazier Ngu. They are the grandchildren of William Wilde and
Julie Segovia Ngu, who are the principal characters of my forthcoming
novel, _Ares_. They are the children of Adam Ngu and Ardith Zacharenko
Ngu, whose stormy romantic relationship is one of the problems of the
book.
An element in Llyra’s character: she feels she’s somehow to blame
for the trouble between her folks, or at least has the power to fix
it.
Sometimes, a character created to be a “spear-carrier” takes over
and threatens to steal the book. Lucy Kropotkin did that, both in _The
Probability Broach_ and _The Venus Belt_. Eventually an author comes
to recognize that as a good thing.
In _Ceres_, it was Jasmeen Khalidov, Llyra’s skating coach, tutor,
and companion, who grew from a shadow in the background into a person
fully as important as Llyra and her brother. Born to Mohammed and
Beliita Khalidov, a pair of Chechen refugees — colonists on Mars —
who will be important in _Ares_, Jasmeen is torn between her stoic
upbringing and the need she perceives in Llyra for a hand to hold and
a shoulder to cry on, things the little girl can’t seem to depend on
from her own mother.
Even minor characters interest me, people like Llyra’s uncles,
Arleigh and Lindsay Ngu, Adam’s secretary Ingrid Andersson, a Japanese
girl whose crackpot father changed the family name out of a belief
that Vikings, sailing through the Northwest Passage, did what
Christopher Columbus failed to do, discover Japan. Then there is news
anchor Honey Graham, ecoterrorist Robert Fulton, and others you will
meet.
Now I can hear a lot of you — mostly it’s the guys — muttering
about “all this soap opera crap”, when what you really want to read
about is gunfights, explosions, space battles, and dead badguys
scattered all over the landscape. Oh, yeah, and plenty sex. Trust me,
gentlemen, all of this character development and revelation is the
equivalent to bringing 3D to the movies. If you know a lot about these
characters, then you’ll care a lot more about whether they live or
die.
Or get laid.
And that goes for villains, too. Wait’ll you meet Johnnie and
Krystal!
When I started writing science fiction novels, I was informed by
an editor that 90 percent of my readers would be adolescent Jewish
boys on the east coast. I have nothing against adolescent Jewish boys
on the east coast, but I wanted a wider audience than that. I knew
J.R.R. Tolkien, Frank Herbert, and Anne McCaffrey had no difficulty
attracting female readers, and I wanted some of that action. But I
wasn’t writing about elves, giant phallic sandworms, or dragons, so
after a while I decided to just write what was in me to write, and not
worry.
Now, without really meaning to, I’m writing things that may be of
more interest to women and girls than previously. And I haven’t left
out a single gunfight, explosion, space battle, and dead badguy. The
universe of _Pallas_, _Ceres_, _Ares_, and _Beautiful Dreamer_ is very
real to me, very important, and a very nice place to spend some time
away from the increasingly depressing universe in which we really
live.
Please share it with me.
And bring along some friends.
- Posted in : Politics
- Author :Administrator
Comments»
It is indeed a beautiful multiverse you’ve created. So nice that if it didn’t already exist in your writings, it would be necessary to invient. -smile-
I’ve enjoyed all of your books. But the character development in “Pallas”, “Henry Martyn”, and “Bretta Marten” is one of the things that make these three of my favorite novels by any writer. I look forward to more adventures of the Ngu family, and hopefully more of the Islay family as well.
Thanks, guys. The hell of it is I know the worth of my work and that it will be read and appreciated by vastly more people someday — provided our civilization continues to exist, which is a real question now, I think. It will just be very annoying not to be around to enjoy and benefit from it.
As Woody Allen said, “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work, I want to achieve it by not dying.”
Both would be okay.
I’d rather more people read your work NOW. But getting through the Mainstream Publishers gatekeepers is like pissing up a rope.
That’s why we’re running _Ceres_ onlne, so that it will acquire a following that will interest a publisher. Be embarrassing for them if it went to the movies first, don’t you think?
What, no disgruntled Sicilian family doctors on the east coast?
I join you in regarding Hank Rearden as a more interesting and useful character than John Galt (or anyone else in the novel, including Dagny Taggart), but that’s because he’s the real Atlas in the story - the one I was really watching for the dramatic development. Galt had already shrugged; Dagny has no real moral investment in anyone but herself, and the rest of the characters are mouthpieces, plain and simple.
I could picture Hank Reardon in a “stand an’ be still to the Birken’ead drill” situation (”When the fox gnaws - SMILE!”), but not Dagny.
I suppose I’m more of a Heinleinophile than a Randroid….
I’d tried to send the following to you by e-mail, but got a “bounce-back” from each of the addresses I have for you. I’m posting it here, and you may please feel free to remove it if you find it impertinent.
–
With what is being received by the Wikipedia apparatchiki as malicious intent, I have been adding to the Wikiquote and Wikipedia pages pertinent to you and your work. Lately, when you’ve uttered something I consider worth remarking upon, I figure it’s worthwhile to cite it on Wikiquote with a link to the online page upon which you’d published it. Your remarks about Wikipedia’s practices with regard to Barry Soetoro (also known as Barack Hussein “No, You Can’t See My Long-Form Signed-in-the-Maternity-Ward Birth Certificate, Damn You!” Obama*) on 15 March 2009 were simply too tempting.
A number of quotations on the Wikiquote page that had previously been attributed to you - by others, not me - without specific sources (and there are many of these on the Internet) had been stripped and moved to a subordinate “Discussion” page by one of Wikipedia’s many self-appointed, self-inflating, “gee-looka-how-much-I’ve-done-for-Wikipedia” editors without bothering to undertake the sort of fact-checking that I was able to accomplish in about thirty minutes using Google and a strong right arm.
Apparently there is a policy to extirpate such unsourced quotations from all Wikiquote pages, though I confess that I’ve found it unevenly - perhaps we might say selectively - implemented. Given that when quotations are clearly packaged under headings like “Sourced” and “Unsourced,” there is adequate warning given as to the reliability of these materials, and there is even a tacit admonition to the general public that if someone reading an “Unsourced” quotation knows whence it had been drawn and can verify it, he should edit the Wikiquote page to move it from “Unsourced” to “Sourced.”
Deleting or hiding “Unsourced” quotations away effectively forecloses such efforts. Very un-Wiki policy, wouldn’t you think?
Meanwhile, my complements on and appreciation for what I’ve read of Ceres thus far. Thank you.
–
Sorry for the imposition.
I won’t believe you’ve let a character get away from you until you create an authoritarian who is more sympathetic than your libertarian characters, actually does something to further liberty, and yet remains an authoritarian at the end, leaving faithful fans waiting for him to turn up in your next novel and be converted to libertarianism.
After years of hearing back up singers outsing lead singers and backup dancers outdance lead dancers I am not surprised that as a novel, especially by a brilliant writer “steal the scene.”
> I’m more of a Heinleinophile than a Randroid
That describes me pretty much, too. We owe Rand an enormous debt, one that will become more apparent with the passage of time, for the philosophical structure she has given us. And I disagree with those who feel she was a bad writer. I do this stuff for a living, and it’s partly on account of her. She was extremely good, but her books had a heavy load to carry, and that sometimes slowed them down.
Heinlein was a far more complete human being (isn’t it odd that neither of them had children — except for us, of course), and it showed in his work. He understood heroism and he understood excellence, but he was kindly and tolerant of the amiably incompetent and the modestly corrupt.
Being the age I am, I always mentally pictured Hank Reardon being played in a movie by Spencer Tracy. No, Kate Hepburn was not Dagny Taggart.
Hey, R.D., it’s no imposition at all, but extremely interesting, and I’m grateful for your interest and effort. I don’t know what’s going on with my e-mail address. The one I use most is lneil@netzero.com .
Al, you have no idea what a coincidence you’ve stumbled into, and I can’t tell you about it right now. When the time comes, just remember I said, “Lincoln, Nebraska”.
Looks like I’ve got to get the “Martyn” books some time, those I think are the only ones I haven’t read yet.
Looking at what _does_ get published, I have to wonder at the sanity of those publishing flappers. _Ceres_ is GOOD.
There are a few stories I could tell about my experiences with New York publishers. Maybe I will, some day. There are also some good folks in the industry who have done what they could to help me. I just wish my sales had justified their efforts. I suppose it’s an admission a writer should never make to his readers, but it’s a continuing source of pain and puzzlement to me why my books don’t sell better than they do.
Frankly, I think that the “mainstream publishers” are in roughly about the position that the “mainstream news media” are—and, like the MSM, it’s thanks to the Internet. Between that and “print-on-demand” technology, they soon will no longer control what gets out into the marketplace.
Considering the commercial success sf has been all my life, if 90 percent of it’s readers were “Jewish Boys on the East Coast” it becomes obvious that Judaism is the primary religion of the United States and that the US East coast has a dense enough population to create a gravitational anomaly.
I take it the statement wasn’t made by a senescent goy. Maybe Bernie Gruenblum should be the protaganist in a couple more novels (or novelette potboilers in the old Ace Double style).
“…it’s a continuing source of pain and puzzlement to me why my books don’t sell better than they do.”
You and me both. I gave TPB to one of my dearest friends back when it first came out and all she had to say was “I don’t understand it.” And my then-wife read “Bucketeers” and thought it was terrible, “Aliens aren’t like that” was her main comment! You can see why she soon became my ex-wife.
Both these folks were avid Trekkies, so maybe that’s it….
But on the other hand, my stepdauthter was an avid Trekkie, and when she first read TPB, she wanted to MOVE there
Can I post a URL here?
I wrote an entry in a discussion about Intellectual Property where I put in this blog, and thought y’all might want to drop in. I know you’ve heard of the Free State Project:
http://forum.freestateproject.org/index.php?topic=17708.msg215805#msg215805
Let’s see if the URL works…
Ken,
I’ve said to more than one person that if the Tom Paine Maru EVER docks, I’m grabbing my kids and getting on board if I had to do so naked and screaming.
I’ll scrub floors ’till I learn enough of the new tech to get along, I don’t care.
Did I mention I’m in the middle of reading Brightsuit McBear to my daughter at bedtime?
LOL!
It has *always* been the characters in your books that drew me to them. The stories were good, but the characters - they were more than good. They were great.
Even today, decades later, I think fondly of the only “old lady” in the Confederation, a whole clan of gorillas, especially one that likes to roller skate, a particular detective with many legs, a chimp who runs a GREAT eating place, and more.
-Paul
Well, I didn’t mean to solicit praise, but you guys almost make me weep. For what it’s worth, Paul, one of my most recent editors has tried repeatedly to chastise me because certain of my characters, in his view, are “cardboard”.
I hope everybody will warm to the characters in _Ceres_. I find it particularly satisfactory (as I believe I’ve said boringly, over and over) to write in this universe. There are big, big surprises ahead that I’ve been planning for years and can’t wait to unleash on my unsuspecting readers!
Greetings,
I don’t know what they are talking about with sales (unless theirs are like Hollywood’s - aka cooked); between 1980 and a few days ago, I had purchased *new* at least three copies of all your books - though some from other publishers. I still have two hardback copies of Pallas - both are pretty worn but holding up. I wonder if Emeril Lagasse or Wolfgang Puck help those publishers? (Yes, I do believe they operate very unevenly - IIRC Lee & Miller had the same problem with their Liad series - consistently sold out [one book store with which I am familiar had a *weekly* standing order of ten of each of their first three titles - in less than four months, they sold several hundred of each title in a small town in SE AZ. Sadly, that independent bookstore has been out of business since the late '90s.])
I am glad to see you are continuing to write - I sincerely hope that one day you get *C&C” out for us to enjoy.
Characters? Ex-Lt. Bear was much more established in my mind than Hari Seldon, even back in 1980 in The Venus Belt. (I bought it at a Stars&Stripes bookstore in Kunsan AB, Korea, then found they didn’t carry Probability Broach - had to special order in those days before Amazon - then had to wait until I got back to the States because my order got lost.)
Please keep up the great work - you are one of the few remaining authors whose book I’ll pick up without even seeing the cover or intro.
Stay safe -
I don’t know what to tell you about sales, Jim. I’ve run into some pretty sleazy characters in publishing, who I was certain were lying to me about sales, and sometimes it seemed that the bigger an outfit was, the sleazier it was. I guess that’s no big revelation now, in what we might call the post-Enron era, but it certainly was back when I was getting started.
On the other hand, I’ve met and done business with some extremely good people (I think) whom I appear to have disappointed, saleswise, which makes me very sad, both for them, and for this country which could have used the philosophy that suffuses my work. I’ve tried to punch up sales myself — for example, with _Forge of the Elders_ — but I wasn’t able to change a damn thing.
I knew right at the beginning that I would never win any thanks from the left wing socialists who dominate the trade. To the best of my recollection I have never so much as been nominated for a Hugo or a Nebula, and I never really expected to be. I have four Prometheus Awards (well, three and a half) so far, and enjoy that.
All I can do is keep writing what it’s in me to write — I have many more ideas for books than I’ll ever be able to write in my remaining lifetime — release it into whatever medium is available to me, and let the chips (the term always makes me think about buffalo instead of gaming tables) fall where they may.
Curt: “I?ve said to more than one person that if the Tom Paine Maru EVER docks, I?m grabbing my kids and getting on board if I had to do so naked and screaming.”
You got that right!
Jim Emmons: “…I sincerely hope that one day you get *C&C? out for us to enjoy.”
I guess you haven’t heard Forge of the Elders IS all 3 of the C&C novels (including the previously unpublished last one. In many ways, that book is my fave of all of El Neil’s books… except for TPB… and Roswell, of course… and … and … anyway.
_Forge of the Elders_ was very lightly rewritten from what readers think of as the original three volumes. Fact is, it was my agent at the time who insisted that the book I had conceived be broken up that way, and the titles were the idea of the original publisher.
I changed the names of the refitted shuttles to reflect a slightly different political landscape. I also switched from weapons using .41 Action Express (which never quite made it) to “.40 Liberty”. I don’t recall what the service weapon was to begin with (Baby Eagles?), but it became the EAA Witness. And an Israeli pocket 9mm that never caught on became the Kahr K9. These are weapons I have myself, and know very well.
If there are other changes, I don’t recall them.
Lots of things were fun for me about writing _Forge_, including the fact that it’s a Darwin’s Delight, full of dozens of different alien species — all of which evolved on Earth. My own special favorite were the spiders.
If it weren’t for a number of obstacles standing in the way, I could happily do a book’s worth of short stories which might be called _The Casebook of Eichra Oren_, violent and sexy murder mysteries to be solved by him and Sam, mostly at the behest of Mr. Thoggosh, where we would run into all my different sapient critters. Probably set before _Forge_.
P.S. I think my next new blog entry is going to be on the the “Herron .270 StaggerCyl” carried by Wilson Ngu in _Ceres_. You can get a step ahead by reading up on the silhouette competition cartridge .270 REN — a fascinating concept.
What about the genetically engineered blue kitten? When do we get to see that?
Uh-oh. Incipient Alzheimer’s Alert! Remind me about the blue kitten, I’m preoccupied and drawing a blank.
1) I’m glad I happened to read the comments today, as I had no idea the .270 REN existed. Now I just have to wait for the Herron.
2) Without character, it would all become polemic. I read your books mainly because I simply like them. They make me smile, and laugh, and hope. Yeah, sometimes I read to learn, and to make myself some kind of a better person (whatever that means) but the reality is that I read because I enjoy it, and it’s a way for me to escape my reality.
When I was a kid, I wasn’t much of a reader. So, my Dad bought this huge stack of records (yep, vinyl, that was the state of the art then) of all of his favorite radio shows that he listened to growing up. Everything from _The Shadow_ to _Edgar Burgen and Charlie McCarthey_, _Captain Midnight_ to _Tom Mix_. I listened to those stories hundreds of times each. The stories were great, certainly, but I would lose myself in the characters. I would listen again and again, always gaining some new insight in to what made them tick.
To make a short comment very long, I’m enjoying _Ceres_, and enjoy all your other books for the same reason. I want to read stories where I can care about the characters; the good guys, and the evil ones. I enjoy sharing their passions, their loves, their failures and their disappointments.
Frankly, I think that character is the ticket to building your audience (how’s that for unsolicited, unqualified, unexpert advice). People are drawn first to a good story. I would set my TIVO right now if Rosalie F. Ngu was going to be on Oprah.
Brian, I’ll make a confession right here. I never knew I was a Libertarian until I read Probability Broach for the third time. I kept saying “right on, man! I couldn’t have said it better myself.” Then, I moved from the East Coast, to a Little town in Colorado called Fort Collins. Then, for the first time, because it was mentioned in the book, i read the about the author part (something I had never done before), picked up the phone book, and found a miracle. The author had a listed number. I called him, and he said “Come on over.” A man who looked a lot like a younger version of the Win Bear I’d been picturing for over a year answered the door. The rest, as they say, is history. I became friends with Neil and Kathy, I watched Rylla go from cute drooler to a three year old who called me “Osborn, because Neil is my Daddy’s name”. I NEVER read his books for the politics, even though I agree with Neil on 95% of his views, I read him cuz he writes a kick ass book with great characters and fun plots. I just wish W.W.Curringer would get off his ass and start the real Pallas moving, because I’d work for him for free if it would get me a homestead there. For anyone who’s never met Neil, he’s exactly as you’d picture him, only moreso.
I wanted to thank you for writing “The Probability Broach” and “The American Zone”. After the ‘08 elections, I was so disappointed by the lack of choice in the major parties (statism vs. statism lite), I decided to dump the Republican Party and look for another political philosophy to live by. I read Atlas Shrugged because I had heard it was one of the books that help fire up the modern libertarian concept. It was a very heavy read, but further stirred my interest in researching libertarianism. I had intellectually grasped the logic of libertarianism, but the concept of how to apply libertarianism was very weak until I bought your book “The Probability Broach” and after that “The American Zone”. Your dedication to describing in exquisite detail what libertarianism is and how pure libertarianism can be applied to everyday life (and wrapping it up in riveting SF novels) was nothing short of sheer genius. When I encounter people now who like the concept of libertarianism but are so indoctrinated into believing they need govt to provide for our basic services that they can’t conceive of it being done any other way, I point them towards your two books. Your books literally caused a paradigm shift in my thinking about how services can be provided without a govt. Now when people tell me about how we need govt to provide certain services, I can now see all sorts of ways to accomplish the task privately, and now tell people to stop thinking of why we need govt for a service and start thinking about ways to do the service privately. Your books need to be in every freedom-loving libertarian’s library as an example of what can be. If you can imagine it, you can create the reality.
I WANT _The Casebook of Eichra Oren_. As a Mediator, I love the concept of the Pna’n Debt Assessor. I constantly reread all your books, and that’s the main thing that keeps me coming back to Forge.