Category Archives: Sci-Fi

Fantasy, FICTION, Miscellaneous, Satire, Sci-Fi

Spotting a Shapeshifter

It’s been weeks and you just can’t shake the feeling. You met with your friend at that party not too long ago but something was different. You can’t quite put your finger on it, but it didn’t sit right with you. They didn’t seem like themselves. Maybe it was the drinking, or the night’s festivities. Maybe it was even the outfits.

But whatever it was, you’re fairly sure, that was not your friend doing that keg stand while a dozen people, men and women, dressed as Wonder Woman chanted their name. They insist they’re still the same person, even tried to prove to you that they knew your secrets – even that one about the dream you swore them to never tell anyone ever again. But, in the days since the Equifax breach, you just can’t be too careful. Sure, you’ve locked your credit. You’ve gotten identity theft coverage. You’ve been doing everything you can to be absolutely secure. But let’s face it, there’s no way to be sure anymore that someone isn’t stealing from you at this very minute – and they could have found all that information somewhere else. So now, as you’ve taken every sane precaution possible, one last thing has to be investigated…

What if your friend’s been replaced by a Shapeshifter?

Continue reading Spotting a Shapeshifter →

Fantasy, Miscellaneous, Mythology, Sci-Fi

The “Real” Men In Black

Sometimes there are elements in the real world which are too ripe with material to pass up for a fiction writer. As many often say, the truth can be stranger than fiction. But sometimes there are things in the world we can’t exactly define as truth or fiction which can be even stranger. Urban legends and the fields of cryptozoology are full of stories like these – stories where it sounds like bullshit, but something about them makes it feel more tangible. Sure, these things are only really believed by people on the fringe, but they seem to be based on something and every once in a while a creature jumps from legend to reality when they’re confirmed. So, while such a thing still existing in the modern age seems pretty unlikely, there are always some true believers. Plenty of people will swear to the existence of Big Foot, the Loch Ness Monster, or Chupacabra and there are a lot of people who will believe in UFOs well into the future. Each of these is of questionable validity, but is trying to explain something people have actually seen, and speaks to something of the human experience.

And for regular visitors to the blog you’ll know I included an urban legend in the alternate history of my books just last Friday. The “men in black” have long been part of pop culture and have been at the heart of conspiracy theories and ufology for at least 70 years now. But for most people the term is inseparable from the charming franchise of movies based on the legend. For the people most familiar with that depiction and the basic idea of where the stories came from, it may be strange that I included them into a world centered more on creatures from folklore.

But, when you really look into the lore about the Men In Black, you find it only gets stranger… Continue reading The “Real” Men In Black →

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Writing

Psychic Powered Plot Problems

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Throughout speculative fiction of all genres, be it fantasy or sci-fi, we have certain tropes that are universal. There’s generally an ancient forgotten civilization, a more war-like race, some benevolent watcher species, and a species or individual with some sort of supernatural power. These supernatural powers have a variety of manifestations and uses, but some of the most common across all genres are powers of the mind. The ability to hypnotize, read minds, or see into the future are in almost all branches of these genres and will likely be there until the future they claimed to see finally comes to pass.

Cheerful as that may be

And why wouldn’t they be? The concept is fascinating on so many levels. We’ve even tried to see if it was possible in the real world, and found that it probably wasn’t (at least on this world). People still insist that they can do it though, often using cold reading techniques and research to try to fake the talent, and continue to keep the ability right on our collective minds. For every story where someone claims to be able to speak to the dead there are at least  a dozen or so real world people who are claiming to do exactly that. And as a result these concepts are an inexorable part of our culture and will be for some time to come (maybe even forever).

But on a writing level, there are problems presented with such powers, problems which often result in a whole other set of tropes that are used as a compromise. It wouldn’t take very much effort to find episodes of shows where the psychic cast member has somehow been stripped of their powers or are somehow nullified. The entire point of Minority Report, both the movie and the original story, was whether or not these perceptions should be trusted. And almost every one of the X-Men movies has found a way to completely remove Professor X’s powers from the equation.

So the question becomes: why do creators who give these characters powers feel compelled to get rid of them at the same time? Continue reading Psychic Powered Plot Problems →

Miscellaneous, Observations, Sci-Fi, Writing

Monday Musing: Alien Communication

While writing languages for inhuman creatures, it’s important to remember just how different it would be. I covered part of this not long ago when I mentioned that fictional languages should sound somewhat like gibberish to us. After all, there are languages in the real world which sound like gibberish already, so it makes sense for it to be more true in a fictional one. But there are times when that should go even further – particularly with aliens.

Within speculative fiction we often hand-wave away the difficulties of communicating with aliens, hiding it behind universal translators. And, while this makes sense when all of the creatures involved are using the same methods of communication, we have to admit that it’s unlikely every creature we meet would “talk” to each other. When you really think about it, even on our own planet the way we communicate is somewhat unique. Throughout the animal kingdom we have creatures who communicate through chemicals, motions, colors and inaudible sounds. And, frankly, the creatures on our world have more in common with us by default of evolving on the same world.

Hell, aliens may not even have mouths… Continue reading Monday Musing: Alien Communication →

Fantasy, Observations, Sci-Fi

Monday Musing: Frankenstein’s Genre

In a time when every studio needs to have their own franchise of interwoven properties, Universal studios came to answer it with their “Dark Universe“. Starting with The Mummy (a decision they may be regretting given the reviews), the plan was to have Universal bring together all of its major “movie monster” properties in the same way that Marvel and DC had been doing over the last few years. Bringing together the likes of The Mummy, Dracula, Frankenstein, and several other properties, the hope was to create something with the kind of cross promotional marketing power as an Avengers or Justice League.

But, while these properties are essentially chosen for their iconic status, they’re also chosen for being ostensibly within the same genre. They are, after all, old school horror icons which have been part of the cultural mindset for generations. Each of them, a movie monster that had been in film since the days before color, represent something with instant brand recognition. And for the longest time all of us have grouped them within our minds as being essentially a part of a single genre.

But this has always been something I have a bit of a problem with because, outside of the films, Frankenstein doesn’t really belong… Continue reading Monday Musing: Frankenstein’s Genre →

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Writing

Fantastic Lineages

Within fictional worlds filled with fantastic or alien civilizations, there’s a tendency for these other civilizations to be marked with very specific personality traits. Sometimes these traits even translate across similar races in both genres. Elves and Vulcans both come across as cold and detached but are actually fighting back something a bit more primitive. In places where there is more than one kind of “elf”, each of them will represent opposing philosophies that have somehow physically altered them. Orcs and Orc-like races across both fantasy and sci-fi settings are usually savage brutes with a penchant for violence. And you’re always going to find at least one race that is devoted to the accumulation of wealth – some more blatantly than others.

And from a certain vantage this comes across as disingenuous or even lazy. People aren’t so uniform and those things that are universal between us all aren’t so instantly identifiable. The human race has a great potential for savagery if left to our own devices. The accumulation of wealth can easily overwhelm some of us, but the rest of us are likely to see that person in a negative light. And, of course, as self-assured some of us can possibly be, the kind of people who approach the sort of arrogance or detachment you find in several fantasy races would just be considered assholes in the real world.

But to each of these, we have to remember to keep in mind (especially for writers): these characters aren’t human, and that can make all the difference. Continue reading Fantastic Lineages →

Observations, Sci-Fi, WTF

Star Trek: Diversity

After months of delays, backstage rumors, sudden loss of its show-runner and so many unnerving little announcements coming out of the production of Star Trek: Discovery, the people finally got to see something better than that awful half-rendered ship from the comic con footage. And, though the recent trailer appeared months after the show was supposed to air, we finally have something about the production that looks promising. Showing slick visuals, a somewhat interesting set up, and a ship that didn’t look like ass – it was decent. Though the involvement of the Klingons seems to confirm some theories that people were bandying about nearly a year ago, at least now there was something to discuss.

And of course the jackasses came out of the woodwork.

In an effort to fight back what they call the “white genocide”, a thankfully small but vocal minority (ironic) jumped at the chance to decry the cast of characters. There were too many women, too many minorities, and not nearly enough straight white men for them. Clearly, by their assessment, social justice was out to ruin Star Trek by forcing diversity onto its cast and crew. And the rest of us only had one question to ask:

What Star Trek have these assholes been watching? Continue reading Star Trek: Diversity →

Miscellaneous, Observations, Sci-Fi, Writing

Sci-Fi’s Weird Roots

Evolution is inevitable, regardless of what certain people may believe, whether it be socially, physically, or personally. Things change, grow, adapt and become something else over a gradual process. In the literary world this is most obvious in the themes that change over time and the way we view certain tropes of the bygone era. Speculative fiction writers in particular have an almost love-hate relationship with our roots – we love the classics that broke new ground but hate to think we might be grouped into the same niche they were. After all, sci-fi and fantasy once carried a terrible stigma of being the domain of basement dwelling losers who took it all far too seriously. Since the day sci-fi became a thing it has gradually done everything it can to be taken seriously as a genre and considered “literature” with the rest.

It wasn’t very long ago in the grand scheme of things that sci-fi was still considered a new, fringe category that barely counted as a genre. Compared to others that have existed for ages, the earliest known works that could be strictly considered “science fiction” date back only a couple centuries at most where as others can count their earliest entries back to the dawn of the written word. Sure, Beowulf wasn’t considered “fantasy” at the time it was written, but it’s hard to deny that’s really what it was. And because of this we can also point at almost the exact moment where Sci-Fi made this transition from being an oddity into a true genre – we call it the Golden Age.

The Golden Age was a time of big ideas and big figures, people like Issac Asimov, Ray Bradbury and Arthur C Clarke dominated in these days and their work went on to define not only the genres but how we think about certain parts of civilization. Despite having a simplistic view on it, it’s hard to get through a conversation about robotics without someone bringing up Asimov’s three laws. And Arthur C Clarke, with “Clarke’s Law”, made us realize just how fantastic things we have today would appear to the past and how fantastic things from the future would appear to us. And as far as the genre went, it’s undeniable that the ideas they introduced to us have become a foundation of the genre as we know it today.

Still, while the Golden Age made sci-fi a serious genre, it wasn’t the only era that made sci-fi what it is today… Continue reading Sci-Fi’s Weird Roots →

Futurism, Miscellaneous, Sci-Fi, Writing

Problems In Post-Scarcity

Images of the future are often polarized along pretty extreme lines. Dystopias and utopias dominate the landscape in science fiction because they’re often thought to be the easiest to write and easiest to deliver a message. The world within a dystopia can be used to magnify today’s problems to be easier to see while the world within a utopia can often highlight issues we don’t see in our daily lives. But the truth is that they’re not nearly as easy to write as people often think and a lot of attempts fall short of the overall mark. Dystopias, in particular, are generally derived from each other and have become attached to tropes rather than genuine ideas. And utopias, as I’ve established not too long ago, are generally the improper labeling of a superficial analysis of what turns out to be post-scarcity societies.

I’ve thrown around “post-scarcity society” often in the last couple weeks without going too in depth on the subject. For some people it would be hard to really tell the differences between a utopia and a post-scarcity society, with the two of them essentially looking ideal from where we stand and showing few of the problems we could readily identify in our current culture. But the division between the two is rather clear: a post-scarcity society has solved many major problems while a utopia has ostensibly solved all problems. And the fact of the matter is, while we’ve never seen a utopia in the real world (and likely never will), we have, however briefly, gone beyond some form of scarcity. Hell, it briefly appeared to happen in the last century before a peanut farmer harshed everyone’s buzz.

He wasn’t wrong though.

But the idealized post-scarcity, the one that you want to see in your speculative fiction, can be a tricky thing to write because it often requires you to understand problems from a completely different perspective. Because writing a post-scarcity society believably requires you to recognize… Continue reading Problems In Post-Scarcity →

Futurism, Miscellaneous, Sci-Fi

The Benevolent Dictatorship Of Our Robot Overlords

Presented a new project to work on in the coming weeks, I came to consider several things I’ve blogged about recently. When dealing with the future and ideas of where we’re going as a race we often find ourselves in a scared, frightened position. It makes sense, the future, especially an unknown future, can be terrifying even if all common sense and logic tells us that it should go another direction. We’re constantly afraid of the idea that the world itself may turn into a Mad Max-style wasteland, or that an arrogant politician may become the next Hitler, or that we may end up going to World War 3 over the actions of a single nation.

But in all of these cases we can look at the history of the world and the shape of what has come before to determine that it’s not always as bad as we feel. The world was once hotter than we’re making it and it managed to survive, so it would go to say that climate change is more a threat to us than to the planet itself. Hitler’s movement was born out of a fairly unique set of circumstances where the world’s economy and social climate were far worse than it is today (for now). And the World Wars were both started by a series of terrible decisions which resulted in the world’s power being separated across clearly divided lines. So, as bad as things may get, the conditions aren’t quite right for most of our greatest fears.

But there are other fears of the future where we don’t have that historical frame of reference to calm ourselves. We have no idea what would happen if tomorrow an asteroid were found to be headed right for us. We have no logical frame of reference for what happens if we discovered aliens exist and are trying to make contact. No one’s entirely sure of the full ramifications of the continued development of artificial intelligence. And these all raise interesting questions with few (if any) concrete answers. In fact, some potential answers are so outside of our normal frames of reference that we have a hard time really picturing them.

For instance: if those machines do take over the planet, are we sure we’d see it? Continue reading The Benevolent Dictatorship Of Our Robot Overlords →