Scrivening

 "Don't bug him about the blog," writes a commentor with the mysterious and ominous name of Unknown, "he's busy WRITING stuff for you."

For those who may be wondering what TOF is writing, the following is a some-ary; that is, some of what is in progress. Several of them have appeared intermittently as Opening Passages here in this vast wasteland known as the TOF Spot. 

• The Shipwrecks of Time. Set in Milwaukee WI during the early 1960s. This concerns the search for a mysterious medieval text known as the Peruzzi Manuscript. The danger does not so much lie in finding it as in being known to be researching it. Somebody may not want it found.
  This novel is complete and has already been rejected by one publisher. 
• In the Belly of the Whale. Set in a multigenerational starship two centuries into a thousand-year transit to Tau Ceti. The challenge was to find an approach to the subject that has not been over-done. They forgot they were on a ship? Aldiss did that wonderfully in Starship, FTL makes their trip meaningless? Done and done again.
  This novel is also done and is now in the hands of the publisher who requested it. 
• "Adventures in Mythistory." Fact article. How history is recast as myth, with special attention to the Hypatia Myth and to fiction-writing. This article is complete, but languishes in uncertainty as to what to do with it.
• "The New World." Short Story. A small flotilla of junks, sent by Srivijaya to find the southwest passage around Africa to the fabled land of Tai Ch'in. This is complete, but as it is a section in a longer, collaborrative work that may or may not see daylight, needs a little tweeking to enhance a standalonr, Currently steeping.
• "The Journeyman: On the Mangly Steppe." Teodorq sunna Nagarajan accompanies a scouting party setting out to the 'serving tray' to assess its suitability as an observation post to keep an eye on the mangos of the steppe. The party is led by an imperial from the Nooby Empire and includes a troop of imperial rangers, as well as a handful of settlers from the frontier settlement of Stubborn Man plus one local [i.e., pre-settlement] who is unafraid of the ghosts said to haunt the serving tray. Nooby has more advanced technology than Cuffy or Yavalprawns: cap pistols, chuffers anf the singing wire. In Progress.
  
•  "Red Clay Man" A short story in which a H. erectus discovers how to think. In Progress.
• "The Laws of Science and the Ignorant Chicken." A fact article on the Dappled World of Science. In Progress.
•  "Hunter's Moon." Mickey, the POV from "In Panic Town on the Backwards Moon," finds a mysterious death at the Hadley Ran above Falcon's Landing on the Moon. Idle.
• "Mayerling." Kronprinz Rudolf contemplates suicide at his hunting lodge near Mayerling. Idle.

Mayerling

For the interested, the opening of "Mayerling", that alternate Austro-Hungarian yarn mentioned in Scribble, scribble, scribble, runs as follows.

Scribble, scribble, scribble... and scribble

There are several stories of sundry lengths in various stages of (in)completion in the Flynnish oeuvre.  For anyone interested, they run as follows.

I forgot one! So I have added 098e below, in the queue at Analog.

The opus number runs generally in the order in which they were started, except 098f. All the Journeyman stories are 098, with each installment getting a letter. The current word count is indicated in order to shame TOF into finishing them rather than starting another.

In process
079 Mayerling.....................4200

Short story. Alternate history. Crown Prince Rudolf is at his hunting lodge at Mayerling, contemplating suicide. Or not.

087 The Shipwrecks of Time..........92,786

A novel. Back in the early 1340s, Heinrich of Regensburg was brutally murdered over a now-lost manuscript known as "The Peruzzi Papers."  In the 1960s, an historical researcher in Milwaukee becomes interested in the contents.  What could have been so dangerous to know that the author was so brutally killed?  Why did the banking House of Peruzzi keep the papers secret for 600 years?  Inquiring minds want to know.  But maybe they should not be so inquiring?  Later, in Part II, a documentary film-maker in 1980s Denver and, in Part III, a small town police detective in the fictional 2010s Neston PA are also entangled in the mystery.  Some mss. are better left unread, it seems. However, we are already up to 93 kilowords and still in Part I. Damn. Don't know whether to cut it drastically by 2/3rd or to make each Part a separate book. Still plugging away.

098f The Journeyman: At the Heights of Iabran.......7973

Teodorq sunna Nagarajan the Ironhand is leading a cavalry regiment he helped organize. They are setting up to take the enemy's capital. Problem is, Teo's commanding general is trying to get him killed, due to a small misunderstanding over the general's wife. There's this deep canyon penetrating the aforesaid Heights; but it is likely a dead-end, in more ways than one.

101 The Chieftain....................................16,421

A fantasy novel -- yes, you heard that right -- in the lackadaisical course of being rewritten from an old draft from TOF's youth. It was written long ago, in and shortly after college, as a straight historical, the market for which can best be described as multiples of SQRT(-1).  The writing sucks because I was just a kid; but it is as capable of rewrite as The January Dancer was.  The world has a shortage of medieval Celtic fantasies.  No, really.  It does. This one is set in Ireland in AD 1225.  A bit of medieval magic should pepper it right up.  Don't usually see prayers instead of spells, or saints instead of imps to answer them; so we shall see.  And calling on God may not be quite as simple as calling on gods....

107 Hunters Moon.................1063

Short story set in the Firestar milieu. The narrator is a troubleshooter for Phobos Port Authority, sent to audit the procedures used for aiming the Lunar catapult dedicated to sending cargo to Mars and finds a suspicious death when he gets there. Same narrator as "In Panic Town on the Backward Moon."

108 Adventures in Mythistory........5747

Fact article on how history is turned into myth, with special emphasis on Hypatia.

109 The Three Faces of Science........859

Fact article on the three phases of science in the Modern Age: Mathematical, Statistical, and Modeled.

111 The Singing City...............2200

A vignette set in the Firestar milieu. Flaco's grandson is about to leave for Saturn in a magnetic sail, and Flaco's son "Memo" (born at the end of Rogue Star) is having a crisis.

112 Moonrise at the Tatamy Book Barn...........2750

Short story. Jacinta Rosario, who never became a space pilot because the whole Firestar history never happened, is running away from home and finds herself taking shelter from a thunderstorm in the Tatamy Book Barn, where there are lots of books. Henry Berge, a neighbor who is storing his papers there for safekeeping, is also trapped by the storm. The store manager, whose name is Roberta Carson, invites them both to stay for pizza. Stuff happens.

Completed
In the queue at Analog:
098e  The Journeyman: Through Madness Gap...............................................14,765

Teodorq had crossed the ocean to Old Cuffy, where his sponsor expects him to organize a regiment of Savage Archers modeled after the Riders of the Great Grass. But a foreign country takes some getting used to.

102 Laminated Moose Zombies and Other Road Maintenance Problems........4786

Short story co-written with Son of TOF, Dennis. Zombies are getting to be a nuisance for the Anchorage DPW. It's a fungus-borne disease, and the narrator's girl friend is researching for a cure, or at least a treatment. Should appear in an upcoming issue.

110 Victor Frankenstein's Bar and Grill and Twenty-four Hour Roadside Emporium........1293

Everybody needs a place where "everyone knows your name." This is true even for nameless monsters who want to hoist a few. A deep psychological study.

Recently appeared
104 Nexus..............25,156

Novella. This was in Analog (Mar/Apr 2017). A concatenation of several science fiction tropes.

A first draft

Here is a first draft of an opening for the Book Barn story I'm playing with, after a drive up to the former site thereof. (The building is still there.) Everything, title included, is subject to revision.

Moonrise at the Tatamy Book Barn

by Michael F. Flynn

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed,

and some few to be chewed and digested.

-- Francis Bacon, Studies.

THE LATE AFTERNOON had spread across the Valley, creating from the waving branches and leaves moiré patterns, all black shadow and orange sunlight across the hiking trail beside the creek. The upper sky was still pale blue, studded with high popcorn clouds, but shifting toward the more cobalt sort as the westerlies chivvied glowering cumulus ahead of them. The fishermen had abandoned the creek in a splashing of waders. It was a matter of luck, the locals said, whether storms would roll down the slot between Kittatinny Ridge and South Mountain.

But Cindy did not believe in luck, or at least not in the sort of luck that you didn’t make for yourself. Besides, the dark clouds seemed intent on rolling directly toward her and if the last couple of miles since leaving the diner were any indication, she really ought to give some thought to finding shelter for the night. She had a meal in her belly and some money in her purse, thanks in large measure to that same diner and its manager’s willingness to exchange clean dishes and clean rest rooms in lieu of payment. But there had not been anything resembling a motel along the miles since.

Not that she hadn’t slept rough before. She carried a bedroll and camping gear atop be backpack – they called it a rucksack around here – and she always enjoyed sleeping under the stars. When she had been younger, she had dreamed of being an astronaut and the night sky possessed a wistful allure. But the stars tonight seemed inclined to hide behind lint and she was less inclined to sleep under driving rain.

Nor was she inclined to beg shelter from the isolated houses she passed. Folks hereabout were generally hospitable, but that might not extend to guesting a stranger for the night, and Cindy had not survived the long road by being overly trustful on her part, either. You never knew when a nice-looking domicile might house a meth lab in its basement, or a young woman alone might prove too tempting for a middle-aged professional in his lonely country home.

Cindy did not know where she was going. Her long trek was more of a whence than a whither. A vast dissatisfaction had driven her from her mother’s house and her nowhere job and whatever it was she was looking for, she had demonstrably not yet found it.

Thunder rumbled in the west like God clearing his throat.

Cindy emerged from the shroud of trees that enfolded the hiking trail and found herself facing a paved road. Directly ahead was a ramshackle stone-and-wood barn with a gravel parking lot. To the right, the road crossed a short bridge over the creek and met the state highway. To the left, it curved north and out of sight. It didn’t look like there would be much in the way of accommodations either way. The fleshpots of Xanadu might be just around that bend, but she doubted it. A darkened residence stood on the left side of the curve and she gave it some thought.

A lot of homes had been foreclosed lately, so the place might be empty. Growing up in Wessex County, back in New Jersey, she had learned all the arts of B&E. But there were no sheriff’s notices plastered in the windows and it would be just her luck that the householder would return just as she was settling in for the night, and in this neck of the woods they were as likely to be the Three Bears as not. And armed. Didn’t they believe in the right to arm bears here?

That left the big stone-and-wood building across the road. A large board sign above the entrance named it the Tatamy Book Barn, Old and Used Books, and three equally old and used cars in the parking lot promised that the building was open. More importantly, unless the owner took a devil-may-care attitude toward his wares, the roof likely did not leak.

God dumped a truckload of scrap metal on the sky, which turned bright brass for an instant, and that made up her mind. Cindy hitched her backpack and strode confidently toward the entrance just as the heavens let loose.

Her strides broke into as fast a run as the weight on her back allowed, but she was drenched before she reached the door. She ducked through, slammed it behind her, and leaned her back against it, almost as if she feared the tempest would try to follow her inside.

The woman behind the counter looked up at this sudden eruption into her domain, took in Cindy and her bedraggled appearance, and cocked a rueful smile. “Come in,” she said, “I’ll give you shelter from the storm.”
#

A Possible Short Story

Succumbing to impulse, I have written 1300 words on a short story whose working title is "Midnight in the Tatamy Book Barn." Cindy is running away from home and her boring nowhere job and has been driven by an afternoon thunderstorm to take refuge in the aforesaid eponymous Book Barn. At one time she had dreamed of being an astronaut, but that that was not to be, she tells Robbie, the proprietor of the Barn. Robbie eyes the backpack and bedroll and asks where she is headed. "I don't know," said Cindy. "I haven't got there yet." Robbie asks if "Cindy" is short for something. "Jacinta," she is told. "Jacinta Rosario."

A neighbor, Henry Fogel, from up the creek has earlier come to the barn with several boxes of personal papers and notebooks. He is going away for a few days and is concerned about possible flash flooding on the creek and wants Robbie to store the boxes on the upper floor of the barn. Despite the "donnerwetter," he leaves. Robbie lets Cindy stay in the Barn overnight. And in their chatting Cindy learns that Robbie once had aspirations of her own: She had been a teenage poet calling herself Styx, but it had never gotten anywhere. As the night wears on, Cindy helps Robbie carry Henry's papers upstairs, and she begins glancing at them. And they are very strange.

Why There is No Bad Big Wolf

and clocks never go tock-tick.

The language rules we were never taught, but we somehow know them anyway, by Mark Forsyth.

“Adjectives in English absolutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun. So you can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. But if you mess with that word order in the slightest you’ll sound like a maniac. It’s an odd thing that every English speaker uses that list, but almost none of us could write it out.”

 Go ahead, try to write the sentence in a different sequence. It will sound wrong.  You cannot have an old little French lovely silver whittling rectangular green knife.Why this is TOF does not know. But we will say "a steel cutting die" (material-purpose Noun) and not "a cutting steel die" (purpose-material Noun).

There are also sound patterns.

"The Big Bad Wolf is just obeying another great linguistic law that every native English speaker knows, but doesn’t know that they know. And it’s the same reason that you’ve never listened to hop-hip music. If somebody said ‘zag-zig’ or ‘cross-criss’ you would know they were breaking a rule

You are utterly familiar with the rule of ablaut reduplication. You’ve been using it all your life. It’s just that you’ve never heard of it. But if somebody said the words zag-zig, or ‘cross-criss you would know, deep down in your loins, that they were breaking a sacred rule of language. You just wouldn’t know which one."

+++
If there are three words then the vowel order has to go I, A, O. If there are two words then the first is I and the second is either A or O. Mish-mash, chit-chat, dilly-dally, shilly-shally, tip top, hip-hop, flip-flop, tic tac, sing song, ding dong, King Kong, ping pong.

Nexus Reviewed

From a review of "Nexus" in Tangent Online, the remainder of which contains spoilers:

"What an amazing and exciting story! Each character is fully humanized, even the most alien ones; we even feel for the spider-alien. Normally I get annoyed by stories that jump from one point of view to another, but the way this technique was used here was just perfect—each point of view had a segue into the next, like carefully drawn lines from a center we can’t see—until the climax, which draws all the characters into the same scene and shows us the center in all its spinning, integrated glory. Time travel stories aren’t uncommon, but finding one that is so exquisitely paced is rare and so appropriate. This is the best piece I’ve read in a long time."

-- Colleen Chen

TOF supposes this is also technically a spoiler, as it reveals how wonderful the story is to those hitherto suspecting a dog, but we'll just have to live with that. 

Flynn Stories in the Queue

Coming to you in Analog

TOF's great opus "Nexus", a novella length something or other, has the cover in the March/April issue of Analog. Woo Hoo.

Also on the Analog web site is an extensive excerpt from the aforesaid tale. Read it and weep. Or else go out and buy the issue on sale now.

Future expectations 

relating to Things Flynnic, dates subject to change:

• Sep/Oct: "Viktor Frankenstein's Bar and Grill and 24-Hour Roadside Emporium"
• Nov/Dec: "Laminated Moose Zombies and Other Road Maintenance Problems"
  (w/Dennis M. Flynn)
• Jan/Feb: "The Journeyman: Through Madness Gap"

In other news

A German contract is pending for a German-language translation of Eifelheim. I can't wait to see how they translate "Eifelheim".....

As a Matter of Fact

A reader recently asked whether a collection of TOF's non-fiction was planned. The answer is no, but TOF thought that a list of non-fiction might be called for. Herewith:

1. "Universal Range Spaces and Function Space Topologies" (1971) Studia Universitates Babes-Bolyai (Seria Math.-Mech.)

TOF does not dare attempt to explain what it is about, except loosely as follows. A function assigns to each element of a domain space Y a unique element in a range space Z: Z = f(Y) = Y² is an example. A topology defines a "closeness" between two elements in a space. A function space: Z^Y treats all the functions f:Y→Z as elements in a space, with a topology defining closeness among them. TOF proved a couple of theorems about topologies on Z^Y.

In aid of this paper I have migrated two posts from The Auld Blogge onto The TOF Spot for the amusement of the easily amused.

2. "Things Your Mother Never Told You About X-bar and R Charts" (1982?) Transactions of the ASQC Annual Quality Congress.

This was a paper delivered at the annual conference of the American Society for Quality Control, but TOF would have to hunt up the year. An X-bar and R chart is a statistical device for discovering whether a change in a process can be assigned to a particular cause. This paper addressed some common misconceptions about the charts.

A X-bar and R chart compares variation from sample to sample
against the average variation within a sample to determine whether
the long-term variation exceeds the short-term variation. In the
example above, it does; and the process is said to be
"not in statistical control."

3. "What Do Control Charts Really Mean?" (1983). ASQC Qual. Cong. Trans.  pp 448-453

Another ASQC paper, this one ITRC on non-standard control charts, using medians instead of means, extreme values, and so on. 

4. "The Road to Hell" (1984) w/John Bolcar. ASQC Qual. Cong. Trans.  pp 192-196

This was a set of case studies in the interpretation and use of quality control charts, showing that the matter was not always cookbook straighforward. TOF has this reference at second hand since it was cited in one of Juran's Quality Handbooks. Woo-hoo. John was one of my quality engineers.

5. "Garbage Out: The Fine Art of Putting Garbage In" (1986). ASQC Qual. Cong. Trans. p. 149 et seq.

Before you can analyze data you must first collect it, which is easier said than done. This paper, also delivered at an ASQC conference, addressed a number of ways in which you can screw up your sampling. The conceit of the paper was the pretense that you're trying to produce garbage out and these are helpful tips for doing so.

Items #2-5 exist in hard only, if they exist at all, in a file cabinet unlockable by Heisenberg's key. That is, a key whose precise location cannot be pinned down.

6. "An Introduction to Psychohistory" (two parts) Analog (Apr and May 1988)

This was a 2-part article about whether a science of history was possible. Part I was the mathematics of history; Part II was the biology of history. It was reprinted in German in 1991 as an appendix to Heyne Verglag edition of Asimov's Foundation series.

7. "An Astounding 60 Years" Analog (Jan 1990)

TOF was asked by Stan Schmidt, then the editor of Analog to write this article, which is an overview of the first 60 years of the magazine. It's name was Astounding for the first 30 years before John W. Campbell changed it to Analog. Opening paragraph:

It was on or about March 10, 1944, when Counter Intelligence Corps agent Arthur E. Riley knocked on the doors of ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION editor, John Woods Campbell, Jr., and demanded to know what the hell was going on.  The March 1944 issue of ASTOUNDING had just hit the stands with the story, “Deadline,” by Cleve Cartmill.  Although set on an ostensibly alien planet, involving an ostensibly alien war, the story had contained some rather disquieting lines. 

8. "FAT-Eating Logic Bombs and the Vampire Worm," w/ Edward Rietman (Analog, Feb 1993)

Dr. Reitman wrote the original article and TOF was asked to help with the wordsmithing. The whole idea of worms and viruses and the like was pretty new at the time.The opening paragraph:

The Worm from Hell
Shortly after 6:30 PM on 2 November 1988 dæmons struck the Net.  Computers across the country went catatonic.  Berkeley’s Experimental Computing Facility and the Rand Corporation at Santa Monica were among the first to crash.  An hour later, the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab froze, then Lawrence Livermore and the University of Maryland.  Other nodes toppled like dominoes: Stanford, Princeton, Los Alamos, NASA’s Ames Research Center, the Army Ballistic Research Lab.  By the early morning hours, InterNet was virtually paralyzed.  Only AT&T and Bell Labs were immune. 

The article also made some predictions:

The processor of the future will be filled with the electronic analogs of platelets, antibodies and other such useful critters.  Autonomous programs will run in the background “automatically updating software, diagnosing hardware problems, seeking out information stored in vast data banks or doing routine garbage collection” (Markoff, 1991).  

9. "Pson of Psychohistory" Analog (June 1994)

A very short note in which TOF tried to prognosticate, with variable success. Economic cycles were approximately correct, but individual politicians did not fulfill their assigned roles.

10. "De Revolutione Scientiarum in 'Media Tempestas'" Analog (Jul 2007)

Written in the form of a medieval Question, this article explored the potential for a scientific revolution in the 14th century. It was a companion piece to "Quaestiones super caelo et mundo" which won the Anlab award that year and for which I gave an acceptance speech in Latin, found here.

11. "The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown and Down and Dirty Mud-Wrassle" Analog (Jan/Feb 2013)

This was a summary of the historical transition from the geostationary to the geomobile models of the World, but we had to jettison the diagrams and figures. A more extended, detailed version (with the diagrams and figures) appeared later on this blog. Opening paragraph:

HISTORY MUST BE CURVED, for there is a horizon in the affairs of mankind.  Beyond this horizon, events pass out of historical consciousness and into myth.  Accounts are shortened, complexities sloughed off, analogous figures fused, traditions “abraded into anecdotes.”  Real people become culture heroes: archetypical beings performing iconic deeds.  (Vansina 1985)

12. "Spanking Bad Data Won't Make Them Behave" Analog (Jul/Aug 2014)

This article was a description of various problems with data. There was to have been a Part II, applying the lessons to Global Warming data, but TOF never got around to writing it. Opening paragraph:

Facts are elusive critters.  Far from being self-demonstrating, they are meaningless without context.  “Theory determines what can be observed,” Einstein once remarked to Heisenberg.  We cannot accumulate answers without first asking a question.  Pierre Duhem put it this way:

“Take two physicists who do not define pressure in the same manner because they do not admit the same theories of mechanics.  One for example accepts the ideas of Lagrange; the other adopts the ideas of Laplace and Poisson.  Submit to these two physicists a law whose statement brings into play the notion of pressure.  They will hear the statement in two different ways.  To compare it with reality, they will make different calculations so that one will find this law verified by facts which, for the other, will contradict it.”  [Emph. added]
– “Some Reflections on the Subject of Experimental Physics” (1894)

So much for the notion that facts alone can settle questions. 

13. "The Autumn of Modern Science" Analog (Apr 2016)

This was a compressed history of the end of the Modern way of doing science, foreshadowed in a few blog posts here and as part of an extended series on the end of modern civilization.  It appeared as a guest editorial in Analog. Opening paragraph:

Thoroughly modern milieu
During the sixteenth century, progress, which had meant a spatial motion, began to mean “improvement.” By 1580, modern had become an adjective and acquired the connotation “new.” This terminological ferment signaled the emergence of new ways of thinking: the Modern Ages.

14. "A Dialogue Concerning the Inner World System" Analog (Oct 2016)

This was a shorter, revised version of a blog post here regarding genetic engineering, written in imitation of Galileo's Dialogo. It appeared as a guest editorial in the magazine. Opening paragraph:

Scene: The Rialto of Venice, Salviati espies Simplicio approaching and greets him.
Salviati: What news on the Rialto, good Simpicio?
Simplicio: Well-a-day, my friend. Work progresses on our engineerings genetical. Soon we shall be "the sort of people we should be."

Fan Mail

The following letter was received by ANALOG magazine in response to a Guest Editorial by TOF:

I applaud Michael F. Flynn for his guest editorial in the June 2016 issue, although since I’ve never read Galileo’s Dialog I may have missed some of his cleverer implications.  I didn’t laugh at Simplicio, but I did snicker a bit.  I suppose a lot of human progress has been driven by heedless infatuation with new possibilities, but I find it refreshing and reassuring that there are people like Mr. Flynn to look while the rest of us leap.

 

-- Tony Dwyer

 TOF blushes.

Battle of the Books in Retrospect

The battle came off on Saturday and TOF was there in fine fettle. Or as fine as a fettle can be, considering the injured humerus. The poet says "a man's reach should exceed his grasp," and for the time being, that seems to be literally true. However TOF is performing exercises that promise to increase both over time.

Meanwhile, TOF is grieved to report that he came in second in the Battle of the Books. The gig was that each of us read from a book of ours in several categories: Opening, Setting, Introducing a Character, etc. After each round, the audience -- which was gratifyingly substantial -- voted on which passage was the best by holding up colored cards representing each of the three authors. TOF was red. First place got three tokens, second place two. The number of tokens for third place is left as an exercise for the reader.

These were accumulated in drinking glasses that had been set before us. The tokens were cleverly disguised as Hershey Kisses, but we were warned that if we ate our tokens, it would be deducted from our scores. However, we would get to keep the tokens and consume them afterward.

TOF accumulated 16 tokens in this wise. Alas, Margaret Murray, a writer of mysteries set in Bethlehem PA rounded up 17 tokens from an audience of staunch Bethlehemians. She accomplished this by writing well. Tricky of her, I thought.

The third place went to Kathy Kulig, a "New York Times & USA Today bestselling author of erotic paranormal and contemporary romance." Who knew there was such a genre? She received 14 tokens, so it was a tight if high caloric contest.

In between rounds, the Quiz Master Bernadette Sukley stepped in and read a passage from a well-known book in the category underway and the audience was invited to Name That Book. If no one knew, the question was reduced to multiple choice. If no one pegged that, it was further reduced to T/F, but none ever got that far. The Namer was awarded a Snickers bar.

Among the distinguished attendees was Sweet Sharon, whom the follower of this Blog will recognize as TOF's high school sweetheart. TOF figured the fix was in, but she did not vote the straight party line! Go figure. But then the other two authors read some pretty good stuff, so TOF can't complain. Or he could, but no one would pay any heed. It may be that genre tastes also played a role: SF vs mystery vs romance.

TOF in case anyone wonders, read from The January Dancer, it being the first of the Spiral Arm series; but now he wonders if this was a strategic error. Which volume of the Flynn ouvre would have made the best choice for this venue? Inquiring minds want to know!

Anselm of Canterbury, the Red Wedding, and the Second Ecumenical Council of Constantinople

A bit of St. Anselm of Canterbury spotted at Siris:

Let us now understand doing (causing) in terms of a classification. Since a doing (causing) is always either in relation to being or in relation to not-being, (as has been said), we will be obliged to add “to be” or “not to be” to the distinct modes of doing (causing) in order for them to be clearly distinguished.

The Latin for 'doing/causing,' Brandon notes, is facere, which means 'making something so.' It can be substituted for any verb, even one that means making something not to be so. Anselm then delves into six ways to make something be/not be:

1. when a cause causes to be that which it is said to cause
2. when a cause does not cause to be that which it is said to cause
3. when a cause causes something else to be
4. when a cause does not cause something else to be
5. when a cause causes something else not to be
6. when a cause does not cause something else not to be

 Anselm gives examples of each, which Brandon illustrates with John and Bob. How many ways can we mean that John makes Bob to be dead?


1. John makes Bob dead (directly)

When someone who kills a man with a sword is said to cause him to be dead, [it is said] in the first mode. For he directly (per se) causes the very thing which he is said to cause.

2. John does not make Bob not to be dead (directly)

If I say, "John makes it so that Bob is dead", I could also mean that Bob is dead, and John is able to make him not-dead, but is not doing so. For example, if in Game of Thrones Thoros of Myr could make Beric Dondarrion not to be dead by his magical powers but does not do so, we can say that Thoros made it so that Beric was dead.

3. John makes Bob dead (by making something else make him dead)

If I say, "John makes it so that Bob is dead", I could also mean that John arranged it so that something else would make Bob die -- for instance, by hiring an assassin.

4. John makes Bob dead (by not making something else make him not dead)

John can make Bob dead by not giving Bob a weapon to defend himself when the assassin comes, or by otherwise not stopping the assassin.

5. John makes Bob dead (by making something else not make him not dead)

John can make Bob dead by taking away a weapon that Bob already has so he cannot defend himself when the assassin comes.

6. John does not make Bob not to be dead (by not making something else not make him dead)

John can make Bob to be dead by not taking action to make him not dead. For example, if John does not disarm the assassin or did not hide Bob when the Gestapo came for him. That is, he does not cause something else not to be.

These six modes can apply universally, since doing or making [like facere] can substitute for any verb. We can vow or make a vow; we can steal or make something to be stolen. This can have great utility in plotting stories. Think of all the ways people made Robb Stark dead at the Red Wedding: by skewering him with arrows or stabbing him [Roose Bolton], by hiring those who did [Tywin Lannister], by disarming him beforehand [Walder Frey], by not warning him, by sending away sympathizers who might have warned him, by killing the direwolf and the Stark bannermen who might have defended him, and so on. Each bore some share of responsibility for the death, even if they did not strike the actual fatal blow.

"[W]hen a problem about the faith comes up it is not only the heretical person who is condemned but also the person who is in a position to correct the heresy of others and fails to do so."

-- Sentences against the Three Chapters, II Constantinople 

A stories in which all actions are first mode -- X does Y -- tend to be thin. Even when enjoyable, they are not psychologically filling. Considering all six modes can make the text richer and the characters thicker.

Built Upon the Sands of Time

The Story Preview page has another old story posted. This is the Irish Pub story "Built Upon the Sands of Time." It was written at the turn of the century.  

There Will Be War X

TOF has a story in Jerry Pournelle's revivified series There Will Be War - Vol.X. The story in question is "Rules of Engagement," which ran initially in Analog (Mar. 1998) The anthology is currently available in Kindle format, but other formats will be available later.

Also in the anthology are stories, essays, and poems by Gregory Benford, Larry Niven, Ben Bova, Poul Anderson, Doug Beason, Alan Steele, et al.

Reportedly, the anthology has already earned out its advance, which is pretty good initial sales! Woo-hoo.

Teaser as follows:

Rules of Engagement
by Michael F. Flynn

Winter having locked the passes with snow and ice, the brass parceled out long-deferred leaves and junior officers scattered across the country.  Some descended on their hometowns to rest in the bosoms of their families.  Some came to the City to rest in other sorts of bosoms.  That was the last winter before the big offensive, when I still had the flat in Chelsea.  Jimmy Topeka dropped in to see me, all somber as always.  He seemed to have something on his mind, but he talked around it six ways from Sunday the way he always does and hadn’t gotten to the nub of it before Angel Osborne clumped his way up the stairs.  I hadn’t seen Angel in almost three years, though he and Jimmy had crossed paths during the Red River campaign.  I went how we lacked only Lyle “the Style” Guzman to make the old gang complete; and the Angel ups and beeps him over the Lynx and, wouldn’t you know it, Lyle was in the City, too.  So before long we were all together, just like old times, drinking and shooting the shit and waiting for the sun to come up.  Those were wild years, and we were still young enough to be immortal.

I hadn’t much in the way of furniture; and once Angel had occupied two-thirds of the sofa, there was less of it to go around.  Lyle, being slightly built, perched himself on the table, while Jimmy raided my kitchen and passed out bottles of Skull Mountain before squatting cross-legged on the floor.  We all said what a coincidence and long time no see and what’ve you been up to. 

It wasn’t quite like old times.  A few years had gone by between us.  They were long years; it didn’t seem possible they’d held only three-hundred-odd days each.  The four of us had been different places, seen different sights; and so we had become different men than the ones who had known each other at camp.  But also there was a curtain between me and the three of them.  Every now and then, in the midst of some tale or other, they would share a look; or they would fall silent and they’d say, well, you had to be there.  You see, they’d been Inside and I hadn’t, and that marks a man. 

Angel had served with the 82nd against the Snakes; and Lyle had seen action against both the Crips and the Yoopers.  Jimmy allowed as he’d tangoed in the high country, where the bandits had secret refuges among the twisting canyons; but he said very little else.  Only he drank two beers for every one the others put down, and Jimmy had never been a drinking man. 


***

Best of the Year? Who Knew?

Now it can be told. 

 

TOF's story "In Panic Town, On the Backward Moon," which appears in the anthology, Mission Tomorrow, has been picked by the estimable Gardner Dozois to be included in his annual The Year's Best Science Fiction, 33rd Annual Collection. 

Fist bumps all around.

Intro teaser:

The man who slipped into the Second Dog that day was thin and pinch-faced and crossed the room with a half-scared, furtive look. Willy cut off in the middle of a sentence and said, “I wonder what that Gof wants?” The rest of us at the table turned to watch. An Authority cop at the next table, busy not noticing how strong the near-beer was, slipped his hand into his pocket, and VJ loosened the knife in his ankle scabbard. Robbery was rare in Panic Town – making the getaway being a major hurdle – but it was not unknown.
     Hot Dog sucked the nipple of his beer bottle. “He has something.”
     “Something he values,” suggested Willy.
     VJ chuckled. “That a man values something is no assurance that the thing is valuable. It might be a picture of his sainted grandmother.” But he didn’t think so, and neither did anyone else in the Dog.
 

All this happened a long time ago. Mars was the happening place back then. Magnetic sails had brought transit times down to one month, and costs had dropped with them, so the place was filling up with dreamers and scamps and dogs of all kinds, out to siphon a buck from the desert or from the pockets of those who did. There were zeppelin pilots and water miners, air-squeezers and terraformers. Half the industry supported the parasol-makers of course, but they needed construction, maintenance, teamsters, and rocket-jocks, and throughout history whenever there was a man and a dollar there was another man willing to separate them.

The Promise of God

One of TOF's fantasies, perhaps his only fantasy, was the short story "The Promise of God," which appeared in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in March 1995. It is a bit under 6500 words, and TOF offers it up on the Story and Preview Page for the next week or so. See the links for the other Pages on this site, situated in the left margin; though judging by the lack of comments there, TOF may rethink the strategy. Well sometimes the comments are here on the blog.

This story was inspired by, of all people, Orson Scott Card. He was GoH at Lunacon one year and gave a presentation called IIRC "One hundred ideas per hour." It was a mass brainstorming session by which he sought to elicit story ideas from the attendees to show how simple it was to generate such ideas. It was quite an interactive session. After deciding on fantasy and a female protagonist and a few other things, he proposed that magic, like an action in  physics, elicits a reaction. One such reaction, which he discarded, was that every time a magician casts a spell, he loses part of his soul. (He was getting multiple ideas at each stage of brainstorming.)

TOF was in the back of the room and when this idea was suggested he said, "Oh!" and this story was conceived. It was only an embryo of a story, but as it grew and developed, it was finally born and (being clear fantasy) was sent off to F&SF, K.K.Rusch, ed. She thought the ending needed clarification. (The original ending was the penultimate sentence.) So TOF inserted a few reminders of a specific item and a more explicit final sentence.

Later, Gardner Dozois selected it for The Year's Best SF, 13th ed.

Neither TOF, nor K.K. nor Gardner noticed that a supporting character's name had changed halfway through the narrative. (Agnes became Alice somehow.) This flaw has been corrected in the version here presented.
###

Recently, TOF discussed the problem of Infodumping and modestly proposes this story as one way to deal with it. A host of data on the mixed ancestry of the culture of the story is displayed in various ways -- Leif ben Eric, the mezuzah to appease the household lares, the sheepskin, the vestal's dagger, the knout, the use of antique English words like rixler, wereman and wifman, beek, and so on, all hopefully growing clear in the context.

See what you think. 

Dilbert Writes an SF Novel

Watch this Space

The on-line submission system at ANALOG informs me that my sestina has been rejected. Evidently, poetry is not my metier. (Ho ho) I will await official notification, then figure out if I should just post it here for free.

Infodumps for Fun and Profit

One of the problems the Writer faces is the dreaded Infodump. This occurs when a writer drops a mass of information on the Reader's head as if the latter were a statue and the former a pigeon. This is especially acute when the story is set in unfamiliar terrain, such as the future, the past, or an exotic country like Iowa, because the reader really does need some info if the setting is not to degenerate into the equally dreaded White Room. 

You are here, or not

One hardly needs to describe the sunny clime of LA or the concrete canyons of NYC, the which are well covered on the screens of television. Nor need the Writer expend effort telling the Reader what subways are and how they work. "Bob, take the A train to Harlem..." is sufficient. One needn't add: "As you know Bob, subways are underground railroads that operate off a powerful electrical current carried in a "third rail" running beside the track. Of the many trains running through this maze of tunnels, one of them, designated "A," runs up the Eighth Avenue tunnel in Manhattan, and..."

...and so on into the background of the IRT, BMT, and how the IND differed from the others... etc. etc. Dig it.

The Journeyman

"In the Great North Woods," having been trimmed from 42,000 words to a mean and paltry 24,300th, has been resubmitted to Analog. It's fate lies in the balance.

Meanwhile, the Dialogue on the Inner World System, a spare 2900 word fact article has been reviewed and is nearly ready to be sent off to do or die.

And TOF in an uncontrollably whimsical moment, has converted some opening paragraphs in "Nexux" into a sestina. Or part of a sestina. These might not be quite the right six words on which to build. The first sestet, so far runs thusly:

Alien life, we are told, would be unlike our own;
True enough for trivia: for species, body, form,
Or appetites and senses nameless to ourselves.
(What lusts do bats endure when squeaks they place,
What pleasures from the echoes they receive?)
Our human mind can't see what bats survey.

But TOF has not reviewed syllable counts and such fine tweakings; nor is he happy with "ourselves," which is a difficult word to place in the following sestets. He has not thought to replace it with "...nameless to our soul." because he thinks he can work soul into the others sestets more easily. "Survey" may also prove a problem.