A Classical Education: 10 (or more) Sci-Fi Books You Should Read

A while ago, Nathan Bransford asked, "What book are you embarrassed not to have read?" A lot of classics were mentioned (and a lot of people haven't read Lord of the Rings, which astounds me), but it made me think: What books should a science fiction author(/critic/fan) have read?

Some caveats: (1) this is not a top 10 sci-fi novels of all time, nor is it my favorite 10 sci-fi novels; (2) I haven't read all of these (in particular, I haven't read #7, and #5 is waiting on my shelf); (3) I totally cheated because I couldn't pick just 10, so I'm giving you some options.

Without further ado, here's my list of 10 (or more) novels any sci-fi fan should read:

1. Journey to the Center of the Earth, From the Earth to the Moon, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, or Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne. The first father of science fiction, Verne thought of things that didn't happen for 100 years, but they happened. That's like the heart of science fiction.
2. The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man, or The Time Machine by H. G. Wells. The second father of science fiction. Apparently also the father of table top war games.
3. 1984 by George Orwell or Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Classics in dystopian fiction. Really, you ought to read both.
4. Dune by Frank Herbert. I consider Dune to be the Lord of the Rings of science fiction, largely for its scope and themes. Unlike the other novels above, Dune is more about the characters and the story than the science. It's one of the best examples of what character-driven, epic sci-fi can be.
5. The Foundation trilogy by Isaac Asimov. As mentioned, I haven't read these yet, but they're on my shelf. I have read very little Asimov, and I know this series is a must from a great science fiction author.
6. The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury or Red Planet by Robert Heinlein. If Wells and Verne are fathers of sci-fi, Bradbury and Heinlein are like their sons, or grandsons or something. These two classics explore the colonization of Mars before we realized there was nothing on it. (Alternatively, try Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land).
7. Neuromancer by William Gibson or Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. I haven't read either, but I've heard so much about them that I want to read both. Both books deal with the idea of cyberspace before "cyberspace" was a word my mom used. A lot of ideas seen in sci-fi since have come out of these stories.
8. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. I couldn't make a list of sci-fi books without mentioning my very favorite. Like Dune, Ender's Game is more about the characters and psychology than it is about science, but that doesn't make it any less scientific. I don't care if you're a sci-fi fan or not, you have to read this book.
9. The Giver by Lois Lowry. More dystopian fiction, but more contemporary and accessible than either Orwell or Huxley. Plus, I have a soft spot in my heart for young adult fiction. It's a good book. Try it out.
   
10. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. One thing about science fiction is that it's often really, really serious. Adams takes care of that, and I think any fan of sci-fi ought to be exposed to the funnier side of the genre.

So I guess that's over 20 books. That's fine, they're all worth reading. But hey, this is just my opinion, and any top 10 list is going to be missing something. So what do you think? What books would make your list?

Self-Promotion

I hate the idea of self-promotion. Who doesn't? Who wants to be that kid who says, "Hey, everybody! Look at me!!" Okay, fine, well I never wanted to be that kid. Now I find myself on the outskirts of an industry that requires it.

So I've been researching self-promotion a little. One thing I've discovered is that I've already been doing it. I mean, the missionary "industry" revolves around self-promotion just as much as the publishing one does. Perhaps more so.

(Speaking of which, those of you reading this from Facebook might like to know that this is being imported from my other blog - my writing one. I'm still importing the missionary blog such that it appears on my wall, but not into my notes anymore. I hope that's okay.)

How you promote yourself depends, apparently, on how much money, time, and morals you have. If you have a lot of money, hire a publicist. If you have a lot of time, build a website, make profiles on social networking sites, and spend time on other people's blogs, the social net, forums, etc. - all the while linking back to your website. If you're low on morals, this time can also be spent comment spamming and writing fake reviews.

It's like this. Let's measure the amount of time and money invested in self-promotion with what we'll call your Publicity Quotient. The more you invest in self-promotion, the higher your PQ (low morals increase your PQ slightly, with an increased risk of drastically lowering it when you're found out; high morals, sadly, do nothing). With that in mind, take a look at this completely unscientific, made-up chart:

Not terribly mathematical, I know. But beyond the general guideline that the more you put in, the more you'll get out, publicity is largely luck and magic - becoming a breakout bestseller even more so.

Also, anyone who tells you how to promote yourself, without mentioning in the same breath that you need a product worth promoting, is taking you in. If your book sucks, you can sell copies with publicity but it won't do you much good in the long run (see low morals).

That's my take on the whole thing, anyway. I plan on doing self-promotion the same way I've been doing it. I'll provide places for people to get hooked in, I'll get the word out with a non-spamming announcement, and most importantly I'll try to be genuine. That means leaving comments because I have something to say, not because I have something to link to. It means making profiles on social networks that I'm actually a part of (sorry, MySpace, guess that means you're out).

And it means trusting others to do the reviewing and word-of-mouth advertising for me. If it doesn't happen, it just means I need to write a better book next time.

And when that doesn't work, I'll upgrade my spambot.

No More Crichton

This is kind of out of the blue for me. I didn't even know he had cancer, but apparently Michael Crichton has passed away.

Michael Crichton is one of my early, and still present, influences in writing. It started with Jurassic Park which I read as a teenager, after which I went on to read practically everything he wrote. Though I didn't mention him before, Michael Crichton taught me that a novel should read like a movie. Ironically, I learned that from reading Sphere, which is a great book but a terrible movie - sorry, Michael, it was.

Premise and Adam's 3 WIPs

Under extreme duress, I've added the followers widget to my sidebar. Two of you have already noticed it. Feel free to make use of it, and know that seeing little boxes up there makes me happy.

At the end of my first mission trip, we spent a few days preparing for reassimilation back to the States. One thing our leaders told us was that everybody would ask the question "How was your trip?" but not everybody wanted to know everything. We had to be prepared to answer that question, lest we just say "Good" or else ramble on until we noticed that our listener had walked away some time ago.

The leaders suggested we have three answers to the question: a 5 second answer, a 1 minute answer, and a 5 minute answer. Each answer was meant to be concise and informative, giving the listener the information they really wanted (you can usually tell who wants a 5 second answer vs. 5 minutes), yet hopefully causing them to ask questions and start a discussion.

Your novel is the discussion you want to have with someone. Your synopsis is your 5 minute answer. Your hook is the 1 minute, and your 5 second answer is your premise.

The premise is everything the story is about in one sentence, less than 25 words or so. It's the one-line blurbs TV Guide uses to describe the movies in their listings, the tagline at the top of Amazon items, the first answer to "What's your book about?" It sucks to write because you have to cut out everything, but it's a great place to start before writing a query.

Today I'm going to elaborate on the status of my works in progress, and give you a 20-word premise of each.

TRAVELERS
Premise: A father and son must rescue an extraordinary girl from an immortal tyrant in a post-apocalyptic future to save humanity. I've put the first chapter online.

Status: I've sent out 50 queries, and received 33 form rejections. Fun, huh?

Plans: I have another 8-14 agents to query. After that, I'll try revising the query at AQConnect and Evil Editor some more before querying big publishers directly. If that doesn't work, small press.

AIR PIRATES (working title)
Premise: A future-telling stone makes a young man join an air pirate crew on a quest to find his long-dead mother.

Status: Tentatively titled "The Curse of Samhain." I have just finished chapter 14, putting the manuscript at 50,000 words.

Plans: The current outline calls for 29 chapters, maybe 110,000 words. I can't yet estimate when it will be done though. During the first six months, I wrote at 2,700 words/month, but in the last six I've more than doubled that. If I can keep it up, the draft might be finished in another 9-10 months. But take that with a bunch of salt, because (a) I'm getting faster all the time, (b) life gets in the way a lot, and (c) my wife and I are still trying to balance my writing with my life/job, and the net effect of this balancing on my writing speed is unknown.

I have a three-book story arc planned for Air Pirates.

JOEY STONE (working title)
Premise: A girl who controls fire with her mind joins an academy for her kind and learns about trust and sacrifice. (Give me a break, I haven't even figured out a plot yet!)

Status: Still brainstorming. Whenever I have ideas, I jot them down in a Word document set aside for that purpose. Otherwise, I leave it alone.

Plans (such as they are): The powers in the story are largely psionic in nature, but I may decide to refer to them as mutant or witchly.* The powers are based on a PBeM world I created in another life.** I was going to set the story in that world too, but now I'm thinking about leaving it on Earth, maybe modern day or near future. Heck, if I can figure out a way to place it in Thailand, I will. You can see how nebulous this story still is.

I very, very loosely have three books planned for this story. I don't know if I will start it after finishing Book 1 or Book 3 of Air Pirates though. Right now, Joey's just a seed that I'm interested in, but not a story. That seed has to bounce around my head for a while before it really sprouts.


* And you thought that other post was theoretical. Ha!

** In the world before 9/11.

The Imaginary Line

There is an imaginary line dividing science fiction and fantasy. Science fiction is space and aliens and the future. Fantasy is magic and elves and dwarves. Right? As a reader, I'm glad it's not that simple, but as a writer, trying to find where I fit, I wish it would be a little easier. We categorize books so that readers can find what they like, and so publishers can find the right folks to sell to, but so so many books defy categorization.

Example: Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. The book is no doubt science fiction what with Martians, space travel, a sole survivor of a defunct colony on Mars, etc. But halfway through, and most peculiarly at the end, there are characters both major and minor that have become angels in Heaven. That's not science, is it?

How about McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern? It has dragons, telepathy, medieval societies... but if you've read farther you know that Pern is a colony of Earth, and dragons the result of genetic engineering. The series appeals to fantasy fans, but the author insists it's sci-fi. If there's a line between science fiction and fantasy, then Anne McCaffrey is sitting right on top of it.

Now try this. I'll give you the premise of a story, and you tell me if it's sci-fi or fantasy: "New students arrive at a private academy for witches whose highly-trained agents must oppose a powerful terrorist witch organization."

Fantasy, right? Maybe urban fantasy (the words "agents" and "terrorist" suggest modern-day). What if I told you the sentence originally said "mutants" instead of "witches" and is, in fact, the premise of X-Men?

X-Men is science fiction, but merely by changing the perceived source of their powers - not changing their powers or the story or even their costumes one bit - the genre of the movie suddenly slides towards fantasy. (In fact, Marvel 1602 does just that, calling them "witchbreed" rather than mutants, leaving their powers unchanged).

Granted, if we altered X-Men by calling them witches, the story should change, at least a little. But it doesn't have to change a lot for it to suddenly become urban fantasy. It's all in perception.

What's my point? I don't know if I have one. Just that with every story I write, I find myself sitting on top of that imaginary line and wondering how to sell the story. I wish we could call it all speculative fiction and be done with it, but it's not to be. I know.

Anyway, here's to steampunk and science fantasy. My favorite blended subgenres that will never see their own sections in a bookstore.

Hook Examples from Television

A few weeks ago, I talked about 7 things that need to be present in the hook (the mini-synopsis, the query... whatever you call it, it's the thing you send to agents and editors in the hopes that they will want to read your book). I had a hard time finding real-world examples of query letters, but I did find some examples from good, old-fashioned television. That's what we're talking about today.

One thing most television shows do is resell themselves with every single episode. You never know when a new viewer is going to tune in, and you don't want them to tune out just because they don't get it. You need to hook them from the beginning. Sometimes, that hook comes in the form of a voice over that explains the show's premise in a cool, interesting way. See if you can find the 7 things in each of these examples.

In 1972, a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire... The A-Team.

This example is 50% setup, but all the elements are there, and the setup goes a long way towards establishing the characters - not individually of course, but as a team, which is really what the show was about. After this voice over, the visuals that played during the theme song would give you a sense of the characters. In a query letter, you've still got a whole paragraph or two to do the same thing.

Knight Rider: a shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a man, who does not exist. Michael Knight, a young loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless, in a world of criminals who operate above the law.

This is not a good example of specificity (what the heck is "a shadowy flight"?), but it is concise. All the elements, except for maybe setting, are presented in only 45 words. Of course this hook omits the coolest thing about the show, namely Kitt. That's what needs to go in the rest of the query (and, again, Kitt is everywhere during the rest of the theme).

The alien world of Myrrh is being devoured by dark water. Only Ren, a young prince, can stop it by finding the lost 13 treasures of Ruul. At his side is an unlikely, but loyal crew of misfits. At his back - the evil pirate lord Bloth, who will stop at nothing to get the treasures for himself. It's high adventure with the pirates of dark water!

This is from a short-lived Saturday morning cartoon I used to watch. It's crammed pack with cliche (hey, it was a cartoon!), but every element is there and it tells you what to expect: adventure, pirates, a quest, treasures, and even a little fantasy. All in only 67 words.

Water, earth, fire, air - long ago, the four nations lived in harmony, then everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked. Only the Avatar, master of all four elements, could stop them, but when the world needed him most, he vanished. A hundred years later, my brother and I discovered the new Avatar - an airbender named Aang, but though his airbending skills are great, he's got a lot to learn before he's ready to save anyone. But I believe Aang can save the world.

Last example. This lacks a little in that it's unclear how one can be a "master of all four elements" or what "airbending" is without being able to see the accompanying visuals. The other thing about this one is that first person in a query is a no-no, unless it's a memoir. Both of those things can be tweaked to make this appropriate for a query letter. Even so, I think the first person works really well here. Mainly because that last sentence gives you a sense, not only of Aang's character, but of the narrator's character as well.

These examples aren't perfect. I present them to show how the 7 things - protagonist, antagonist, goals, stakes, conflict, setting, and theme - can be presented in an interesting way in a short space. None of these examples is longer than 100 words. That leaves you with another 150-250 words to clarify the 7 elements, talk about your credentials, and mention why you chose that particular agent. If you can do all that concisely, you will have gone a long way towards your goal.

Last tips for today:
(1) Read your query out loud to yourself. You can catch a lot more errors that way.
(2) Imagine your query being read by the guy who does movie trailers. I'm not joking. It helps.

Why Do I Want To Be Published?

Bit of a God post. You've been warned.

In the last couple of weeks, I've repeatedly come against the question:* why do you want to get published? It's forced me to think, especially in light of the fact that writing is not, and can never be (at least for the foreseeable future) my main priority.

It's a hard question, because I won't deny that I like the feeling of being mini-famous,** but that's hardly a Christian attitude and certainly not a good thing to prioritize over my family.

* See Tip #88
** That is, famous only within small circles.

So I did what I always do when I'm in doubt. I went to the balcony and prayed. God didn't talk to me, but he opened my eyes. Or maybe by opening my heart and being quiet, I was able to see. I looked at our lawn - the lawn that only a couple months ago was a barren wasteland - and a bunch of birds flew onto the lawn, hopping around looking for bugs, and I thought, "That's cool. They couldn't do that before. Those birds are enjoying the lawn we made."

That's what hit me. I liked that the birds were enjoying something I made. I felt satisfied in my work. That's why I want to be published.

See, I already know that I love to - no, I have to - create. Writing is just my current outlet for that. And I'm completely convinced it's because I was made in the image of a creative God.*** And even God wasn't content with creating for himself. He needed someone who would get his Creation. Someone who could enjoy it.

I realized I create so that I and others can enjoy what I've created. Even though I do want to be mini-famous and make some money, my writing ultimately isn't about me. I could make it so pretty easily (and I'm sure I do in my mind all the time), but it's liberating to know the basic drive is much more pure than that.

*** That's essentially what "Author's Echo" means. We are echoes of the Author, images of him, children trying almost pathetically, yet purposefully, to emulate our Father in the things we do.