Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth

by Wright, John C.

  “But—then why ask Dr. Smithwork to come here? Surely the campus laboratory…”

  “I see you still have your little statues and trinkets hanging up all over your flat. Virgin Mary. Saint George. Saint—who the hell is that with the dog?—and I’m sure you said your beads. We might have need of all that superstitious fa-de-la before the night is through. You have a crucifix? Put it on. You have any holy water, holy oil, sanctified communion cookies? We may need something to throw at the shadow when it materializes here.”

  “Laymen are not allowed to carry around the blessed Host to throw at people.”

  “Who said anything about people?” Professor MacNab grunted and took another swig from my mug, scowling. “Ach! You drink swill. Can’t you afford to buy something better?”

  I took my crucifix from a drawer, crossed myself, and donned it.

  “Do you have anything—a cross, a bible?” I asked him.

  “Course not! I’m a man of science.”

  “And if the shadow that wields the Great Fear manifests here?”

  “I’ll hide behind you and cry like a girl, as befits a man of science.”

  There came a knock at the door.

  If you notice what I did in this short scene, you can learn to do the same

  The first thing to make up when writing is a conceit, a pretend thing, a false to facts idea that the reader will accept for the sake of the story. It has to be pretend, because if it is real, you are writing nonfiction.

  The conceit it is actually the easiest part of the writing process: everyone has ideas for good stories. Every professional writer I have ever met carries a notebook in his back pocket (or her purse) to jot down story ideas as they come to him. Conceits for stories occur to most bookish people between once a week and once a day, but only pros write them down and remember them. That is why we are called “conceited.” That is also why pros react with snorts of scorn when amateurs ask us where we get our ideas. In the first place, no one knows where ideas come from, and in the second, they are commonplace, and in the third, ideas are insignificant. The significant thing is the execution of the craftsmanship in carrying out the idea.

  The conceit for the hypothetical novel Old Men Shall Dream Dreams is that the Inklings (J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams) were secretly involved in a British project to investigate Nazi interest in the occult, and that some of the material in their famous books was, of course, a reflection of some real things their work for the government ran into, but which they were not allowed to reveal due to the Official Secrets Act.

  Now every book has a beginning. The same story can start in one of two places: in medias res, like Paradise Lost by Milton, which starts in the middle of the action, rather than from the beginning, like The Book Of Genesis by Moses.

  The second thing is the basic technique for revealing the plot. If you have ever performed a striptease act in stiletto heels atop a sleazy bar and gotten drink-besotted yet lustful customers to thrust large denomination bills through the g-string barely covering your swaying shapely hips to brush against the luscious tickling smoothness of your warm yet naked velvety skin, you already know the technique. But (ahem) since I am a grossly overweight middle aged man, and the visual image involved here requires we wash out our brains with Listerine, you might need the technique explained in a more step by step fashion.

  It has to do with showing just enough onstage to create in the mind of the audience that something more, something interesting, is next to come. The writer lures the reader into turning the page.

  The first line is the “hook.” By mentioning an arresting image, the corpse of a child, but saying that something, whatever it is, is not the corpse of a child, the paragraph automatically provokes the reader to wonder what it is. What is not a child’s corpse but would be mistaken for one?

  Curiosity is the most powerful and simplest of the lures to trick the reader into turning the page. Whole books and whole genres, called Mystery stories, entertain a large segment of the reading world just with the lure of curiosity and nothing else.

  The exact same number of words could indeed put across the exact same information, but if the answer is given the reader before the reader has time to wonder about the question, the paragraph provokes no curiosity, and will seem oddly flat. Consider the same story opening with, “A dead Hobbit from Tolkein’s universe was brought by MacNab to my flat in London during the Blitz.”

  The second sentence contains a second hook: the phrase “Professor of Applied Military Theology” is comical, but interesting, and it tells the reader what kind of story this is. The reader now knows he is not in our real world, and he wonders what kind of world he is in. A science fiction reader, in particular, will automatically start to wonder what the laws of nature and unreal conditions of that unreal world might be, that there would be such a class as Applied Military Theology.

  The line “Don’t worry. It is not human.” is another pure negative lure. The reader automatically wonders, if it is not human, what is it?

  The “Don’t worry” is there partly for ironic effect, since most people would find the presence of a dead nonhuman humanoid more disturbing rather than less. Humor, particularly dry humor, acts as a lubricant to make it easier for the reader to slip further into the story. You as a writer are trying to cast a spell like a hypnotist, trying to make the reader forget the real world for an hour and believe in the make-believe world as if it were as real. Everything that lubricates and makes the process easier is a plus.

  The “Don’t worry” is also partly for character development. MacNab sounds unsympathetic about the death of the nonhuman he is carrying, or perhaps he is merely so hardened by war as to be unsympathetic to any death.

  The second paragraph establishes the time and place, not by saying “Dateline: London, during the Blitz” but by including details specific to that period. There are many periods in history where teamsters drive horses, and many where there are anti-aircraft guns, and blackouts, but none where there are all three together. The reader makes an unconscious act of imagination, and fills in details of scene and setting.

  It is especially important in a science fiction setting, where the reader assumes that the setting is not our world, to establish immediately that the setting is very much like our world. By the second paragraph, the reader knows this story takes place not far from real history, but that it differs from our world by the introduction of one abnormality: a small corpse that looks like a child “but it is not human.”

  The third paragraph is character development. A first person viewpoint character needs very little; the reader will automatically assume the viewpoint character is like him unless told otherwise. The other character in the scene is given a single personality quirk—he both steals a drink and complains about it, and he does not have particularly drawing-room manners. This is meant to be funny and endearing rather than annoying, and to portray in one stroke a brusque or absent-minded fellow.

  Since we have by now established a setting and given him a name, the reader can be trusted to fill in the details of some sort of stereotypical Oxfordian professor, perhaps a blustery, bossy or jolly type. It is important to trust the reader (because you have no choice not to) to fill in lifelike details. The bit of business of stealing a drink establishes that the two characters are friends. The use of the word “lad” and other clues show that the professor is either the older or the superior of the viewpoint character.

  Please note that the technique for establishing character is the same as the technique used for establishing setting.

  The paragraph does NOT say, “MacNab and I are old friends, despite that he is my mentor, and we were at ease with each other, even during desperate and dangerous situations. He helped himself to my drink without asking while my hands were full, which I thought was annoying, but forgivable. We share things like friends, but sometimes he shares more of my things than I do of his.”

  What the paragraph does instead is put on clues
that are unique to relationships of that kind, so that the reader deduces, rather than is told, that the relationship is one of that kind, a close but unequal one.

  Again, having MacNab steal the drink but then complain about it, is meant to be funny, or at least ironic. Since MacNab makes several comments about drinking, the reader fills in the blank that he is a hard drinking man, who has (or who imagines he has) a discriminating taste in alcohol.

  Notice the difference a small change in one of these clues can have. Had MacNab taken the drink, but instead of calling it bathtub swill, sighed and said, “Sorry to nick your drink, Old Man, but running is thirsty work! I’ve seen things this night—well, never mind what I have seen. Fear can dry your mouth out, that’s all. And too much fear—damn, I am parched, that’s all.”

  This would have been of a different tone, but still setting out hooks and lures. The speaker interrupts himself, and does not say of what he is afraid, or from whom he was running, and this provokes reader curiosity again. It also would set a slightly more serious and menacing tone than the tone I selected. Selecting tone is a matter of judgment. The only general rule is that the tone should reinforce the general tone of the story. Don’t start a horror story with a joke; don’t start a joking story with a horror.

  There is a certain delicate judgment involved in character development, since the selfsame words which strike one reader as funny will strike another as repellent. The only solution there is to be careful about first impressions, and to keep a certain consistency to re-enforce the impression you want to persuade the reader to create in his imagination.

  This, by the way, is why writers use stereotypes. Far from being the evil thing all the rest of the world regards them as being, writers cannot write without stereotypes of people, places and things, and this is because our entire art consists of creating the illusion of a complete picture or a complete world out of a splinter or fragment of description, with the reader’s imagination filling in the majority of the details. One cannot do this without knowing what pictures the reader is likely to have in his imagination beforehand.

  What the reader wants not to do is to find himself being asked to use the stereotype in his head in a tired, trite, shopworn, or expected way, because then the reader notices, and is rightly put off by the trick being pulled on him.

  The defining characteristic of stereotypes is that they are unadmitted, unthinking, unconscious and unselfconscious, and using a stereotype in an expected way brings to the reader’s attention that he has these stereotypical sets of assumptions floating around in the back of his mind — and many a reader (especially a reader who thinks of himself as thoughtful) is a little miffed to discover that these unthinking assumptions are there, or are being played upon.

  A reader whose stereotype assumptions differ from your own is even more aware. I recall reading a short story where, for example, nothing was described of the character aside from that he was a CIA agent. The writer expected me to fill in the details, so I (who come from a military background) filled in the details of a stalwart and patriotic member of the intelligence community. The writer (who must have come from a different background) told the story as if the character’s sinister and malign nature had been established—because, to him, the stereotype of the CIA agent is sinister and malign. And for me the spell was broken.

  One way to avoid that error is to make sure that you use at least two stereotypes, preferably two stereotypes that contradict each other when describing any one character. In Tolkien, for example, Bilbo Baggins of Bag End is both a dragon-hunting adventurer friendly to elves and wizards and also an overweight avuncular old bachelor who complains about guests hanging on the doorbell all day. Kal-El of Krypton is both a heroic Herculean strongman and also a mild-mannered reporter. Fu Manchu of the Si Fan is both a criminal conspirator and also a dignified Mandarin too proud to break his word, and a scientific genius. Note that each of these qualities could be described (or, better yet, adumbrated) in a sentence or two, but that the character also possesses an opposite quality.

  While Bilbo, Superman, and Fu Manchu at one time or another, have been denounced as being stereotypes, note their enduring popularity; and compare them to the relatively flat and uninteresting versions of their less famous imitators, Curzad Ohmsford of Shady Vale, Marvelman, and the Mysterious Wu Fang. If you said “Who?” at these names, my point is made.

  What makes Bilbo different from every other knight errant is that he is a short little stay-at-home squire. What makes Superman different from other vigilante supermen is that he is a hick farmboy trying to make good in the Big City. What makes Fu Manchu different from other crime lords is his code of impeccable honor. The first two are heroes you can feel sorry for; and the last is a villain you can admire.

  The next paragraph is the first satisfaction of the curiosity provoked in the first paragraph. The thing that is not the corpse of a child and not a human being is described. The details are meant to fit in to some sort of picture the reader is forming in his mind, but not fit nicely or precisely, so that the reader can sort of tell what is going on (we do not want the reader totally lost at sea, lest he put the book down) but not allowing the reader to see all that is going on.

  The reason for this is allure: it is like the striptease mentioned above. When the nubile young doxy pushes the loop of fabric off her shoulder, and turns away, and looks back over her shoulder with half-lidded eyes, it is meant to allure the filthy old voyeurs in the audience into seeing the beginning of the curvaceous delight of the bosom exposed, but not all, not quite, not yet. A young woman taking off her bra when no one is looking does so in a more businesslike way, and the allure is minimal.

  The paragraphs after each serve two purposes at once. Each one is supposed to answer, or partly answer, the readers’ question about what is going on, but then also to raise a new question or new twist on an old question. Pacing is the art of placing the questions and answers not too close together and not too far apart to keep the reader turning pages.

  You tell the reader the corpse is not a human being. This raises the question of what it is. Then you mention German agents to make the reader raise the question of what the Germans are up to. Then you tell the reader what the corpse is: a short humanoid dressed in green and yellow. You mention what slew the corpse, something called the Great Fear. This raises the question of who or what is the Great Fear. Then you tell the reader what the German agents were up to, trying to smuggle the hobbit down the Thames. Then you mention Darker Powers. This raises the question of what are the Darker Powers and what kind of dread and hellish thing do you use a crucifix rather than a Tommygun to face? Then mention that they may be coming here. Then say there is a knock at the door.

  It is a simple pattern with many variations: question, distraction, second question, first answer, second distraction, third question, second answer, and repeat. The longer the pause between question and answer, the longer the reader is kept lost at sea.

  The biggest question, will the hero slay the villain and get the girl? has to be introduced in the first chapter and kept until the last chapter to answer. So you either have to introduce the villain, or the clue leading to the henchmen leading to the villain, in the first chapter, or you have to introduce the girl and make her seem lovely to the reader. If your hero is a Hobbit rather than a Frenchman, you are allowed to introduce a lovely bit of home and hearth and beloved countryside rather than a lovely girl.

  The villain can be anything (animal, vegetable or mineral) that the hero hates or fears or needs to overcome.

  The clue that starts the thread that leads to the villain can be a very small thread indeed. Consider the following opening of two paragraphs, eight lines in total:

  “When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.

  “Bilbo was very rich and very peculiar, and had been the wonder of the S
hire for sixty years, ever since his remarkable disappearance and unexpected return. The riches he had brought back from his travels had now become a local legend, and it was popularly believed, whatever the old folk might say, that the Hill at Bag End was full of tunnels stuffed with treasure. And if that was not enough for fame, there was also his prolonged vigour to marvel at. Time wore on, but it seemed to have little effect on Mr. Baggins. At ninety he was much the same as at fifty. At ninety-nine they began to call him well-preserved; but unchanged would have been nearer the mark. There were some that shook their heads and thought this was too much of a good thing; it seemed unfair that anyone should possess (apparently) perpetual youth as well as (reputedly) inexhaustible wealth.”

  The thin thread here is that, of course, it is too much of a good thing that anyone should possess perpetual youth and inexhaustible wealth. That thread leads step by darker step to a magic ring, which turns out to be a cursed magic ring, and the curse is from the darkest of Dark Lands itself. Mr. Bilbo’s perpetual youth is not just unnatural, it is a gift from the pit of Hell, and the Witch King on a black steed is already being drawn and lured toward peaceful Hobbiton by the dread ring, the Ruling Ring, the One. The Witch King is but a lesser shadow of the Great Shadow. And the gold band on the stubby hand of the silly little hobbit man is the power that can enslave the will, darken minds, corrupt souls, and ruin the world. The thread leads all the way to the Cracks of Doom.

  Tolkien knew what he was doing; for he actually introduces his villain in the second paragraph of page one. The reader wonders at the long life of the harmless country squire, and may perk up his ears, but he is not yet to suspect the chain leading back link by link to the Dark Tower. The question of “Why is Bilbo so lucky?” leads, question by question, to the question, “Now that Frodo is broken by the Ring, and put it on his finger while standing in the very Cracks of Doom in the center of the Dark Land, how can the world be saved when destruction seems certain? And where did that wretched Gollum go?”