Writers of the Future Volume 27: The Best New Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year

by L. Ron Hubbard

  No point in getting into a sulk, though. Kyla Resnick was doing enough of that herself, and with Lasko still out and her boss delirious with fever and blood loss, I didn’t even want to try and talk to her. Moor and I moved Zhou into the one freezer she’d left running. Same place we’d stuffed those three dead bodies I’d found on my first look-around.

  Nothing more I could do, so I crawled back up into that observation dome. At least I could die seeing the sky. Then I fell asleep. All that excitement, the strain of heavy labor and that missing liter of blood left me out for five hours. I woke up with the nurse standing above me with a tube and a needle.

  “I need another five hundred milliliters,” she said.

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  “Well, I can either be active or passive, and if I’m passive, Mr. Achuthanandan will die for sure.”

  I hate it when they turn my arguments against me. So I let her take my blood, and I was pretty woozy when finally I got up and climbed down to see how Moor was doing.

  “Good news is that I found us some thermals,” she said.

  “Bad news?” I had to ask.

  “Not enough. We’re fifty klicks below the rig’s probable altitude and still two hundred and fifty klicks behind it. I can’t find it visually. Wish we had radar or lasers or something. Anything more than a glorified camera.”

  “How’s the power?”

  “Bad. We can have velocity or lift, and right now, even if I could find them, we’d pass below them at a hundred down, or get us back to their altitude with no change in position. So we’ll have to pass underneath them and wave at them as we cook. If I could find them.”

  “Do you think the ’Roiders hit them, too?”

  Moor shrugged. “How the hell do I know? I doubt it. Tensions were high between Mars and the Belt. I figured there was going to be a war, because we both wanted a war more than peace. But picking a fight with the Venusians would be just stupid for them. Or us.”

  “I’m not Martian,” I reminded her.

  “No, but you’re on Martian contract, so that’s the same thing.”

  “Contract just got violated,” I said. “Somebody owes me a termination package. Okay, poor choice of words. So what’s the plan?”

  “Keep scanning the skies and hope for the best.”

  “Great.” I took a seat and worked a screen, scanning above us. The sky was a clear blue haze, just some streamers in the distance. Picking out anything was going to be hard. I turned the contrast up until I started to see spots on the screen. Or maybe it was my blood loss. I pointed them out to Moor.

  “No, those are real.”

  “Debris? Do you think they blew up the Caelus platforms, too?”

  “It’s not falling. Cutting across the wind, too.”

  I kicked the magnification up high enough to get a pixilated mess and those spots turned into wiggles and disks. “I think that’s the spring migration,” I said. I’d seen pictures. There were murals of the swarms on the rig’s main cafeteria walls.

  “Well, that’s not something you see every day,” Moor muttered.

  “Yeah. So what’s the range? Fifty forward and twenty up?”

  Moor nodded. “Looks about right.”

  “Well, can you get us up into them?”

  “Maybe, but we’ll start dropping or stall out after that. So what the hell good does that do? We still have no idea where that rig is, and flying anywhere near a migration swarm’s been illegal for almost four hundred years.”

  “Exactly. You have a problem about being arrested?”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Got a better plan?”

  So she did her best to get us up toward the swarm. The odds of hitting any creature were pretty low. Even though they didn’t have central nervous systems, they had enough hard-wired instinct to keep their distance from each other and from us. I hoped. I also figured that this once-in-a-forty-year migration was interesting enough for the people up on that rig to be watching it.

  An hour later, we buzzed through a line of gossamer tubes and disks, past giant translucent filter feeders up to twenty meters long. They really were beautiful creatures. Pale ghosts of the sky. Didn’t hit a single one.

  And then the power level went to red. The morph metal envelope began to collapse back into a wing. We had nothing but gliding and life support now. Four more hours and we’d be dead. Another hour and Achuthanandan would be dead. Kyla Resnick didn’t even bother to ask if she could take any more blood.

  Moor kept us in line with the migration, heading north and away from the Caelus track as we slowly dropped below the critters. I watched them recede from the observation dome. Whether I lived or died, I was never going to see anything like that again.

  I went back to the tech room to help scan for the rig. Couldn’t see it at all. Didn’t even know if it really was in the neighborhood, but less than an hour into our final descent, Moor’s phone crackled to life on the emergency channel.

  “Attention, unknown vehicle! Under the authority Articles Two and Three of the Convention of Uranian Conservation and Protection, you are under arrest for gross violation of buffer zone restrictions. Prepare to be boarded.”

  I didn’t answer, I just laughed. Hysterically, to be honest. Moor pointed at the dot growing on her screen, moving to intercept our glide path.

  I picked up her phone and said, “Yeah, great, arrest us. Just hurry up. And we’re going to need a medic. And blood. You guys better have some synthetic blood packs with you.”

  So Achuthanandan lived. So did Lasko, but he was never in any more danger than me. He probably had more blood left in him than I did. Our makeshift refuge—Moor’s act of panicked genius that had saved us all—finally collapsed in the crushing depth three hours after our rescue. Those damn Venusian bureaucrats didn’t want to drop the charges, but hell, worst they can do is deport me back to Earth. Only way I could afford a ticket, anyway.

  When I get back, maybe I’ll take up ballooning. Or not.

  Creating Your Own Destiny

  by Robert Castillo

  Robert Castillo is a storyboard artist who lives in Jersey City and works in New York City. He is represented by Frameworks, LLC.

  Robert graduated with honors from the Art Institute of Boston and has a master’s degree in computer arts from the School of Visual Arts. As a storyboard artist, Robert has created boards for films including Lee Daniel’s Precious, the Christopher Reeve-directed animation Everyone’s Hero, Queen Latifah’s The Cookout and The Perfect Holiday and the award-winning cable television program The Sopranos. He has also done music videos for Alicia Keys, Ja Rule, Kid Rock, Lauryn Hill and Don Omar, commercials for Phat Farm, Adidas and And1, as well as promo work and music videos for MTV, Nickelodeon’s Ironman and Fuse, VH1, Court TV and ESPN. Robert has done concept boards for shows like Lopez Tonight, Skins and Chopped.

  Robert’s talent has been recognized with various awards and honors including L. Ron Hubbard’s Illustrators of the Future Contest and the Student Academy Awards in 2004 for his short film S.P.I.C. The Storyboard of My Life which has screened in fourteen festivals including Cannes and the Museum of Modern Art.

  Robert has given back by auctioning his artwork for charitable foundations. He also volunteers his time with Ghetto Film School in the Bronx, NY, Mount Sinai Medical Center and the Automotive High School of Brooklyn, NY. He is married to Karen Latney and has four dogs.

  Creating Your Own Destiny

  I was born with a pencil in my hand, or so the story goes! Ever since I can remember, drawing has been a vital part of my life. It’s something I have been doing all my life. Drawing was the tool which helped me communicate with others. In 1977, when I stepped off the plane from Santo Domingo, I knew not a word of English and drawing was how I commun
icated.

  In school, my counselor told me that I should take up a trade like woodworking because artists did not make a lot of money, or else to be careful because I may end up a starving artist. When I applied to art school, I was torn between fine arts and illustration and was told illustrators worked for the quick buck and that fine arts were the way to go. My professors told me to loosen up, that I drew too much detail and that I needed to slow down because I was drawing too fast (traits that really come in handy today when I work on a storyboard job needed in twenty-four hours). Many of my friends who were artists changed their profession and got so-called “real jobs.” It was perceived that only a lucky few would make it. Even today, I hear negative remarks from my peers about how hard it is out there. I’m sure many of you reading this right now have had your share of obstacles.

  So, having experienced both the benefits of the Illustrators of the Future Contest and knowing what it is like to work from the bottom up as an artist, I have some points that I highly recommend to anyone wanting to make it as an illustrator in today’s world.

  People have asked me: “What is your secret?” “Why do you get the best jobs?” “Why are you so lucky?” Little do they know luck has nothing to do with it. You create your own destiny—along with some assistance from the Man above. To all aspiring illustrators out there, I offer this advice I have learned through the years. I have broken it down to ten key points.

  1. Believe in Thyself: You need to have confidence in your work. If you believe in your work, others will believe in it also. The best artist you can be is yourself. You don’t have to imitate someone else; there is only one of you and your style is your style. When I was in art school, there was a class where we needed to emulate another artist. I had a hard time doing this because what I ended up with was a cheap imitation of the other artist’s work.

  2. Practice, Practice, Practice: Athletes do it! Singers do it! Actors do it, at least the good ones! Then why shouldn’t illustrators? Someone once asked the great Wayne Gretzky how a skinny little kid from Canada ends up being one of the greatest hockey players of all time. He remarked, “I go to practice!” Many illustrators don’t draw every day. We have a tendency to procrastinate. Believe me, I know! You should keep a sketchbook or journal and sketch in it every day, practicing drawing people in different poses or animals at your local zoo. If you don’t get to draw every day, at least do it every other day. Some of the best illustrators in the world sketch at least an hour a day. It really makes a difference.

  3. Communication: This is a big one! I know many talented people who are amazing at what they do, but there is one problem; they can’t express themselves. Many illustrators work alone in their studios, and so this is a skill that is not practiced enough and it hurts their chances at great projects or jobs. It can also affect your income potential. Anyone can overcome this; I did! Many people don’t believe me when I tell them I was a very shy kid in high school. The best way to learn this is to try it. Learn about public speaking; volunteer and work with kids in your community such as teaching them art. Take a class on public speaking or read a book about it. If you are from another country, learn the English language as it will open doors for you. I have received jobs just because I was articulate and spoke properly. These things are very important, but it is something that is not addressed in some art schools.

  4. Self-Respect and Respect for Others: If you have respect for yourself, others will respect you. There might come a time when you will be asked your opinion on a fellow artist and what you say can very well come back and bite you! Think before you speak and find respectful words to express disagreement with the other person. Stay away from gossip, especially in a studio setting. You never know who is listening. I worked in a studio where I made the mistake of criticizing someone’s work when he was not present and the very next day I was confronted by that person. Of course, what I said was made even worse by the people telling him what I had said. Tell the person yourself. Most artists welcome constructive criticism from their peers. The professional way to disagree with someone is to say you have “creative differences.”

  5. Positive Mental Attitude: I’ve come across students and other illustrators who have a negative attitude about almost everything around them. They defeat themselves before they get started. Most of it comes from listening to other negative people. If you told someone you were going to start a business tomorrow, one of the first things they will say to you is how hard it is or that 90% of businesses fail in the beginning. We live in a world full of negativity—just turn on the news. It is up to us to see the positive results in our mind and know that things will eventually be all right. See yourself as a successful illustrator and you will be blown away by the results. Stay focused on what you want to achieve.

  6. Think Outside the Box: I have had success with this one! If everyone is doing things a certain way, it doesn’t mean you need to do them that way. For example, when I was at the Art Institute of Boston in my freshman year, I heard about an internship position at an animation studio. I knew that students were mailing in their portfolios and that the studio had a table with a pile of work from everyone wanting in. I decided to visit the studio and deliver my portfolio in person. I rang the bell and a woman answered the door. I told her I was in the neighborhood and just wanted to drop off my work. As I was speaking to her, I saw the president walk by, and lucky for me I knew that the company had recently won an Emmy. I congratulated the president and he struck up a conversation with me. I told him that I was trying out for the internship and he asked me if I could come back the following day. I ended up getting the internship by showing up and thinking differently than anyone else. Einstein once said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

  7. Self-Promotion and Networking: It is very important to promote your work and to market yourself. In the beginning of your career, you have to act as your own agent. Technology and the Internet have made it possible to reach all over, so the sky is the limit on this one. You can put up a free website with your work or a blog, upload a video of you drawing on YouTube or a slide show of your illustrations. I have received many jobs because someone saw my work on the Internet or they did a search for a storyboard artist and my name came up. I now have an agent for storyboard work, but 95% of my work has come from my connections that I have made through self-promotion or word of mouth. You should always have business cards ready. You could be on a train or at the supermarket and be next to someone who is looking for an artist. I once went to a party I did not want to attend but passed out my cards and got a job that lasted me for a year. All because I walked around, introduced myself to people and passed out my business cards.

  8. Research: One important thing that I like to do before every job or client I might meet is research. Before I do a storyboard job, I gather references of the artist and subject matter I will be working with. It saves a lot of time and stress when you have what you need in front of you. If I will be meeting a new client or working with a new company, I research and read up everything I can on them. It helps you communicate better and make better decisions.

  9. Give Back: Giving is one of the most important things you will ever do. It is something we all need to do! You can give by donating your time and artwork. For me it encapsulates all the other key things I’ve talked about. When I donate art to charities, it’s a perfect combination. I’m giving back and at the same time, I am getting exposure for my art and meeting other people who could potentially hire me. Another great way to give back is to mentor and teach others. Advise your peers. We will all see each other again in this industry; it’s a small world.

  10. Be Flexible: The best way to survive in this illustration market today is to be flexible. Like the ancient saying, “Be like water.” For example, I went to school wanting to be an animator at Disney Studios. I studied animation. Disney started laying people off and many animat
ion companies went overseas. So I took a comic book and storyboard class. While in school, I started doing storyboards for students at first to make extra cash. Eventually one music video led to another and now I make a living doing storyboards. You might start out wanting to be an illustrator, but it doesn’t mean you can’t end up doing concept art for movies or comic books and graphic novels, maybe even directing films. Kurosawa was a painter. James Cameron was an illustrator and also a truck driver. So be open to changes and you will survive. I still draw caricatures for kids’ parties or an occasional portrait or mural here and there; art is art. It’s all practice!

  I believe that if you work hard and believe in yourself you can achieve your goals no matter where you come from. Your environment or economic situation does not define who you are or will be. It doesn’t matter if you come from a poor neighborhood or had a hard life, or if you don’t speak English. We have all had to struggle! It’s part of the human experience. It’s easy to say my life was hard so I couldn’t make it. I try to do every job that I get the best way I know how. I go the extra mile for my clients and it pays off because they only want to work with me. I also try to live an honest life and do what is right when it’s easy to do the wrong thing. Another area of my life that I enjoy is giving back, raising money for charities and helping underprivileged kids. It really does come back tenfold. It’s a great feeling when you can help others. That is the secret of success: “To give!” As far as the job market, the jobs are out there, no matter what they say about the economy. Illustrators will always be needed. We put image to word, whether with pencil or computer. We are the creators of worlds. We are the unsung folks of the movie world. Along with the directors, we put the film on paper before it is shot. How great is that? So, go out there and create your own luck and make your own path. Life is an adventure! Every day is an opportunity to learn. Teach and pay it forward.