Spanner: Shira Is 10!

#999 #webcomic Today Spanner main character Shira turns 10!

Back around 1995 or so, when I was in my longest period of artist's block ever and I compulsively wrote story notes for 5 full years (and then went on for another 7 or 8, only with drawings), I read a book by American ninjutsu master Stephen K. Hayes (his site here) in which he revealed to Grandmaster Masaaki Hatsumi that he was born on September 9, 1949 — the number 9 has special significance to the ninja — I realized right then that Shira Thomas would have to be born exactly 50 years later. Spanner begins right before Shira's 15th birthday. So today is a major day in the Spanner mythos. And Shira's birthday party will have to be a significant event in Black Science as well (toward novel's end, in fact).

But since Spanner is supposed to be a manga, this is a reminder that I need to start drawing again. I've been procrastinating this for over 2 years.

Two Kinds of Science Fiction

I just found out that there's actually two kinds of science fiction: fiction in the genre, and fiction outside it. The latter is called, somewhat disparagingly by fans, "mundane"; the most popular writer of "mundane" SF is, of course, Michael Crichton. Some mainstream or even literary fiction is all but indistinguishable from science fiction; one famous example is Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, which is set partly on an alien world in some sort of trans-time. William Gibson's current "Blue Ant" cycle belongs to this category. Meanwhile, there is some genre SF that could fit just fine in the mainstream. For example, I've noticed that Philip K. Dick's proletarian-realist novels (the literary fiction he longed to be known for, such as In Milton Lumky Territory) are sold in the SF/fantasy section of the bookstore simply because he is an SF God. Some novels are (or were) on the borderline: Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow and Don DeLillo's Ratner's Star were both nominated for the Nebula Award; Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon tends to be put in the SF/fantasy section with Snow Crash and the Baroque Quartet, but rests right on the boundary between "genre" and "mundane" and is intended to be there.

As Literary Fiction Dies, Science Fiction Must Take Over

Face it: the traditional literary fiction that defined the mainstream in the 20th century is on its way out, much like the newspaper it drew from starting in the late 19th century. During its period of dictatorship, anything outside its narrow boundaries was ruthlessly relegated to the lowbrow genres of pulp fiction by the cultural establishment's literary police. But now literary fiction is almost extinct. Why? Because its ideology, called Naturalism, no longer reflects the daily lives of ordinary people.

What does? Science fiction. You see, far more than in Isaac Asimov's day, we are living in the world predicted by science fiction. Rockets and space stations? Check. Supercomputers, internets, virtual reality? Check. Robots do more of our manufacturing work. Cyborgs are increasingly banal. Androids and jetpacks are in development. Can interstellar spaceships, wormholes, antigravity, and time travel be far behind? And there's some amazing stuff now commonplace or in development that were inconceivable to the likes of Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and their contemporaries: nanotechnology, personal area networks, quantum computing, augmented reality — the list goes on...

The conclusion should be obvious. The central place in the mainstream of modern literature that was once held by the now dying Naturalist literary fiction properly belongs to science fiction. Why, then, is it still relegated to genre and fandom? Because the old literary establishment still controls the publishing industry.

Science Fiction Is The True Modern Literature

Remember my post in which I vowed to destroy science fiction? Now I'm going to assert with J. G. Ballard (in his introduction to his novel Crash) that science fiction is the only true modern literature, and the only kind of literature that fits the science fiction universe we live in.

On the surface, the two are exact contradictions. But they're not. In fact, they're the same thing.

Black Science: The Back Cover Copy

I've been trying to write Black Science for both JulNoWriMo and AugNoWriMo, and yet I've had little idea of what the plot is. No more idea, in fact, than when I first tried to write it for NaNoWriMo back in '06 and got two plots in one for my trouble. Well, yesterday I realized exactly what the conflict is: the battle between two "tribes" of scientists, the "Prometheans" dedicated to human improvement and evolution vs. the "Faustians" who sell their scientific integrity (if not their souls) to the military-industrial complex for money and power. And those two ex-spouses turned mortal enemies at the center of the novel, (respectively) Willa Richter-Thomas and C. Henry Becket, represent (or even lead) them.

So how did I manage to get a plot out of the cast, vague concept, and many background ideas for Black Science? I asked myself: "What would I print on the back cover?" It goes something like this:

Black Science

Willa Richter-Thomas. Clinical psychologist drawn deep into experimental neuroscience. Secular humanist. Liberal antiwar activist. Musician with a shady rock 'n' roll history. Mother of two. Den mother to a small tribe of hackers. Dedicated opponent of pseudoscience.

C. Henry Becket. Behavioral psychologist. Inventor of the mind-control machine. Patriarch of a clan of soldiers and police. Retired army officer. Conservative commentator. Fanatical patriot. Torturer.

For one month in 1993, they were married. Now they are mortal enemies. They battle over the soul of science itself as leaders of two powerful factions:

The Prometheans: Single-mindedly devoted to the advancement of human evolution, even if it causes chaos, anarchy, and revolution.

The Faustians: Dedicated to the relentless pursuit of personal wealth and political power, even if it threatens the extinction of the human race.

In 2008, Dictel Corporation, the world's largest military-industrial conglomerate, attempted to take over the United States by force. Now it sends out its siren song to those on the cutting edge of knowledge. Can even the most dedicated Promethean resist — and save not only the world, but her own soul?

This Is The Cyberpunk Universe -- With A Twist

If you've read cyberpunk novels from the 1980s, they're generally set in this decade or soon afterward. The 21st century of the classic cyberpunk cycle from Neuromancer to Snow Crash is dystopian and corporatist; a majority of its heroes are science fictional versions of the hard-bitten heroes of hard-boiled crime fiction. The future tech was not only up-to-date, it was different from anything seen before in science fiction: basically, personal tech and street cyborgs, plus something then new called virtual reality.

In my last post, I floated the idea of abolishing the science fiction genre. I think the name's misleading and so 19th century. There's just so much "science fiction" that sneaks in magic of some kind (like the new Star Trek movie's unexplained "red matter") that the label has long since become meaningless. Also, there's the fact that we are now living in the science fiction universe, though without the spaceships; even the androids and jetpacks have proved much more difficult to develop than we expected back in the 20th century. I'd suggest the new genres "speculative fiction", "future fantasy", and "technofantasy"; but science fiction and its fandom are an institution, so that 20th-century label's sticky. Especially if Hollywood uses it, and a cable TV network names itself after the genre. (But one sci-fi offshoot has managed to escape the genre — by latching itself onto a far more powerful and mainstream genre. I'm speaking, of course, of "future romance".)

AugNoWriMo & 50/90: Panic Time approaches!

Let's see. It's the middle of August. How many words have I written for AugNoWriMo? A little under 2,500. How many songs have I written for 50 Songs in 90 Days? Well, I've got 5 posted, but none unlocked. It's the middle of each.

Yep, it's almost that time of the month again:

Panic Time!

For those who don't know, Panic Time is when I panic and write almost all the words required to win any WriMo. It started with NaNoWriMo, of course.

Here's the tough part: Panic Time for two WriMos instead of just one! Not just for AugNo (novel writing; my goal: 50,000 words) but 50/90 (goal: 50 songs in 90 days, of course) too. Making it even harder still is my efforts to increase my presence and influence on Twitter, complicated with my increasing preoccupation with social media stuff starting with FriendFeed. I even started a new blog at Posterous (you can find it here, including my most popular post ever, my whiny complaint with the irresistibly catchy name, "Social Media Is My Crack"). Plus, blog platforms have started going social as well: Blogger using Google Friend Connect, and Posterous using its own built-in social subscription system.

All this is getting a bit overwhelming. It's hard to obsess over Twitter and write at the same time. So, I might just want to ease up on the tweeting some while I catch up with my word and song counts. It doesn't really pay to get focused on one thing at the expense of more important things.

But before I can write, I first need to shift my attention. That's been pretty hard lately. But Twitter can wait. Got work to do.

Spanner: Destroy the Superhero Universe?

And now, to explain the apparent arrogance of that last entry...

I started collecting comics in 1989. By 1991, when I (re)discovered anime and started writing my first story notes on what would become Spanner, I'd gotten tired of superheroes: they had begun to blur together into one featureless super-blob. By 1994, I was a pretty fanatical otaku and had begun openly proclaiming to my fellow anime club members that the only way to break Marvel's stranglehold on the American comics industry was to destroy the superhero universe altogether. Manga publishers Viz and TokyoPop eventually broke that stranglehold, driving Marvel to the movies, but by then my purpose was fixed.

My original purpose for Spanner: to destroy the superhero universe!

Black Science: Destroy Science Fiction!

In his June 1998 article "The Squandered Promise of Science Fiction", the author Jonathan Lethem makes the case for dismantling the science fiction genre altogether. He claims that the refusal to give the Nebula Award to Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow was the turning point: from that point on, science fiction followed the trendy identity politics that passed for "radicalism" in those days into its own ghetto, so that now (in 2009) it's nothing more than a minor subgenre of fantasy closely related to superhero comic books. Even cyberpunk has become reactionary, basically Blade Runner-type neo-noir set in the future. True speculative fiction is now a rarity. "Sci-fi" (or, even worse, "syfy" or "skiffy") is considered cheesy and disreputable; its place in the popular culture is now taken by horror and dark fantasy. Barry Malzberg is right to say that science fiction is one of the most reactionary genres in fiction. Therefore...

The purpose of Black Science: destroy science fiction!

(If I intend to use Spanner to destroy the superhero genre, then...)

AugNoWriMo: Getting Back to Black Science, with Notes

I finished my AugNoWriMo short story last night. Then I spent the rest of my session reading articles and retweeting on Twitter. I didn't feel ready to do anything with Black Science. Well, now I'm ready. But first, I need some story ideas to play with. Some of these come from a book I reread often: Screams of Reason by David J. Skal.

Here's some of the ideas I'm likely to throw into Black Science:

1. Good mad scientist vs. evil mad scientist! Even better yet, the two enemies were once married:
   • Dr. Willa Richter-Thomas, a psychologist who sometimes works with neuroscientists and is sometimes considered one herself, once wore a shunt in her brain for a year so she could observe the neurochemical activity inside it. She also has a scandalous rocker past.
   • Her ex-husband, Dr. C. Henry Becket, is notorious for his eager participation in the CIA's infamous MKULTRA mind control project and was heavily involved in the interrogations at the Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay prisoner-of-war camps. His monomania is the creation of a "psychotron", or mind-control machine. He was a leader of the pro-torture faction which led the American Psychological Association during the Bush era and is a fanatical proponent of "conversion therapy" of homosexuals.
   The reason I'm including as a backstory subplot the story of Edward Teller's destruction of J. Robert Oppenheimer is not only because of the obvious analogy between the atomic bomb and the psychotron, but also because of the similar struggle between the two main characters of Black Science.
2. The automaton of the classical variety, modernized into sleek gynoid robots inspired by the likes of Hajime Sorayama. I should specifically relate this to the origin of the "PowerSuits" in Spanner.
3. Social Darwinism and eugenics raise their ugly heads. Again. This carries over from Bad Company and is one of the consuming obsessions of the Becket clan behind Dictel Corporation.
4. How about today's crop of "Frankenstein monsters" being developed by and for the US military? Hover drones, cybugs, biomass-eating EATR robots (which the manufacturer claims is actually vegetarian — a classic case of plausible deniability), and other components of Skynet. In short, the combots. The ones Dictel Research is working on are humanoid, like the Terminator.
5. Uploading human personalities into computers and robots, the engineering of new "posthuman" species, and other obsessions of the Extropians and similar cults.
6. Cybersex, cyberfetishism, and other such things beloved of the cyberpunks.

And so on. I could go on almost forever. This is just a sampling of the ideas I'll probably throw into that masterpiece of mad mixology I call Black Science.

Now all I need to do is get out those index cards and start giving this story a plot — something I haven't done yet, even though I started writing it in NaNoWriMo '06...