F()CUS SPRING 201 cus Martin MAlastair Reynolds Steve GrOvtr Focus. is published twice a yeaf by tht British. Science fiction Fighting for words 8 Asso(:Iatlon. The magaZine alms to pr_nt high Cluility articles about Dev Agarwal explains why a good fight ~~:r~b~~·~::sV:~~I~~~~~s:~~~lr~'a~~;~~~~W;\~~ scene is about more than choreography. contact thfo ed,tor tim if you intend to submit I lengthy art',1fo =d~=iesrl~~~~=~~~~~f~~y~::;WA News from Orbit 11 committee members Errors and ornlSSIOtlS are the resporntbthty of Terry Jackman with the latest updates the editOl" lSSN 0144"S60X C BSfA 2011 from the BSFA's writing groups. British Science Fiction Association ltd. Masterclass 9' What I know 13 8SFAWebIote _bsla(o~ Re-gI$'l~;nEngl...-d....:lW.Jes. In the last of his regular articles, Chris Company No 921500 RegJSteredilddre$ 61Ivy(roftRNd,W.rtOll.Tlmworth. Priest offers sage advice. Slaffordshire.8190JJ One vial or two 17 Stephenhxter C John Arthur on doing biochemistry for Jon Coortenil~ Grit'llwood Iiln"""'t", real. It's not much like CSI... dw,romfilco uk MilrtlnPom 6'IvyCroftR~Wilrton. Writing the other 18 NrT..-th.1noll bsfiltrNw...... I.QlftI Clarke Award-winning author lauren ""t~W,1li.1ftKM'I FW. '" Str,tton lod9t'. 79 8..,-< Ro.d Beukes says that if you want to write the lIamort.~on:hhIre.[r-l.. sEU other convincingly, you need to do your bsf...... ,.~Hoo.(O.uk research. MEMBERSHIP FEES u, £.J9Pi1O< (Ul'lwil9td" (~oPil) Life memberstup 'S~ Over the wall 20 OU1'U~UIC: Gary Budgen wonders why class isn't a Jomtlfamllymembershlp AddOtothe"~p"c",'" C~Ufl (Sterhng only) should be mMle PiI~ilbte to "BSFA ltd" ,nd ~nt more important issue for writers. to Peter Wilkinson,t the ilddrm ,bo\Ie or )Oin v" the BSFA webs,te ilt wwwbsf,couk To plug or not to plug? 22 Should authors promote their own works. BSFAAWARDS Adm ~iUr;JIor OonniIxon Juliet E McKenna says it is good for _~fil.co.uIl readers and good for business. ORBITER WRmNG GROUPS learning to love learning 24 0I'lr>e TI'fT)I.liIdt..,.., teny)ildt..".nemypostofflCe.(O.uk Paul Graham Raven returns with the latest

update from his Masters adventure. ALSO PUBLISHED BY THE 8SFA: Poetry in a SF magazine? 26 Vector The new Focus poetry editor, Charles THE CRITICAL JOURNAL OF THE 8SFA Christian, discusses sf poetry. ~iIIurt'i,ed'torl~'It'tleo..Sh"I'liIWorthet'l ~or.ed,ton-,lI'liIil.(om Poems from the stars 27 ....,-""" ,.. AmOR)' I+ouM. PImbury Pl.a And finally... burly detectives... 28 l.or>do<1, [slGl ...and broad-shouldered rocket wranglers. MMbnMdirm ~9Qthnet

__veaor..:ltlln~oom Cover image: 0 Chaoss I Dreamstime.com 'Oog MAKING PLAUSIBLE WORLDS A little attention to detail makes a difference, reckons Martin McGrath

n page four you'll find Alastair Reynold's article on the basic Orequirements necessary for writing convincing ~hard sf· - and if anyone should know, he's the man. Alastair neatly spears the myth that writing this type of sf requires a higher degree in physics, all that is really required is a commitment to getting the basics right. I recently got accused (in a nice way) of being an author of hard sf, a description with which someone else then disagreed. It was strange to read other people discussing which bOKes my stories fit in, but it also made me wonder how 1 would describe my own writing. I've written fantasy, horror and sf but about two-thirds of my stories are "core sf" in that they are specula­ tive and set in the future. Plenty of stories set in the future Spacesuits are bulky, awkward things. are, in no sense, hard sf. I've recently So, even though it wasn't central to read this year's James White Award the plot, it seemed right to take a mo­ entries and a surprising proportion ment presenting something like what of those took, uncritically, the short­ would actually happen. The character hand of "Golden Age" sf- spaceships could have run through the airlock effortlessly hopping between solar systems, galaxies populated with co­ casting bits of suit behind him and pious alien species, galaxy-spanning most readers may not have noticed bureaucracies - as a starting point. anything amiss. But, by spending a tit­ Such stories are not, necessarily, tle time getting closer to reality, I felt I bad but I have never been drawn to made this world more plausible. write them. As a reader I find that In ·Home Protection" (published stories built on this library of shared by Hub) I wrote a horror(ish) story assumptions often (there are excep­ that revolved around a pistol. The tions) lack the resolution of detail gun was an important character, so necessary to persuade me to sus­ it mattered (to me at least), that the pend my disbelief. details were convincing. I could prob­ It bothers me when writers get ably have bluffed most readers with basic facts wrong. If they can't get a "Hollywood" gun, but doing a little simple stuff right why should I follow research made me more confident them on their wilder speculations? and, I hope, that confidence was That doesn't just apply to physics or transmitted to the reader. engineering, it also applies to ecol­ Whether writing sf or fantasy or ogy, built environments, sociology horror or anything else a writer must and psychology. And it is as relevant (usually) create a world that readers in horror and fantasy as it is in sf. find plausible enough to believe in. My story "Pathfinders· (which will appear in the hard sf anthology Without drowning the reader in mi­ Rocket SCience, coming soon from nutiae (though that seems to work Mutation Press) features a protago­ for Neal Stephenson) the writer nist who has to get out of a spacesuit. should convince the reader that this It would have been easy to gloss over world is more than just cloth back­ this process, but the truth is that it's drop against which the author is ma­ not a thing that can be done quickly. nipulating puppets. SPRING 1011 F0CUS 3 ALL THE SCIENCE YOU DON'T NEED TO KNOW Alastair Reynolds on getting the basics right

oe thing I've learned in my fiction, such as fantasy, romance, happened to take place against a career to date is that there's crime, the historical novel, and plausibly rendered backdrop. Oa certain type of science "'mainstream literature". It came to Given these distinctions, it might fiction that editors don't see nearly pass that no one was very sure what be easier simply to speak of core enough of, a truism that applies just science fiction was, let alone hard science fiction: the stuff where as strongly to novels as it does short science fiction, and there fell upon the implied science kind of makes fiction. It was the case when t started the land a dark time in which writers sense, although it mayor may not trying to break into Interzone, the experimented boldly, refused to be be the whole point of the story. better part of three decades ago; it constrained by genre boundaries, A core science fiction story might was true when I began to try selling and generally strove to raise their not play with scientific ideas in any a novel, and (as I know from recent ambition. overt, up-front way, but the depicted experience) it still applies now. This Despite all this, there remained actions will avoid impossibility and elusive stuff I'm talking about is of a market for something vaguely implausibility as much as possible. course hard science fiction. identifiable as hard science fiction. This is the stuff I'm talking about. Or is it? What do we mean by By which I mean stories and novels And I don't for one moment mean to hard science fiction, anyway7 For that in which events were set more or less undersell core science fiction: I think matter, what do we mean by science in our universe, in which the actions it can be as excellent and ambitious fiction? It was all so simple once upon and settings were consistent or even and literary as any other area of the a time. There was an area of writing illustrative aI, known physical law, field. Really, the sky is the limit. But called science fiction, the boundaries and in which there was a marked you can take it from me that editors of which no one disagreed about, absence of supernatural phenomena, really like this stuff. and entirely enclosed within those creatures from folklore, wizards and So - whisper it - if you can do this boundaries there lay a well-defined $0 on. A typical hard science fiction kind of thing even half well, you're nucleus of the stuff, a kind of golden story might involve speculation well on the way to getting published. citadel in which skilled practitioners about contact with aliens, the likely But, I hear lots of readers cry, I executed science fiction with absolute realities of space exploration, the can't write core science fiction, let and scrupulous adherence to known limits of artifical intelligence, the alone hard science fiction, because I physical laws. consequences ofgenetic engineering. don't know very much science, and Trust me, it really was that Even topics that bordered on the therefore I'm bound to get lots of straightforward. fringes of the possible, such as things wrong and look a bit silly. But then lots of things happened. time travel or parallel worlds, were Well, here's the second secret. The walls of the citadel turned out acceptable grist to the hard science Whisper it again: you don't really to be not as well defended as people fiction mill. Some hard science fiction need to know skiploads of science. had imagined. Worse, the outer stories were little more than walk­ Just a tiny bit. And since even people boundaries of science fiction itself throughs of some clever technical who know quite a lot of science still proved to be porous. There was idea that had occurred to the writer. get stuff wrong occasionally, and a great deal of unfortunate cross­ Others foregrounded character indeed look a bit silly in the process, contamination with lesser forms of and political/social themes but just there's no shame in it. 4 F0CUS SPRING 1012 Stars: For the purposes of this article, same solar system. Something similar type of planet can be in which orbit, Planets let's think about the basic knowledge­ was true of the later series Firefly, around which type of star, and so on? go around set needed to write about other in which the writers never seemed Basically, no. Or more property, them (not planets and solar systems. let's not clear whether the action was taking the whole thing is still up for grabs. to scale!) pretend that modern astronomy place in one alien solar system, or Once upon a time, astronomers is anything other than a richly many. If it was just the one (which expected that alien solar systems complex, constantly evolving area of is what they settled on for the film), would be quite similar to our own, knowledge. I was an astronomer and it had an improbable abundance of only with a few details moved I only got my head around a tiny part life-supporting planets. But that's around. It was assumed that most of it. But for the purposes of science another story. planets would be in mostly circular fiction, you don't need to know more To their credit, the writers of orbits, and - based on the eKample of than a few very simple facts and Star Trek were generally pretty the Sun and its family of worlds - it general principles. The rest, you can good at getting the planet/star thing was taken as a given that one would fudge around or look Into in more sorted out. In episode after episode, eKpect to find a progression from detail if you're that way inclined. This mention is made of alien solar rocky planets (Earth, Mars) to heavy knowledge set, in fact, is pretty basic systems, with particular (made-up) gas giants (Jupiter), to cold snowballs stuff - almost insultingly basic, in classifications of stars and planets. (Pluto), as one moved further and many respects. But keep in mind that It's also clear that the writers grasped further from the star. lots of people still aren't sure that the something else: solar systems are We know now that that's not Earth goes around the Sun. still incredibly small compared to the the case - although exactly how So let's start with that one. distances between solar systems. anomalous our own solar system is Planets go around stars. Yes, I If you could look into the night sky remains to be seen. But of the many know. But a surprising amount of bad and see the planets going around hundreds of alien solar systems now science fiction doesn't even get this other stars ... you wouldn't be able known, the only rule seems to be far - or at least it's situated in a kind to. That's because, on the scale to eKpect the uneKpected. We now of conceptual void in which you're we're dealing with, the planets know that very heavy planets can never entirely clear what, if anything, would still be squeezed into the tiny orbit very close to their parent stars, goes around what. In the series Space: cosmic pinprick already taken up by which is not something you'd typically 1999, the runaway Moon was forever the star. (This, incidentally, is why have seen in any science fiction story encountering alien planets. But my direct detection of alien planets is so written more than a decade or two recollection (which may be slightly difficult). ago. This was unexpected, and it unfair) is that there was usually So planets go around stars. essentially liberates writers to make little mention of which stars these What else do we need to know up almost any solar system they can planets were circling, or whether or about planets and stars? Are there think of. As to the typical distribution not there were other planets in the particular rules governing what of lighter planets, we still don't have

SPRING 1011 F@CUS 5 enough data to say anything useful - although it's beginning to look as if our own solar system is perhaps a little atypical- again, not something you'd have seen in much science fiction written until recently. Before we go making up our alien solar systems, there are a couple of other considerations to bear in mind. The first is that these planets must still obey Kepler's laws. This means, in effect, that you can spe<:ify a planet's year, or its distance from its alien sun without needing to look anything up - but if you want to put both figures into the story, you'll need to do some sums. My advice would therefore be not to bother unless the plot mechanics of the story absolutely demand it. You can also get away with the generalisation that planets further from a star will orbit slower than planets near one. But again, don't put numbers in unless you really need to. In the first draft of my first ever science fiction novel, I had two planets going around the same star The rhetoric of scale: The Hubble ultra deep field in different orbits, but with the same image. All those galaxies, far, far, away. period, so that they kept up with each other like two cyclists racing this seems to be most of them. Very stars of lower mass than itself, there side by side in a velodrome. Sadly, it heavy, hot stars-they tend to be blue are still hundreds of millions of Sun­ doesn't work like that: the planet on or white for most of their lives - may like stars just in our own galaxy. the inside track will always pull ahead or may not have planets, but since What else do we need to know and eventually lap the one on the these stars put out a lot of radiation, about stars and planets? Not too outside track. their planets wouldn't make very much. Keep in mind that while If you insist on it, but still don't good candidates for life anyway. They planets wilt tend to orbit their star want to do any calculations, you also don't live very long: mere tens in the same sense, and in the same can always pinch the distances and of millions of years, which is nothing ecliptic plane - think of marbles orbital periods of planets in our own on an evolutionary timescale. These rolling around grooves in a flat solar system, and simply rename are also the only kinds of star which disk - there's no reason at all why everything. The type of planet end their lives dramatically, blowing two different solar systems would doesn't matter: at a given distance, up in a supernova explosion. While it be orientated at the same angle. a tiny world will orbit at the same might make dramatic science fiction That means that if your expedition speed as Jupiter-sized monster. You to imagine an alien culture faced with is arriving in another solar system, can make up the rotation periods of the imminent and violent death of they're much more likely to approach the planets - their days - as you see their sun, it isn't plausible from an at some random angle to the local fit. And you don't need to include astronomical standpoint. The kinds of ecliptic than to come in at exact every planet. Once you've renamed star that live long enough to nurture alignment with it. SCience fiction them, and come up with some alien life-bearing worlds don't go out with quite often gets this wrong. though, equivalent of the hour, who's going a bang. Our own Sun will gradually which is why you'll sometimes read to notice? swell up over billions of years, shed statements like ·we passed the orbit This brings us to the second its outer envelope, and then fade of the solar system's equivalent of consideration, which is the star itself. down to a white dwarf. Pluto·, or even worse, ·we passed Stars are not all the same, which is The safest rule of thumb here is the solar system's equivalent of why they come in different colours to assume that your made-up star is Pluto", which implies that the planets and sizes and why astronomers have of similar mass to our own Sun. That have helpfully lined up in readiness careers. Fortunately, it's really not way you can transplant the distances for these new visitors. Of course, if too complicated. For the purposes and orbital periods of our own solar the plot of your story simply requires of science fiction we're presumably system onto your imagined one, and your characters to jump into the thick interested in the types of stars that no one will be any the wiser. And of the alien system from hyperspace, are likely to have planets. Luckily while the Sun is outnumbered by the angle of approach no longer 6 F0CUS SPRING 1011 matters. sure everyone reading this already of the relative importance of things. There's plenty more we could knows, is merely a pattern formed We really are a very late chapter in get into - the probable dispersion by the chance alignment of stars, all the story, Actually, we're more of a of rock and ice through a solar of which could be at very different footnote on the last page of the last system, the presence of asteroid distances. It would make sense for chapter. belts, cometary clouds and so on ­ aliens to say they've come from a If there's one thing I want to leave but as long as you keep away from particular star cluster, since a cluster you with, it's this: we've only touched specifics, you can avoid getting into isarealentity.Theterm"starsystem" on some very simple astronomy, and this stuff too deeply. It's worthwhile is a science fiction coinage that (in my we've scarcely touched on timescales thinking about habitable belts - the experience) isn't commonty used by at al1. But already there's enough in "Goldilocks Zone" a planet would scientists - although (just to confuse there to be getting on with. Clearly need to orbit in for life to be possible matters) binary and trinary system the universe is a lot older than on its surface, but again, don't worry are. we are. So what does that tell us about it overmuch; these things John Clute once wrote, if I'm about our place in the cosmos? are at present far less strongly remembering rightly, about a book's There are lots of Sun-like stars out constrained than some dogmatic "mismanagement of the rhetoric there and there must be Earth-like types would have you think. Given of scale", and I'm afraid scale is planets around some of them. Even a different history, Venus could be something a lot of bad science within our own galaxy, you'd think habitable, and Mars may also have fiction still hasn't got to grips with, the chances were quite good that been habitable for a period in its Imalline a crime novel in which terms someone, somewhere, must have past, A heavier version of Mars coutd like "precinct", "district", "city"" and evolved before us. Millions, maybe be habitable even now, So there is "state" were used interchangeably: even billions of years before us. So Quite a lot of leeway, you'd soon lose patience. But we what happened to them? Where are Beyond that, what else dowe need put up with far worse abuses in they now? to know? We've spoken of planets our science fiction. We shouldn't Think about it a bit. Write and stars, and I've mentioned the need to, though, because the basic some ideas down, no matter how fact that stars tend to be separated concepts and yardsticks really aren't outlandish. Think about them from from each other by distances on the that demandinll. Again, to go back different angles. See if one Idea has order of a few lightyears. All the stars to Star Trek: no one would hold it up some particular emotional resonance we can see with the naked eye in the as a paragon of scientific excellence, for you. Does it make you feel sad or night sky are of course part of our but it did mostly have a good grip lonely or exalted and special? Does it own galaxy, a vast whirlpool of stars on the rhetoric of scale. Although evoke a chill of cosmic dread, or give spanning at least a hundred thousand the universe was not rigorously you a weird tingling feeling? How is light years from edge to edge. The consistent from one episode to it likely to make your characters feel? galaxy is huge, in other words, and it the next, the writers got the basic can you relate your big idea to some contains unimaginable multitudes of relationship between worlds, stars human drama that you can stage in stars - literally hundreds of billions and the galaxy pretty well rillht and the foreground? If you can zero in of them, a large fraction of which this fundamental understanding was on something like that, you don't probably have planetary systems. only deepened in the tater series, yet have a story. But you're half way There are other galaxies out there, such as Voyager. there, and that's a lot better than not but the nearest is more than two The point is, though, that it's being anywhere at all. million light years distant and most really not hard to get this basic stuff are a lot further than that. One dead right. And while we've only said a little giveaway of a lot of bad science about relative timescales, there's fiction is that it just doesn't get this nothing too treacherous there either, basic point: the galaxy is huge, and even if some of the numbers can be other galaxies are almost unthinkably a little mindboggling. The universe is remote. In so far as we could ever about twelve to thirteen billion years reach or communicate with them, old. Our own Ilalaxy is maybe hatf they may as well not exist. that age, and our Sun about a third. But time and again in bad science The Earth is about as old as the Sun, fiction you'll hear speak of aliens and there has been life on Earth for at who've come from "a world beyond least three quarters of its existence. your galaxy" or "galaxy seven" or Animals and intelligent life, though, something. To me this conveys a are much more recent innovations. fundamental misapprehension about Someone once said that, compared the relative size and significance of to the age of the Earth, the time things. Anothergiveaway is the use of occupied by humans is like the "constellation" as ifitreferred tosome last layer of paint on the top of the well-defined volume of space, as in Eiffel Tower. I don't know whether "we come from your constellation that's strictly true, but it does offer Gemini", A constellation, as I'm a handy and vertigo-inducing sense SPRING 1011 F@CUS 7 FIGHTING FOR WORDS Dev Agarwal knows the first rule offight club 'o.".e of Christopher Priest's A scene randomly selected from the way to malCimize the "truth" of masterdasses dealt with Simon SCarrow, a popular military your story telling. If we imagine the Awrltmg about seK, I thought fiction writer, demonstrates this: story as a pyramid, the emotional I'd offer some thoughts about what is reaction is most of the body of the The warrior's momentum carried perhaps the other side of the same pyramid, and the apelC, that moment him forward, straight onto the coin--violence. at the very top alone, is the instance point of Cato's sword, which Why write about violence? The of violence. passed through his collarbone two most obvious reasons are to An elCample of this occurs in and into his heart. He dropped drive the story and to illuminate your Lucius Shepard's story "Shades." to one side. taking Cato's blade characters. Writing effective violence Two men, Witcover and Puleo - the with him. presents particular challenges. Too protagonist, who is a Vietnam war (When the Eagle Hunts, p129) much attention to detail can make veteran - are arguing. you seem obsessed with gore. But For me, this short example is almost a loat SO?R I .....as shaking again. if done correctly. scenes of violence "how not to" guide. Whatdoweknow but with adrenaline not fear. and I add drama and immediacy to a story. about the attacker? He's a warrior, knew I .....as going to hit Witco\'cr. I recently read a story as part of undifferentiated from anyone else. a writing group which was notable He posed very little threat to Cato Shepard announces the action, for its total absence of any conflict. (he "carried forward") and appears to setting up the coming moment and Three characters went through each have basically killed himself. There's also breaking a "rule" of Violence, scene agreeing with one another, no threat to Cato, and by extension that it should surprise the reader. until the narrator made his farewells this is a violent scene devoid of any Old horrors .....ere stirred up. and left. Ordinarily, we'd find that conflict. Cato loses his sword, but and I saw myself walking in a protagonist is opposed to other how did that feel? Physically, was it a napalmed village rife with characte~who are aU struggling for a wrenched away? Did it slip from his dead VC, crispy critters. and resolution to their conflict. That was grasp and leave him feeling foolish? beside me this .....eird little guy absent from this story. That is not to When he's unarmed, does he panic? narned Fellowes who claimed he say that you can't construct a story I'd suggest that Scarrow is writing could read the future from their built around harmonious relations, long choreographed sequences. scorched remainsand would point but in that story's case, nothing These were all surface and don't at a hexagrarnlike structure of happened, as none of the characte~ reflect the physical or psychological charred bone and gristle and say. sought something that they didn't demands of violence -- either on its -rhat there means a bad moon already have. Conflict is the engine subject or on the aggressor. His over­ on Wednesday,R and claimed for most story telling, and in choreographed violence doesn't get too. that he could read the past particular, for genre fiction. Carefully dose to illuminating the characters' from the blood of head wounds. handled this is not only a visceral emotional state. alld thell I was leaning over experience, but one that deepens I was given a good piece of writing this Canadian nurse, beautiful the characters' motivations for the advice early on, which was both blonde girl. disemboweled by reader. This is perhaps most acutely simple and fundamental. This was to a mine alld somehow still a!i\·e. the case with physical violence. invert. Like scarrow, I had focused her organs dark and wet and Depicting physical conflict often on choreography as well, mistakenly pulsing. and somebody giggling. invites disasters for writers. In our believing that this was where the whispering about what he'd like daily lives, most people are rarely writer's, and the reader's, interest to do, and then another scene involved in violence and we lack lay. Instead, I was encouraged to that was whirled away so quickly. direct knowledge of what it's like to see the physical contact as being I could only make out the color be hit -- or how to throw a punch. only the finale. When two people of blood...and a dead man was We struggle to imagine how our decide to fight, there is normally a stretching out his hand to tile bodies move, or where we might feel chain of events that culminates in and ... the impact. this decision. Looking at that is often I nailed \Vitco\'er. and he flew 8 F@CUS SPRING 1011 Pierce returns fire at a bank guard. Smith guides us through this encounter with a compact minimum of elaboration and in a way that simulates the abruptness of the violence itself, Reduced to its essential elements, this sequence would be that a security guard surprises the gang and shoots one of them, Pierce shoots back and wounds the guard, This might have a Visceral, exciting element in its telling, However, Smith uses this encounter to deepen his characterisation: The young man...stepped back a little to clear hb pistol - a Glock. it looked like - and ailll..:.-d at Pierre through the bars and shO[ at him and Illisst.-d. Pierce didn't knO\\ where the slug \Ient, didn't hear it at all in the noise. lie lined the Smith & Wessoll, sighted Ill' the stairs, and fired one shot and didn't sec where thlll one went, either, Fired another, and deaf from gunlire. barely heard the bullet dang ofr one of the slender steel bars. The young lIlan jumped back, ~ared, But he came to the gate again and raised his pistol and Pierce line", this round \\ould hit him, so he hurried a little and shot the man bet\leen two bars centering his bell)'. Are your fight scenes convincing? It was so close and such a ptnultal tIling it wai1 as if he'd sideways oll' the chair lind rolled but what we know is that he "nailed N slwnked the guy, or kicked him­ on the floor. him. Not where on the body, or and the young man silgged ilJld (The Ends afthe Earth, p222) how, but that one precise word that sagged and fainted dowli along the bars and ended sitting there Shepard delivers the inversion by first conveys the whole act of one person \\ith his face resting abrainst establishing the hostility between striking another, them.- Puleo and Witcover, then veering That is, of course, only one way away from it. Instead, he goes inside to depict violence, You can also Then, Puleo and explores his interior state. approach it from other angles: but Pierce felt as tired a the young Puleo has reached a decision about what's always effective is conveying man, and couldn't think .... hat Violence, and his anger propels him the "sense of impact" (Shepard's to do. Ill' sure wasn't going to into a steep emotional spiral. The use of "nailed"). This challenge is shoot him again. They ....ere both images become more grotesque particularly complex in violence that worn OUI in just a few seconds. .. and violent, and then accelerate, isn't immediately physical -- such as Freddy came running and yelled becoming faster and shorter. This the use of weapons, as in gunfights. at him, got him moving. increases the pace that the reader Mitchell Smith, who's probably (Sacrifice, p12) comes to them. The physical fight is not on many genre readers' radars, the shortest element of the scene, is better known for his contemporary Key details fill this sequence, the apex of the emotional pyramid, thrillers, In one of these, Sacrifice, he elevating the specificity, "so close Shepard constructs Puleo's inner begins the novel with a bank robbery, and such a personal thing it was as monologue with a single line, and perpetrated by Tyler Pierce. To add if he'd shanked the guy," Shonked with images that deliberately build in excitement to the scene, the robbery is carefully selected as a verb. Not intensity, goes wrong and one of his men is knifed, but a more precise term that Puleo hits Wltcover with his fist, killed. comes from the American prison

SPRING 1011 F0CUS 9 subculture, And who would think exhaustion, it can also convey stimulating experience that we find of a gunfight in terms of knifing or humour. In Elmore leonard's Freoky in our daily lives. Conflict is a form kicking someone? Those words Deoky, two black criminals discuss of communication - of disagreement convey immediacy in ways that, for scamming a white millionaire. between two parties reflected in me, scarrow's writing did not, Donnell tells Juicy Mouth to threaten the extreme situation of physical The victim doesn't just fall down, the man in a men's room, "Tell him challenge, Where depicting violence he sags and sags, the repetition it's fifty bucks to take a piss or you is mishandled it ironically reduces a describing the slide as he falls against gonna cut his dick off. see, then I scene to less credibility. Successful the bars, The description also utilizes come in just then and throw a punch writers show how violence has an and reinforces the setting, reminding at you like in the movies, dig? And emotional core, and that describing us of the gate between them, and save the man's ass, I don't hit you, I these actions are a way to reveal the this then adds to the moment by pretend to,~ characters' attitudes and mentality, prolonging the man's collapse. Juicy does that and Donnell I also began by talking about a story And what does this violent follows. Donnell ~slipped on black that had no violence or conflict in encounter do to Pierce, who hasn't leather gloves before going in and it. After we'd fed back, the person been hit by a bullet or physically hit Juicy hard, the knife flying, blood submitting the story responded. She harmed? He is "worn out" and flying. hit him in his surprised face assured us that she'd listened to us "couldn't think what to do," The again and got the man zipped up and and heard that we were encouraging gunfight has been an extreme out of there," (p13S), her to make her story "more gritty," experience, one that affects even This is funny, the humour derived 50 she rejected what she felt was an the aggressor both physiologically from surprising us (in the way that imposition to make her story into and emotionally, Anyone in a violent Donnell surprises Juicy). The scene is something it wasn't. rather than encounter or even an accident will made vivid with the use of key details the message that conflict is story. know that sense of displacement and repetition, "knife flying, blood Writers may not want to write about and shock. In this example, the fact flying," and how Donnell violates violence. but conflict is one of the that Pierce has past experience with their compact not once, but twice, engines for driving a story. And an violence is revealed in the line, ~He Physical violence short circuits understanding of this, and of how we hurried a little," situations, and we often find that might use violence to show conflict, Just as violence can be used to stories move more quickly because of can heighten the story's drama and convey conflicting experiences or it. One of the reasons we might read emotional depth. emotions - abruptness, turmoil, fiction is to gain a more visceral and

<~ .. ''!./~> AJ~~~t:i'~- .~ '~/l BSFA workshops for wrttersalllevels'~'J"'r:' .J~. .., The BSFA's Orbit writing groups allow writers of ~'7,,1 of experience to share stories and learn from each other. 1'I'r Whether you're just starting out as a writer or you have a . - ~ string of publications to your credit, you can learn from - ... ~t""...' studying the work of your fellow authors and receiving their "_ critiques of your stories. If you're working on a novel or producing short stories there's an orbit group for you. For more information about the BSFA writing groups \\ contact the Orbit co-ordinator, Terry Jackman: \ [email protected] TAKE YOUR WRITING TO THE NEXT LEVEL News from It TWEETFICTION! SALES FROM BSFA CHALLENGES WRITERS TO TELL A STORY IN ORBIT A TWEET. TIle Orbit writers' groups :ll1ow BSFA recentlv came across a definition of editing as ~putting every word on trial members to improve their writing by sharing for its life~. I suspect, however, that the upcoming BSFA TWEETFEST sched­ stories .....ith a small number of other writers. Iuled over the Eastercon weekend will not be so strict - except of course You recei\'e comments on your stories and that the maximum length of a tweet is officially 140 characters. So if you are learn by studying and commenting on the going to Eastercon. (By the time you read this it should be coming up fast.] be work of other \'o'riter-s. lIere are some of the sure to look out for the tweets. And please, please join in7 recent sales made by current members of the All you need is to tweet an sf 'story' that, in practice, totals not more than 134 characters [140 less the necessary tag] you can enter by tweet, obviously. Orbit groups.

HOW TO ENTER Mark lies: placed three feature articles in Tweet (obviousIV): All tweets must include the hashtag #TBSFA Martial Arts lUus/rated. Email; If you're not on Twitter, you can also email your entry to: [email protected] &an Jones: sold the short story 'Alex' to Paper: If you're at Eastercon, pick up one of our paper tweet forms and Sag~s pop it in the bole on the BSFA table in the Dealers' Room. B(lf(/s and Quarter'-,"

However you enter, all stories must end with the hashtag: I#TBSFA Martinl\fcGrath: sold "Pathfinders" to the And in case you think you can get out of both, I'll even be open to you anthology Rockel Science from Mutation emailing one, or more, entries to me, as long as you do it by Spm Friday 6th Press. The book will launch at Eastercon. April before I leave for the can. Which I will take with me and post for youl My email address is at the bottom ofthe page. So, having now been warned, you can start thinking about what to send, Rosie Olh'cr: congratulations all receiving II now, or at worst while you are stuck on that train/bus/plane en route? Which­ distinction. no less. in her creative writing ever way you tweet it there'll be the chance of being published, or even read degree. out at the BSFA Awards ceremony on the Sunday. The competition opens on 4 April 2012 and closes at midnight, 10 April. COIIsrOtlllcllions to a/llhese Orbiter mcmbers for thcir succcsses. If .you're a JJSFA member who FULL RULES AT: WWW.BSFA.CO.UK/BSFA-NEWS/ has has rccell/ly sold (J story or 1101.'c/. we'll 101'e TWEETFICTION-TWEETSTREAM-TBSFA/ to hear your nel('s. AT EASTERCON? SAY 'HELLO' ili page 5hould reach rou the ....eek thell you esp«ially 5110uld read the 1'wee· VictoriAn e1assic about life in t ..·o dimen­ T before EasterCOIl in Heathrow. a tatholl insert. alsoolltllis page. sions:' They noticed us! ,"err good ,"cnue la.'>t time. If rou don't kno..... about the con just Coogle for info. LEGITIMATED! RECOMMENDATIONS To those I aln:ady know are coming, There's all Agailia Chrislie mystery ill Waut 10 be ....o...ed? Try reading Cor)' I hope 10 see rou in the fte>;h. To anyone ...hiell a eharacter. born a bastard. has Ooctoro..•• Litllf! BrOlhrr alld Barbara else cou.'>idering it. IlOpe )'ou'll also find the ...ord 'Iegitilllated' slampea acroS.'> ilis Erskine' late>;t. Timrll u80c.,'? F'or me lime to 5a)' "!-Ii"' to me. I'll be there Sat· birtll certificate. The follo"'ing struck lIle each alone had the .....0... factor" but it urday 1Ilrough Monday thi5 time and. for as rather similar. was even51ronger reading tllem together. atlea.'>t pllrt of the time. I'll be doing 111)' III The Times. Jan 23rd. an article en' 5hare at the BSFA table ill the dealer.'>' litlcd 'Ho to gi,'c your child a private Terry Jackman, IS co ordmator of room or, I hOI>e. at the Milford meeting education ithout lIpellding a penny' ill- Orbit, the BSFA's onhne writers' on the Sunday. c1uded a n:ading li.'>t for secondary maths workstolops Contact toler via So if you're going, have a great time pupil, The only fiction in it 18 titles was terryJackman@mypostoffice co uk ,,'hether I see you or 1I0t, If you're 1I0t. Ffo,hJlld by EA Abbott. de.K.ribed as "a

SPRING 1011 F@CUS 11 ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING &MINI CONVENTION Saturday, 9 June 2012 10:00 am - 4:30 pm GUESTS OF HONOUR Aliette de Bodard Marek Kukula BSFA Short Story Aword Winner Public Astronomer ot the Author of fhe Obsidion ond Blood trilogy Royal Observatory Greenwich

Cost: Freei Membership is not required. Updates: www.bsfa.co.uk www.sf-foundation.org The day includes panel discussions. interviews with the guests of honour and the Annual General Meeting of both the BSFA 113:45) and the Science Fiction Foundation (noon).

12 fCUS SPRING 1011 Christopher Priest's MASTERCLASS No.9: What I Know

,Nat a lot: is what I usually perfection, but equally should never they must have a certain type of say in response to that. believe that they have achieved it. paper, or exercise book, or they must It is probably time to bring Improvement is always essential. have a pencil (or a felt-tip pen, or a this Masterclass sequence to an Never write anything that feels easy: fountain pen). Some computer users end, as there is a limit to what any always push against what you see as become fixated on a particular word­ one person can say about the craft your limitations. processing software, or they can only of writing. I think that what I have Everyone has quirks, bad habits, write with music on (or off), some to sayan this subject I have mostly things they fail to get right. Some need drugs or alcohol; many need said already, so instead of my writing make spelling mistakes, others tobacco. lance saw a famous writer about one dedicated subject let this reveal habitual obsessions or blind having what looked like a nervous end with a fairly random selection spots, some go on too long, others breakdown, after she dropped her of suggestions about writing and don't go on long enough. Most real mass-produced fountain pen and writers, a note of some propositions, writers (and by 'real writers' I mean bent the mass-produced nib. facts, punishable offences. writers most people wilt have heard In the end every writer will find You might think the use of the of or read, or who have published his or her own best way of working, personal pronoun in the title of this consistently for some years) are as they do. will make it autobiographical, to aware of their shortcomings and However, I have always believed which I would say: not really. All non­ see much of their daily work as an that there is one principle of writing fiction writing is to one degree or attempt to put such failings away, or that every fiction writer should another an expression of self: review at least to disguise them effectively. adhere to, which is so important someone's new novel, describe a We are all people: we have a to the making of good work that it journey through North Africa, write singular point of view, we do things should probably be considered a rule. a biography of a famous figure, even that others get annoyed with, no one That Is the writing of separate drafts. compile a textbook on some practical fully understands the way the world Nearly all writers now work on matter, all of these will to some works, everyone has off days. computers, either drafting from extent reveal personal choice, ideas, This essay is not perfect. scratch, or typing up from written notes ... or at least at some point preferences. attitude, experience. having the text in front of them on a Sometimes that revelation might be How should I work? easier to see than at other times, computer monitor. Most publishers It's a widely acknowledged fact that require or expect submissions when it will seem to veer towards the atl writers work differently. You would in computer format, so there's a autobiographical, but the principle think that in a process that invariably good reason for that. There is an remains. Inevitably. this essay will starts with blankness (blank paper, irresistible temptation at this stage to rely more on my own experience new computer workspace) and ends start picking at the text, deleting this than the earlier ones have. up with a manuscript (handwritten or that, adding sentences, changing So here are a few propositions. or typed or printed or saved as words, moving paragraphs around. a document) there would not be Every change of that sort makes All writers make mistakes much room for people to set about a difference, which is why writers do No one is perfect. No one has yet it in different ways. But I've yet to it. It's also fairly painless to do, which written a perfect novel or short story, come across two writers who work is the less advertised reason writers although some have come close and identically. doit. a handful have come astonishingly Even the parentheses above set It is, however, a piecemeal and close. Some poets have attained up the parameters of variety: some superficial process, and the more it is perfection - Shakespeare, Keats, people cannot work except with pen done the greater the risk of losing the Hughes, Dickinson, for example - but and paper, others must type at a original intensity of vision. prose writers work in a longer, looser keyboard (and some will dictate to a A complete separate draft is form, where things can and usually machine or a secretary). Some writers essential. What this means is that do go wrong. All writers should seek are neurotic to the point of fetishism: at some point the computer text SPRING 1011 F@CUS 13 All writers work differently! Ernest Hemingway·s room at Finca Vigia in San Francisco de Paula, Cuba

should be printed out, the document Good internal structure builds Chief Justice, and taking most of a files archived somewhere they can't invincibly as the work proceeds. It is lifetime to achieve it) is a structured be accessed easily, and the writer undoubtedly a lot of hard work, but it thing. Many others will have followed should then again redraft the book is also a deeply satisfying thing to do. the path before, and there are a (or short story) from beginning to Writers who say a separate draft number of objective steps which end, working only from the hard is not necessary have never tried it, can be taken at appropriate times: copy. No reference should be made or are denying something. Those examinations, training, practice, to the existing computer text, not who say they have tried it and still promotion, and so on. even (especially not even) to copy­ think a separate draft is a waste of The other meaning of 'career' and-paste one of the good bits that time, have not done it properly, have is a headlong dash, uncontrolled allegedly doesn't need any more skimped it somehow, and literally movement, some swerving at hectic work, with the misguided intention know not of what they speak. moments, and a desperate jab at of saving an hour or two of hard graft. If you have never tried it, do so the brakes from time to time. That Fluid linear drafting - which is to next time and do it properly. Marvel sounds a bit more familiar, doesn't it? say, writing everything down in the at the difference it makes. Most writing 'careers' are in right order - is a process in which reality a sort of blend of deliberate the hand of the craftsman and the How should a writing choice and unpredictability. imagination of the author blend career be managed? Everyone starts writing with a seamlessly into the production of a Careers are for careerists. Writers thought in mind: a wish to make good book. Redrafting is a process who plan a career are probably going money, perhaps, or to become of re-imagining, of recollecting about things in the wrong way. famous, or to write a great novel, in tranquillity, of instinctively Oddly enough, the word has two or to amuse people, or to satisfy a restructuring or anticipating, on a meanings in general use, which are deep personal urge to communicate line·by-line basis. It also, crucially, more or less opposite in meaning. A something ... this is the element of involves working with what the real career (such as one in the legal choice. It drives you on, gives you author knows will be revealed or profession, rising from raw recruit a purpose, makes you become and described in scenes yet to come. through the various levels to Lord remain a writer. But a career can't be 14 F0CUS SPRING 1011 planned on that basis alone. To take such usage is wrong, for that reason. 'Crescendo' is a musical term, one of the above examples, anyone Writers have a duty to reflect a noun, which means a gradual starting out as a writer thinking the times in which they live, and increase in volume. Writers often they'll make a lot of money is almost that should include a working use the word metaphorically to certainly in for a few hard surprises knowledge of the vernacular, and an mean a peak or a c1imaK, or the and a great deal of disillusionment. understanding of linguistic growth. state of someone who is already Yes, it is possible to become rich as But a novelist or a short story writer there. a writer, but rarely as a result of a should at least know the difference Disinterested. The favourite of plan of campaign. In the last twelve between what is 'good English' and pedants everywhere, but we fight months the novelist Julian Barnes has what is not. Both are essential and the battle for this word because it received at least £90,000 in tax-free valid, but in many cases casual or has a special and subtle meaning literary prizes - you can campaign for careless English leads to a blurring which is in danger of being lost a Booker Prize, you can plead, grovel, of meaning, which is just about the through widespread misuse. etc., but the only way you can win a last thing a writer wants to happen. The true meaning is that a big cash award is to write a book that Good English is clean and readable, disinterested person is free from happens to impress other people. enjoyable to read, and makes its personal bias; an uninterested You can't plan for it. meaning clear. person couldn't care less. Thus And that is an eKample of Most publishers have a 'house one can write a disinterested the happenstance quality of a style', which means they want review of someone else's book, writer's career. Things come along, everything they publish to achieve a while being completely interested unexpectedly, unplanned, sometimes certain teKtual standard, and within byit. not even wished for. Someone sends a varied list to have continuity of you a book for review, and that leads usage. Onto. Almost everyone now writes to something else: a side-activity as My first publishers, Faber, had a 'onto' as if it is a one-word a regular reviewer, perhaps, or an printed booklet they sent to every preposition. It is not. It is an uneKpected friendship, or a rivalry, or author, which set out their own house adverb and a preposition: 'on an idea for something else you might style preferences. I learned a lot to'. In many cases the 'to' can want to write. from that, and it is, by the way, why be left out, and still be good Things come along. In the mid­ all my books up to The Affirmation English. 'Into' is correct. 'Onto' 1960s, when I was barely out of were printed with double quotes now appears to be standard my teens, I happened to meet the for dialogue and the '-ize' formation American English, incidentally, managing director of Victor Gollancz for some verbs: 'realize', 'cauterize', but Americans also turn 'different at a SF convention. That led directly etc. For that reason I have grown from' into 'different to' and the to a part-time job as a first reader of used to, and still prefer, '-ize', but the amazingly horrible 'different manuscripts for Gollancz, something house style of my current publishers, than', so make your own mind I did for the next six years, and that Gollancz, is for single quotes and I up about the weight of American in its turn led in different ways to now prefer to use those. precedent. The Faber booklet was produced enduring friendships with people 1960's. Adding an's' to the numbers in the 1960s. These days you like Malcolm Edwards, Richard of a decade is making a plural, generally find out about house style Cowper and John Sladek. It also led not a possessive. It's therefore the hard way, when you see what the to a lifetime's loathing of the works of correct to write 19605 without the publisher has set up in print and how Piers Anthony and Harlan Ellison, but apostrophe, and if a possessive is your work might have been changed, we won't go into that here. needed then it goes at the end: but it's possible to discern in advance In summary: plan the stuff you 1960s' fashion, for instance. Ifyou what the house style might be from are sure of, but be open to change if want to contract the numbers, informed study of books that have something happens along. then the apostrophe goes at the been recently published. (You can beginning: the '60s, the '80s, etc. also ask a member of staff.) It is also technically correct (but Words and Grammar and Now here is an admittedly short awful) to use both the contraction Punctuation list of usage I dislike seeing. This is and the possessive: '60s' cars, Here we take a header into pedantry, not complete by any means, but I '80s' music ... but much better or so some will claim. Never mind. have noticed most of the following in in that case to use words: sixties' Words are the bUilding blocks recent books. cars, eighties' music. of literature. It pays to use them Alright. 'Alright' is never all right; 'all correctly. In these days of tweets, Noone or no-one. Both are incorrect: right' is always all right. Note that text messages and rush-to-judgment 'no one' is two words, with aspace 'always', 'already' and 'altogether' comments on website, a casual between. This usage, incidentally, are all right too, but you will perish freestyle of English is emerging. underlines the fact that 'noone' is in misery if you try to summon This isn't such a bad thing: English singular, not plural. 'No one were them as an argument with me in is a living language, where meaning there when I arrived' is obViously favour of the abominable 'alright'. changes or widens all the time. It's wrong; 'no one from the builders always risky to say that such-and- Crescendo (often as a verb). were there when I arrived' is less SPRING 1012 F@CUS 15 uses uncontracted words will be Ersatz Wines. It is the story of the first just as readable and will not seem five years, and includes all the short pompous. stories (previously unpublished, for the most part) I wrote in the period Dictionaries. Worth an essay in between absolute ground-zero themselves, a subject of almost no-hope beginnings, and starting endless interest to the geek side the precarious life of a freelance of me. I have about a dozen a few years later. I describe the general dictionaries in the house, stories as 'instructive' rather than of varying ages and intensity, but 'instructional'. Each one is appended the two I refer to most often are with two descriptions: what I thought Collins English Dictionary and I was doing at the time, and what I Chambers 21" Century Dictianary. think of that now. For Americanisms t use The Ersatz Wines can be ordered from Randam House Dictionary of me direct, using PayPal, at grimgrin@ the English language, which gmx.com Price: £16.99, including has helpful little pictures to aid p&p. As well as receiving a beautiful the understanding of the harder hardcover you will also receive a words. All three of these are one­ handmade bookmark for which volume dictionaries. lesser mortals plead in vain. It's almost pointless to say If you prefer, Ersatz Wines is also that there are dozens of books available on Kindle. It cost5 £4.75 on English usage, but my own Christopher from Amazon: http://amzn.to/ indispensable favourites are wuRnwB. Fowler's Modern English Usage No bookmark with that, though. Priest and Eric Partridge's Usage and Abusage. For American usage Free with a handmade bookmark! I recommend Strunk & White's The Elements af Sty/e. A reliable journalistic guide is Guardian ObviouS. because of 'the builders' Style, published by the newspaper getting in the way. If in doubt, of that name. Intended for the think of it as 'not one', and then use of Guardian contributors, but the need for a singular becomes available online, it contains the clear. (The same is true of 'none', newspaper's current preferences: which is a singular often forced to for example, the difference behaveasa plural.) between 'Baroness Thatcher' Contractions: I'd, we'll, should've, and 'lady Thatcher', should you wouldn't've, etc. Contractions ever want to know. Finally, for are regularly used in speech the sheer fun of reading a short­ and conversation and are tempered but entertaining rant, wide Iv accepted as correct and there is Kingsley Amis's The unobjectionable, so what's wrong King's English, which combines with them in fiction? Nothing at sarcasm, wit and a real love of all in dialogue, because that's the English in detailing his various way people speak, but when used strictures on usage. Do you know in narrative or description, the the difference between 'alternate writer should always think twice history' and 'alternative history', about using them. Contractions and which is correct? Sir Kingsley certainly give a racy, vernacular will tell you and afterwards you feel to prose, and can make long will never forget. He also advises passages seem more readable or against ever using infamous: it's comprehensible. The argument too ambiguous now, he says. in favour of them is to suggest that uncontracted forms ('I would A shameless plug not have', etc) look fusty and Finally -I have written a book that mock-formal. I personally argue discusses the craft of writing from a that contractions are often used more personal and historical point hastily or casually by writers in an of view, a detailed account of my attempt to sweep over other bit5 struggle to become a writer. Adolf of careless grammar or syntax. A Hitler pinched the appropriate title well constructed sentence which before I got to it, so I called my book 16 F@CUS SPRING 1011 ONE VIAL OR TWO? Real biochemists do more washing up than CSI, says CJohn Arthur

am a biochemist and work in science. So what did I have my hands a lab. This is rather unusual in on today? Well, I was separating Iacademia at my stage of life--but small molecules using high Iam inspired by Fredrick Sanger who, performance liquid chromatography once he'd got his first Nobel prize, (HPlCl. You will have even seen such didn't rest on his laurels but went equipment on C51 or Silent Witness. back to the lab and got a second one. My molecules have a radioactive Nowadays, if you look carefully tag which means we can easily at what people who call themselves identify them in a cellular soup. So biologists or life scientists actually do, the separated materials leave the then it is often really biochemistry. HPlC column and are then fed to We are in an era in which biology is a pipetting robot which diligently, defined at the level of the molecule. following a prescribed program, If, however, you observe what people puts different amounts of the liquid who purport to work in a lab on TV coming from the column into plastic actually do (say C51 or Silent Witness), vials--more than 200 of them. that's a whole different story. They When I say robot, don't get your are not doing biochemistry, they hopes up. The comparison between are doing Science Fiction. Of course, this faithful automaton, and my smart when I say science fiction, I don't phone, is the difference between mean the genre we are interested in, me and a pan-dimensional AI. The t mean fictitious science. So what's robot has, on occasion, stopped for real biochemistry like? no apparent reason in mid-run, or Let me start at the beginning of skipped the one crucial vial that had my career. As a PhD student, at the my molecule of interest in. So it has end of every working week there sentience, but it is not benevolent. was the washing up to look forward Each one of more than 200 vials to. There was no dishwasher: this then gets a squirt of a fluorescent out and then transfer it to a OCR hallowed servant was reserved for cocktail that acts as a detector. Is program from which the numbers are undergraduate practical classes. this automated? No. And to keep finally imported into Excel-- thus the There were just two sinks and a me on my toes different vials need phone is an indispensable part of lab lot of dirty glassware, mostly test different volumes of the detection equipment. tubes, and there was a routine. agent. The vials are individually This whole process is repeated at Following a period of soaking, came capped and shaken. And then each least twice a day for up to a couple a phosphate-free detergent wash gets a number 1-200+. You can leave of weeks. (with much zipping up and down off the numbers to save time and From this description you with the test tube brush), followed effort, but what happens when you probably get the impression that by the 8 rinses in cold tap water-­ drop the rack? Well you lose a set my star burns feebly in the scientific deemed sufficient by my boss to get of data from an experiment that firmament. In fact, I work in a big rid of the aforementioned detergent­ took several weeks to set up and research centre and run my own -and finally a wash in distilled water. perform, never mind all the money small group. We've had a few papers One Friday my exertions at spent on expensive chemicals. So you over the years in the top journals. the sinks were interrupted by do the numbers. Then you load the The thing about education is that the appearance of our technical whole lot into a machine that reads it lifts you out of the mire the less assistant and a local school girl on the level of radioactivity in each vial. Qualified have to endure. There are a work experience visit-- who was The instrument is run by a computer no monotonous production lines for strenuously objecting to the fact that utilizing MS DOS. It can even export us. Science, or at least biochemistry, she had been asked to wash up. data (theoretically)--but you would is a whole different thing. The technician pointed to me need to find a copy of a 720 K floppy. and said, ~See, he has 'A' levels and Unfortunately, it is smart enough not DOING IT FOR REAL. .. a degree and he's doing a Ph.D. and to try and read or even format your Ever seen the Job you do misrepresented 10 prlOt he's washing up." Quite. standard 1.44 Mb floppy. These days or on the screen?What IS It really like to do what Working in the lab helps me the aforementioned smartphone is you do? Tell your fellow writers, help us get It to feel I am really doing hands-on used to photo the dot-matrix print nght 10 future

SPRING 201/ F0CUS 17 WRITING THE OTHER The best way to learn about how others live? Ask them and listen to what they tell you, says Lauren Beukes riting The Other is a W ~:~5:;tel:~~iCbe~~uss:o~:,~ so often been done so very, very, badly. But the truth is that unless you're writing autobiography, any character you write is 80ing to be The Other. I am not a serial killer. (Unless my multiple personalities are hiding something from me.) I am also not a fifties' housewife, a parking attendant, a car-jacking reality TV star, a Ugandan email scammer, a Tokyo mecha pilot, or a future-world stubborn-as-heck gay anti-corporate activist. And even though my novelist friends Thando Mgqolozana and Zukiswa Wanner like to joke that I'm a black girl trapped in a white girl's skin, I'm not Zoo City's hip, fast-talking, eX-journa, eX-junkie black Joburg girt protasonist,Zinzi. I don't have a lot of patience for authors who say they'd be too scared to write a character outside their cultural experience. Because we do that all the time. It's called using your imagination. The other people I don't have a lot of patience for are the ones too lazy to do any research. I heard a radio interview recently with a poet who had written a whole book of verse about the sex workers in Amsterdam's red light district and the incredible empathy she had for these women and how she tried to climb inside their heads to really expose the painful reality of their experiences. Number of sex workers she enough on its own. People are people. and who we are in it. interviewed or even tried to engage We love. We hate. We bleed. We itch. The only way to climb into that in a casual chat to get that in-depth We succumb to Maslow's hierarchy experience is to research it, through insight into the painful reality of their of needs and traffic makes us pissy. books or blogs or documentaries or experiences? But culture and race and sexuality journalism or, most importantly and Zero. and even language are all lenses that obviously, talking to people. Sometimes imagination isn't shape our experiences of the world I was lucky to have good friends 18 F@CUS SPRING 1011 like Undiwe Nkutha, Nechama Brodie, and recommended I sacrifice a black South so you'll have company." Verashni Pillay and Zukiswa Wanner chicken) and did follow-up interviews No-one (yet) has given me flak for who were all willing to take me with other traditional healers to make being a white South African writing round Johannesburg AND read the sure I was on track on the details a black South African. And Zukiswa's manuscript afterwards to make sure before I twisted them to my fictional Men of the South was just short­ that I got the cultural details of the purposes. And I spent a week just listed for the Herman Charles Bosman people - and the city - right. walking round Hillbrow and talking to prize. She says she only gets flak from I read books on Hillbrow, like people. people who assume she's a man and Kgebetli Moele's Room 207, watched As my official "culture editor", that Zukiswa is a pseudonym. documentaries and movies and Zukiswa Wanner busted me a couple In the end, I think my question turned to Twitter to get expert first­ of times on inaccuracies - almost all should never have been "Is Zinzi hand info on city details like storm of them on inner city living details, black enough?" but "is she Zinzi drain entrances and good places to like Zinzi stopping to buy a single enough"? Because it's not about dump a body (!). Stuyvesant cigarette from a street creating one-trick ponies that reflect I chatted to music producers vendor. "No ways, dude, I'm sorry, it some quintessential property of and journalists to understand the would be a Remington Gold. That's what we think being Other is about. South African music industry and the cheap generic," or prOViding It's about creating complex, deep, interviewed refugees like Jamala the correct slang for the ubiquitous rich characters driven by their own Safari to get insight into what he'd plastic woven rattan suitcases used motivations and shaped by their been through (and referred him to by refugees: "amashangaan" experiences. my publisher when he mentioned "But is Zinzi black enough?" I People are different. There are he'd written a novel about his journey asked her, after going through all the things we don't get about each other. from the ORC to Cape Town-his book notes in her commissioned reader's Usually it's because we haven't asked. will be published later this year by report which hadn't addressed the So ask. RandomHouse Umuzi). point even once. And then write. I visited the Central Methodist Zukiswa laughed at me. It hadn't Lauren Beukes IS the South Afrl Church where four thousand occurred to her. can author of the novels MOII.vland refugees were sheltering in the worst "Oh Zinz is hip and black enough:' and the Clarke Award winning conditions that were the best possible she said, "Fuck anyone who questions Zoo CltV ThiS artlcle was orlgmally option for them in that moment, got that. What does that even mean? published on The World SF Blog bounced from The Rand Club, paid for Don't worry about it. I too am going (httpll http Ilworidsf wordpress a consultation with a sangoma (who to be catching flak. I write purely from com/) diagnosed a dark shadow over my life the male perspective in Men of the

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SPRING 2012 F0CUS 19 Gary Budgen argues that we should extend the idea of the other across class boundaries.

n a recent MA Module on social classes are not perceived as everywhere, as I found in making choracterwe were introduced an other in that society. I wouldn't these programmes."l to Writing the Other by Nisi want to comment on that since my O It is often pointed out that the first Shawl and Cynthia Ward. This is an knowledge of that society is limited; question a new parent asks is what attempt to encourage writers to however within British society class sex their child is. They don't ask what tackle realistically the creation of has always been something that class; they don't have to. people are conscious of and that has characters that belong to groups Without getting into definitions that are considered 'other' by the had a profound effect on the lives of what social class is, what it is that they lived and the way they are dominant sections of their societies. based on, and whether there is an perceived. This admirable book focuses on race, underclass or a 'precariat', I find the In a Guardian article about a radio gender, ability and seKual orientation. concept of cultural capital useful. series she has made, Polly Toynbee It does contain a curious comment in This idea, originally from the work points out how class has become a the introduction about social class: of Pierre Bourdieu, argues that the stronger determinant of life chances linguistic and cultural advantages "A5 we've said. the focus here than it has been for many years. She that certain children get at home give is on those differences that also says something revealing about them advantages in later life. Basically are generally presumed to how all pervasive class as an issue is it is not just how much money your be important. While class is in our society: arguably as important as race in parents have that determines life terms of characterization, and "I asked everyone I came across chances but the books, music, art that is certainly more scientifically if they had a story about class: you are exposed to, the ideas that quantifiable, on this continent everyone has - either working you are introduced to in education class people confounded by and the expectations people have of it's not a difference majority middle class snobbery, or you. culture recognises as significant." privileged children embarrassed 1 think that the important point (p71 by being posh. Pretence, shame, about all this is that people with a The authors are not claiming that pain, guilt, anger - the stories lack of cultural capital of the sort that there is no social class in north tumble out. Scratch below is valued by mainstream society are America, just that those of different the surface denial and class is perceived as being outside of the 20 F0CUS SPRING 1011 intellectual culture of that society; of the wall. As she grows up she Dogs, the wharves and shadowy in this sense they are regarded as an begins to realise that there is a world lanes of the south-east London 'other'. These groups will have some containing a culture she hasn't been docks, the terraces of Millwall relation towards this lack. This could exposed to before. One point of football ground, those were the be envy, resentment, an inverted interest is the way in which popular playground of my early life." snobbery or outright hostility to what culture, and she emphasises good He goes on to talk about how this is deemed to be elite culture. But popular culture, can playa decisive 'play' informed his work as an actor; often this relation is characterised role in fostering this awareness. For how he has never stopped playing. by a failure to recognise the very lack her it was the music of the Pet Shop So it is when we think about creating itself. Boys: characters we have to draw on all the Thiscultural blindspot is brilliantly "... my favourite pop group from resources of the method actor, no discussed in a recent book by Lynsey the age of nine, when they sang eKperience is ever wasted. Hanley called Estates: An Intimote a song about the West End of And hopefully we will be History. This is both a memoir and a London and made it sound like contributing to that 'good' popular history ofsocial housing in Britain. The the most exciting place in the culture that Hanley talks about. author's own childhood on an estate world. They had other songs, SF can be a form that discusses outside Birmingham is described complex issues in an accessible way. about the kinds of lives in which along with her growing awareness of It certainly made me aware of the you had the choice of becoming a world she has had no access to. In world beyond the walls I lived behind. a pop star, a writer, a composer the chapter "The Wall in the Head" One thing that always appealed or a revolutionary." !p154j she discusses how this 'wall' divides to me were those stories, such as off those who grow up in isolated Finally from the point of view of a those by Samuel R. Delany, where working class communities from the writer, as opposed to a character, characters moved from the lowest cultural products of the wider world. the sort of cultural capital you have to the highest echelons of society "The wall is about not knowing and its value becomes rather more seemingly without effort. Or those what is out there, or believing complex. What is valuable to a writer stories where the current order was that what is out there is either goes far beyond what is often valued overthrown entirely. SF in general entirely irrelevant to your own by society in general. Like actors we offered accounts of societies that life, or so complicated that it have to be able to assume lots of were not like my own and gave me would go right over your head roles and so in our case having once the same sense, an almost palpable if you made an attempt to worn a Peckham Manor school tie is shiver, that I remember getting in understand it." [p153] as valuable as having worn one from one of my first days at primary school Eton or Old St Pauls. Daniel Day­ when the teacher told us a story Partly her point is that the way Lewis, the son of a poet living among about pre-historic man wearing skins that social housing in Britain has working class youth in south London, and living in caves: things haven't isolated the rich from the poor has talks about how his childhood always been like they are; things contributed to this wall. Where informed his approach to acting. This don't have to be like they are. classes live in greater proximity is part of his BAFTA award speech for then t would argue that 'the wall' is 1. The Guardian: "Money bU5tS the There Will Be Blood: sometimes more like a slated fence, convenient myth that social class is dead" http:/{bit.ly{wCrrkU with gaps you can see through to a "... Invicta infants school, landscape you might not understand; Sheringham Primary School but Hanley's argument remains valid. in Charlton; Greenwich Park, She then talks about her growing Blackheath, the streets of knowledge of the existence of the Deptford, Lewisham, New Cross, life that goes on over the other side the bomb sites on the Isle of

CERTAIN I THINK HE MEANS ENVIRONMENTAL WOMEN, MELVIN... FACTORS.•?

SPRING 1012 Fecus 21 TO PLUG, OR NOT TO PLUG • •• Promoting your work is good for a writer and good for readers, says Juliet E McKenna

s always, at this time of year, there's been a fair amount Aof discussion about awards and award etiquette. It's time for nominations and/or voting on a good few genre awards; the Hugos, the BSFA Awards, the David Gemmell Awards. I've been watching with interest, because, yes, I have a dog in this fight. I am on the long list for the David Gemmell Legend Award for best fantasy novel, with Dangerous Waten:. I'm also an Arthur C Clarke Award judge this year and next, and judging the James White Short Story Award. While these are different in that they're juried and judged rather than voted on, it's fair to say I'm taking a closer interest In the whole LiJJ awards business than has been my custom. There are some very strong opinions out there about what level of mention an author may reasonably make of such things. There are those who seem to think so much as mentioning their own novel's eligibility for nomination crosses some invisible line into the online. I was brought up to consider I've seen that criticised as well). But unacceptable. Others see nothing such behaviour utterly reprehensible, what if an author's fans don't happen wrong in writers actively canvassing no its or buts. Besides, in today's book to follow that publisher's website or through their blogs and regularly trade, such behaviour is all too often Twitter feed? I am getting fed up, in tweeting Vote for Me! Vote for Me! associated, fairly or unfairly, with the this age of information overload, with Then there's every shade of opinion most deluded of self-published no­ being told I should/must followdozens in between. hopers. and dozens of feeds, blogs, social I have a good deal of sympathy Except - how are people to know media manifestations and networks, with those who think that an author's that an author's book is eligible for that I have some sort of nebulous work should speak for itself. That a nominations or long/short-listed, if obligation to keep current with such bookshould promptothers apart from no one tells them? It's no answer to things, if I am really committed. Sorry the writer to speak for it, ifit is to have say that if readers are following an but there are a great many other calls any claim on a nomination or votes. award they will already know. What on my time and the number of hours Personally I cringe at the thought if they're not even aware of that in a day is unaffected by my personal of waving my new novel at people particular award? Is it a publisher's level of commitment. uninvited, still less urging them to buy responsibility to tell potentially The most effective and it with the extravagant self-praise that interested parties? Insofar as they straightforward way for me as a reader I occasionally encounter, in person or can, yes it is, and they do (though to learn what's going on with the 22 F0CUS SPRING 1011 specific authors I am interested in is to the midlist authors displayed on articles like a recent one in The check their personal feeds and blogs. equal terms with the big names, for Guardian insisting that 'real writers' So why should they be discouraged the reader to pick and choose. don't seek monetary reward for their bV online hostilitv insisting they're I remember the first time I was art. We see the enduring literary not allowed (and who eKacUv decides on a panel at a US convention when snobbery that insists a commercial this anyway?) to teU me about their the moderator blithelv announced, best seller must self-evidently eligibility, nominations etc? With that 'I'll ask the panel to introduce be devoid of true merit precisely insistence followed by threats that themselves and plug their latest because such popular appeal can if they do, such behaviour should books: Everyone in the room onlv be meretricious (from the latin, automaticallv stop any right-thinking stiffened, sitting up straighter on meretriK, a whore). Such snobbery person for voting for them now or their chairs. Me with shock at this then promptlv inverts itself, insisting in the future! When, incidentally, challenge to mv Traditional British a 'challenging' or 'important' novel publishers' martenng departments Reserve. The audience with keen must be lauded, even if it's sold and publicity officers for these awards anticipation, dearly eager to hear under a thousand copies. PresumablV will be encouraging those authors about new books and authors new because only the clever people can to share exactly that information, to them. MV fellow writers bV way understand it. Sorry, but I cannot read in keeping with their own job of preparation to inform potential these self-selecting, self-regarding descriptions. When one of the most customers about their wort in a critics without wondering if they've valuable functions of awards is to friendly and professional fashion, ever heard the story of The Emperor's prompt the debate and discussion so standing their books up on the table NewClorhes. vital for keepinll a lleme developinll to show cover art, etc. Such people have clearly never in ever more interesting ways for Why should an author feel awk­ studied basic logic. A best-seller can readers and writers alike. ward or embarrassed about offering indeed be devoid of literary merit. What about what happens such information? But at UK conven­ A chair can have four legs. A best­ after that? If such self-promotion is tions I often see writers barely making seller need not be devoid of merit. acceptable, where does one draw mention of their own work, brutallv Something with four legs need not be aline? Is it acceptable to let people self-deprecating if they do - and then a chair. It can be a racehorse. With all know your work is listed/eligible for I hear con-goers afterwards asking respect to Dr Johnson, I don't know an award? But not to openlV solicit each other for more information on a single author who writes onlv for votes? But not to post, for instance, a panel member's titles, where that money. This is not in the least the a short story online for people to read writer's work sits in the genre, trying same as savinI!! we cannot justifiablv for free? But not for an author to to work out if someone whose con­ eKpect fora fair reward forourwriting. privately email all their contacts who tribution they've appreciated in that To return to the subject at hand. millht be elillible to vote, offering to discussion is also likelv to write books Ultimately every reader and writer send them a copy direct, at once? to their taste. If such information's will find the level of self-promotion Because I've seen all those things available in the programme, all well that they're comfortable with. I go on. And yes, I can see how the and good, but all too often it isn't. have decided that am not going to latter practises might well skew a How does such reticence encourage be discouraged from offering useful vote, if one candidate's material is far that broader conversation that keeps information to potential readers, such more accessible than another's. But a genre vibrant and evolving? as links to reviews online or a brief who's lloing to decide these thinllS, When considering hostility to introduction to mV work if I'm on a given subjective opinion on what's self-promotion, I think there's a panel discussion. I see nothing wrong acceptable behaviour can vary so clue in that word 'pimpage', which in letting people know that one of mV widely between different people? grates on me like fingernails on slate books is eligible for consideration for More practicallv, who on earth is whenever I hear it. r don't care if it's an award. What readers choose to do going to enforce any such rules that being used ironicallv, post-modernly, with that information is then up to might be made? self-deprecatingly or whatever them. I've seen similar hostility directed other justification might be offered. towards authors retweeting or linking Writers are not pimps and our books to favourable mentions of their books. are not whores. We are not sleazy But why shouldn't we direct potential money-grubbers demanding cash for readers towards information which something that decent, dean-living might help them decide if our book people otherwise exchange for free. is likelv to be to their taste and is We are offering our work-product something they might like to consider and inviting the reader to purchase it, bUVing?This is a business after all and to give us a retum on our endeavour. authors operate in an increasinglv How is this different from any other hostile environment. Chanlles in commercial transaction, where goods booksellinll have pretty much done and services are exchanged for a fair away with the days when a reader price? could browse a shop's shelves and Ah but 15 Eliot had to work in a expect to see the new releases and bank, we are told. We read infuriating

SPRING 1011 F@CUS 23 LEARNING TO LOVE LEARNING Paul Graham Raven is currently studying for an MA in Creative Writing at Middlesex University. In this, the second article in a series, he talks about his personal and academic progress.

are the most in need of murdering. That's valuable knowledge, a weapon for beating back your inner editor. Come to think of it, the greatest value of a Masters might well be your access to a small but qualified audience: your lecturers, of course, but also your course-mates. At its best, the workshop scenario provides an opportunity for accelerated learning, because the group can make instructive mistakes at a greater rate than you can on your own. (The same goes for successes, too.) Combined with incisive feedback from your lecturers, this is vital stuff; this is where the generalist aphorisms of the advice book are transcended with specific feedback from people who know and care about good writing. f I wanted to be trite, I might years of writing reviews and non­ There may be someone on your say that if it were possible to list fiction that I respond positively to course who just doesn't like your Ieverything I've learned since deadlines. As such, I've found that style or subject matter, or with whose October last year in a 1,000 word regular and structured demands for work you have the same issues. This, article, then I'd have been wasting tangible written output have got me in a way, is valuable preparation for my time. turning out more copy than I've ever an important writerly reality: even I started reading writerly advice managed before... though I make no the great masters can't please all the books and blogs back in 2003; if claims as to the consistency of its people all the time. (Indeed, evidence exposure to self~evident advice was quality. suggests that the bigger you get, the all it took to break through into Interestingly, though, I'm less more people wlll find fault with you... publication, I'd surely be out on my intimidated than I used to be but that's another essay for another bestseller signing tour right now. about producing work that I feel is time.) That's not to knock advice books and substandard. Workshopping and However, an environment where blogs, mind you, but the best of them the development of early drafts is a everyone has a problem with your simply expand on a central truth: central component of every module style or subject matter by default that to learn to write well, one must of the course, and the opportunity would be hell on earth and, I imagine, read, and read critically; then, one to find out what your peers think of very demoralising. That's what makes must write, and write often. Knowing your works-in-progress might well the Middlesex course so special, in that fundamental truth is one thing; leave you feeling better about them, that - uniquely for UK universities ­ putting it into practice, for me at not worse. Which isn't to say you'll it hasa strand explicitly dedicated to least, is quite another. never get anyone saying bad things science fiction and fantasy. Reports A Masters won't teach you that about your work, of course - far from from writers of sf and/or fantasy either, of course. When it comes it! But you might find the bits you who have attended (or even simply to motivation, you need to bring loathed pushed everyone's buttons, attempted to apply for) MA courses your own. That said, I know from while your darlingest paragraphs in Creative Writing elsewhere suggest 24 F0CUS SPRING 1011 that the hostility of the literary from it! - but creative writing is not a career out of creating things, out academic establishment towards easily graded on a numerical scale. of thinking about the things that those genres has not abated. Here, So while I was aware that I was doing fascinate you most, and writing however, the genres have a happy good work, I didn't know how good. about them - how could that not home alongside their literary cousin, Just good? Really good? Just good be tempting? Academia, it seems, supported by writers and critics and enough? has more attraction for me than I tutors who value them and study That's an interesting distinction, ever suspected ... though it probably them closely. because I enrolled on the course with helps that my day-job, which I started Incidentally, I've not once heard the attitude - consciously-held, at around the same time as the Masters, my lecturers make derisive comments least - that it was the learning that is also academic in nature. about the artistic merits of literary mattered, not the qualification. Now And now my inner pessimist fiction; indeed, we've studied a fair I find that the qualification matters at wants to say that I'm probably just bit of it. Make of that what you will. least as much. I am no longer content riding off the combined seratonin rush of my good results and the to pass; I want to pass well. I want to seasonal shift into spring, and that get a first. That was an undreamable A PERSONAL DISCOVERY the worst is yet to come, and I might I was still waiting for my first semester dream until it was shown to be within yet fail or fumble, and cross the finish results when I began this piece. They my theoretical reach. line somewhere in the midfield, were posted a few days back, and I What's different about my rattling around near the nipple of the found I'd done much better than I academic experience this time out is Gaussian bell-curve. Maybe I'm just that, since I'm studying something I thought I had. enjoying the grass-is-greener effect, One thing I'd forgotten about really care about, my engagement doing to the academy what I always with it isn't a chore. On the contrary, the academic experience is how do when I travel: falling in love with r find myself getting frustrated at important the benchmarks of wherever I visit and wondering if I having to do anything else - like assessment becomes to me, and should move there forever. that's amplified somewhat by the my day-job, say, or the washing Well, maybe I am. But then again, very nature of a creative writing up. I talk to PhD students, and find maybe I amn't. course. That isn't to say you don't get myself thinking I want to be one. I like it here. Perhaps, if I work a lot of feedback on your work during Sure, it's a lifetime of hard work for hard enough at it, I'll convince them seminars and from your tutors - far comparatively low pay. But making to let me stay.

(IQWI) Not that tastyarvJ .I. not mlAcft meal ( DOING- ~NYW£LL.)

SPRING 2012 F@CUS 25 POETRY IN AN SF MAGAZINE? No, it's not a mistake! Charles Christian, the new poetry editor of FOcus, introduces himself and sf poetry.

oetry and science fiction ­ award for long poems of SO or more of magical realism but I'll leave it to surely they have nothing in lines in length, one for shorter poems two other authors to succinctly (and Pcommon? Sci-fi is all about of 49 lines or less). The Rhyslings are cynically) sum up it up. According to setting the controls for the heart named after the blind poet Rhysling, Gene Wolfe umagical realism is fan­ of the Sun whereas poetry is... well a character in Robert Heinlein's short tasy written by people who speak it's aU mimsy verse about nodding story The Green Hills of Eorth. How­ Spanish," while Terry Pratchett said daffodils and skylarks isn't it? ever Star·Une can also claim to be ~magicat realism is like a polite way leaving aside the fact some of the one of the first publications to start of saying you write fantasy.~ earliest and best known eKamples publishing scifaiku, the illicit love­ So, good luck with your writ­ of SF&F writing in world literature child of sf poetry and the Japanese ing. Please do remember that po­ - Homer's Odyssey and Beowulf­ 17-sytlable haiku form (actually haiku etry does NOT have to have clunking were written in verse (all the easier are a lot more complicated than that rhymes at the end of each line. NOR to remember in non-literate societ­ but you get the idea). Here's one I does it have to be split into dinky ies), Edgar Allan Poe's stories were wrote earlier (not selected because I little stanzas - the piece by Beverly a strong influence on early science think it is good but because it avoids Ellis on the next page is an example fiction writers such as HG Wells and copyright clearance issues)... of a 'prose poem' - a form that sits on Gothic horror yet Poe started out on the borderline between poetry in literary life as a poet. And then space time dilation­ and flash fiction. DON'T worry about there is HP lovecraft, another writer when I return all that iambic pentameter stuff you who started as a poet, before moving the only face J know is mine were taught at school - all you need into sf and horror. He was still writing to write poetry is an ear for words. poetry until shortly before his death. Terry Pratchett uses scifaiku as chap­ In fact reading a poem out aloud is Fast forward to the present day and ter epigrams in his non-Discworld a very good way of seeing if it works if you ever catch a Neil Gaiman read­ novel The Dark Side of the Sun, while as a piece of writing. AND if anyone ing, you'll see him reading some of David Brinn's Uplift Universe series ever gives you a copy of Stephen his own poetry. even includes a race of intelligent Fry's book The Ode Less Trovelled, Quite simply, there is no incom­ dolphins that speak a haiku-like lan­ sling it in the bin as reading it will set patibility between the worlds of sf guage called Trinary. back your understanding of poetry by prose writing and poetry, they are While the Americans seem to ac­ about 50 years. just different forms of creative writ­ cept sf poetry as a legitimate literary ing, which is why I'm now editing a genre, as do sf&f magazines, over poetry page for Focus magazine and here in the UK, the poetry establish­ plenty of other publications in the ment, including most Arts Council­ sf&f field also carry poetry. funded magazines, is definitely not Want to know more? The grand­ a fan. Submit sf poetry to them and daddy of the sf poetry scene is the many will reject it with a sniffy note Science Fiction Poetry Association (or along the lines of "we do not accept SFPA) a US-based organisation that light verse." Being accused of writing has been around since 1978, produc­ light verse is a great insult in poetry ing a quarterly print (and PDF) maga­ circles, on a par with being told you zine of sf poetry calted Star·Une. write like Pam Ayres. The SFPA defines sf poetry as ~po­ But, there is a way around this. etry with some element of specula­ Instead of describing your work as tion - usually sf, fantasy or horror." science fiction poetry, call it 'masi­ www.sfpoetry.com cal realism'. People on creative writ­ The SFPA is probably best known ins MA courses can - and will - ar­ for its annual Rhys!ing Awards lone gue forever on the exact definition

26 F0CUS SPRING 1011 SOMETHING ABOUT LOVE ADVICE FROM A CLONE Instead of Double Maths that aflernooll, She had thesrnallest I\aist. TECHNICIAN they tell the teacher to back ofl' and look so how the queen could lace her tighter And so we watch the muscle it up online, find images of carve

SPRING 1011 F0CUS 27 AND FINALLY••• "BURLY DETECTIVE" SYNDROME This useful term is taken from SF's cousin-genre, the detective-pulp. The hack writers of the Mike Shayne series showed an odd reluctance to use Shayne's proper name, preferring such euphemisms as "the burly detective" or "the red-headed sleuth.'" This syndrome arises from a Wf"ong-headed conviction that the same word should not be used twice In dose succession. This is only true of particularly strong and visible words, such as "vertiginous." Better to re­ use it simple tag or phrase than to contrive cumbersome methods of avoiding it.

The Turkey City Lexicon

There was the sound of something heavy smashing into T:~:;~~~e~ea~~~~~~t:~~:;;:d~~~~~:~~:~~~:::~~~:~ng, something hard, a soft moan and then silence. vainly, that there was some kind of error. "Chief?" An alarm started to howl. There was no reply. "Bridger The thickly-accented voice of McKay. the bluff The slick-faced space-pilot dipped his head to his shoulder, Scots engineer, cut through the blaring siren. ~Bridge! We have a scraping sweat from his brow with his uniform's epaulets as he situation-" frantically tried to bring the nose of his ship up into a shallower "Reallyr The hotshot space-jockey made no effort to hide angle of attack. He tried again to raise engineering. his irritation as he slipped lithely into his seat, pulling the "1 need more power, dammit." harness tight across his body. He killed the siren's banshee howl. The only sound on the com channel was a low hiss. The ship trembled. "Tell me something I don't know, Chief." The strong-willed steersman ran his fingers over the panel. "We've lost the automatic stabilisers, we cannae hold her!" He tried to reinitialise the automatic landing system but the A sudden buffeting almost flipped the The Desperate Endeavour. console burped an error message. Shaking his head Harvey "You're gonna have to land her manually laddie." swiped away the overlay of pilot aides, revealing the basic flight "Damnt~ The broad-shouldered rocket-wrangler yelped and controls. Warning lights flickered, they were still coming in too began to work furiously at his console. The starship juddered steeply. Violently, but the wilder oscillations were dampened, the ship "Well, it looks like we're going to have to do this all on our was back under its pilot's control. "Engineering? Engineering! own; muttered the quick-thinking flyboy. He patted the console. Can you give us the power to get back to orbit?" "Come on Dessie, let's get us down on the ground."

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Astrophysics made simple