Looping Through Time

I love Don’s football analogy of how the time continuum thing got started. I didn’t realize that it was first conceived of by Poe. For some reason, I think of him as only a macabre writer (not one of my favorites, probably because he comes a little too close to home – he was the original Alfred Hitchcock for psyco-thrillers).

Some of our biggest movies and novels are based around “alt history”: Fatherland by Robert Harris and the movies The Terminator, Back to the Future and the most recent, Looper (which I haven’t seen.) Apparently, the formula is to change one or two events in the past, causing the present to become very different.

Zack Varvel has been playing with this concept in his Captain Jackson series. Currently his characters are 21^st Century marines caught in the Middle Ages. Zack has not been forth coming about whether or not they change time. You’d think he’d be willing to share that with his editor! Guess I’ll just have to wait like everyone else.

One of the things I read, and I can’t for the life of me remember from where, states that you can’t go back and change time. Even if you had the opportunity to say kill Hitler before he became the monster, because time is already set, you would never be able to change the course of history. Of course, this becomes one of the big plot drivers for the Sci-fi series, Eureka. I think that Dr. Who, especially this latest Dr. Who, discusses “fixed time” a lot. In fact, he lost my favorite characters, the Ponds, to fixed time. If I think about it further, The ghosts of Christmas Past and Future (Christmas Carole) don’t’ allow Scrooge to change time, but the Ghost of the Present embraces change and, depending on the version, actually encourages Scrooge to change – there-by changing time. Many a story has been built around the idea of layers of time rubbing up against each other. I wonder, can we actually exist in several time frames at the same time? And we are propelled into one or another depending on our decisions?

So, if I can’t change time big time, is there one small thing that I might do that would alter time just a little bit? The Butterfly wing effect. What would I do to change history – just one small thing… I often wonder what would happen if someone was not born, or maybe someone is born and they shouldn’t be. Can one person change history? I guess this is where I travel with an open mind and the realization that with every decision, I am changing time. How about you?

One of my favorite Star Treks was the "City on the Edge of Forever". Another one, with Captain Picard and crew, is the Star Trek version of Ground Hog Day called “Cause and Effect”. 

Carolyn

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Ed, Herb, Ray, Gene, Homer and Me

 

I’ve always really been into the whole going back in time and messing up  the smallest thing resulting in alarming consequences  in the present scenario. In between the time that I was first sucked into the sci-fi web and now, there’ve been  a whole lot of years during which I simply lost touch. Somewhere in that time, the term “space time continuum” popped up.  This here  “ space time continuum “ I thought, until recently,  was a jargonesque contrivance ground out by some overworked B-movie Hollywood hack who deserved the raise they didn‘t get.

 Well, I find that (unless my online sources are flat out lying), it ain’t some Bob Cratchit wordsmith’s invention but an idea that first popped up in a serious academic paper by Edgar Allan Poe in the early part of the 18^th century. Pass the ball to Herbert Wells ( H.G. to his close friends ) who also contemplated it at school and  ran with it in “ The Time Machine” . Both of these guys were, by day, serious eggheads so they weren’t just diddling with this as a timewaster during staff meetings.

 Ray Bradbury snags the pigskin and, through his “The Sound of Thunder”, I get exposed to it in my closet years as a  geek in training. Around the same time, Gene Roddenberry okays a Harlan Ellison ( also at my icons head table ) script for an original Star Trek Episode “ City on the Edge of Forever” that sees McCoy, suffering from an accidental drug malfunction, scoot through a time portal and flirt with similar future sabotaging mayhem in America in the 1930‘s.  The episode not only allows William Shatner to do some requisite cougar tracking but will ultimately win a Hugo Award and a Writer’s Guild of America Award. I will sit enrapt at the glass teat (Ellison’s term) more than once while it plays. The seriously crackerjack Simpson’s writers also corral the pigskin from quarterback Ray and use it for one of their best “Treehouse of Horrors “ episodes. You know, the one with the toaster that sends Homer way back to the time when dinosaurs weren’t in zoos! 

And here we are.

 It remains one of my primo idle time fillers. If I could go back and change the future by doing something back then, what would I do??  And why would I do it?

Right now I think I’d go back and do whatever needs to be done to prevent the formation of petroleum. Then those powers that be ( but should not be ) couldn’t just goose the price of gas and oil based electricity generation  capriciously up and down , but mostly up!

Don’t get me started. 

Anyhow, if you could do some in the past tinkering, what would you do ??

Don B.

Writing and Editing

I love Don’s reference to Brendan Behan: ”Critics are like eunuchs in a harem, they know how it’s done, they’ve seen it done every day, but they can’t do it themselves.”    I imagine that we could extend that to editors. But I don’t think that it is that they can’t do it, they just don’t have the confidence to do it. I read somewhere that denying creativity leads to anger and frustration; fear of not being “good enough” also leads to anger and frustration – an interesting thought.

As a content editor, I’m often awe-struck by the authors I edit. They’ve done incredible work putting words together, creating characters and scenes that are believable! They “unfold” the story in such a way that leaves me wanting to read the next chapter. O’Ryan Jackson’s Serpent Bearer series is an example. O’Ryan submitted the first three stories, then decided to make changes to stories four, five and six before she submitted them. I had to wait to read the ending! It was a long six weeks. And once I got them, I pushed everything aside and just read them for the pure fun of reading. Colby Elliot’s For a FewDiapers More series is another example – but his is also an example of taking an everyday happening, twisting it and seeing were it leads; following his character to see how he stands up to the challenges of the world suddenly taking a left turn into weird.

I’ve had the opportunity to venture out with two very different stories of my own, to let my “imaginative fancy” out for a spin: Tracker and Trouble with Humans. Now that I’ve been able to let others “peek” into my world, I better appreciate what the writers for Wormhole go through when they submit a manuscript – days/ weeks of self-doubt only to be faced with rewrites based on “She wants me to do what?!”

There still remains that pull, that “story” inside me, that is yammering to be let out that hasn’t been dulled by editing … “It” believes that since I did it for the first two stories, it should have equal time, it’s fair share of the light. I have no idea what I’m really hooked on: the writing or the editing! What an interesting dilemma!

Carolyn

 

Okay! I'll Talk!

Okay, Detective! I‘ll talk, just move that light from my eyes, will ya? Yeah, I’ve always been an SF junkie, is that a crime ?? Sure, I’ve also enjoyed seeing my own words on paper. But I didn’t write the bastard… at least not yet !

When I got curiously mixed in with this wormhole thing as an editor ( down the wormhole if you will ) it was to strictly be a behind the scenes gig. Funny though, as an “ editor” I started to feel that it was almost pretentious and even maybe preposterous to hold forth in a supposedly authoritative manner on other peoples’s works - it was sorta like, you know, a 16 year old Justin Beiber writing his inspirational and insightful life story. Say what !!

I was also a bit haunted by observations made by a couple of past literary high-rollers who were also scoundrels in varying degrees. George Bernard Shaw observed “Those who can’t do, teach” and Brendan Behan noted that critics ( who gotta be on a branch close to the editors’ branch on the literary tree ) are like eunuchs in a harem, they know how it’s done, they’ve seen it done every day, but they can’t do it themselves.

Finally, I was slightly reminded of my late older brother who got himself booted from our Grade nine Catholic high school religion class by calling the celebate priest on his qualifications as a teacher authority vis-à-vis marriage related topics and issues.

So I began to figure that if I’m gonna edit other writers stuff, I gotta be doing the writing thing myself if I want any credibility. So that’s what I’m gonna do.

I have had some ideas swirling about since, and even before, the ever-present effervescent Ms. Varvel got a hold of me online and said I should attempt to bake a story cake from them - I’ll bet she says that to all the wordsmith wannabees ! Anyhow, in the next while I will try to take them further. I’d be happy ( gulp) to let the others who peek in weigh in on what I’m up to as well.

Hmmmm, never thought I had masochistic tendencies before !

 

Don

Sci-fi wannabe

One of the questions I was asked recently is why do I write sci-fi/fantasy and why do I like the genre? I was told there is so much more out there to read! And I agree! There is! And I love a good mystery! Romance is good, but a full body lust push just isn’t my style. I prefer Hitchcock’s theory of giving just enough information that the imagination takes over. I’m not one to stick loyally to one genre! Why not involve as many elements of the different genre as possible? Isn’t that the way life is? I’ve certainly had days that were fiction strange! And some of my students are definitely from “somewhere else”!

A while back, I was told I was good at memoir writing – that my stories were clear, believable, helped people relate. And they were boring for me to write. What is the challenge of restating something that has already happened – water under the bridge so to speak. Where is the imagination in the story? Writing sci-fi/fantasy is my opportunity to be someone else on paper – no costume or makeup required – just an active imagination. It is the opportunity to let a bit of myself out, to take that part out for a spin into fantasy and see how “I” respond, and to see if “I” can stand up to the challenges.

My character Lady Ev D’Ander in the Tracker series is a very small part of me and a lot of what I wish I was: musician, good with animals and people, adventurous, confident, unafraid to take action when needed. Ev is my wannabe – she is who I’d like to be when I grow up.

Here's Don!

 

 

First …a bit about myself and how I got into this cozy corner of the blogosphere.

I'm unabashedly an old school sci-fi aficionado ( read - fanboy ) as well as a fellow in his early sixties so maybe this item should be called- “Forward to the Past”.  I got put on to Wormhole Electric back when its working title was still “ a writing project”  by a very good friend  and fellow Canuck who taught school in Sarajevo with the man who brings us Captain Jack. Editors were needed and, once I got the lowdown about all things Wormholish from  the primal force and Mustapha Mond behind it all - Carolyn Varvel ,  I thought that it looked cool ( now there’s a word that has thumbed it's nose at the  god of trendiness, eh ?).  So here I am.

The biggest charge I get from being involved in this is that I have a chance to read stuff from writers a generation removed from my vantage point .They’re  solidly afloat in a gadget ga-ga world that was almost still the stuff of fiction itself when I was in their proverbial shoes. It’s selfish, I know, but I wanted to see if the muse was just as alive now, or had pure keep ’em glued to the page story-telling  been pushed into the backseat by digital flash and techno-glitter. Thankfully, it hasn’t. 

Enough appetizers, on to the main course of the meal I want to serve up in this initial blog. May there be time another day for more gingerbread.

It’s been a bitch of a year so far, for old school sci-fi people, and their icons.  Two figures from my personal pantheon hit the final road this summer . Ray Bradbury left in June and Harry Harrison took his final bow in August .If these names mean squat to you dear blogee but pique your curiosity ,check ‘em out.

 They became part of my personal reading dirty dozen or so demigods as I first discovered, and revelled in the world of speculative fiction. Harrison’s Stainless Steel Rat was my ultimate cool guy then and still wears the champion belt. It was a toss-up between Steve McQueen and later a young Bruce Willis ( a la “ Moonlighting “) for who’d portray him on the screen if I were the casting director. I give it to Willis in retrospect. McQueen, while most certainly uber-cool, was too brooding.  Sean Connery, late of “Dr. No” and “Goldfinger”, was also in the running for a bit but he was simply too Vegas for the role.  The Stainless Steel Rat is more loquacious, and less sidetracked by the flesh than Mr. James Bondage, thought I in my mid-pubescent mind.

Bradbury was everyone, everywhere and everything for me for a few months in my 15^th year. He sits at the head table yet. For  reasons that even now I can’t fully articulate, when I find myself at someone’s abode as a guest and they insist upon leaving the TV on or surfing the web whilst there are other flesh and blood people in the room, I think of Fahrenheit  451.

 There are obits aplenty out there for each of these Olympians. I’m not here to add another, only to point out that they were among the chief providers of my sweetest mind candy when I was at my most impressionable - I’ll miss ‘em fer shure.