Liked Interstellar? Consider reading Expedition of the Arcturus

I keep doing this. I write a story and publish it, then a film comes along on a similar topic. At least I seem to be staying abreast of the Zeitgeist of what's interesting.

I wrote and released "Simon's Beautiful Thought" sometime before the film "She" was released. That film was in the works for about ten years though so I'm not claiming anything here other than that I see a relevant and current topic and I like to write about it. I consistently come up with stories prior to film's being heard about or released.

By the way, if you haven't read my story about Simon yet, it's a good story to check out, and it's always free. It will give you the idea however, of whether it's worth checking out my other works and I suppose, it gives you a good perspective on whether or not I can write. Though it is one of my more general audience, tamer tales of in this case, science fiction.

ebook version cover

I'm happy to say that coming up with timely stories has happened again with the release of Christopher and Jonathan Nolan's, "Interstellar", by way of my short story, Expedition of the Arcturus (also available as an audiobook I should add). It's a quick but fun read.

audiobook cover version

I produced and narrated the audiobook myself. It was an interesting and lengthy process requiring some degree of technical expertise on the recording and production end. So far I've produced three of them. Arcturus, The Conqueror Worm, which is the first full chapter of my book, Death of Heaven, and The Mea Culpa Document of London, a medieval tale of horror and regret by a Judge of the Inquisition and a Witch Hunter.

The Arcturus story was first released on PerihelionSF.com, a first rate, "hard" sci fi kind of an online magazine, where stories on the magazine are free to read online. I highly suggest, if you love good sci fi, to definitely check them out and support them. Let your friends know.

I also reported on an incredible documentary for PerihelionSF titled, Chasing Ice (page down a bit there to see it; there were originally two parts and there is only one left on the magazine archive now. For the entire article including the Q&A with a team member after the film and with photos, you can download my pdf of the article from my web site. I highly recommend watching this documentary, for the visuals if not for the reality it portrays and the warnings it offers.

I am also currently working on a new sci fi story for the magazine called, Rapture.

Expedition of the Arcturus, is a story about Earth's first generational spaceship sent to find a new home for humanity because of an impending global disaster. This isn't your clean, straightforward kind of story however, but it's not a bloody mess either. So if you like SF and not gore, this is a good story. Sam (the publisher) is strict about sci fi and not horror.

There is something else going on under the surface on Arcturus, however.

Told in reverse timeline, we are at first introduced to some of the crew of the spaceship Arcturus at the end of their journey. Then we step backward through time as we come to know more of them and about them and their situation until finally, we see how it all began and start to understand why things turned out how they did.

The title of the story came from a book I read years ago, A Voyage to Arcturus by Scottish author David Lindsey, published in 1920. A fascinating tale considered by some to be one of the top 100 greatest books of all time.

I'm not trying to compare my story to Lindsey's in quality or story, it was just a tribute to a book I had greatly enjoyed and appreciated, and I wanted to pay tribute to the author and his tale. Much like I did with my first published story of social horror, In Memory, Yet Crystal Clear in Anthology of Evil, 2012, which we have begun a re-edit on, and was a tribute to Isaac Asimov's first autobiography, In Memory, Yet Green, as I mentioned in last week's blog.

My Arcturus tale is a straight forward sci fi story. If you want something closer to David Lindsey's, you'd have to check out my book, Death of Heaven. Or perhaps the story I'm current writing on Wattpad, The Unwritten, a free and curious tale involving backwoods incestuous, serial killers, scientists in another universe and, a demon spawn's repeated attempts to literally escape from Hell.

I put all parts of The Unwritten into a Word doc and so far it comes to, 41 pages and 23,286 words with more to come. The gory, grisly scenes I had been talking about the last half of November (in case anyone reading this remembers or knew about that), those scenes are finally written and now available on there. That scene, part sixteen, grew into three parts and went on for a ways; but hey, when you have ten people tearing one another apart, well....it took some space. As well as some time to plot out where everyone was standing and what they were doing.

Regarding Arcturus, people wonder sometimes if a story written in a reversed timeline was originally written in a straightforward, linear fashion, then cut and pasted regressively into form. Maybe some are. But I wrote this story of earth's first generational spaceship, a ship where people live and love, procreate and die during the course of their seventy-five year mission as it is and how you would read it now.

I wanted to open with some action. In coming up with the opening I thought it might be interesting to show the end of the mission, first. From there, came the thought to write it backward. I decided on the time frames to leap backward through, and then I wrote it that way, then repeated the process until the final and first scene played out in the end. It was a fun though somewhat melancholy story to write and I wasn't sure if Sam (the publisher at PerihelionSF.com) would like it or not.

See, originally I had written and sent him another story. About twenty years ago, I had come up with an idea for a story. Quite different than the story that played out and was eventually published, the original had a scientist who invented a new technology, trying to sell it off to avoid being killed for it. It involved spies and intrigue but it just didn't work out for me in the end for some reason. That story was about a new technology, something no one saw coming, and which may just be coming someday.

There have been advances recently actually leading toward that. It was also a technology first shown in the neo-noir dystopian sci fi film, Blade Runner, which they are now gearing up to producing a sequel to. I'm hoping that Ridley Scott gets to direct, but that's still up in the air. Interesting side note many people don't know, there are sequels to the first novelization of the original film (Blade Runner The Edge of Human (book 2), Replicant Night (book 3), Blade Runner 4: Eye and Talon), all by K.W. Jeter.

According to Wikipedia: "These official and authorized sequels were written by Dick's friend, K. W. Jeter. They continue the story of Rick Deckard and attempt to reconcile many of the differences between the novel and the film."

The Blade Runner story originally being from a Philip K. Dick book: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and having little to do with the film, really. I had posted in newsgroups back in the late 1980s that I was working on a sequel screenplay to the original film and got several death threats from around the country. I wished them all the best and indicated I lived in Seattle at the time if they wanted to come visit. No one took me up on the offer. However two people did offer to help me with the screenplay, which I never got around to completing, though I did map out a story line.

The story I was getting around to mentioning using the new technology, was EarVu and  the story is about a technology that could blow the social structures of the world because of what would ensue from it's utilization.

Consider what would happen if you could take an audio tape, any audio tape, play it through a machine and then be able to watch a 3D video of whatever was going on in the environment surrounding the microphone(s) at the time of recording. Of course, that's not just what happens in this story, not by a long shot.

Getting back to my Expedition of the Arcturus...

Check out my own story on my version of Earth's first generational space ship, if you get a chance. And see, Interstellar, as from what I hear, it's a definite yes on a film to go see.

Cheers! And a very merry Holiday season to you all, all around the world!

On Creating Great Story Titles

Properly titling a story is extremely important to me. In thinking about creating titles for stories, I thought I would share what my process can be. For at least one type of story title, anyway.

I believe that a good title can contain half of a story's meaning, in theory. It's something to shoot for anyway. By changing a title it can alter the entire meaning of the story. It can twist a story's meaning in unforeseen and  interesting ways.

Sometimes I write a story, from a short story to a novel, based upon a title I came up with first as inspiration. Sometimes that title lasts all the way through to publish. At times once I finish the story, another title becomes apparent.

Sometimes the title comes last once I discover what the story is through discovery as I write it. When that happens, I try really hard to come up with the right title. I try to find the title in the story. I'm not always successful to the degree I want, but it's usually worth the effort.

A good title can make a world of difference in reader perception as well as story meaning. One of my best titles came out of this story:

Nikolas Hayes as "Simon" on the cover of one of my free ebooks
Simon's Beautiful Thought

Having a story where the title pulls things all together at the end, can be very pleasurable. It's good to be careful however about taking a string of words from within a story as the title, as it can come off as cliche or in the worst case, simply annoying.

For our purposes here, I'll just use a story of someone I know, Nikolas Hayes. This is from his first published short-short story on Wattpad.  It's a cool little horror sci fi tale, a dystopic that worked on his first draft. It's a good title. Not quite the kind that alters a story outside of its obvious meaning or intent, but a good title nonetheless.

Wattpad, if you don't already know, is a site where you can find a lot of interesting and free writings. In some cases, authors are writing entire books online there that you can follow along with as they are written, chapter by chapter. You can comment on them, sometimes affecting how the book develops. Many of these stories are first drafts, written on Wattpad and published without a second draft attempt. Many find that interesting. 

I heard a well known writer once say that you CAN make a living as a short story writer, you just have to be able to write a first draft, send it off and have it bought by a publisher, every single day. Not a lot of people can produce a finished, polished purchasable story in one draft. 

Some people have even gotten book deals in publishing like this on Wattpad.

Here is one of my latest stories on my Wattpad, titled: "To End All War". It's about a scientist who misuses an experiment he and his coworker are working on, in order to affect the entire world to his agenda. He's finally had it and felt that he had to do something; something, to stop the madness. Hopefully in the end, it will work out for everyone for the better. 

Or perhaps, he's just sadly deluded as so many seem to be now a days. Yet, I wonder....

One last thing before I get to the point of today's blog....

Death of Heaven by JZ Murdock

A few years ago before I published my currently re-released epic book, Death of Heaven (you know, I don't use "epic" lightly either, the book IS epic in scope, there's simply no debating that...read it, you'll see what I mean), it still had no title as I approached the final edit prior to publishing.

Years before, Nik had produced a music CD of his original music on keyboards and there was one song titled, "The Death of Heaven" ( the link is to the video book trailer for the book using Nik's song so you can actually hear it). 

You can also see the web page for my book here, Death of Heaven.

In my search for a title for a book I scan a lot of art and music for ideas, to tweak to my own purposes. So at some point, I ended up looking over his song titles. I was starting to worry that I wouldn't find a title worthy of this book.

I loved that title when I saw it again. Perhaps I subconsciously directed myself to look at those songs again, songs I had previously listened to more than once. Although it wasn't quite how I was thinking of titling my book, over that next week, the more I thought about it, I just couldn't get it out of my head.

It started to make total sense to me. It fit the book the more I thought about it. So, I asked him and he allowed me to use that title. I dropped the leading "The" in the original title, as that isn't a great idea to use in book titles, but over all, the title was his.

In supplying Nik now with the title to his first short story published online, I've finally been able to pay him back in some small way for using one of his titles. I'm not saying that title doesn't exist elsewhere in the world, just that he came up with it independently on HIS own. 

Anyway, back to Nik's story and my method for devising a title, that would go something like this....

In his story there is mention of air, breathing, freshness and stars. These seem to be primary elements of the story, so good to focus on. 

Immediately I think:

star air

or 
air star

But that’s boring, right? 

It has the gist but not the cadence or pizzazz needed, especially in a short-short story. So I go and look things up in an online thesaurus. 

Maybe I’d keep "star", as it’s so immediate and recognizable. 

That leaves, "air".

So I enter into my browser URL field:

air syn

for 
air synonym

I pick a good site from the search results. This time it’s one on top:

thesaurus.com/browse/air

From there I get:

breath breeze wind blast draft heavens ozone puff sky stratosphere troposphere ventilation waft whiff zephyr

So 
zephyr 
seems cool to me. I like that word. 

Star Zephyr?

Except, now "star" seems boring and doesn't really match up well.

So maybe not "zephyr" after all.

Maybe:

star breeze?

Waft and whiff are both wrong; more silly than useful and this is in no way a comedy.

star wind?
That isn't too bad, but they don’t fit the story very well in my mind. 

So maybe "star" just won’t work.

star breath?

I like that, but it feels backward to me somehow. Maybe not "star" but "starlight"?

breathing starlight?

That just might work!

But not quite. It's too obvious, too straightforward, and I need something less obvious, with a twist somehow, something minor.

So if not breathing? Another sense? Feeling? Smelling? Tasting? Or maybe, drinking?

Drinking Starlight!

Drinking indicates thirst and that is a strong feeling. So is breathing but drinking twists things on its head and that's usually good.

So that’s it then. 

And that is pretty much how I go about creating my titles. Usually, anyway. 

I mean, that and other ways.

So check out Nik's cool little dystopian sci fi tale, Drinking Starlight, published just last week on Wattpad. I hope to see many more from him over the years as he has a unique vision on our world, our human condition and for that matter, our universe.

Drinking Starlight by Nikolas Hayes on Wattpad

Enjoy the free stories and as always... 

Cheers!

Sounds Familiar - Her - a film by Spike Jonze

A while back in February of 2012, I published a sweet little short science fiction story that I titled, "Simon's Beautiful Thought". It pleasantly turned out to be one of my more popular stories. I had wanted to write something a bit more sci fi oriented, that was a lot less dark than my usual Horror tales.

It's about a socially somewhat inept but charismatic and good looking young man who just can't keep a relationship with a woman going. He ends up trying various things and finally falls for his smart phone AI, its Artificial Intelligence (yes, kind of like Siri, but not quite) "digital assistant", he called, "Sandy".

I knew several things when I decided to write this story. I knew that its time had come for such a story. I thought people would at first assume it was Horror, and you do just keep waiting for the other shoe to drop throughout the story, but it just never quite does. Or does it? I guess it depends upon your own orientation.

At least it doesn't in the way you might expect it to. Simon falls for his AI and the AI knows it and she is quite fond of him. Will she become jealous of any "real" women showing interest in Simon? Will she respond in a highly intelligent but jealous rage should someone show Simon romantic intent? Being a sophisticated AI she could make things highly interesting for Simon, either in ways that would be useful to him, or quite dramatically detrimental.

There were many ways I could have gone with this story. I knew if I didn't write it at the time, that someone else would. It's not like I was the first to write a story like this, it just seemed timely that I write one like it. I knew someone would come out with another eventually and it would be bigger, probably better, and get a lot more attention. There is after all only so much you can do in a short story. I just wanted to know that I had already gotten one out there. As I wrote it there was a sweetness that developed in the story line that I really liked. And, the meaning of the title fell together quite nicely in the end.

Anyway, someone finally did make a story about this concept. I mean, it was bound to happen and it did in Spike Jonze's new film, "Her", which is getting very good reviews. "Her" was chosen the best film of 2013 at the National Board of Review Awards. Good work guys. The film has also received three Golden Globe nominations for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, Best Screenplay and Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.

Staring Joaquin Phoenix as Theodore Twombly, the guy smitten and Scarlett Johansson as Samantha, the voice of the guy's computer operating system.

Joaquin as Theodore Twombly in "Her"

Both actors I enjoy watching a lot and I look forward to seeing the film, even though, sadly, you never actually get to see Scarlett, which is a lose in my book. Still, she has a great voice. Funny how the names of these things seem to start with an "S" (Siri, Sandy, Samantha).

Scarlett Johansson

Well that's really all I have to say. I am very much looking forward to seeing, "Her".

Just for fun I had to add this, preview of the film, "Him" (spoof of "Her").