One of the things that drew me to the Swarm Cycle was the incredibly rich environment these roughly fifty authors have created within the 291 stories on SOL, ASSTR, and which includes a number of unpublished titles, and written since Thinking Horndog started out with "Average Joes" in 2007.
Of course that means that I need to make sure that I'm being consistent with all that as I'm writing. I don't want readers to think "hey, it was different in that other story I read" and I wouldn't want to disrespect other authors by having my stories conflict in incompatible ways. For example, if a rifle in story "A" shoots bullets, but in another I say that same rifle shoots laser beams, haven't I just demonstrated to the author of story "A" that I don't value his contribution?
That's where I found myself when I was on Chapter 8 of "The Troubled Celestial River." I discovered that a weapons system on a ship had previously been established to be entirely different than what I thought it was, and those specific "facts" of that system were rather important to the story. I was building a narrative on something that was "wrong," so I needed to back off and get it "right" before I went further.
Now imagine yourself as needing to research such a huge body of works to find out a very few specific details. Google? Nope. Use SOL's search feature? Terribly unwieldy, and the stories aren't all on SOL anyways. Oh, I've got an archive all in epub format, maybe I can search on that? Nope.
That left me with a couple of options. I could depend on the availability of the other authors on the mailing list to answer questions they probably regard as unusual at best, in hopes they'll accurately remember the contents of all these stories and be able to talk about details involving the specifics of ship's weapons systems. These are great guys, but omniscient they're not. They could suggest a few stories I could read that might answer the questions I had, but asking for more than that is foolish.
I could also depend on the resource they use to document the "universe" to have the answers I needed. Well, if you've ever seen how eager folks like engineers are to fully document their creations, you'd think their dedication to such a task to be amazing compared to how authors like to document their works. The documentation isn't comprehensive about technical details, wasn't always well-organized, and maintenance of the repository had fallen to a far-distant priority behind actually writing stories. It had a decent amount of broad information, but real deep details, not so much.
If this was a problem for me, I thought it might be a problem for some others, so on Labor Day I started trying to solve this underlying issue so that not only could I find information I was looking for on my own, but everyone else could as well.
I converted story archives to text format, I wrote python scripts to do context-sensitive searches within that archive to find references to keywords. I wrote other scripts that could analyze a story and give me some idea of what it talked about and the level of technical detail it went into. Then I started plugging the output of these scripts into the repository, so if you wanted to find out about "missile launcher" you not only could read what the repository had to say about it, but you could read the top twenty most relevant paragraphs that talked about them across all those stories.
So now every time I have a question, I have some scripts that can help me either find out the answer, or point me to precisely the story I need to review to find it. And I can share my results, so if anyone else has that same question, all my research is available to them.
Yeah, back in the day I used to be a computer geek, so if I can solve a problem with code, that's what I do.
So now I can get back to writing. I have some major revisions (at least to me) to do, and once I get the seven chapters previously posted squared away, I can resume moving forward. And the next time I have a strange question, I don't have to spend two weeks doing software development and data management before I can get an answer, so this should not only make things move more smoothly, but I hope it's going to improve my final product.
I'll bet the (thoroughly amazing) DiD folks are going to be contacting me next. No, I don't need to add volunteer data management guru to the list of things I do.
SGTStoner
We westerners tend to lack an appreciation for the military history of some other countries, and one of the nations with an amazing military history is Japan. I'm unsure I have the cultural chops to write authentic Japanese characters, but there are a lot of Americans of Japanese ancestry that would be much easier to portray, though, and they DO tend to rightfully have an appreciation for their history and culture.
What if the Confederacy commissioned a new class of ship, the Shimakaze Class, complete with a version of long lance torpedoes that could be fired unobserved and do the same kind of terrible damage that the WW2 version inflicted on US ships? A pickup of Americans from San Francisco includes a group of Japanese-Americans who become the crew of the class leader and work to revive the proud traditions of Japanese military history.
Cultural conflict would have to play a strong role, as well as institutional distrust between the western-centric Confederacy and the crew. I'd have to be careful not to have the crew pushing in unrealistic ways against confederacy culture, but there would have to be some conflict at home to make the story interesting.
If I decide to take this on, I'd definitely need an editor who had a personal understanding of Japanese culture. I would be horrified if those who live it saw a story like this as an insult to them - it would dishonor them, and ill-serve readers who deserve a full picture of this amazing culture. Not sure how many of you out there could do this, but not having editing support on this project would make it a no-go.
Thoughts? Ideas? Offers of support? Let me know!
I got a message from a retired Navy E-8 this evening. I have gotten quite a few notes from vets who have appreciated my efforts, and even from some intel guys who had either served with federal agencies or in the military before, and I had much appreciated their thoughtful comments and kind words.
But this one blew me away.
I am enjoying your Swarm story, particularly your rat-pack crew on the Oxford. I was surprised to read your description of the vessel and it's class AGTR. I had the pleasure of serving aboard the USS Liberty AGTT-5 from 1964 til 1967.
I enjoy stories such as your's about ELINT operations. Your story is one of the few which is believable to me. Keep up the good work; post at your own speed.
If you look up what happened to the USS Liberty on June 8th of 1967, you'll understand why I was so blown away by this note.
As "The History Guy" likes to say, "this is history worth remembering." Unfortunately, much of what these guys did to protect us, and YES, THEY DAMNED WELL DID, is classified and we will never know in our lifetimes nearly all of it.
One of my motivations has been to help bring this hardly ever acknowledged endeavor into more mainstream understanding, as much as one can in an SOL story. It was also to honor the men who labored under such difficult and dangerous conditions who then couldn't talk to even their families about what they'd done.
To have one of those men, who had actually been where those sacrifices were made, take the time to thank me is overwhelming.
I just hope I was not the first one who had ever shown him that what he and his fellow warriors had done was so worth honoring. Men like these should hear that every day.
Senior Chief, Victoria!
Today am humbled beyond my ability to describe in learning that Thinking Horndog has approved the inclusion of my story into the Swarm Cycle Universe. Just a little more than a week ago, I was wracked with doubt about whether I could possibly earn a place among the writers who have made SOL such an interesting place. Could I write fiction? Would anyone possibly think the way someone like me wrote a story was worth their time? Would I be buried in bad votes and hounded with negative feedback?
Just a week later, I've somehow tricked thousands of people into thinking that I deserve their attention and hundreds into casting votes I'm not at all sure I deserve. I'm getting feedback from readers I had no idea that were on SOL - I had NO idea how many Vietnam and post-Vietnam era vets are readers out there, for example. I was astounded by the number of people who were volunteering to diligently alert me to proofreading and other mistakes I had annoyingly made so I could fix them in a relatively timely fashion. And nothing surprised me more than seeing authors who I had such reverence for take the time to reach out to me, and they told me they actually liked what I was doing, while rather patiently offering valuable suggestions about what I was doing with my storyline. I'm getting messages from Reluctant_Sir??? You've got to be kidding me! I'm a friggin' nobody!
I hardly feel worthy of the time, support and encouragement I have received from so many of you.
There's one more chapter to complete part one (of a planned three) which will probably roll out tonight or tomorrow, and I need to circle back and fix a few issues with the chapters I've already posted. Many readers wouldn't notice much of those changes, but if you haven't started yet, you might actually want to wait a bit. It should only take a couple of days. If you see chapter 10 appear, I'll be done with those fixes.
I may have to take a little time before jumping on Part 2, where we'll get to the Oxford being assigned an active duty role. This is where I have to start on the glide slope of fitting in with the story universe's "canon." Some of those discrepancies are due to my own ignorance, as I haven't read every previous story, and I haven't done a particularly impressive job of understanding the nuances of every story I have read, or remembering the details I should have been taking notes on before.
Some of those discrepancies are quite deliberate, and while that may seem strange to some, there are definite reasons why I'm doing that and no, it's not that I want at all to revolt from what came before I suddenly appeared. No, I'm not trying to bend the story universe in some new direction. You'll understand what I'm up to as we move forward. I hope you all will appreciate this strange approach as much as I desperately hope that I can effectively pull it off.
To those out there that might be in that place I was so recently ago, and are wondering whether they should try their hand -- think hard about it before you start, but absolutely start. I began by writing down questions I wanted my story to address. It's not "brainstorming," but "question storming." When someone reads what you've done, what questions will you have answered? No, nobody starts out reading a story because they think you have the answer to some question they've been struggling with, but we all actually have those subconsciously in our heads. Then start "question storming" on how you will address those questions. Don't worry about the answers, just start with the questions.
For me this fixes in my mind the bigger ideas, and then the paths I might use to start addressing them. To me a sci-fi story is a vehicle to talk about who we are today, and who we COULD be, where we get to set the boundaries in a way that gives a writer the freedom needed to make that discussion effective.
Thanks so much for all your support. I hope to improve so I can feel more confident in the trust you all have placed in me - trust that maybe spending time with my writings will be worthy of your time, and in so doing cause some positive enhancements in the quality, performance and experience of our human species.
Victoria!