Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Writing: To Shine or Not to Shine

It's been a while since I posted anything on my own writing. Partly because I'm in a slow stage and partly because well, I guess because I've been plugging at one story for a bit and revisiting an old novel. Earlier this year I polished up the long running story (long running in that it took me 15 years to write) and sent it off to the Shine anthology being edited by Jetse de Vries in the Netherlands.

It's an intriguing anthology because the point is that the future is bright, not the dystopian worlds so often shown in SF and fantasy, and especially in short stories. The subgenre (or maybe getting back to the grassroots genre) of "mundane SF" looks at the world within the next 50 years, on our planet (mostly) and with a possible, believable extrapolation of future science and technologies. No bug-eyed aliens, no extra worlds or space-faring races.

For Jetse's anthology, he also wanted a future world that was better than this one. My world starts out worse but with a hopefully uplifting future, so it didn't fit. But there have been discussions of late, on the SF Canada writers' list, as well as at Worldcon about all the dystopian SF that's being written. How, some editors were asked, do you get people to write something uplifting that takes place in the near future?

A good question and I think one reason we are writing so much dystopian fiction is because of the inundation our culture receives of news stories about the terror and horror and pollution and the fall of civilization. In some ways, today is no worse than it was fifty years ago. In other ways, it is worse. There are more pollutants, more severe forms of crime (even if there is less crime), more illnesses and allergies. Or is there? Some yes, but we have 24-hour news channels, and as they say, no news is good news.

With the constant fear-mongering, the visuals of graphic crimes, the devastating natural disasters, the "wars on terror" we find our mindset dwelling on THE END, or the present and how to survive it. We have no faith of a good future. We have no pretense that there will be endless resources. We'll run out of water, oil, food and space. So how indeed do we write utopian fiction?

This discussion and Jetse's comment to me has got me thinking. My own fiction is often dark but not always. Yet I've never sold the two humorous pieces I've written, but then they're fantasy more than SF. Still, part of bringing our future, our tangible world to a brighter place is to not succumb to the gloom and despair but to hope and work towards a dream, not a nightmare. I'll consider this as I write some of my future fiction.

So with that in mind, Jetse de Vries is planning some contests for the pre-release of his anthology, Shine. Here is what he said:


Shine is slated for an early 2010 release, and until that time I will keep
several features (‘Optimistic SG around the World’, ‘Music that Makes You Feel
Optimistic’, etc.) running on the Shine blog, while adding new
ones.
First, I will be running a number of stories that came very close, but
didn’t make the final cut for a variety of reasons (I’ve tried to walk the
tightrope of getting maximum quality while also obtaining great variety in tone,
content, characters and setting). This to promote Shine and optimistic SF
in general. I’ll probably be setting up a new site for that.

Second, I will be holding a competition where people need to guess the
correct ending of a certain paragraph—choosing from four alternatives: three
bogus, one real—and this for 16 paragraphs, each from one of the 16
accepted Shine stories. Extra points for guessing who the author is. I’m
working on interesting prizes. Depending on the actual launch date
of Shine, I intend to hold this competition in November or December
2009.

Jetse de VriesEditor, SHINE anthology & OUTSHINE Twitterzine

OUTSHINE guidelines: http://shineanthology.wordpress.com/outshine-submission-guidelines/
Shine: http://shineanthology.wordpress.com/ Personal
blog: http://eclipticplane.blogspot.com/