Neil Gaiman and Chinese Sci-Fi

Sechin Tower

@SechinTower

Last week, renowned author Neil Gaiman gave a speech for The Reading Agency in which he defended the idea of books and libraries in the digital age. His argument hinges on 3 points: 1) books are crucial to our development as thinking creatures, 2) it doesn’t much matter what a child chooses to read so long as that child grow up passionate about reading, and 3) librarians are essential because they’re in a unique position to introduce new books to readers. His words are inspiring and profound, and definitely worth reading in their entirety.

To support his position, Gaiman recounts an experience he had at a Chinese science fiction convention. He approached one of the organizers of the event and asked, given that the People’s Republic has traditionally frowned upon fantastical fiction (and even went so far as to ban stories about time travel), why is China now suddenly so interested in sci-fi?

The answer given to Gaiman was startling only in that it came from the mouth of a government official. The event organizer stated that Chinese technologists have always excelled at implementing other people’s ideas, but not at coming up with their own. So they created a task force to examine creative professionals in science and industry around the world and discovered that they all had one thing in common: imaginative fiction. You don’t have to be a Ph.D. to see that reading inspires imagination, and imagination means creative problem solving and new ideas that drive our world forward.

The idea that imaginative literature is more than mere escapism is certainly a validation for someone like me, whose greatest joy is writing about robots and jet packs. And I don’t think it’s just science fiction that can take credit, because fantasies, thrillers, and all other genres can serve equally well to get us thinking, predicting, and imagining.

Once upon a time, I visited China and had an experience which might confirm the notion that fiction improves us. I was a college student travelling abroad, and two friends and I decided to take a detour for Tai Shan, a mountain famed for its amazing sunrise vista—and the seven thousand steps one needed to climb to see that sunrise. We had trudged along all day and into the night, and we were so tired that we felt ready to give up. We went so far as checking into an inn and taking off our shoes.

Only a thousand steps up, we were already beat

Then a funny thing happened. The three of us had been passing around a book about a dragon slayer—I think it was by Barbara Hambly, but it was so long ago I can’t even remember the title. The important thing was that the protagonist was both brave and clever, and we started talking about how he would never spend the night in an inn while the peak awaited. We agreed to emulate the hero’s courage by pressing on for the top that very night, so we resumed our march in the dark. We also decided to be wise like the hero by improvising warm ground covers and stools so that we wouldn’t freeze on the rocky ground as we waited for dawn. We made it, and we didn’t even die of hypothermia in the process (which was a real, if remote, danger).

The sunrise on Tai Shan had not been oversold by the generations of Chinese philosophers, poets, and artists who praised it. As the first vermilion rays crept into the sky (China’s pollution has added some amazing pigments to the celestial pallet), I realized that I was seeing it through my eyes, and also the eyes of all those poets who had put its beauty into verse. At the same time, I saw it as the dragon slayer in our shared book would have seen it: a reward for hard work and sacrifice. And as Bilbo might have seen it: the promise of a new day and new adventures. And as Mr. Spock might have seen it: a roiling mass of fusing helium atoms, all the more beautiful for being measurable and understandable.

Viewing that sunrise through all those different lenses didn’t distract me from the majesty of the event, but rather multiplied my appreciation for it. Fiction helped me see reality more clearly, and it helped me reach the peak of the mountain, both figuratively and literally. This, I think, is only one part of the power of books. I wholeheartedly agree with Gaiman’s argument, and I wish the Chinese great success in their public campaign to stimulate imagination.

How about you? Has a book ever inspired you to do something? If so, I’d love for you to leave a comment below to tell me about it.

Be good, and dream crazy dreams,

Sechin Tower is a teacher, a table-top game designer, and the author of Mad Science Institute. You can read more about him and his books on SechinTower.com and his games on SiegeTowerGames.com

Girls & Monsters Halloween Giveaway

It's no secret: autumn is my favorite time of year, especially because of Mother Nature lashing out her brightest colors before killing everything for winter. And then there's Halloween, the celebration of the Dead and the Un-Dead. So pretty the skulls and spiders adorning the neighborhood, the pumpkin grins and the skeleton dances, so inspiring for future stories to come.

 

 

And so I want to spread the dark joy of scaring people, of making people squeal in disgust and hide in fright by giving away a signed copy of my collection of dark tales for young adult, Girls & Monsters, as well as The Monsters Collection of Skellies. Of course, I won't be celebrating alone, so please visit my fellow Coffin Hoppers blogs and websites for other scares and goodies by clicking the sexy zombies, up above.

*Girls & Monsters Giveaway*

1st prize winner gets a signed copy of Girls & Monsters plus The Monsters Collection of Skellies, made by moi.

2nd prize winner gets a digital copy of Death By Drive-In, an anthology featuring stories written by 24 horror authors/Coffin Hoppers.



To participate, click here: a Rafflecopter giveaway

Beginning on Octobre 24th and ending on Halloween at midnight (east), the contest is international, the winners will be picked by ramdom.org, and the prizes shipped the next day. Good luck♥

The Three Essential Tools a Writer Needs (and it's not what you think)

When I first started sitting on writer panels and faced the classic question, what are the essential tools every writer needs--I would reply with appropriately calibrated gravitas:  a deep passion for the written word, a willingness to search beyond the shadows of your soul, and a keen appreciation for the spirit that defines how we, and others, view the world. 
                That was then.
                This is now.
                I've been lost in the Forest of Futility enough times to know exactly what I need to survive.  But having these three essential tools isn't enough.  Yes, passion and soul searching and emotional connection are important--but they are like the granola in your trail mix.  Very good to have, but they won't sustain you.  They won't get you out of the forest, up the mountain, through the clouds and into the sun.  I'm talking the basics of wilderness survival: knife, flint, and fifty feet of para chord.

Survival Tool Number One:  Hope

A writer without hope is like an explorer without a horizon.  For me, that hope is defined by the projects I have out there in the wild being considered (or not) for publication.  That means I need to be in constant motion, putting words on a page and sending them out.  But the mere existence of hope won't do the trick.  You have to know where it is.  If you let hope get behind you, then all is lost.  It has to be in front of you, preferably up high where you can always see it.  Send out those manuscripts, then allow them to populate your dreams.

Survival Tool Number Two:  Persistence

In the real world, survivors might call this the will to live.  To crawl out of the cave, to eat bugs and tree bark, or saw your arm off with a dull blade when you are trapped by a rock in a crevasse in the middle of the desert.  For scribes, this is the will to write--to put words on the page even when the clouds of rejection are raining on your creative soul.  If Hope is your north star, Persistence is the drive to finish the damn book, to polish it till your fingers bleed,  then send it out and out and out.  And when it comes back, all beat up and pleading for mercy, send it out again.  Keep Persistence behind you, but close.  You want to feel it's firm hand on your back.

Survival Tool Number Three:  Luck

This is arguably the least, and most essential, tool you have.  Luck is out there, happy coincidences of fate that lead to treasures unseen.   Most people view luck as a random event--sometimes it happens, and when it does it happens to someone else.  I remember interviewing a champion poker player for a magazine article.  I asked him how much luck plays into the game.  He replied that luck is huge, but if you wait for luck it will burn you every time.  The good players, the ones that keep winning, know how to make their own luck.  So my view is every writer needs luck, to submit the right manuscript to the right editor at exactly the right time--but those odds, if you calculate all the other manuscripts out there and how quickly market trends change, are oppressively long.  So I say keep luck in your orbit.  You can't see it or feel it.  You just have to know that it is out there, and when tools one and two are in doubt, that shining pinball of good fortune will bounce your way and change everything.  It has happened to me more than once and I know that it will happen again.  But here's the thing about luck.  It won't find you. 

You have to get in its way.

A Hike Through MONSTERS

On my blog last week, I took us through some of the mines that inspired my take on Rule's mine in SHADOWS.  Do check that out if you're into arcane effluvia, like gold mining in Michigan (for real, folks).  This week, though, we look at a couple real locales that figure prominently in MONSTERS: Houghton, MI and Isle Royale.

Houghton really is a college town, home to Michigan Tech University. 

The Keweenaw Peninsula was also very big in terms of copper mining back in the day, and as I pointed out in my SHADOWS post last week, you can still visit the old Quincy Copper Mine and Hoist.  After a day of touring around (or to give you that necessary jumpstart), you can't go wrong with a great cuppa at the Cyberia Café,

whose owner was nice enough to open up early for a caffeine-deprived writer AND let her hang out on his internet because hers wasn't working.  And that brownstone synagogue Tom talks about near the end?  Yup, Temple Jacob, with its very beautiful copper dome, is there, too--

to the right of the lift bridge.

Michigan Tech's real claim to fame is that the university's home to the Isle Royale Wolf and Moose Project, the longest running, continuous study of predator-prey populations in the world.   Over forty miles long, Isle Royale is isolated and remote, the largest island in the largest inland lake in the world, and a place you really have to want to get to.  Most people come by ferry (about 5 1/2 hours from Houghton, 1 1/2 from Thunder Bay, Ontario, or 3 hours and change from Grand Portage, MN),

or--if you can scrape together the change and spring for it--about 45 minutes from Houghton by seaplane (after a 5 1/2 hour drive to the town).

There is nothing on Isle Royale other than a very small National Park Service lodge (with a grill and tiny restaurant), a lookout tower, a former fish farm (and a place that Rolf Peterson, one of Isle Royale's premiere wolf researchers, calls home)

some cottages from the days before the island was made a national park,

a couple water taxis, the research station (on the southwestern tip of this forty-mile long island), and a whole lot of backcountry with some of the most spectacular scenery and fabulous flora and fauna you'll ever see.

 

Why do research here?  In brief, the island's home to a number of isolated populations, and research has focused on moose and wolf populations, beginning back in the 1950s.  Now, moose can swim between the mainland and the island, but wolves can't.  So how did they get there in the first place?   Ice bridges: Lake Superior typically freezes over at least a few days every year, although the thickness of this ice varies from a few centimeters to several inches (enough to support vehicles on an "ice highway" between Bayfield, WI and Madeline Island).  Animals can cross ice bridges if they're thick enough, which is how the wolves got to the island in the first place.  Unfortunately for them, the last ice bridge anywhere thick enough existed between Thunder Bay and the island happened in 1985.  So the wolves are trapped, making them a pretty interesting population for study, and one that's been as high as 24 individuals in three different packs to where they are now: just eight wolves, in two packs, with a single female in a three wolf pack (The West End Trio), another three wolf pack (Chippewa Harbor) and two loners (one of which might be a female).  There's been lots of debate on whether or not we ought to interfere to save the population.  In a way, we already have; the wolves were decimated by parvovirus brought over by a tourist's (illegal) dog; and in 2012, a stunning seven wolves (including a female) died, three of them after falling into an abandoned copper mine shaft that has since been closed off.   So things have looked pretty bleak for the wolves. As I recall, either no pups were born or survived as of two years ago--but researchers at Michigan Tech have recorded evidence of a few pups this past year.   Study on these populations is year-round, but the most fruitful time for wolf study is during the winter, when there's no one on the island other than the researchers; Jon Vucetich, a wildlife ecology from Michigan Tech, leads the team and did a lovely series of blog entries on the research for the New York Times in 2012.

On the other hand, if you ever want to get into the act, you can volunteer to scrounge for moose bones during the Summer Research Season (but bring plenty of mosquito repellant).

Me, I just like to lace up the boots and hit the trails.

Because really, with vistas like this, no wonder Peter decided that, for him, this was heaven on Earth.