Oda Nobunaga Finishes Unifying Japan, A More Plausible Draka Timeline, and an Uglier Tanker War

It's been awhile since I've posted about alternate history. Here are some scenarios from the public sections of the forum I used to be a regular member of that you might find interesting.

Nobunaga's Ambition Realized: The Dawn of a New Rising Sun-In real life, warlord Oda Nobunaga was betrayed by one of his own commanders and committed suicide to avoid captured and execution. His efforts to reunite feudal Japan were continued by others, including Tokugawa Ieyasu. The latter brought peace to Japan, but at the price of isolating the country from the world, the functional extermination of Christianity, and establishment of what sounds like an early modern police state. In this timeline, Nobunaga avoids the coup attempt and continues his historical course. He ultimately reunites Japan as the new shogun (a military dictator who rules in the emperor's name), but his government pursues very different policies. Although his successor Hideyoshi's war with Korea is avoided, he and his successors do successfully colonize Taiwan, and Christianity remains a tolerated faith even if some of the excesses that provoked the Tokugawa crackdown (slave-trading by foreign priests, Catholic lords forcing peasants to convert) are firmly dealt with. It looks like Japan is on the way to becoming a major power in Asia rather than turning inward. And this is already having some effects, most notably on China...

Snakedance: A Plausible Draka TLIAM-The author wants to have this whole timeline completed in a month (hence the title) and she seems to be making good progress so far. For those not familiar, here is the canonical Draka timeline through the 1950s. Although it's not particularly plausible, the fiction is entertaining and it's one of the founding texts of modern-day alternate history. The author is focused on the early Draka expansion in southern Africa and depicts the natives putting up a more realistic and much better fight that they did in canon and avoids the Draka's too-fast early industrialization. She also emphasizes sports, the arts, and culture among the Draka, something that is often overlooked in alternate history, and seems like she's planning on emphasizing class conflict among the Draka elite more than canon does.

(The first book Marching Through Georgia has female lead Sofie Nixon pondering the social gap between herself, the daughter of a dock foreman and granddaughter of a Scottish mercenary, and her commanding officer and love interest Eric von Shrakenberg, but I don't recall very much from the later books. The Citizen caste seems rather united on most issues of importance and the points of disunity are limited to grousing, like the urbanite-dominated Security Directorate sneering at the planter-dominated military as living in the past.)

Crushed In Infancy-In this timeline, the "Tanker War" phase of the Iran-Iraq War escalates into a series of direct battles between the United States and the new Islamic Republic of Iran. The Islamic Republic soon goes into a different, more US-friendly direction, after some events I'm not going to give away for spoiler reasons. This in turn leads to some very different politics in the United States, the declining Soviet Union, and a China that is just starting to liberalize after the death of Mao. We're looking at a very interesting late 1980s and early 1990s here.

Books Make Good Miniseries: S.M. Stirling's DRAKA

Once upon a time at DragonCon, author S.M. Stirling said that books typically make good miniseries and short stories make good movies. I'm an administrator of a Facebook group dedicated to his works and recently the possibility of films or TV series based on his notorious Draka series from the late 1980s and early 1990s came up. This set the wheels spinning--I'm inclined to think that each of the three main books would make for a good three-hour TV miniseries.

Marching Through Georgia-This would be based on the first novel and depict the Draka's entrance into this timeline's World War II. While the Draka armies surge into the southern entrances of the Caucasus mountain passes, paratroopers under the command of young officer Eric von Shrakenberg land in the northern entrances to trap the German defenders, accompanied by American reporter William Dreiser. Although Dreiser doesn't like the Draka's practice of large-scale slavery, he is intent on convincing his American audiences to cooperate with them to stop Germany, which has conquered European Russia and is currently enslaving and killing Jews, Russians, and Poles by the millions. Here we can see all the consequences of Generalplan Ost in their horror. 

However, throw in enough about the Draka as the story goes along that we get the creeping realization their winning might be even worse. Through Eric's memories and Dreiser's heavily-regulated visit we see just how horrible life in the Domination is. On leave Eric has to stop two Janissaries (soldiers drawn from the slave population) from raping his driver, millions of slaves are worked to exhaustion in military factories to prepare for the coming war, Dreiser is threatened by a Security Directorate minder who thinks he's going to try to spread sedition among the slaves, and Eric's father Karl tells Dreiser it's in the US's interest to help the Draka stop Germany and Japan from becoming great powers because the alternative to their dividing the world between them (and the Draka enslaving everybody under their control) is Germany, Japan, and the Domination allying against the United States. Draka small-talk reveals even more horrors. For example, Eric's fighter-pilot sister thinks buying a female Russian guerrilla as essentially a concubine would be doing her a favor (the master-slave sexual dynamic encourages a lot of situational lesbianism among Citizen women), other soldiers talk about how "it's a long way to the Atlantic" as though they've planned to conquer their ostensible French allies from the get-go, Dreiser thinks that the Draka view the rump Soviet state in Siberia as a "caretaker" before they take over themselves, and even the "distressingly liberal" Eric advocates the Domination merely "regulate and tax" occupied Europe rather than enslave the entire population and casually discusses sterilizing alcoholics and "retards." 

Ultimately, even though the Nazis are defeated, the Security Directorate assassins sent after Eric for his liberal-minded ways are dealt with, and Dreiser makes arrangements for Russian guerrillas who helped the Draka to be evacuated to the United States, we have a more ominous ending than a happy one. It's been a long time since I've read this book, but the first half could be the everything leading up to a large-scale last-ditch Nazi attack that threatens to destroy Eric and company and relieve the trapped Germans and the second half could be the Nazi attack itself and the aftermath.

Under The Yoke-This one is based on the second book and would be a straight-up horror show, albeit with a slightly happy ending. All the stuff the Germans were doing in Russia and Poland? The victorious Draka are doing it on a somewhat more subtle level from the English Channel to the Pacific Ocean. American secret agent Frederick Kustaa, pretending to be a brain-damaged Draka veteran (i.e. so he doesn't have to imitate their very distinctive accent, spar, dance, etc), is sent in to facilitate the defection of a European nuclear scientist who'd been given Citizenship but soon found he could no longer bear working for the absolutely worst people ever. However, while trying to smuggle the scientist out of Draka-occupied France, he gets involved in the internal politics of a newly-established Draka plantation, including rebellious young Communist Chantal LeFarge who has attracted the attentions (ahem) of both the master and the mistress and Polish nun Marya Sokolowska, a Resistance agent. 

The first half would be everything leading up to Frederick's arrival at the plantation. Frederick's insertion into Finland and helping Finnish rebels fight Draka occupation forces while bachelor Draka officer Andrew von Shrakenberg is unknowingly hunting for him would be a big part; meanwhile you have Marya and Chantal arriving at the plantation and becoming part of the household staff. The second half would be everything that happens after Frederick arrives. The ending features a pregnant Chantal escaping with the American extraction team while Frederick, Marya, and Andrew give their lives to stop a dirty bomb from detonating--for Chantal at least it ends somewhat happily and the other three essentially become martyrs saving thousands of people from death by radiation poisoning.

The Stone Dogs-This one, based on the third book, would be a generational saga like something out of James Mitchener. To tighten it up, I'd start right before the 1970s secession of India from the anti-Draka Alliance for Democracy and the consequent Draka invasion to keep the focus on Frederick and Marya LeFarge (the twin children of Chantal, fathered by a Draka rapist but born free in America who become secret agents), the young Draka officer Yolande Ingolfsson, and the returning Eric as a reformist Draka politician. To tighten it still further, the miniseries could focus on the race for a stalemate-breaking superweapon. The Draka have the titular "Stone Dogs," a bioengineered virus intended to drive the Alliance military insane, while the Alliance has a computer virus that causes Draka military assets to self-destruct when the Domination goes to war footing (and an almost-afterthought sleeper ship The New America in the event of a Draka victory). The first half of the miniseries can end with the cornered Eric forced to launch a nuclear attack on the Alliance when the spiteful Yolande engineers the escape of the enslaved Marya, whom she'd deliberately told about the Stone Dogs. The second half can cover the resulting nuclear war and the peace treaty in which the Draka grant Citizenship to the Alliance survivors on the Moon and beyond (but not on Earth, for more horror) and allow the New America to leave the solar system and establish a colony at Alpha Centauri. It'd be a combination of 2001 (or 2010 since that involves a US-Soviet confrontation) and The Day After.

Drakon-Per Stirling himself, this fourth book would be the one that would work best as an actual movie--I think he compared it to Predator. Only the very beginning and a couple minor scenes take place in the world of the victorious Domination and most of it in modern-day New York City. Basically an accident with wormholes deposits female Homo drakensis (the Draka genetically-engineered themselves into a superhuman master race) Gwendolyn Ingolfsson in our world and she begins building a personal empire with the ultimate goal of bringing in a conquering Draka army. A naval vessel from Samothrace (the colony established by the Alliance exiles) sends cyborg secret agent Kenneth LeFarge through a wormhole after her and the battle is on. Given how the book was written in the late 1990s, maybe make it a 1990s period piece? In an age of smart phones and online videos, concealing the events of the climax would be very difficult, but in the Domination frame-story, it seems only a few people are aware of what really went down.

Hmm...make a Drakon movie first, with the victory of the Domination depicted in flashbacks or something Gwen or Kenneth tell their respective servants/allies? If it does well enough, then go whole-hog on the original trilogy.

Another Alternate Draka Timeline for AH Enthusiasts

One of the founding texts of the modern alternate-history subgenre is S.M. Stirling's Draka series--three novels assembled into the omnibus The Domination, the distant sequel Drakon (which provides the frame story for The Domination), and the anthology Drakas! that tells stories from different points in the timeline. One of the more common criticisms of the world is how implausible the timeline is (the proto-Domination's white overlords expand rapidly in an area that was a lethal disease zone for Europeans, the British tolerate a dominion practicing slavery-in-bad-disguise after formal abolition, etc), which has led to a lot of alternate versions of the Draka timeline. Most of them feature the Draka not expanding as much or getting straight-up squashed, which they eminently deserve for combining the imperialism and murderous behavior of Nazi Germany with the cruelty of Atlantic slavery and much more brains than either.

(Here's one I created--there are some updates I didn't post on fanfiction.net and I'm not going to petition to be unbanned to copy them, so this is not likely to ever be fully finished.)

Now the premiere alternate history discussion forum online is hosting a new one, "Separated At Birth: America and Drakia." So far only a couple chapters in, but it's got some interesting features, including:

*The early death of George Washington and a different founding of the United States, which as a result is much more hostile toward slavery and also has much wider suffrage for (white) men from the beginning.

*A rebellion by free blacks and white allies against an attempt to disenfranchise black voters leads to a black-governed Georgia within the United States, which undermines much of the intellectual-cultural rationale for racism.

*A much uglier War of 1812 and surviving Republican France.

*In-universe writings that explain the rationale of the different political systems, including a very Draka take on the line of Cain in the Bible.

I'm definitely looking forward to more. The timeline's author has earned awards from the site's membership for his timelines, so hopefully this will keep going and stay interesting.

Movie Review: Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)

The first PG-13 movie I ever saw was the original Jurassic Park back in 1993. I've been a fan of the franchise ever since--I saw the first sequel Lost World in middle school, Jurassic Park III in high school, and Jurassic World when it came out. I reviewed it and even participated in a podcast dedicated to the film. So even though the advance buzz wasn't so hot, I definitely made plans to see Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.

The Plot

In the aftermath of the events of Jurassic World and the massive payouts the company had to make to those harmed, Isla Nublar has been abandoned again. However, it's not a paradise where once-extinct beasts can roam around freely--at least not for much longer. The island's dormant volcano has came to life and the US government, which based on Jurassic Park III seems to have been doing the lion's share of keeping the islands quarantined, has been listening to Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) and is inclined to let the volcano destroy the dinosaurs.

This doesn't sit well with Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard), who is now running the Dinosaur Protection Group dedicated to protecting the dinosaurs like they're an ordinary endangered species. She allies with the late John Hammond's former partner Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell) to transport the dinosaurs to a new sanctuary, with her former boyfriend Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) along for the ride to help find his velociraptor pet/surrogate child Blue.

Unfortunately they--and the timid computer geek Franklin Webb (Justice Smith) and the take-no-shit "paleo-veterinarian" Dr. Zia Rodriguez (Daniella Pineda) from Claire's organization--find that the sinister plots to weaponize the dinosaurs (one of Jurassic World's weaker points) are still in play and drastic action might need to be taken to save them...

The Good

*I will give the film credit for taking creative risks. The island gets blown up halfway through the movie and the rest of it takes place in California, with the climax occurring at Lockwood's mansion way out in the woods. No more formulaic "how can we get people to these quarantined dangerous islands" films now. The film also gets pretty dark--there's deliberate murder (or attempted) murder of humans by other humans. Even when Malcolm and his crew sabotage InGen's attempt to capture Isla Sorna's dinosaurs in The Lost World, InGen's mercenaries rescue them from the falling trailers and include them in their attempts to get off the island rather than abandoning them to die or deliberately killing them.

*The visuals are stunning, including the dinosaur effects.

*The last quarter of the film, however ridiculous it often seems, comes off like a Gothic haunted-house horror movie, just with dinosaurs.

*Like before, Howard and Pratt are quite amusing together. And Claire has become quite the bad-ass since then. No more running around the jungle in heels for her. :)

*In general there's a lot of nice laugh-out-loud moments.

*There's a scene with a brachiosaurus that's legitimately sad, just like in the last movie. I think the last movie did it better in terms of eliciting an emotional reaction from me, but a whole lot of people found what happened poignant.

*A new type of dinosaur actually seems to have a personality and almost demonic cleverness.

The Bad

*How is the mosasaurus (really a kronosaurus due to its size) still alive if the park has been abandoned for three years? It doesn't seem like it's capable of climbing out of its pool. It would have long since starved to death trapped in its enclosure unless the pool was already stocked with fish, animals keep conveniently getting close enough for it to snag, or somebody's been feeding it.

*Apparently a tie-in in-world website of the Dinosaur Protection Group that provides a lot of the back-story, but I didn't know it existed. Consequently, I was wondering for much of the movie about Isla Sorna, which should be unaffected by the impending destruction of Isla Nublar. This is a problem--if it's that much of a plot hole, it should be explained in the movie. All they'd need is a throwaway line about how after "the spinosaurus incident" Isla Sorna's ecology collapsed and the surviving dinosaurs had to be relocated to Isla Nublar for the new park.

*There's some needless political commentary, like one of the mercenaries (a villain, unlike the awesome Roland Tembo from the second film) referring to Dr. Rodriguez as a "nasty woman." Where have I heard that before?

*There's a scene involving transfusing blood from one species of dinosaur to another. That's...not going to work. You can't transfuse from one human to another if the blood types are different and humans are all one species. The almighty TVTropes said this was like using rabbit blood in humans.

*Ian Malcolm is even more of an annoying pantheist than he was before. It's my understanding that his worries about chaos theory from the first movie had to do with the overconfidence of Hammond and his entourage that they could control these wild and dangerous animals so easily, but there was still the "nature SELECTED them for extinction" stuff. He's still on that kick in this one, even though he explicitly tells the Congressional committee that God isn't involved here. News-flash: In a purely naturalistic world (Malcolm is not a religious man, something made quite clear in the novel The Lost World), there is no "meant to be" or "wrong side of history. Things happen and people have to deal with them.

*It would have been better if the "rescue the dinosaurs" plot had taken up the entire movie--one last return to the park, rounding up the dinosaurs, some close encounters of the worst kind with big carnivores, etc. could have taken up quite a lot of time. One of the more creative features of The Lost World was the depiction of the carnotaurs as having chameleon-like camouflage, which they could have included in this one. The betrayals that take place halfway through could be a cliffhanger ending to set up the events of a third Jurassic World film, which would cover the events of the second half of the film and the consequences of those.

*Things got kind of draggy after they get off the island all the way to the dinosaur auction going badly.

*They hype up the possibilities of the dinosaurs getting loose as some kind of apocalyptic event when they're really not. Most if not all of the dinosaurs are female and there are so few dinosaurs period they wouldn't be able to create a viable breeding population even if they became established somewhere. And if the lysine contingency is still in the genes of the new batch (it's certainly still there with old-school dinosaurs like the T-Rex), many of them will die unless they can find the proper foods. The only ones I anticipate being a real problem are the kronosaurus, since it has the whole ocean to hide in, or the pterodactyls due to their ability to fly and the fact enough of them escaped Isla Nublar (and Isla Sorna earlier) that they could establish a viable breeding pool. The big carnosaurs in particular will be in zoos or trophy racks within a month or two.

*Weaponizing the dinosaurs is still a dumb idea. Unless they could teach raptors to use guns (or engineer them into creatures similar to the wolf-baboon-human chimera ghouloons from S.M. Stirling's Draka novels), it seems pretty pointless. They need too much food, the fixed costs of creating them are huge, etc. A "war raptor" might be able to do more damage on the battlefield than a "war dog" (more physically destructive, more intimidating) but it doesn't seem like it's worth the effort.

The Verdict

Worth seeing once. It's not a bad movie, but it could have been done better. 7.5 out of 10.

Great Minds Think Alike: The Dutch East India Company Finds Gold and My Afrikaner Timeline

Although I'm still self-banned from the alternate history forum to avoid Internet political drama and save time for my writing projects, I do drop in unlogged-in from time to time to see if there's anything cool in the public sections.

Well, here's a new timeline entitled "The Dutch Strike Gold: A Timeline of VOC Exploits in Southern Africa." In our history it's my understanding that the Dutch East India Company (whose Dutch acronym is VOC) restricted Dutch settlement to the coastal regions of what was then their Cape Colony, preventing further expansion into the rural areas. The movement of the Dutch into the interior, the Great Trek, came much later on, after the British seized the Cape during the Napoleonic Wars and many Dutch didn't want to live under their rule.

In this timeline, however, a VOC expedition into the interior discovers gold, prompting mass emigration to the colony from the Netherlands, France, and other parts of Europe. The Dutch begin moving into the interior well ahead of schedule, eventually putting them right in the crosshairs of the nascent Zulu Empire under the rule of the charismatic and highly dangerous Shaka Zulu. Shaka's conquests triggered the Mfecane, a period of widespread warfare and conquest in southern Africa that led to the formation of many new states and killed between one and two million people. Things get...interesting, although one positive consequence might be better relations between the Boers and neighboring African peoples, including possible intermarriage rather than what ultimately became apartheid.

This reminded me quite a bit of my own alternate timeline, "Apartheid Superpower," in which my space-war short story "Coil Gun" (included in Digital Science Fiction: Pressure Suite) and espionage novelette "Picking Up Plans in Palma" (available as part of the collection Digital Science Fiction: Cosmic Hooey as well) are set. My timeline is rather spotty in the early days, but it features a similar situation in that the Dutch settle southern Africa much earlier and in larger numbers, ultimately expanding all the way to the Sahara Desert and Ethiopia by land and into Arabia and India by sea.

(In case that sounds familiar, the world is both a homage to and critique of S.M. Stirling's Draka novels, the first three of which are combined in The Domination and the fourth novel Drakon. I elaborate a bit on that in this post here.)

Given how hostile the disease environment is toward Europeans and their livestock once one gets sufficiently north into Africa, that took some...creativity. For starters, the Afrikaner Confederation is founded independently of the Netherlands and VOC, allowing for more flexibility. What ends up developing is more akin to the Massachusetts Bay Colony than an outpost focused on providing way stations for the trade with India and nothing else. Secondly, a Spanish attack on Cape Town (complete with several leading citizens being burned at the stake for refusing to abandon Protestantism) traumatizes the Afrikaners and prompts them to greatly militarization. Thirdly, having the VOC side with Cape Town instead of Amsterdam when Revolutionary France seizes control of the Netherlands (in TongaTui's timeline the VOC and its African colonies side with France) allows the nascent Afrikaner Confederation to pretty much inherit all the VOC's assets throughout Asia and lots and lots of money, allowing for the Confederation to dominate southern Asia by the time of World War III.

However, dealing with malaria, the tsetse fly, etc. with pre-19th Century medical knowledge proved a tougher hurdle. I had the Afrikaners transplant cinchona trees to their lands in Africa and Asia (the anti-malarial quinine is made from the bark), something someone commenting on the timeline pointed out would be that era's equivalent of the Moon Landing. TongaTui's timeline is probably much more realistic than mine; it's certainly more conservative and better-researched.

So if you're interested in alternate history set in Africa, check out TongaTui's timeline and my timeline, as well as the published works linked to above.

A Timeline of the World of "Coil Gun" and "Picking Up Plans In Palma"

When I first became interested in alternate history in high school, one of the early books I read was The Domination and its sequel Drakon, both of which are part of S.M. Stirling's Draka series. The series is controversial in the AH community--although it's considered one of the major founding texts of the sub-genre (alongside Harry Turtledove's Guns of the South, which is more a time-travel story), its plausibility is somewhat lacking to say the least. Stirling himself said the point of the series is that everything that can go wrong does.

On the forum, the user whose handle is reddie suggested a "realistic quasiDraka"--a cold war between the United States and "the apartheid juggernaut" (a sort of super-South Africa under white minority rule). That got the creative wheels turning. I wrote an embryonic timeline that served as both a homage to and critique of the Draka world and within a few years wrote "Coil Gun" (my first professional sale; it first appeared in Pressure Suite: Digital Science Fiction #3) and later "Picking Up Plans in Palma." I've got some ideas for additional short stories and even a trilogy of novels depicting the events of WWIII from the perspectives of, among others, some (surviving) cast members of "Palma," but I'm focused on other projects right now.

However, since SM Stirling has the appendices and timeline from the three books that went into The Domination available online, here's the current version of the timeline where the two stories take place. It's still a bit patchy in places and it's a work in progress. After all, this is the sixth iteration of the timeline and I might well end up making a seventh, especially if I end up writing novels set in the universe.

Some highlights:

*Although a point of divergence in the late 16th Century might "butterfly" the United States completely, I still need it to be there for story reasons. However, we have a completely different cast of Founding Fathers and a very different war. The same with the U.S. Civil War.

*One of the first major enemies the Afrikaners face is the Sultanate of Oman. They don't get a lot of notice in most histories I've read, but they get their due here. And having taken a class where Oman's history was explored in greater depth, I'm revising that aspect of the story. Hint: Just because two nations are enemies at one point doesn't mean they can't become allies later, especially if one experiences a major problem.

*The French Revolution isn't corrupted or ultimately repressed. However, there is a proto-fascist Bourbon pretender who causes trouble later. Furthermore, the French ally/puppet the Batavian Republic remains in existence for much longer than in our history. Although I haven't integrated that into the existing TL or v.7.0, basically the Dutch East India Company forsakes Amsterdam for Cape Town, giving the Afrikaners the Netherlands' Asian possessions right away. This helps explain their rapid expansion, which the disease environment in Africa would make very, very difficult to say the least.

*The 1848 revolutions are much, much more successful. However, that doesn't mean the French Republic and the newly-united Germany are going to be friends...

*There's a more successful analogue to the Taiping Rebellion. Thanks to the influence of the Afrikaners, it's more orthodox in its beliefs. Instead of being Jesus's brother, the leader of the rebellion believes himself to be something akin to Jehu, only called by God to destroy the Qing Dynasty rather than the House of Ahab.

*There's still a Soviet Union, but Leon Trotsky ultimately succeeds Lenin and not Stalin. Why I use real-life personalities for this when I don't for the American Revolution or Civil War is beyond me. This will require some changes...

*Project Orion. Oh yes. If you want more information, here's a really cool book.

Playing In Other Authors' Sandboxes...

This morning I ordered a copy of the new short-story collection The Change: Tales of Downfall and Rebirth set in S.M. Stirling's Emberverse. This is not the first time Stirling has let other authors play in his sandbox. Back when I was in high school, when that wonderful place called Media Play still existed, I flipped through a copy of Drakas!, a collection of short stories other authors wrote in his Drakaverse.

I haven't started reading The Change yet beyond the first few pages and I don't remember Drakas! all that well beyond a few particularly interesting (or particularly silly) stories, but I do love the concept. Many authors have played in other authors' sandboxes before--I read Robert Jordan's Conan stories in high school and Brian Herbert has been filling in the blank spaces his father Frank Herbert left in the world of Dune--but short stories are different from letting another author write a novel-length work set in the same world.

A full-blown book is a pretty momentous--Brian Herbert's novels describe the Butlerian Jihad and much of Paul Atreides' reign as Padishah Emperor, stuff that was left out of his father's books completely or only alluded to. However, short stories allow for much smaller brushstrokes that wouldn't have large effects on the wider worlds.

For example, my BattleTech short story "Skirmish at the Vale's Edge," which I sold to BattleCorps and so it's now canon, depicts the relatively small Battle of the Jallington Vale described in a single paragraph in the Clan Wolf sourcebook. The good people from Catalyst Game Labs advised me to stay away from the major events and people, lest my story get nuked for contradicting established canon. Given how enormous the BattleTech world--like the Emberverse and the Drakaverse--is, there's plenty of blank spaces to fill without impacting people like Victor Steiner-Davion, Phelan Kell, etc. The same principle applies to the Emberverse and the Drakaverse as well. It's even been applied to Charlaine Harris's world of Sookie Stackhouse--see this collection Dead But Not Forgotten.

Perhaps someday my own work will be popular enough to justify similar projects. The world of Battle for the Wastelands I've plotted out thus far covers three generations and spans a whole continent, plenty of time and space for other writers to play in my sandbox without causing undue problems for the main plot. The world of The Thing in the Woods, although what I've plotted so far only covers a relatively short time period, could also host works written by other writers. The world depicted in my unfinished space opera The Cybele Incident and a current project I'm keeping under wraps for now also have plenty of space, especially the latter one.

All I need to do is make those projects successful enough. Time to get cracking. :)

Why Sociopaths Make Poor (Fictional) Villains

As I have noted before, it has become common in certain quarters to assume evil people are sociopaths or psychopaths (I think they're pretty much the same thing), especially those in high places. This is something I object to for a variety of reasons (it seems to me to be a convenient way of "Othering" people one doesn't like and avoiding facing the reality of human fallibility), but one problem is that it reduces complex (albeit wicked) people into caricatures.

This io9 article written by a psychologist goes into a lot of detail about the symptoms and signs of psychopathy. Among others, psychopaths are not capable of normal emotions. They're also quite shallow emotionally. This article states they might intellectually understand the concept of sadness, but they won't feel it. The article states that Sherlock, for all his claims to be a sociopath, is not a cold, calculating machine focused only on his own gratification. Specifically, he is capable of emotional attachments, something psychopaths simply are not. This TVTropes page discusses how most fictional villains aren't actually sociopaths because real sociopaths are real-life "flat characters."

Here are some villains, both real-life and fictional, that from what I know of them don't appear to be sociopathic and are all the more complex characters for it.

Loki-The villain Loki from the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been referred to as a sociopath and in terms of bad behavior, he's done a lot--the attempted genocide of the Frost Giants, the attack on New York City that killed many thousands of people, etc. However, he has entirely too many emotional attachments. The driving force of his antics in the first movie is trying to please and/or show himself worthy of his adoptive father Odin. He sabotages Thor's coronation not (necessarily) because he wants the throne for himself but because he thinks Thor would be a poor king (and at this point in Thor's personal development, he'd be right). In the second film, when Odin calls him onto the carpet for his attack on Earth, he says he wanted to rule humans as a benevolent god--like Odin himself rules Asgard. The second film also shows how attached Loki is to his mother Frigga, including his total meltdown when he learns she was killed by the Dark Elves. He also throws Jane Foster out of the way when one of the Dark Elves throws a vortex grenade at her, even though she'd slapped him earlier. This shows he cares enough for Thor to save his love interest even if he doesn't care for the squishy mortal Jane (and he might--note the "I like her" comment after she slaps him). He's also too emotionally "deep" to be a sociopath--go to the TVTropes page for the first film, his character page, and the page for the second film and you'll see all sorts of explorations of his character.

Most importantly, Loki is supposed to be a tragic figure. If he was never "good" to start with, he can't fall into evil and make the audience sad.

Khan Noonien Singh-The greatest Original Series villain of them all, he was a dictator on Earth who fled into space and upon being defrosted in "Space Seed," nearly took over the Enterprise and was only undone by the treachery of the Starfleet officer he'd seduced. In Star Trek II:  The Wrath of Khanhe successfully took control of a Federation ship and seriously damaged the Enterprise, killing Scotty's nephew (the relationship is made clear in a deleted scene that's included in some DVD releases) and eventually no less than Mr. Spock. A pretty bad dude? Yes. However, when Kirk exiles him he was a remarkably good sport about it rather than lashing out as some kind of psychotic man-child. He accepts the presence of Lt. McGivers among them despite her ruining his plan (and according to some sources killed other Augments to make sure she was respected) and it was her death that drove him to such vengeance against Kirk. Many of the Enterprise crew admired him as "the best of tyrants" even though they knew they had to beat him. The Wikipedia article lists a bunch of positive traits uncharacteristic of a psychopath (I'm thinking primarily the "not threatened by the success of others" and encouraging other people), with the exception of the whole "lack of regard for the rights of others" part. Obviously that's not good, but that makes him a villain, not (necessarily) a psychopath. The Wikipedia article also describes him as possessing many of the same traits as Kirk, but in much larger helpings. A "Dark Kirk" is a lot more interesting than some emotionally-shallow monstrosity any day.

Adolf Hitler-We all know just how monstrous Hitler was--not only did he start WWII (in Europe) and kill six million Jews and six million others in the Holocaust, but his intention was to turn the Slavic peoples into helots for the German Spartans at a planned cost, according to my high school history textbook, of fifty million Slavic lives. Heck, just look at Generalplan Ost, something so hellacious that many people defend Stalin's industrialization-through-forced-labor-and-famine as the most viable alternative. However, this wicked man still had some very human traits. This article here corroborates Hitler's devotion to his mother (and how normal he was as a teen--he doesn't display obvious-in-hindsight warning signs like Eric Harris here), something that extended to some degree of protection for his mother's Jewish doctor later. His mistress Eva Braun's two suicide attempts seem to be motivated by a desire to get Hitler's attention--if he weren't capable of emotional attachments, that wouldn't have worked (as it did the first time). Seriously, from a purely pragmatic perspective why bother with someone that unstable? For all his many sins he must've had some legitimate feeling for her.

Darth Vader-On the issue of emotional attachments alone, Vader cannot be a psychopath or sociopath. He was quite attached to his mother and his first major crime -- the massacre of the Sand People tribe in Episode II -- was in reaction to her death. One could imagine a sociopath punishing someone for harming HIS kin, but his guilty feelings in which he confesses his sins to Padme look genuine rather than some kind of act to get her sympathy. A legitimate psychopath (at least a smart one) would keep it secret or, if he figured he'd be exposed, be "honest" but downplay it. In the third film, his devotion to Padme was what Palpatine (who credibly can be described as a psychopath) played on to corrupt him. If we're going to be playing armchair shrink, some psychologists have suggested he had borderline personality disorder. However, this article has been written in rebuttal. And he feels quite a bit of guilt over Padme's death--see this image here from this comic. Psychopaths can't feel guilt, period. And before his fall into evil, he was notably loyal to his friends.

Josef Stalin-Stalin, the dictator of the Soviet Union, presided over the mass starvation of Ukraine to export grain to fund industrial projects, his control-freak attitudes toward foreign Communists contributed to the rise of Hitler, and his paranoia-fueled purges crippled Soviet espionage efforts in the United States and the Soviet military on the eve of Barbarossa. Even though the opening of the Soviet archives reduced the number of his victims, his body count ranges from three million to 20 million. However, for all his wickedness, his mother recounted that he was a sensitive child. He was totally wrecked by his first wife's death, to the point his friends feared he would commit suicide, and however odious he was to his sons he was kind to his daughter. He also semi-adopted the son of a deceased friend. He also seems to have been at least a decent poet. An exceedingly wicked man, yes, but hardly a shallow one or one incapable of emotional attachments. This article here (which is about a book) attributes Stalin's horrors to his zealous adherence to Marxism-Leninism--basically he became evil because of the politics he adopted.

Genghis Khan-Genghis Khan founded the Mongol Empire, a realm that despite uniting most of Eurasia in a zone of free trade and travel required a ludicrous degree of brutality. The Mongols killed so many people it may have affected the Earth's climate. However, as a young man his wife Borte was kidnapped by rivals, raped, and soon after her rescue gave birth to a son of questionable paternity. Many men in the pre-modern era would have committed infanticide at this point and possibly even killed the mother as well. To his credit, Temujin did neither. Furthermore, when the paternity issue came up when it came time to decide his succession, Temujin seems to love all of his sons, is upset when they're fighting, and points out how hurtful their behavior would be to Borte. Despite the atrocities inflicted both personally and on his orders, this is a man capable of forming emotional attachments, so he can't be a psychopath.

Eric von Shrakenberg-Here we're getting a bit obscure, but he's one of the major characters of S.M. Stirling's Draka series. The books follow him from his youth in the Domination's military during WWII in which he's under a cloud for helping his illegitimate daughter with a serf concubine (one he was very attached to, to a degree his landholding family found quite unhealthy) escape to the United States all the way to his becoming the Archon of the Domination. Along the way he seeks to reform the Draka slave system and consents to more extreme proposals for super-weapons, secret wars in space, etc. only to horse-trade for his reforms and for defensive purposes. Although he's the one who pulls the trigger on a nuclear war that kills 1/3 of the human race, his hand is forced by the rash actions of his niece and he orders it only because he knows if he refuses, he'll be killed and someone else will do it. He even remarks that all his life he's sought to free his people from "a way of life based on death" but in order to do this, he'll have to inflict more killing than any human who ever lived. Afterward, with the Domination victorious, he allows the Alliance for Democracy's starship to escape the solar system and grants (limited) Citizenship to the Alliance survivors in space as well as telling his niece he's going to be handing out Citizenship liberally, "as many as I can swing."

Although by any objective standard he's the worst murderer in human history, he's a very sympathetic, thoughtful character, not a heartless monster. That's what makes him all the more tragic--the man who would abolish the slave system (or at least reform it drastically) if he could is forced by circumstances and his own sense of duty to commit genocide on a scale undreamed of in order to extend this system over the overwhelming majority of humankind.

Bernie Madoff-Madoff is routinely considered a corporate psychopath (think the book Snakes in Suits)and given how unbelievably destructive his crimes were, it's easy to see how this account is credible. However, something that clashes with that portrayal was his taking all of the blame for the Ponzi scheme on himself. Psychopaths routinely blame others for their problems and refuse to take responsibility. He was pretty obviously trying to shield his family and associates from the blame--not surprising considering how other people were part of the plan--but the fact he was willing to protect others rather than sell them out to save himself is fairly telling. He was greedy, selfish, dishonest, and generally slimy--but his taking responsibility for his actions undermines the idea that he is a psychopath.

Magneto-This gets tricky due to all the retcons and the abominably out-of-character moment in the the second X-Men filmwhen he decides to kill all ordinary humans. However, in the comics, between his escape from the concentration camp and his daughter being killed by an angry mob frightened by his mutant powers (something I remember very vividly in a flashback scene in a comic I read a child), he lived a fairly normal, loving family life. No abuse, no affairs, no secret serial killing while maintaining an upstanding facade, none of that. This biography here describes how his creators never intended for him to be a "bad guy" per se and he's described as "charismatic, noble, and wise." When he thinks he nearly killed the young Kitty Pryde, it horrifies him so much he renounces his terrorist ways for a time and later even becomes a teacher at Xavier's school, returning to villainy only after a series of murders of mutants. There's a line I remember from one of the comics in which Xavier points out Magneto refraining from some particularly large act of villainy and says that Magneto knew that going through with this would make him a Hitler, something a Holocaust survivor would not want to be.

This is not to say that there aren't psychopathic villains, both fictional or historical. However much I object to using "psychopath" as some kind of post-Christian attempt to pathologize moral failings or even political disagreements, I'm not such a fool to ignore the obvious physical evidence for it. Prominent Nazi Reinhard Heydrich seemed like a totally amoral killing machine, with the only "complicated" aspect to him being his self-loathing over possible Jewish ancestry. Palpatine and Columbine mastermind Eric Harris I've already mentioned. The sadistic degenerate Ariel Castro seems to fit as well.

However, if I were writing a villain, I wouldn't use them for models and neither should you. The ones I listed above are much better examples. They're deeper, more complicated character rather than two-dimensional monsters. And if you can write them well enough that at least some readers will take their side over the protagonist, Internet fan controversies raise awareness and thus sell more books. :)

Sparta, Athens, 300, and Problems

Sanjay's recent guest post on 300: Rise of an Empire pointed out how rather than give the Athenians their due, the movie pumped up the Spartans yet again got me thinking. I'm going to take a page from David Brin or, God forbid, the obnoxious Internet Social Justice mob, and point out how "problematic" that is.

Before I begin, I'll admit the Athenians had their flaws. They were sexist even by the pretty bad standards of ancient Greece and in that respect the Spartans were superior. Spartan women could own property, testify in courts, and walk around naked in public just like Spartan men could. Athenian women were basically confined to the house in a manner more akin to Saudi Arabia than anything one might imagine in Europe.

But there's a reason Spartan (ruling-class women) at least had so much more personal freedom, and it's a bad one. Spartan society was very hierarchical--the Spartan men who were such fierce warriors ruled over a vastly larger class of slaves (the helots, who were indigenous to the area and conquered by the Spartans long ago) and the "dwellers-about" (conquered people who weren't enslaved). To dominate them the Spartan men had to specialize in war and thus had to rely on their women to a much greater degree. Restricting talent by virtue of gender was a luxury they could not afford.

Although only around 20 percent of the Athenian population could participate in government, it was a lot more open in terms of social class. Its citizen body dwarfed that of any other Greek city-state. That's a lot better than having a tiny ruling class kept in power by pure terror, including a secret police force. The democratic traditions of the modern West (and those non-Western societies that have adopted them) are based on those of Athens. In contrast, the Nazis aspired to make themselves into a new Spartan class ruling over Russian slaves. General Sherman's comments on the Confederate cavalry--in particular how they were men who did not work but were highly-skilled at war--echoes this. Like the Spartans or feudal knights, they could only spend so much time learning the skills of war because they relied on a vast number of subordinate laborers for everything else. The apotheosis of the Spartan ideal is S.M. Stirling's Domination of the Draka--a ruling class sustained by the labor of slaves outnumbering them ten to one who casually rape enslaved women, impale rebels, and constantly plot war to destroy any alternative to their social system. In contrast, the apotheosis of the Athenian ideal is modern-day liberal democracy.

The original 300 glossed over this massive flaw in Sparta's political system, but since it was told from the perspective of a Spartan loyalist, that makes sense. Rise of an Empire, though it certainly gives the Athenians credit for the great victory at Marathon, depicts the Battle of Artemesium as an outright defeat of the "amateurs" derided by the Spartans in the first film. This is straight-up inaccurate, and not in the harmless way the uber-ab-toned Spartans or the bejeweled circus freak Xerxes are--it was a strategic withdrawal due to the Persians' defeat of the Greeks on land at Thermopylae. And even at Athens' great victory at Salamis, the Athenians are losing despite Persian admiral Artemisia's arrogant blundering until the Spartan fleet (which numbered less than 20 ships at Salamis) and ships from some other barely-named Greek cities show up.

As Sanjay pointed out, here's a chance for the citizen-soldiers to show their worth, but yet they're rescued from defeat by the Spartans whose real-life contribution was pretty poor. Not only is that historically inaccurate, but it has its ideological problems. Democratic states with citizen armies tend to do better than despotisms with warrior classes when all is said and done. Compare the Confederacy (dominated by what Marx called "an oligarchy of 300,000 slaveowners" with the pro-Confederate whites outnumbered slightly by the white unionists and black slaves) with the Union, especially after the early run of bad Union generals.

My Return To Fanfiction.net: A Tale of the Draka

Awhile back, I posted about two alternate Draka timelines I'd written for my alternate-history message-board. Sometime later, I found some people discussing my timelines on another Internet forum and one person complained about how they had to join the site in order to view them.

This morning on a whim, I posted on my Facebook fan page to see if anyone would like to see these timelines and I got three "likes" within thirty minutes. Never being one to disappoint my fans, I started copying and pasting from the original thread, now many years old, and posting them on fanfiction.net.

Behold, "The Dragon and the Bear: An Alternate Drakaverse." The early stuff is up now and I'll be posting the rest of it over the next several days.

Long ago, when I finished "The Revenge of the Fallen Reboot," I said I would not write anymore fan-fiction and would instead focus on my original work that can actually make me money. What I'm doing now fulfills the letter of the promise, since this is material I wrote years ago. Furthermore, I have many, many more Facebook fans now than I did then and providing them with content will keep them interested while I produce more original stuff. Given the popularity of the Draka novels among the alternate-history community, this will also help cement my position among them in preparation for the publication of my original material.

So sit back, relax, and enjoy a world where there's no Stalinist purge, the German invasion of Russia gets stopped a lot faster, Operation Valkyrie succeeds, and the evil Draka get what's coming to them. Robert Heinlein, Carl Sagan, and Pope John Paul II make appearances.

Just Threw Out My Old Rejection Letters

Just threw out my folder containing all my print rejection slips.  Given how so many are now coming in via e-mail and I deleted all of those, I didn't see the point in keeping the print ones.

I did read through them once for old time's sake.  Here're some tidbits y'all might be interested in...

*My first rejection slip from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and was dated September 11, 2001.  Pretty ominous.  It was for a short story called "Slave Raid," set in a world I devised after reading S.M. Stirling's Draka novels.  Basically vampires (and their half-human bastards, the "halflings") have taken over the Earth and enslaved humanity, with resistance continuing in orbit and on the Moon.  I hadn't yet read the novel Footfall, which shows just how dangerous any power with control of orbit can be to people on the ground.

(I should also have paid closer attention to the scene in The Stone Dogs where the Alliance for Democracy's last general, in control of the AfD's sleeper ship and asteroid bases, tells the Draka, who've won in the Earth-Moon system, "we're standing over your head, Snake.")

I might go over that world once more and rework it to make it more technically plausible and more sensible, but I've got a lot of other projects going on these days.

*Most of the ones from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction were signed by John Joseph Adams, who was then the editorial assistant.  The later ones had different names, while I started seeing JJA's name on various other projects, including anthologies he was soliciting content for and other magazines (like Nightmare Magazine and Lightspeed Magazine) that I submitted fiction to.  I didn't need to hit up his Wikipedia page to see he'd changed jobs.

*The rejection slip for my Norse horror story "Nicor," which I may make available for Kindle if I cannot find a publisher soon, was signed by Gordon Van Gelder.  The Gordon Van Gelder, the actual editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.  I don't know if "Nicor" escaped the slush pile that day, but considering how "Nicor" is one of my better stories (I actually sold it to a print magazine Flashing Swords, which paid me but shut down before it could publish), I'd like to think so.

*An early version of my Lovecraftian-horror-in-the-Ottoman-Empire story "The Beast of the Bosporus" was rejected by JJA.  He said there was good writing there and recommended I submit it to Paradox, a now-defunct magazine of historical and alternate-historical fiction.  It's now under consideration by Alt Hist, a similar market, and this one will be Kindle fodder if AH doesn't want it.

*Some of my rejection slips came from Sci Fiction, a defunct webzine of science fiction run by the Sci Fi Channel and overseen by none other than Ellen Datlow. 

*I got personalized print rejection letters from Weird Tales that, among other things, pointed out problems with formatting as well as problems with the story itself.  They were signed by an editorial team that included George Scithers, whom I corresponded with via e-mail a great deal.  It was a bit of a shock to find out he had died.  The fact he was willing to talk to me and offer advice despite being so much higher on the food chain reflects well on him.

Maybe I should call this post "All The Famous People Who Signed My Rejection Slips," in homage to my earlier post entitled "All The Famous People I've Met" that covers all the people I've met as a newspaper reporter.  Or maybe "Who's Who In Speculative Fiction Today"?  :)

(If any of you all read this, I'm not griping about getting rejected.  I'm just feeling a touch nostalgic.)

Two Interesting Alternate-History Scenarios...

Here are a couple of interesting scenarios from my alternate-history message-board you all might find interesting.

An Age of Miracles: The Revival of Rhomanion

This is a Byzantine-revival scenario that takes place fairly late--it's actually after the Fourth Crusade in which the Crusaders took Constantinople and the Empire shattered into several warring statelets.  Considering how at least some Byzantine experts think the Empire's fall was inevitable after the crusade, the fact one of the Byzantine statelets manages to reunite the Empire and actually expand territorially in Asia Minor, which had since become largely Turkish and Muslim, is impressive.

(I'm not the biggest Byzantine expert there is, but there's nothing here that seems to be unrealistic.)

A Crack at Draka: ME's Attempt at a Better TL

Here's an attempt to create a more realistic version of the Draka timeline, beginning with a longer-lived Sir Francis Drake establishing a colony on the Cape of Good Hope.  Pretty realistic so far, although the author had to revise a particularly-glaring issue involving the leaders of the East India Company being strong-armed.  It also has an explanation for the weird Latin lingo the Draka used in the canon timeline making an appearance in this one.

This timeline's Draka aren't as scary as the canon timeline's Draka--there are history-book entries dating much later in the timeline that feature them trying to remain part of the British Commonwealth as late as the 1950s and 1960s and being rejected for their racist behavior, so they aren't apparently interested in world domination and being the Master Race.

UPDATE 9/17/2014: "Age of Miracles" is still going strong, but "A Crack at the Draka" has been rebooted. See here for the new thread. It starts out with a narrative set in the late 1980s involving what looks like a member of the Assad family as a Citizen, which is cool. And the Draka in the late 1980s still practice slavery (instead of becoming mega-Rhodesia that the original timeline implied), which isn't.

2011 DragonCon #2: S.M. Stirling

One of the panels I had the chance to sit in on at DragonCon was that of noted science fiction and alternate-history author S.M. Stirling.

"Currently, I'm working on a sequel to Tears of the Sun," was his answer to someone asking him about his current projects.  The sequel was originally titled The Given Sacrifice, but the story took longer than he thought.  It is now called Lord of Mountains and it will complete Rudi MacKenzie's story arc--make of that what you will.  He does intend for more Emberverse novels taking place afterward--he and John Birmingham are working on one set in Australia.

"Galleys ramming each other Salamis-style off the coast of Darwin," is how he described that project.  He also made a reference to a future Emberverse novel entitled Eric the Strong, which is (I assume) about the foundation of the Norse-reconstructionist pagan culture that our heroes come across in Maine during one of the later Emberverse novels.

He referred to the Change universe as his Hyborean Age.  Robert E. Howard created the Hyborean Age so he could include things from different historical periods.  Stirling wanted to have knights in armor and cowboys existing in the same world, and voila.

He is also pondering an alternate-history project in which Teddy Roosevelt won the 1912 presidential election.  It will feature dirigibles, biplanes, guys in leather helmets with goggles, and, just maybe, an underwater base.

Stirling also said he may return to the world of Island in the Sea of Time, although he didn't go into detail.  He said he can produce roughly a novel a year, so he only has time for 20-30 novels, barring rejuvenation technology.

Someone's phone rang during the discussion. "Die!" Stirling shouted.  I thought that was pretty funny.

When asked if he has given any thought to opening up his world like Eric Flint did in his 1632 novels, Stirling said he has given thought to a shared-world anthology of Emberverse stories. However, his publisher vetoed it.

Stirling then revealed the Emberverse series has been optioned for a TV program. He warned that hundreds of properties are optioned every year, so that doesn't mean it will be made. He said the series would be like HBO's Game of Thrones, with each book corresponding to a TV season.  He said TV series are more appropriate for books than movies are--a movie is more akin to a short story or a novella.

Stirling also revealed he will have a short story included in a Barsoom anthology timed to come out at the same time as the John Carter film next year.  His story manages to include the Moon Men and Pellucidar. He will also have a Time Patrol story in a Poul Anderson tribute anthology.

"Short stories are sort of a Judas breed these days," he said. "You don't make enough money from them to be worth your time, but it's a hell of a lot of fun."

Ironically short stories used to be bigger sellers than novels.  Robert E. Howard was the richest man in his hometown.

A woman asked Stirling about including maps for battles in his books because the battles were written confusedly.  He said he tries to be as clear as possible when he writes battles.

"It's hard to be both realistic and clear about battles and fights," he said. "Especially on a large scale."

He then said that in real life, actually being a king is boring.  Lots of meetings and reports.  No wonder the fantasy stories end when the hero actually becomes king.

Another participant asked how the Draka series would end, or would the status quo continue for thousands of years.  Stirling said the Draka were alternate-history horror, an "AH Cthulhu mythos."  He said he wrote the series when he was in law school, which would explain why it was full of anger and hate.

He told the participant he was not interested in the Draka anymore, since he wrote the last book over 20 years ago.

He then discussed his life before he made it big.  He spent eight years working odd jobs while trying to write, including picking tobacco and working as a bouncer in a bar for two days.  He sold a short story to a British magazine for a quarter-cent a word.  The magazine went under, but someone bought the rights and the story appeared 20 years later.

"I got my quarter-cent a word," he said.

He told a funny story about how he sold a story to Jim Baen, the founder of Baen Books.  Baen said it was a good story, but the ending was ambiguous--what happened was the last page had gone missing.

Stirling's work began selling after he married.  His career really took off with Island in the Sea of Time and things have been getting better ever since.

"You've got to have talent, you've got to have persistence, and you've got to be lucky," he said.

He said fiction sales have withstood the recent economic downturn well, but publishers have gotten more cautious.  Publishing profit margins are typically three to five percent--people try to get 15 to 20 percent returns and they can't.  Writing is one of the last individual craft industries.  He signed a multi-book contract before the crash and he is safe.

"For people trying to break in, it's hell," he said.

An audience member asked about EBooks.  Stirling said as long as people were paying for them, he is happy with them.  He has a Kindle and it helps him read more, since he spends $6,000 per year on books.

As far as fan-fiction is concerned, if copyright is acknowledged, that's free advertising for him.  There are people who post fan-fiction on his site.

(Hmm...that might be something to keep in mind when I become a novelist.  I got a lot of practice for novels with my Harry Potter fan-fiction and so I couldn't non-hypocritically condemn fan-fiction, but I can easily imagine getting upset if someone wrote Grendel/Andrew slash fiction, romanticized the captivity of Catalina Merrill, or something icky like that.)

I got the chance to ask him a question during the session.  What happened to all the Protestants in the Emberverse?  I asked why it seems everyone in the Emberverse is either a neo-pagan or a Catholic.  Even Frederick Thurston, who was brought up as a Methodist, became a worshipper of the Norse gods.

Stirling said that was  of a joke--everyone he knows who is a member of some exotic religion started out as a Methodist.  Rarely does one see, say, an enthusiastic Orthodox Jew becoming a Wiccan.  He said the "either Catholic or pagan" situation was in the Pacific Northwest only and Iowa is still majority Protestant.

Someone else asked him what his long-term plans for the Draka were--who wins?

"The battle would have continued as long as I wanted to write the books," he said.

He said one doesn't kill off a good villain, unless you give them children.

Stirling then read a selection from Lord of Mountains out loud.  Rudi has had a big meeting at Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood and he and a bunch of others investigate a supernatural occurrence nearby.  He gave Rudi and Edain faux Irish accents, which I found really funny.