Tristan Palmgren

Part and Parcel

aricene@yahoo.com — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 14:26:23 GMT

One of the side-effects of parceling my apartment up, even if it's just to move eight blocks, is realizing how increasingly dependent I am on material possessions. "Really? I can't bear to part with this? How sad."

Habit Forming

aricene@yahoo.com — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 22:08:25 GMT

Sometimes it seems like I’m spending as much time breaking my freshmen comp students’ high school habits as I am teaching them how to write.

I’m tired of repeating that I do mean the things I say in my syllabus—especially the late work policy. If I ask them to turn in an assignment or a paper before a break, and they want to leave early, at the very least they need to e-mail me their work before class. I won’t take it on the Tuesday after.

I shouldn’t have to tell them that yes, the grading scale really does mean that these assignments can sink you if don’t do them, and no, there is no extra credit.

And yet…

Can I really blame them?

We’ve drilled it into their heads (and their parents’ heads) that they need to attend college the same year that they graduate from high school. A lot of them have come to think of college as non-optional, as high school mark two but with more freedom and a great deal more cost. When they start thinking of college as mandatory, they stop taking it as seriously. Because, really, it’s not like we have a choice about coming here, right? Something else made us come, so something else can take responsibility.

I can usually tell which of my students have been with the college for two or more semesters, because they’re the ones who actually turn in their work on time, read the instructions on the assignments I gave them, and make sure that they’re familiar with the course policies. They know what my late work and attendance policies are. They know to contact me if they can’t attend class because they’re sick, because I won’t track them down of my own volition. They’ve gone through the transition. They can tell the difference.

Though I’m not being paid to teach them that college is different than high school, there are a few things I can do to help:

• Stress how difficult it is to get an A in my courses. I take grade inflation seriously, but I can’t say the same about many of the high schools my students come from. So some of them may need some cushioning for a shock.
• Make sure they not only know my contact information, but that they know they need to use it.
• Make it clear that I’m not the cruel exception. Their other instructors require more of them than just showing up. It’s not just me.
• Offer as much help as I can, but always let them know that the assignment is their responsibility, not mine.
• Always be accessible. I’m not just an instructor; I’m a resource. They can bounce ideas off me, ask me to check a paragraph, or clarify assignment guidelines.

Genre tug-of-war

aricene@yahoo.com — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 21:03:58 GMT

Charlie Stross’s post “Why I Hate Star Trek” has already gotten a lot of attention—as I’m sure it was designed to—so anything that I say about it is probably repeating something said elsewhere. So I’ll spare you.

However, it did leave me wondering where the boundaries of science fiction ended and speculative fiction began. To some extent, this is a meaningless debate. No matter what we call it, it will still be shelved in the same section of the bookstore, and that’s the most important arbiter of genre in the business. So remember that little dose of reality while I meander through the following.

My short story “Outside the Standard Deviation” was science fiction by Charlie Stross’s definition. (Whether it’s any good at that is a question I’ll leave to the reader, but I’m fairly confident of the genre it would be slotted into). It asks a question about the nature of the universe and attempts to answer it. By this definition, the fact that it uses SFnal tools—von Neumann machines and artificial intelligences and traveling to other stars--to answer that question aren’t as important as the fact that it asks the question at all. It’s the question, not the tools, that make it fit this definition.

Yet a lot of what I write and read doesn’t fit the definition. My current project is an SFnal refracturing of the story of Gautama Buddha. The fact that it’s a different perspective on a story that already exists means, almost by definition, that it doesn’t necessarily have to take place in the future. Some of it (though not all) already took place in the past. The remainder could just as easily take place in the modern day as in the future.

Frank Herbert’s Dune consciously borrows the forms of feudal societies and transposes them onto an interstellar civilization eight thousand years beyond us. Those old politics that drive Dune. Many of the science fiction tropes that underlie those politics—the Kwisatz Haderach propechy, the spice, telepathic space pilots—are either quasi-religious or ridiculous even by the standards of the day in which Dune was published.

Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, problematic though is it, similarly focuses on politics above its SFnal elements. The nature of the buggers, the space station, the interstellar war, and so forth, to the story of a child soldier that could have been told in the present day. The story’s most interesting prediction is an early imagining of what, in real life, became the blogosphere—but that isn’t what drives the story. It’s a sidenote, a tool, not the plot’s motivator.

Are these still science fiction? Yes, and damn anyone who says otherwise.

That strong response aside, though--why do I call it science fiction?

I sure hope it’s not just because the genre offers so many gee-whiz gadgets, though I can’t make any promises on that score. The gadgets are awfully entrancing. And shiny.

I’m interested in the patterns of history, in studying human behavior on a broad spectrum from its beginnings to its potential futures. I think many of those patterns will repeat more than we think. Or more than we’d like to think. If that’s my current project’s only SFnal prediction, then so be it.

I think something more is at work, though.

Other worlds, whether they're constructed using fantasy or SFnal tropes, should be like mirrors. Reversed or distant or distorted, they show us something about ourselves that we didn’t realize was there. Sometimes the distortions show us more than the real thing.

I didn't believe in the future Stross constructed in Glasshouse. But I enjoyed reading it anyway--hopefully for some of the reasons he intended.

Navel-gazing--Oooo, some lint!

aricene@yahoo.com — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 20:52:01 GMT

For the first eighteen years of my life, I didn’t know what kind of town I was living in. I lived in a suburb, surrounded by other people but isolated from anything that might be worth walking to. There were no stores in walking distance--no movie theaters, no malls, no concerts, no social gatherings. I could have visited any of the above once I was old enough to drive, but I didn’t like driving and, by then, had gotten used to being on my own.

I got enough socialization at school. What I got there was enough to turn me off it for a while. It was easier to stay in, and focus my efforts inward.

In my adult life, what used to be isolation by choice has become isolation by location. For the past seven and a half years, I’ve lived in small towns: Bowling Green in Ohio for my undergraduate and graduate degrees, and now Gunnison in Colorado for a teaching position.

Both of these towns are limited in the idle entertainments they offer; Gunnison moreso than Bowling Green. In flat, gray Bowling Green, the nearest movie theater was a five-minute drive out of town, which was still a little too intimidating for me without a car. In the tiny, cowboy college town of Gunnison (home of five thousand people, half of whom are students), the nearest movie theater is half-an-hour’s drive away, in Mt. Crested Butte. There’s an arts center and a handful of restaurants, but certainly no museums or malls.

I have no car to reach it or much else that would interest me, nor do I want one. Why am I happier staying here, out of reach of most things that, when growing up, I imagined I would always want? I’d always imagined “settling” (to the degree that any teenager imagines settling) in a city, not in a small town. Yet I never regretted my choice.

One of my friends from Bowling Green once remarked that, “there’s nothing for the creative writers to do except drink and write.” And I don’t drink.

So that leaves me with writing.

I have a personality type that’s badly suited to some professions. I drag my feet when I’m on a regular schedule. I can’t stand not having flexibility in the way I want to run my life. And I’m a little too easily tempted by some distractions.

Gunnison is a nice town filled with nice people (aren't they all?), but it presents me with little in the way of distractions. The town is small enough that anything I actually need—the school, the library, the grocery store, and so forth—is within fifteen minutes’ walking distance.

If I were in a city, I'd probably have to do the same amount of hiding to get any work done. But I wouldn't be able to see the stars through the light pollution.

Fiction, anyone?

aricene@yahoo.com — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 17:21:28 GMT

My hard SF short story "Outside the Standard Deviation" was published this week in M-Brane SF's eighth issue. It contains (among other things): self-mutilation, opinionated starships, Von Neumann machines, unwinnable interstellar wars, and people with asterisks in their names. Plus a dash of Fermi Paradox. You can find it here.

Hi

aricene@yahoo.com — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 06:10:05 GMT

Posts after long, unexplained absences are always the awkwardest.

Hi.

Um.

I am still alive and getting writing done. I've just been buried under graduate school.

Progress report posts are boring as hell, so no more of those. The general rule about writing anything remotely public is to be entertaining (except in academia), which is something that, over the summer, I hadn't been doing my best at. I started tuning myself out. Somehow I defied stereotype and got too full of myself before I started grad school, not after. I'm a clown; I should dance. And I don't mean that in a demeaning way, either. If my chief goal in life is to be a public entertainer, I should be doing much more interesting things with my words. Or at least provocative.

So I need to figure out what I'm going to do with an online journal. Or if I even need it. I don't know yet. It's nice to have sometimes, but if I'm ever entertaining or provocative I usually like to put that into my stories instead. And if the past few months have been any guide, I can go long stretches without feeling like I need to post.

Does the Internet really need one more blathering keyboardist? Can I be anything more than that? Stay tuned.

What I spent Labor Day working on

aricene@yahoo.com — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 07:06:16 GMT

I'm with the NYT. We need a labor week.

6 freshmen sample essays critiqued, check
5 workshop stories read and critiqued, check
4 techniques exercises read, check
1 lawn mowed, check

If grading freshmen essays takes as many hours as these ones, I'm going to be in for a fun time when my kids hand in their first rough drafts this Friday.

September 1st Tired Notes

aricene@yahoo.com — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 08:35:40 GMT

Today's Words: 1,078
On: "Anomie"
Total Words: 75,940

What's the key word in the title? I'm out.

August 31st Progress Notes

aricene@yahoo.com — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 06:59:57 GMT

Today's Words: 1,186
On: "Mystery in the Year 2000"
Total Words: 1,837
Today's Action: Traveling to the Queen's Seat of Power on the Potomac.
Chosen Sentence(s): "All of the great inventions credited to her husband – the Transatlantic Cannon, the Invincible Bathysphere, the Tesla Rifle, even trifles like the Newtonian Chain Hammer – were hers. Other creations followed in the years subsequent to our meeting, including the steam-powered aeroplane: a ghastly metal insect that looked like it was more out of the pages of H.G. Wells than Jules Verne, and had a great deal of military potential."

August 30th Progress Notes

aricene@yahoo.com — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 06:49:00 GMT

Today's Words: 651
On: "Mystery in the Year 2000"
Total Words: 651
Today's Action: Some guy died. People are mildly upset.
Chosen Sentence(s): "Jonathon Heiden was one of the most mesmerizing individuals I've ever encountered, but not because he was a complex man."

August 28th Progress Notes

aricene@yahoo.com — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 07:12:03 GMT

Today's Words: 725
On: "Anomie"
Total Words: 74,862
Today's Action: Now that he's idle, Nalor's feeling himself slip into a depressive episode.
Chosen Sentence(s): "He was a fugitive, a killer; a stupid child who hadn't just murdered people with his own hands, but who'd had other people die to protect him from his mistakes."

Very tired.
Long hours tomorrow.

Late August 27th Notes

aricene@yahoo.com — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 01:53:15 GMT

Only one hour of class today*, and I'm already feeling overwhelmed.

I have eleven hours of them tomorrow.

Today's Words: 1,014
On: "Anomie"
Total Words: 74,137
Today's Action: Summarizing a few weeks of farming chores.
Chosen Sentence(s): "Her life's experiences [stolen memories] integrated into the static background fuzz of knowledge."

*It's the work outside of class that's killing me.

August 26th Progress Notes

aricene@yahoo.com — Sun, 27 Aug 2006 19:42:16 GMT

Today's Words: 1,073
On: "Anomie"
Total Words: 73,123
Today's Action: Nalor's settling into the farmhouse he'll be spending the next few weeks healing in.
Surprises: Just fitting together some pieces of the regional economy.
Chosen Sentence(s): "Now it had a distinctly sugary, fruity odor. No-- frooty. Almost exactly like Froot Loops, or the generic equivalent Ma had always bought him."
Actual Work Work: Reading essays and workshop stories.

August 25th Tired Notes

aricene@yahoo.com — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 06:58:26 GMT

Today's Words: 1,259
On: "Anomie"
Total Words: 72,050
Disclaimer: Total word count doesn't add up with last time's because I scratched a scene.
Today's Action: The family protecting Nalor made their escape from a burning town.
Surprises: The tense is suddenly very retrospective, in part to help me justify skimming over the next few weeks of Nalor's life.
Chosen Sentence(s): "With juice that smelled it had come out of a fish flowing down the stubble on his chin, Nalor leaned back and realized he could see the man on the moon."
Actual Work Work: Teaching and juggling classroom schedules.

Yesterday's Progress Notes

aricene@yahoo.com — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 04:42:22 GMT

Some actual work done amidst the hailstorm!

Today's Words: 1,111
On: "Emergent Phenomenon"
Total Words: 1,111
Today's Action: The universe was created. Draft finished.
Surprises: The story was told entirely through dialogue, and the characters of the two speakers gradually swapped as the conversation went along. It worked out, though.
Chosen Sentence(s): "It's full of hodgepodge quantum and relativistic contradictions, for Christ's sake."
Actual Work Work: Writing an essay assignment sheet, as well as getting caught up on reading, and drafting another syllabus.

Overwhelmed

aricene@yahoo.com — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 06:36:06 GMT

Why, you'd almost forget there was a person underneath these big stacks of paper.

Oof.

August 20th Day Before Teaching Notes

aricene@yahoo.com — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 06:50:21 GMT

Today's Words: 1,086
On: "Anomie"
Total Words: 71,393
Today's Action: The town Nalor took refuge in is under attack, and now he's feeling suicidally guilty about the danger he put these people in.
Hair-Pulling Moment Du Jour: "Host" and "Roast" rhyme and so shouldn't be put together in a sentence, but I couldn't think of anything to replace either word with.
Words Word Didn't Know: Manipulable
Chosen Sentence(s): "After three shots snapped off in a rapid burst, the air outside the house was suddenly full of them, like the town had decided to hold a popcorn roast."
Good Vibes: This is close to the end of a long, tense chase sequence.
Bad Vibes: I'm clumsy around words today.

Late August 19th Notes

aricene@yahoo.com — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 01:23:32 GMT

Today's Words: 871
On: "Autocide"
Total Words: 2,415
Today's Action: Infodump overload.
Chosen Sentence(s): "Cy didn't even want to think about the kind of evolutionary circumstances that led to that."
Bad Vibes: Damn, this is taking a while to establish.

August 18th Progress Notes

aricene@yahoo.com — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 07:01:56 GMT

Today's Words: 951
On: "Anomie" and "Autocide"
Total Words: Anomie: 70,307 Autocide: 1,544
Today's Action: Skipped ahead several scenes in "Anomie", and did a little touch-up in "Autocide". In the unlikely event that anyone's keeping track of the word counts, the one for "Anomie" today doesn't add up because I hacked off a scene segment.
Surprises: I jumped ahead a little in "Anomie" to write a little fragment of dialogue. I didn't expect that to suddenly become a scene.
Chosen Sentence(s): "You're not afraid of their sexuality. You're afraid of human sexuality. Theirs isn't all that different from yours. If you're going to whine about different expressions of the same substance, then you'll never cope with the larger things out there."
Distraction Du Jour: Today was the last day of GradSTEP. Three days until the semester officially begins.

August 17th Progress Notes

aricene@yahoo.com — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 05:50:33 GMT

Today's Words: 701
On: "Autocide"
Total Words: 1,423
Today's Action: Went back and added more to Nephew's section, and then back to Nephew trying (and mostly failing) to speak with Cy about his product recall.
Chosen Sentence(s): "You/we cannot recall sperm, Cy Arit Kinash."
Good Vibes: Liking the individual scenes so far.
Bad Vibes: The more I think about the broader plot I have planned, though, the more hackneyed it becomes. I need something else.
Distraction Du Jour: Today was the last day of the graduate school's general programs. But I still have GSW training left to get through.

What A Shitty Day

aricene@yahoo.com — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 04:51:23 GMT

I don't even want to talk about it.

August 15th Play

aricene@yahoo.com — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 05:01:46 GMT

Today's Words: 722
On: "Autocide"
Total Words: 722
Today's Action: Early establishment of facts and crisis. Cy is about to issue a product recall on the weapons he's been selling to the Bancalo.
Surprises: A lot, mainly about the Bancalo and how they live. It's been a long time since I've tried to get into the head (or midsection cavity) of a non-human intelligent species, AIs notwithstanding.
Chosen Sentence(s): "Missionary position unacceptable question mark?"
Continuity: This is the same Cy that appears in "Anomie". This story takes place a few years beforehand.
Distraction Du Jour: More GradSTEP. I'm starting to worry again -- I'm not sure I'll be able to maintain an appropriate classroom persona. The real me just doesn't lecture, walk around the room, appear very eager about a textbook he doesn't like, or project his voice. I've been advised to let another person take me over for the duration of the class period. I'm not sure I'd like to meet the kind of Tristan that acts like that.

Blah

aricene@yahoo.com — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 04:41:15 GMT

Only 366 words today. Most of my time went into GradSTEP training, and most of my thought went into plotting out a short story. The reason for this is the momentary panic that caught up with me when I realized that, yes, I will be expected to have a new short story for grad workshop very quickly -- and, yes, either the stories I have are either too long for workshop, or at least one other person in the workshop has already seen them.

August 13th Nervous Twitching

aricene@yahoo.com — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 05:24:12 GMT

Today could've started off better. Just recently, I found out that, in order to get paid for my assistantship, I'll need two documents that I left back home -- and the warning that I would need these documents was sent out Wednesday afternoon. I'd left home Wednesday morning. Today, we figured out this will mean a delay in getting my first paycheck. Meantime, I have a precariously tiny bank account to sit on.

Today's Words: 1,227
On: "Anomie"
Total Words: 69,157
Today's Action: Nalor's been drugged by the family who dragged him in from the cold, wet swamp. An extradimensional merchant is tinkering with Nalor's mind and checking him out to make sure the new arrival doesn't pose a threat to his exporting business.
Surprises: Some weird sexual play between Nalor, the mother of the family, and her son. This was always going to be here; it just happened sooner. Cy, the merchant, also showed up earlier than he was supposed to.
Chosen Sentence(s): "Nalor had been split into two minds. This him was here, in this senseless void with the black man who had stolen Felix's voice. Over a long, impossibly narrow bridge, a rainbow of sensation shone at him. His real body, in the brick house. He was more aware of the chasm between him and it than anything coherent on the other side."
Distraction Du Jour: Forms, forms, forms. I'd created a decent rough draft of course requirements yesterday, but somehow it got lost in the great electronic ether. I had to rewrite it, as well as a rough syllabus (one detailed syllabus for me, one abridged copy for my students). Also, I had to tell the Ohio Department of Public Safety that I wasn't a terrorist. Because, y'know, if I were, the Ohio Department of Public Safety would totally be the first on my list of organizations to inform.

Late August 12 Notes

aricene@yahoo.com — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 15:43:08 GMT

Today's Words: 1,084
On: "Anomie"
Total Words: 67,930
Today's Action: Nalor stumbled into the right clearing, and found the town whose inhabitants he is currently being sheltered by.
Surprises: I introduced a few new minor characters here, and though I knew who they were, I hadn't known what they'd look like. Their appearances surprised me.
Chosen Sentence(s): "Her body was covered in matronly fat, but Nalor couldn't avoid detecting the thick bundles of muscle underneath. She gripped his shoulder with iron-strong fingers."