‘Suck’ Comes Before ‘Succeed’

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So without further ado, here’s a digital painting that I’ve been working on for a couple of weeks. Working on this while finishing Mesh, it’s teaching me that universal truth: Unlike the dictionary, ‘Suck’ Comes Before ‘Succeed’ in the process of creativity. Enjoy the painting and see below for some notes.

Even though I’m not super happy with the final product, I need to move on. Watching Bob Ross (because, Bob Ross) I realized that I wanted to paint, too. So I started working on something that I was interested in and if you’re one of my Beta Readers, you know that this is a scene from ‘Mesh.’

It took me around twenty hours to do this. Learned a lot about how to paint digitally using Photoshop and my digital drawing tablet along the way. I wish the project came out better, but I also remember that quote from Jake the Dog in Adventure Time: “Suckin’ at something is the first step to being sorta good at something.”

So here’s me and the painting I made. Yes, I know it sucks, but that’s how I get better. You can see some of the progress pics below in this Imgur gallery:

 

Finished this digital painting today … 

Five Skills You Can Learn From Science Fiction

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Five Skills You Can Learn From Science Fiction

I’ve discussed it in other blog posts but I’ll say it again so the people in the back can hear: scifi isn’t just a genre, it’s a way of life. I don’t know anyone who came away with practical skills after reading ‘Wuthering Heights,’ but thanks to authors like William Gibson, Arthur C. Clarke, and Neal Stephenson I’ve come away with life lessons, skills and heck, even recipes. There are, in fact, many skills you can learn from science fiction. Here, for a Monday morning, are five of them: Continue reading

Why SciFi Will Never Be Mainstream

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I ran across this and thought it was an interesting counterpoint to a question I’ve been asking myself for the past twenty years: why isn’t scifi mainstream? Why do people think science fiction begins and ends with superheroes and Star Wars? The sad reality is that scifi, real science fiction, isn’t and will never be mainstream.

That’s a bummer, to be honest. Real scifi, IMO, has some actual science in it and another instance of ‘Marvel Magic Punching People’ just isn’t my cup of tea. Why don’t people get that there’s more to science fiction? This post arrived on Reddit, and explained the reason in cogent, and logical, detail:

So what’s wrong with even the best science fiction? My theory is that science fiction is too concept dense to be communicated in the lush, multi-dimensional form that is expected from literature. Too much of science fiction demands prose that needs to be parsed abstractly and is thus flat by comparison. 

So, I guess that to love science fiction is to be an institutional outlier. Tough pill to swallow on a Tuesday morning, but like Louis L’Amour said of a certain cowboy protagonist: ‘You won’t make as many friends, but the ones you make will stick by you.’

I can live with that.

You Should Geek Out About the ‘Black Hole Picture’

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The Internet blew up yesterday over a picture of what looks like a fuzzy donut. Yes, science has taken it’s first picture of a black hole and yes, it’s a really big deal. In fact, there are a number of good reasons to geek out about this. You can Google around, or you can read below for some of those nerdy details. Here’s what went into the production of this picture, according to the European Southern Observatory (ESO):

Although the telescopes making up the EHT are not physically connected, they are able to synchronize their recorded data with atomic clocks — hydrogen masers — which precisely time their observations. These observations were collected at a wavelength of 1.3 mm during a 2017 global campaign. Each telescope of the EHT produced enormous amounts of data – roughly 350 terabytes per day – which was stored on high-performance helium-filled hard drives. These data were flown to highly specialised supercomputers — known as correlators — at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy and MIT Haystack Observatory to be combined. They were then painstakingly converted into an image using novel computational tools developed by the collaboration.

To put that in perspective, each of the eight telescopes in the EHT produced the data equivalent of 3,500 full-length movies in 4K every single day. That data was then analyzed and converted back into a viewable image. A Redditor explains how that happened and what that means: Continue reading

Formative Scifi is the Only Scifi

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Re-reading a thread on Reddit about Iron Giant makes me realize how many lives that story touched. I’ll write a love letter to Brad Bird and The Iron Giant someday, but that isn’t what I want to talk about. Rather, I want to talk about formative scifi, because it’s the only scifi that matters. Therefore, Mesh must be formative scifi and that’s where my calories will really be burned.

Let me explain. “Formative experience is the everyday life we lived growing up and the know-how we develop as a result,” by this definition. “More often than not, the know-how develops beyond our awareness. We simply react or do the things we do, based on a familiarity, having seen or experienced something like it before.” As children, those formative moments become the pillars we stand on, or the rocks that crush us, for the rest of our lives. Further, for most of us, we’re trying to turn those rocks into pillars because, self-actualization and stuff.

Scifi always played a formative role in my life, and for many others. Iron Giant was clearly a formative experience for many, and it’s one of the reasons Brad Bird is such a talented storyteller. Contrast Iron Giant with a movie like Titan A.E.: one is a timeless story about love, loss, and acceptance … the other is, well, Titan A.E. You can enjoy both for what they are, but only one of them really worked to resonate on a human level. If I want readers to love Mesh as much as I do, I have to make sure the human connection is there.

But beyond Mesh, the only science fiction worth having in 2019 is formative scifi. Just as Tor points out, scifi books help us fight for a better world. That’s what we need right now. Regardless of where we come from, where we’re going is a dark and desperate place unless humanity can step back from the brink.

So, I want Mesh to be a part of that solution. I want my stories to be formative for someone, and therefore, Mesh has to resonate. If you believe in stories that matter, I want to know you. I want to tell a story that matters to you.

 

Free List of Scifi Magazines That Pay For Your Work

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Scifi Magazines Accepting New Fiction Updated - Free Author ToolQuick announcement – If you’re like me and you’re looking for every Free Author Tool on the planet, you’ll want to pay attention to this. I keep a log of scifi magazines that actually pay for your work. My list has been updated again – it’s at the bottom of the Free Author Tools page.

There’s no secret sauce to the Free Author Tools. I hear about things from time to time, and I want to pass those along to other people just like authors pass things along to me. The only way we’re going to succeed is if we help each other.

Lots of love!

~J