“His name was Harbin then. Dorik Harbin.”

“Wasn’t he brought to trial?”

“No. He ran away. Disappeared. I always thought Toyama helped to hide him. They take care of their own, they do. He must have changed his name afterwards. Nobody would hire the butcher, not even Toyama.”

“His face ... half his body ...“ Elverda felt terribly weak, almost faint. “When...

“Must have been after he ran away. Maybe it was an attempt to disguise himself.”

“And now he is working for you.” She wanted to laugh at the irony of it, but did not have the strength.

“He’s got us trapped on this chunk of rock! There’s nobody else here except the three of us.”

“You have your staff in your ship. Surely they would come if you summoned them.”

“His security squad’s been ordered to keep everybody except you and me off the asteroid. He gave those orders.”

“You can countermand them, can’t you?”

For the first time since she had met Miles Sterling, he looked unsure of himself. “I wonder,” he said.

“Why?” Elverda asked. “Why is he doing this?”

“That’s what I intend to find out.” Sterling strode to the phone console. “Harbin!” he called. “Dorik Harbin. Come to my quarters at once."

Without even an eyeblink’s delay the phone’s computer-synthesized voice replied, “Dorik Harbin no longer exists. Transferring your call to Dorn.”

Sterling’s blue eyes snapped at the phone’s blank screen.

“Dorn is not available at present,” the phone’s voice said. “He will call for you in eleven hours and thirty―two minutes."

“God-damn it!” Sterling smacked a fist into the open palm of his other hand. “Get me the officer on watch aboard the Sterling Eagle.”

“All exterior communications are inoperable at the present time,” replied the phone.

“That’s impossible!”

“All exterior communications are inoperable at the present time,” the phone repeated, unperturbed.

Sterling stared at the empty screen, then turned slowly toward Elverda. “He’s cut us off. We’re really trapped here.”

Elverda felt the chill of cold metal clutching at her. Perhaps Dorn is a madman, she thought. Perhaps he is my death, personified.

“We’ve got to do something!” Sterling nearly shouted.

Elverda rose shakily to her feet. “There is nothing that we can do, for the moment. I am going to my quarters and take a nap. I believe that Dorn, or Harbin or whatever his identity is, will call on us when he is ready to.”

“And do what?”

“Show us the artifact,” she replied, silently adding, I hope.

Legally, the artifact and the entire asteroid belonged to Sterling Enterprises, Ltd. It had been discovered by a family ― husband, wife and two sons, ages five and three ― that made a living from searching out iron-nickel asteroids and selling the mining rights to the big corporations. They filed their claim to this unnamed asteroid, together with a preliminary description of its ten-kilometer-wide shape, its orbit within the asteroid belt, and a sample analysis of its surface composition.

Six hours after their original transmission reached the commodities market computer network on Earth ― while a fairly spirited bidding was going on among four major corporations for the asteroid’s mineral rights ― a new message arrived at the headquarters of the International Astronautical Authority, in London. The message was garbled, fragmentary, obviously made in great haste and at fever excitement. There was an artifact of some sort in a cavern deep inside the asteroid.

One of the faceless bureaucrats buried deep within the IAA’s multilayered organization sent an immediate message to an employee of Sterling Enterprises, Ltd. The bureaucrat retired hours later, richer than he had any right to expect, while Miles Sterling personally contacted the prospectors and bought the asteroid outright for enough money to end their prospecting days forever. By the time the decision-makers in the IAA realized that an alien artifact had been discovered, they were faced with a fait accompli: The artifact, and the asteroid in which it resided, were the personal property of the richest man in the solar system.

Miles Sterling was no egomaniac. Nor was he a fool. Graciously he allowed the IAA to organize a team of scientists who would inspect this first specimen of alien existence. Even more graciously, Sterling offered to ferry the scientific investigators all the long way to the asteroid at his own expense. He made only one demand, and the IAA could hardly refuse him. He insisted that he see this artifact himself before the scientists were allowed to view it.

And he brought along the solar system’s most honored and famous artist. To appraise the artifact’s worth as an art object, he claimed. To determine how much he could deduct from his corporate taxes by donating the thing to the IAA, said his enemies. But over the months of their voyage to the asteroid, Elverda came to the conclusion that buried deep beneath his ruthless business persona was an eager little boy who was tremendously excited at having found a new toy. A toy he intended to possess for himself. An art object, created by alien hands.

For an art object was what the artifact seemed to be. The family of prospectors continued to send back vague, almost irrational reports of what the artifact looked like. The reports were worthless. No two descriptions matched. If the man and woman were to be believed, the artifact did nothing but sit in the middle of a rough-hewn cavern. But they described it differently with every report they sent. It glowed with light. It was darker than deep space. It was a statue of some sort. It was formless. It overwhelmed the senses. It was small enough almost to pick up in one hand. It made the children laugh happily. It frightened their parents. When they tried to photograph it, their transmissions showed nothing but blank screens. Totally blank.

As Sterling listened to their maddening reports and waited impatiently for the IAA to organize its hand-picked team of scientists, he ordered his security manager to get a squad of hired personnel to the asteroid as quickly as possible. From corporate facilities on Titan and the moons of Mars, from three separate outposts among the asteroid belt itself, Sterling Enterprises efficiently brought together a brigade of experienced mercenary security troops. They reached the asteroid long before anyone else could, and were under orders to make certain that no one was allowed onto the asteroid before Miles Sterling himself reached it.

“The time has come.”

Elverda woke slowly, painfully, like a swimmer struggling for the air and light of the surface. She had been dreaming of her childhood, of the village where she had grown up, the distant snow-capped Andes, the warm night breezes that spoke of love.

“The time has come.”

It was Dorn’s deep voice, whisper-soft. Startled, she flashed her eyes open. She was alone in the room, but Dorn’s image filled the phone screen by her bed. The numbers glowing beneath the screen showed that it was indeed time.

“I am awake now,” she said to the screen.

“I will be at your door in fifteen minutes,” Dorn said. “Will that be enough time for you to prepare yourself?”

“Yes, plenty.” The days when she needed time for selecting her clothing and arranging her appearance were long gone.

“In fifteen minutes, then.”

“Wait,” she blurted. “Can you see me?”

“No. Visual transmission must be keyed manually.”

“I see.”

“I do not.”

A joke? Elverda sat up on the bed as Dorn’s image winked ouf. Is he capable of humor?

She shrugged out of the shapeless coveralls she had worn to bed, took a quick shower, and pulled her best caftan from the travel bag. It was a deep midnight blue, scattered with glittering silver stars. Elverda had made the floor-length gown herself, from fabric woven by her mother long ago. She had painted the stars from her memory of what they had looked like from her native village.

As she slid back her front door she saw Dorn marching down the corridor with Sterling beside him. Despite his longer legs, Sterling seemed to be scampering like a child to keep up with Dorn’s steady, stolid steps.

“I demand that you reinstate communications with my ship,” Sterling was saying, his voice echoing off the corridor walls. “I’ll dock your pay for every minute this insubordination continues!”

“It is a security measure,” Dorn said calmly, without turning to look at the man. “It is for your own good.”

“My own good? Who in hell are you to determine what my own good might be?”

Dorn stopped three paces short of Elverda, made a stiff little bow to her, and only then turned to face his employer.

“Sir: I have seen the artifact. You have not.”

“And that makes you better than me?” Sterling almost snarled the words. “Holier, maybe?”

“No,” said Dorn. “Not holier. Wiser.”

Sterling started to reply, then thought better of it.

“Which way do we go?” Elverda asked in the sudden silence.

Dorn pointed with his prosthetic hand. “Down,” he replied. “This way.”

The corridor abruptly became a rugged tunnel again, with lights fastened at precisely spaced intervals along the low ceiling. Elverda watched Dorn’s half-human face as the pools of shadow chased the highlights glinting off the etched metal, like the Moon racing through its phases every half-minute, over and again.

Sterling had fallen silent as they followed the slanting tunnel downward into the heart of the rock. Elverda heard only the clicking of his shoes, at first, but by concentrating she was able to make out the softer footfalls of Dorn’s padded boots and even the whisper of her own slippers.

The air seemed to grow warmer, closer. Or is it my own anticipation? She glanced at Sterling; perspiration beaded his upper lip. The man radiated tense expectation. Dorn glided a few steps ahead of them. He did not seem to be hurrying, yet he was now leading them down the tunnel, like an ancient priest leading two new acolytes ― or sacrificial victims.

The tunnel ended in a smooth wall of dull metal.

“We are here.”

“Open it up,” Sterling demanded.

“It will open itself,” replied Dorn. He waited a heartbeat, then added, “Now.”

And the metal slid up into the rock above them as silently as if it were a curtain made of silk.

None of them moved. Then Dorn slowly turned toward the two of them and gestured with his human hand.

“The artifact lies twenty-two point nine meters beyond this point. The tunnel narrows and turns to the right. The chamber is large enough to accommodate only one person at a time, comfortably.”

“Me first!” Sterling took a step forward.

Dorn stopped him with an upraised hand. The prosthetic hand. “I feel it my duty to caution you ―Sterling tried to push the hand away; he could not budge it.

“When I first crossed this line, I was a soldier. After I saw the artifact I gave up my life.”

“And became a self-styled priest. So what?”

“The artifact can change you. I thought it best that there be no witnesses to your first viewing of it, except for this gifted woman whom you have brought with you. When you first see it, it can be―traumatic.”

Sterling’s face twisted with a mixture of anger and disgust. “I’m not a mercenary killer. I don’t have anything to be afraid of.”

Dorn let his hand drop to his side with a faint whine of miniaturized servomotors.

“Perhaps not,” he murmured, so low that Elverda barely heard it.

Sterling shouldered his way past the cyborg. “Stay here,” he told Elverda. “You can see it when I come back.”

He hurried down the tunnel, footsteps staccato.

Then silence.

Elverda looked at Dorn. The human side of his face seemed utterly weary.

“You have seen the artifact more than once, haven’t you?”

“Fourteen times,” he answered.

“It has not harmed you in any way, has it?”

He hesitated, then replied, “It has changed me. Each time I see it, it changes me more.”

“You . .. you really are Dorik Harbin?”

“I was."

“Those people of the Chrysalis...?"

“Dorik Harbin killed them all. Yes. There is no excuse for it, no pardon. It was the act of a monster.”

“But why?”

“Monsters do monstrous things. Dorik Harbin ingested psychotropic drugs to increase his battle prowess. Afterward, when the battle drugs cleared from his bloodstream and he understood what he had done, Dorik Harbin held a grenade against his chest and set it off.”

“Oh my god,” Elverda whimpered.

“He was not allowed to die, however. The medical specialists rebuilt his body and he was given a false identity. For many years he lived a sham of life, hiding from the authorities, hiding from his own guilt. He no longer had the courage to kill himself; the pain of his first attempt was far stronger than his own self-loathing. Then he was hired to come to this place. Dorik Harbin looked upon the artifact for the first time, and his true identity emerged at last.”

Elverda heard a scuffling sound, like feet dragging, staggering. Miles Sterling came into view, tottering, leaning heavily against the wall of the tunnel, slumping as if his legs could no longer hold him.

“No man ... no one. .. .“ He pushed himself forward and collapsed into Dorn’s arms.

“Destroy it!” he whispered harshly, spittle dribbling down his chin. “Destroy this whole damned piece of rock! Wipe it out of existence!”

“What is it?” Elverda asked. “What did you see?”

Dorn lowered him to the ground gently. Sterling’s feet scrabbled against the rock as if he were trying to run away. Sweat covered his face, soaked his shirt.

“It’s ... beyond ...“ he babbled. “More ... than anyone can.., nobody could stand it ...“

Elverda sank to her knees beside him. “What has happened to him?” She looked up at Dorn, who knelt on Sterling’s other side.

“The artifact.”

Sterling suddenly ranted, “They’ll find out about me! Everyone will know! It’s got to be destroyed! Nuke it! Blast it to bits!” His fists windmilled in the air, his eyes were wild.

“I tried to warn him,” Dorn said as he held Sterling’s shoulders down, the man’s head in his lap. “I tried to prepare him for it.”

“What did he see?” Elverda’s heart was pounding; she could hear it thundering in her ears. “What is it? What did you see?”

Dorn shook his head slowly. “I cannot describe it. I doubt that anyone could describe it ― except, perhaps, an artist: a person who has trained herself to see the truth.”

“The prospectors―they saw it. Even their children saw it.”

“Yes. When I arrived here they had spent eighteen days in the chamber. They left it only when the chamber closed itself. They ate and slept and returned here, as if hypnotized.”

“It did not hurt them, did it?”

“They were emaciated, dehydrated. It took a dozen of my strongest men to remove them to my ship. Even the children fought us.”

“But―how could. . .“ Elverda’s voice faded into silence. She looked at the brightly lit tunnel. Her breath caught in her throat.

“Destroy it,” Sterling mumbled. “Destroy it before it destroys us! Don’t let them find out. They’ll know, they’ll know, they’ll all know.” He began to sob uncontrollably.

“You do not have to see it,” Dorn said to Elverda. “You can return to your ship and leave this place.”

Leave, urged a voice inside her head. Run away. Live out what’s left of your life and let it go.

Then she heard her own voice say, as if from a far distance, “I’ve come such a long way.

“It will change you,” he warned.

“Will it release me from life?”

Dorn glanced down at Sterling, still muttering darkly, then returned his gaze to Elverda.

“It will change you,” he repeated.

Elverda forced herself to her feet. Leaning one hand against the warm rock wall to steady herself, she said, “I will see it. I must."

“Yes,” said Dorn. “I understand.”

She looked down at him, still kneeling with Sterling’s head resting in his lap. Dorn’s electronic eye glowed red in the shadows. His human eye was hidden in darkness.

He said, “I believe your people say, Vaya con Dios.”

Elverda smiled at him. She had not heard that phrase in forty years. “Yes. You too. Vaya con Dios.” She turned and stepped across the faint groove where the metal door had met the floor.

The tunnel sloped downward only slightly. It turned sharply to the right, Elverda saw, just as Dorn had told them. The light seemed brighter beyond the turn, pulsating almost, like a living heart.

She hesitated a moment before making that final turn. What lay beyond? What difference, she answered herself. You have lived so long that you have emptied life of all its purpose. But she knew she was lying to herself. Her life was devoid of purpose because she herself had made it that way. She had spurned love; she had even rejected friendship when it had been offered. Still, she realized that she wanted to live. Desperately, she wanted to continue living no matter what.

Yet she could not resist the lure. Straightening her spine, she stepped boldly around the bend in the tunnel.

The light was so bright it hurt her eyes. She raised a hand to her brow to shield them and the intensity seemed to decrease slightly, enough to make out the faint outline of a form, a shape, a person...

Elverda gasped with recognition. A few meters before her, close enough to reach and touch, her mother sat on the sweet grass beneath the warm summer sun, gently rocking her baby and crooning softly to it.

Mamma! she cried silently. Mamma. The baby―Elverda herself―looked up into her mother’s face and smiled.

And the mother was Elverda, a young and radiant Elverda, smiling down at the baby she had never had, tender and loving as she had never been.

Something gave way inside her. There was no pain; rather, it was as if a pain that had throbbed sullenly within her for too many years to count suddenly faded away. As if a wall of implacable ice finally melted and let the warm waters of life flow through her.

Elverda sank to the floor, crying, gushing tears of understanding and relief and gratitude. Her mother smiled at her.

“I love you, Mamma,” she whispered. “I love you.”

Her mother nodded and became Elverda herself once more. Her baby made a gurgling laugh of pure happiness, fat little feet waving in the air.

The image wavered, dimmed, and slowly faded into emptiness. Elverda sat on the bare rock floor in utter darkness, feeling a strange serenity and understanding warming her soul.

“Are you all right?”

Dorn’s voice did not startle her. She had been expecting him to come to her.

“The chamber will close itself in another few minutes,” he said. “We will have to leave.”

Elverda took his offered hand and rose to her feet. She felt strong, fully in control of herself.

The tunnel outside the chamber was empty.

“Where is Sterling?”

“I sedated him and then called in a medical team to take him back to his ship.”

“He wants to destroy the artifact,” Elverda said.

“That will not be possible,” said Dorn. “I will bring the IAA scientists here from the ship before Sterling awakes and recovers. Once they see the artifact they will not allow it to be destroyed. Sterling may own the asteroid, but the IAA will exert control over the artifact.”

“The artifact will affect them―strangely.”

“No two of them will be affected in the same manner,” said Dorn. “And none of them will permit it to be damaged in any way.”

“Sterling will not be pleased with you.”

He gestured up the tunnel, and they began to walk back toward their quarters.

“Nor with you,” Dorn said. “We both saw him babbling and blubbering like a baby."

“What could he have seen?”

“What he most feared. His whole life had been driven by fear, poor man."

"What secrets he must be hiding!"

"He hid them from himself. The Artifact showed him his own true nature."

"No wonder he wants it destroyed."

"He cannot destroy the artifact, but he will certainly want to destroy us. Once he recovers his composure he will certainly want to wipe out the witnesses who saw his reaction to it."

Elverda knew that Dorn was right. She watched his face as they passed beneath the lights, watched the glint of the etched metal, the warmth of the human flesh.

"You knew that he would react this way, didn't you?" she asked.

"No one could be as rich as he is without having demons driving him. He looked into his own soul and recognized himself for the first time in his life."

"You planned it this way!"

"Perhaps I did," he said. "Perhaps the artifact did it for me."

"How could―"

"It is a powerful experience. After I had seen it a few times I felt it was offering me..." he hesitated, then spoke the word, "salvation."

Elverda saw something in his face that Dorn had not let show before. She stopped in the shadows between overhead lights. Dorn turn to faced her, half machine, standing in the rough tunnel of bare rock.

"You have had your own encounter with it," he said. "You understand now how it can transform you."

"Yes," said Elverda. "I understand."

"After a few times, I came to the realization that there must be thousands of my fellow mercenaries, killed in engagements all through the asteroid belt, still lying where they fell. Or worse yet, floating forever in space, alone unattended, ungrieved for."

"Thousands of mercenaries?"

"The corporations do not always settle their differences in Earthly courts of law," said Dorn. "There have been many battles out here. Wars that we paid for with our blood."

"Thousands?" Elverda repeated. "I knew that there had been occasional fights out here―but wars? I don't think anyone on Earth knows it's been so brutal."

"Men like Sterling know. They start the wars, and people like me fight them. Exiles, never allowed to return to Earth again once we take the mercenary's pay."

"All those men―killed."

Dorn nodded. "And women. The artifact made me see that it was my duty to find each of those forgotten bodies and give each one decent final rite. The artifact seemed to be telling me that this was the path of my atonement."

"Your salvation," she murmured.

"I see now, however, that I underestimated the situation."

"How?"

"Sterling. While I am out there searching for the bodies of the slain, he will have me killed."

"No! That's wrong!"

Dorn's deep voice was empty of regret. "It will be simple for him to send a team after me. In the depths of dark space, they will murder me. He will be my final atonement."

"Never!" Elverda blazed with anger. "I will not permit it to happen."

"Your own life is in danger from him," Dorn said.

"What of it? I am an old woman, ready for death."

"Are you?"

"I was... until I saw the artifact."

"Now life is more precious to you, isn't it?"

"I don't want to die," Elverda said. "You have atoned for your sins. You have borne enough pain."

He looked away, then started up the tunnel again.

"You are forgetting one important factor," Elverda called after him.

Dorn stopped, his back to her. She realized now that the clothes he wore had been his military uniform. He had torn all the insignias and pockets from it.

"The artifact. Who created it? And why?"

Turning back toward her, Dorn Answered. "Alien visitors to our solar system created it, unknown years ago. As to why―you tell me: Why does someone create a work of art?"

"Why would aliens create a work of art that affects human minds?"

Dorn's human eye blinked. He rocked a step backward.

"How could they create an artifacts that is a mirror to our souls?” Elverda asked, stepping toward him. “They must have known something about us. They must have been here when there were human beings existing on Earth.”

Dorn regarded her silently.

“They may have been here much more recently than you think,” Elverda went on, coming closer to him. “They may have placed this artifact here to communicate with us.”

“Communicate?”

“Perhaps it is a very subtle, very powerful communications device."

“Not an artwork at all.”

“Oh yes, of course it’s an artwork. All works of art are communications devices, for those who possess the soul to understand.”

Dorn seemed to ponder this for long moments. Elverda watched his solemn face, searching for some human expression.

Finally he said, “That does not change my mission, even if it is true.”

“Yes it does,” Elverda said, eager to save him. “Your mission is to preserve and protect this artifact against Sterling and anyone else who would try to destroy it―or pervert it to his own use.”

“The dead call to me,” Dorn said solemnly. “I hear them in my dreams now."

“But why be alone in your mission? Let others help you. There must be other mercenaries who feel as you do.”

“Perhaps,” he said softly.

“Your true mission is much greater than you think,” Elverda said, trembling with new understanding. “You have the power to end the wars that have destroyed your comrades, that have almost destroyed your soul.”

“End the corporate wars?”

“You will be the priest of this shrine, this sepulcher. I will return to Earth and tell everyone about these wars."

“Sterling and others will have you killed.”

“I am a famous artist, they dare not touch me.” Then she laughed. “And I am too old to care if they do.”

“The scientists ― do you think they may actually learn how to communicate with the aliens?”

“Someday,” Elverda said. “When our souls are pure enough to stand the shock of their presence.”

The human side of Dorn’s face smiled at her. He extended his arm and she took it in her own, realizing that she had found her own salvation. Like two kindred souls, like comrades who had shared the sight of death, like mother and son they walked up the tunnel toward the waiting race of humanity.

 

Chapter Eight

 

Background in Science Fiction

Background: Practice

 

 

 

Designing the Ringworld was the fun part. The difficult part would be describing it without losing the reader!

―Larry Niven

 

 

Larry Niven’s novel Ringworld is a modern classic of science fiction. It is set on an artificial world built by alien engineers in the form of a gigantic ring around their star, a ring whose size is roughly equal to the size of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun: a ring some three hundred million miles in circumference!

The novel is, in large part, an exploration of this stupendous artifact. Yet Niven masterfully tells a story about fascinating characters while he shows off this strange, engrossing world without losing the reader.

In a sense, the background of Ringworld was the novel’s main attraction. Yet the background did not overwhelm Niven’s story; it provided a magnificent stage on which the story is played out.

In “Sepulcher,” the background is not merely the physical setting; there is a more important background suggested in the story, the social background. The story is set in a future time when human civilization has spread through much of the solar system. We are told that powerful corporations have built bases on the moons of Mars, on the asteroids that orbit between Mars and Jupiter, and even as far from Earth as Titan, the major moon of Saturn.

The story draws a picture of vast corporate wars in the depths of space, of whole giant space habitats destroyed in these wars, killing thousands of men, women and children. And there are “little guys” roaming through the solar system, too, such as the family of prospectors that discovers the alien artifact.

All of this happens off-stage, however. It is merely suggested. Only a few lines are devoted to this all-important background. But those few lines are enough to give the reader a sense of the world in which the story happens, the world in which the three characters live.

In “Fifteen Miles” (chapter four) the harsh lunar background served mainly two dramatic purposes: (1) to provide an isolated, forbidding setting for the physical ordeal that the protagonist had to go through; and (2) to provide an appropriate symbolic setting to mirror the protagonist’s inner turmoil.

Thus the moon of “Fifteen Miles” was physically like the purgatory of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Not that Kinsman faced punishing flames and devils. But the terraced inner walls of the crater Alphonsus form a natural analogy for the tiers of Dante’s purgatory. In fact, hell itself was arranged in different levels by Dante, so it was necessary to have the priest tell Kinsman, at the end, that they were not in hell ― which is eternal damnation ― but in purgatory, which can be escaped after suffering purifying pain.

So the unnamed asteroid of “Sepulcher” also formed a specific physical background, a setting removed from the ordinary world, a cold, dead chunk of rock with a secret buried in its heart: the alien artifact.

It was not necessary to explain that human technology had reached a point where spacecraft routinely plied the asteroid belt looking for good chunks of metallic ores. Neither was it necessary to go into any detail whatever about how human engineers could build comfortable living quarters inside an asteroid. All I had to do was show the characters in action, and these background details came along with them, with hardly half a paragraph spent on them.

But look at the physical details I did put into the story: the special feeling of a low-gravity environment; colors, textures, tones of voice and other sensory clues to help you feel that you are there, experiencing what the characters of the story are going through. Light is especially important. I used it both to bring out various facets of the characters and in symbolic ways.

One of the symbolic ways I used light was in describing the character Dorn. He is seen entirely through the eyes of Elverda Apacheta, an artist who is at first repelled by the fact that Dorn is partly machine, a cybernetic organism, a cyborg. Despite herself though, Elverda’s artistic eyes begin to appreciate the grace and beauty of this man who is half human, half metal. And as she begins to soften toward him, the reader begins to learn more about Dorn’s personal background.

 

CREATING “SEPULCHER”

Now for some words on the genesis of the story, the background of the creative process that led to “Sepulcher.”

Most of my stories begin in my mind with a concept of the major character, or an intriguing situation that pops into my head and demands to be written about. “Sepulcher” was different. It began with an idea. For years I had a tiny scrap of paper tucked in my ideas file. It read, “Perfect artwork. Everyone sees themselves in it.”

The idea intrigued me, but the reason that scrap of paper stayed in my file was that I knew the idea might be the background for a good story but was not sufficient for a story by itself. A good story needs believable characters in conflict.

As I mulled over the basic idea, I reasoned that the story would need several characters, so that the reader can see how this work of art affects different people. I began to see that the artwork would have to be an alien artifact. If a human being could create a work of art so powerful that everyone who sees it experiences a soul-shattering self-revelation, then the story would have to be about the artist and the power she gains over the rest of humankind.

That might make a terrific novel some day. But I was more interested in a short story about the work of art itself―and several people who are deeply, fundamentally changed by it. Thus I had actually created the basic background of the story before anything else.

I settled on three characters: a former soldier who had become a kind of holy man; a hard-driving man of vast wealth; and an artist who is near the end of her life. Each of them undergoes a transformation when they see the alien artwork.

Again, notice that much of the action takes place offstage. The mercenary soldier Dorik Harbin has already been transformed into the priest Dorn when the story begins. The billionaire s experience with the artifact is offstage. We see only the artist and her moment of truth as she sees the artwork and is transformed by it.

In the final analysis, “Sepulcher” is a story that deals with the purpose of art. Why do we create works of art? Why do painters paint their pictures and writers write their stories? Beneath all the other facets of “Sepulcher,” that is the fundamental idea that we examine.

And that is the most important part of the background to good stories. Almost every story has a philosophical point to make. That may sound pretentious, but the simple truth is that all storytelling is based on getting across some truth that is culturally valid. Homer was trying to set a standard of conduct among his semi-barbaric listeners. The most vapid sitcom on commercial television reinforces the social norms of middle America.

Everything in a story’s background should be shaped for the purpose of making the point that the author is striving for, and it is difficult for me to see any item of background information that could be removed without damaging the story’s impact.

You might try that as an exercise: Reread the story and see if there are any parts of the background that can be removed without destroying the story’s understandability and credibility. Try the same exercise with several other stories, including some of your own. You will be surprised at how much you can remove without hurting most stories. And perhaps you will be equally surprised at how much you must leave in.

Remember the old newspaperman’s rule of thumb: “When in doubt, throw it out.” Every part of the story’s background must work to enhance the story. If it doesn’t, get rid of it. Learn to be ruthless with your own prose. Often the scenes you like best will have to be cut out of the story. Do not let that worry you. The result will be a tighter, cleaner story. And if the scene is really all that good, it will start another story cooking in your mind.

 

REVIEW OF THE BACKGROUND CHECKLIST

Let us briefly examine this story, then, in the light of the checklist from chapter six.

1. Make every background detail work. There is not a detail in this story that does not help advance the mood or the character development or the plot. For example, we see at first that Dorn’s clothing is tattered, although his soldier’s boots are highly polished. Later we learn that his clothing is his soldier’s uniform, from which he has torn all the insignia and pockets: a physical representation of Dorn’s soul-shaking decision to become a priest. He has torn away his military insignia because he has renounced soldiering. He has torn away the pockets because, as a self-styled priest, he has renounced all wealth.

Many of the details about Elverda show that she regards her life as over; she is an old woman, no longer capable of doing creative work, waiting for inevitable death. Perhaps longing for death to relieve her of her sense of failure. She feels cold. Is that because she is dying or because she misses the warmth of human family and friendships? But once she is changed by the alien artifact, once she realizes the enormity of what Dorn is telling her, she feels cold no longer. She has a reason to continue living. She has found a friend, a companion, perhaps the son she never bore.

Look for the other details in the story and see how each of them helps the story along.

2. Don’t try to explain how the machinery works; just show what it does. There is not a word of explanation about any of the technological marvels in the story. Spacecraft and life-support systems and drawing computers and cyborgs― you see them in action without any description of how they work. Nor do I for an instant try to explain the alien artifact. It does what it does. Period. In fact, any attempt at explaining its mysterious marvels would weaken the story, distract from its impact.

In Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey, the mysterious alien slab remains completely unexplained and stands as a powerful symbol of awe and mystery. Arthur C. Clarke’s novel, on which the film was based, goes to some pains to explain what the slab is and how it works. And the story is thereby robbed of much of its mystery and majesty.

Save the explanations for academic papers or media interviews. As Nobel laureate chemist Peter DeBye often said, “Sometimes it is not so important to be right as to sound convincing.”

3. Feel free to invent any new devices or scientific discoveries that you can imagine― providing they do not contradict what is known about science today. The far-flung interplanetary civilization that I postulate in “Sepulcher” depends on a lot of technological advances that have not yet been invented. But they undoubtedly will be. We currently know of no fundamental scientific reasons that would prohibit such a civilization.

The alien artifact is something else again. It is rather farfetched, I grant, but no one can prove that such a device could never be made.

4.  Be thoroughly familiar with the background of your story. I have been writing science fiction long enough and (more important) been involved in the world’s real space programs long enough to be thoroughly familiar with the interplanetary setting of this story. The asteroid belt really exists. No one yet knows how many hundreds of thousands of chunks of rock and metal are floating out there in the belt, but many of them are literally small mountains of pure nickel-iron orbiting around the Sun. In 1991 NASA’s Galileo spacecraft took the first close-up photograph of an asteroid, Gaspra, which is roughly the size of Manhattan island.

After nearly forty years of working among space technologists and scientists I have a decent knowledge from which to draw the background for “Sepulcher.”

I was also quite familiar with the background of the story’s central character, Elverda Apacheta. She had been a principle character in an earlier story of mine that bears the unlikely title, “A Can of Worms.” It was in this tale that Elverda carved the mile-long asteroid she called The Rememberer and electronically painted The Virgin of the Andes across the ionospheric sky of North America.

5.  Learn the basics of science. I am not a scientist, nor an engineer. I am a writer. But I fell in love with science the first time I went to a planetarium and began to see the majesty of the universe.

It is especially important to at least understand the fundamentals of science if you intend to write real science fiction stories. If you are more interested in the softer parts of SF, or in areas of writing that have nothing to do with science ― learn science anyway! It is fun. It is the most human thing that human beings do: trying to understand the universe, from stars and galaxies down to microbes and the workings of our own minds. What could be more exciting? What could give you more material, and more understanding, for the stories you want to write?

6. Names are important. There are three named characters in “Sepulcher,” and the names of all three of them were picked with great care.

Elverda Apacheta is a latter-day Incan princess. Her family name is the name of an Andean mountain tribe. In its native tongue, the name literally means “mountain people.” Elverda is from the Latin for virgin; it is frequently given to Latin American girls born under the sign of Virgo.

Miles Sterling is the name of a very rich man. That ring of sterling silver is inescapable. So, perhaps, is the other meaning of sterling: excellence, solid worth, purity. It is obvious, once you see Sterling in action, that he is not excellent or pure. So, that meaning of his name also reverberates in the reader’s mind as a reminder of what Miles Sterling is not.

Dorn is a name chosen almost entirely for its sound, although back in the 1940s a screen actor named Philip Dorn had the kind of rugged yet dour look to him that I imagine Dorn’s human half-face to possess. His earlier name, Dorik Harbin, comes from a city in Manchuria―Harbin― that has known its share of destruction and misery under the heavy hand of Russian, Japanese and Chinese administration. Dorik just sounded right to me. It is a variant of a Polish name meaning, ironically, gift of god.

7.  The background―and the story itself―must be internally consistent. I believe “Sepulcher” is internally consistent. The characters are in tune with the world in which they live; in fact, the reader only learns about that world through the characters’ actions and words. An interplanetary civilization of ruthless capitalist corporations developing natural resources from the asteroids and other bodies in space, building and populating space habitats the size of modest cities, is engaged in cutthroat competition and even war. It seems not only internally consistent but almost inevitable, if the human race keeps expanding its numbers the way we are presently.

Which brings us to a final point: Every story must engross its readers so thoroughly that they fall into the world you have created with your words. The background of a story may be the exotic, magical world of The Arabian Nights or the hard-edged mean streets of Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct novels, but that background must help to create a kind of reality that possesses the reader from the first word of the tale to the last.

 

Chapter Nine

 

Conflict in Science Fiction

Conflict: Theory

 

 

 

The story ... must be a conflict, and specifically, a conflict between the forces of good and evil within a single person.

―Maxwell Anderson

 

 

What is a story?

I have asked that question to hundreds of audiences ranging from students in writing classes to new acquaintances who immediately tell me that

they want to be writers. I always ask anyone who expresses a desire to be a writer, "What is a story?"

I seldom get the answer I am looking for. Most people, even those who want to spend their lives writing stories, find it extraordinarily difficult to say exactly what a story is.

I have already given the answer, but I will repeat it here: A story is a narrative description of a character struggling to solve a problem. Nothing more than that. And nothing less.

There's an old Italian saying: "A meal without wine is like a day without sunshine." A story without conflict is like a meal without food. Conflict is what makes a story. How can you describe a character struggling to solve a problem without describing some form of conflict?

Without conflict, there is no story. You might have an interesting essay, or a lovely sketch of some scenes, or the setting and background for a story. But the story itself depends on conflict. Imagine what a drag Romeo and Juliet would be if the Montagues and Capulets were friendly and had no objections to a marriage between the two lovers. Or how boring Moby Dick would be if Ahab joined Greenpeace and gave up whale hunting.

 

SIMPLISTIC CONFLICT

The simplest form of conflict is the most obvious: action-packed fighting between two characters. This is the heart of the stereotypical western story―the good guy in the white hat shoots it out with the bad guy in the black hat. Or they fight it out with fists in the town saloon. This is called “horse opera,” a justifiably derisive term when such physical action is the only kind of conflict in the story.

Science fiction stories have been written along the same lines, and such stories are called “space operas.” They tend to be more grandiose and larger in scale than horse operas, because the science fiction writer has the whole universe of interstellar space to work with, instead of one dusty Western town. But the pattern is the same; physical action is the mainstay of the story. Instead of cattle rustlers in black hats we have an invasion of earth by horrid alien creatures. Instead of a battle with the Indians on the prairie we have an interstellar war. But the conflict is all physical, all good guys vs. bad guys.

Although space operas had virtually disappeared from science fiction writing by the l960s, they are still a mainstay of Hollywood’s sci-fi flicks, which usually draw their inspiration more from comic strips than from real science fiction published in books or magazines. In fact, sci-fi movies are about as closely related to science fiction as Popeye cartoons are to naval history.

The details of each space opera are somewhat different, of course, but the general pattern is almost invariably the same. There is a group of Good Guys. Usually they include at least one brilliant but eccentric scientist or other type of father figure, a beautiful young woman (often the scientist’s beautiful daughter or some other relation) and one two-fisted hero. Then there are the Bad Guys. Sometimes they are invaders from outer space, but they can also be space pirates, interplanetary criminals, or a dictator and his henchmen. They usually have an evil scientist in their gang or, at the very least, the benefits of futuristic science, such as superweapons, hypnotic rays, invisible spaceships or whatnot.

The Good Guys fight the Bad Guys and win. Usually they have to come up with some dazzling new invention to win, and the hero often has to beat the chief villain in hand-to-hand combat. Whether it’s Star Wars or Alien or Outland, every space opera offers little more in the way of conflict than physical shoot-‘em-up.

The audience knows from the outset what the outcome will be. The thrill is in the chase and in the special effects.

There is no character development at all in most space operas, whether they are pulp-magazine tales of fifty years ago or this season’s $50 million Hollywood extravaganzas. The hero, the villain, the other characters are completely unchanged by the action ― except for a few bruises on the jut-jawed hero and the inevitable death of the slimy villain. There is no internal conflict in any of the characters. There is no real conflict between any of the characters, either, outside of the axiomatic Good Guy vs. Bad Guy fight. The entire cast of characters could go through exactly the same kind of story again in next month’s issue of the pulp magazine or in the sequel to the movie.

Such stories seem ludicrously crude today, yet they still show up week after week in slushpiles all across the publishing industry. So let’s get one thing straight right now: Slam-bang action is not conflict.

 

WHAT IS CONFLICT?

If you look up the word in a dictionary, you will find several definitions. The one that pertains to writers is: “clash or divergence of opinions, interests. . . a mental or moral struggle occasioned by incompatible desires, aims, etc.”

A mental or moral struggle caused by incompatible desires and aims. That is the kind of conflict that makes stories vitally alive. Not merely the mindless, automatic violence of Good Guys vs. Bad Guys, but the clash of desires and aims that cannot coexist. Like the thunderstorms that boil up when two massive weather systems collide, the conflict in a story must well up from the inner beings of the major characters. This conflict can come in many forms; a fist in the face or a shoot-out is the least satisfying, because it takes the least thought to produce.

In a good story, the conflict exists at many different levels. It begins deep within the protagonist’s psyche and wells up into conflicts between the protagonist and other characters and often ― especially in science fiction ― conflicts between the protagonist and the forces of nature or the strictures of society.

We saw in the chapters on character that the beginning of every story is the emotional conflict within the protagonist’s mind, such as love vs. hate, fear vs. duty, loyalty vs. greed.

In a short story, where the writer is cramped for space and time, the protagonist must begin the story with that inner emotional conflict already torturing him. Even in a novel, where you have much more flexibility and freedom, it is a good idea to have that central conflict already ablaze in the protagonist’s heart. For now, let us stick with the problems you face when you must deal with conflict in a short story.

Whatever it was that caused the protagonist’s inner conflict, it should have started before the first word of the story’s opening. Sure, it may be possible to write an excellent short story in which you show the beginnings of the protagonist’s agony. But as a rule, the story should be concerned with the resolution of the problem rather than its origins.

The short-story form is like a hundred-yard dash compared to a cross-country race. There is no time for pacing, strategy, getting a second wind. In a short dash you go flat out, and that’s all. You write about the sequence of events (or the supreme, single event) that completely changes the protagonist’s life, rather than telling the whole story of her existence. Novels are for telling life stories; short stories are for illuminating crucial incidents.

So the short story begins with the protagonist’s inner conflict already boiling within. It is not necessary to blurt it out to the reader right at the outset, but the reader should quickly realize that here is a character with a problem.

Often it is the exterior manifestation of the protagonist’s problem that is revealed first. In “The Second Kind of Loneliness,” by George R. R. Martin, a young man has been tending a remote space station by himself for many months. The reader quickly sees that he is extremely lonely and awaiting the relief ship that will take him back to Earth. Only gradually does the reader come to realize that the man was extremely lonely even in the crowded cities of Earth. He was unable to make friends, to love anyone. He would be lonely no matter where he was.

In Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the moral struggle between good and evil that rages within each human being is made physically real by the drug that transforms the humane Dr. Jekyll into the bestial Mr. Hyde. Stevenson is pointing out that there is a “Mr. Hyde” in all of us, which we struggle to suppress.

Most stories, though, revolve around a struggle between the protagonist and an opponent―an antagonist. In science fiction, of course, neither character need be actually human. But just as the protagonist must behave like a human being so that the reader will feel sympathy for him or her, the antagonist should also be human enough for the reader to at least understand what he, she or it is up to.

There is an important difference, incidentally, between an antagonist and a villain. It is very easy and very tempting, especially for a new writer, to create a villain who is mindlessly evil. That is, a villain who does bad things simply because the story needs bad things done.

That is why I prefer to use the word antagonist to describe the character who clashes against the protagonist. The antagonist does not realize that he is the villain of the story. He thinks he’s the hero! Nobody, from Cain to Medea to Adolf Hitler, has ever really decided to take certain actions because they were the nasty, mean, villainous things to do. People firmly believe that everything they do―no matter how horrifying―is entirely justified, necessary, perhaps even saintly.

When you have a character who is doing rotten things merely for the sheer villainy of making problems for the hero, you have a weak story going. Villains, as well as heroes, must be motivated to act the way they do.

 

LEVELS OF CONFLICT

A strong story has many tiers of conflict. First is the inner struggle of the protagonist, emotion vs. emotion. Then this interior struggle is made exterior by focusing on an antagonist who attacks the protagonist precisely at her weakest point. The antagonist amplifies the protagonist’s inner struggle, brings it out of her mind and into the outside world.

For example, think of the many layers of conflict in the tale of Robin Hood.

Interestingly, the Robin Hood stories were originally spoken, not written. They are folk tales. Over the many generations before the stories were gathered together in written form, the oral storytellers instinctively put plenty of conflict into the tales. They saw their audiences face to face and they knew what it took to keep them interested and wide-awake.

Robin’s basic inner conflict is obedience vs. justice. He is an outstanding young nobleman, but his sense of justice forces him to become an outlaw. He must give up all that he holds dear and retreat into Sherwood Forest as a hunted man. His interior struggle is brought into the exterior world of action through his chief antagonist, the Sheriff of Nottingham. The sheriff represents law and order; Robin should be obedient to him. Yet, because the sheriff’s idea of law and order conflicts with Robin’s idea of justice and right, Robin and the sheriff are enemies.

So there are two levels of conflict going: Robin’s inner struggle and his outer fight against the sheriff. To this are added many more minor conflicts and one overriding major conflict. The minor conflicts revolve around Robin’s Merry Men, for the most part. Little John is not averse to knocking Robin into a stream the first time they meet. Friar Tuck and many of the other outlaws often have disagreements or fights with Robin ― all in good fun, of course. But there is a steady simmering of conflict that has kept readers turning the pages of Robin’s story for centuries.

The story is framed within a major conflict, the struggle between King Richard the Lion Heart and his scheming brother, Prince John. While comparatively few words in the story are devoted to this conflict, the struggle for the throne of England is actually the major force that motivates the story. We see only one small consequence of that royal struggle, the battle between Robin ― a loyal follower of Richard ― and the sheriff, who supports John.

Tier upon tier, the conflicts in a good story are multileveled. Of course, Robin Hood is not a short story. Yet it is possible to build many layers of conflict into short stories, as well.

Consider Vonda N. McIntyre’s “Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand,” which received the Nebula Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America in 1974.

The protagonist is a young woman, hardly more than a girl, who is a healer. Her name is Snake. Her healing instruments include three snakes, Mist, Grass and Sand, whom she uses as living biochemical laboratories, altering their venoms into various medicinal drugs.

Snake’s inner conflict is self vs. duty. Being a healer is demanding, difficult and a lonely life. She must travel alone across the wilderness of her planet to answer the calls of the sick.

She is called to a small, backward village where a small boy is dying of a tumor. The parents of the boy and most of the villagers are terrified of her and her snakes. Yet, because they cannot allow the boy to die without trying to save him, they allow her to operate. To Snake’s interior conflict we now add an outer conflict: the tension between her and the villagers. This outer conflict is also a matter of self-interest vs. duty: Snake could leave the village and its fearful, hostile people behind. But to do so would be to leave the child to die. She chooses to remain.

Treating the boy takes many, many hours. Snake begins to be attracted to one of the younger men of the village, who seems not quite as afraid of her as the others and even tries to help her in his clumsy way. More levels of conflict: Will Snake neglect her duty because of this love interest? Will the villagers start to accept her because this man accepts her, or will they turn against him because they hate and fear Snake?

In ignorance and fear, a villager kills one of the snakes, while the sick boy lies in a deathly coma. This brings out the conflict between Snake and the villagers even more sharply and adds another level of conflict, because Snake is responsible for her instruments.” Her superiors, who taught her how to heal, will blame her for the loss. Perhaps they will stop her from practicing the healing arts.

The boy recovers and the villagers are repentant. The young man asks Snake to stay with him. She must decide between love and duty. If she stays in the village and accepts the man’s love, she will be turning her back on her life as a healer. If she goes back to her superiors, they may take that life away from her and she will lose everything, including the man’s love.

Snake chooses to return to her superiors, risking their anger. She leaves the man behind. The conflicts are all resolved by this choice. It does not really matter if her superiors prevent her from practicing the healing arts again; her choice is made. She will face whatever fate has in store for her. She did not succumb to the temptation to stay in the village and give up her profession. She has chosen duty above self, and the reader feels that this is the morally correct choice. If she had chosen to stay in the village, she would have given up the part of herself that makes her herself. So, by choosing duty above self, she gains self-respect as well.

 

ALTERNATE ANTAGONISTS

In some science fiction stories, the antagonist is not a person at all. In “Flowers for Algernon,” the classic short story by Daniel Keyes that he later expanded into a novel and turned into the movie Charlie, the antagonist is nature itself. Charlie’s opponent is the universe, the blind inexorable workings of the laws of physics and chemistry.

Even though the antagonist may not be an individual character, the protagonist must have an opponent, and that opponent must work on the basic conflict within the soul of the protagonist. In “Fifteen Miles,” the harsh environment of the moon can be thought of as Kinsman’s antagonist, one that forced Kinsman to bring his inner turmoil into the open. There was much more to the story than the physical adventure problems of dragging an injured man through the wilderness to safety.

Conflict is what makes stories move. Stories that describe the author’s idea of Utopia are unutterably dull; in the perfect society of Utopia, there are no conflicts. No conflict means no story. You can write a lovely travelogue about some beautiful world of the future. But if you want to make the reader keep turning pages, eager to find out what happens next, you must give the story as much conflict as you can stir up.

The writer’s job is to be a troublemaker! Stir up as many levels of conflict and problems for your protagonist as you can. Let one set of problems grow out of another. And never, never, never solve a problem until you’ve raised at least two more. It is the unsolved problems that form the chain of promises that keeps the reader interested.

 

A CONFLICT CHECKLIST

 

1. A story is a narrative description of a character struggling to solve a problem. Nothing more, nothing less. Struggle means conflict.

2. In fiction, conflict almost always involves a mental or moral struggle between characters caused by incompatible desires and aims.

3. Physical action is not necessarily conflict.

4. The conflict in a story should be rooted in the mind of the protagonist; it is the protagonist’s inner turmoil that drives the narrative.

5. The protagonist’s inner struggle should be mirrored and amplified by an exterior conflict with an antagonist. The antagonist may be a character, nature, or the society in which the protagonist exists.

6. Eschew villains! The antagonist should believe that he is the hero of the tale.

7. Be a troublemaker! Create excruciating problems for your protagonist. And never solve one problem until you have raised at least two more ―until the story’s conclusion.

 

Chapter Ten

 

Conflict in Science Fiction

 

Crisis of the Month

A Complete Short Story

 

 

 

 

 

 

While I crumpled the paper note that someone had slipped into my jacket pocket, Jack Armstrong drummed his fingers on the immaculately gleaming expanse of the pseudomahogany conference table.

“Well,” he said testily, “ladies and gentlemen, don’t one of you have a possibility? An inkling? An idea?”

No one spoke. I left the wadded note in my pocket and placed both my hands conspicuously on the table top. Armstrong drummed away in abysmal silence. I guess once he had actually looked like The All-American Boy. Now, many facelifts and body remodelings later, he looked more like a moderately well-preserved dummy.

“Nothing at all, gentleman and ladies?” He always made certain to give each sex the first position 50 percent of the time. Affirmative action was a way of life with our Boss.

“Very well then. We will Delphi the problem.”

That broke the silence. Everyone groaned.

“There’s nothing else to be done,” the Boss insisted. “We must have a crisis by Monday morning. It is now...” he glanced at the digital readout built into the table top, “. . . three-eighteen P.M. Friday. We will not leave this office until we have a crisis to offer.”

We knew it wouldn’t do a bit of good, but we groaned all over again.

The Crisis Command Center was the best-kept secret in the world. No government knew of our existence. Nor did the people, of course. In fact, in all the world’s far-flung news media, only a select handful of the topmost executives knew of the CCC. Those few, those precious few, that band of brothers and sisters ― they were our customers. The reason for our being. They paid handsomely. And they protected the secret of our work even from their own news staffs.

Our job, our sacred duty, was to select the crisis that would be the focus of worldwide media attention for the coming month. Nothing more. Nothing less.

In the old days, when every network, newspaper, magazine, news service, or independent station picked out its own crises, things were always in a jumble. Sure, they would try to focus on one or two sure-fire headline-makers: a nuclear powerplant disaster or the fear of one, a new disease like AIDS or Chinese Rot, a war, terrorism, things like that.

The problem was, there were so many crises springing up all the time, so many threats and threats of threats, so much blood and fire and terror, that people stopped paying attention. The news scared the livers out of them. Sales of newspapers and magazines plunged toward zero. Audiences for news shows, even the revered network evening shows, likewise plummeted.

It was Jack Armstrong ― a much younger, more handsome and vigorous All-American Boy―who came up with the idea of the Crisis Command Center. Like all great ideas, it was basically simple.

Pick one crisis each month and play it for all it’s worth. Everywhere. In all the media. Keep it scary enough to keep people listening, but not so terrifying that they’ll run away and hide.

And it worked! Worked to the point where the CCC (or CeeCubed, as some of our analysts styled it) was truly the command center for all the media of North America. And thereby, of course, the whole world.

But on this particular Friday afternoon, we were stumped. And I had that terrifying note crumpled in my pocket. A handwritten note, on paper, no less. Not an electronic communication, but a secret, private, dangerous seditious note, meant for me and me alone, surreptitiously slipped into my jacket pocket.

“Make big $$$,“ it scrawled. “Tell all to Feds.”

I clasped my hands to keep them from trembling and wondered who, out of the fourteen men and women sitting around the table, had slipped that bomb to me.

Boss Jack had started the Delphi procedure by going down the table, asking each of us board members in turn for the latest news in her or his area of expertise.

He started with the man sitting at his immediate right, Mat Dillon. That wasn’t the name he had been born with, naturally his original name had been Oliver Wolchinsky. But in our select little group, once you earn your spurs (no pun intended) you are entitled to a “power name,” a name that shows you are a person of rank and consequence. Most power names were chosen, o course, from famous media characters.

Matt Dillon didn’t look like the marshal of Dodge City. Or even the one-time teen screen idol. He was short, pudgy, bald with bad skin and an irritable temper. He looked, actually, exactly as you would expect an Oliver Wolchinsky to look.

But when Jack Armstrong said, “We shall begin with you,’ he added, “Matthew.”

Matt Dillon was the CCC expert on energy problems. H( always got to his feet when he had something to say. This time he remained with his round rump resting resignedly on the caramel cushion of his chair.

“The outlook is bleak,” said Matt Dillon. “Sales of the new space-manufactured solar cells are still climbing. Individual homes, apartment buildings, condos, factories―everybody’s plastering their roofs with them and generating their own electricity. No pollution, no radiation, nothing for us to latch onto. They don’t even make noise!”

“Ah,” intoned our All-American Boy, “but they must be ruining business for electric utility companies. Why not a crisis there?” He gestured hypnotically, and put on an expression of Ratheresque somberness, intoning, “Tonight we will look at the plight of the electrical utilities, men and women who have been discarded in the stampede for cheap energy.”

“Trampled,” a voice from down the table suggested.

“Ah, yes. Instead of discarded. Thank you.” Boss Jack was never one to discourage creative criticism.

But Marshal Matt mewed, “The electric utility companies are doing just fine; they invested in the solar cell development back in ‘95. They saw the handwriting in the sky.”

A collective sigh of disappointment went around the table.

Not one to give up easily, our Mr. Armstrong suggested, “What about oil producers, then? The coal miners?”

“The last coal miner retired on full pension in ‘98,” replied Matt dolefully. “The mines were fully automated by then. Nobody cares if robots are out of work; they just get reprogrammed and moved into another industry. Most of the coal robots are picking fruit in Florida now.

“But the Texas oil and gas. . .

Matt headed him off at the pass. “Petroleum prices are steady. They sell the stuff to plastics manufacturers, mostly. Natural gas is the world’s major heating fuel. It’s clean, abundant and cheap.”

Gloom descended on our conference table.

It deepened as Boss Jack went from one of our experts to the next.

Terrorism had virtually vanished in the booming world economy.

Political scandals were depressingly rare: With computers replacing most bureaucrats there was less cheating going on in government, and far fewer leaks to the media.

The space program was so successful that no less than seven governments of space-faring nations ― including our own dear Uncle Sam―had declared dividends for their citizens and a tax amnesty for the year.

Population growth was nicely leveling off. Inflation was minimal. Unemployment was a thing of the past, with an increasingly roboticized workforce encouraging humans to invest in robots, accept early retirement, and live off the productivity of their machines.

The closest thing to a crisis in that area was a street brawl in St. Petersburg between two retired Russian factory workers ―aged thirty and thirty-two―who both wanted the very same robot. Potatoes that were much too small for our purposes.

There hadn’t been a war since the International Peacekeeping Force had prevented Fiji from attacking Tonga, nearly twelve years ago.

Toxic wastes, in the few remote regions of the world where they still could be found, were being gobbled up by genetically altered bugs (dubbed Rifkins, for some obscure reason) that happily died once they had finished their chore and dissolved into harmless water, carbon dioxide and ammonia compounds. In some parts of the world the natives had started laundry and cleaning establishments on the sites of former toxic waste dumps. I watched and listened in tightening terror as the fickle finger

of fate made its way down the table toward me. I was low man on the board, the newest person there, sitting at the end of the table between pert Ms. Mary Richards (sex and family relations were her specialty) and dumpy old Alexis Carrington-Colby (nutrition and diets ― it was she who had, three months earlier, come up with the blockbuster of the “mother’s milk” crisis).

I hoped desperately that either Ms. Richards or Ms. Carrington-Colby would offer some shred of hope for the rest of the board to nibble on, because I knew I had nothing. Nothing except that damning, damaging note in my pocket. What if the Boss found out about it? Would he think I was a potential informer, a philandering fink to the Feds?

With deepening despair I listened to flinty-eyed Alexis offer apologies instead of ideas. It was Mary Richards’ turn next, and my heart began fluttering unselfishly. I liked her, I was becoming quite enthusiastic about her, almost to the point of asking her romantic questions. I had never dated a sex specialist, or much of anyone, for that matter. Mary was special to me, and I wanted her to succeed.

She didn’t. There was no crisis in sex or family relations.

“Mr. James,” said the Boss, like a bell tolling for a funeral.

I wasn’t entitled to a power name, since I had only recently been appointed to the board. My predecessor, Marcus Welby, had keeled over right at this conference table the previous month when he realized that there was no medical crisis in sight. His heart broke, literally. It had been his fourth one, but this time the rescue team was just a shade too late to pull him through again.

Thomas K. James is hardly a power name. But it was the one my parents had bestowed on me, and I was determined not to disgrace it. And in particular, not to let anyone know that someone in this conference room thought I was corruptible.

“Mr. James,” asked a nearly weeping All-American Boy, “is there anything on the medical horizon ― anything at all ― that may be useful to us?”

It was clear that Boss Armstrong did not suspect me of incipient treason. Nor did he expect me to solve his problem. I did not fail him in that expectation.

“Nothing worth raising an eyebrow over, sir, I regret to say.” Remarkably, my voice stayed firm and steady, despite the dervishes dancing in my stomach.

“There are no new diseases,” I went on, “and the old ones are still in rapid retreat. Genetic technicians can correct every identifiable malady in the zygotes, and children are born healthy for life.” I cast a disparaging glance at Mr. Cosby, our black environmentalist, and added, “Pollution-related diseases are so close to zero that most disease centers around the world no longer take statistics on them.”

“Addiction!” he blurted, the idea apparently springing into his mind unexpectedly. “There must be a new drug on the horizon!”

The board members stirred in their chairs and looked hopeful. For a moment.

I burst their bubble. “Modern chemotherapy detoxifies the addict in about eleven minutes, as some of us know from firsthand experience.” I made sure not to stare at Matt Dillon or Alexis Carrington-Colby, who had fought bouts with alcohol and chocolate, respectively. “And, I must unhappily report, cybernetic neural programming is mandatory in every civilized nation in the world; once an addictive personality manifests itself, it can be reprogrammed quickly and painlessly.”

The gloom around the table deepened into true depression, tinged with fear.

Jack Armstrong glanced at the miniature display screen discreetly set into the tabletop before him, swiftly checking on his affirmative actions, then said, “Ladies and gentleman, the situation grows more desperate with each blink of the clock. I suggest we take a five-minute break for R and R (he meant relief and refreshment) and then come back with some new ideas!”

He fairly roared out the last two words, shocking us all.

I repaired to my office ― little more than a cubicle, actually, but it had a door that could be shut. I closed it carefully and hauled the unnerving note out of my pocket. Smoothing it on my desk top, I read it again. It still said:

“Make big $$$. Tell all to Feds.”

I wadded it again and with trembling hands tossed it into the disposal can. It flashed silently into healthful ions.

“Are you going to do it?”

I wheeled around to see Mary Richards leaning against my door. She had entered my cubicle silently and closed the door without a sound. At least, no sound I had heard, so intent was I on that menacing message.

“Do what?” Lord, my voice cracked like Henry Aldrich.

Mary Richards (nee Stephanie Quaid) was a better physical proximation to her power name than any one of the board members, with the obvious exception of our revered Boss. She was the kind of female for whom the words cute, pert and vivacious were created. But beneath those skin-deep qualities she had the ruthless drive and calculated intelligence of a sainted Mike Wallace. Had to. Nobody without the same could make it to the CCC board. If that sounds self-congratulatory, so be it. A real Mary Richards, even a Lou Grant, would never get as far as the front door of the CCC.

“Tell all to the Feds,” she replied sweetly.

The best thing I could think of was, “I don’t know what you’re talking about."

“The note you just ionized.”

“What note?”

“The note I put in your pocket before the meeting started.”

“You?” Until that moment I hadn’t known I could hit high C.

Mary positively slinked across my cubicle and draped herself on my desk, showing plenty of leg through her slitted skirt. I gulped and slid my swivel chair into the corner.

“It’s okay, there’re no bugs operating in here. I cleared your office this morning.”

I could feel my eyes popping. “Who are you?”

Her smile was all teeth. “I’m a spy, Tommy. A plant. A deep agent. I’ve been working for the Feds since I was a little girl, rescued from the slums of Chicago by the Rehabilitation Corps from what would have undoubtedly been a life of gang violence and prostitution."

“And they planted you here?”

“They planted me in Cable News when I was a fresh young thing just off the Rehab Farm. It’s taken me eleven years to work my way up to the CCC. We always suspected some organization like this was manipulating the news, but we never had the proof...

“Manipulating!” I was shocked at the word. “We don’t manipulate.”

“Oh?” She seemed amused at my rightful ire. “Then what do you do?”

“We select. We focus. We manage the news for the benefit of the public.”

“In my book, Tommy old pal, that is manipulation. And it’s illegal.”

“It’s... out of the ordinary channels,” I granted.

Mary shook her pretty chestnut-brown tresses. “It’s a violation of FCC regulations, it makes a mockery of the antitrust laws, to say nothing of the SEC, OSHA, ICC, WARK, and a half a dozen other regulatory agencies.”

‘‘So you’re going to blow the whistle on us."

She straightened up and sat on the edge of my desk. “I can’t do that, Tommy. I’m a government agent. An agent provocateur, I’m sure Mr. Armstrong’s lawyers will call me.”

“Then, what....”

“You can blow the whistle,” she said smilingly. “You’re a faithful employee. Your testimony would stand up in court.”

“Destroy,” I spread my arms in righteous indignation, “all this?”

“It’s illegal as hell, Tom,” said Mary. “Besides, the rewards for being a good citizen can be very great. Lifetime pension. Twice what you’re making here. Uncle Sam is very generous, you know. We’ll fix you up with a new identity. We’ll move you to wherever you want to live: Samoa, Santa Barbara, St. Thomas even Schenectady. You could live like a retired financier."

I had to admit, “That is... generous.”

“And,” she added, shyly lowering her eyes, “of course I’ll have to retire, too, once the publicity of the trial blows my cover. I won’t have the same kind of super pension that you’ll get, but maybe...

My throat went dry.

Before I could respond, though, the air-raid siren went off, signaling that the meeting was reconvening.

I got up from my chair, but Mary stepped between me and the door.

“What’s your answer, Thomas?” she asked, resting her lovely hands on my lapels.

“I.. .“ gulping for air, "...don’t know.”

She kissed me lightly on the lips. “Think it over, Thomas dear. Think hard.”

It wasn’t my thoughts that were hardening. She left me standing in the cubicle, alone except for my swirling thoughts spinning through my head like a tornado. I could hear the roaring in my ears. Or was that simply high blood pressure?

The siren howled again, and I bolted to the conference room and took my seat at the end of the table. Mary smiled at me and patted my knee, under the table.

“Very well,” said Jack Armstrong, checking his display screen, “gentleman and ladies. I have come to the conclusion that if we cannot find a crisis anywhere in the news,” and he glared at us, as if he didn’t believe there wasn’t a crisis out there somewhere, probably right under our noses, “then we must manufacture a crisis.”

I had expected that. So had most of the other board members, I could see. What went around the table was not surprise but resignation.

Cosby shook his head wearily, “We did that last month, and it was a real dud. The Anguish of Kindergarten. Audience response was a negative four-point-four. Negative!”

“Then we’ve got to be more creative!” snapped The All-American Boy.

I glanced at Mary. She was looking at me, smiling her sunniest smile, the one that could allegedly turn the world on. And the answer to the whole problem came to me with that blinding flash that marks true inspiration and minor epileptic fits.

This wasn’t epilepsy. I jumped to my feet. “Mr. Armstrong! Fellow board members!”

“What is it, Mr. James?” Boss Jack replied, a hopeful glimmer in his eyes.

The words almost froze in my throat. I looked down at Mary, still turning out megawatts of smile at me, and nearly choked because my heart had jumped into my mouth.

But only figuratively. “Ladies and gentlemen,” (I had kept track, too), “there is a spy among us from the Federal Regulatory Commissions.”

A hideous gasp arose, as if they had heard the tinkling bell of a leper.

“This is no time for levity, Mr. James,” snapped the Boss.

“On the other hand, if this is an attempt at shock therapy to stir the creative juices....

“It’s real!” I insisted. Pointing at the smileless Mary Richards, I said, “This woman is a plant from the Feds. She solicited my cooperation. She tried to bribe me to blow the whistle on the CCC!”

They stared. They snarled. They hissed at Mary. She rose coolly from her chair, made a little bow, blew me a kiss, and left the conference room.

Armstrong was already on the intercom phone. “Have security detain her and get our legal staff to interrogate her. Do it now!”

Then the Boss got to his feet, way down there at the other end of the table, and fixed me with his steeliest gaze. He said not a word, but clapped his hands together, once, twice....

And the entire board stood up for me and applauded. I felt myself blushing, but it felt good. Warming. My first real moment in the sun.

The moment ended too soon. We all sat down and the gloom began to gray over my sunshine once more.

“It’s too bad, Mr. James, that you didn’t find a solution to our problem rather than a pretty government mole.”

“Ah, but sir,” I replied, savoring the opportunity for le mot just, “I have done exactly that.”

"What?"

“You mean...?"

“Are you saying that you’ve done it?”

I rose once more, without even glancing at the empty chair at my left.

“I have a crisis, sir.” I announced quietly, humbly.

Not a word from any of them. They all leaned forward, expectantly, hopefully, yearningly.

“The very fact that we―the leading experts in the field―can find no crisis is in itself a crisis,” I told them.

They sighed, as if a great work of art had suddenly been unveiled.

“Think of the crisis management teams all around the world who are idle! Think of the psychologists and the therapists who stand ready to help their fellow man and woman, yet have nothing to do! Think of the vast teams of news reporters, camera persons, editors, producers, publishers, even golfers, the whole vast panoply of men and women who have dedicated their lives to bringing the latest crisis into the homes of every human being on this planet―with nothing more to do than report on sports and weather!”

They leaped to their feet and converged on me. They raised me to their shoulders and joyously carried me around the table, shouting praises.

Deliriously happy, I thought to myself, I won’t be at the foot of the table anymore. I’ll move up. One day, I’ll be at the head of the table, where The All-American Boy is now. He’s getting old, burnt out. I’ll get there. I’ll get there!

And I knew what my power name would be. I’d known it from the start, when I’d first been made the lowliest member of the board. I’d been saving it, waiting until the proper moment to make the change.

My power name would be different, daring. A name that bespoke true power, the ability to command, the vision to see far into the future. And it wouldn’t even require changing my real name that much. I savored the idea and rolled my power name through my mind again as they carried me around the table. Yes, it would work. It was right.

I would no longer be Thomas K. James. With the slightest, tiniest bit of manipulation my true self would stand revealed: James T. Kirk.

I was on my way.

 

Chapter Eleven

 

Conflict in Science Fiction

Conflict: Practice

 

 

 

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face... You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.

―Eleanor Roosevelt

 

Mrs. Roosevelt was not giving advice to writers when she wrote those words, but better advice would be hard to find. As a writer, you must do the thing which you think you cannot do; push yourself farther, stretch your writerly muscles, reach for impossible dreams. Also, you must push your characters to do what they think they cannot do; give them conflicts that they cannot possibly resolve. Then get them to resolve them.

Even a lighthearted story such as "Crisis of the Month" can have plenty of conflict in it. In fact, no matter what the mood of a story, if it does not crackle with conflict there is no interest, no point, no story.

Conflict was at the very core of my thoughts when I first began to write "Crisis of the Month." The story began when my wife complained one evening about the hysterical manner in which the news media report on the day's events. Veteran newscaster Linda Ellerbee calls the technique "anxiety news." Back in journalism school (so long ago that spelling was considered important) I was taught that "good news is no news." Today's media take this advice to extremes: No matter what the story, there is a down side to it that can be emphasized ― and usually is.

So when my darling and very perceptive wife complained about the utterly negative way in which the media presented the day's news, I quipped, "I can see the day when science finally finds out how to make people immortal. The media will do stories about the sad plight of the funeral directors.”

My wife is also one of the top literary agents in the business. She immediately suggested, “Why don’t you write a story about that?”

Thus the origin of “Crisis of the Month.”

Notice that the story has nothing to do with achieving immortality or with funeral directors. But that is where the idea originally sprang from. And the originating idea was rich in several forms of conflict: various characters in conflict with one another, the government in conflict with the media, the very idea of a Crisis Command Center that manages the news in conflict with our inherent concept of freedom of the press.

The background to the story is suggested, not shown. “Crisis of the Month” takes place in a lovely, peaceful, healthy world; so lovely and peaceful and healthy, in fact, that its very desirable attributes provide a level of conflict. How can a Crisis Command Center do its job if there are no crises? All of this is shown through the dialogue among the characters. The setting of the story is confined to the offices of the CCC.

Two forms of conflict hit the reader on the very first page. The protagonist, Thomas K. James, is worried about a note he has crumpled up and stuffed into his pocket, and the CCC board chairman, Jack Armstrong, is distinctly unhappy with his crew. To find out why, the reader must go deeper into the story.

Remember that the basis of conflict lies in the protagonist’s inner struggle of one emotion battling against another. With Thomas K. James, that inner struggle is his desire to succeed and become a full-fledged member of the CCC board versus his fear that he does not have what it takes to succeed.

Ambition vs. self-doubt.

Enter Mary Richards, who brings that inner turmoil out into the open in two different ways: One, Tom James is powerfully attracted to Mary Richards; romance is in the air. Two, it turns out that Mary is a government agent who wants him to be a witness against the CCC. This creates another level of conflict:

If Tom goes along with Mary, he will sabotage the CCC and ruin his own career; if he refuses to work against the CCC, he will certainly lose Mary.

Loyalty vs. love.

Through all this there is still another level of conflict confronting the reader: Is it right to have a Crisis Command Center? Should these people be allowed to manage the news, month after month? Should Tom sell out to the Feds? Wouldn’t that be the right thing to do?

“Crisis of the Month” is also a variation of what I call the “jailbreak” plot. Chances are that you think what the CCC is doing is wrong, and therefore Tom is wrong to be with them. The protagonist is doing something that you feel is morally wrong, like a convict attempting to break out of jail. Yet because the protagonist is sympathetically drawn, the reader wants the protagonist to succeed, even though the protagonist may be doing “wrong” in the eyes of society.

In its original form, the jailbreak story put the reader on the horns of a moral dilemma. You want the protagonist to succeed, yet you know that the protagonist’s success is socially wrong. The prisoner-of-war variation of the jailbreak story removes this moral ambiguity―as long as it is our POWs trying to break out of the enemy’s camp.

In “Crisis of the Month” all of this is lighthearted, of course. Yet within the context of the story it is these various levels of conflict that keep the reader turning pages, anxious to find out what happens next.

At the story’s climax, Tom opts to save the CCC despite the fact that it will cost him Mary’s love (assuming that she truly loved him, which is doubtful). Once he makes that tough decision, he also comes up with the solution to the CCC’s problem and receives the reward he wanted all along: recognition by the other board members and the right to chose his own “power name."

Despite the playful tone of the story, what Tom does seems somehow wrong in the reader’s eyes. He has thrown away his chance for True Love in order to further the nefarious work of an organization that manages the news, which strikes a jarring chord among those of us who would like to believe the news media are scrupulously fair and independent. In the very end Tom makes a morally reprehensible choice and is rewarded with all the wealth and approval that the CCC can bestow. And, chances are, the reader wanted Tom to succeed! So the tale ends on a note of moral conflict within the reader’s mind.

We have come a long way from the simple fistfight or shoot-out, in our examination of conflict. Certainly there is nothing wrong with physical action as a source of conflict in a story. Homer had plenty of battles in the Iliad, for example. But there are other, better choices available. In science fiction, as we have seen, the path is wide open to set the protagonist in struggle against the forces of nature or the bounds of a stifling society.

Yet, whatever kinds of conflict you put into your stories ―whether it is a martial arts fight or a military rebellion against a dictatorship ― the fundamental, underlying conflict must always be the struggle going on within the mind of the protagonist. Out of his interior conflict stem all the other conflicts of the story. If the protagonist has no inner turmoil, the story is quite literally gutless, and all the slam-bang action in the world will be nothing more than mindless, unnecessary and ultimately boring violence.

 

REVIEW OF THE CONFLICT CHECKLIST

This time, let us use the checklist as the basis for a quiz.

1. A story is a narrative description of a character struggling to solve a problem. Nothing more; nothing less. Struggle means conflict. Who is the protagonist in “Crisis of the Month?” What is the protagonist’s problem? As a mental exercise, think of rewriting the story from another character’s point of view. Which character would you pick? What would be the protagonist’s problem?

2. In fiction, conflict almost always involves a mental or moral struggle between characters caused by incompatible desires and aims. What are the desires and aims of the protagonist? Whose desires and aims conflict with them?

3. Physical action is not necessarily conflict. Is there any physical action in the story? If not, did you find the story static or dull?

4. The conflict in a story should be rooted in the mind of the protagonist; it is the protagonist’s inner turmoil that drives the narrative. Earlier in the chapter I gave the protagonist’s basic inner conflict in the form of an equation of emotion vs. emotion. What were the two emotions? Could you write a similar equation for Mary Richards or Jack Armstrong?

5. The protagonist’s inner struggle should be mirrored and amplified by an exterior conflict with an antagonist. The antagonist may be a character, nature, or the society in which the protagonist exists. Who is the antagonist in this story? Jack Armstrong? Mary Richards? The government? The society as a whole?

6. Eschew villains! The antagonist should believe that he is the hero of the tale. Could you rewrite this story with Mary Richards as the protagonist? Make a one-page outline of that.

7. Be a troublemaker! Create excruciating problems for your protagonist. And never solve one problem until you have raised at least two more―until the story’s conclusion. Go through the story and count the problems that the protagonist faces. Note when each problem is solved. And note that the resolution of the story solves the basic problem shown at the story’s beginning―even though you may not like the morality of the solution!

 

Chapter Twelve

 

Plot in Science Fiction

Plot: Theory

 

 

 

Draw your chair up close to the edge of the precipice and I’ll tell you a story.

―F. Scott Fitzgerald

 

 

Gordon R. Dickson is not only a fine writer, but also one of the best story “doctors” I know. Writers take their problem stories to Gordy for advice.

He was once asked, “What makes a story tick?” His answer: “The time bomb that’s set to explode on the last page."

Every story is a race against time. Something is going to happen and, whether it is good or bad, the characters and events of the story are set up to get to the time and place where that something is going to come off. Perhaps it is as simple as pointing out that the emperor’s invisible new clothes are actually nonexistent. Or as complex as the super nuclear device called the doomsday machine, which literally destroys the world in Stanley Ku-brick’s motion picture Dr. Strangelove.

Even in a long and complex novel, there is still that time bomb ticking away, page after page. Its beat may be muffled or slow, but it is there, chapter after chapter. In Frank Herbert’s Dune, it was that ultimate moment when rain first begins to fall on the desert world of Arakis. In Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October, it was the question of whether or not the Soviet submarine captain would succeed in his effort to escape his pursuers.

In a short story the time bomb must tick loudly on every page, from the opening paragraph to the end of the tale. “The game’s afoot,” as Sherlock Holmes says, and that race against time is especially sharp in a short story, where you must engage your reader immediately and start those pages turning.

In some stories, the time bomb can be more subtle and more complex. In Isaac Asimov’s “Nightfall,” it was the threat of the destruction of civilization on a planet that is always lit by its multiple suns, except for one brief night every thousand years. In Arthur C. Clarke’s “The Nine Billion Names of God,” a sect of Tibetan lamas are convinced that God has nine billion names, and the world will end once humankind has written them all down. They have been laboriously doing the job by hand for centuries, but now they buy a computer to finish the task within a few days. I will never forget the shiver that went up my spine when the computer finally printed out the nine billionth name.

But simple or complex, subtle or bluntly obvious, the time bomb represents a threat, and its ticking should be loud and clear on the very first page of the story. The writer must promise the reader that the story’s protagonist is going to face an incredibly difficult problem, dangers that are overwhelming, enemies that are unbeatable, conflicts that will tear her apart.

In most stories the time bomb has several different aspects; the explosion promised at the end of the tale can happen at many different levels ― as many, in fact, as the various levels of conflict built into the story. In “Fifteen Miles,” the ticking of the time bomb is a countdown that will end with either the success or failure of Kinsman’s efforts to save the priest, and the success or failure of his efforts to keep his secret to himself. Note that the protagonist cannot succeed in both efforts. The two conflicts also conflict with each other, placing the protagonist on the horns of an impossible dilemma.

Think about “Sepulcher” and “Crisis of the Month” with an eye to understanding what the time bombs are in those stories and on how many different levels they might explode.

 

SETTING THE PLOT TICKING

The essence of creating a strong, exciting plot lies in building a powerful time bomb and making certain that the reader can hear its ticking from the very first page― even the first paragraph―of the story. The three aspects of fiction writing that we have already discussed― character, background and conflict―must be brought into focus by the plot. The protagonist must have a problem that she must solve. To solve this problem the protagonist will come into conflict with other characters and/or the environment in which the story is set. The background of the story must contribute to the protagonist’s struggle.

Some writers begin planning a story by constructing a plot, then putting in characters, background and conflict as necessary. For example, they start with a basic idea, such as, What would happen if the least intelligent people of the world had larger and larger families, while the most intelligent had fewer and fewer children? The answer turned into Cyril M. Kornbluth’s classic, “The Marching Morons,” one of the best novelettes ever written in the science fiction genre. I may be entirely wrong, but it seems to me that Kornbluth got the basic idea first, worked out a plot to suit the idea, and then peopled the story with the characters, background and conflicts that it needed.

On the other hand, it is possible to get the germ of a story idea from any point of the compass and build the story from that starting place. Asimov’s “Nightfall” began with the background of a planet where night comes only once each thousand years. “Sepulcher” began with the idea of a work of art so perfectly executed that all who see it see something specific to their own life. “Crisis of the Month” began as a grumble about the way the news media seem constantly to seek out anxiety-producing stories.