Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2d edition:
Links to Books, Authors, and Topics Mentioned in the Text
Introduction
J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism
Alfred Bester, The Demolished Man
Ursula K. Le Guin, Earthsea Cycle
Chapter 1: Hard Facts for First-Time Novelists
William Gibson
Robert Jordan
Locus Online
Chapter 2: The Past, Present, and Future of Science Fiction and Fantasy
Thomas More, Utopia
Samuel Butler, Erewhon
Aldous Huxley, Island
George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four
Ursula K. Le Guin
James De Mille, A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Cat’s Cradle
Frank Herbert, Dune
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
Yevgni Zamyatin, We
Joe Haldeman, The Forever War
Esther Friesner, Chicks in Chainmail
Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination
Amadis of Gaul
Lord Dunsany
Saki
E. R. Eddison
J. R. R. Tolkien
H. P. Lovecraft
C. S. Lewis
Terry Pratchett
Sir Arthur C. Clarke
Chapter 3: Understanding Genre
Crawford Kilian, Icequake
Crawford Kilian, Tsunami
Garfield and Judith Reeves-Stevens, Icefire
Tevis,
The Man Who Fell to Earth
Robert A. Heinlein, Sixth Column
Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Frank Herbert
SF Clichés
Laws of Science Fiction Writing
Stanislaw Lem, Solaris
Star Trek
Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers
Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars
Greg Bear, Moving Mars
Allen Drury
William LeQueux, The Invasion of 1910
H. G. Wells, The War in the Air, The World Set Free
Nevil Shute, On the Beach
Alfred Coppel, Dark December
Robert A. Heinlein, Farnham’s Freehold
Daniel Kalla, Pandemic
Fred Adams and Greg Laughlin, The Five Ages of the Universe: Inside the Physics of Eternity
Olaf Stapledon, Odd John
Wilmar Shiras, Children of the Atom
Shiras
Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park
K. Eric Drexler
Crawford Kilian, Gryphon
Jack London, The Scarlet Plague
H. G. Wells
Walter M. Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz
John Wyndham, The Chrysalids
John Barnes, Mother of Storms
John Christopher, The Death of Grass (also published as No Blade of Grass)
Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle
Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, Lucifer’s Hammer
George R. Stewart, Earth Abides
Philip Wylie and Edwin Balmer, When Worlds Collide
Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward: 2000-1887
Ray Bradbury
Jack London, The Iron Heel
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
George Orwell
Fredrik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth, The Space Merchants
Isaac Asimov, The Stars, Like Dust
Code of Hammurabi
Crawford Kilian, Lifter
Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
L. Sprague de Camp, Lest Darkness Fall
Crawford Kilian, Rogue Emperor
Harry Turtledove, The Guns of the South
John Jewitt, The Adventures and Sufferings of John R. Jewitt: Captive of Maquinna
Ward Moore, Bring the Jubilee
William Sanders, The Wild Blue and the Gray
William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, The Difference Engine
William Gibson, Neuromancer
Keith Laumer, Worlds of the Imperium
William Sanders, Journey to Fusang
Crawford Kilian, Greenmagic
Crawford Kilian, Redmagic
Conan
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Dave Duncan
Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, Reindeer Moon
Sean Stewart, Resurrection Man
Peter S. Beagle, A Fine and Private Place
Walter Jon Williams, Metropolitan
Peter Dickinson, The Blue Hawk
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Beginning Place
C. S. Lewis, Narnia
James Blish, Black Easter
Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys
Fantasy Clichés
The Grand List of Fantasy Clichés:
The Not-So-Grand List of Overused Fantasy Clichés:
The Fantasy Novelist’s Exam:
Terry Pratchett, The Color of Magic
John Updike, Toward the End of Time
Gore Vidal, The Smithsonian Institution
Gore Vidal, Live from Golgotha
Thomas Pynchon, V
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Word for World is Forest
Robert A. Heinlein, Space Cadet
Chapter 4: Creating Your Fictional World
Terry Bisson, Talking Man
Fantasy Name Generator
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed
James Hilton, Lost Horizon (Shangri-La)
Hal Clement, Iceworld
Chapter 5: Developing Efficient Work Habits
Abhishek Kumar, How to Create Good Work Habits
Kate Morgenroth, Work Habits
Famous Writing Habits?
Chapter 6: Research and Soul Search
Greg Knollenberg, Internet Research Resources for Science Fiction Writers
SpecFicWorld, Research Resources that Might Interest Speculative Fiction Writers
Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Articles on Writing
Robert J. Sawyer, Research: Secret Weapons of Science
Crawford Kilian, Rogue Emperor
Google, Babylonian mythology: The Assyro-Babylonian Mythology FAQ
Cthulhu (H. P. Lovecraft)
Samuel Fussell, Muscle
Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess of Mars
Robert A. Heinlein, Double Star
Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels
Science Magazine
Nature Magazine
Scientific American
New Scientist
Isaac Asimov
Stephen Jay Gould
Stephen Hawking
Louis Agassiz
Robert Oppenheimer
Kenneth Koch
Chapter 7: Elements of a Successful Story
Deus ex machina
Cormac McCarthy, The Road
See also my review:
Chapter 8: Developing Characters
Fictional Character
Writing Exercises for Creative Fiction Writers (Characterization, Prose Style, and Language)
Fiction Factor: Characters
James Patrick Kelly, You and Your Characters
Chapter 9: Plotting
On Plot
Anton Chekhov
Chapter 10: Constructing a Scene
Sheri Cooper Sinykin, How to Write a Scene”
Wikipedia, Scene (fiction)
Chapter 11: Narrative Voice
Edgar Allen Poe, “The Cask of Amontillado”
Rashomon
Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Tales from the White Hart
Iain Banks, Feersum Endjinn
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
Charles Dickens, Bleak House
Chapter 12: Exposition and Dialogue
Judy-Lynn Del Rey
Lloyd Abbey, The Last Whales
Last Whales: Lloyd Abbey
Gabriel García Márquez
Watergate Tapes
Rudy Rucker, Freeware
Chapter 13: Symbolism and All That
Heroic Archetypes
The Archetype of the Hero’s Quest
S. M. Stirling
Chapter 14: Mechanics of Manuscript Production
SFWA, FAQ Answered for Beginning Writers
Readability.info
Chapter 15: Selling Your Story
SFWA, The Business of Writing
Chapter 16: Researching Publishers and Agents
Writers’ Union of Canada, Finding a Publisher
Writers’ Union of Canada, Literary Agents
Finding a Book Publisher
Small Press Center for Independent Publishing
Writer’s Market
Publishers Weekly
The Writer Magazine
Writer’s Digest
Richard Curtis, How to be Your Own Literary Agent
Scott Meredith, Writing to Sell
Chapter 17: The Publishing Contract
Writers Union of Canada, Self-Help Contract Package
SFWA, The Business of Writing
SFWA, Print on Demand
SFWA, Writer Beware
Crawford Kilian’s Writing Fiction blog
Periscope Writing
By Crawford Kilian
(Writing Fiction Blog)
Chapter 1
Once I’ve written the first chapter of a novel, I keep going back to it to figure out what happens next.
That’s because the first chapter strikes the theme and sets us up for most of what’s going to happen.
Let me give you some examples from Henderson’s Tenants. It starts with Mike Henderson, age 53, getting a death sentence from a college classmate who’s now a physician: pancreatic cancer, still a killer in the year 2030. Doc gives Mike some new painkillers (addictive and hallucinogenic, but with a life expectancy of 7 months, who cares?).
On the way home, Mike gets mugged and robbed of his computer specs (the computer itself is under the skin of his left arm, about 5 cm in diameter). He gets home, where he can at least use the pixelite screen on his apartment wall to interact with his computer. The default image of the screen is a realtime image of Vancouver harbor circa 1650: a huge forest with a few villages and orcas playing in the water.
Mike, we learn, is a former nanotech innovator and entrepreneur who’s been driven out of business after a Japanese nanotech firm caused a horrendous mess. So Mike is broke, unemployed, and dying...in a Vancouver that’s part of a satellite Canada, locked into a semifascist US that’s been waging “the War” for 30 years. His only consolation is that he’s on BS--Basic Support, a minimal welfare scheme keeping most people from starving or revolting while the War goes on and on.
Mike’s shabby one-room apartment is in a formerly comfortable part of North Vancouver, with a lovely view of the harbor and also of a homeless camp right across the street. He buys most of his food in a market occupying the parking lot of a former supermarket. The other customers are broke people like himself.
I wrote chapter 1 as “periscope writing” -- a way to learn what was going on in Mike’s world, before I’d really committed myself to this story. Then I kept going. But I knew that the bits and pieces of chapter 1 were going to have to pay off later in the story.
So the painkiller turns out to be critical to helping Mike solve some major problems--but it also sets us up for a major discovery about the nature of the human mind. The death sentence gives him the motivation to break the law when he’s offered a chance to create a major nanotech breakthrough that will save the life of a brain-damaged kid. The pre-industrial image of Vancouver 1650 is a kind of edenic vision that Mike will be able to regain for humanity.
The homeless people downstairs also have to factor into the story--most are Mexicans, living by usually criminal means. And the building’s tenants themselves are going to be important, however negligible they may be in the society of 2030.
I didn’t have all these items in mind when I wrote chapter 1. But I’ve learned to trust my subconscious; if it wants painkillers or a mugging or a vision of Vancouver as Eden, I’m happy to provide it. Then I’ve just got to build those details into story elements.
Right now I’m still uncertain about some of the details. Was the mugging just a random attack, or something set up by the Homies--the Homeland Security bad guys who want to recruit Mike into “defensive” nanotech even if it’s technically illegal? Mike rejects an open offer from the Homies, and then accepts a similar offer from a Korean chaebol--but are the Koreans on the level, or just more sophisticated in dealing with a dying genius?
A lot of fiction writers have trouble coming up with a good plot; my problem is over-plotting, making everything so meshed that it gets ridiculous. But I can sense some kind of inner logic working on the story so far, and I’ll just have to follow where it leads.
Ten Steps for Pre-Editing
By Crawford Kilian
(Writing Fiction Blog)
A lot of apprentice writers lavish most of their work, understandably, on character, plot, narrative, dialogue, and description. They often forget that to an editor, their manuscript is not an epoch-making breakthrough and the first great novel of the new century. To an editor, a manuscript is work.
Too many of us make more work for our editors than we should. It's not just that we don't follow the format guidelines every publisher sets out on its Website; we don't even follow basic English usage. In a very few cases this is tolerable; the writer's storytelling is so good that it's worth cleaning up the spelling and punctuation. Isaac Asimov, a famously fast and prolific writer in the Typewriter Age, single-spaced his manuscripts with no margins because he saved time by not inserting a fresh sheet of paper as often. Jack Kerouac used a roll of teletype paper so he wouldn't have to change sheets at all.
Long-suffering editors will deal with these foibles when the outcome is a sure success. But if you're a brand-new author, your editor may simply decide you're not worth the effort. Nothing personal, but the time spent cleaning up your spelling probably won't bring a nickel into the house, since first novels are notorious money-losers.
One of my editors told me that his house had a hugely successful but only semi-literate author, whose manuscripts had to be exhaustively (and exhaustingly) cleaned up. He also told me that Canadian authors' manuscripts tended to be welcome in New York publishing houses because we're more literate than our American cousins. Not better writers, necessarily—just better spellers and punctuators.
Having completed a weekend of correcting Canadian students' spelling and punctuation, I'm not sure I agree. If true, the US schools are in worse shape than I'd imagined.
So I always tell aspiring writers to present a manuscript that need an absolute minimum of copy-editing. That will free the editor from inserting commas and semicolons, and enable her to look at the overall shape and structure of your novel. What does that mean?
1. A double-spaced, laser-printed manuscript with inch-wide margins all around, numbered in the upper right-hand corner. Don't bother with a header containing your name and the title unless the publisher specifically asks for it.
2. A serif font, 12 or 14 point. Sans serif fonts are hard to read in long text, and boldface fonts are even worse. Long passages in italics are also unpopular (some publishers insist on ordinary roman text underlined to indicate italics, just like the old typewriter days).
3. Paragraphs with first lines indented half an inch from the left-hand margin, and a ragged right margin. That ensures easier reading, since a right-justified margin means extra-wide spaces between some words. The space between paragraphs is just one double-space, not two.
3. Ideally, no paragraphs split between pages.
4. Correct spelling for the intended market. So if you're submitting to a London or Toronto house, your hero swims across the harbour as a labour of love. In New York, it's harbor and labor. Correct spelling, by the way, will not result from your spellchecker. Spellchecker codes are written by Satan's own software engineers. You will have to check dictionaries. You will also be wise to set up a usage list, ensuring consistency in spelling of proper names or special terms. Your editor will create such a list too, but you can save her a lot of work by doing it first.
5. Correct punctuation, especially in dialogue. If you write: "Darling I love you". She said.
...your editor will have to repunctuate it as
"Darling, I love you," she said.
...while snarling, "Idiot! I hate you!" under her breath.
6. Correct paragraphing, again a common dialogue problem: Every time you quote a different speaker, you need a new paragraph:
"Hi, Bill."
"Hi, Tom," said Bill.
"May I ask you a question?" asked Tom.
"Fire away!" Bill replied.
(By the way: your dialogue should make it so clear who's speaking that you rarely need to add "asked Tom" or "Bill replied.")
7. Correct grammar means paying attention to all those boring rules about subject-verb agreements, run-on sentences, and dangling modifiers. This is basic craft, and if you're serious about writing it ought to be easy enough. You may even be able to find a course in copy-editing and proofreading that will pay for itself many times over. If terms like "subordinate clause" and "noun phrase" refuse to become understandable, consider hiring a freelance editor to go through the manuscript for you. This won't solve your plot and character problems, but it will make those problems easier to deal with.
8. Chances are your publisher will also expect an electronic version of your manuscript, and this can pose problems too. Your ms. should be in the publisher's preferred word processor (usually Word, but not always), and readable on the publisher's computer. So if you use a Mac and your publisher is PC, you'll have to save a version in a PC-readable format. The publisher's Website will probably tell you exactly what kind of electronic ms. they want.
9. Before you print off the finished ms., print off a copy for yourself. Let it get stone cold. After a week or two, go through it as your editor will, with pen in hand. You'll find all kinds of typos, awkward repetitions, and similar blemishes. This is the time to catch them, but it's not the time to revise the whole damn story! At this point you are the world's worst judge of your own stuff. If your editor sees problems, she'll give you good advice on how to solve them. After all, she's seen them in dozen of other manuscripts.
10. Now print out your manuscript, making sure it meets your publisher's guidelines. Put it in an envelope and send it off to its first real reader, your editor. You've done what you could to make her job easier, and she'll appreciate it. At this point, you and your novel need all the friends you can get, and a clean, professional-looking ms. will make your editor a very good friend indeed.
Royalties
By Crawford Kilian
(Writing Fiction Blog)
Got a call from my nonfiction publisher, Self-Counsel Press, this afternoon: my royalty statement was available, and did I want to come in and pick it up? Since their office is close to my campus, I dropped in on my way home.