Category Archives: Side Projects

Short Stories, Side Projects

2020… Was a Year.

It probably won’t surprise anyone to learn that my 2020 was very, very boring.  Living with an immunocompromised roommate sent me into seclusion fairly early in the pandemic, and I’ve rarely had the opportunity to poke my head out since then.  Which means that when the time rolled around for my mother to begin dropping hints about how important my yearly travelogue is to maintaining readership for the family Christmas letter, I hedged.  A lot. 

You see, while quarantine life has certainly been rife with bizarre and mildly amusing excerpts, there have been very few of the massive logistical failures and bad ideas that characterize these stories.  Oh sure, I went on a socially distanced bike ride where one rider suffered a blow out that saw him literally trying to rebuild a high performance racing bike tire with a few feet of duct tape and I became severely dehydrated after accidentally dumping 80% of my water out on the trail halfway through.  But it’s quite hard to write about an event where you still aren’t entirely sure which memories are real and which ones were hallucinations created by a brain eager to distract itself from what must have seemed like its imminent demise.

And then, in the most underwhelming of Christmas miracles, Amazon delivered the most appropriate subject matter imaginable for this dumpster fire of a year:

An electric hair clipper held by someone who clearly should not be trusted with one.
Yeah, this seemed like a great idea at the time.

Because nothing says 2020 more than someone who can barely be trusted to comb their own hair trying to give themselves a haircut because some a hair stylist on YouTube made it look easy.

The first thing I did upon receiving the kit was to take the photo above to message it to a select group of close friends to announce that the backup plan of showing up to the next sci-fi convention sporting the world’s laziest/best Cousin It costume ever was off the table.  The second thing I did was show it to my roommate Katie.

“I’m not cutting your hair,” she informed me.

“That’s fine,” I replied.  “I was going to do it myself.”

She gave me a long look.  “You know how?”

“I watched some YouTube videos!” I chirpily replied.

I chose to interpret her silence as embarrassment for not having considered this and set off to the bathroom to reacquaint myself with the topography of my own forehead.  My plan was simple.  I would use a series of hair clips to partition my head into three, each of which could be cut using one of the many comb attachments the kit had shipped with to a precise length.  I grabbed a comb, spent about five minutes creating a line between the side and top of my head, then carefully put the first clip in place to hold the hair on the top safely out of the way. 

The clip fell out.  So I tried partitioning my hair again.  The clip fell out again.  So then I tried doing it a third time.  And it fell out a third time.  So I started deviating from the script, trying to find some way to hold my hair safely out of the way.  I eventually found something that worked where I roughly grabbed a mass of hair, twisted it into a thick rope, coiled that rope, then skewered it with two clips to form the world’s lumpiest bun in the center of my head.  It didn’t look quite as neat and tidy as the partitioning in the videos, but I found it was easy at this point to pretend that wouldn’t matter.  Finally, I fitted the first comb on the end of the clipper and began trimming the right side of my head.  Hair began to fall away in massive clumps as I sighted my earlobe, bleached bone white after months of being kept out of direct sunlight.  And then came a tiny barely audible squeak at my right ankle.

I looked down to find Celty – Katie’s new kitten – had joined me in the bathroom and begun batting at one of the clumps of hair on the floor, no doubt wondering if there was a small edible animal beneath it she could eat.  Buoyed by the unexpected infusion of vitamin Aww, I went back to work. 

A kitten staring up at the camera looking cute because she knows it will make it easier to wreak havoc.
Also known as The Despoiler of Worlds

A moment later I felt another presence at my right ankle.  I looked down and saw Sepp, my ever-faithful wiener dog, leaning up against my leg and giving me an inquisitive stare.  I patted him on the head, then started in on the left side.

My brain didn’t really realize how much trouble I was in until about five seconds after it was too late to stop it.

I’m sure that in the pets’ minds, everything that followed looked very much like a classic Akira Kurosawa films where two Samurai face off in a forest while cherry blossoms rain down all around them, only with the cherry blossoms replaced by human hair.  It didn’t look quite so picturesque from my view.  I don’t really know which one of them made the first move, but it took essentially no time to go from that to both of them chasing one another around, through, and over my legs with joyful abandon.  At one point they accidentally collided and face planted into Celty’s litterbox.  Under any other circumstances this probably would have made them pause for a moment, but not today. The time had come for the ultimate battle of chase between cat and dog, beneath the rain of human hair as spoken of in the ancient legends, and they would not be deterred.  I’d decided that perhaps pausing the haircut was called for when Katie arrived, drawn by the sound of paws scrabbling against tile.  The moment the door opened Celty immediately broke off to determine if she had brought treats, giving me a moment to examine my progress so far and Sepp a moment to check if hair was edible.

A confused wiener dog standing on a towel covered in hair which he is giving a tentative taste test.
Answer: Not very.

I would describe the look as very fashion forward.  The untidy bun holding up the hair on the top had largely disintegrated, allowing a few strands of hair to escape down the sides and back.  In the excitement I’d somehow managed to cut the hair on the left side to be significantly shorter than the hair on the right, which I believe Bob Ross would refer to as a “happy little accident.”  And I was NOT completely bald, which at that point felt like a major accomplishment.  Katie, clearly not up to date with the latest trends, had a somewhat different take.

“Oh my god,” she said, “were you going for the fabulous lesbian look?”

I shook my head.

Katie sighed and held out her hand.  “Give me the clippers,” she said, “I’m giving you a haircut.”

Yes, I thought as I meekly handed over the clippers.  All according to plan.

And that, gentle readers, is how you get a free haircut from your roommate during a global pandemic.  Use this knowledge wisely.

The author sporting a surprisingly competent looking quarantine haircut.
Let’s hope for a better 2021!
Short Stories, Side Projects

Call of the Mild

There are times that I worry about my dog.

When I first decided to get a Dachshund, one of the reasons I gravitated towards them was that they were well known for being somewhat fearless when it comes to outdoor excursions, which is a plus for anyone or anything associated with my family.  Everything I read talked about how Dachshunds were known for the kind of fearless lunatics that would dive into a hole knowing that there was an angry Badger waiting at the bottom of it, which seemed like about the right mindset for a dog that might be called upon to serve as a hiking buddy for my dad.

What I got was Seppel, who is essentially the dachshund version of the stuffy butler from Downton Abbey. 

It became obvious early after adopting him that Sepp has a… special relationship with the outdoors.  He has a strong aversion to dirt, water, any activities performed between the hours of 9PM and 10AM, and most non-air-conditioned hotel rooms.  He is a dog who, when presented with a small muddy patch that other canines might feel compelled to roll in, will stop and begin to whine plaintively until someone else can come and pick him up so that he does not have to suffer the indignity of mud between his delicate toes.

Sufficed to say, I was concerned about this.  Whenever I go out of town Sepp tends to stay with my parents, and I know from experience that if you leave my dad alone with a dog for more than two hours he will take them out hiking.  Obviously, Sepp would need to learn how to properly live up to the Dachshund stereotype if he had any hope of survival in this family.

So when my parents invited me and Sepp to join them in a brief camping trip to Trout Lake for a family reunion, I jumped at the chance.  I believed the trip would be the first step to unlocking Sepp’s inner outdoorsdog.  And in hindsight I can only assume that this belief is the result of some internalized mechanism I’ve adopted to make sure I never run out of material to base these stories on.

At the start of the trip, things looked good.  Mostly because we were still in a car with ample air conditioning and a doggy throne of blankets and memory foam prepared by my mother, who I’ve come to realize is much better at perceiving reality than me or my dad.  Sepp seemed quite happy to be chauffeured to the pet store to buy some basic doggy camping supplies, because he foolishly trusted that I would never deliberately do anything to cause him discomfort.  Because he, like all members of my family, believes many things that he shouldn’t.

Acceptable.

The first sign of trouble occurred when we arrived at the campground only to discover that we’d been beaten there by Sepp’s greatest and most deadly enemy – precipitation.  I really can’t overstate just how much my dog hates water in all its forms.  I considered it a great step forward when he stopped growling at his water dish.  And now we had taken him to some strange wilderness where water liberally fell from the sky into a bathtub bigger than most parking lots he’d seen.  The ten minutes we spent waiting for the rain to stop was a flurry of concerned barking and stern nudges directed at my dad as Sepp requested that he come to his senses and drive away to somewhere with HBO.  But we held firm and convinced him to come out with us.

While my dad and I set about erecting our campsite before the rain started up again, I staked Sepp to the picnic table and let him explore his new home away from home.  There was still no sign of the fearless dachshund I’d read about in his exploration of the camp, but there was at least signs of a normal dog as he trotted around sniffing trees, puddles, and the butt of an exceptionally jaded squirrel.  After about half an hour of this he trotted out into the middle of the camp and peed straight into the fire pit, declaring it to be the latest addition to his holdings.  And for the rest of the day, he seemed to be legitimately enjoying his extended walk.

Everything is fine! I thought to myself.

And then we got to the tents.

Sepp was… concerned when night fall saw us retreating not to the throne-equipped Prius, but what I imagine what must have looked to him like a large grocery bag pinned to the dirt.  He was likewise concerned to see that he had only a single doggy bed set aside for him, with blankets crafted from my clothes and coat rather than the finery his station demanded.

“What is this madness?”  His eyes seemed to be asking me.  “This is OUTSIDE.  The place I go to pee.  We don’t sleep here!”

“Who’s a good boy!” I replied, scratching behind his ears in an enthusiastic fashion.

So, resigned to his fate, Sepp settled into his bed and began wrapping my pants around him as I tucked him in with my jacket, and we both nodded off for a good night’s sleep.

Two hours later, I was awoken by a very cold, very wet nose being poked into my left eye.

I reluctantly opened it to see Sepp’s silhouette looming over me.  Apparently very pleased with himself, he licked my nose once and let out a soft whine.

“Go to sleep,” I told him.

He pointed to my sleeping bag, then looked back at me and whined again.

“Go to sleep,” I repeated, still not really understanding.

Sepp wagged his tail, and then stuck his head inside the sleeping bag.

Now, the sleeping bag I was using was far from the kind of restrictive mummy bag that great comedy routines are made of.  But in that moment, you wouldn’t necessarily be able to tell.  As small as dachshunds are, it’s easy to forget that they’ve got huge barrel chests that wouldn’t look at all out of place on a greyhound.  His chosen point of entry was not wide enough to accommodate both that and my neck.  I responded to this by letting out a series of pained choking sounds, while Sepp responded through digging.  This is a time-honored pastime of his people which he has never really caught on to (presumably because it would get dirt in his nails,) so I suppose the demonstration that he knows how to do it counts as progress.  Unfortunately, the intensely unpleasant sensation of having a dog known for digging prowess trying to bore through my nipple kept me from recognizing this for the breakthrough that it was.

Somehow, I managed to reach up and undo the zipper enough for Sepp to pop straight through the neck hole into the sleeping bag.  I could no longer see him at this point, but from the whapping of his tail against the side of the bag I could tell he was pleased with himself.  He did a quick circle on my chest and then flopped down, poking his nose out right next to my shoulder.

Well, I decided, at least he’s comfortable there.  Then I nodded off again, content that we’d be able to spend the rest of the night in this position.

An hour later, I awoke to the sensations of sweaty paws against my forehead and realized that I’d forgotten how this usually goes.

Four more times, I was woken up by Sepp’s passage in and out of my sleeping bag in search of a superior spot.  Each time I adjusted it to try and make it easier.  I unzipped the feet first.  Then I tried unzipping the neck further.  Eventually, after he’d woken me up just to run through the entire length of the bag like a play tunnel, I even tried unzipping it entirely to lay over both of us like a blanket.  Then I gave him my pillow.  Then most of the thermarest.  One by one, the few comforts which made camping tolerable were sacrificed at the altar of the dog.  None of it worked for long.  Each effort ended the same way – a few moments of rest interrupted by a cold nose and a low, demanding whine.

The next morning, my mother was up bright to take Sepp for a walk where she introduced him to the wonders of rolling in dead things right before a three-hour car ride.  My dad and I stayed behind, both nursing cups of hot tea while we mentally steeled ourselves for packing away the wet tents in the car.

“How’d he do last night?” My dad asked.

I considered my response.  “Okay,” I said.  “A little active.”

“That’s good,” my dad replied.

I grunted in response and looked over at his tent, where two large padded collapsible cots had been set up for him and my mom. “How were those?”

“Really nice.”

“Do they come in dog sizes?” I asked.

Plotting Along, Side Projects

Plotting Along – “That Star Trek Movie” (Part 3)

Well, that took a while!  Hopefully everyone’s enjoying the new site and my newly twittered self.

So, in the last two parts of this  series, I covered what I saw as the major narrative flaws in Generations, as well the elements that I thought worked best.  So now, finally, let’s finish this thing.

Here’s how my version of Generations would have played out.

Continue reading Plotting Along – “That Star Trek Movie” (Part 3) →

Plotting Along, Side Projects

Plotting Along – “That Star Trek Movie” (Part 2)

This is actually a pretty hard one for me not to break my own rules on.  As you may or may not know, part of the idea of this series is to look at how a story can be fixed rather than rebuilt.  The Phantom Menace series, for instance, stuck with more or less the same plot while tinkering with the characters in such a way that would have allowed for more audience investment in it.  And that worked because while Phantom Menace was bloated and at times meandering, there were good ideas behind all of its scenes that just failed to materialize due to poor direction and dialog.

Star Trek Generations, on the other hand, does not have quite the same weight in its core ideas.  The film is ostensibly about coming to terms with the passage of time and the change it brings.  We know this because characters often stop the movie in its tracks to tell us all about it.  But for a movie in this particular franchise, I honestly feel it’s too small of a concept to build an entire film around on its own.

Wrath of Khan had arguably the same arc for Kirk.  But that wasn’t the entirety of what the film was either.  You had Khan’s revenge, the Genesis program, the trainees, and I could go on but won’t because there are still one or two people who haven’t seen the film yet (and the rest don’t need me to.)  Not to mention having what are still the best scenes of starship battles the franchise has produced.  It was a pretty full movie.  Generations though…  Well, it could have been a great episode, but as a film it’s hard for me to get excited about the idea of Picard being worried that he’s too old to be interesting anymore.

So this leaves me with a problem: how do I take a script whose biggest problem may be that it’s just too small for the big screen and broaden its scope without replacing the ideas that form its core identity?

Continue reading Plotting Along – “That Star Trek Movie” (Part 2) →

Plotting Along, Side Projects

Plotting Along – “That Star Trek Movie” (Part 1)

Look at that title.  You know which one I mean.

There’s no question that among Science Fiction fandoms, the Star Trek contingent is a force unto themselves.  They are frighteningly passionate, opinionated, and fractious.  And yet there are a few things that they can agree on.  Namely: that some of the movies are pretty bad.  And among the bad, there is one that stands out.  One which, as a followup to the previous masterful film, was disappointing enough to dash the hopes of everyone who went to watch.  And that film is:

Star Trek: The Final… Oh dear god no.

Continue reading Plotting Along – “That Star Trek Movie” (Part 1) →

Side Projects

Signs You’re Trapped in 90’s Cyberpunk

Cyberpunk in the 90’s was a special kind of madness.  Technology for mobile phones, the internet, and robotic prostheses was just starting to take off in a big way.  Everyone seemed certain that virtual reality and cybernetic implants were just around the corner.  And, best of all, none of those technologies had matured enough for people to realize that the ideas they’d always had about what those things would look like were batshit crazy.  The result was a pastiche of techno-babble and nonsense that has never quite faded away.  Which unfortunately means that there are probably still people trying to figure out a way to make the insane concepts that characterize 90’s cyberpunk into a reality.  You might want to keep this list of signs that you’re starting to slip into that insanity handy, just in case…

Continue reading Signs You’re Trapped in 90’s Cyberpunk →

Side Projects, Uncategorized

How I Learned to Get Over Myself and Learn to Love Quantum Physics

There have been a lot of advances in theoretical physics since the end of the 19th century when the first examples of what I would consider “modern” time travel stories were being produced by Mark Twain and H.G. Wells. One of the best of those in my opinion is the multiple worlds theory of quantum physics, largely because it finally offers us a chance to break away from the constraints of the paradox that have plagued science fiction for so long.
In the universe of the Shadows of Time series, there are no temporal paradoxes to contend with. This is because it is flat out impossible for them to exist. The main characters exist within a 11 dimensional omniverse where all possible outcomes of their time travel are accounted for. Now, as individuals who exist outside of the normal flow of any single universe, they do have the ability to flit in and out of several different universes as they see fit. But it is beyond their power to create anything truly new. The law of conservation of energy dictates that their ability is inherently finite.
Furthermore, the Guardians themselves are not unique. The very nature of the setting demands that there be innumerable copies of them all running around simultaneously, operating in near ignorance of each other simply because of the fact that as many versions of them as there are, there are far more possible destinations for them to be shunted to. And while there may occasionally be things that look like paradoxes where they are reacting to something done by themselves in the future, they’re actually the result of other iterations of them taking action. So not only is there no paradox, but oftentimes they’re left stymied by the fact that these other iterations made different choices than they would given the same circumstances.
I’ll admit that when I first decided to go this route for my books, I was hesitant. While the idea of being able to write in a universe free of the decrepit specter of temporal paradoxes was appealing, it seemed at first that the omniverse posed just as many problems. There seemed to be an inherent nihilism to the concept that I found to be abhorrent. After all, with constant reminders that there were near infinite other copies of my protagonists making different choices and living (or dying) under different circumstances, what incentive would my readers have to care about what happened to the one group I chose to follow? Furthermore, how would I address the concern of dual occupancy? After all, with so many near identical Guardians operating with impunity, surely it was inevitable that eventually two or two million sets of them would decide to go to the same universe.
So my initial response to the problem was to cheat, and basically try to fudge the logic a bit by elevating the Guardians as being somehow special. In the early drafts of Shadows of Time the Guardians were unique because there could only ever be one set of them at any given time. All the other iterations that existed were simply held in reserve so they could be rotated in as needed when one of them ended up dying . I don’t think it was an entirely bad concept. In fact I adapted it into another unrelated project later. But it still ended up causing too many problems for me. Every time I asserted this in the book, a little demon in the back of my head would pipe up and ask “So, does that mean that whenever they make a choice, there are an infinite number of universes where they simply vanish all of a sudden? And doesn’t that also mean that the starting point of the universe would have to be defined as the point where they became Guardians?” and so on.
I ignored the demon for a long time until I suddenly one day had an epiphany. There’s a reason that time travel remains such an appealing concept for us, even after it’s been demonstrated that a practical application will likely forever be out of our reach. It speaks to feelings everyone has experienced at some point in their life: guilt and regret. It offers a chance to go back, to correct our past mistakes, and basically just have things turn out the way we wanted them to. A key part of the human experience is the eventual coming to terms with the fact that ultimately there’s no way for us to do that.
Time travel offers us a way to cheat that. Now, I’ll admit, highlighting this is one thing that the paradox approach has done rather well. It dangles time travel in front of our noses, always whisking it away at the last second because our past is just that. The problem is that this really doesn’t work for an ongoing series where I have characters repeatedly going back to different eras.
By embracing the problems of the omniverse I found they stopped being problems and started being stylistic elements. In the face of that pseudo-nihilist existence, there really is no way for the characters to fool themselves into thinking they can make their own lot better by meddling in their own past. They can tweak history all they want, but at the end of the day they still have to go home to live with the choices that they made. The ultimate promise of time travel then is revealed to have been a cheat all along.
Now some might call me on this by pointing out that in some cases this is exactly the same kind of message that writers seek to convey through the paradox mechanic. However I still maintain that there is a difference. The conventional paradox story always at some point presents the audience with something that is wholly nonsensical and tries to pass this off as complexity. In this way it is very similar to some philosophers I’ve known who, when losing an argument, have attempted to undermine their opponents position by claiming that the concepts they are quite eloquently explaining are simply too far beyond human comprehension for anyone to understand.
The omniverse, however, does not have this problem. Furthermore, by placing several existing paradox stories within an omniverse, many of the problems with said stories can be resolved, and in some cases even made more interesting by the shift.
I present as an example one of the single worst offenders in recent history: Star Trek Voyager. During her seven year stint as the Flying Dutchman of starships, Voyager was responsible for the absolute worst time travel plots that the Star Trek franchise has ever seen. What’s even worse is that the writers seemed to be aware of it, often having the characters point out all the plot holes they were creating only to have another character chuckle and say in a sage voice that time travel is supposed to be complicated.
To which I say: bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit.
Let’s consider one of the worst of the bunch: the episode Time and Again. In this episode Kes, the resident quasi-Q (every starship seems to have one in the 24th century) detects the death of an entire planet. When Voyager goes to investigates Janeway and Tuvok are accidentally sent back to the same planet a few days before the cataclysm that will ultimately destroy every person on its surface occurs. Horror of horrors! Since they have nothing better to do, the two decide their best bet is to prevent the explosion from happening. This seems rather easy, as they’ve traced it back to a particular power generating MacGuffin which is apparently known to wipe out planetary populations when someone sneezes on the controls. That seems to be a bit of a design flaw to me, but I bet it’s got a great carbon footprint.
Meanwhile in the future, the rest of Voyager’s crew is working on trying to figure out how to get Janeway and Tuvok back. They come up with a system involving some kind of wormhole (though they wrap it in newer sounding tech talk) and start opening up portals everywhere just a few seconds too late to catch them. At the climax of the episode, Janeway is inside the power plant trying to stop a terrorist group from sneezing the wrong way and ending the world. A bunch of people, including Tuvok, are dead because she was trying her hardest to keep them out of this place. Only she suddenly discovers that the terrorist group is not, in fact, genocidal. They know full well that blowing up the power plant would end the world. Then the wormhole opens up behind her and starts moving in a menacing fashion towards a conduit. This being Star Trek, the conduit is apparently lined with C-4 and absolutely vital to the safe and non-explosive operation of the entire facility.
Janeway suddenly realizes that it was the rescue attempt of her crew that caused the explosion in the first place, not this bunch of loonies. She adopts her best “Captain face” and fires on the wormhole, blowing up the device on the other end and probably killing most of her command staff. This doesn’t matter though, because suddenly a bright white light sweeps over everyone and everything, and we cut back to Voyager going on her merry way. Kes wakes up again, then calls the bridge and declares that everyone’s fine. Which has got to be really, really annoying to everyone up there who is now probably thinking that Kes has been growing some really good space-weed in her hydroponic garden. The episode ends on a message of… what, exactly?
I know this is a little low, but this episode is a perfect example of all that is wrong with time travel stories these days. If Voyager was the cause of the explosion and had no reason to visit the planet in the first place (which, by the way, it didn’t) then the explosion never should have happened, and Kes never should have woken up in a cold sweat. That kind of absurdity should be reasons to can the script right there. And yet the episode revels in it. In fact, there really isn’t anything else this episode is about. There’s no attempt at a greater message, no attempt at any kind of commentary on humanity, society, or bad science fiction tropes. Even the somewhat interesting premise of eco-terrorists accidentally ending the world because they’re just as reckless as the people they’re trying to stop is nullified in the end because, what do you know, they’re arguably the only sane ones here. All there is to the episode is forty five minutes of self-indulgence where the writer tries to brag to the audience about how clever they are by being able to warp their minds like that. Sadly, even that falls flat.
Now let’s apply the omniverse model. In this version, the planet is destroyed by something (like, say, someone coming in sick and sneezing on a glowy thing or two toilets being flushed at exactly the same time) and Voyager comes to investigate. They get caught up in the after effects, Janeway and Tuvok get sucked in, etc. Finally, at the end of the story, Janeway fires on the rift and closes it, killing most of her command crew in the process. Yay, we’ve reduced the senior staff to a hologram who is still about a season away from becoming awesome and Harry Kim.
Of course, the problem is that Janeway has now basically ensured that the universe she now occupies will never become the one where her Voyager is currently in orbit and Harry Kim is wondering how he’s going to break it to the crew that he’s the captain now without causing a mass scramble to the escape pods. Are you honestly going to tell me that she isn’t making more of a sacrifice here? That the conflict isn’t more interesting, more worth exploration, than the original anemic version? You could even tack a happy ending on it by having Voyager show up in orbit, perhaps end on a close-up of the other Janeway watching this new universe’s version of her and her crew and shedding a “single tear™” of joy before turning away and setting out to build a new life for herself on this world she has saved. Or take it a step further, have her sent even further back in time, and have Voyager arrive after she’s lived a long full life on the planet’s surface. Sure, it’s still a bad episode. But at least now it’s one that features some form of lasting character development.
And really I can’t think of anything that could do a better job selling this idea than that. Adopting the multiverse brings consequences back into the equation. It requires the characters live with their choices, however they turned out, rather than wiping them away in order to return to the status quo. And why wouldn’t we want that? Choices should always matter in a story, otherwise you might as well just drop the whole thing.

Side Projects, Uncategorized

Isn’t it Time We Stopped Using Paradoxes?

(NOTE: I wrote this article a few years ago, so some of the references may be a bit old.)

                As a writer of fiction which involves time travel as one of its core elements, I have had more than my fair share of questions from friends and readers regarding the question of paradoxes.  Usually I make a habit of avoiding blanket statements as to my own authorial intent or future plans for anything I write, as I have a disturbing habit of proving myself wrong more often than not.  On the question of paradoxes, though, I have no problem in making my opinions clear.  I don’t use them.  Nor do I ever plan to.  Ever.

                To some this may seem vaguely heretical.  Paradoxes and time travel have been linked so closely over the years that it’s practically become an essential part of the genre.  Everyone who dabbles in time travel has had their take on it.  Some even argue that fiction about time travel is really all about paradoxes.  To these kind of people, the omission of such a vital part of the narrative is a mistake comparable to forgetting to include a protagonist: it simply isn’t done.  Even TV shows like Doctor Who, which is ostensibly about a protagonist who does nothing BUT meddle around in history, have had their token episodes warning of the dangers of unleashing a paradox on the world by some small mistake or change made by one of the well meaning protagonists.  These kind of stories seem to establish that, while it may not be something we’re constantly presented with, the paradox is a constantly looming threat that may strike at any moment.

                Unfortunately the problem is that it’s usually crap. 

                Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that there has never been a good paradox story written.  I’ll admit that I did get a sort of guilty pleasure out of watching the most recent Doctor Who paradox episode, wherein the Doctor’s companion Rose Tyler destroys the universe by saving her father.  It made little to no sense in the grand scheme of things, but it did allow for some great character moments and some absolutely brilliant acting on the part of the show’s leads.  But the sad fact is that these are the exception rather than the rule.

                The first problem with paradox stories these days is that, when it comes down to it, they’re basically just a slight retooling of the old trick where the main character wakes up at the end of the story only to realize that it was all a dream.  Every great story centers around conflict, which drives the main characters to action and eventually ends up changing them or the world around them.  And yet the standard fare of paradoxes these days seems to take pride in flaunting that old tradition by completely nullifying any change that occurs.  It’s the cheapest of tricks, and is generally the first thing that any writer is told to avoid.  I suspect that the reason they keep doing it is that a lot of writers have tricked themselves into believing that this is in fact making some kind of profound philosophical statement, and that their readers (or viewers) will be walking away from the experience shaking their head and thinking deep thoughts.

                Which brings me to my second problem with paradoxes as a plot device.  They’re not profound.  Not at all. 

                I think part of the problem is that the very idea of paradoxes were first raised by philosophers before being co-opted by science fiction writers.  Writers, myself included in most cases, are usually laymen playing at being experts.  They learn just enough about the subject their writing about to establish a veneer of credibility.  But when it comes down to it no wholly sane person really expects a diagram from a Star Trek technical manual to work in real life.      But philosophers, well, they’re experts in paradoxes.  They get paid to sit around and make sense of circular logic and complex ideas.  And so, automatically, they get more attention when they say that something bears consideration.

                The problem is that most of these philosophers were raising these paradoxes as reasons for why the time travel stories being presented to them were patently ludicrous.  Their inclusion in so much of time travel fiction wasn’t so much a move towards verisimilitude as it was putting up a huge flag saying “THIS NARRATIVE IS IMPOSSIBLE!”  And in trying to make the stories work anyway, they only ended up creating a whole lot of confusion.  Ultimately it seems this confusion was mistaken for some kind of greater meaning.  And, being writers, most of the group simply decided to run with it.

                Which brings me to the third and final point I’ll raise as to why temporal paradoxes simply don’t work for me.  As a matter of course, the audience is requested to simply sit back and accept that what they see in front of them is possible in the odd sort of hyper-reality that fiction operates in.  For the most part I would say that suspension of disbelief is a good thing.  No one can every get every detail right in fiction, and if they spend too much time trying to get the minutiae nailed down the narrative usually ends up suffering for it. 

                The problem comes in when you consider that the very label of paradox highlights it as an impossible thing.  To fully suspend your disbelief regarding a paradox, you essentially need to stop thinking.  And while that does work very well for some forms of entertainment, in science fiction this is equivalent to suicide.  Sci-Fi has always been a genre relying very heavily on allegory.  When done right it casts familiar human characters into a vastly different set of trials and tribulations in an often unfamiliar setting, and thus works to strip away the influence of the real world to more fully explore who we are.  And you simply cannot interpret this allegory if you are being requested to not think about it.

                Many writers have tried to counter this problem by giving complex explanations of how paradoxes aren’t supposed to happen, but cause a great deal of damage if they do.  Thus, they explain, it’s vital that you try to stop these paradoxes whenever they rear their ugly head.  And they inevitably do, creating millions of new paradoxes without even a second thought.  I’ve yet to hear one good explanation from one of these writers as to how you deal with the problems of conservation of mass or energy when you’ve got molecules existing in two places at the same time.  What’s even more infuriating is the fact that they all tend to use the same explanations anyway, leaving the audience with nothing they haven’t seen a hundred times before.

                Once upon a time, long ago, the idea of a paradox was a new and challenging concept.  It offered writers a chance to experiment with a new kind of story, one where the ability of man to truly control his destiny was constantly being challenged, and all our heroes humbled.  But that time has passed.  And every time I see a writer spit out another repackaged paradox story I can’t help but feel like we are becoming more and more creatively bankrupt.  It’s time we put it to rest.  Fortunately, despite the common misconception, there is more to the concept of time travel than how we can kick physics in the groin and steal it’s lunch money.  In my next installment, I’ll explain to the few readers still interested at this point how I choose to do it.

Plotting Along, Side Projects

Plotting Along – The Phantom Menace (Part 3)

Darth Maul really got a pretty raw deal.
I know, I’m hardly the first person to say this, but it bears repeating nonetheless. Consider the marketing that lead up to the release of this film. Darth Maul was freaking everywhere, glowering down at filmgoers in a grim promise of how uncompromisingly awesome he was going to be. The guy had a cadre of devoted fans before the movie even opened.
Given how it turned out, I sometimes have to wonder if perhaps they went so far overboard with the marketing as an apology to Ray Park for how little screen time he actually ended up getting.

Unfortunately, I can also see why it happened. Darth Maul’s not actually the villain of the film. Palpatine is. Darth Maul’s just an enforcer. And he actually fills that role pretty well. Audiences don’t expect the two hundred pound gorilla who serves as a bouncer/bodyguard for the mob boss to be a richly developed character. But, like Boba Fett before him, Darth Maul looked really cool. Thus everyone really, really wanted him to be more awesome than he actually was.

So how do you fix this? Basically, you do it by almost completely cutting Palpatine out of the film. Which you may be surprised to hear I almost hate saying.

Now, I am a big fan of Rod Hilton’s machete order for viewing the Star Wars films. If you haven’t read the original article yet, go there now. It’s worth a look, and is an excellent demonstration of how making relatively minor changes to the plot structure of the story as a whole can actually improve both trilogies. And one of the things that he highlights in it that makes the whole concept work is the fact that Palpatine is actually a really freaking scary villain in the prequels.

Think about it: the guy not only managed to engineer a war, he managed to engineer it in such a way that he was actually leading both sides. In addition to that he managed to get the Jedi to break their long-standing prohibition against getting actively involved in military conflicts, leading to the corruption and ultimate destruction of the entire order save for a few stragglers who went into seclusion, and he did it all without ever being so much as suspected of being a Sith. Even at the end when he was revealed it was because he flat out admitted it to a Jedi. This is the villain we really wanted. But sadly many people rejected him because, well, he was an old guy in a robe. He didn’t look cool, and no amount of awesome evil voice work was going to sway people’s minds in that regard.

By letting Darth Maul have Palpatine’s (or more accurately Darth Sideous’s) scenes and lines though we achieve two goals. The first is that we are no longer disappointing fans looking for a scary and awesome looking villain. The second is that Darth Maul can now actually be present in person at Naboo, running things directly. Which is greatly preferable to just having Sideous sending instructions via hologram the entire time. There’s a reason Darth Vader always lead from the front, and it has everything to do with how the audience reacts to seeing a menacing super-powered badass ready to step in when the army of useless stormtroopers inevitably fail.

So would this change diminish Palpatine? Well, maybe. Frankly though I think it would be worth it and possibly only serve to make him more threatening in the second and third films if you mostly cut him out of the first simply by letting the threat of him loom a bit. After all most Star Wars fans knew he was the emperor going in. Letting him be there but apparently not doing much would set everyone wondering just what plans he might have in place, or even if he was actually a sith yet. It would also help close the plot hole formed when the captured Trade Federation leaders didn’t immediately turn around and announce that, yes, they were taking instructions from a creepy guy in a cloak who referred to Darth Maul as an apprentice, and could we please not get shot now? In fact you could even capitalize on it by having a scene where the Jedi are questioning them about Maul trying to find if he was the master or the Apprentice. All of them say that he was running the show, except perhaps for one who offers an opinion that he thought Maul might have been getting instructions from somewhere else. Or if that’s too much just give him some last words, perhaps a barely coherent plea to his master for help. In short, give us a little bit of mystery here as to what the balance of power is.

And with that out of the way, that only leaves the side characters… oof.

So first off, R2-D2. In an early draft he was actually supposed to be the POV character, recounting the history of the Skywalker family from his own experiences to an advanced being hundreds if not thousands of years after the battle of Yavin. And, even though that was dropped, he actually fills that role really well. He’s the perfect fly on the wall character – always present yet usually ignored. To paraphrase the awesome HK-47 from Knights of the Old Republic, “Droids are like furniture. No one thinks much about them. Which makes it the perfect surprise when the lamp in the corner pulls out a high powered blaster combine and liquidates them.” So how does the quirky little astromech do?

Actually, pretty well. R2-D2 is more or less perfectly handled in The Phantom Menace. This time he’s brand new, and obviously a bit more capable as a result of it, but frankly what else did we expect? I imagine he’s pretty far out of warranty by the time A New Hope rolls around.

And C-3PO. The overly polite slightly prissy protocol droid who really has no business being in a war. In this movie, he’s presented to us as a naked do-it-yourself project in some kid’s bedroom.

And again, I really don’t have a problem with it. I actually think it’s kind of a good twist on the character that 3PO, who always made a point of bragging about the features he had to everyone he met, was actually cobbled together from spare parts and junk. As for the alleged plot hole of why Vader never recognized him… should he? How often did they actually interact in the original trilogy? And, if you think about it, how many identical protocol droids are out there? The fact that C-3PO and R2 were able to pretend to be droids belonging to the Death Star in a New Hope suggests that there were probably quite a few gold-plated protocol droids and blue astromechs on board the station, so seeing a droid that was identical to C-3PO was probably a daily occurrence.

Which leaves… which leaves…
(sigh)
Jar-Jar.

Okay. Well, first off we should be asking a very important question: does he even need to be here?

No, he doesn’t. At no point are his actions vital to the plot. Taking them to the Gungan city? Naboo has been populated for long enough that I’m pretty sure that the humans know the Gungans are there. Leading the Gungan forces? We’ve already got a Gungan officer character who can do that. Comic relief? You do realize you have a naked C-3PO in this movie, right? And a sarcastic snarky Obi-Wan? Enough said.

So yeah, my thoughts (unsurprisingly) is that this is a character that simply does not need to be here. If you really wanted to keep him though, I would actually suggest taking a page from the Clone Wars series currently wrapping up on Cartoon Network. There they make the simple change of having the disaster that follows in his wake due not to him being mind-numbingly stupid and cowardly, but simply profoundly unlucky. In which case you could make his introduction more the result of the Gungans trying to snub Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon by offering them a guide that they feel will be a hindrance. But honestly, the movie would be well served by just getting rid of him completely.