The audiobook for Accidental Warrior is completed and off to QA at ACX! I’m hoping this process won’t take more than a few weeks but, with everything else that has been upended during this pandemic, I’m keeping my fingers crossed. In the meantime, it’s back to working on getting Complicated finished and ready for publication. That is now looking like January. Was hoping/planning for before Christmas, but it’s pretty clear that’s not going to happen. And while that’s going on, I need to find time to write on a new project. It’s all fun, though …
One topic that comes up frequently is how to write about something you haven’t experienced directly. The answer – to me anyway – is research. I have seen people write – and heard them declaim – that you can’t write a story about war if you weren’t in the military, can’t write a spy story if you never did that, can’t write about medicine if you’re not a doc and on and on. I think there is a kernel of truth here. Direct personal experience can inform your writing and it should help make it more vivid. Could Tolstoy have written the way he did about Austerlitz or Borodino if he had not served in the Crimean War? Still, careful research can allow a writer to describe scenes they have not seen. It has to be that way. There is no writer currently living who has experienced a nineteenth century battle or a clash of medieval knights. In the same way, being a doctor today is not going to allow a writer to invent a medicine-based scene in a story set in a world at the level of the middle ages. You need to do your research. Granted, the more direct experience you have, the easier it is to do the research and reach a good result, but you have to do that work and, if you do it, I do not think you need to start off by being an expert.
For recent reading, I would like to mention Vagabonds by Hao Jingfang, translated by Ken Liu. This is a fascinating book. Mars has revolted against Earth and won its war of independence forty years before the book opens. Hard feelings, tension and the potential for renewed conflict remain. The two planets have very different social, philosophical and political structures. Earth is presented as individualism and capitalism taken to an extreme (maybe gone amok) while Mars is shown – initially – as close to a socialist ideal. The story focuses on a group of Martian teenagers sent to Earth for their high school years – the ultimate in foreign exchange students. As the book proceeds, the author develops both the good and bad sides of the structures of Earth and Mars in contrast to the simplistic views that many of the characters hold (and are presented at the beginning). This evolution is shown through the views and experiences of the students who undergo a profound culture shock, both in adapting to Earth and on returning to Mars. This is done very realistically and is like the experience of many students today who study in other countries during their high school years (also for college students who do this and folks who work as expats, but I think the impact is greater when one is younger). This book is really about social and political structures and the philosophy that goes with them. It brings to mind, for example, works of Ayn Rand (although the political perspective is very different!). The use of glass as a building material on Mars made me first think of We by Zamyatin, but in Vagabonds a good scientific and engineering reason is given for its use. It is important to realize before starting in on this big book that it is not action-based, there are no battles. While there is a little adventure, there is not much and readers looking for that will be disappointed. This is an intense book about people, the way they perceive their lives and the social structures they live in. There are a few interesting items that may be a function of translation. The government of Mars is the “Boule”, an old Greek civic structure. This seems to work well for the way the government is described, but the head of the Boule is the “consul” which comes from the Roman Republic and Empire and feels a little jarring. More difficult is the use of the word “atelier” to define what feels like guilds or collective organizations. I would love to know about possible alternative translations for the Chinese word used in the original and why Mr. Liu chose “atelier”. Overall, I found this an excellent book and definitely worth reading.