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Lawrence M. Schoen: “Marginally self-aware collections of atoms”

Interviews

Lawrence M. Schoen is cognitive psychologist and Hugo-nominated writer living in Philadelphia, whom I first met 20 years ago when he taught a class in psycholinguistics at New College in Sarasota, Florida, where I was studying for my BA. His stories have appeared in venues like Analog and Andromeda Spaceways, as well as in translation in a variety of languages around the world. This Codex Blog Tour interview delves into the intersection of writing, cognitive psychology, Schoen’s life, and in a way, everything else that matters in the universe.

You have a pretty fascinating combination of careers: cognitive psychologist, small press publisher, and writer, with a past decade spent as a professor and a serious involvement on the side with the Klingon language (that sultry minx). Does this multiplicity of interests work for you? Is there much synergy among these parts of your life?

I like to keep busy. No, scratch that. I need to keep busy. I’m the poster child for that bit about idle hands. Really though all the things you mention, the cognitive psych, the writing, the publishing, the Klingon, they’re all different facets of the meeting points of creativity and language.

At some level I truly believe that all human endeavor is the same endeavor. All art and science is after the same thing. All dreams and efforts are attempting the same thing. Whether you call it trying to understand the world, or finding purpose, or justify our existence doesn’t matter. It’s all commentary, from a single mind, expressed to a mostly indifferent but occasionally intrigued world. This applies whether we’re talking about paintings on a cave wall, a mathematical proof, the lines in a teenager’s diary, or the cutesy names I give to my dog (who this very morning I was calling “vomit puppy”). I don’t want to get all touchy-feely and say we’re all “star stuff” (though we are), but at the end of the day we are all marginally self-aware collections of atoms with opinions and ideas about other collections of atoms. To not find synergy in the actions and directions of a person’s life would be a great surprise.

At a less heady level (which is probably what you were going for, sorry), yes indeed, the different tangents of my life do indeed influence one another on a regular basis. My training as a research psychologist with a particular fetish for language and memory constantly informs the fiction that I write. The fiction that I write colors what fiction from other authors that I edit and publish, and vice versa. My interest in Klingon is fueled by my expertise in language as a psychological construct, by being a genre author and publisher, by appreciating the combination of timing and technology that put me in the right time and place with the right skill set to lead an international effort to work with a constructed language.

Or more simply, I have a really great life!

A lot of your fiction to date has been about the spacefaring hypnotist The Amazing Conroy. What is it about Conroy that is compelling for you as a writer?

BUFFALITO CONTINGENCY, Schoen's latest book

Like many writers of my generation, I grew up reading Burroughs and Heinlein. I like my fiction to have a happy ending. I like to see everything resolved and tied up with a bow at the end, for the good guy (or girl) to win out over the bad, and for the unjust to be defeated. Conroy does that for me. He’s the little guy who wins, not necessarily because of any great attribute he possesses, but because he’s got a good heart. He’s a decent enough guy, despite being a bit of a rogue.

They hypnosis part means he gets to play with people’s reality. This isn’t just fun, it’s also a great vehicle that I need to remember to take better advantage of. Conroy gets to change what people believe, perhaps only for a few minutes while they’re on stage, perhaps in subtler and longer lasting ways. Of course, we all do that every day, but we’re not usually doing it so overtly or deliberately or as a form of entertainment.

And too, there’s a lot that’s autobiographical in Conroy. He wants to be liked (don’t we all?), and he wants to succeed. He wants to be special. He makes mistakes, but doesn’t always see them. He’s the center of his own world — a point that is played up by my always writing him in the first person — but he’s more often a protagonist than a “hero.” He’s a good guy, trying to be better, but he’s flawed. I think all of these factors make it easier for readers to identify with him.

Have cognitive psychology and linguistics offered you any insights into how to write or why you write? Additionally, do they help with characters, stories, or voice?

I used to wish I was one of those authors who claim they “have” to write. Like I’ll go mad or become self-destructive or commit violence if I don’t have that release. Nyah, sorry, that’s not me. But I am fascinated by people, and always have been. That’s probably what propelled me into psychology way back when, the variety of people and their behaviors, the manifestations of their motivations and the choices they make. I do believe that everyone has a story but that most of them don’t have the means to tell it well.

I’m very comfortable writing dialogue. I’m usually pretty good about having different characters sound like different people, and I can be impatient or incredulous with authors who can’t do this. Both sides of that stem from a passion for language that goes back at least as far as being twelve and hanging out with people who were trying to teach me articulatory phonetics and elvish in the same afternoon.

So, yes, my background in psychology and language do have an effect on my characters and my stories, and most definitely on my voice. There are a lot of writers in our field with PhD’s and/or who have spent time as professors. Most of them have degrees in the “hard” sciences, disciplines like physics and chemistry and biology. I was trained using the same tools, the same scientific method as they were, but my subject matter has the added kicker of volition and attitude and the other experimental irritants that go along with consciousness. My worldbuilding is less concerned with getting right the mixture of gases that make up a planet’s atmosphere and more about social structures or language quirks or the impact of alien attributes on memory. For example, one requirement that I gave myself for every Conroy work is that someone in the story has some mental phenomenon that we might label as some form or other of “telepathy,” and that they have to be different every time. This allows me to play with the impact of such a device on the psychology of the people and world around it. If I were a biochemist or an astronomer, I don’t think I’d care about it so much.

What’s your biggest challenge at this point in your life? What quest are you on?

About ten years ago I had a philosophical awakening in my life, and turned myself around. I like to say that I greatly reduced my asshole quotient (though there’s still plenty left) and I became a much nicer person. At the heart of this was the realization that I’d spent most of my life unconsciously sabotaging every relationship I’d been in, professional, social, romantic, you name it. Fortunately, included in that realization was the means to stop screwing things up. As I began rebuilding my life, I made a deliberate choice to stop engaging in zero-sum games. No more of the “for me to win, you have to lose” mindset. Since then, I strive to create win-win scenarios, defining the terms for my own success and well being on ensuring that I bring the other person(s) along with me. It has made an amazing difference.

In the summer of 2009 I turned fifty, and I made another major life decision. As I began to move into the beginning of my second half-century, I acknowledged that I’d accomplished pretty much every goal I’d ever set for myself. I’d been married to a wonderful woman. I’d achieved recognition in my academic field. I’d published a novel. Things like that. Which meant that moving forward at fifty, it didn’t have to all be about me! I’m still writing, more so than ever actually, but with less pressure. Instead, I’m looking for more ways to pay it forward. I’m doing more mentoring. I’m trying to take the things I’ve learned along the way and assist colleague and friends, as well as younger and beginning writers, to achieve their aims and write the stories they want to tell. And you know, it’s incredibly gratifying. More surprising still, is that it’s making me a better writer. Talk about your win-win scenarios, all unlooked for.

I’m not sure where it’s all going to go, where it’s going to take me. In February of this year my wife and I hosted a new writing workshop out of our home. Six writers came together for a very long weekend of feedback, critique, and novel blocking. It was brilliant. It was exhausting. It was incredibly satisfying and transformational. And I want to do it again, every year, possibly twice a year. It’s an incredible feeling to connect with other authors in this way, to be part of a community that helps one another to become better, to share in the creative process so freely. I said it above in answer to your first question, and I can’t think of a better way to end here. I have a really great life!

You can find some free examples of Schoen’s work online, including the story “Mars Needs Baby Seals,” posted for International Polar Bear Day at http://www.lawrencemschoen.com/freebies/ipb-2011/ and his reading of “Sweet Potato Pie” for the Balticon podcast: http://balticonpodcast.org/wordpress/2010/04/bc44-89-lawrence-m-schoen-reading/.

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Promoting Our Writing to other Launderers

Writing

A writer friend/acquaintance whose work I quite like was discussing a short fiction project (the Daily Cabal, which is very, very short science fiction posted every weekday morning) today and said “For some reason I can’t quite fathom, most of SF readers are also SF writers.”

This touched a nerve in me. I don’t have the numbers to prove it, but there’s no reason to believe most readers of science fiction/speculative fiction are writers. A lot of writers do seem to believe it, though, probably because so many of their friends, acquaintances, critiquing buddies, and in some cases fellow con-goers who read science fiction are writers. But this is like a steel worker who reads science fiction concluding that most science fiction readers are steel workers because his friends that read science fiction are steel workers. For us writers to know what the average science fiction reader is like instead of what our friends who read science fiction are like, we’d have to not be writers.

Another friend pointed out that a great many of the people discussing short science fiction online are science fiction writers. That might be true (again, it would be very hard to get statistics), but the people who discuss reading science fiction aren’t likely to be a random cross-section of the readers of science fiction. Writers are much more likely to discuss writing than non-writers, after all.

In the end, I have no statistics on this, but I think the thing to take away is to have great caution about what any personal sampling of readers tells you unless that sampling is somehow a cross-section reflective of an entire readership. The people who write letters to the editor at the newspaper are not the average newspaper readers; they’re an unusual group within newspaper readers. The people who come to signings tend to be the most die-hard fans, not the person who picked up your book because the cover looked interesting and there was nothing good on TV. If you’re a writer, your friends who read are very unlikely to be typical readers.

I mentioned touching a nerve earlier: maybe it’s more accurate to call it a pet peeve. I don’t like it when writers go out of their way to market their fiction to other writers. To friends, sure. To your writing group, sure. But don’t go and put up a post about your latest short fiction sale being out in bookstores now on a public writing discussion group; don’t give out swag at writer’s conferences. Just because writers are readers and are easy to find doesn’t mean that they’re where you should be putting your effort. How far can we really get, taking in each other’s laundry? Besides, it’s a market that gets far too many advertisements.

Even a blog about writing is a questionable enterprise from a marketing point of view. If you’re writing about writing because it lets you market your new novel to amateur writers, this is just the laundry thing again. Figure out what kind of readers you have and go market to them, says I.

Which may bring you to wonder what I think I’m doing with this writing blog. Well, there’s a good justification for it on the one hand and a real reason for it on the other. And then, of course, there’s the real real reason for it.

The justification is that my first book (
Talk the Talk: The Slang of 65 American Subcultures) is a book for writers. It’s of interest to a lot of people who aren’t writers, but it was written with writers especially in mind and is published by Writer’s Digest books. So I’m in the unusual situation of being a writer whose market is actually writers. It’s as though I specialize in cleaning launderer uniforms, which is a legitimate niche trade.

The real reason is that for years and years I’ve been profoundly interested in learning about writing and in spreading the knowledge. That’s why I started Codex, and I hope to be able to be of some use to writers here.

And the real real reason is that I like to mouth off about my writing opinions in a semi-irresponsible way and need a forum in which to do it.

There’s probably another reason behind that somewhere, but that moves out of the realm of writing and into the realm of psychotherapy, and there’s no need to get ridiculous with it.
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The Myth of the Science Fiction Ghetto

Writing

There’s an old and revered legend that circulates among science fiction and fantasy writers, and it goes like this: “A lot of people won’t read science fiction just because it’s labelled ‘science fiction,’ so publishers call some science fiction ‘mainstream’ and then people will read it, but it’s really science fiction.” Optionally, the legend may include “Authors who won’t call their work science fiction are selling out.”

The same thing is said about fantasy; I’ll deal with science fiction here for convenience, but the same arguments apply.

As you can probably tell from the title of this entry, I don’t exactly agree with this idea, and I think the exact reason the ghetto is a myth leads to an important thing for writers (at least science fiction and fantasy writers) to understand, of which more in a moment.

What books are we talking about here? Margaret Atwood (for instance, The Handmaid’s Tale) and Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse Five, for example) get a lot of mentions in this context. More recent examples include Maria Doria Russell (The Sparrow) and Gregory Macguire (Wicked).

Here’s how people seem to look at this: if a story is set in the future (like The Handmaid’s Tale) or contains science fictional elements (like the interstellar flight in The Sparrow), it’s science fiction. If science fiction is defined solely by subject matter, that makes sense. But is that the most useful definition of science fiction? I’m big on “useful.”

Think about it this way: as a reader, which of the following is more important for you to know about a book?

A) Exactly what subject matter it contains, or

B) Whether or not you’re likely to enjoy it.

Or as a writer, which of the following do you care about more?

A) A taxonomic classification of your book based on an analysis of story and setting elements, or

B) Who will buy your book.

In both cases, we have a choice between A, which gives us rigid categories that take into account only certain aspects of a book and B, which gives us information about what books are good for what people.

A and B are not equivalent. Putting a spaceship into a story doesn’t necessarily make it appealing to all science fiction readers, and for many readers, how a story is told counts for a lot more than what props show up in it or when it’s set.

I’ll use the term “mainstream science fiction” here to describe stories that contain elements we usually associate with science fiction but that are written for a general audience instead of primarily for science fiction readers.

So, recently a writer friend and I were discussing Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow, which I’d call “mainstream science fiction,” and Hyperion, by Dan Simmons, a novel that’s clearly labelled and read as science fiction. My friend asked what I thought made The Sparrow mainstream science fiction and Hyperion genre science fiction. My answer was this:

1) The Sparrow focuses on the story and characters rather than the speculative elements. The speculative elements are background rather than foreground.

2) The Sparrow presents speculative elements gently, in ways that mainstream readers find easier to adjust to. No terms are thrown out without indications of what they mean. No speculative elements are introduced simply for coolness factor: they are streamlined to the essentials required to tell the story.

I readily admit that these aren’t hard-and-fast distinctions, but they’re meaningful distinctions to readers.

Here’s the opening of The Sparrow:

On December 7, 2059, Emilio Sandoz was released from the isolation ward of Salvator Mundi Hospital in the middle of the night and transported in a bread van to the Jesuit Residence at Number 5 Borgo Santo Spirito, a few minutes’ walk across St. Peter’s Square from the Vatican.

And the opening of Hyperion:

The Hegemony Consul sat on the balcony of his ebony spaceship and played Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C-sharp Minor on an ancient but well-maintained Steinway while great, green saurian things surged and bellowed in the swamps below.

In Hyperion, we’re supposed to take a variety of speculative elements (the existence of some sort of Hegemony; big, green monsters; and a spaceship with a balcony) in stride.

In The Sparrow, the only immediate speculative element is the date, and that is immediately comprehensible to everyone. Russell failed to take the initiative to come up with a more plausible future vehicle than a bread van or to create a brand new religious order. Throughout the rest of the first chapter, there is only a reference to a mission to a place (the reader will probably conclude that it’s a planet) called Rakhat, and a mention in passing of the fairly non-speculative effects of travelling at near light speed.

Hyperion has several times as many speculative elements on the first page as The Sparrow has in the entire first chapter. Actually, Hyperion has more speculative elements in the first sentence than The Sparrow has in its entire first chapter!

The essence of mainstream science fiction as compared to genre science fiction is how it expects its readers to deal with speculative elements, their tolerance and ability to grok them. So mainstream vs. genre is a meaningful distinction that is useful to readers, because it helps them select books that are or are not suited to their tastes. Some genre readers aren’t interested in mainstream fiction because it doesn’t have enough wild stuff. Some mainstream readers aren’t interested in genre fiction because it asks them to do things with their brains that they don’t like to do and that their brains aren’t currently good at.

Why is this important to writers? Because while every book you write has to be a book you love, you also have to know who else out there in the world will read it. If you want to reach a larger audience, you have to tell your story in a way that they will be willing to read. If you want to reach science fiction readers, you need to tell the story in the way that they want to hear it told. And these are basic writing choices rather than simply labels slapped on by publishers.

From here we get into trickier questions, like the Harry Potter stories. In a sense, Harry Potter stories are clearly fantasy: they throw out a lot of magical things and don’t explain everything. But they still don’t demand the reader to juggle ideas in the way the usual adult fantasy novel these days does, in part because there’s no attempt to justify the magical system. Thus the Harry Potter books manage to be mainstream books in the same way a science fiction movie like Independence Day, which doesn’t require audiences to imagine anything radically new, is a mainstream movie.

But there’s a subtler point here, which is that if you can make the payoff high enough, you can ask more of your readers (or viewers). Many kids and adults who wouldn’t have been interested in reading a fantasy story under normal circumstances simply got so much enjoyment out of Harry Potter that they were willing to accept his impossible world, just as many of Michael Crichton’s readers will sit still for discussions of reconstructing DNA because later in the story, they get to see characters they care about running from a ravenous T-Rex.

The lessons I take from all this are as follows, then. Rule one: write a story in a way that readers are willing to read it. Rule two: if you can write a story that fascinates people, you can break rule one and any number of other rules. Rules aren’t made to be broken, but you could argue that in writing, they are made to be transcended.

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