Writer's Blog

Giveaway Fun: Enter To Win A Copy of Falaha’s Journey

Posted on by Jeno Marz / 2 Comments

This autumn I’m doing a book give­away on Goodreads. This is my first such event and I have three copies to give away this time. Enter this give­away by November 6th and share with friends for their chance to win a paper­back of my sci­ence fic­tion ser­ial novel, Falaha’s Jour­ney: A Spacegirl’s Account in Three Move­ments, the first vol­ume in Falaha’s Jour­ney series. Sign up at the bottom of this post. The copy you’ll be get­ting has this blue cover:

Alternative Cover Version (Smashwords / B&N / iTunes / etc.)

A young girl with ambi­tion.
A des­per­ate man on a mis­sion.
An ancient enemy set to wipe out their entire race.

When a seem­ingly sim­ple space res­cue mis­sion turns into a night­mare, Falaha, a Danna Com­man­der Trainee with a power she can’t use prop­erly yet, has her skills put to the ulti­mate test as her world begins to col­lapse, throw­ing her to the cen­ter of the con­flict that might wipe out her entire race.

The Danna are a species of humanoid aliens who share the Milky Way with human­ity. Unlike humans, they have been around for at least three bil­lion years and are the old­est species in the Galaxy. Born with an alien arti­fact in their blood, they pos­sess abil­i­ties sur­pass­ing any­thing any liv­ing crea­ture can dream of. How­ever, both their superb space tech­nol­ogy and their unusual blood legacy have attracted dan­ger no one expected. Aban­don­ing their home Galaxy, the remain­ing pop­u­la­tion sets out in secrecy to their last resort, Kan Diona, the place to wit­ness their vic­tory or to become their grave.

FALAHA’S JOURNEY is a vivid tale of alien species, races, and cul­tures, a fam­ily saga span­ning mul­ti­ple gen­er­a­tions and extend­ing across the Uni­verse, a tale of iden­tity, explo­ration, and self-discovery amidst a dev­as­tat­ing strug­gle for sur­vival, and a love story that touches the stars.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Falaha's Journey by Jeno Marz

Falaha's Journey

by Jeno Marz

Giveaway ends November 06, 2015.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway
Writer's Blog

Figuring Out an Epic

Posted on by Jeno Marz / 2 Comments

I was planning to write this post for some time. But then life happened, and I have a new PC, so it took me a while to stop playing with my new toy and get back to work. 😉 I’m now enjoying a Dell machine (after being a devoted HP user) with Windows 10 on it. So far I love it. I haven’t tried any numerical modeling soft yet, but I’m thinking it will run just fine. I’m looking at that MITgcm again (virtual machine for Linux, though). It certainly can work out now. *Happy Dance*

Now, onto the topic of this post, where I’ll be attempting to examine a genre of Epic. In my case that would be epic science fiction and how it differs from space opera.

I never classified Falaha’s Journey as an epic. Because when I wrote it, epic was not on my mind at all. In my head I refer to this story just a story. Not science fiction, or anything else. Though it is a hard science fiction story among other things.

Now, while working on Rjg (I made it halfway through chapter six and then returned to chapter one to rewrite it), I realized that I don’t have a fixed genre for this story as well. It is science fiction, but it is not quite the standard candle. It fits the epic slot quite well.

Epic. I had a few people call Falaha that and after some analysis of the subject I have to agree on the designation. It is an epic and a just little bit of a space opera.

I’m somewhat familiar with epic literature. I’ve read Homer and Virgil, and some of Plato’s poems. And, of course, the Epic of Gilgamesh among others.

So I dug around to learn the details of what an epic actually is. What are the characteristics of an epic?

My general knowledge was that it has a hero, and the said hero does some important deeds on the scale of a nation or civilization. Turns out, to some extent, I wasn’t far from truth in my subtle hunch.

Reading Epic: An Introduction to the Ancient Narratives gives quite a detailed insight into the genre and its roots. In short,

For Greece and Rome this is the simplest explanation: it is a long narrative written in hexameters (or a comparable vernacular measure) which concentrates either on the fortunes of a great hero or perhaps a great civilization and the interactions of this hero and his civilization with the gods (Merchant 1971: vii).

Of course, this is not a description of a full range of ancient epic literature. It’s quite a complex genre to grasp. But in terms of themes, first of all

heroism and the hero are at the very heart of mythological and historical epic. Praise of the glory of heroes (klea andron) is perhaps the basis of the concept of heroism.

In many instances the hero is also the face of his civilization.

Then, the epic continuously stresses the relationship of said heroes with their parents — particularly fathers, since the epic is a patriarchal world.

Third, religion is important in epic.

And lastly, nostalgia and glorification of bygone eras accounts for the appeal of the epic narrative.

If we take a description of epics in modern cinema, that would be

Epic film is a genre that takes historical events and people and interprets them in a larger scale. Historical accuracy is not the main focus in Epics, but rather the telling of a grandiose story.

Epic film subgenres are biopics (dramatize the life of a significant person in history), historical (about a particular time in history), war (these look at the reality of war on a grand scale), and religious (focus on important religious leaders as well as stories of religious significance). I’m sure the same things are present in literature.

Certainly, epics share some similarity with space opera.

Hartwell and Cramer (Hartwell and Cramer 2008, Introduction, pp. 10-18.) define space opera as

colorful, dramatic, large-scale science fiction adventure, competently and sometimes beautifully written, usually focused on a sympathetic, heroic central character and plot action, and usually set in the relatively distant future, and in space or on other worlds, characteristically optimistic in tone. It often deals with war, piracy, military virtues, and very large-scale action, large stakes.

Sci­ence fic­tion is the genre that prob­a­bly has as many def­i­n­i­tions as there are authors. Some of them share much in com­mon, some have dif­fer­ent approaches to the genre, which shifts as cul­ture and tech­nol­ogy shifts. I’m not going to touch the topic of sub­gen­res here, they bring in addi­tional defin­ing characteristics (as the space opera above).

The for­mal def­i­n­i­tions of SF fairly closely resem­ble the sets of pro­to­cols for writ­ing genre SF, yet no fully sat­is­fac­tory def­i­n­i­tion of SF exists. Some more definitions can be found here.

Since I write what is called hard sci­ence fic­tion, my own def­i­n­i­tion of science fiction would be a genre in which the story set­ting — the world — is grounded in the tenets of sci­en­tific think­ing. In the worlds cre­ated for this genre it is accepted that there is noth­ing besides a phys­i­cal real­ity and that every­thing is, in prin­ci­ple if not in prac­tice, explain­able and gov­erned by phys­i­cal laws. Even if a story in this genre employs FTL, or time travel, it is assumed that this is some­how (and yet bet­ter — explained) a phys­i­cal pos­si­bil­ity and that it is not done by super­nat­ural means. Thus, if tech­no­log­i­cal and/or sci­en­tific basis is taken away from such a story, it col­lapses. Civ­i­liza­tions and cul­tures also fol­low the laws, e.g. those of biol­ogy, accord­ing to which they evolve and work. There are real­is­tic under­ly­ing prin­ci­ples that allow — or don’t allow — things to happen.

So, if I put it all together, an epic science fiction tale would be a dramatic, universe-spanning science-fiction adventure (or at least a planet-scale one, depending on the time-period — space setting is not a necessity) of epic proportions (and sharing epic themes — e.g. glorification of the future time period and/or setting), espousing, at its core, elements or scenarios that focus on the more positive, more optimistic, larger-than-life, heroic vein, which runs counter to the real world’s colder, darker, mostly negative version of reality.

What do you think? How would you define epic science fiction?

Writer's Blog

The Power of Slow Stories

Posted on by Jeno Marz / 2 Comments

Pacing.

The speed at which the story moves.

Clarity, accent on the details, and something juicy happening — these are the basics of good storytelling.

Quick-paced story with lots happening all the time, slow when nothing much happens, or so it seems. But even in slow-paced stories things happen, and quite intensely at that. These stories have that inner movement that is concealed from the quick-screening eye. You have to slow down and look better.

Most slower-paced stories are usually character-driven stories, while faster-paced ones are plot-driven.

Slow and steady is the storytelling at its most thoughtful, most expansive, and most human. It is to look at things from multiple perspectives and sides and angles, with depth and breadth.

Fiction writers are advised to keep things fast because people are impatient now and apparently there are too many other things competing for their attention so they don’t have the time or interest for leisurely pacing. In the time of oversaturation with insane amounts of content, they want it all and they want it now.

It doesn’t mean slow stories must go away because someone somewhere can’t slow down to process them.

I must confess — I love slow stories. Slow, complex stories. They focus on plot and even more so on characters, and less on action. They hook me with the gradual descent into things, when I have the time to catch my breath and contemplate, and reflect upon what I read/watch. And adjust my expectations of a promised good ride. I love to take my time and eventually collect high returns even if waiting felt like agony (for some people). I will surely remember it better than a fast-paced roller coaster, which ends in painful withdrawal when the ride is suddenly over. Looking back at my experience I can surely say that I still remember slower, richer stories, years later, while fast ones were quickly forgotten. That’s why I will always favor slow stories. I want to re-read and re-watch and savor the details and gain a deeper appreciation for the story before me. I want that in my fiction.

Love it or hate it, my own style had developed from exposure to this particular kind of stories.

There’s nothing wrong with writing slower fiction. Life may appear like it’s happening at hyper speed, but more fascinating and exciting things in our world are the result of subtle changes and shifts over time.

Civilizations/Writer's Blog

Superintelligence: What’s in Store?

Posted on by Jeno Marz / 2 Comments

Today I want to delve into the topic of intelligence and superintelligence. I have some interest in this subject, including AIs and smart, fast (high IQ) brains, and I touched on this theme in my fiction, presenting my version of superintelligent beings of various kinds.

Intelligence can be defined in many different ways and what is considered intelligent varies with culture. Generally it is one’s capacity for problem solving, creativity, planning, memory, emotional knowledge, logic, abstract thought, learning, communication and self-awareness. Rather than book smarts, it reflects a broader and deeper capability to perceive and comprehend things and figuring out what to do. It’s the ability to understand complex ideas, to adapt effectively to the environment, to learn from experience, to engage in various forms of reasoning and to think how to overcome obstacles.

Intelligence and intellect should not be seen as synonyms though their relationship in consciousness is definitely symbiotic.

Being intellectual means knowing things, having the ability to identify and analyze, memorize and categorize objective facts of the external situation: the physical characteristics and implications of whatever is perceived by the senses. Intellectual is cognitive. It’s the ability to inquire and learn.

Being intelligent implies taking those objective facts and figuring out their meaning and/or purpose, and determine the course of action to be taken.

Training the intellect does not result in intelligence (unless you rewire that brain somehow). In intelligence is the inherent capacity to feel as well as to reason. The way we feel and the strength of feeling determines how we evaluate the facts and how we respond to them.

An intelligent person has a strong mental capacity, can think quickly, can pick up on things and can also sometimes have insight that isn’t obvious to others.

So, what is it like to have an extremely high intelligence?

What could superintelligence be like?

What mental abilities an extremely intelligent mind would have?

Clearly, all this is highly speculative. Our ability to understand a superintelligence is limited to our own intelligence. And this is exactly why AI is considered a singularity event: we have no idea what truly sentient superintelligence would be like and what its effect would be, since even superintelligence wouldn’t be enough to predict the “firmware” of a superintelligence.

Is a purely organic superintelligent mind physically possible in humans?

Assuming it is so, such mind would be a product of structure similar, but more capable than, a typical human brain, and no enhancement would necessarily be required.

There certainly are numerous examples of human brain undergo significant transformations while recovering from many kinds of traumatic events, tumors, stroke, etc. This sometimes results in neural connections between portions of the brain that normally are not connected. The outcome can be a spectrum of conditions known as synesthesia. Perhaps, a superintelligent mind could be expected to possess similar set of conditions, that would result in a mind capable of achieving profound insights and more powerful levels of inspiration and creativity.

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Such mind would also need to be able to logically process such tremendous stream of sensory information. To do so, it would need either to process the various streams of data arriving really fast and/or operate multiple processing centers in the brain, and combine those disparate data streams into a coherent mental construct — awareness – and then act and react.

Another thing that also comes to mind is that he/she would probably behave indistinguishable from any regular human being, having

a) an ability to make the most precise systemic analysis of any visible phenomena characterizing any human emotion and gain a unique perspective about the motivation behind it;

b) eventually collecting a massive database of those (facial expressions, body gestures, involuntary reflexes, etc.) that he/she would openly read any person he/she encounters based on their behavior, even studying a few seconds of it would tell him/her everything, and

c) possessing an uncanny ability to mimic precisely any of the above that he/she chose.

Having an ability to adjust himself/herself to any person would make it easy for him/her to manipulate people as well. Having a complete control of his/her behavior, he/she would show only what is expected of him/her at any given moment.

Yet that person would probably feel like purely intuitive and realistic at the same time, because of the faster ‘computing’, more comprehensive ‘computing’, seeing new links in data, coming to new conclusions, revolutionizing understanding by new theories, models and approaches.

It is possible that unless fed with appropriate input he/she would get bored and in certain circumstances maybe become anti-social or even go psychotic, but such mind would certainly flourish in an environment that would nourish the ever-hunger. Hunger for knowledge, hunger for intelligent and empathetic interaction, an intense craving for near-constant challenges with which to engage its full range of capacity.

Such a mind would benefit from possessing an eidetic memory, either natural or technologically enhanced. Yet at the same time the mind would need to have an option to selectively disengage from all that repository of information to avoid being overwhelmed and have a calm reflection on things contemplated, and to relax and/or sleep.

As I stated earlier in this post, unlimited intelligence is not the same as having real-time data stream on which someone makes real time decisions – that would be the intellect, unless backed by high intelligence. Intelligence also doesn’t mean (nor does it require) that the person is free of moral, or free of prejudice and dogma. It still can be any combination of these things, which is a concept science fiction loves (e.g. the Matrix has intelligent machines that have no morality other than their preservation; or morally good robots that are missing some emotional understanding of things, like Data).

I tend to think that superintelligent being could be a gentle, extraordinarily empathetic person/entity, because truly brilliant people have shown great compassion in both philosophical and interpersonal basis. There are plenty of people who interact with those whose intelligence is a fraction of their own (parents & kindergarten teachers, special needs educators, etc.), and they develop wisdom, compassion and the ability to healthily interact with those people. Superintelligent person/entity could be a truly people’s person, a humble person (they would be far too intelligent to let us see all of their abilities let alone be arrogant about it), who would be pleased to do plenty of good for humanity. Unfortunately, history had also seen destruction of bright people at the hands of fellow humans.

All this leads us to one more question. What a superbright mind might do with his/her time? I think that it would engage itself in solving a vast variety of problems in an ocean of scientific and artistic fields, and hopefully with a healthy dose of ethics and morale.