How to Create an Alien Language

If you are writing a science-fiction or fantasy story and the setting is another world, whether on a different, physical planet or a world in imagination, it is likely that when your characters encounter intelligent life there, that intelligent life (we are the "aliens" there, of course) will have some system for communication: language. There are three ways to handle this situation.

1. You create that new and different language for those "others" to use (more on this below).

2. You have someone translate what they are speaking - but then you need a character established for that, and where does one get training in, ummm Martian or TXDFGYHUJ?

3. You render the "alien" language as paraphrase: Then the F'G'HiX told them where to find water.

While some authors have argued for the second or third ways as being "realistic" and/or easier on the reader (one that comes to mind is Isaac Asimov's introduction to the novel Nightfall, based on his 1941 story [link], where he states that to use "alien" terms would be ridiculous in context and an obstacle for readers; I mentioned this in the previous posting), I find the bafflement of a character who encounters a language unknown to him/her to be an essential part of the story. His/her confusion is what readers want and need to experience...to a degree.

Granted, I do not want to unduly tax my readers, yet I feel that having some "other-language" present in a relevant scene (not added willy-nilly) adds to the setting (some call it "flavor") and can also deepen the meaning of action in the scenes (e.g., our hero smells smoke, yells "Fire!" but none of the aliens understand him; one of the aliens, seeing his consternation, tells him not to worry because they are simply roasting a Dtguuuuggbi over a bonfire in his honor; yes, after the appetizer he will be the Huguyumm [= "main course"]!)

For me, the first way of solving the problem is the most interesting. As a professional linguist, I love studying languages and comparing them. Anyone who has ever taken a foreign language in school knows that what we learn as much as the language itself is how other people think. Language reflects how a culture thinks, how they see their world. And if a sci-fi/fantasy author is building a world, certainly the language of that world (or cultures there) is of primary importance. My formal language study began with French in high school and college. Then I went to Japan. Along the way I also dabbled in German and Russian. Indo-European languages had much in common compared to Japanese, so comparing all of them was an education. As my curiosity compelled me, I also found myself studying a host of other languages: Chinese, Icelandic, Italian, Irish, Korean, Turkish, Swahili, Sanskrit/Hindi, Thai, Arabic, Spanish, Finnish, Greek, Serbo-Croatian, Quechua, Inuit, and Klingon.

There are several things you need to do to create a language. 

First, choose the structure of communication, the sentence pattern. There are only three so this is the easy part, unless you wish to create a new one. The main two are:

Subject - Verb - Object     is what we use in English, for the most part. ("I love you.")
Subject - Object - Verb     is used in many European languages and sometimes in English ("I thee wed.")

A third pattern is:

Object - (particle) - Subject - Verb     is what is used in Japanese. The particle is not a word but an indicator of function of the preceeding word in the sentence ("wo," "wa," and "ga"). ("[implied object, implied subject] aisteru" = "you I love.")

You could also employ Verb - Subject - Object ("okka debu sofak") or even Verb - Object - Subject ("okka sofak debu") but how will you keep the meaning clear? You can use those "particles" - like this: "okka debu ro sofak" so that "ro" indicates the one doing the action (the subject "debu" doing action "okka" to object "sofak"). Then you can switch the words around any way you like and still have it make sense. Supposedly.

Or, you could create something altogether different, depending on the kind of society of the language. For example, if it were to be a polyamorous society then singular verb forms would not exist, or would be considered rude. They might say: "We love us." There would still be a subject and an object, just not singular pronouns.

The next thing you need is a lexicon, sometimes called the vocabulary. (Many linguists declare that the grammar comes before the words but that is rather like deciding whether the chicken or the egg came first; in the end you need one in order to do anything with the other.) I went through a dictionary and made a list of all the words I wanted to use. I broke some words into several words (e.g., "fly" became "fly like a bird," "fly like on an airplane," and "fly like a rocket"), and combined other words.

Of course, this began with the words in a few phrases already in the story. I invented what was spoken in the story, then back-engineered the grammar. I foresaw the need to create new sentences for these "alien" characters, so I began my project. I chose the basic Subject-Verb-Object pattern for Ghoupallean, but to make it "seem" like a real language I added some quirky grammar rules and a huge list of very detailed and specific pronouns, a mind-boggling compendium of pronouns, such that a non-native speaker would never be able to get them correct beyond the most basic level of fluency. For the northern warrior race, the Zetin, I decided on a consonant heavy language, distantly imitating the grunts of military Klingon. To compensate for the difficulty of pronunciation, I made the grammar easy.

In the Dream Land trilogy, the southern desert race, the Roue, is an interesting case. For their language, I wanted something melodious so I modeled it after Hawaiian, very vowel-heavy with glottal stops, catches in the throat between vowels. But it becomes difficult when you realize that Roue is based on numbers and they use a base-20 system. In other words, instead of counting 1 through 10 and starting over with 11 through 20, and so forth, they go straight from 1 through 20 before starting over. It gets worse. They don't just say "I love you" - no, each word is a number on a master list of words! If the word "I" is, say, number 5 and the words "love" and "you" were numbers 11 and 9 respectively, then when they say "I love you" they would be speaking numbers "five-eleven-nine"! (Ah! But how would they distinguish actual numbers from the words? Fair question; clever answer: There is a "number" that designates that the numbers which follow are used as numbers rather than words. Follow?)

Anyway, the words. It's all about the words. Just make them up. However, like real languages, words tend to be related. Related words have related spelling and pronunciation. (We shall forego discussion here of the various written scripts that an alien society may use to share their communication.)

Notice how words are constructed in English. Take the car, for example. Car comes from carriage; a carriage is a type of wagon, a conveyance used in the era before the combustible engine. You see how the society's needs force the creation of new words to describe new things? Aliens do that, too; make your words fit. Another name for car is automobile. The automobile is a moving conveyance which can move on its own power, not pulled by polar bears or giraffes or tyggfix: autocar could work just as well, yet notice how the longer word automobile, made of a root word mobile and a prefix auto, gradually comes to be shortened to just auto. However, I've not yet heard self-propelled howitzer called a self.

Today the word "app" (short for "application"; I suppose in our quickened society we cannot be bothered with uttering a couple more syllables or we'd miss the next tweet from people we don't know) stands in as a whole slew of other words. The next generation will not know that "app" once meant "application," which is what other people call "software" or, when computers first became consumer devices, a "program." Words have history; they change; their usage changes. Build that in when you create your alien language.

In English we have several categories of words, based on what function each has in a sentence: nouns, verbs, pronouns, prepositions, articles, conjunctions, adjectives, adverbs, interjections [chart]. In Ghoupallean, I simplified it down to four categories or "families": thing-family (nouns, pronouns), motion-family (verbs), flavor-family (adjectives, adverbs), and relational family (the helping words: articles, conjunctions, prepositions). You can decide what categories your alien language will have.

Next comes grammar. It's just a bunch of rules for putting the words together. Basically, it comes down to this question: Do the words change form or are they static? This mostly occurs with verbs, but also with other parts of speech when they must match the form of the verbs. In English, following the practices of languages that came before us, such as Latin, we tend to change the ending of a word to show a change in meaning. Take the verb "fly": depending on the situation, we can write or speak "fly" or "flew" or "flown," but we know it's the same word really. In your alien language, will you have similar changes (and the rules that keep it organized), or will you show the same changes perhaps by using other words (helper words)?

fly (present) - flew (past) - will fly (future)

In Ghoupallean we change the ending of the word to match the time (the ending en indicates a verb):

soren (present) - sorend (past) - ge-soren (future)

But if you did not want to have words change according to a pattern, then you need to have some way to indicate when the action occurs. Try some kind of particle:

Let's say that qu means the same as "fly" (what a bird does, not necessarily what an airplane does). Then you could have the following system:

qu (present) - iz qu (past) - me qu (future) ......or smash'em together: qu, iqu, mqu............

which is not too different from the Ghoupallean pattern. But suppose you changed the word completely just to show the change of time? You might then have something like:

qu (present) - fo (past) - vi (future)

which would be fine, except that as an author you'd never be able to keep it straight in your head. Keep it simple yet have a few strange rules (grammar) to make it feel real.

The last part is the pronunciation guide. How are these characters (granted, we must generally use the Roman alphabet in our stories) to be pronounced? Most phrase books will compare the sounds of the new language with English phonemes (a single vowel or consonant utterance). For example (using Ghoupallean):

S s          Sounds as [s] in “sassy” in all positions; when doubled and between vowel phonemes, it sounds as [ss] in “scissors”; when written with [h] in this dictionary transcription sounds as [sh] in “shoe” or “mesh”.

Š š (Sh)   Sounds as [sh] in “shoe” or “mesh” in all positions.

sz            Sounds as [s] in “has” or [z] in “buzz”; only found in final position.

szs          Sounds as /zh/ in “azure” or the French word “menage”; only found in final position.

For me, when this madness first began in childhood, I was limited only by what characters I could produce on a typewriter keyboard. I tried combining characters or using symbols as additional letters. When I upgraded to the IBM Selectric with the balls of typeface, I could switch them (to get different fonts, for one thing). I then had a vast library of letters to use. The computer and MS Word now allow me to bring in many additional letters and accent marks from languages used around the world.

But remember, an alien language is not very likely to use the Roman alphabet - unless you invent some causal explanation, such as long ago one of the aliens visited Earth and shared their language writing system with an old Phoenician scholar, etc. (Well, it could've happened!)

That's enough for now, perhaps forever. Grammar can be fun, especially if you get to make up the rules. Play around with your alien language, speak it aloud, invent a script (something like a secret code from childhood?), and have fun!

Rbfj[I nfadko[ jgvakoi koj nk nw guypphviphvi UHWE!

Saying "To Be or Not to Be" and Meaning It

People say I am clever in certain ways--clever perhaps meaning smart in nefarious situations. Others don't know me so well and thus believe I am innocent of all wrong doing. Still others would blame me for any hesitancy in the spin of the Earth, much less the various quirks of life that ruin their quirky lives. But one thing I do that tends to infuriate people around me is talk about language. More precisely, talk about inventing languages.


When it comes to science-fiction or fantasy, we often find ourselves in worlds new and different from our own (for most of you, that's a reference to Earth). Such new places will naturally have their own cultures, much of that based on the particular geography, history, and environmental factors of the place (for example, the floating mountains in the film Avatar). A monster part of any culture is language. It's needed to express everything in that culture, so how the language is born from the culture and how the culture infuses the language with meaning has always been a prime concern of mine as I read and write in these genres.

Which brings me to Star Trek. First the movies then the subsequent new television series made use of alien languages, especially Klingon. That was what intrigued me most when I saw the film: seeing Christopher Lloyd as a Klingon speaking the lingua franca of Kling! Then, for those who demanded it, a dictionary and phrase book was published for Klingon devotees around the universe. (There are now "institutes" of Klingon language study (here's one). My study of language* since then, however, has revealed to me that Klingon is essentially Greenlandic Inuit, the language spoken by the native inhabitants of Greenland**. Though no creditation is given (look here), it became apparent only through my studies. James Doohan is credited with originating a few basic phrases and Marc Okrand is credited with the subsequent development of the full-scale language. One significant feature of both languages is the way meaning is constructed through a root word with countless prefexes, interfixes, and suffixes to create huge words--like saying a whole sentences worth of meaning in a single 20-syllable word. Forget Klingon (for now).


By the time I first heard Klingon, I had long been at work on the languages used in The Dream Land trilogy (to catch you up, check this earlier blog post of mine here). Some critics (here's one) have slammed the use of "alien" languages in science-fiction and fantasy novels, but I believe they are crucial to the weave of the landscape setting of such stories. Use of alien languages, like the use of foreign phrases in literary or other genre fiction, is a device best used sparingly lest it tire the reader. (I, however, love the use of such phrases so I would be a reader who was not made tired by its use.)


The use of alien languages is appropriate in the following cases:


1) In dialog, when the character is speaking it. Why wouldn't a native speaker of Danid speak Danid? But then it is best to slip into a paraphrase of what is said rather than write it all out in the alien language.



2) To describe or refer to something for which English has no effective word, or when English cannot render the idea as subtly or with appropriate nuance as the foreign/alien word or phrase. As a writer, you could have another character or the narrator point out that the meaning is such that it needs to be uttered in the nuances of that language; English would not have a suitable equivalent. This is the case for alien flora and fauna, as well as distinctly alien customs which would take several paragraphs to explain.


3) To add to the soundscape of the setting. In this case, if my hero were on another world, he would hear people of that world speaking their own language. If he does not know the language himself, or knows it imperfectly or incompletely, he could only guess at the meaning. In that way, the reader can experience the hero's disorientation along with the hero. Again, don't tax your reader's patience by going on too long; learn the fine art of the paraphrase. Start the spoken alien language, then switch to the paraphrase or summary of what was said. Point out subtleties in meaning where appropriate. (Examples to follow next blog post.)


And so we see/hear that there are useful uses for alien tongues (besides mopping in the corners of the kitchen floor). Now, how in the alien world do we create one? 


Study all you can at one of the Klingon institutes for one example. Or wait until I find the time to scribble out another bloggette and I shall take you step-by-step through the process I used to create the principal language of Ghoupallesz! (Meanwhile, brush up on your grammar terminology, especially the parts of speech! Try here.)


So, the fateful question is rendered "taH pagh taHbe'!"  in Klingon.


(According to Klingon sources, everyone knows that Shakespeare was half-Klingon. Check out the Klingon Hamlet here.)


_______________________________________


* In my day job I am expected to expound profoundly on the structure of language, with particular emphasis on Engish. Although I have formally studied only French, Japanese, and a bit of German and self-studied a dozen more Earth languages, I seem able to become fully fluent only in my first-language, American English. To compensate for such linguistic irony, I have developed the ability to speak English in 12 distinct accents.


** My study of Greenlandic comes from a project in a sociolinguistics course during my doctoral program a few years back, and not as preparation, some might guess, for my recurring role as one of the husbands in the Desperate Housewives of Nuuk television drama, which was just picked up for a second season.

The first time didn't really hurt so much.

It wasn't as complicated as I had been led to believe by a few smart-ass teenagers. My first Tweet, that is. (Is that what they're called? Makes me think of Tweety Bird, the nemesis of Sylvester.)  Find me at @StephenSwartz1 if you've got a fetish for stupid quips about life.

Today I joined the Twitter generation. Or should that be generationS? Can't be too sure what year I'm living in any longer, what with all these wonderful, new devices, and the strange customs that inevitably come with them.  Oh, when will it end?  Never.  Probably.

I imagine someday we will all stay at home 24/7.  The daily routine will be to roll out of bed and crawl into some lounge chair, feet up, electronics on, and just connect with the world.  Ah! Much like what was portrayed in that sci-fi flick a couple years back called Surrogates (IMDb).  In that film, people stayed home and from there operated robots that acted for them, did their jobs, and were infinitely better looking.  The flesh-and-bloods lived in their pajamas and looked like drained death.

Are we so far from that today?  Profile pics, competition for followers, the "like" culture (Click to "Like"), the quest for relevancy in an increasingly mundane world--all are symptoms of a drastic shift from the gentle innocence of a simpler time when electronic devices were limited to transistor radio and black-and-white televisions that offered us 3 channels (4 or 5 if you had an UHF antenna).  I saw a glimpse of that recently.  Or call it a cruel flick of nostalgia.  The film Tree of Life (Another something to click on!), though it seemed to me too long and slow for what it ultimately portrays, reminded me what it was like to be a boy and play outside, to run and jump, and throw and fight, and swim in a creek, and everything I did before I got my first computer in 1986.

No, I'm not one of those anarchists who want to return to the uncomplicated past.  I love having a computer to type out my novels.  Those of you who lived to experience the endless frustrations of the typewriter know what I mean.  And I liked having MTV in the 1980s, back when they actually played music videos all day.  Now there is more than ever to choose from and yet I find myself choosing "off" as my favorite channel--next to The Weather Channel (Check your weather!).  I don't need the radio any longer, either, because now I can listen to exactly and only what I choose via CDs or, more recently, mp3 downloads.  It is a world of focusing on me, what I want, and I want it now.  And I really, really want to blog!

Life would be so much the better if I did not have to find and maintain some kind of employment to produce, in exchange for decades' long compilation of intellectual fodder and slight physical effort, the suitable financial compensation to enable me to continue driving the "me, all me" consumerism to which I am expected to participate (to keep the overheating economy rolling along), and for which I will be constantly rewarded by a greater range of choices in absolutely everything but DNA.  Not that I wish any of that scenario to change.  Then I would have nothing to blog about.

Or tweet about.  (Did I use that term correctly?)

On the Origin of Characters

Where do characters come from?

It seems like such a simple thing, both to readers and to many authors.  Where do characters come from?  The simple answer is that, like flesh and blood characters (Yep, he's quite a character, my Uncle Bernie!"), they are born, for better or worse.

I recently read a blog posting about this subject by Danielle Raver, in which she discusses how one of the three protagonists in her novel Brother, Betrayed was "born"--Check it out:

http://danielleraverauthor.blogspot.com/2011/07/character-highlight-syah-prince-of.html

So, in authorly fashion, I decided to borrow the idea.  That's original.  No, seriously: Danielle's post made me think about where my own characters originated.  I've always known deep down inside, of course, but those secrets are sworn to secrecy.  I don't even tell myself.

For me and my novels, characters come from two sources (Here's your "duh" moment, loyal readers): I invent them or I really invent them.

In the former, I mean that I compose the various aspects of a character (speech patterns, appearance, behavior, quirks, personality, world view, fashion sense, psychological motivations, etc.) from different people I know or have known.  It often makes for interesting results.

For one example, in my literary novel A Beautiful Chill (coming in January 2012, or a few days after, from Shelfstealers Books), one major minor character (Is that semantically correct?) is Lance Albright, an old writer of former fame now spending a year as writer-in-residence at the campus in the novel.  Early in the story he is described thus:

Albright had published fourteen novels and in his prime he was a notorious sybarite. What Eric saw was a surly old man—much like his father, perhaps, though taller and much plumper in his eccentric Southwestern fashion, a barrel-chested Santa Claus with a golden baldness and a wide, white-bearded, bespectacled face, a loud man who growled without opening his mouth and who seemed to prefer that people left him alone.

In reality (a fantasy if ever there was one!), Albright is a compilation of several real people. I doubt that any of them read this blog so it may be permissible to name names, so I shall.  The appearance of Albright comes from the actual visiting poet at the campus (real school: Wichita State University), Paul Zimmer combined with regular faculty member Philip Schneider for the Western themed fashion.  The rakish sybarite aspects of Albright come from visiting fiction writer at WSU, Louis B. Jones, who while consulting with him about my latest manuscript seemed more interested int the female colleague of mine walking by outside his office and so spent the majority of our time asking questions about her.  (Sorry, Louis, but it's the truth.)  Many of the quips Albright says come from the standard repertoire of quips by faculty member Stephen Hathaway, with whom I had two fiction workshops, including the opening chapters of A Beautiful Chill.  There are lesser aspects of Albright which were snatched here and there from my colleagues (MFA students), faculty members (not all of them in the English department), and my own twisted imagination.

In the interest of full-disclosure and the pleasure of fiction creation and fiction reading, please don't sue me.  You and I both know it's all in fun.  I wish you all well, as I wish you wish me well, too, as a fellow author.  Besides, Albright has a very good time during his year's visit on campus.  Don't believe me?  Buy it, read it, review it.

In the latter case, I completely invent a character from scratch.  Oh, I suppose there is a point of origin, perhaps in stock characters or stereotypes.  Then I build on it.  As the story goes on and I get to know the shaped-from-clay character, he or she often develops his/her own personality, behavior, quirks, etc.

For an example of this, I offer my latest, a novel titled After Ilium (available from Fantasy Island Book Publishing about now) and the two main characters, Alex Parris and his lover/nemesis, Elena.  This is an example, also, of a story being plotted prior to character development.  That is, I knew how the story would progress so I chose characters that would fit into that plot.

In After Ilium, a young man, fresh from college graduation, gets his wish to visit the historic site of ancient Troy (called "Ilium" in every other breath).  On the way, he meets the older woman, Elena, who he draws into conversation and lets her draw him into an affair.  He thinks big plans, a future with her while she clearly is interested only in a quick dalliance.  When they tour the site of Ilium, Alex plays historian and bores Elena, so she tries to get his attention back--which only causes Alex the first of many troubles as he tries to return to her.  No spoilers!

The point is that I needed an innocent, naive young man to play Alex.  I have never known such a person (except, perhaps, myself [he sheepishly confesses]) and so I could not draw upon such real people.  Alex majored in History so I needed to have him sound like a history fanatic.  As for Elena, I had the image/appearance in mind first (no, not from surfing porn!): she had to be Greek-ish and voluptuous, beautiful in a more mature way than the svelte co-eds Alex has known.  The exotic appeal would be irresistible to Alex.  They make a great couple...as long as he gives her all the attention she did not get from her busy husband.

Two characters that are stock figures, sure.  But as we get to know them in the story, we get to know them: they take on individual characteristics, develop personalities, act in ways  consistent with their personalities and experiential backgrounds.  In short, they become real characters--or at least more realistic.  In a story where the plot and story arc is set, I plugged in the kind of characters that would make it work.

Curious to see how I pull it off?  Buy it, read it, review it.  Then get all of your family and friends to buy it, read it, review it.  And have them tell their family and friends to buy it, read it, review it.  And so on....

                                          

UPDATE...

I got the first review of AFTER ILIUM.  "Yea, me!" (imagine kindergartener voice)

5.0 out of 5 stars An Anti-Romance with Passion and Adventure, July 15, 2011

By 

Danielle Raver - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase 

This review is from: After ILium (Kindle Edition)

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. It was well-paced and the characters were engaging and realistic. Don't read it if you are expecting a sappy romance novel. Passion, violence, adventure, history, mythology, tragedy and betrayal couldn't be woven together into a more enjoyable tale. After Ilium has a wide audience of readers it will please.

Excellent!

Thanks, Danielle! I'm glad you liked it. Definitely NOT for YA, right?

What a Summer! (A most delicious title, eh?)

Ah, where has the summer gone?

Such languishing weeks of pithy indolence, such dreamy hours beneath the flocculent sky, expectations drifting away, feelings of mirth dancing betwixt our fingertips! So much for the annual vacating of routine and toil!

What?  You say it's still June?  What calendar are you using?

Oh, uh . . . well, I--

It seems it's true: the summer period is yet only one-third gone.  What a shame!

Now what shall I do?  Obviously, I must return to my slothy existence amid the lowly, lonely landscapes of lucid daydreaming, there to make whoopy among the daffodils and daisies, to swim through the seas like a great shiny fish, to flap through the air like the biggest of bees -- Nay, that is not the best way to dally around the camp fire, to dither up to the drinking stand, to sip and sup and tell huge lies, to stretch and sing and fornic--

Well, perhaps time would be better served 'twere it to be organized around a pattern of written communication, handsomely arranged in the most modern of venues, this very same so-said "blog".

What say all of you?  Had enough of this balderdashery?  Too much of the piles of cows?  The sweet delight of the fecund trails overfill your nostrils?

That, my dearest friends, is the framework through which we embrace our summertime frivolosity, much in the same way, though frightfully brief, as the delicate little poofs of weekend pleasures we memorize for later indulgence.

So off we go to the hinterlands, away to the fields and forests, on and beyond we galavant, to the horizons and more, to the moors and back, to the back of forever, and ever more . . . .


[I have just now been instructed to take a vacation and regain my sanity.  I merely laughed, of course, for what is sanity but the mirror of insanity, yet who can know whether the mirror stands for us or we stand in for the mirror?  Bags are packed, and I am out the door--]

Twisted Thoughts on the Longest Day

I suppose it has been long enough now that you deserve a new post of the adventures of me. So be it!

Well, gracious gentlefolk, I have been traveling.  That is my excuse.  The effort has brought memories good and not so good, and a decided lack of nostalgia for the places I used to inhabit (see previous remarks here).  Enough has been said on that topic to content any neighborhood existentialist for a while, so I shall move on.  Next, I must report (as required by state and federal agencies) that I have returned to whence I came.  My first clue was hearing the tornado warnings on the radio as I crossed the border into Oklahoma.  As they say (or should say), it ain't Oklahoma unless there's a tornado warning sounding.  Enough said on that topic, the better.

There's always some place to spend your summer on the beach yet avoid the heat.

And I survived the annual Father's Day rituals.  In my particular case, it was the day following a late-night arrival back at my humble abode--still intact and undamaged from the near-daily storms hitting while I've been away.  That's good news.  Anyway, I tried to stay off the usual social networking sites, which I presumed to be cluttered with paternal laments and paternal praises.  (Checking later, I found that to be true.)  Yes, I did call my father, but in these ancient days his hearing isn't so good.  Fortunately, he has learned how to respond to whatever I happen to say, and does so automatically when he thinks I have said what he thinks I would say to him.  ("Did you have a good Father's Day?" --> "Yep, it's hotter than usual here.")  Half the time it is almost appropriate to the context of the conversation.  But that is also enough said.  I shall revisit the topic next year.

Today I am bombarded by the "happy summer solstice" crowd's textual chanting of "Happy Summer Solstice!" As everyone knows, from ancient times to the present day, people have celebrated the arrival of the full flowering of the sun and, more importantly, what it portends for the growing season.  A lot of people starved in ancient time, apparently.  In modern times, of course, it has become a time to celebrate freedom from school, or the annual summer vacation trip for working adults, or just a excuse to have a party.  And for a small niche group, it is a time to get funky and pretend the world does not have demands of them.

An even smaller niche group (I represent nearly half of them) is simply content to sleep late and count the hours 'til the next day. Longest day? What's the point? It is longer than the previous day by maybe a minute. What you failed to do yesterday can be safely done today.  You'll have more time to do it.  And yet, it is somehow different.  As per humanity's obsession with greatness, it is the focus on things that are longest, fastest, strongest, most famous, and so on that occupies our attention. In my circle of authors, for example, the longest day represents an opportunity to count sales--though I begrudge them not a longer day of writing and editing.  In general, a longer day means more people out shopping, buying, consuming.

If you have read this far, you may be thinking this is the longest (i.e., most boring) blog post anyone has ever written. You'd probably be correct. (Please take the survey at the end of this blog post.)

Let's call this the "catch up" post, whereby I throw everything I've got into one big soup pot. It will keep you alive, even though it may lack any particular flavor or nutritional value, and might possibly make you sick later on, in the middle of the shortest night.  Thank goodness for short nights, eh?  Come to think of it, a night is less important in the greater scheme of things than one's sleep schedule: twelve hours is still twelve hours, no matter if the light of day intrudes or not.

[There! Now you have your profound thought for this post.  Go forth finally fulfilled and judiciously joyous, for the day hath a few seconds less than yesterday, and with each passing day we opportunistically mirror the dying of the season and the dying of the year, the dying of humanity and of an individual's strict allotment of time, measured by party and paycheck, until the bitter end when sweets are verboten and diapers again become de rigueur, until the eyes fall silent and the mouth closes to perpetual darkness, and the last morsel of breath coldly expires.]

Let the rest of the summer begin!

Weiner-gate and the Little Blue Pill

It has been suggested by fellow bloggers and bloggettes that if I were to take advantage of the latest news I might gain a significant bump in blog traffic. The latest news, however, seems to be about a congressperson who has been naughty. To whit: This Representative Weiner fellow has the appropriate name for linking Twitter feeds with sordid self-portraitures of convex shadowy angles purportedly demonstrating the surface features of a "bulge". That is putting it delicately.

So, the strategy goes, I should write a post about this news story so that Google hits will reflect my interest in this so-called Weiner-gate. However, given that my blog is chiefly about my fiction writing, in particular my science-fiction trilogy called The Dream Land, it seems a stretch to write about any man's digital evolution. It is not a subject worthy of my keyboard, and yet . . . strategists compel me to write something, anything about the story in order to draw clicks to my own blog site (here!) so that someone, anyone might become acquainted with all of my witty remarks.

I do not actually need to write about a man's adventure in digital archiving to draw in readers. The mere mention of the congressperson's name--which, as I explained above, is so deliciously perfect (check that: I probably should not use those words as part of this story)--is enough to draw hits and clicks to this page. Ah, the wonders of technology! Ah, the foibles of humanity! Ah, the impetuous imperatives of the easily impressed masses. Who wouldn't like to read a report on a man sending pictures of a bulging fabric? Why, the whole universe is a bulging fabric--

Which segues so effortlessly into me blogging about The Dream Land trilogy! You see, in this sci-fi adventure, two high school sweethearts discover a tear in the fabric of the universe, and through such a tear they go exploring (not in the Weiner-gate sense, of course). It is another world they discover and the adventures they have there are both full of beauty and magic as well as horrible violence that tests their will to survive and even their sanity. It seems a natural phenomena for these human explorers to question their sanity--much as Mr. Weiner must have questioned his reasons for sending such pictures to someone who likely never wanted to see them.

So which is the real world? And which is only a poor reflection of the world we all know and love? To find the answer, look not among the stories of your local news, both on TV as well as the Internet; nay, look deeply among the pages of the three volumes of The Dream Land trilogy--where there never have been, nor will never be, pictures of bulges!

(However, it should be pointed out that The Dream Land trilogy is not suitable for readers under, say, 15 or 16, as there is considerable love making and warfare scattered across the many pages. But for the adult who is tired of Weiner-gate and other assorted Twitter feeds of embarrassing text and pictures, the book covers await their cracking, the pages your eyes, and all shall be in balance until the words "The End" bulge from the page.

Thanks for indulging my sensitive sensibilities!

PS--I forgot to mention the little blue pill. It is not a metaphor. It is a medicinal property, an element of great consternation that enables an Earth man to approximate the prowess of an adult Ghoupalle male, almost necessary to please a typical Ghoupalle woman--Ghoupallesz being the local name of the planet in The Dream Land trilogy. Again, you must read The Dream Land trilogy to know about and appreciate what the sex life of aliens feels like. Forget Weiner-gate; it's a small matter, indeed.  Instead, enjoy the reality of your unadulterated protuberances, and grin in satisfaction, confidence, and release!

To Blog or Not to Blog

That is often the question. To blog or not to blog? What shall be said/written? What am I thinking about today? What do my loyal followers expect from me to bright their day? And do I have it in me to punch the keys?

This is the silly season: between the end of the spring semester (I'm a professor in real life so my circadian rhythms are set to semester intervals) and the start of the summer semester (for those poor souls who must teach during the summer for whatever personally hellish reasons they may have). To escape the silly season, I usually find myself traveling. Often I travel to actually find myself. Sometimes I forget where I have left myself, so it's an interesting adventure looking for me. And frequently when I find myself, I don't really want it.

This summer is different, however. Shortly after embarking on this summer's travel (having many highway miles to contemplate the meaning of the "meaning of life"), I came up with a name for this Interstate phenomena. I am calling this exercise in fuel consumption my "farewell tour" for reasons only I know for sure. It's not such a big secret, actually.  I lived in the northeast for seven years. Then, while wishing to continue living up in the northeast (somewhere, anywhere), I was lured to the hot, dusty, dry midwest to continue drawing a paycheck. Yet there is nostalgia--painful, bittersweet, warm-hearted, soft-fuzzy nostalgia for the places I've left.

As fate would have it (and with today's technology one may easily tweak fate to one's heart's content), I have traveled backwards in time as I have traveled physically, geographically eastward. I have revisited the places I called home once upon a time. And now? They have changed--so much so that I can recognize them only by digging deep in my bag of memories, comparing a fading image with the concrete reality before me. There is no feeling welling up, no rush of pleasure, no sense of home sweet home again. I might as well have stayed home--in my new home in the midwest.

Last summer, as I made the migration west, I waved farewell. Yet it did not take. Back again, I find I am a stranger, as much of a stranger as if I had never lived there. I've been forgotten as completely as though I'd never existed. And that is the melancholy mood that sneaks upon an unwary traveler when he dares to presume that anything, anyplace, anyone ever matters. That I once existed in a certain place has no meaning now for anyone in that place. I can walk the streets without wearing dark glasses and I am not bothered or asked for an autograph. Even if I introduce myself as someone who once lived there, I only receive a response akin to "Oh, yeah?" Is it really so hard to believe?

Alas, memory, nostalgia, home . . . just concepts, metaphors, words that act as placeholders in the mind, and suffer not the great institutions known as scrapbooks, photo albums, and memoirs.

New World, Old Idea

New worlds have always existed - or they've been perpetually in a state of being discovered - ever since science-fiction was invented. Now it's true again. Even scientists are satisfied that this time they've stumbled upon a world that is actually inhabitable. Rudimentarily liveable. Don't believe me? (Fiction writers are prone to lying.) Then check out these stories:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/17/first-habitable-planet-2030_n_862785.html

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=128764

http://gizmodo.com/5802902/new-home-for-humans

Of course, I knew it could not actually be Ghoupallesz, the planet featured in The Dream Land trilogy - I know it to be about 100 light years from Earth, give or take. But this is not a bad find. Twenty light years is doable. Traveling at a quarter of the speed of light, you have an 80 year journey. That's only one human lifetime. Cut that in half (traveling slower) and you have 160 years or about 5 generations living it up on a big spaceship from Carnival. You've read it in Arthur C. Clark and Clifford D. Simik stories (and plenty of others) and seen it depicted more recently in that animated flick Wall-E. So it may truly be possible to leave this world once we succeed in making it uninhabitable.

So start packing! It's not too soon.

On the Naming of Names

I started writing before I could spell. I drew pictures in sequence like a comic strip. They weren't very funny, however. Eventually I was writing short, multi-paragraph tales of similar (cartoonish) material. I was big on illustrating standard jokes. Then, as my world enlarged year by year and stories lengthened page by page (those were the days of typewriters), I began to consider the Big Question: 


What name would I use as an author?

Perhaps that is not what most elementary school pupils have as their most pressing matter of importance. But it was mine. By the time I was in what we called junior high school, I was reading mostly science fiction and fantasy, as well as the classics of English literature and world literature translated into English. I was not a bookworm; rather, I was a book caterpillar. The authors I read had such wonderful names: Roger Zelazny, Robert Silverberg. Isaac Asimov, Miguel de Cervantes, Feodor Dostoevsky, Heinrich von Kleist, and so on. But I did not like my name.


Stephen Swartz. Two strikes. With my middle name (not to be repeated here), it was three strikes. I did not like Bible stuff to begin with, so having names from that book irritated me. When I learned that "Stephen" was the guy who got stoned (as in having rocks thrown at him, not smoking marijuana), I shuddered at using the name. That it was from Greek and meant "crown" did little to inspire me, either. My surname Swartz was a good German name that was conveniently misspelled at Ellis Island. The correct spelling would probably be: Schwarz. It means "black"--the color, or dark in general. Having ancestors from the Black Forest in southwest Germany (where the trees grew so close together they blocked out the sun, is what my grandmother told me) helped explain it--and I was always explaining it to everyone who mispronounced it or deliberate misspoke it by way of an insult. Swartz- Shorts - Sports - Snorts, and Warts.


So I embraced the Pseudonym, or pen name. What shall I be called? I liked the sound of foreign words, especially after I tried to teach myself Russian from an old Berlitz book. For a while I used the pen name Boris Khivitikov.  Briefly, the more exotic Krum Kiram.  As I began creating the world of Ghoupallesz, I borrowed some native names. Then I tried the unwieldy Stefan von Schwarz. I considered using initials, too. Soon it dawned on me that if I used some pen name, nobody who knew me would believe I had written the books with those names. I could not simply stand in a book store and point at a book "by Boris Khivitikov" and expect anyone to believe Boris and me were the same.


Therefore, I gradually learned to live with my names, and to accept the names given to me by my parents, the people least able to anticipate my adult naming needs. Stephen Swartz it is and, I guess, shall always be. I might flip the middle initial in there for one genre or the other that I write, just for show. Either way, I've always preferred the title to outshine the author name on book covers. It is the story that is all-important, not the feeble, innocent human (or elf, ogre, warrior, lackey, etc.) who pens it, copying furiously as the Muses whisper in his ear, lucky to catch even half of it all.

Belated Mother's Day Blahhhhg

I almost missed the ubiquitous Mother's Day blog post, what I lovingly refer to as the blahhhhg. The day came a week early this year--just as easter came a couple weeks later than usual. However, after being quite busy with finishing the semester, going to final concerts, etc., I eventually got around to calling Mom. Instead of the sound of her voice I got a recorded message saying the number had been changed. My own mother changes her number and doesn't tell me. Well, maybe that was the point. As an only child it is especially painful. Long story short, too many prank phone calls caused them to change the number (No, none of those calls were from me.) and the ever-present gremlin named "Ill-get-to-it" tricked her so completely. The ruse lasted a week. I did, by today, finally tell her to have a happy day--belatedly but with correct grammar.

I also mentioned to her that this past week I seemed to have established some kind of future for a book that I wrote--although not the science-fiction tome this blog is designed to enhance. Yes, I also write "literary fiction," a form of storytelling that is generally contemporary and true to life, typically relationship tales and such. My entry is a novel titled A Beautiful Chill, about which I have devoted a few blog posts in the past. (Here) and (Here, too). It seems important now to mention it, so I am. Because I struggle to balance my cocky, overly confident side with my humble, modest side as a writer, I am walking a fine line in this post.

If I were to dream of success as a writer of fiction (I did try that as a writer of poetry and fell short), this is the novel I would hold up as the example of my best writing. Part of that is due to the subject matter of the book, which lends itself to a certain style which might be called aloof, disinterested, haughty, distant. When dealing with the creation and manipulation of two protagonists it seemed the best way to proceed.

Though it is, by definition, fully fictional, I have like most writers borrowed liberally from the environment surrounding me. That is, the setting in the novel approximates the setting of the place in real life. The characters in the novel are smashed compilations of several real people I encountered when writing the novel. (Send an SASE for the breakdown of characters by real life person.) Much research was conducted--as much, I felt, as for the dissertation I would later write on composition and identity--and incorporated into the minds, motives, and behavior of the two lead characters: a free-spirited female artist born in Iceland and nearly ruined in the strip clubs of Toronto, and a stodgy male English professor who wishes to break out of his conservative life. They struggle to find a balance in their awkwardly realized relationship. Opposites attract, people say, but the other half is that they seldom can stay together. A Beautiful Chill explores this concept in touchingly lean prose and alternating perspectives.

I just wanted to post something about my literary novel A Beautiful Chill. Now I shall return to the other side and continue dabbling in hysterical hyperbole. Thank you very much.

Fantasize Reality

I know it's Monday morning, the Monday following a wild weekend of world events.

First the Royal Wedding, all the pomp and circumstance, the photography, and the fashion gurus debating fabric and jewels. Then the kiss and speculation about the family jewels, the mansion, and what ever shall we do the rest of our lives since we don't actually have to do much anyway talk.

Now we have reports that the most heinous henchman of the past decade has been killed. Grainy video and sincere spokesmen, speeches and genuine pictures straight off the Photoshop floor. Proof drowned in a burial at sea. No martyr here, so keep moving.

But seriously! There's a lot more to life than weekends full of glitz and corpses. Back to work, back to school, back to whatever you want to do. Like poetry (the previous sentence was almost some). Why worry? Everything will be settled by the end of the game. So just sit back and have a drink, contemplate reality as you would fantasize it. Imagine this and that, as some people say.

Everything is fantasy in the final analysis, so just believe. That's all we are expected to do anyway. Believe in the fantasies surrounding us. And smile in rabid delight. There is no man behind the curtain.

No, wait! There's More!

Once in a while the purveyors of The Dream Land invite other manuscripts to visit. This week's visitor is a novella called After Ilium, named for the actual name of ancient Troy. It's a modern tale, however, of a young man who gets lost, and all of the adventures that follow. It's by the same author as The Dream Land, so enjoy! Here is the first portion of it.

Chapter 1

Rage, O Goddess, sing the rage of Achilles, murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans so many losses, who sent down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls, the souls of great warriors, but made their bodies carrion, food for dogs and birds, while the will of Zeus pushes ever to its end....

He was muttering again, he knew.  The words played over and over in his head and he absently repeated them.  Then he opened his eyes, suddenly, as though he expected they might not see.

Alive!  At least I’m alive....

He breathed in dust and felt his body limp against an unyielding surface.  His eyes saw mostly darkness.  At the edges, a deep bronze light played with him.  The surface beneath him was warm, wet with his perspiration.  And his blood, he suspected.  Soon he began to feel some vibration in the ground beneath him.  It grew stronger and he realized what was happening.  He broke through his stupor and, at the last possible moment, summoned what energy remained in him and thrust his weakened body over. 

He felt the hot sun on his face.  The noise and vibration continued and he knew he must go further.  One more time, he urged himself, and rolled over again.  Then again, and found himself quickly dropping into a shallow ditch filled with the powdery beige dust that covered everything in this Mediterranean landscape.

The vehicle that just missed him had a loud, banging engine as it went on down the road, a narrow route that wound along the coastline.  The bus rolled to a halt, its engine sputtering then settling into a more harmonious noise.  He heard the door creak open and some people bound out.  They ran to him, striking up dust which hovered over his body, blocking the sun with their bodies.

The men’s voices were gruff, thickly accented.  Their breaths were heavy as they pulled his broken body out of its spontaneous grave.  They were careful as they laid him on the roadway.  He could no longer open his eyes because of the blinding sun overhead, but he felt one man searching his pockets.  Another dripped water on his face and wiped it away with a grubby, gnarled hand.  Next, a fat finger, with rough skin and a wart, forced his mouth open and water followed—a warm, awful liquid he could not swallow.

Then he was floating, as though angels had come to gather him and take him home.  He kept his eyes tightly shut, feeling the heat of the sun on his face.  Eight hands lifted him into the air.  He levitated over the dirt road, up the slope he had been about to mount before he collapsed, and into the welcome shadow of the bus.  Voices, curious cackles, shot at him from the bus windows, all words he could not recognize.  He was taken aboard, after some anxious discussion in the strange language, and the bus lurched into gear and backfired as it pulled away.

Perhaps, with some good fortune, he might return to his home, even if it took years.  Yet just knowing he was on his way made his heart burn with hope.  As his body fell limp against the floor of the bus, his lips, cracked and bleeding, twisted uncontrollably into a thankful grin, a silly mask he could not control.

“Your name?” came the voice outside the bandages, shaking him back to consciousness.

He wasn’t asleep, but he didn’t know exactly where he was, either, not being able to look out at the world.  Feeling the bed beneath him and the scent of medicines around him, he guessed he was in a hospital or clinic.  He took in a deep breath, pulling himself into more alertness, and tried to clear his head.  Things did not feel right.

His first act was to see if his jaw would move.  It wouldn’t—or, barely would.

“It’s wired,” came the answer to his unspoken question.  “You can speak, yes?”

He tried again.  He could move his jaw, he discovered, but the sudden shot of pain warned him not to do it again.  Concerned, he raised his head off the pillow and felt all of the blood rush out of his brain, and fell back.

“It’s on this side, by your ear,” the man’s voice explained, and Alex felt a fingertip lightly tap his jaw.  “It will heal.”

He wanted to say something, like “Thanks,” but he feared the pain of opening his mouth.

“Your name?” the man repeated.

“A—lex,” he managed after some time testing how much pain he could endure.  The name sounded familiar.

“Aleksa?  Ah, like El-Xandar, the Macedon, yes?”  The voice laughed.

He didn’t know what the man was talking about at first.  Gradually he understood that he shared his name with Alexander the Great, who had in 334 B.C. conquered this region of the world, leading an army of 10,000 at the age of twenty.  He just knew it, he realized.  It had been part of his Senior Seminar, a few weeks ago.  He should have been out conquering something, instead of only writing about it.  Instead, he was lost in Turkey, he recalled as if waking from a dream, and the land seemed to have conquered him.

“Where...?” he whispered.

“This, aaa, Edremit Hospital,” the man answered.  “You American?”

Alex could not answer, too afraid and too much in pain.  He did not know of any town named Edremit.

“You are lucky boy.”

Alex didn’t feel so lucky.  Why was this man he couldn’t see asking him such stupid questions?  He started to go off on the litany of his lucky breaks: the cool summer jobs at CyberAmerica, being high school salutatorian, getting into a good college, the Webber scholarship, vice-president of his fraternity, getting a first date with Suzie Olmeyer, their sexual episodes.  None of them were due to luck, he argued in the voice of his proud parents; it was his hard work, his dedication—

“You alive, yes?” the man interrupted.

Alex wasn’t sure about that, but he would take the stranger’s word for it.  He felt too much pain to think for himself.  For now, he could not see who he was speaking to, but he assured himself the man must be the doctor who bandaged his wounds.  He tried to smile, not with his mouth and jaw, his lips and straight teeth, but with his mind and spirit hidden beneath the bandage that covered his eyes.  From inside his fortress he could regroup and prepare to continue the campaign.

He listened to the man exit, detecting amusement in his voice.

Campaign? thought Alex, his head feeling heavy.  What the heck was he doing on a campaign?  He had already finished college, he told himself.  No more homework, no more tests.  Stop all this history stuff, he ordered himself.  It was one thing to be interested enough in something to study it and achieve a degree in the subject, but it was very different to infuse one’s daily life with everything learned in four years of college.  No-one who might hear him would understand anyway, he decided, remembering he had been touring the site of ancient Troy when he lost his way.  A degree in ancient history?  What good was that?

Alex tried to sit up, wanting to get some assurance from the medical staff that he was not dreaming.  A sharp bolt of agony shot across his cheeks.  The dull ache behind his eyes exploded into a sharp stabbing pain that sliced down his neck to the small of his back.  He froze.  Then screamed—using a mouth which could only mutter a moment before.  He was not dreaming.

The doctor rushed in.  He had a nurse give Alex an injection which left his head swimming and his body numb.

“You are bad boy, yes?” the doctor grilled him, almost with a chuckle.

Alex wondered what he meant.

“You have bad fall?” the doctor asked him, and burst into a snickering laughter than made Alex feel very uneasy, even as he slipped into a relaxed stupor.

If by ‘fall’ the doctor meant physically, like down a well, then no.  But a fall from grace, perhaps?  That was not out of the question.  If only he could speak to the doctor—to anybody.

Alex was conscious enough now to fear his present circumstances.  He wanted to speak whole paragraphs to them, not just one or two grunt responses.  If he could just make them all understand what happened to him, maybe someone could do something.  He did not belong here, he would confess.  Right now, in his pain and fear and confusion, he simply wanted to go home.

It was not his fault, Alex wanted them all to know.  He was not clumsy.  He had not fallen down a well, as the doctor had supposed.  He could not trip over a small rock and land face first into a ditch.  He was certainly smart enough to not walk in front of a bus.  Filled with anger, Alex could not relax, and that made him continue to feel pain.  The drug was weak, he decided.  He still felt pain, lots and lots of pain.  But even as he tested the threshold for pain tolerance, he began to understand that much of the pain he felt was not from his body but from the wounds to his spirit.

Now, nearly immobilized in his sweat-soaked hospital bed in a stale room with no air conditioning, Alex did not believe he was going to survive.  The sickening perfume of the medicines and ointments, along with the spicy, greasy Turkish food being handed out to each patient, made him conjure an eerie world where the gods and mortals continued playing their mythic games.  The ho-humness of the staff, and the chuckling of his doctor, whom he was forced to rely on for any communication, made him think he was on his way down to Hades to mingle with its zombie-like hordes.  The doctors and nurses who came and went seemed like denizens of the Underworld to him, faceless voices, touching him at random.  In his mind, they condensed from an opaque gray background, as though stepping on stage, and after making their case for his injuries, just as fluidly coalesce with the background.

His mind was racing, spinning out of control as the drugs took effect and wore off and were injected again.  How many days had it been since he had set out to visit Ilium, the site of the ten-year siege of Troy?  It was three thousand years earlier, yet this dusty, dried-out, strangely fragrant land with its exotic charms and hidden dangers was the same.

And what alarmed him most about his situation and the state he had come to was his realization that they had both begun with a woman named Helen.

Chapter 2

When he had awakened on the first morning of the cruise, Alex had looked out of his porthole, which sat just above the waterline, and immediately had visions of the oars of the Achaeans’ boats plying across the blue waters toward the shores of Asia Minor.  All for a woman.  Was it worth it? he pondered on the bright, golden morning he set out from Piraeus aboard the gleaming white cruise ship Aegean Princess.  He was thinking about his own adventure, not that of the ancient Greeks.

[CONTINUES]