Ken MacLeod's comments.
The title comes from two quotes:
“If these are the early days of a better nation, there must be hope, and a hope of peace is as good as any, and far better than a hollow hoarding greed or the dry lies of an aweless god.”—Graydon Saunders
Contact: kenneth dot m dot macleod at gmail dot com Blog-related emails may be quoted unless you ask otherwise.
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Sin Bio: writing a democratic dystopia
On the other hand, it has worked. The book's more interesting than what I'd have devised if I'd planned it, and a lot more interesting than my vague imagining of how it was going to go. I never expected that barbarian to walk across a hallway and through the wall. I'm sure my then editor didn't either, when we brainstormed my next book last year. 'All we want you to do, Ken,' he explained, 'is write the next Brave New World or Nineteen Eighty-Four or Fahrenheit 451.' Oh fine, I said. Why didn't I think of that? I had all kinds of ideas, none of which he liked, until I said: 'What if genetic engineering became so common that not having it was like not having vaccinations?' As soon as he said 'Yes!' I thought oh no what have I done?
And then I thought and scribbled and talked with my agent and came up with an outline for a novel about just that, with vast geopolitical conspiracies involving selective viral weaponry, and was told that this wasn't what they wanted at all. Then my agent suggested I read Children of Men, and focus on the woman and the child. So I read that book and didn't like it, but it gave me a sense of what mainstream authors writing SF can get away with.
The book I've ended up writing is not at all like any of the books I've mentioned, and not very like anything I've written before. No date is given. The technological advances in synthetic biology are perhaps faster than the developments shown in other areas. There's no big political change in it. No new ideology, no new system. There have been geopolitical shifts. If the society shown is a dystopia, it's a democratic dystopia. It's what we have, a decade or three down the line.
At the moment it seems like the best thing I've ever written. I'm enjoying the feeling while it lasts. By the time I've been through the revision, the copy-edit, and the proofs, it'll seem the worst thing I've ever read, let alone written. But for the moment, I'm happy with it. The rest is up to the readers, some time in the not too distant future.
Labels: self-promotion, skiffy, writing
20 Comments:
Would love a proof read as well. I saw IMB in London at a book signing for Surface Detail recently and its clear the planning phase takes a a lot of time. Sounds like an intriguing book as much for seeing the result of the free form approach as for the subject matter.
No pressure from your editor then?
I'd read something involving global conspiracies and selective viral weaponry, it's something I've wondered about since discussing it in a minibus at uni with other students maybe 13 years ago.
So congratulations on finishing this one.
Viral weapon...need Lemsip...(cough...gasp)
By 
Conan the Librarian™, at
Tuesday, January 25, 2011 7:31:00 am
It's good to read that someone else really didn't like the book Children of Men. My mum (yes her) gave it to me to read after I'd seen the film. The film is excellent so I couldn't wait and then... well it was really really disappointing.
I didn't realise you wrote to an outline. I've always found that that killed the creativity in me, whether I am essay writing or otherwise.
How much time do you spend on an outline?
It's good to read that someone else really didn't like the book Children of Men. My mum (yes her) gave it to me to read after I'd seen the film. The film is excellent so I couldn't wait and then... well it was really really disappointing.
I didn't realise you wrote to an outline. I've always found that that killed the creativity in me, whether I am essay writing or otherwise.
How much time do you spend on an outline?
Congrats on having "knocked the bastard off"! If it's half as amazing as the "Star Fraction" you might have us clamouring for you to 'wing-it' again for the next one ;) Ooops
"By the time I've been through the revision, the copy-edit, and the proofs, it'll seem the worst thing I've ever read, let alone written."
That is a wonderfully reassuring comment, nice to see even successful authors with I'm quite sure hundreds of gushing reviews throughout their career can still read their own work and be convinced it is terrible. :)
Looking forward to it!
The comparison to vaccinations reminded me: have you ever read Robert Chase's excellent short story "Shrieking of the Nightingale"? (Analog, Nov. 1991.) It takes place in a world where people are arrested for child abuse if they don't have their children genetically engineered against defects. (The title refers to the somewhat different issue of people being cured of deafness against their will.) I sometimes use it when I teach medical ethics; I wish the editors of medical ethics anthologies would discover it.
By 
Roderick T. Long, at
Tuesday, January 25, 2011 6:37:00 pm
antihippy: How much time do you spend on an outline? Far too long, usually.
Paul - that would be 'sans bio', no? 'Sin Bio' is just a bad pun on 'Syn Bio' (synthetic biology).
Roderick - thanks for the pointer. I don't know that story, but it sounds like it starts from a similar premise. In my novel they're not quite so far down the slippey slope - just near the top, in fact.
Paul - that would be 'sans bio', no?
I presume Paul C. was thinking of Spanish rather than French.
By Roderick T. Long, at
Thursday, January 27, 2011 2:46:00 am
Of course!
You might find it interesting to check out Paul's web site, with particular reference to his work on economics (scroll down for lots of papers relevant to the economic calculation argument).
Many of the relevant papers and polemics are conveniently grouped here.
Towards the end of his life Frank Zappa was a proponent of AIDS as a selective viral weapon engineered as part of a global conspiracy as I recall.
I'm curious, do the ideas which your editor brushes aside end up sneaking their way into what you actually write anyway?
So definitely not my approach when starting off on a new book: 'Here's the title but it might change' waves hands vaguely and mutters 'exploding space ships'.
guthrie, Ian, Neal ... I'd better explain that my editors were genuinely concerned that my writing should be reaching more readers than it does, and were exploring with me ways to broaden out its appeal. And it took me a while to see what they meant.
Some of the ideas from an outline that got rejected ended up in a short story 'Earth Hour', which I'm happy to say is going to be published sometime soon on Tor.com.
I assumed Sin Bio was your acknowledgement of the doctrine of Man's Total Depravity thru Original Sin.....
I always thought Total Depravity sounded like a high School rock band.
By MacLeodCartoons, at
Tuesday, February 01, 2011 4:06:00 pm
I've seen and heard high school rock bands that make the doctrine of Total Depravity seem soft on crime.
I'm ready to do my part as a reader, then. I am now expecting something even more original than your others and wondering how that will be possible.
By
Pat, at
Monday, January 24, 2011 7:57:00 pm