A.T. Gomes
Life

Feeling Like an Outsider in my Hometown

atgomes,

More than embracing São Paulo’s idiosyncrasies, being “paulistana” means carrying them like a badge of honor. What happens when a paulistana has been living far from the megalopolis’s intensity for a long time? Does she get lost in the chaos?

The roaring of busy engines and blaring of mad horns open up the memory gates. Not familiarity but an overwhelming sense of disquiet floods in. I try to visit my family in Brazil once a year. It used to feel like riding the proverbial bicycle. Recently, it’s been more like wearing a cloak of inadequacy. I’m not fast enough, witty enough, fit enough, angry enough.

I let other drivers cut in. I uselessly wait for my turn at the crossroads. It takes me time to remember this isn’t how things are done in São Paulo’s traffic. I must block others, push through, and inch my way across.

Riding the subway feels equally challenging. Paulistanos rush everywhere. I search for a map, trying to figure out which line to ride, and I’m ruthlessly scolded for the sudden stop. I’m clearly not getting it. Move, lady.

I wear flip-flops to the mall. Two women pass me by, talking about my faux pas loudly so I can get the hint that I’m not at a beach. I perk up and stop wearing sweats outside the house. I have some makeup on at all times. I blow dry my hair every time I wash it. My posture tightens. My steps quicken.  

Outside, the rain clears the pollution, cooling the air, and blurs the views, softening the concrete jungle’s harsh lines. Inside, a whiff of wet dog permeates all environs. A blessed smell of coffee reaches me. I find the counter and smile involuntarily. Other customers with knowing looks squeeze so I can join them for a much needed break.

The server is fast, precise, and courteous. I grab a quick bite of “pão de queijo” and “cafezinho,” the local espresso. The quintessential Brazilian snack grounds me. A kinder disposition allows me to notice the overworked demeanor of my fellow coffee drinkers getting a much needed kick to help them plow through the afternoon.

At the bakery line, I watch a batch of fresh “pãezinhos,” like petit baguettes but lighter and crispier, tumble from a giant basket into a glass bin, looking so perfectly baked my mouth waters, and everyone in line exchanges appreciation smiles. We all know nothing compares to fresh, Brazilian-style “French bread” with a generous smear of butter.

It’s mango season! No dessert can compete with the distinct sweetness of a ripe Brazilian mango. Their bright yellow flesh fills my mouth with sumptuous velvetiness, and I’m settled.

Under the spell of delicious food, I see the mix of American Southern charm and New York edginess that paulistanos manifest while juggling long work hours, intense traffic, and the constant pressure for results in the financial and industrial heart of a developing nation always trying to do better. I get it.

More at ease, I go to all my favorite restaurants and cafés. I take a walk at Parque do Ibirapuera. I stroll through Bixiga neighborhood, stop at a bar for a caipirinha, and let the music soothe me. Couples are dancing a mellow samba. Around me, lively chatter covers recent soccer games, a local election, family debacles, romantic innuendo. The city vibrates through its people. I am, again, part of it.

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Making the Best of Critiques

atgomes,

(Whether Offering or Receiving It)

Critique is a hard thing to deal with. In my wish to become a successful writer I had to learn, not only to deal with, but appreciate it. I’m no masochist. Nonetheless the more I develop as a writer, the more appreciative I am of a good, straight to the point critique. Although some encouragement is always welcome. Still I know the path is long. Regardless of how brilliant an author may be, it’s impossible to please all readers. The trick is to develop a thick skin.

Critique, according to the Merriam Webster dictionary, simply means “a careful judgment in which you give your opinion about the good and bad parts of something (such as a piece of writing or a work of art).”

If you read farther on the Merriam Webster website you will learn that “Critique is an alteration of an archaic word that referred generally to criticism. Critique itself dates to the early 18th century and originally referred to a piece of writing that criticized a literary or artistic work. The words criticism, critique, and review overlap in meaning. Criticism usually means “the act of criticizing” or a “remark or comment that expresses disapproval,” but it can also refer to the activity of making judgments about the qualities of books, movies, etc. (as in “literary criticism”).Critique is a somewhat formal word that typically refers to a careful judgment in which someone gives an opinion about something. Review can refer to an essay analyzing a literary or artistic work, but can also sometimes imply a more casual or personal opinion.”

As in most things in life, there’s more than one Point Of View to a critique, actually there are two: the POV of the writer of a piece, and the one of the person critiquing it.

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If you are offering your work to be critiqued – be specific; if you have a particular passage you would like to have critiqued post only that passage. If you prefer to offer more for context, which can be helpful, make an observation at the top of your posting letting the forum members, writers’ group, etc. know of your particular focus.

If you wish to receive help with your grammar, punctuation, etc., you should let critique givers know as well, but beware that not all critique partners might be up for such a time consuming work. Basic English writing issues may be better addressed by a copy editor. Before subjecting your work for critique, it’s a good idea to line edit it to the best of your ability, so the comments will add to the development of characters, setting, plot.

Above all, be gracious and appreciate the time and consideration the person critiquing your work is giving you, in most cases for free, in a day and age where time is money. Pride, prejudice and denial never serve us well, but in the particular case of a critique, they can prevent us from making the best possible use of comments that can potentially help our work go from OK to great. Understanding that the person critiquing has the best intentions for the piece helps make the punch bearable. So read the critique with an open mind and take it for what it is; a one person opinion of your work that may have some good pointers on how to make it better overall.

If you’re critiquing – start with a positive note by pointing at least two good things in the piece, use examples from the work, like an engaging open sentence. Praise grammar precision, well developed characters, settings, scenes, etc.

When critiquing a piece from a writer new to you, it’s a good idea to praise the writer for the courage in offering the piece to be critiqued, acknowledging how hard it is to do so. Make it clear the comments that follow are in the best interest to the development of the work. Remember how exposed you feel when offering your work to be critiqued.

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It’s a good idea to start with a summary stating what you think the piece is about and pointing to any perceived meaning that jumped at you. That helps the writer know if the themes being explored are coming across. Always critique the piece, never the writer. For example: this piece would benefit from… I didn’t understand this passage. Make your feedback positive and specific in language and meaning, use examples from the piece being critiqued and offer possible ways for improvement. Ex: This sentence, “…,” has a lot of information that would be interesting to know from the beginning.

A good rule of thumb is to comment on three positive aspects of the piece and point three opportunities to make it better. If a writer is new to the process, too many pointers can be overwhelming and discouraging. A seasoned writer though, will be happy with a long, detailed critique. So gauge it accordingly. A fellow writer with whom you’ve been exchanging pieces for some time versus someone new to a writing group will benefit from different styles of critique. Learning to critique to different sensibilities will improve your ability to make the best of the critiques to your own work and will ultimately make you a better writer.

Sentence and Paragraph Length and Reading Modes

atgomes,

There are four reading modes: oral reading to an audience, oral reading to oneself, silent reading, silent reading while listening. There are many studies about which one of these modes is better for reading comprehension. It seems like oral reading to oneself or silent reading are tied.

Maybe that’s why I prefer reading silently to myself when doing it for pleasure. But for work, after the first revision, I like to read my WIP out loud to myself. It helps me catch silly mistakes, and it allows me to feel the cadence of sentences and paragraphs. It’s at that stage that I adjust the length of both.

Shorter sentences and paragraphs speed the reading by allowing for more breathing opportunities. With that, the flow of the story gains momentum. But too many short sentences and/or paragraphs in a row can turn the reading experience monotonous. So, variation is important.

In Artemis, an action packed, fast paced, hard science fiction, Andy Weir does a great job at using the length of the sentences to add dramatic weight to the story. When explaining how Kenya’s minister of finance managed to create the country’s space industry out of its geographic advantage, the protagonist, Jazz Bashara says, “God only knows how she convinced fifty corporations from thirty-four countries to dump billions of dollars into creating KSC, but she did it. And she made sure Kenya enacted special laws just for the new megacorporations.” The first sentence in this paragraph is relatively long. It goes on without pauses before the one comma. It demands attention. The second sentence, although not as lengthy, still goes on without pauses. In contrast, the paragraph that follows is a sequence of short sentences, which helps expose the main character’s ironic, quick-witted attitude. “What’s that, you say? Favoring a single company with special laws isn’t fair. Tell that to the East India Company. This is global economics, not kindergarten.” (Artemis, First Paperback Edition, 36) These two paragraphs are very close in length, but the variation in sentences makes their flow completely different from each other.

Finding the right balance for a particular work helps create a rhythm that will advance the story. Accelerating generates anxiety, excitement, or manifests specific emotional traits. For example, while lying, a character might speak faster than usual, which a sequence of short sentences can highlight. On the opposite spectrum, slowing down can help create suspense, a sense of anticipation, or it can add weight to a relevant point.

The more I write, the more I learn to spot those tools when I read.

Once I made the jump from reader, who wrote on occasion, to committed writer, my reading for pleasure was compromised. Don’t get me wrong, I still love reading. But it’s nearly impossible for me to read without paying attention to chapter sizes, vocabulary choices, sentence structures, even the font of a book catches my eye these days. Going back to Artemis by Andy Weir, I love how the name of the book has a unique font on the heading of my paperback copy. It’s a little thing, but to me, it shows care and intention.

Themes and Cultural References in SFF

atgomes,

Themes, deeper meanings, and literary and cultural references enrich readers’ experiences, but they can get lost in translation if the reader didn’t grow up with those traditions. Or, they can turn into a fun treasure hunt that keeps on giving.

Themes are the underlying inspiration behind a writer’s work. They are the big concepts one might be exploring, the thing at the back of a writer’s mind as they create characters and develop a story. Sometimes, even for the writer, a theme only becomes clear as the book is being written. Our subconscious has many hidden, dark corners.

I’ve been intrigued by the concept of identity and in what ways it will or won’t change with the AI revolution. I’m fascinated by how we might see ourselves individually and as part of the human species as our avatars grow in popularity and importance faster and more intensely than the people behind them. Our carefully crafted and disseminated social media personas aren’t who we are. Yet, in many instances, they are becoming more relevant than our true selves. 

It took me an international move to appreciate His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman. I read The Golden Compass/Northern Lights in Portuguese, called A Bússola Dourada, and loved it. I was enthralled by the imaginative fantasy and the straightforward criticism of organized religion. Splitting people from their souls, their sense of self, and turning them into confused, hollow beings… all in an effort to figure out a way to make folk easier to control, that was easy enough to get.

After moving to the U.S. I read somewhere that the series was inspired by Paradise Lost. After reading John Milton’s epic poem, I gained a deeper appreciation for Pullman. The way he flips the poem in its puritan values… now, that is epic. In John Milton’s Paradise Lost with an introduction by Philip Pullman (Oxford University Press, 2005), Pullman wrote, “My interest was most vividly caught by the meaning of the temptation-and-fall theme. Suppose that the prohibition on the knowledge of good and evil were an expression of jealous cruelty, and the gaining of such knowledge an act of virtue? Suppose the Fall should be celebrated and not deplored? As I played with it, my story resolved itself into an account of the necessity of growing up, and a refusal to lament the loss of innocence. The end of human life, I found myself saying, was not redemption by a non-existent Son of God, but the gaining and transmission of wisdom. Innocence is not wise, and wisdom cannot be innocent, and if we are going to do any good in the world we have to leave childhood behind.”

That’s one beautifully developed theme.

When I say cultural references, I’m talking about more mundane things. Maybe it is for that very reason they are so amusing. When I catch one, I smile mid-read. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline was such a book. It’s pop culture references go from Sesame Street to Monty Python and The Holy Grail. I had to research many American references that didn’t make it to Brazil, but even that was fun in itself. It was like a game, really.

My favorite cultural references add an extra meaning to the work though. I’ve already mentioned in this blog that The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams was the first work of science fiction I ever read. Yet, only when I bought the Omnibus Edition and read Adams’s introduction, which he called “A Guide to The Guide – Some helpful remarks from the author,” did I understand Ford Prefect’s name. The character’s name has such a cool meaning. It’s based on a car produced by Ford UK between 1938 and 1961. That’s Adams’s way of exposing the fact that an alien had “misunderstood” Earth and thought cars were the dominant species. Come to think of it, seeing from afar, humans could easily be mistaken for some sort of cars’ parasite.

Then, there are the literary references that may not be connected to an overall theme but are used to emphasize a concept or express a writer’s deep connection to the genre of his work. The Bible and Shakespeare are the most referenced books in modern literature. But I love a tie in genre reference. One of my favorite books with this quality is To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis, where the author’s love of mystery classics and her brilliant research shine as much as the time traveling plot. As a fan of mystery books, I loved seeing Agatha Christie and Randall Garrett’s references among other masters of classic mysteries.

I certainly don’t understand most of the references in books translated from other languages. That’s why I appreciate when translators take the time to explain the references, like Ken Liu did so brilliantly in The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu.

I don’t think themes and references are essential to make a book great. I certainly enjoy reading well written books with engaging characters and great plots even when I don’t get hidden meanings pertaining to the writer’s background and culture. But whenever I get one, or I learn about it and decide to revisit the book, I feel a special connection with the material and the writer.

Belief and Religion in SFF

atgomes,

I attended a fantastic panel during Chicon8 about Belief and Religion in science fiction and fantasy. I appreciated the distinction between belief and religion. In my opinion, religion, faith, and spirituality, which is different from spiritualism, are all part of a theme that can greatly enrich science fiction and fantasy works. This theme encompasses our need as humans to feel like we’re not only part of this universe we’ve been born into, but that, in the big scheme of things, we matter. In the vastness of the universe, we might not. But we really, really want to.

This theme can be explored in so many unique ways, which can be grouped into three categories:

·      Existing religions – Project Pope by Clifford D. Simak (1981), I think the word Pope is pretty telling. The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal (2018), where the protagonist is Jewish.

·      Made up religions not connected with existing ones – World of Five Gods series by Lois McMaster Bujold (2001-2021, so far)

·      Made up religions extrapolated from existing ones or inspired by them – Dune by Frank Herbert (1965), which has Islamic influences, and The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (1985) with its Christian references come to mind.

In fiction, as it is in life, belief and religion have the potential to greatly influence characters’ lives. They can be interwoven throughout the story as an underlying guideline. In this category, the “Force” in Star Wars – A New Hope (1977) jumps to mind. Systems of belief can be not only a part of the story, but a driving force. In Star Wars – Revenge of the Sith (2005), the Force is at the heart of the plot. Even though everyone who watched the original trilogy knows what happens to Anakin Skywalker, the will he-won’t he turn to the dark side of the Force drives the emotional side of the plot. That’s the power of good storytelling.

Religions are a great source of inspiration, but also a pointed way to reveal character. When writing about characters’ religious practices, besides considering diversity of religions, it’s important to highlight different practices and opinions within the same religion, avoiding a monolithic vision that everyone who practices a certain religion does it the same way and has the same views, interpretations, and opinions.

Religion and beliefs should be part of the whole character, interwoven into their behavior in subtle and consistent ways. Consider what temptation means in different religions. What is taboo? Think about how limitations of time, food, and access, to name a few restrictions, affect big and small life decisions characters must make. On Good Friday in Brazil, people traditionally don’t eat meat. Suppose a character who follows this tradition rigorously is invited to a party at his new boss’s house on Good Friday. They need the job. They don’t want to upset the boss. The boss brings them a plateful of meat and eagerly watches them, expecting enthusiastic appreciation for their culinary efforts. There you have tension. What will this poor character do?

Fiction has the power to inspire people from different religions to see and interact more positively with each other. The media we consume help shape the way we see the world. So, SFF can act as a channel to open people’s minds about other religions. It can be instructive and help us see solutions and ways to communicate and live in harmony despite differing beliefs, avoiding violent outcomes.

Culture comes from our beliefs, including religious beliefs. So, when making up a fictional religion, it’s a good idea to start from the culture being created. Think about Dune and the Fremen’s culture, which is influenced by their harsh environment, and in turn, their culture influences its religion. That, and the Bene Gesserit leaving seeds to feed the legend of a prophesied savior. It’s all a veritable ouroboros clusterfuck, a really engrossing and fun to read one, but I digress.

Belief, culture, and religion define us as much as our sexuality, our job, the community we belong to or struggle with, really anything that gives us a sense of who we are in the world. So, if including religion in your work, insert it as a daily reality as opposed to a theoretical and philosophical concept of faith exclusively. Much of what we do in the world is based on how we believe and interact with other people. The point is, belief and religion have been great sources of inspiration for SFF works, and some great writers explored its many possibilities. Yet, this theme is very much renewable.

Below is a list of books in which religion and different systems of belief are intricate parts of the story telling. It’s been compiled by suggestions from panelists, attendees, and my own research. This isn’t by any means an exhaustive list. If you have recommendation(s), please enter it(them) in the comments below.

Book Recommendations:

·      The Call of Cthulhu by H.P. Lovecraft (short story, 1928)

·      Unto the Fourth Generation by Isaac Asimov (short story, 1959)

·      Daredevil by Stan Lee and Bill Everett (comic book, 1964)

·      Dune by Frank Herbert (1965)

·      Isle of the Dead by Roger Zelazny (1969)

·      A Maze of Death by Philip K. Dick (1970)

·      The Door into Fire by Diane Duane (1979)

·      The Door into Shadow by Diane Duane (1984)

·      The Door into Sunset by Diane Duane (1992)

·      The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (1985)

·      Small Gods by Terry Pratchett (1992)

·      Manifest Destiny by Garry B. Longyear (which includes Enemy of Mine, 1980)

·      Project Pope by Clifford D. Simak (1981)

·      Book of the Long Sun by Gene Wolf (1993)

·      The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell (1996)

·      Absolution Gap by Alastair Reynolds (2003)

·      World of Five Gods by Lois McMaster Bujold (series, 2001-2021)

·      Dark Intelligence by Neal Asher (2015)

·      Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal (2018)

·      City of Resurrection by Ahmed Salah Al-Mahdi (2019)

·      The Priory of The Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon (2019)

·      Sisters of the Vast Black by Lina Rather (2019)

·      Of Strangers and Bees by Hamid Ismailov (2019)

·      Machinehood by S.B. Divya (2021)

·      A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers (2021)

·      Strange Religion: Speculative Fiction of Spirituality, Belief, & Practice, anthology edited by Andy Dibble (2022)

Movie and TV Recommendations:

·      Battle Beyond the Stars (space opera from 1980, produced by Roger Corman, directed by Jimmy T. Murakami, screenplay by John Sayles)

·      Babylon 5 (space opera TV series from writer and producer J. Michael Straczynski, pilot aired on 1993, the series had 5 seasons and many spin-offs)

Virtual Chicon8 and My Stubbornness

atgomes,

Monday, September 5th 2022

I attended the virtual option of Chicon8. My mom arrives in three weeks for a three month stay. I didn’t want to risk getting sick prior to her arrival. One would think staying at home and only going out for basic necessities, like groceries, would suffice. Nah. I’ve got Covid. It started over the weekend. I was way too tired and had to take long breaks after each panel I managed to watch. But as the stubborn creature that I am, I only took the test once a fever hit me. Luckily, my spouse was out with the kids. Now, I’m in isolation in my bedroom, feeling sorry for myself. Nothing else to do but rant online, I guess. This sucks.

The panels and workshops I managed to attend were great. I watched knowledgeable, generous professionals in various fields share their expertise in a very supportive way. I plan to watch all the panels I missed through the conference’s Airmeet page, which should remain available for 3-4 weeks. I’ll write the highlights in next week’s post, Covid permitting.