Moderator: Or when our guests show up!
Drikmor: How old is silverberg now?
* smaug digs through the library *
Legend: Card! Brin! Haldeman! And the other 2 people....
Moderator: Tonight's chat is a moderated event so make sure you all know how to send me private messages --- that's how you're going to be asking questions.
Drikmor: It's amazing there arent 500 people here with those people. Fire your PR guy :)
Drikmor: (oops that would be you?:)
Moderator: Pas moi!
Drikmor: *snicker*
Moderator: Although I know the publicist and I wouldn't fire her for anything -- she's great.
Legend: Well...it was plastered all over all the scifi sites I visited...
Epiphanis: I feel embarassed--I read the first chapter of "Beggars in Spain" and never finished it
smaug: these chats have been kinda small lately
Drikmor: Hello
Epiphanis: And now Kress is gonna be here
Legend: Hey Gardner
smaug: I hope they dont drop the venue
Legend: Yeah, something's wrong if we have all these big names and the chat is tiny
* Drikmor agree *
Gardner: Ah, brave new world that has such people in't!
Catmando: I was at Card's chat back in Nov - 100's of people here.....
Gardner: Hi, guys.
Mole: Welcome to Hell on Earth
Mole: Welcome to Hell on Earth
smaug: howdy
Mole: Howdy parnter
Moderator: Hi Gardner!
Legend: The only logical explanation is that sf is doomed. Doomed, I say!
Catmando: Domed, as in air dome on mars??
Legend: Hey, I'm rereading Robinson's trilogy...
smaug: Mars trilogy is great!
Legend: It's better the second time around....
Gardner: Doomed and domed as dear dead Mars! <g>
smaug: you go, boy!
Moderator: If any of our guests are hiding out under exotic cyber-pseuds please identify yourselves!
Robin: The whole thing? I loved the first book, 2nd less, 3rd -- who cared.
Legend: I was too young and impatiant the first time I read it
DustanMoon: Hi Gang! Anyone that likes to read in here, signify by breathing.
Gardner: I have a few questions to ask that will reveal the Real Joe Haldeman...
Moderator: Ahem!
DustanMoon: Bachelor number one, do you have a wife named Gay?
Legend: Does anyone here really like the word 'forever'?
DustanMoon: Ooops...guess that wouldn't make him a bachelor now, would it?<g>
Moderator: I like the word "foirever" almost as much as I like the word "always"
Gardner: So, anyone here who is a World Famous Writer, please raise your hand.
DustanMoon: <----wannabe world famous writer
* Moderator 's hand does a Dr Strangelove *
smaug: heh
puck: yea is this the place for far horizons chat?
Gardner: Dustan, you can legitimately raise a finger, then! <g>
Epiphanis: Never use the words "hand" and "strangelove" in the same sentence.
Gardner: Yes, puck.
puck: tnx
DustanMoon: Pinky up, Gardner!
Legend: When is that tomb coming out, anyway?
DustanMoon: Now extending thumb with pinky to make the shukka 'hang loose' sign.
Legend: Heya Card
OrsonScottCard: Hi. Nice to see you.
Drikmor: Hello
puck: hi
Gardner: Hi, Scott!
Epiphanis: Wow. He can see you! Writers really do have mystical powers.
Kirana-Scott: hi
DustanMoon: Hmmm. I wonder who Orson Scott Card might be among those mysterious names?<g>
Starlotte: Hello everyone!
Gardner: Nice to "see" you again--if we can call what we're doing "seeing" each other.
* Drikmor groans *
puck: lol gard
DustanMoon: Hmmm...would "feeling" each other work better, Gardner?
OrsonScottCard: Gardner, this is about the only way people see each other these days.
Moderator: Everyone, we will be starting tonight's chat in just a couple of minutes. Nancy Kress hads told us that she is going to be a few minutes late...
Legend: Gardner, I think we can "call" it "seeing"
Gardner: It would work better depending on who you ARE--not with YOU, I think, though, Dustan.
DustanMoon: Legend....are you Rob Silverberg by chance?
OrsonScottCard: I realize now I should have "said": Nice to "see" "you."
Moderator: Let's give our guests a few more minutes to filter in.
DustanMoon: LOL Gard.
Legend: Whoa!
Legend: Someone just ask me if I was Silverberg!
Gardner: As our guests filter slowly in, like fine coffee perculating...
Legend: My day is made!
Legend: (But no, I'm not)
smaug: good!
puck: la la la
OrsonScottCard: I think I seeped in like a slow leak in an air-conditioning unit.
Epiphanis: Or fine wine, gradually turning to vinegar...
DustanMoon: (He did an anthology by that name)
Gardner: It's your air of wordly sophistication, Legend!
* GarTrek has seen Scott seep before LOL *
DustanMoon: Orson, do you bring Legionaires disease with you?<g>
Lirani: Moderator left...hmmm...
Mole: party
OrsonScottCard: No, but in my youth I danced with the Legionettes.
Gardner: The Moderator left! Like a rat deserting a sinking ship!
smaug: we all promised to behave
DustanMoon: That's worth a few points, Orson.
Moderator: I'm back!
GarTrek: Disco Scott and the Legionettes? hehe
Legend: Ah, come to moderate the poor oppressed masses!
puck: damn my window is messed anyone know how to get it big again?
OrsonScottCard: How long before this discussion degenerates to complaints about Episode 1?
RSilverberg: Finally found my way in. Your dumb program insisted on my giving you a nickname.
Gardner: Actually, she left more like a rat going to check the other chat rooms for the guests who haven't shown up yet...
Epiphanis: Give it about ten minutes, OSC.
Gardner: So you chose, "Harlan, " right, Bob? <g>
OrsonScottCard: How do you like my nickname, Bob?
Lirani: click on the little square with the square in it...in the upper right.
Legend: Card, did ya like it?
* GarTrek thinks the server massed against the poor oppressed moderator! *
Moderator: And you didn't pick "Poopsie?" Shame on you, Bob!
Drikmor: Say no to spoilers.
OrsonScottCard: I thought and thought and finally it hit me ...
DustanMoon: I thought "Legend" was you, Rob.
butterfly: hi
RSilverberg: I chose RSilverberg. Fight dumb with dumb.
DustanMoon: Forgive me father, for I have sinned.<g>
Gardner: Well, we've got three Big Name Writers here. I suppose that's enough to start.
Moderator: Well, it keeps us tech folk from having to play charades -- which is a good thing!
Gardner: Hi, Bob, by the way.
RSilverberg: Hi
OrsonScottCard: Heck, I've even got one of my characters here. Anybody else bring one of theirs? I thought not.
Moderator: Should we start, Gardner???
GarTrek: hehe Scott
puck: lol scott
Gardner: Can the others still get in if we do?
OrsonScottCard: And Bill Shakespeare sent Puck.
Ender: Mr Card you are Buddah!
puck: hey I liked this alright
Moderator: Yes, and as soon as I recognize them, I can give them...VOICE!
OrsonScottCard: Never comes himself anymore.
DustanMoon: WHEN DO WE GET TO GET OUR BOOKS AUTOGRAPHED?
Gardner: Ah, what fools these mortals be!...
Legend: I will not rest until I "see" Brin in this "room"!
Gardner: "Look!" He's over "there!"
OrsonScottCard: You can mail them in reusable packaging to PO Box 18184 Greensboro NC 27419-8184 and get my signature on my story.
DustanMoon: This room is a signing heaven. I'm gnashing my teeth right now!
* GarTrek is not sure you can see a Brin in "The Transparent Society" hehe *
Gardner: Just "kidding."
DustanMoon: Cool, Orson!
Legend: Gardner, you'll "pay" for "that"
RSilverberg: What are we doing here?
Gardner: Dustan, just IMAGINE that Scott is signing your book right this moment. And if you imagine it HARD enough...
Legend: Okay, so that was sort of "weak"
Mole: typing?
Moderator: We're waiting for Joe Haldeman and David Brin...
Gardner: Well, I suppose we should start, Moderator.
OrsonScottCard: I, for one, am watching "Just Shoot Me" and playing Civilization II.
Moderator: Okay!
Lirani: ah, the joys of multitasking.
Legend: Oh yeah, and chatting with us, right?
Moderator: Hold on for a moment...while I start the Moderator magic...
Gardner: And hope that the others show up eventually.
puck: civ is ok ever play starcraft?
puck: card?
Drikmor: Spam ahead.
Drikmor: Duck.
OrsonScottCard: Whenever I think of something to say.
Moderator: Gardner! Type to me, baybee!
Gardner: Why, suddenly I can type! I couldn't type BEFORE! It's...MAGIC!
Moderator: Boib, Scott?? Can you...
Moderator: TYPE?
Gardner: And...I can CRAWL again!
RSilverberg: tYPE?
Moderator: Scott???
Gardner: Oh no, you scrambled his synapses!
OrsonScottCard: Aaaargh! I have been +v-ed!
Moderator: Cool! Let's begin with the intros:
Moderator: Hi everyone -- thanks for joining us here at scifi.com for tonight's chat. We're going to be talking to five very talented authors about the universes they created for Robert Silverberg's new anthology, FAR HORIZONS: The Great Worlds of Science Fiction.
Moderator: A dozen writers contributed to FAR HORIZONS altogether but the five who are with us tonight are: David Brin (UPLIFT), Orson Scott Card (ENDER), Joe Haldeman (FOREVER WAR), Nancy Kress (THE SLEEPLESS) and Robert Silverberg (ROMA ETERNA). Now these are NEW stories -- but they are based on each author's most popular series or settings. You should DEFINITELY buy this book.
Gardner: We have all been Translated into the Realms of the Divine!
Moderator: This chat is co-sponsored by Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine -- http://www.asimovs.com -- and your host tonight is the debonair and charming Gardner Dozois! I'm the tech guru and this is the way it works: if you have a questions to address to any or all of our guests, shoot it to me as a private message and I'll see that it gets asked.
Moderator: Voila!
Gardner: Hey, don't forget the All-Important Commercial Announcement!
Moderator: You mean...
Moderator: http://www.asimovs.com???
Moderator: Yes!
OrsonScottCard: Well, let's not forget www.hatrack.com and www.frescopix.com
Moderator: Those too!
RSilverberg: And Far Horizons, available at your friendly neighborhood amazon.com
OrsonScottCard: Not to mention the upcoming novel "Ender's Shadow" (Aug. 31), which goes back to Battle School from Bean's point of view.
OrsonScottCard: Now I feel much better.
RSilverberg: I may be asking why you called us all together tonight.
OrsonScottCard: Are we waiting for questions? Because I have become so skilled in the online interview format that I begin answering questions BEFORE THEY ARE ASKED.
NancyKress: Testing...
RSilverberg: Church of JC of the Former-Day Saints, Scott?
OrsonScottCard: And I also answer questions that NO ONE WANTS TO HAVE ANSWERED.
OrsonScottCard: Doggone it, Bob, that was one of my best answers, and now you've used it.
RSilverberg: Yup. Quick fingers.
NancyKress: Hi everyone -- I'm here!
RSilverberg: About time. WHat did you do with Joe?
Gardner: Hi, I'm back.
RSilverberg: We never knew you were gone,
Gardner: The cats decided that I'd talked online long enough.
Gardner: That's the story of my life, Bob! <G>
RSilverberg: but we missed you anyway, I think,
OrsonScottCard: This set-up phase is like every fantasy role-playing game I ever played - all set-up, no play.
OrsonScottCard: I have all these characters that have never taken more than ten steps into the dungeon.
Gardner: Nancy, just came in, I think, having obviously devoured Joe somewhere backstage.
OrsonScottCard: I even wrote novels about some of them.
Gardner: So, while i was gone, have we covered how this anthology came to be? Bob?
Moderator: We have an audience question...
Moderator: <GarTrek> : For Robert: What quirk of fate brought this insanity about? -- er....I mean What was the genesis of this book?
Moderator: Synergy...
Gardner: Same difference. Go, Bob.
RSilverberg: Well, in the beginning there was LEGENDS> And I looked upon it and it was good.....
Gardner: Was the world without form, and void?
RSilverberg: And thought maybe the s-f people should have one too.
RSilverberg: So I asked Heinlein for a Future History story, and Isaac to do a Foundation thing, and Frank Herbert.....
OrsonScottCard: Odd how the fantasy tail is now wagging the speculative fiction dog, these days, isn't it.
Gardner: Interesting that you thought of the fantasy one first, since you're usually thought of as an SF writer.
RSilverberg: And when nobody wrote back I figured I ought to try a couple of the other folks....
RSilverberg: But fantasy is Where It's At. I've even written some myself.
NancyKress: For some of us, fantasy is NOT where it's at!
Gardner: Hey, Bob, Heinlein, Frank Herbert, and Isaac got confused and sent those stories to ME, instead. Thanks for getting them worked up for me, though! <g>
RSilverberg: You know why Willie Sutton robbed banks, Nancy? He said, It's where the money is.
RSilverberg: Did you get the Hubbard story too, Gardner?
OrsonScottCard: You should have written to Hubbard. He's still writing a blue streak.
* NancyKress laughs *
RSilverberg: And the Verne? Jeest.
Gardner: We're serializing it in all twelve issues next year, the Hubbard.
NancyKress: But did you ask Willie Sutton for a story??
RSilverberg: He quit writing after he got the Grand Master.
OrsonScottCard: (Now the references are too obscure for me ... who the heck is Willie Sutton?
RSilverberg: Bank robber. Not a Mormon.,
OrsonScottCard: Funny. Butch Cassidy managed to be both.
NancyKress: Safe-cracker. DEFINITELY not a Mormon.
RSilverberg: Not Jewish either. I don't think there have been any famous Jewish bank robbers.
OrsonScottCard: I guess I'll skip the obvious Rothschild joke here.
RSilverberg: Yet,
RSilverberg: anyway.
NancyKress: Is casino-building the same as bank robbing?
RSilverberg: The Rothschilds didn't rob banks, they ran them. Is a big difference.
OrsonScottCard: That's the joke. You don't have to rob them when you own them.
RSilverberg: Maybe not for the customers, I guess.
Moderator: Here's another audience question:
Moderator: <DustanMoon> to <Moderator>: This question is to torture you guests, Where do you get your ideas?<g>
OrsonScottCard: I read Nancy Kress's column in Writer's Digest.
* NancyKress laughs *
RSilverberg: I get them in on-line chats like this.
OrsonScottCard: Actually, I get them from studio and network executives in pitch meetings. These guys are GOLD MINES.
NancyKress: For those of us writing high-viscosity science fiction, science itself yields all sorts of new ideas.
RSilverberg: So when Heinlein and Asimov didn't come through, I asked Brin and Bear and Card and Kress and all those guys, and they wrote a lot of nice stories.....
RSilverberg: And then the book came out and you should all buy it and I can go to dinner.
NancyKress: Right now, corn disease, monarch butterfiles and Frankenstein foods -- who could ask for more?
OrsonScottCard: Nice was what I was going for, that's for sure.
RSilverberg: Murrain....frogs....
RSilverberg: Stuff with the first-born,,,,
RSilverberg: Butterfiles, Nancy?
OrsonScottCard: Those of us whose idea of science is reading each issue of Scientific American whether we understand it or not have a much harder time coming up with sci-fi ideas.
OrsonScottCard: Butterfiles ... she keeps an organized refrigerator.
RSilverberg: Is that like butterflingers?
RSilverberg: James Bond movie, wasn't it?
NancyKress: Genetically engineered corn has had its pollen blown on to milkweed which is the foold of the monarch butterfly caterpillars -- nd it is killing them. Mind you, I''m in favor of genetically engineered crops. But there are still some bugs in the system.
OrsonScottCard: Seriously: Ideas come from asking questions and making up cool answers. Why? What if? What next?
RSilverberg: And larvae
RSilverberg: And what happens if you take the obvious and turn it upside down.
Moderator: Hi Joe!!
Joe-Haldeman: Whew ...
Moderator: You should be able to type -- try it!
Joe-Haldeman: Finally made it, after four crashes and a computer change
RSilverberg: You need to put more butter in the damn thing, Joe.
Gardner: Hi, Joe.
Gardner: FOUR crashes, Joe? You drive that computer too damn fast!
RSilverberg: Try the new Mac SUV.
Joe-Haldeman: I should use the turn signals
Gardner: Cop's get you for typing under the influence!
OrsonScottCard: Gardner, just because it feels so good to get +v-ed doesn't mean you should keep doing it in front of the children.
Joe-Haldeman: I wish.
Gardner: Much like Eternal Fame, the chat keeps spitting me contemptuously out.
Moderator: Audience question:
Moderator: <Birch> : When creating an alien culture (or even a future human culture), how do you balance the need of the reader to understand through familiar concepts with the "strangeness" or uniqueness of the culture you are creating? Does anyone use a "set" criteria?
Joe-Haldeman: The first criterion is clarity.
Gardner: I think everybody makes it up as they go along. Whatever "feels" right.
RSilverberg: You lead them in subtly. You study how Heinlein did it, if you're smart -- the easy intro to the strange.
Joe-Haldeman: Clear weirdness is what you're after.
OrsonScottCard: Clarity, yes. Then plausibility. THEN strangeness. Then full extrapolability.
RSilverberg: By the time they know they're in another world, they're in it.
NancyKress: Feed in the bits of strangeness in tandem with the bits of familiar.
RSilverberg: We're giving away all the secrets.
OrsonScottCard: They were secrets? Ouch.
RSilverberg: They were written on golden plates.
Joe-Haldeman: It's really effective if the strangeess is not immediately apparent ...
Gardner: Interestingly, the "familiar" lead-in stuff in Heinlein stories such as "Gulf" is by now dated enough that it probably seems more unfamiliar than the "unfamilar" stuff to many readers!
Joe-Haldeman: but appears to the rede _after_ if occurs on the page.
RSilverberg: Ye olde generation gap. No defense against it.
NancyKress: At dinner tonight, my step-daughter had never heard of Sputnik.'
OrsonScottCard: But I bet after dinner, she had.
NancyKress: She was amazed when I told her how it seized our imaginations in 1957.
RSilverberg: Sputnik was 42 years ago. Bill CLinton was nine when it went up.
Gardner: So, how many of you actually WANTED to write another story set in your famous series? And how many of you had said "Never Again!" when you finished the previous story?
Joe-Haldeman: I have students who ask "What's Shinola?"
RSilverberg: I wish they had sent him instead.
RSilverberg: But they know the rest of the equation,
NancyKress: So was I -- nine, I mean.
OrsonScottCard: Actually, the chance to write an Ender story was perfect - I wanted to write about Ender's meeting with Jane, but it wasn't worth a novel.
RSilverberg: If you were president instead, would you have let the Chinese pirate all your stories?
RSilverberg: Nancy?
Gardner: A high-school kid asked me once (in total seriousness), "Did World War II come before or after Vietnam?"
NancyKress: I had said Never again! -- until Bob asked.
NancyKress: He's very pursuasive.
RSilverberg: I can be very persuasive.
OrsonScottCard: Many women have had that identical experience.
Joe-Haldeman: I'd always wanted to write a story that was a follow-up to The Forever War, to expand on the ambiguity
RSilverberg: Many have submitted, yes.
Joe-Haldeman: of the ending.
RSilverberg: But few are chosen,
RSilverberg: What about the ending of the ambiguity, Joe?
Gardner: So, having said "Never Again" about returning to that world, was your first reaction dismay? Or did you become enthusiastic about going back after you thought about it for awhile?
RSilverberg: William Gibson made the never again stick. Which is why he's not in the book.
RSilverberg: I begged and begged. Wept and moaned. But I'm not his type.
Gardner: Any other Big Fish you went after but couldn't get, Bob?
RSilverberg: Clarke. He said yes, then got too busy accepting his knighthood, and checked out.
RSilverberg: Bradbury was writing a screenplay for The Martian Chronicles and didn't want to write a new chronicle.
Joe-Haldeman: I couldn't use the follow-up novelette in Bob's book because it was turning into a novel (forever free).
Joe-Haldeman: So I wrote him a different one...
Gardner: If you could have ASSIGNED a story to Clarke, a follow up on one of his famous stories, which Clarke story would you have picked?
NancyKress: How long does it take to accvept a knighthood?
Joe-Haldeman: filling in a "lost" part of the story in TFW
OrsonScottCard: Actually, Spinrad was thinking of an anthology in which series writers PARODY their most famous characters.
NancyKress: You gave us 18 months to write the story for God's sake.
RSilverberg: It took him three months. I would say yes faster.
Gardner: Depends on how hard they whack you with the sword, Nancy.
OrsonScottCard: I was so tempted to do that for Bob's anthology, but I decided that wouldn't be in the spirit of the venture.
RSilverberg: I asked Clarke to extend Childhood's end, He was tempted.
Gardner: CHILDHOOD'S END is a good choice. I might have picked THE CITY AND THE STARS.
RSilverberg: Beyond Childhood's End....maybe an odd idea.
NancyKress: Childhood's End was the first science fiction novel I ever read. I was 14.
RSilverberg: Anyway, Greg Benford took care of City and Stars.
Joe-Haldeman: It was wonderful at 14. I wonder how it holds up.
Gardner: Well, you'd already seen Sputnik by then, so you might as well read...
Moderator: Station identification: our guests tonight are David Brin, Orson Scott Card, Joe Haldeman, Nancy Kress and Robert Silverberg ho've all written stories for Robert Silverberg's new anthology, FAR HORIZONS: The Great Worlds of Science Fiction. Got a question? Shoot it to me, Moderator, as a private message.
RSilverberg: I was seventeen. I didn't think as much of it later on when I read it again.
Gardner: I liked it when I read it. Haven't re-read it in years.
Moderator: <Glenn>: RSilverberg, how important do you weigh science in science fiction?
RSilverberg: But what ever IS as good as when you're seventeen?
OrsonScottCard: You can never read something for the first time a second time.
Gardner: I hope I'm better at SOME things now than I was when I was seventeen...<g>
Joe-Haldeman: I've rea novels that were better on the second reading ...
RSilverberg: I think the science ought to make sense -- no flowers on ferns, for example. But it can remain subtext while the drama plays out on top.
OrsonScottCard: Different stories offer dreams that fit with different ages. I read Moby-Dick and seventeen and found it tedious. REad it again in my late thirties and found it funny and wise.
RSilverberg: Flowers on ferns might be an interesting notion, come to think of it....
RSilverberg: You saw it here first.
Gardner: Bob, if you COULD have had a story from a Famous Dead Writer, which sequel from whom would you have wanted?
OrsonScottCard: So i don't ask "Galactic Derelict" and "Tunnel in the Sky" to be as good now as they were then. Because they were the stuff of dreams then.
OrsonScottCard: I have different dreams now.
NancyKress: I ocunt the characters as more important than the science but many disagree. This makes for very lively debates at my house.
OrsonScottCard: Nancy, doesn't that depend on the story? If the focus of the story is the idea (cf. Nightfall, 9 Billion Names of God) the characters are irrelevant.
Gardner: I picture you and Charles yelling the equivilent of "Tastes great!" "Less filling!" across the kitchen table at each other.
OrsonScottCard: But in most of your fiction, while the science is not irrelevant, the characters are the reason for reading.
OrsonScottCard: Different kinds of fiction.
OrsonScottCard: Both good, when done well.
Joe-Haldeman: The science in sf is like the independent "reality" details in any fiction. It can be bullshit if you know what you're doing.
Gardner: Everyone does it differently, with different emphasis on different things. That's why you can read more than one book in your life.
NancyKress: Words of true wisdom for Gardner! Give that man a drink.
* Moderator passes Gardner the Thunderbird. *
Gardner: Indeed, Joe, with some stories, the only difference between listing them as SF or as fantasy is that the bullshit details are more "convincing" in one than in the other.
Joe-Haldeman: You want to trust your reader to know when you're kidding.
Moderator: Another audience question -- this time for Joe:
Moderator: Mole> : question to haldeman: Why is it that many of your works involve the military in such detail? Do you see it as a dominating force in technological advancement?
Gardner: Still bullshit in both--just that the doubletalk seems "plausible" in one, and not the other.
Joe-Haldeman: No, Mole. It's just a "write what you know" thing.
Joe-Haldeman: But the military does drive tech. Ref. the design of the space shuttle.
Gardner: Tsk, Scott! Now YOU'RE +ving in public too.
OrsonScottCard: I'd only want to alter Gardner's summation by saying that good fantasy must be as convincing as good sci-fi - but using different methods of establishing verisimilitude.
OrsonScottCard: I'm so ashamed.
Gardner: There's probably a twelve-step program for people like us.
Moderator: Station identification: our guests tonight are David Brin, Orson Scott Card, Joe Haldeman, Nancy Kress and Robert Silverberg ho've all written stories for Robert Silverberg's new anthology, FAR HORIZONS: The Great Worlds of Science Fiction. Got a question? Shoot it to me, Moderator, as a private message.
Gardner: True, Scott.
OrsonScottCard: Need drives technology. The military is one source of that drive. But commerce is another. Fear of death is another - hence advances in medicine.
Joe-Haldeman: And then there are dreams.
NancyKress: Commerce is driving genetic engineering.
OrsonScottCard: Hungers for prestige and love and admiration drive things like plastic surgery and automobile design and underwear design.
Gardner: Reading Le Guin's "Earthsea" story, "Dragonfly, in LEGENDS, it struck me that, although the world worked perfectly as a fantasy world...
Moderator: Here's a question for Scott -- appropos:
Moderator: <Ender> to <Moderator>: Mr Card since most of the Ender novels were more about people than the science , does that mean you know people better than science?
Joe-Haldeman: Technology also drives itself. Any computer customer knows that.
Gardner: ...If you once touched a spaceship down on Earthsea, even for a second, the whole world would change into SF instantly, like a chip of Ice Nice changing water.
OrsonScottCard: Sad to say, I don't know that much about either. But I guess at what makes people do what they do - including me - and try to make sense of it in stories.
Gardner: That's Ice Nine, actually. <g>
OrsonScottCard: Each story is like an experiment in science - try out the hypothesis, see if other people find it rings true.
Joe-Haldeman: I like Ice Nice.
Gardner: Ice Nice makes people instantly NICE to each other.
OrsonScottCard: As to science, I just use whatever is needed to make things work in the story. Create a black box and make clear what the rules are: Put X in one end, get Y out the other.
Gardner: They could use some in the Middle East.
Joe-Haldeman: Islam forbids its use.
OrsonScottCard: In another sense, though, science IS people - scientists doing things and believing things for human reasons. Some of what we call science is just religion in a new suit. (cf. psychology before effective drugs).
OrsonScottCard: But in the end, our knowledge of people and our knowledge of science are both subjected to the same test: does it work in the real world?
Moderator: 'noither audience question:
Moderator: <GarTrek> to <Moderator>: To all our authors: You each get, for one magical moment, the ability to categorize your books the way YOU want to in every bookstore on the planet. Under what category or listing would you place them?
OrsonScottCard: this set of pontification done.
Gardner: Whether it's SF or fantasy, the story needs to be internally consistent, and faithful to the aesthetics of the world. SO, no spaceships in Earthsea, no ghosts or demons in RAMA.
Joe-Haldeman: I don't equate faith with religion, Scott. I'd say science is often "faith in science."
OrsonScottCard: Different books in different categories. I have written historicals, contemporary novels, sci-fi, fantasy. I wish each could be in the place most likely to find its appropriate audience.
OrsonScottCard: I think the distinction between "religion" and "science" is often used by scientists as a way of asserting the superiority of their own religion. But that's another argument.
Gardner: Bob and Moderator slipped out for some Hot Cybersex, but they're back! <g>
Joe-Haldeman: Yeah, if we're limited to the real world, I'm happy with "literary hard science fiction."
RSilverberg: The network hung me up about ten minutes ago and I can't find my way back in.
OrsonScottCard: The scientists who feel most threatened by religion are the ones for whom science is most religious.
RSilverberg: Am I here now?
Gardner: A very metaphysical question. Yes.
Joe-Haldeman: You're here, Bob.
Gardner: It's happened to me twice so far.
RSilverberg: I was told that my name was in use and I had to provide another one. But when I did that I didn't have the right to get on screen. Foop.
OrsonScottCard: But the term "literary" - Joe, your stuff is much better than the claptrap that goes under the name "literary" in bookstores these days.
RSilverberg: I 'm going to scroll back to see wht I missed.
OrsonScottCard: That academic-literary stuff is so riddled with cliches and stereotypes, so tied to formulas.
Joe-Haldeman: Well, in some fantasy world the category "novel" wuould do.
OrsonScottCard: Are you sure you want to saddle your work with a limiting label like that?
OrsonScottCard: That's the best world, Joe - but then, the existence of genres helps readers find our books when we're just starting out.
Gardner: I suspect that there's good stuff and bad stuff there as well, if you look close enough, Scott. Just like everywhere.
RSilverberg: Can't scroll back either. I'll just sit here until I figure out what the question is.
OrsonScottCard: I know, Gardner. Just like reversing the stereotypes - with the exact same degree of validity.
Joe-Haldeman: It doesn't seem limiting. By "literary" I just mean "to be judged by normal literary standards. Most sf is not.
OrsonScottCard: The question, Bob, is what category we'd like to put our stuff under if we could choose.
NancyKress: I would put my books in a category called Science Fiction For People Who Think They Won't Like Science Fiction But Who Live In The Real World.
RSilverberg: Science fiction.,
RSilverberg: I believe in truth in packaging.
Gardner: You have to come up with an acroynm for that you can put on the spine, Nancy.
RSilverberg: I did a book called Dying Inside once and they put a slimy monster on the cover. The slimy monster fans didn't find any inside
RSilverberg: and the people who don't read slimy monster books
RSilverberg: didn't buy it. So I quit writing forever.
Gardner: Would it have been worse, I wonder, if it DID have slimy monsters inside and you DIDN'T put them on the cover?
OrsonScottCard: I think my category really is "Stories that pretend to be easily-readable science fiction but are secretly just whatever Card felt like writing and thought he might get someone else to read."
RSilverberg: When I was through quitting writing I stopped caring about the packaging. Like swimming upstream to give a damn about it.
Joe-Haldeman: And then they brought it out with a neutral cover to bring you back?
RSilverberg: Yes. But by then everything had changed and nobody understood the book.
NancyKress: My two thrillers were shelved with sf because my name was on them and no thriller readers actually found them -- which is too bad because I think they're the best books I've ever written.
Gardner: For a guy who quit writing forever, Bob, you keep having RELAPSES. <g>
RSilverberg: Same here with my two historical novels.
OrsonScottCard: The categories are maddening, though, when you write out of category. My "Enchantment" sat on the New Fiction shelves in the chain stores for about two weeks, till the Star Wars novelization drove them off. Then they put them into the sci-fi section, which is NOT where its proper audience will find it.
RSilverberg: Oh, I won't quit again. I'll just do a Cheshire Cat routine.
Joe-Haldeman: And my spy novel.
Gardner: Joe, did 1968 get shelved with SF?
Joe-Haldeman: Not that I know of.
RSilverberg: They thought it was a prequel to 1984.
OrsonScottCard: There you go, Nancy. It's the unimaginative use of computers in the chain bookstores. That's what you do when you don't have store managers who know books.
Joe-Haldeman: Har de har ha. Bob -- actually, WAR YEAR got an sf cover and wound up on the sf shelves.
RSilverberg: Should we remind the 47 people with us to go out and buy Far Horizons now?
OrsonScottCard: Some writers are now creating pseudonyms for each category, just to beat that system. Dave Wolverton is now writing a fantasy series as David Farland.
OrsonScottCard: And that was only to change from sci-fi to fantasy.
Moderator: Go out and buy Far Horizons NOW.
RSilverberg: Killer anthology. Your libraries will be incomplete without it.
RSilverberg: Yes, Yes.
Moderator: Buy it for your friends who couldn't make it to the chat!
RSilverberg: THis is subliminal advertising at its finest.
Joe-Haldeman: I was sto do that, Scott. I wanted to do 1968 under a pseudo.
RSilverberg: Keep it above the limen,
OrsonScottCard: And WITH it, your libraries WILL be complete, and you don't have to buy another book as long as you l ive.
Gardner: There's so little flexibility. When I did my SF cat anthology, I tried hard to get them to get stores to put one copy out in the SF section, and one copy in the PET section. But there's literally no mechanism in place to enable you to do this.
RSilverberg: and pretend it's not.
RSilverberg: You said it, Scott. The ultimate anthology.
OrsonScottCard: The trouble with a pseudonym is, you lose the GOOD parts of your career - like getting paid enough to live on.
RSilverberg: I did okay with that Grisham penname
Moderator: Ahem! At this point in the evening, Gardner and I generally open up the channel to -- uh -- freeform chat. Scott? Joe? Bob? Care to stick around for a few minutes and hang with the homies???
OrsonScottCard: so you hve to choose between getting shelved in the right place, but getting paid a $3,000 advance, or getting the advance you usually do, and getting shelved in sci-fi no matter what.
OrsonScottCard: Guess which one I chose!
OrsonScottCard: Of course, I've been writing for years under the pseudonym "Anne Tyler."
Gardner: I liked the books you did under the "Stephen King" name better, Bob.
RSilverberg: What about the five as Moses?
Gardner: They were heavy reading.
RSilverberg: Only Deuteronomy.
OrsonScottCard: Come on, Bob, don't take credit for Harlan's early work.
Joe-Haldeman: I liked the Gigamesh ones
RSilverberg: Sins of my youth,
Gardner: I wasn't all that crazy about your "Anne Rice" books, though.
OrsonScottCard: I'm here till about ten-thirty.
Gardner: So, any questions for Scott, step up to the plate!
RSilverberg: What about the Iliad? Some nice battle stuff there, hey?
OrsonScottCard: Not mine! That's a filthy lie and I won't have it! I did NOT write the Anne Rice books. I simply told those stories to a weaselly friend who wrote them and took all the credit and the money!
Gardner: The swine!
Joe-Haldeman: I don't have a clock on this little slow computer. I'm here for a while.
RSilverberg: Harlan wrote them. We settled that five lines back.
Gardner: Joe and I are here until they close the bar, as usual.
RSilverberg: Lower the bar, you mean.
RSilverberg: It says Brin is here. Where?
Gardner: I take it David Brin never showed up.
OrsonScottCard: You mean some people are getting drinks? Is it because I'm using AOL that I don't get bar privileges?
NancyKress: I hve to say good night now. Good night, sweet princes.
Gardner: Unless Bob is David Brin TOO.
Joe-Haldeman: He is here in spirit ......
RSilverberg: Not on your life.
OrsonScottCard: Farewell, Nancy. We've got to stop meeting like this.
Gardner: Goodnight, Nancy! Write me some more stories!!
RSilverberg: OR his.
RSilverberg: Good night, Nancy,.
OrsonScottCard: Can I write the intro to your next novel?
RSilverberg: There's a Brin in the corner of my screen.. Impostor?
Joe-Haldeman: Swede dreams ...
Gardner: Mod, tell Nancy to stop hanging out in chats and write me some new stories!
OrsonScottCard: Yeah, well, there's a Cheese in the corner of mine, and I'm not making nachos.
Gardner: That goes for the REST of you, too!
Moderator: Okay, y'all.
RSilverberg: I haven't eaten yet. Cut out the food stuff.
Gardner: Wait a minute, mod
Moderator: Now the real wild and crazy stuff starts -- hold on to your hats again. We're going UNmoderated....
Gardner: I have a question for Bob, and for the rest.
RSilverberg: Okay
OrsonScottCard: You mean ... I'm getting un-*v-ed?
Dreamer: Any guys wana chat?pres 5555
quadrinaros: hi
puck: now thats better
* whiz waves to Cheese! *
OrsonScottCard: It's like becoming a virgin again.
Epiphanis: Yeah
Moderator: Wg=hhoops!
Mole: howdy
Moderator: Wait!
whiz: Hey... Cheese... yoah!
OrsonScottCard: Oh, wait. I was already a virgin.
Gardner: Bob, if you could have gotten a sequel to ANY story, even by Dead Writers, which one would you have chosen?
quadrinaros: wake up, brin
Dreamer: Joe where are u from?
RSilverberg: Hamlet
puck: so how is everyone tonight?
* Moderator peers up *
* Raptor dinks with his Lego Droid Starfighter, deftly morphing it from cruising the attack to walking modes, with a quick swap of bricks.... *
brin: Oh boy, now I get to say something! Hi. David Brin here. Been kept out till now. Nice to see you guys... sorta...
Legend: Card, how's that EG screenplay comone along?
ThunderWolf: howdy
RSilverberg: Fortinbras takes over the kingdom and Hamlet's ghost starts to walk...
Legend: Brin!
redhead: hi everyone
Gardner: And the rest of you, if you could have picked out any story to see a sequel written to, which one would you have picked?
Creideiki: OSC: How goes the battle to bring Ender to the big screen?
Gardner: David! You're actually HERE!
OrsonScottCard: Bummer - I guess you didn't use the "list of chat commands" to find out how to tell the moderator you were really David Brin.
whiz: moohahahahahahaha... Cows...... bring me some COWS.........
Epiphanis: Here's mine: you guys talked a lot about categorizing between SF and fantasy-- yet I believe much good work is both at once, particularly from Zelazny's work. Is that a good or bad thing?
RSilverberg: I see we've let the dork site of the farce loose in here.
Legend: It wouldn't've happened in a transparent society <g>
RSilverberg: Categories aren't important, just good fiction,
brin: Hello Gardner. How you been.
Dawnmyst: lol
OrsonScottCard: About Ender: The Movie: I'm working on the new screenplay. I can do it from Ender's pov this time because we have a good chance of getting Jake Lloyd to play the part, if the script is right.
whiz: Use the Farce, Luke... The Marketing Power, Luke... Use the Marketing Power!
Moderator: Gardner -- should we go back moderated for a couple more minutes???
Drikmor: bah set the moderation back on.
OrsonScottCard: With a real actor in the part, I can write it the way it's supposed to be written.
GarTrek: To be or not to be, that is Bob's alter egos....
Vadah: Mr. Card do you know of a market for christian based sci-fi?
Moderator: Hold on everyone!!!
RSilverberg: That would be nice.
Moderator: SILENCE!
* whiz holds on to Moderator *
OrsonScottCard: And Jake is the real thing - a brilliant kid, a very good actor. Look how he made those awful lines in Phantom Menace sound almost like a real human might have said them!
Moderator: We're going to go back into moderation for a few minutes.
Rocky: when's the movie suppose to come out?
Gardner: Moderator takes a whiz....
Moderator: ?mode #auditorium +v Gardner
OrsonScottCard: Vadah, I know of no such market. The biggest barrier is that to be christian fiction, God must function as God; to be science fiction, God must NOT function as a transcendant God.
Moderator: So -- who can type???
Moderator: Gardner?
OrsonScottCard: I can't think of a way to reconcile the contradictory rule set.
RSilverberg: I can. But what for?
RSilverberg: The what?
Gardner: Well, those who'd like can answer the question--which SF story, other than ones you wrote, would you most like to see a sequel written to? Living or dead authors.
OrsonScottCard: I was continuing the previous answer to Vadah's question.
RSilverberg: Mystery of Edwin Drood. The Lady or the Tiger.
Moderator: David Brin?? Can you type?
Gardner: Am I on?
Moderator: I think Joe has disappeared...
OrsonScottCard: I've seen "Christian science fiction," but it's exactly as good as science fiction by romance writers - it's just work from the other genre using a few sci-fi tropes without a clue about what they're for.
Moderator: You're always on, Gardner.
RSilverberg: Christian s-f? You mean, advocating the doctrines? Or examining them?
brin: Great news about the influence Scott Card is having over the interpretation of his novel to screen. I did not have that for the Postman... Tho the Paramount deaGreg Bear, Greg Benford & I just returned from a tour promoting the second foundation trilogy.
RSilverberg: Blish's novel is Christian s-f, I think.
RSilverberg: Case of Conscience.
OrsonScottCard: Advocating. If it merely examines them, then it's not "religious" - it's theological or cosomological <grin>
OrsonScottCard: I assumed Vadah was referring to Christian fiction in the sense that there is a Christian Fiction category today - fiction in which characters are self-consicously (and, alas, usually smugly) Christian.
RSilverberg: Advocating any doctrine seems to me a violation of the reader-writer relationship.
OrsonScottCard: Obviously I'm not a fan of the genre.
RSilverberg: Exploring, yes. Peddling, no,
RSilverberg: Christianity is at least as worth exploring as atomic theory.
RSilverberg: In fiction, I mean.
OrsonScottCard: The only reason I still have influence over Ender's Game, Dave, is because there's no money involved yet.
OrsonScottCard: As soon as money gets involved, no one will listen to me anymore.
Gardner: So then, what SF story would you all most like to see a sequel to? Any author living or dead.
brin: Seems to me that Star Wars peddles an unbermensch religion, that demigods can get away with genocide, so long as they save their own son.
RSilverberg: Dune?
OrsonScottCard: Andre Norton's Time Traders books. I want more! Instead, she went off into the Witch World series, which got less and less interesting to me.
Gardner: There's one coming up, in fact, I think, Bob. Several, in fact.
RSilverberg: Vance's To Live Forever.
Gardner: I agree with you there, Scott. Loved TIME TRADERS, never liked WITCH WORLD.
OrsonScottCard: I wrote a nasty essay on that, Brin. Which obviously no one read, because I was later offered the chance to do a Star Wars novel, which would never have happened if anyone in the Lucas group had seen my opinion of "The Force" as religion.
RSilverberg: Kuttner's Fury.
RSilverberg: Sam woke, remember? Remember?
Gardner: Interesting choice.
brin: Dune is another example. The tradition is as old as the Illiad! It runs through comix. In contrast, Star Trek is of the Jeffersonian/Heinleinian tradition.
Gardner: I believe the DUNE sequels are being written by Kevin Anderson, though, not (alas!) Frank Herbert himself.
OrsonScottCard: I think, though, there's a big difference between fiction in which characters have powerful religious beliefs, and fiction in which the author's powerful religious beliefs and the assumed audience's powerful religious beliefs shape the story.
RSilverberg: He wrote a few himself, actually.
RSilverberg: How can you assume anything unitary about the audience?
RSilverberg: Unless they're Unitariams, of course...
RSilverberg: Unitarians,
RSilverberg: I meant,
OrsonScottCard: Bob, it's a self-selection process. You have to assume that anyone who reads a lot of sci-fi is the kind of reader who reads sci-fi.
RSilverberg: Getting hungry.
brin: Scott, I was about to say that the Parmount deal for Startide looks like I've got more clout. They have to be POLITE when they ignore me & kick me off the set!
RSilverberg: But not of any one faith,/
Gardner: <gives SIlverberg a virtual prime rib>
RSilverberg: They're always polite, David. But they always win.
OrsonScottCard: And I feel quite safe in saying that anybody who reads a lot of Christian fiction is going to be the kind of person who enjoys reading that kind of fiction. Seems like a truism, but ...
RSilverberg: Stop ribbing, Gardner.
Gardner: You want me to pass the horseradish sauce?
RSilverberg: I was once asked to provide a quote for a Christian novel by Roger Elwood. He was astounded when I pointed out I wasn't Christian.
RSilverberg: And that Zeus was about as real to me as Jehovah.
brin: Bob, we signed and sold a LOT of copies of Far Horizons on this tour. Hunneds! So you can afford real prime rib.
Gardner: How about you, Joe? What story would you most like to see a sequel for?
RSilverberg: And vice versa.
Gardner: REAL prime rib is fattier...
OrsonScottCard: I don't think Joe is here anymore. His + listing is there, but his name isn't there farther down the list.
RSilverberg: I think Joe's gone. He'd probably like to see a sequel to The forever war.
Gardner: How about YOU, then, David? You weren't here earlier.
Gardner: Any questions for David, by the way, Moderator, pass them on up to us!
brin: Gardner, I wanted more from Sheckly's MINDSWAP.
RSilverberg: Thanks for that prime rib, David. I'm starving. Good night, folks. Good night, Mrs. Calabash.
Gardner: It's a hard question. I wouldn't mind seeing a direct sequel to THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS.
Gardner: Or, hey, Bob, how about a novel version of THE POPE OF THE CHIMPS?
RSilverberg: The right hand of darkness, yes. Over and out.
Gardner: Good night, Bob.
brin: Good night, Bob.
Moderator: Shall we go unmoderated?
Gardner: Might as well.
Gardner: Several of us are unmoderate anyway.
* Cassius is back from: In the immortal words of that once honored wise-man Forrest Gump: I gotta pee. ... 2mins 10secs *
Moderator: Voila!!!
Raptor: hmm
Creideiki: For David Brin: Set? Kicked off the set? Is Startide filming?!!?
Cassius: "ahhh"
Rocky: woohoo
Raptor: aiee cass is the better term
puck: ahhhhh thats better