I guess I better write it down. Preferably somewhere I won't lose it.

The fictional book has a dystopia. There's no convincing the reader it's a dystopia. There's no carefully pointing out how certain actions much like what commonly occur in our own world are a big part of how it's a dystopia. There's no trying to convince the reader of what's right and wrong. There's certainly no grand scheme for fixing the whole world. There's just hero/s whom are finding ways to cope with the situation. Not exactly just merely surviving. But finding/applying positive coping mechanisms.

Along the way various insights may be included but never ever in a manner that they get in the way of the story at all.

It may be that to a large extent what could have been learned will simply fly over the readers head. Oh well. There is fiction and there's nonfiction.

...I think of Devo. And how their message, which wasn't really that hidden, (but was partially hidden as it would have pissed a ton of people off) was missed by almost everyone it seemed. Devolution. We're evolving into a stupider race. Our idea of a good time is getting drunk and laid. Being really (noncompartmentalizedly) smart is like having a disease.

They weren't hiding it much.

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Mongoloid he was a mongoloid
Happier than you and me
Mongoloid he was a mongoloid
And it determined what he could see
Mongoloid he was a mongoloid
One chromosome too many
Mongoloid he was a mongoloid
And it determined what he could see
And he wore a hat
And he had a job
And he brought home the bacon
So that no one knew
Mongoloid he was a mongoloid
His friends were unaware
Mongoloid he was a mongoloid
Nobody even cared

A guy has Down's Syndrome but no one even notices because everyone else is at about the same level. Endless such songs parodying everything in our culture that disgusted them and, for all their preachiness they might as well have been mumbling grocery lists.

So it flies over everyone's head. Oh well.

Vancian coping was stoicism. That's why it appealed to me so much.
Salvatore appealed to me in that the dystopia/versus the compassion of the hero resounded with my own life. His coping was also.. stoicism.

Another coping is turning things into the absurd. Another is focusing on the welfare of others instead of the self. (Thank god for children?) What else? Religion/mysticism/art..., love, well... then maybe endless others. Could say everything is a coping mechanism. But focusing on the coping mechanisms of 'the hero'.

The books that gave a euphoric feeling had the hero's with coping mechanisms that were new to me.

There is also Ayn Rand's heros. Her coping mechanism was thinking you're superior to others and that The Game is all there is. Endless competing against all other people. The individual against all others. That is Life. That is The Way. Love it. Become it.

Such is the coping mechanism of a monster.

There is also Milan Kundera's coping mechanism. His was showing that yes, he agrees, life is horrible. Look at this. See? I understand. I agree. But I'll go further. I'll show you that it's even worse then you thought. In fact it's so bad that what you must do is give up. And turn to relatively small bits of happiness. Like a nice hot piece of ass. A beautiful sunset. That's all one can hope for.

Kundera is probably right but a real hero would not agree.

As I climbed the steep driveway on a gray afternoon last winter, a large dog barking at my approach, I tried to banish the irrational expectation that Vance and I would exchange Vancian dialogue. Me: “Why did you persist in writing hurlothrumbo romances of the footling sort favored by mooncalfs?” Him: “The question is nuncupatory. I grow weary of your importunities. Begone.”

Jack Vance

Heh. I've read 40 some books by him but I don't really consider attempting to write like him. Maybe try to incorporate some elements. His manner of describing a setting was so perfect. His worlds were so real. And the description of them never got in the way of the story. There was never this, "now bear with me while I stop the story and spend 5 paragraps describing some buildings, etc." It always flowed so effortlessly. There was never the conscious action of suspending disbelief. It really was and I remember needing to believe that all those worlds literally are. That because they exist in our minds they really exist...

Vance takes pride in his craft but does not care to talk about it in any detail, going so far in his memoir as to consign almost all discussion of writing to a brief chapter at the end. Jeremy Cavaterra, a composer who lives in an apartment attached to Vance’s house and helps look after him (and who was recruited as a lifelong fan when he read “The Eyes of the Overworld” at age 14), said of this reticence, “Part of it is that he feels like it’s the magician telling you how the trick works, and part of it is that he writes by feel and doesn’t interrogate it.”

Jack London's Martin Eden

I assumed that London was a rightwinger as his books are about rugged individualists who succeed in a world where there is nothing but winning or losing in the neverending struggle to survive. Such books were popular. Turns out London kind of hated that stuff and was a socialist. Martin Eden is the ideal rugged individualist and London tries to make him out as mistaken in how he is living. He has him commit suicide eventually. People hated this book. London went back to his Klondike Man Against the Elements stuff afterwards and people went back to loving his books.

People do love the rugged individualist who overcomes all in a harsh world. To varying extents there's Ayn Rand, Jack London, Neitzsche, and I suppose Jack Vance too.

It's not how I want to write. Perhaps books that make fun of such people?

But what else is there? Dunno. People who work as a team who don't want to "win" at all cost. Star Trek comes to mind.

Also the blacksmith as opposed to the wordsmyth. (Martin Eden) I can definitely relate to that.

So when I was 12, 13, 14 years old I would take a tennis racket and take tiny strips of duct tape and wrap it around the racket thus making it roughly twice as heavy and greatly increasing the sweet spot and "power" of the racket. I would walk a mile or so to this usually deserted place at the nearby college where there was this huge empty piece of asphalt and a huge brick wall. And there I would hit a tennis ball against that wall as hard as I could for hours. It was kind of fun in combining vigorous exercise with very precise movements that required all sorts of calculations (I'd aim for tiny bricks in the wall) and while I did it I would think. Lots of stupid stuff I mostly thought, like being this amazing professional tennis player (I had no idea how much money it took). Like I'd have the most freakish top spin forehand in history and the ball would hit the ground and bounce up into the stands.

But also I liked to try to compose music in my head amongst other things. I would spend hours composing music in my head while to outwards appearances I was practically killing myself violently hitting this silly little ball against a wall. To the degree I took things I'm sure some people thought me not right in the head.

By the time I was 14 my "tennis career" ran into a brick wall in that I hit the ball so hard strings would only last a couple hours and so I just couldn't afford to play tennis anymore. Luckily, or unluckily I was 6'3" by then and so I switched to spending hours dunking a basketball; reaching the point where I could have held my own against NBA players by the age of 16.

Anyway this music composition was funny in that when I sat down at a piano my mind went blank. If not immediately, certainly once I had actually played a few notes, then whatever was in my mind was overpowered by the sounds that were actually playing.

So I worked at it and would spend hours just trying to improvise. I spent little time playing other people's music. I prefered to just improvise and I did get somewhat better at it. To eventually I could feel inspired to write songs most times I sat down at the piano. In the short term I had quite a few such songs I wrote that sat in my memory. I tried to somewhat regularly play them, but eventually situations changed. Almost all those songs were forgotten. And that's fine. No big deal. They weren't that impressive. Hardly Beethoven. Today I can't write them as well. I need to get another piano perhaps. Or something. Probably just need to get back into spending time doing that. Have instead tried other methods. That one really worked well enough.

It's just not quite as inspiring on a synthesizer. It's touch sensitive but still not quite the same somehow. I think it may be literally a thing of magic. In that in my mind a real piano has "magic" and therefore I'm "inspired".

But real pianos are heavy.

Anyway, so then with writing stories, when I'm up and about my day I have ideas but when actually in front of a keyboard it is still partially like when I first would sit down at the piano and my mind would suddenly just go blank. The way around that was trial and error. So then the same.

-----

I hear in books this idea of the character changing. "A journey of self discovery." Some people emphasize it as an essential element of a good story. I don't think anyone in a Jack Vance story really ever changed at all from beginning to end. And I at least loved his work. Partially for the stoicism. Partially for the escapism. It is sadly perfect stuff for unhappy relatively intelligent people in my mind. Like sucking one's thumb in a corner; escaping from the ugly world to fantasy And learning an unemotional attitude.

Do I want to write like Vance? Certainly not exactly. In some ways his books were pitiful. He only had two characters really. Plot certainly was nothing.

Like Tolkien it was about setting, but with this added stoicism and a strange way of speaking. Just some strange little tricks. A group online wanted him to be considered serious literature instead of dismissed as pulp sci fi. I'm afraid I don't think he quite makes the cut, beautiful as his overall feel was...

I think Vance had the proper "modern" way of describing a setting. The more normal way is a few pages with no action where the writer basically is saying, "bear with me through this" and just goes to such pains to describe a setting. Perhaps before TV, and maybe just in general when people had more time for books, the length to which authors described settings was more acceptable. But still even then Vance's method is better. He is the king of world building; the king of making a setting. His key is to not just stop the action and spend pages describing the world. He instead describes it within the action. Seemingly just in passing.

But there are only two characters. Nothing is symbolic. No societal critiques. No relation to the real world but for one polemic (The Grey Prince) that wasn't very good really. Excepting his picaresques, the hero is basically Spock. The bad guy is generally Dick Cheney, if you look at Dick in interviews; very cool, calm, collected. Basically wreaking havoc without any emotion. (Well there is some range within this I guess... some more fantastical villians...) If there's a woman she's not even really there. The bit players are almost all annoying little bureaucrats whom have the strange habit of talking like a thesaurus.

Stoicism in a harsh world. People who at least sound refreshingly intelligent when they speak. Fantastic worlds beyond this one that stretch to infinity.

The picaresque (such as Eyes of the Overworld): point 2 and 3 the same. But the "hero" is a rogue whom we laugh at because he isn't a stoic.

Of course most critique of Vance mostly raves about his unique use of language. I think too much is made of that. Ultimately this isn't scrabble. Ideas are conveyed and they either are interesting, at least soothe the mind, or just bore.

http://journal.davidbyrne.com/2008/11/112308-planet-of-the-neanderthals.html
And then there is the "writing" concept of balance. You can see it here (IMO) with Byrne. Or I'm reminded of his talking song on Remain in Light about people forcing their faces to look how they want them to but making mistakes. I'm also reminded of Vance again I think in the same story about determining the next Leader of the Galaxy.

There is the idea of questioning the status quo while simultaneously seeming humble in the case of Byrne and then with Vance the idea of eitehr questioning the established way and/or being way better than everyone else while simultaneously obediently following rules and/or being humble.

Because as the person reads this, the questioning of the status quo distresses them on some level, no matter how much they personally actually like to question the status quo themselves, thus there must be a balance. With every bold step forward the amygdala..? must be soothed.

But that may not really be it at all of course. Just one definition that could have some success to remember despite it not necessarily actually being true at all. It could simply be the feeling of examining multiple points and/or showing that you do understand multiple points. So the person arrogant enough to question can still be humble for example.

"I thought of it as being similar to stoics. And also associated with Vancian characters who even while being tortured kept a relatively even keel."

Vance had one story where 5 men were put through a mind simulation, put through a number of situations to determine who would be the next ruler of the galaxy. The simulation only lasted an afternoon but seemed to take months at least in their minds. The final scenario was being tortured to get wartime information. As it ended the men came to and one man was left a gibbering fool, huddled in a corner trying to eat a leaf he had found. But one man was like a stone, even being tortured for months had had no effect on him. His scoring was seemingly perfect. He had handled every situation like Spock I suppose would have.

To his chagrin the "deciders" chose the man who had been reduced to insanity by the torture (they could fix him back up to sanity) to be the next ruler.

I don't think that Vance explained it so well. Will look it up. But the point is easily understood. To be able to withstand such torture is a sort of freakish insanity in it's own right. And to be such a man, a man who lives every moment like neverending war, is lacking in wisdom. He just might not take the galaxy in the best direction despite having good morals, etc.

To always be waiting for that death blow is no way to live. But it seems to ever be caught unexpected...

It is a sort of losing to always be waiting for it. The infinite strike that reverberates in your mind for your entire life.

Ultimately it's a game and to some extent we choose the games we wish to play. Some of us are more creative than others. But why did I choose such a game really?

One can cry or one can get angry or one can be like Spock, untouched by anything. Like steel, like stone. I thought to cry meant you lose the game. Getting angry also means losing the game. But being like a robot, always waiting to be surprised also means losing the game.

We laugh at what is unexpectedly wrong. Not bothering to expect the death blow, thus finding everything unexpected would mean laughing a lot. This too is a form of insanity. Much more clearly than being a stoic. Really anything out of the norm is "insane"; a pointless tiresome word.

Laughing more often is simply not doing as good of a job at expecting things to go wrong.

Do too good a job and you're a stoic. Too bad and you're an idiot. It is good to reject the norm in this world. Even if the norm is actually right. It's still good for a few people to go in different directions. Being different just for the sake of being different in and of itself is basically a good thing in this world.

http://thetoofarfuture.blogspot.com/2008/11/not-right-scene.html
Not so much vitality/virility although that plays a role. It was about being able to see beauty in ..just about anything. And understanding how relative it is. For a fat women you think about flesh in general. With women it's softer so with a really fat women: wonderful endless soft flesh! Why you can just about disappear into it! The ultimate orgy of the flesh for Paxton!

One can look at a female ape... and if you weren't aware what the males looked like you'd think it male. But once you've seen the males, suddenly it's properly feminine, (if the relative you keep in mind is solely the male ape) The gentle sex. Gentle and snuggly and... that's enough. The point was just being able to see beauty anywhere and as result understanding how relative it is really. Personally I have tried to reject the usual understanding of beauty, where it's relative to all other members of the species and just taking the average. The most perfectly boringly normal. I don't like that version of beauty... But beauty is about being relative to something. Better than some other thing... the most general idea is less likely to be mutated/defective, thus normal beauty is the most perfectly regular features. (Yes, it comes right back to evolution/successfullly spreading one's genes.) I think of some royal family in europe long ago where they were so inbred their elongated jaws quit working properly and they had trouble eating... Saw a picture of one of them. Probably of course the most flattering possible picture. I thought her so beautiful. To me a long jaw is beautiful. Elongated faces, almost like Easter Island statues. In Australia it seems there's something going where a few people have these freakishly long faces. At least I've seen them in movies a few times and it was always Astralians. Was fascinated by it. I have it slightly. Not freakishly.

But being able to see every person as beautiful is a nice thing. And I can just about do it. Almost. But I quit bothering with it quite a while back, for the most part...

Attached somewhat to a larger idea of being alone in a room and staring at a wall for years and being perfectly happy. Bizarre idea of mine when younger. "I'm turning myself into steel to be invincible!" (Silly Fist of the North Star anime line.) That was the idea, to be invincibly happy.

But I rejected so much of my thoughts from back then. Regarded it all as... invalid as it was not based on the thinking of a person that remotely was the common man. Which now at least, in a sense, I'm the common man. Except with the remains of that having pushed me in something of an unusual direction.

I thought of it as being similar to stoics. And also associated with Vancian characters who even while being tortured kept a relatively even keel.

In Vance's picaresque tales, the villain, to the extent that there is one, is not integral to the tale: the real villain is the protagonist himself, who is usually not the winsome rogue the word "picaresque" sometimes evokes but rather a blowhard, a semi-competent or incompetent egotist with few or no morals; such protagonists--for his picaresque tales are all meant as savage humor--ultimately prevail (if they do indeed prevail) either by blind luck or by dint of their lying and cheating ways. To my own tastes, Vance's picaresque tales are his least successful (though still books by quality), owing to the protagonist's often failing the test I set out elsewhere on this site: "we can have no understandings with folk whose mental processes, intellectual or moral, are simply alien to us"--we cannot fathom them, we cannot empathize with them, we cannot enjoy them, save as we "enjoy" seeing someone slip on a banana peel. For myself, Vance's two "Cugel the Clever" novels are his least satisfactory mature work; but his novel Showboat World (the publisher's title--see the book list below) is much more enjoyable, perhaps because the protagonist, while another blowhard, at least has some scraps of wit and ethics and courage.
http://greatsfandf.com/AUTHORS/JackVance.php

I liked the Cugel stories best of all and have read everything Vance ever wrote. I find his "likable" heros (what the hell is the plural of hero...?) kind of boring. I find it a weakness in his writing that excepting his picaresque tales, all his protagonists are basically the exact same boring person with different names slapped on.

Although Cugel is a rogue... it touches on something in me... the idea of getting down into the dirt of life, really playing The Game. To actually find a way to identify with most of what life is, all the wisdomless striving, the backstabbing and so on; as opposed to mostly standing aside of it all and only acting to defend one's self from these endless rogues.

Earlier the person who wrote the above said though said:
A final thought on character: we must have for a protagonist at least one of two things--liking or respect. We can have both, but if we have neither the book means trees killed for naught. (Note that the lack of a quality does not necessarily imply the presence of its opposite: we may lack liking for persons without thereby needing to dislike them.)

(Based on some conversations since the paragraph above was written I think I had best point out that "respect" is a morally neutral term--it does not necessarily convey positive qualities, as we may well have respect for a rattlesnake owing to the danger it embodies; "respect" as I use it above signifies an appreciation of magnitude in a character, whatever that character's nature. Many great protagonists--in several senses of the word "great"--have been folk we would not by choice invite to our next dinner party.)
http://greatsfandf.com/apologia-1.php

Any dangerous human is worthy of "respect" I would think... Would 'interesting' be a better word?

Too general.

What is it about Cugel that makes him OK? I don't know exactly. Maybe just that it's funny while still being serious and dark. Funny in the sense of laughing at his stupidity. What better thing to laugh at then an evil person.

Yet at the same time he is sort of likable. He has such a positive attitude...

I have no idea really. I haven't been thinking very well lately. Probably because I've been relatively happy the last few weeks.