All posts by tmdoyle2@yahoo.com

THE FRAMING STORY FOR BORDER CROSSER

Here are the 2017 framing sections of the far-future Border Crosser story. The first appears at the beginning, the second in the late middle, and the third at the end:

1.

Now I am not early in the twenty-first century.

Now I am not early.

Now I am not.

Now I am.

Now is Monday morning, ship time, so I am against the Empire.

2.

INTERLUDE: EARLY IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

I am early in the twenty-first century, and it is not accomplished. The whole world has gone to shit. I’m aware of my diagnoses, but writing about how I project my dark microcosm onto the macrocosm doesn’t make me feel better. I’m profoundly decentered, and I know it. The Hollywood narratives about people like me which imagine some fixed central point of rational self that some nice person can change are fairytales designed for sale to those nice people, because they don’t help me in the least. No, that’s not quite true—those narratives help me manipulate, gaslight, and obsess the helpful others this way and that, and we all fall down.

Why do I always do this to myself?

I’ve tried writing the world better, and it just won’t give. My future powerful Eris-self has taken my revenge on the universe and the assholes who run my world, and I don’t feel any better, because the assholes are still here in the real, and even if they go someday, I can’t wait that long.

Even without talking to the shrinks, I know what they’ll say about where this has to go next. I hate them because they’re right. I’ve gone out to the stars; now, I have to go into my bowels and dig out some old stupid pain to show them. It doesn’t help create anything; it just hurts. But I’m going to do it to keep my hands and mind busy, because the other things I might do still scare me.

I have to go back to the place from which no one rescues me.

3.

In the year 2017, a human being puts down a razor blade or pills or a gun or some other conventional instrument of self-harm and instead picks up a pen. The person hesitates, because this is part of their therapy, and they’d much rather hurt themself than do what the shrinks told them. Most of all, they don’t want to be here and now. So they write, “I am not early in the twenty-first century.”

They write while the world spirals downward, and everyone they know plummets with it. But even a constellation of profoundly decentered selves can, in words, make rooms of their own for the fractured bits, build many mansions in heaven, hell, and earth.

By the end, they decide that this story may hurt just enough to do the trick.

PHILCON SCHEDULE

Philcon.org Schedule this weekend, 11/20-22 (an online convention this year)

Reading: Sat. 3:30PM (with Border Crosser giveaway)

Panels: Fri. 8:30PM: From the Iron Bank to CHOAM: Business in Fiction

Sat. 11:30AM: What We Owe Each Other: Philosophy in SF&F Media

8:30 PM: What Else Might Have Changed?

10PM: The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

Post-election letdown

I wrote this on Monday, Nov. 9th re: post-election depression/letdown (I’m personally relieved, but I’m seeing a lot of it around, and it’s an emotion that I think I understand):

In these post-election days, I think some of you may be experiencing similar things to what I went through 6 years ago post-cancer treatment, so I’m going to talk about that.

Throat cancer treatment can be rough. I starved and had clinical levels of pain, and every bit of the little energy and focus I had was taken up in getting through it successfully. And the whole of my future narrowed down to a cramped tunnel which might or might not close off.

When I finished treatment, I was a wreck. Some of the side effects were not only going to persist but worsen for the next few weeks. Yet the staff at the hospital congratulated me on being a cancer survivor. Instead of the cheers you might imagine for such a moment, I looked at the wasteland of my body and life and wondered what the hell “survivor” even meant.

But there was also another, subtler problem. As the weeks passed, it was clear that that narrow tunnel of the future had exploded outward with time and possibility. So I had another question: “Well, WTF do I do now?” That’s also not the happy thought you might imagine it to be.

As a nation, we got our cancer diagnosis 4 very long years ago and have had a long and painful treatment. For me, this has been worse than my own illness. And now, as we look about at our damaged institutions and mores, we’re told that we have won. So, we wonder what that means. And we see the time and possibilities that this victory gives us as a nation and individuals and wonder what can and should we do now.

This letdown is going to depress some of us. But I also think it helps to realize that this is a normal and even rational response. We haven’t had time to mourn our losses. So mourn them. And we’re under no obligation to be grateful for our own and the nation’s mere survival. There’s no obligation to count ourselves lucky. This remains a very dubious timeline. But there is more work to be done when we’re rested and ready. If anything, the value of our efforts as individuals will go up during the midterms and other less national and less immediately existential contests.

I hope the recognition of the complexity of this moment emotionally is helpful to some. We’re not alone, and this too will pass.

my capclave schedule oct. 17-18

DC’s Capclave science fiction convention will be virtual this year, but we’ll be doing all the usual convention things online, so please join in. www.capclave.org

Sat 10/17

11:30 AM Author Reading

12:00 PM Book Launch for BORDER CROSSER (with book giveaway)

7:30 PM Alternate vs Secret Histories
— Alan Smale (mod), Carolyn Ives Gilman, John Hemry (Jack Campbell), Steven H Silver, Tom Doyle

Sun 10/18

10:30 AM Hubris or Oversight: Mistakes In Military SF
— Christopher Weuve (mod), John Hemry (Jack Campbell), Alan Smale, Tom Doyle

12:00 PM It’s the End of the World and I Feel Fine
— Sarah Avery, Juliet Kemp, Nancy Kress, Tom Doyle (mod)