Why SF? Asking kindred spirits in the SF community the story of why they give back and create forward.

A Chat with Angela of scifichick.com

Lynda: What inspired scifichick.com??

Angela:When the whole blog craze first started, I wasn’t really interested in journaling or blogging about myself. So I got the idea to just start talking about my favorite books and movies – which, of course, were science fiction/fantasy. This eventually led to buying SciFiChick.com and started a hobby of writing actual reviews and having a place for other fans to visit and give their two-cents as well. When I started receiving books from publishers and authors, I was ecstatic! I used to spend a ridiculous amount of money on books. And I’m actually reading a lot more than I ever had in the past.

Lynda: A favorite moment for me in Star Wars is when Han comes back to support his friends, making the impossible survivable. Can you share something similar from one of the series you love that touched your heart?

Angela:Quantum Leap. Every episode. But you probably want something a bit more specific. ☺ So, the episode/scene that sticks out in my mind the most is “The Leap Home: Part 1” when Dr. Sam Beckett leaps back into himself as a teen. He’s finally able to right some wrongs in his own past and tries to keep his brother from going off to war. When Sam plays his favorite song (from the future) “Imagine” by John Lennon to his sister – it’s heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time. I’m not really a fan of the song, but the story was so poignant. And it was so easy to get emotionally invested in the characters each week.

Lynda:The gallery (http://scifichick.com/2-2/) on your site features your own art work. Tell me about yourself as an artist.

Angela:As a child I always loved to draw. But it wasn’t till I was in 5th or 6th grade when I found a small picture of Leonard Nimoy as Spock in a TV Guide, that I decided to try drawing a portrait. And to my surprise it didn’t look half bad and was told I had a natural talent. That started a love of drawing portraits, and of course I practiced a lot on favorite actors and actresses that happened to be in scifi shows. My formal training really began in college, while majoring in Art/Graphics Design & Illustration. That’s when I found out I didn’t know as much as I thought I did! But I still coasted through college without much of an idea of what I was really going to do with my major. So, after my first job in graphics design, I quickly got burned out and left the field. Now, drawing is enjoyable again, and I still occasionally do commissioned works (portraits of people/pets or renderings of homes/buildings) and some just for personal enjoyment. But with as busy as I’ve gotten with my 9-5 job and SciFiChick.com, unfortunately I haven’t focused as much on art as I should. To most artists “it’s all about the process.” But when I’m working a piece, I don’t really start getting into it until I can start seeing the end result. I love attention to detail and shading. Capturing the expression of someone is what I’m really going for.

Lynda: It wasn’t until the “dark movement” in SF got under my skin that I realized I relied on SF – both as a fan and an author -- to keep my batteries charged for dealing with the tough stuff in life. What role does SF plays in your life?

Angela:It’s certainly my biggest outlet! I would rather read a book than watch television - just to let my imagination soar. Obviously, science fiction takes up a huge chunk of my day-to-day life. I’m almost always reading or watching something scifi or fantasy. Usually more than one book at a time. I rarely find myself getting stressed or down. But it’s no wonder since I have my dog Lois Lane (no one could be stressed after a few minutes with her), and I have a constant source of escape through a genre that is truly a passion in life.

Lynda: What difference to you want scifichick.com to make in the world?

Angela:Well, from the beginning, I took the moniker “SciFiChick” to let people know that there are women who enjoy science fiction. When I was younger, I didn’t know many other girls who did. Not only do I want young girls to know that it’s okay to like scifi and fantasy, but that it’s cool too.

Ethics in SF: A series of interviews, articles and debates on the Reality Skimming blog, hosted by Lynda Williams, author of the Okal Rel Saga.

Reality-based Ethics and Morality

What it comes down to for most people is an assumption, based mostly on gut feelings and intuition: Are human beings fundamentally good or bad? Are compassion and cooperation the innate qualities, with selfishness, cruelty and competition acquired through behavioral reinforcement, or is it the opposite? Are we really just brutes at heart who have to be trained to be civilized?

Layered on this is another question: Is there even a way to objectively distinguish “good” from “bad”, or are these inescapably relative and subjective concepts?

The discussion about whether we can have a completely atheistic, science-based system of ethics and morality depends a great deal on what fundamentals we assume. A common argument for religion is that it coerces people into behaving well. This presumes that people need to be coerced, and that a mythological framework governed by an omniscient, omnipotent authority is necessary to do it. Cut God out of the equation and, it is argued, there is nothing to keep us from descending into the dog-eat-dog brutality of our underlying nature.

A great number of people have been busily at work studying whether there is any truth to these assumptions, accumulating data on the way people actually behave, and the results have been surprising, encouraging, and because this is reality we are talking about, far more complex than the simple answers we might like to our questions.

Are human beings innately good or bad? The psychological and neurological answers coming in indicate that it depends on the human being. There is evidence that some folks are just born bad. Due to some genetic or environmental influence, they don’t develop the brain structures associated with empathy. They don’t feel your pain. They are indifferent to suffering. Maybe they can be taught civilized, compassionate behavior, which they may practice if it benefits them to do so, but left to their own devices they are not someone you’d want in public office. (Seems they also can be very charming, and they enjoy having power, which explains a great deal of why politics is the way it is).

The good news is that a statistical majority of us are wired for compassion. We react to suffering with a desire to help. This is, evidently, innate and pretty much universal across cultures. Doesn’t matter if you are an atheist, Christian, Buddhist, African, Australian aboriginal, or a second generation American of Jewish Russian ancestry. If your brain is wired the way most of us are, and you have not been conditioned to suppress the reaction, when you are confronted with suffering your impulse is to help.

As for teasing apart the distinction between moral right and wrong, that is never easy, even if you have a book of religion to guide you (hence the vehement disagreements among believers who are ostensibly all following the same operating manual, be it Bible or Koran). But a great, objective way to start is by settling on “the good” being characterized as promoting human thriving. We can’t all agree on what God might want, but we can all see whether the consequences of our actions lead to greater health and happiness, or an increase in suffering. Still not easy, still complicated as hell, but it gives us a place to stand and something to build with as we study the problem.

All things considered, this gives me good reason to be optimistic. And although human beings may sometimes be as hard to figure out as quantum physics, at least we can see what we’re doing. There’s plenty of light.

Your Turn: Comment with your own reaction to the questions.

Dialogues: Lynda Williams and a guest author tackle the same topic from two points of view.

Lynda Williams: Dark & Light

Confession –I love heroes. When I face a dreary day or a mean-spirited adversary in the daily slog, I need my touchstones to make it through: like Frodo hanging onto memories of the Shire to help him contend with the evils of Mordor. And as melodramatic as it may seem to equate making it through to lunch on a bad day with saving the world of humans, elves and dwarfs, I suspect many lovers of the genre will know what I mean.

We all need something to believe in.

When I discovered the depths of man’s inhumanity to man, as a teenager who read widely and volunteered with a crisis centre, I was shaken. Not only could people behave in far more ugly ways than I’d imagined possible, but their victims typically lacked the advantages of SF heroes empowered by mysterious origins or superior technologies.

To process these shocks to my sheltered but imaginative self, I used my beloved characters, pushing them to their limits in their Okal Rel Universe adventures. As I got older, and grappled with the less perfect heroism of flawed and fragile human beings, my characters had an even worse time of it because I introduced handicaps and imperfections. But no matter how I tortured Amel or drove Horth to the breaking point, they remained heroes because they hung onto their belief in good things, like love or integrity. And if they could do it, I could.

Because we can’t afford to build a world in which people are too traumatized to dare to be the good guys.

So darkness, for me, lies not in what happens to a character but how the story influences the reader. If readers come away from a story thinking it’s smart to be the bad guy, it makes me feel a little ill.

When I was researching how to portray Amel as a survivor of sexual abuse in childhood, I discovered many men abused as boys become abusers (1) because of the two roles “available” they prefer the dominant, stronger one. Those who escaped this fate were the ones able to sustain empathy with others despite their experiences. More broadly speaking, exposure to extreme harm off all kinds, particularly warfare, has long been known as harmful to one’s ability to function in society (2) and continually demonstrations that resistance is futile leads to giving up (3). Are these the effects we want to engender in readers or viewers of SF?

There’s considerable debate on whether the vicarious experience of violence makes people more violent (4). But what if violence isn’t the key issue? What if it’s more about whether the good guys are portrayed in a positive light, suffering to achieve something meaningful– or fools who would do better to be more selfish, grasping and cruel?

I can’t, as a writer, help living in hope that my creations might have some influence, however slight, on others and if so, I want them to weigh in on the side of light and heroism.

Footnotes

(1) Why do People Abuse?
(2) Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome
(3) What is Learned Helplessness?
(4) Research on the Effects of Media Violence

Next week: Lynda Williams writes her response to the central topic.

Dialogues: Lynda Williams and a guest author tackle the same topic from two points of view.

Krista D. Ball: Dark & Light

Many people like to think of humans as inherently good creatures. We have the capabilities for such kindness and compassion that, underneath our dark natures, there must be something that makes us want to be good.

I do not believe this.

I look at the world and see a struggle between good and evil, what is right and what is selfish, and the disregard for humanity. Unless raised to be compassionate, caring, and an upstanding member of the global community, people need to be taught how to be such individuals. It's no wonder that fiction reflects that darkness.

"Gorn Porn" is a phrase coined a lot to protest the extreme usage of violent and gory scenes with no other purpose than the gross people out. Those have their place and readerships, but I don't think it's really necessary in the bulk of mainstream fiction. A vicious beating of a beloved secondary character can have readers in tears with very little details, just as a graphic blow-by-blow (as it were) of what's happening. Less can be more.

Then there are times that more is indeed "more". I recall In The Heat of The Night, with the language used by Chief Gillespie. I was shocked, having been raised in a sheltered, religious home and school. In fact, the teacher asked if anyone was comfortable doing it because he was not. There was only one volunteer and I remember even he turned red a few times.

Could that book have had less language, less hate, less racism? Of course. Would it have impacted me the same way? Doubtful. It's twenty years later and I still recall that book, that language, that feeling of anger in my gut. I needed to be offended so that I could look past my own nose and see the world as it was, not as it could be.

In Road to Hell, I have a scene that many people have found offensive and disturbing. After a frantic hunt, Captain Francis finds her missing crew member: tied up in a vent shaft with part of her face burned off in strips. It offended people because of the choice Francis makes to murder the man who did it. It wasn't that she murdered him - that didn't seem to bother people, more than the reason. She did it to protect herself and not to avenge her friend.

And that pleases me to no end. That should offend people. That should make readers angry. It should make people talk. Because we often see injustice in our daily lives and do nothing to stop it because we are protecting ourselves. I think people see themselves in Katherine when she fires her weapon: they remember all of the times they sold someone down the river to cover their own behinds...and it makes them angry.

The desire to balance the reality with the reader's tolerance gets even trickier when dealing with young adult and middle grade fiction. Right now, MG seems fairly unmarred, but YA is full of depressing dystopias where violence reigns. And I'm ok with that.

I think there is a need for all kinds of YA works, from adventure stories that are fun and suspenseful, without any true threat or danger, to the extreme end that looks at the dark underside of the world of teens, to the capabilities of teens under extreme circumstances.

There weren't really "young adult" books when I was a teenager. The few books that existed specifically for teenagers generally preached to me about the evils of sex, why pregnancy would ruin my life, how guys all wanted to rape me, and how smoking a cigarette would cause me to end up addicted to heroin and prostituting myself for my next hit. (This is not an exaggeration, by the way).

So, for the twelve year old girl who started sneaking Jackie Collins novels and who was reading Sidney Sheldon and Danielle Steele religiously at fourteen, I'm ok with dark themes in young adult. I think there needs to be easier subgenre classifications so that teens of all ages and tastes can find what they want. Just because one teen wants to read about the brutality of child soldiers does not meant the next wants to. I think we owe it to everyone to provide both options.

We're authors, after all. Surely we can help provide a reading experience for everyone?

Next week: Lynda Williams writes her response to the central topic.

Dialogues: Lynda Williams and a guest author tackle the same topic from two points of view.

Q. “Inside baseball” is a metaphor for the details of a subject requiring such a specific knowledge that they cannot be appreciated by an outsider. When depicting a real culture in fiction, how can a writer be authentic without shutting out the general reader with too much “inside baseball?”

Lillian Cohen-Moore: It takes a lot of murdered darlings. As tempting it is to slip in every cultural fact you can think of, there comes a point where readers are going to be able to tell that what you wrote isn’t for people not ‘in the know.’ Michael Chabon is a great example of someone who walks that line with incredible skill. It’s possible for someone who isn’t Jewish to enjoy books like The Yiddish Policeman’s Union. There’s a degree of nuance that I think allows for emotional connection for Jews with the book, but it’s an incredible novel for non-Jewish readers as well. At the core of it, Policeman’s Union has an incredibly taut murder mystery at the center. That’s how you build a book that doesn’t shut people out — no matter how many cultural or linguistic details they might not understand off-hand, readers can still follow a strong plot.

Lynda Williams: My mother's rule was never talk about family to outsiders. So writing about topics like the stresses caused by my father's depression were impossible. I started fictionalizing my issues by laundering them through Sci Fi. Throne Price comes closest to portraying the struggle of someone (Amel) struggling to hold the "family" together in a worsening situation. But the sexual abuse elements came from my years at the Crisis Centre and the "slut or frigid" dichotomy of coming of age at the tail end of the sexual revolution. I stripped away details until even I didn't recognize, 100%, what I was talking about through my characters. In the process, I developed my own "inside baseball" in the form of alien cultures and practices which I had to fight to keep palatable to readers. Part 4: Throne Price was written first, and it shows. It needs a re-write to bring it in line with the airier style of subsequent volumes of the saga.

Q. Offending others who identify with the culture: Is it inevitable? Is it a problem?

Lillian Cohen-Moore: You can’t please everyone. I think you run an equal risk of offending those who identify with a culture as you do those outside it. I think that’s a reality of writing, and that the problem of offending others is how it’s responded to. Whether or not you feel that you’ve erred in your portrayal, reacting in a knee-jerk, defensive fashion doesn’t help your work or your readers. It takes a lot to sit down and listen to reader concerns. If you agree with their points, then by all means do what you feel you should in order to address the issue in the present and future. Even if you don’t agree, considering the possibility that you’ve written something from a biased perspective, conscious or otherwise, encourages you to look at your work from a different angle. That’s never a bad thing.

Lynda Williams: When I started writing the Okal Rel Saga it was the adults of my middle-class life I feared offending via my sympathetic portrayal of the Vrellish, with their multiple kinds of sex partners and promiscuous behavior. I never expected to find myself, in the new millennium, worrying about whether the disdain for Vrellish excesses felt by Demish characters might offend friends who act a little Vrellishly.  Likewise, Di Mon and Ranar's affair was so avant-garde when I began developing it in the late 70s, that I was warned I'd never sell a genre book featuring a homosexual romance unless I pumped up the erotica and went for a niche market. Now I find gay-advocates annoyed with me for Di Mon's failure to come to terms, entirely, with his sexual orientation. All I can hope is that the characters are well enough drawn, all around, that they work whether or not people are sometimes offended by them.

Q. What are the pros and cons of working with a real vs. an invented culture?

Lillian Cohen-Moore: Working with real culture presents a lot of challenges that I enjoy wrestling with, but the pros and cons tend to drift across the categories for me. Should I follow historic details, what details need to be more malleable in a speculative setting, how much do I want to break from history and how do I defend those choices. I think that the closer you get to the present day, the more potential you have to offend readers when you make the decision to seriously play with alternate history or speculative explanations for historic events and societal mores. The closer something is to us, to have affected our lives or loved ones, the touchier those topics can be to address in fiction, as a writer or a reader. That’s the fundamental issue to keep in mind in terms of cons, for me. Just because its fiction doesn’t mean it lacks a capacity to hurt.

Lynda Williams: Fiction lets me abstract arguments about what's right and wrong in a way that divorces them from the cultural baggage any reader brings to a story. Nesaks, for example, represent the maddening truth, for me, that good people with wholesome family lives can be racist/sexist/war mongering monsters outside the family circle. I don't have to say whether Nesaks represent the bigoted people of my own life experience, Islamic extremists or far-right Americans. Invented cultures let you tackle issues as pure thought experiment. In Part 2: Righteous Anger, for example, a happy marriage causes death and mayhem. Not because I am against marriage, but because I wanted to experience the issue from the point of view of Vrellish people whose way of life is threatened by it.  Some of these ideas came from reading about culture clashes between Europeans and natives across the British empire and other examples of culture clash where the a majority norm encroaches on the perfectly workable, but very different, norms of others. However, I don't believe in pure cultural relativity so I'm always searching these situations for grains of something universal.

Continuing Characters: A series of interviews featuring continuing characters and the authors who know them best.

The Artifacts of Empire series by Gwen Perkins begins with the novel The Universal Mirror (2012), newly available from Hydra Publications in paperback and Kindle format. Planned subsequent volumes will be the novels The Jealousy Glass and The Funeral Ring, and a novella entitled Paper Armor. The books share a common universe, but are designed to be readable both as a series and as stand-alones.

(cover art by Enggar Adirasa)

Questions for Asahel

Q. How did you feel when you realized the full extent of the consequences of defying the laws of your land, which prohibit magicians from leaving their homeland, and casting spells on the living?

Afraid.

I hadn't realized before the depth of what it was that we were doing or what it meant to other people. When I first agreed to help my friend Quentin learn to heal others, I thought only of the good that it would mean. I didn't understand the path that we'd need to take to get there nor where he'd want to go.

Quent hasn't got an understanding of what life is like for those who don't have money. He thinks that it's acceptable to treat the poor as if they're not the same as he is. Easy for him to say when he's never missed a meal in his life nor really spoken to many who did. Life doesn't have the same consequences for him that it does for me. The experimentation that we were doing—it meant exile for him if he was to be caught but for me? It meant death. It wasn't until he made the suggestion that we perform our experiments on the poor that I truly understood how much was at stake.

Q. In The Universal Mirror you play a supporting role to Quentin in his personal quest, but in The Jealousy Glass you play a more central role than Quentin. How do you feel you have changed between books in this series?

A long time has passed. I'm not sure that I feel I'm as much of a man as I used to be. I stood up to Quentin and made difficult choices before. In the aftermath, however, I let myself weaken when I should have been strong. I'm worried that I gave up one friendship to maintain another that perhaps wasn't as valuable as I once believed it to be.

I'm still discovering who it is that I am. A person never really stops learning that, I know, but it's easier to find when you step away from shadows cast taller than your own.

Questions for Gwen Perkins

Q. How have you managed to balance the independence of your second book in your series while maintaining continuity with the first book?

I've used a few different techniques to make this second novel work as a "stand-alone" while playing with the concepts introduced in The Universal Mirror. The Jealousy Glass takes place a year after Mirror concluded which gives the events a little space and also sets the stage for a different conflict to take place. Because so much time has passed, this puts the reader who has followed the series on a more equal footing with those who have not. Those who've read Mirror are likely to notice subtle nuances in Jealousy Glass from moments in the first book but it won't be necessary to read both books to enjoy either first or second.

The second book also takes place in the Anjduri Empire, a larger nation that has a conflicted history with Cercia, the island that The Universal Mirror is set on. Although Asahel and Felix (book 2's POV characters) are familiar with Anjdur, neither has ever been off their island before and because of this, they're discovering the country at the same time as the reader.

Q. Are you planning to write your stories in sequential order? How much continuity in POV characters will there be?

Presently, I have three novels and a novella planned in the Artifacts of Empire series. The Universal Mirror is the starting point for the novels and the two subsequent novels, The Jealousy Glass and The Funeral Ring, take place in sequential order right after that one. Paper Armor is the novella that I'm planning and that will actually be an origin story for Felix and Tycho, two characters who play pivotal roles at varying points in the series.

So far as points of view, what I tend to do is have two points of view per novel. (I don't believe this will be the case with the novella.) Asahel is a planned POV character for all three novels while the second POV rotates for each. In The Universal Mirror, it was Quentin, his best friend, whereas in The Jealousy Glass, it's Felix, a swordsman, and in The Funeral Ring, it will be Catharine, Quentin's wife. You see many of the same characters from book to book but the POV won't be the same.

"I believe that if something can be conceived in the imagination it is already one step closer to being achieved."

Ethics in SF: A series of interviews, articles and debates on the Reality Skimming blog, hosted by Lynda Williams, author of the Okal Rel Saga.

Science Fiction as a Model

When Lynda spoke at one of my World Federalist meetings, little did I know what an impact her ideas would have on me despite me not being a Trekkie or a sci-fi scholar such as herself. In fact I was so enthralled by her philosophy and motivations that I approached at the end and offered to contribute to her blog, for which she was very pleased. Hence, here I am, an eager writer, putting some of my own ponderings into words to share with a larger interested audience. Again, I am not an avid sci-fi reader, yet I believe I have watched enough sci-fi shows on TV and have read more than a couple sci-fi related books to draw on these to make several observations. My wish is not to convince you of the validity of my opinions but rather, much as Lynda herself intends, to spark much needed dialogue about issues that transcend sci-fi and touch upon universal topics such as morals and ethics which are in danger of becoming obsolete in today’s world of ‘distraction’ and ‘avoidance.’

I once read an interesting article by Ross Pavlac entitled: "Some Thoughts on Ethics and Science Fiction." As he points out, “science fiction (SF) is the natural home of discussion of ethics” and one of the main themes of the SF genre is what he calls “ultimate issues” which include the ideal society, the fate of humanity and the universe itself. As Pavlac states, “SF provides a chance to do things ‘in the laboratory’ with (theoretically) no harm to the real world.” In as such I believe that SF settings allow audiences to postulate what-if scenarios with enough credibility so as to test different theories on how ‘ideal’ societies or different technologies could work or not. Pavlac cites the work of Pohl & Kornbluth's Merchants of Space, which dealt with the issue of harvesting organs from prisoners, something that has been revealed is practiced in China.

SF also offers a realm where the outcomes of certain actions and choices can be deliberated free of any palpable consequences. One very popular example of this, also cited by Pavlac, is J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. He mentions how in this case people are “not afraid to make decisions and then have to pay the price of those decisions.” Pavlac explains how Gandalf the wizard is faced with the temptation of the ring knowing that in having it he is given absolute powers yet turns it down because he is aware of how it corrupts him. Similarly, Elrond destroys the ring despite knowing that in doing so his power will end as well. The bad guys, on the other hand, have to face the consequence of their past choices to do wrong, something that the good guys are courageous and intelligent enough not to do.

Roddenbury’s Star Trek is unarguably one of the best known sci-fi creations of all time. Hence, it is fraught with examples of how its creators and writers pictured how an ideal humanity would run. The virtues one can find associated with all characters in this saga are uncountable. And yet some of them immediately come to mind by way of examining how modern-day people can indeed seek the SF genre in search of examples on how to live lives based on self-fulfillment, maturity and growth in an environment of peace and hope and prosperity. My thoughts are well explained by Steve Pavlina’s article "Lessons from Star Trek" from which I take inspiration.

To get right to it, for one thing, the characters such as those of the Enterprise behave virtuously as if acting on a solid inner moral compass. In all moments they show to be acting on the bases of bravery, honesty and self-sacrifice in which neither religion nor belief in a higher power need play a role. Instead, their values are centred on humanism and the universality of each Being as unique and equally valuable no matter what background he or she comes from.

Another value quite prevalent in the SF genre and in particularly in Star Trek is that of self-discipline and emotional maturity. Each character “owns themselves.” In a setting where food and entertainment abound, no one ever overindulges. To the contrary, the characters are so moral and disciplined that they feel comfortable around telepathic/empathic beings that can read their minds. Their public and private personas are congruent and they have nothing to feel shame or guilt about and hence have no need to hide any thought or feeling. In essence, the characters are mature and responsible, two more dominant values of the show. Each Being does his or her job without complaint and assumes 100% of the responsibility for all they do without ever blaming anyone else for their situations. They show passion and commitment to their jobs and are pleased knowing that they can contribute to the well-being of the society as a whole.

The issue of mutual respect is one that cannot be ignored by anyone who has ever watched an episode of this famed show. The characters are always professional when on duty yet when having fun approach a more informal, first-name basis. Nonetheless, at all times they treat each other with mutual respect and never insult, demean or slander each other. As Pavlina states, “When doing their jobs, the characters interact within a formal structure, but off duty they’re on a first-name basis. At all times they treat each other with mutual respect and if one character begins to self-destruct, the others step in to help restore balance and integrity.”

Centred on growth and driven by principles, the characters adhere to their moral compasses at all costs. In the rare instances where conflict does arise, they are willing to violate laws to uphold their principles even if it means giving their lives. In addition, the characters are highly growth-oriented. They continually endeavour to hone their skills and learn about themselves, the cultures of others and about the nature and workings of their environments. Most if not all of them have individual interests that they pursue, whether they be music, art, literature and so forth and even mentor one another as they realize how the betterment of their fellow characters is enriching to themselves as well as to the community at large.

In the end, what the ‘good’ Star Trek does is to, in the words of Lynda Williams, “give people the hope and courage to be good.” The values and principles that the show and the SF genre as a whole guide their characters on act as a model from which society can draw to ponder how life would be if the fictitious visions were made a reality. I believe that if something can be conceived in the imagination it is already one step closer to being achieved. It is only a matter of willingness on the part of those who are corrupted in power to cede it, of those veiled in apathy to act and of those despondent to have hope. It is our collective responsibility to take the visions of the ‘good’ and make it a reality so that we no longer live in world based on the defeating powers of greed, violence and hatred that have slowly lead to the destruction of our own morals, principles and values that we once perceived to be unalienable and ever so important.

Your Turn: Comment with your own reaction to the questions.

Lynda Williams (Reality Skimming co-editor & author of the Okal Rel Saga) and Michelle Milburn (Reality Skimming co-editor) have been chosen as finalists for the 2012 Prince George Regional Arts and Cultural Awards. Lynda is a finalist in the fiction category for her Okal Rel works. Also among the fiction category finalists is friend of the Okal Rel Universe, Nathalie Mallet. Michelle Milburn is a finalist in the advertising category for her book cover illustrations for both Lynda and Nathalie, and Prince George publishing house Bundoran Press.

To read the complete list of nominees, view the Media Release (PDF) from the Prince George Public Library website. The awards gala takes place on Friday, April 27th at the Prince George Playhouse.

Author Karina Fabian returns for our first Continuing Character interview with a dragon.

Continuing Characters: A series of interviews featuring continuing characters and the authors who know them best.

For a dragon detective with a magic-slinging nun as a partner, saving the worlds gets routine. So, when the US government hires Vern and Sister Grace to recover stolen secrets for creating a new Interdimensional Gap--secrets the US would like to keep to itself, thank you—Vern sees a chance to play Dragon-Oh-Seven.

It's super-spy spoofing at its best with exotic locations (Idaho--exotic?), maniacal middle-managers, secret agent men, teen rock stars in trouble, man-eating animatronics, evil overlords and more!

The DragonEye, PI series by Karina Fabian begins with Magic, Mensa and Mayhem and continues April 20, 2012 with Live and Let Fly.

Vern is a private investigator with the Dragon Eye Private Investigations Agency, where he works with his partner Sister Grace. The part where it gets interesting? He's a dragon, and she's a nun/mage from the Faerie Catholic Church. What kind of work to do they do? In Vern's own words: "We'll handle just about any case that pays and, being a dragon, I'm not particular about how I get paid. Cash or carrion, I'm your dragon. We do everything from find lost pets to save the universe--sometimes at the same time. Hey, I'm a dragon. I can multi-task."

Questions for Vern

Q. What made you want to become a private investigator, and is this your first profession?

I almost laughed at this question, because as an immortal being forged in the beginning of time, I’ve done a lot. “Profession,” however, made me stop and think. I’m not sure cruising the skies for cattle, snacking on annoying knights, or trading the spare scale to some apothecary that amuses me counts for a profession. Eight and a half centuries ago, I was “drafted” into service of the Faerie Church, and I’ve done some interesting things, from bodyguard to scribe—I’ve got great penmanship as long as I have an inkwell and a sharp pinkie claw—to agent of the Inquisition. Still, in all those cases, I did what I was told and got my rewards from God and whatever the Church doled out in food and shelter; so, not a profession really.

I didn’t exactly choose the private investigation profession so much as happen into it. I’d come to the Mundane world from Faerie--not sure why, it was a “Calling”-thing—and got caught up in a mystery that baffled the local sheriff. He had every right to be baffled; what Mundane lawman suspects chili pepper vines to turn into murderers—outside of the movie theater, that is? Magic was still new to the Mundane, back then, and obviously, the world needed someone who was an expert—and brilliant, quick to learn new things, strong, with good instincts… I fit the bill, so I hung up a shingle and spent a lot of time cold and hungry because no one wanted to hire a dragon.

That was over a decade ago—a blink of an eye to a dragon. Now, my partner, Sister Grace, and I get a steady share of cases where magic and technology have mixed badly. We still do our share of finding lost kittens. (I never get asked to find lost lambs; it’s always cats.) However, we also handle some major baddies. We’ve saved the Mundane and Faerie worlds so many times, we have a code for it—STUC. (Save The Universes Case). I try to charge extra when I can, but do you know how hard that is to get past a nun? It’s not like I can hold out saving the world until I get a raise.

Still, it’s interesting work, and if you disregard the danger, broken bones, gunshot wounds and other physical annoyances, it’s a pretty good way to spend a few centuries.

Q. How do you get on with humans, and do you ever find it's difficult being a dragon in your profession?

It would be a lot easier if the government would consider me a person. Until Grace joined me, I did everything under the table, with the police force turning a blind eye. Grace holds the PI license that makes us legit, even if we have to pay taxes. It’s humiliating to think that Coyote the Trickster has a Green Card but I don’t qualify. (I just take comfort that he’s still on parole in the reservation, and I put him there. Grin.)

I get along fine with humans from Faerie. They understand about dragons and give us proper respect. (Or most do, and I just eat the rest.) In the Mundane, things are different. Took years to convince the populace of Los Lagos that I did not need a leash and asking me if I was “housebroken” was insulting. Oh, and let’s not discuss the time in Florida when I got mistaken for an animatronic kiddie ride. People as a group are ignorant, but individual persons are all right. I have a lot of good friends in the Mundane.

Questions for Karina

Q. The DragonEye Universe started out as a short story. What sparked the idea of a dragon and a nun as a private investigation team?

Vern came about because I needed a different angle on dragons and got inspired by a comedy routine in the show Whose Line Is It, Anyway? Colin Mochrie and Ryan Stiles were doing a noir skit about a parrot, I think, and I was laughing and thinking, “I could do this—with a dragon!” Vern was born. I followed the noir motif of giving him a jaded past, and what could make a dragon more jaded than having to work for St. George (and by expansion, the Faerie Church and God) to get his dragon glory back?

Vern was rough, very cynical, and not good with people, so he needed a soothing influence. Enter Sister Grace from the Order of Our Lady of the Miracles. She’s a high powered mage in the Faerie Catholic Church and has a tortured past of her own; and in fact, was in the US for psychiatric treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, which they don’t have a lot of experience with in Faerie. She needed someone who could protect her, comfort her, and push her to use her magic again. Vern fit the bill nicely. They have great respect and admiration for each other. You’ll notice, for example, in the books that Vern always puts himself first, even when saying, “I and” another person. Other than the saints, Sister Grace is the only person he makes an exception for.

Q. Vern has a very distinct voice. What do you enjoy about writing from his point of view?

I can let loose, be snarky, make sarcastic jokes and puns. (I looked at the henchman under my claws and drooled. “Phil A. Minion. Can I have fries with that?” I live for these moments. I really do.) It’s a lot of fun to look at the world from the point of view of a predator who believes himself superior to everyone—even the ancient gods and goddesses.

Vern’s easy to write. I scared a friend once by saying I “channel” him, but in truth, his voice and attitude do take over. It’s hard to write Vern when others are around, because I feel my face twist into a kind of half grin, half sneer, and my eyes narrow. (When I’m not chortling at something he said.) I probably look odd at best, schitzo at worse, but that’s okay because the books are such fun, and his voice makes it that way.

For the next book, Gapman, I’m alternating between Vern’s POV and that of his apprentice, the superhero Gapman. It’s a great juxtaposition, because Gapman, aka Ronnie Engleson, is so sweet and naïve and bumbling until Grace makes Vern take him under his wing, so to speak. Vern doesn’t want to deal with a superpowered babe-in-the-woods, but if he has to, he’s going to have some fun…at Ronnie’s expense. (“Consider it ‘tough love,’ if it makes you feel better, Ronnie.” “(Groan) That’s what Mom always says.”)