ozarque: Writing science fiction; interview 3

ozarque (

ozarque) wrote,
@ 2007-07-07 08:40:00

Writing science fiction; interview 3
November 7, 2081

"Interview with Holdyn Callaweigh," conducted by CNN-Prime's Malcolm Ndebe
Retiring CEO of Cyberdragon Inc. has a story to tell

CNN-Prime:
Mr. Callaweigh, what our viewers on "Business Parade" would be most interested in is the history of Cyberdragon Inc., if you're willing to share some of your memories with us now that you're retiring.

Holdyn Callaweigh:
Well, the whole thing was a complete surprise to us. When it started, we were a very succcessful toy company--

CNN-Prime:
Callaweigh Toys.

Callaweigh:
Yes. Not a very original name, but a very successful company. But of course after the cyberdragon thing happened, it wouldn't have made any business sense not to just go with that one product, and then we changed our name. [Laughs] To yet another not very original name, I'm afraid.

CNN-Prime:
So how did the "cyberdragon thing" get started?

Callaweigh:
You'll find this hard to believe, Malcolm .... but the original idea was that the dragons were toys for kids to ride on.

CNN-Prime:
[Pause] That's .... Actually, Mr. Callaweigh, I have to say that that's a bit shocking.

Callaweigh:
It's true, all the same. That was the original concept. And we'd made saddles for them, and bridles, and fancy saddle blankets, and for the top-of-the-line buyers we were planning to offer fancy little stables to put in the back yard. You know the kind of thing.

CNN-Prime:
But how on earth--

Callaweigh:
Well, it was the focus group, you see. We'd tried the cyberdragons on a group of kids, and they loved them; step two was to find out how parents would react, so we tried that. We had a dozen of the dragons in an observation room, and we brought in a dozen adults, and what happened next was beyond belief. We'd told them that the dragons were kids' toys, of course. Standard procedure. But in oh, two minutes flat, every single adult in the room was either sitting there with a dragon in their lap or walking around the room holding a dragon's front paw the way they would have walked around holding a child's hand. With big happy smiles on their faces. We'd never seen anything like it. And we sure as hell couldn't have predicted it.

CNN-Prime:
It just happened spontaneously like that? That's amazing!

Callaweigh:
The eggheads tell us that we had somehow managed to tap into the set of characteristics that turn on all the hardwired parenting instincts in most human beings. You know.... the round face, the big round eyes, the long eyelashes. That kind of thing.

CNN-Prime:
So what did your company do?

Callaweigh:
Hell, we weren't stupid; we went straight back and redesigned the whole project. We had made the dragons sturdy -- and muscular, you know, kind of hard -- so they could handle the wear and tear of having kids riding on them. We went back and made them softer, and lighter, and more ... more cuddly. And of course we re-did their front paws to make them exactly like a little child's hands. And we made little birth certificates for them... And they just took off. We didn't have to do a damn thing to promote them, Malcolm; we just put one ad on the comsets and from then on our only problem was producing enough of them to keep up with the demand. Three weeks into it, we had to set up a separate division just to handle the installment plan orders for people who couldn't afford them otherwise.

CNN-Prime:
And the rest is history!

Callaweigh:
And the rest is history.

(Post a new comment)

	queenmaggie 2007-07-07 02:34 pm UTC (link)
	These little stories are progressing from "what an interesting concept!" to rather chilling. (Reply to this)

	archangelbeth 2007-07-07 02:50 pm UTC (link)
	Those poor kids -- deprived of riding dragons! sniffle (Reply to this)

	voxwoman 2007-07-07 02:58 pm UTC (link)
	I can also see these interviews as interludes in a larger (novel-sized) work that helps fill in back story without stopping the action. (Reply to this)(Thread)

almeda
2007-07-09 09:41 pm UTC (link)

I've been trying to figure out which of the myriad possible novels that could be written with these as chapter-interstitials (pant, pant, deep breath, sorry!) that *I*, personally, would choose to write.

It all depends on where you stand, what plot seems most 'obvious' or 'interesting'. Some of the ones that have occurred to me (I'd be overjoyed to see other suggestions, of course -- not that I intend to sit right down and begin writing, necessarily; it's a thought experiment):

Post-apocalyptic; viewpoint character is the first scientist to realize that humanity is, all unwitting, actually in real danger of extincting itself (presuming longevity treatments of some kind to be fairly common, so that folks don't realize how fragile they might be).
What it's like growing up one of the only kids in your city, which spawns (at least) the subsets
1. Loneliness, perhaps illicitly befriending/reprogramming neighbors' dragons
2. Growing up with weird, ostracized parents (rather like being the only Jew in a neighborhood in the thirties, perhaps?)
3. Being pampered and made much of by all available adults
4. Being raised impersonally in a creche, and dreaming of the day you save enough to buy your own cyberdragon
Viewpoint character fixes up and reprograms secondhand/discarded/defective cyberdragons for the secondary market, and while doing so happens across [Insert McGuffin Here], which ends up driving the entire plot of the book. Perhaps the McGuffin was secreted inside a cyberdragon of someone who later died, or is in fact some kind of relation to a deep, dark Cyberdragon, Inc. secret. Or, well, anything else at all, really.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

voxwoman
2007-07-09 09:58 pm UTC (link)

Well, David Brin did something very similar at the beginning of every chapter in (I think it was) Kiln People - they were more news reports or blog entries or advertising (in various media) And it may not have been Kiln People or David Brin (but another novel by someone else that I read in that same time frame - there was a pyramid and a holoporn actress and some survivalists... could have been Kiln People, I don't recall enough now).

What I remember was that I enjoyed reading those snippets almost more than the regular prose in the novel.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	almeda 2007-07-10 10:18 pm UTC (link)
	It's definitely been done before. At least as far back as the excerpts from the Encyclopedia Galactica in Dune (supposedly written by Irulan many, many years later, as we find during the book -- which makes them both particularly interesting in hindsight and particularly unreliable). (Reply to this)(Parent)

dteleki
2007-07-07 03:25 pm UTC (link)

"Follow-ups to Interview with Holdyn Callaweigh," conducted by CNN-Prime's Malcolm Ndebe

Phyllida Argent:
I can't help admiring Mr. Callaweigh's chutzpah. Really, a toy manufacturer is the last person on earth who needs eggheads or focus groups to tell him that cuteness sells, and that to make a toy cute you make it look like a baby. And God knows cuteness in a mass-manufactured toy doesn't happen by accident. Not even in the prototype stage.

CNN-Prime:
Do you think cyberdragons are cute? You, personally?

Argent:
Of course I think they're cute! I wouldn't be human if I didn't. Every time I see one, I have this overwhelming temptation to sweep the adorable little charmer up into my arms and ooh and aah and goo-goo-goo at the unholy thing. I'm terribly afraid that the world won't end with a bang, or with a whimper... but with a goo-goo-goo.

CNN-Prime:
[ involuntary snicker ]

Argent:
That's why I founded Repopulate America Now, just a month after the ungodly things hit the market.

CNN-Prime:
Weren't you, shall we say, overreacting a smidgen?

Argent:
Good God, hasn't anybody but me read the results of the 2080 census??

(Reply to this)(Thread)

	wandering_cat 2007-07-07 03:42 pm UTC (link)
	Good follow-up! :-) (Reply to this)(Parent)

	haikujaguar 2007-07-07 03:52 pm UTC (link)
	Yow! (Reply to this)(Parent)

Exotic forms of fiction
(Anonymous)
2007-07-07 03:55 pm UTC (link)

I'm intrigued to see this form of fiction. Particularly, I like how the interviews can *stack* within the same news topic, turning a short-short into something longer and more complex.

I'm a big fan of poetic forms, especially the complicated ones like villanells and sestinas. In fiction ... I'm not sure yet. I'm curious about exotic forms but they're kind of hard to find. I do like well-done epistolary stories. One of my favorites was a pastiche of children's letters to a museum, entitled "The Room with the Moa That We Aren't Supposed To Write About."

But there are a couple of problems. 1) It's harder to find lists of exotic fictional forms, and instructions on how to write them. 2) Many editors simply won't consider them. Never mind whether the piece is well-written or not: it's often not allowed to compete, but rejected as "not a story." It's very frustrating both as a writer and a reader, because it leaves very few places where one can find exotic forms of fiction.

Well, the editors are half right; some exotic forms aren't actually narratives, and a story is most essentially a narrative. But they're not poems and they're not nonfiction either, and they are literature. I've used the term "demi-fiction" for imaginary materials that are not stories but rather the nonfiction of their homeworld: otherworldly plant guides, for example. For things that tell a story but not in a narrative way, perhaps another term could be coined, like "quasi-fiction." That might make it easier to get such things into print, if it discouraged the tendency to apply apple standards to oranges.

This is at least the second example to appear here, after the glossary story. What other exotic forms of fiction are people aware of?

(Reply to this)(Thread)

	Re: Exotic forms of fiction... response to Someone... ozarque 2007-07-07 06:23 pm UTC (link)
	Thank you for your comment. I would add only that (based on my own experience) editors aren't unwilling to consider glossary stories. [The glossary-story posts in this journal are indexed at http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=ozarque&keyword=Writing+science+fiction%3B+glossary+story&filter=all ]. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Exotic forms of fiction... response to Someone... ysabetwordsmith 2007-07-10 04:24 am UTC (link)
	That was my comment. Sorry, I didn't realize my LJ login had somehow gone away. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	Re: Exotic forms of fiction rozasharn 2007-07-08 03:10 am UTC (link)
	In a collection of Spider-man short stories, I found a story in the form of a museum catalog: the museum held objects Spider-man and the Joker had used in their intrigues, catalogued in order of use, with brief explanations of how they'd been used. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	alt.faq.basilisk houseboatonstyx 2007-07-08 04:26 am UTC (link)
	I haven't read this, but I think it may be online somewhere. I've heard it praised: people call it a story though apparently it's written as a conventional "Frequently Asked Questions" document. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: alt.faq.basilisk aquaeri 2007-07-08 07:10 am UTC (link)
	It's at: http://www.ansible.co.uk/writing/c-b-faq.html It's by David Langford, and first appeared in Nature in 1999. (Reply to this)(Parent)

starcat_jewel
2007-07-07 04:09 pm UTC (link)

I like this; it gives important information that clears up some of the largish "plot holes" in the first interview. If the cyberdragons are actually seen as virtual children, then the "no naked dragons" proscription becomes much more plausible.

I would bet that there are some people who don't have that gushing response to the cyberdragons... and that they are exactly the people who would have already chosen to be childfree. OTOH, that could also go the other way; I certainly have a gush response to cute baby animals that does not extend to human babies!

(Reply to this)(Thread)

	voxwoman 2007-07-07 05:22 pm UTC (link)
	Has there been a study of the child-free to see if they are also "pet-free"? I know of several militantly child free couples who own cats, for example (and then, there is my brother who is both child and pet-free, despite his spouse's occasional desires for a dog (I'm sure allergies are playing into this). (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

elynne
2007-07-07 07:29 pm UTC (link)

I'd put my money the other way around - that child-free people are far more likely to have pets, rather than less. Some child-free people simply don't want any kind of responsibility for another living creature, and wouldn't choose to have pets either; but there are many reasons not to have children. If I could have kittens instead of human babies, I'd seriously take the option. I'm pretty sure that the ease with which I was approved for a tubal ligation had to do with me explaining this to the interviewing counselor, and her believing me.

At the same time, I'm not sure that any non-human-baby-thing could completely replace and subsume the instinctive drive to physically reproduce. From what I understand from other women, there are a variety of reasons to want to have children too. Some of those reasons (especially the social pressures) could probably be derailed with a sufficently human-baby-like replacement, but other aspects - pregnancy, breastfeeding, watching a baby grow, possibly baby smell - would be harder to manufacture.

For me, the attraction of having a "cyberdragon" would lie in its animalism; I'd want something that I could look at and immediately identify as a "real dragon", not something that looked like a cartoony dragon-child. When I was little, I loved stories about animals, but never liked (and sometimes strongly disliked) "cute little animals in cute little clothes acting like cute little people" stories. I never did get all the way through The Wind in the Willows, but I chewed through Call of the Wild and White Fang and made a good attempt at Watership Down when I was in third or fourth grade.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	(Anonymous) 2007-07-08 05:20 am UTC (link)
	Yes. I hate seeing people domesticate animals any more than absolutely necessary for the animals' survival. I know... the animals sometimes don't seem to mind. Sometimes slaves don't seem to mind. I wonder how the dragons liked being pets. Going to let us know, Suzette? Meg Umans (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

Response to Meg Umans...

ozarque
2007-07-08 01:55 pm UTC (link)

" I wonder how the dragons liked being pets."

That depends, Meg. They're not physical creatures, they're robots -- like the robot dogs Sony makes today and the new Japanese robot toddler. If the assumption is that robotics/AI has progressed far enough for robots to have human-like thoughts and feelings, that would be an issue; I haven't made that assumption. [At least I don't think I have; maybe you noticed something that presupposes more than I realized?]

In the new Temeraire dragon series, the dragon Temeraire has very strong objections to the slave status of dragons, and doesn't hesitate to express those objections. I'm waiting with great anticipation for the fourth book in the series (pre-ordered, due out in September), and am hoping that it will explore that issue further.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

catdoor_cats
2007-07-09 04:28 am UTC (link)

Well, it depends on what you mean by 'domesticate.' When we had pets, I liked cats and dogs to BE cats and dogs, not surrogate infants. But cats that are friendly, not feral: just, well, traditional cats. :-) They went in and out as they pleased, had outdoor lives of their own. Some of them seemed to make their 'home base' indoors and slept with the humans, some preferred the barn.

Same with dogs. Because of leash laws we had to fence them, but otherwise they had their own lives: a mated pair.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

	houseboatonstyx 2007-07-08 04:30 am UTC (link)
	I liked the fashion designer interview better. More mysterious, more punchy. (Reply to this)(Parent)

(Anonymous)
2007-07-07 04:11 pm UTC (link)

(Michael Farris)

"we had somehow managed to tap into the set of characteristics that turn on all the hardwired parenting instincts in most human beings. You know.... the round face, the big round eyes, the long eyelashes"

I'm not much for big round eyes, but my (extraordinarily weak) nurturing instincts kick in at the sight of fur (and shoulders that really small for the body). In other words, if the cyberdragons resemble baby knut (http://english.pravda.ru/img/idb/bear-5.jpg) then I am so there.

(Reply to this)

Cuteness response
(Anonymous)
2007-07-07 04:23 pm UTC (link)

These interviews are fascinating. I love the way they tell the story implicitly rather than explicitly (the unspoken assumptions). Yes, the cuteness response can be triggered in some people by animals but not human babies. Our youngest son, age 24 (the only one still unmarried and childless) loves cats with unbridled devotion. He thinks babies are a bit creepy. I asked our next-oldest son, who has 2 children under two, whether he felt the same way when he was single. He assured me he did. Having an infant of one's own seems to trigger the response -- but obviously not always, or there wouldn't be any child cruelty crimes perpetrated by natural parents.

(Reply to this)(Thread)

	Re: Cuteness response voxwoman 2007-07-07 05:24 pm UTC (link)
	My cats were my "children" until I had a baby of my own. Now, they're just "cats" and I think the cats prefer it (they don't particularly like to be carried around and cuddled. Well, neither does my kid anymore...) (Reply to this)(Parent)

(Anonymous)
2007-07-07 05:00 pm UTC (link)

Delightful backstory! I'm having a problem with calling the child-surrogates dragons, though. For me, dragons have hard, sharp scales, long claws, sharp combs on their long snouts, and fire breath. No way can I make my mental dragons cute.

Dragons are kind of built like dinosaurs, which for me, can be cute. I'd never thought of that either - cute dinosaurs? - until I started raising chickens. For some of their chickhood, after they're fluffballs, they're little dinosaurs.

Maybe it's just me, or maybe it would help to show how the concept of dragon moved from fierce predator to cute possession.

Meg Umans

(Reply to this)(Thread)

voxwoman
2007-07-07 05:26 pm UTC (link)

Read some of the later Pern novels by Anne McCaffery - the ones where she introduced "fire lizards"... they are very cat-like in many ways, and the Pernese took to them in a big way. Fans of the books started making stuffed fire lizards, and you would see them perched on shoulders at conventions quite frequently. I take the cyberdragons as this sort of plush toy with futuristic enhancements.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

dteleki
2007-07-07 05:28 pm UTC (link)

You might find it more believable if they're baby dragons. This could be suggested by calling them "cyberdragonets".

I wouldn't normally think of worms as "cute", but I remember there used to be (still is?) a ride-on toy for very small children called "Inchworm", which was indeed a disgustingly cute anthropomorphized inchworm. As I remember it, "Inchworm" had huge eyes, a huge inane smile, and wore a teeny-tiny bowler hat.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

Response to Meg Umans...

ozarque
2007-07-07 06:33 pm UTC (link)

voxwoman, I'd recommend McCaffrey's firelizard stories. I know there are firelizards in Dragonsong, Dragonsinger, and Dragondrums -- perhaps in others, I'm not sure. Everybody in my own fan circle would have been willing to put up with a lot of expense and inconvenience just to have a firelizard.

[I have a sneaking suspicion that McCaffrey did that as "fire lizard," two words, in which case I apologize for compounding. I should have checked before posting.]

(Reply to this)(Parent)

	Response to Meg Umans, continued... ozarque 2007-07-07 06:42 pm UTC (link)
	Sure enough -- McCaffrey's work had "fire lizards." Two words. There's a drawing of a youngster with two fire lizards at http://www.carylibrary.org/ya/m1.html . The ones in the drawing aren't as large as those I have in mind in the two fictional interviews in this journal, but they'll give you an idea of what a dragon serving as a child-surrogate might be like. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Response to Meg Umans, continued... (Anonymous) 2007-07-08 05:29 am UTC (link)
	Thanks for the link... oh... lizards with bat wings? I wasn't expecting THAT. Well, lizards are cute and bats are cute, so I guess there you go. Not very cuddly-looking, but I suppose you get used to it. Meg Umans (Reply to this)(Parent)

	lovely dragons maggieno 2007-07-08 07:25 pm UTC (link)
	Instead of the Western sort-of-dino dragon, think the Easter water god dragons with their sinuous, lean bodies, sharp curiosity about things human, and lovely colors. As in the anime, "Spirited Away." (Reply to this)(Parent)

	kelsied 2007-07-09 01:04 am UTC (link)
	I am immensely enjoying this series... grins (Reply to this)

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