Once upon a time, the Universe happened. At some later unspecified date, possibly on a Tuesday, people happened. No one has yet been able to determine if that is a good thing.
On most civilized worlds, it is generally agreed upon that both of these things did actually occur, except by the Flavian philosopher Magros, whose followers suspect it is all a conspiracy to make them believe that they do, in fact, exist.
Most of the rest of the people of the universe like to argue about how it all actually happened. They also like to pretend to kill each other in various creative ways using video controllers, and to sit in dark, crowded rooms where they watch other people pretending to kill each other on large screens. This is because actually killing people is usually regarded as a very rude thing to do and results in not getting invited to as many parties.
It also tends to reduce the number of people available with whom one can argue about various things. Many of the inhabitants of many of the universe's planets haven't worked out that last bit, and go on actually killing each other, in addition to pretending to kill each other. Many of the inhabitants of many of the universe's planets aren't terribly bright, in spite of having invented cell phones, which is considered by some to be a measure of a civilization's relative intelligence.
In fact, whenever someone does manage to work out these things, they are generally scoffed at until someone gets around to nailing them to something. Then the people who did the nailing go about doing things as they'd always done them as if nothing had ever actually happened.
On many planets, the easiest way to get yourself killed is to provide its inhabitants with new information. They simply don't have a place for it in their brains. That is why The Veil works so well.
The Veil is a web of sound waves encircling certain planets – Earth, for instance – which has the ability to communicate with the inhabitants by means of subliminal whispers. In the listener's primary language, The Veil says things like, “You didn't see that pink spaceship,” or “You don't really believe gaunt-faced androgynous aliens are traipsing around Alabama in glittering body suits, do you?”
It works very well, because the average Earthperson would rather not believe he had seen a pink spaceship or an alien resembling David Bowie circa 1972.
The average Earthperson is fairly happy going about life without the slightest inkling that the solar system surrounding his little blue planet is positively brimming with life, much of it with terrible fashion sense.
In fact, one old gentleman who went deaf in such a way that The Veil could no longer communicate with him, actually went stark raving mad. He wasn't particularly bothered by finding a party going on around the planet, but he absolutely could not deal with discovering the sun was a warm shade of red-orange. He'd always been told it was yellow, simply yellow, and wasn't prepared for any colors more complicated than that.
At the height of his madness, he attempted to jump out of a 42nd-story building, but was prevented from completing his fall by the sudden appearance of a large Cerulean Dodo. It is an odd-looking creature, resembling a constipated, and very confused, ostrich. Over the last decade alone, it has been sighted several hundred times, but since human beings are not a race to let physical evidence get in the way of not believing in dodos, everyone is in denial and the bird continues to multiply unchecked. The old man spent his last days babbling to himself about color mixtures and became quite an oracle for interior designers. All in all, he was pretty much the average Earthperson.
Tom Collins, however, was not an average Earthperson. In fact, Tom Collins was not an Earthperson at all. Not technically, anyway.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Saturday, May 19, 2007
What This Blog Is About
In the beginning, there was a blog. It was a science fiction and humor blog, to be exact, put together by a little-known yet optimistic writer named Rhonda Jones as she sat with her aging laptop on the floor of a small apartment in Bucharest, Romania. First and foremost, it was to be an experiment.
And here it is. I decided to see whether the Earth would explode if I wrote a novel online. I know. It's a foolhardy thing to do. Civilization as we know it could come to a crashing halt. But my curiosity knows no bounds.
Good Morning Galaxy is the story of an Earthman who discovers he isn't an Earthman after all. He discovers this just as he is recruited as a member of the Quillifaxian Time Agency by an 899-year-old Time Agent who is very determined to retire by his 900th birthday. Lots of fun stuff, including an official alcoholic beverage, a cast of bizarre characters, and the Pleasure Mall that thrives just beyond Earth's atmosphere, hidden from human view by The Veil.
As you can probably tell, I've got a great deal of Douglas Adams lodged in my brain. If you do as well, you may just enjoy what you find here.
And what will you find here? Eventually, the entire first draft of my novel Good Morning Galaxy and, sometime after that, a much more polished draft will appear on the website. It'll be like having a front-row seat to Frankenstein's laboratory. Eventually, there will be attractive PDFs and hard copies for sale, and all sorts of interesting things to do and read and see on Good Morning Galaxy.
You are welcome -- nay, encouraged -- to post what you find here on your website or blog, as long as you include my name and this URL or a link to this site in the same space. So go forth, visit alien worlds and meet strange characters. Drop me a line if you like what you see, if you hate what you see, if you think the characters have begun talking to you or if you just want to annoy your boss.
But, whatever you do, don't touch the green goo.
And here it is. I decided to see whether the Earth would explode if I wrote a novel online. I know. It's a foolhardy thing to do. Civilization as we know it could come to a crashing halt. But my curiosity knows no bounds.
Good Morning Galaxy is the story of an Earthman who discovers he isn't an Earthman after all. He discovers this just as he is recruited as a member of the Quillifaxian Time Agency by an 899-year-old Time Agent who is very determined to retire by his 900th birthday. Lots of fun stuff, including an official alcoholic beverage, a cast of bizarre characters, and the Pleasure Mall that thrives just beyond Earth's atmosphere, hidden from human view by The Veil.
As you can probably tell, I've got a great deal of Douglas Adams lodged in my brain. If you do as well, you may just enjoy what you find here.
And what will you find here? Eventually, the entire first draft of my novel Good Morning Galaxy and, sometime after that, a much more polished draft will appear on the website. It'll be like having a front-row seat to Frankenstein's laboratory. Eventually, there will be attractive PDFs and hard copies for sale, and all sorts of interesting things to do and read and see on Good Morning Galaxy.
You are welcome -- nay, encouraged -- to post what you find here on your website or blog, as long as you include my name and this URL or a link to this site in the same space. So go forth, visit alien worlds and meet strange characters. Drop me a line if you like what you see, if you hate what you see, if you think the characters have begun talking to you or if you just want to annoy your boss.
But, whatever you do, don't touch the green goo.
Friday, May 18, 2007
Good Morning Galaxy Interview
Here is my very first author interview, which was done in May 2007. By me. Silly, yes, but effective, especially since the phone was failing to ring off the hook with requests from David Letterman.
Good Morning Galaxy: You've compared your work to that of British author Douglas Adams. That's a bit cheeky, isn't it?
Rhonda Jones: Well, of course it would be terribly cheeky if I went around saying that my work was better than his or even as good. The truth about writing is, the writer is much too close to tell how good it is. Sure, you may put down a joke and think, "Well now that'll have people spraying Pepsi out of their noses," and then someone reads it and hardly notices, and they laugh at something you didn't want them to laugh at. Or you may think, "This is utter rubbish," and it makes someone fall out of their chair. So you never know, really, you just do your best until you have some sense that it isn't terrible, or at the very least, isn't boring, which to me is the worst sin a storyteller can commit, being boring. But when I compare my work to his, I'm referring more to the style and subject matter than anything else. I'm acknowledging him as someone who had a profound impact on my writing. I read the Hitchhiker's Guide series when I was eighteen, and it was one of those experiences--it's always wonderful when you can describe reading a book as an "experience," but that's what it was in this case. It was one of those experiences where you think, "This makes more sense than anything else," or you just have this sort of, "Yeah, me too" kind of feeling. And I don't get that feeling very often, so it was very profound for me. In the movie "Shadowlands," in which Anthony Hopkins plays C.S. Lewis, he says that we read so that we will know we aren't alone. The Hitchhiker's Guide series made me feel as though there was actually someone out there who also seemed to be having a very absurd experience in this universe of ours. Because there is so much of life that is absurd, and you just have to laugh at it.
GMG: Who, besides Adams, are your influences?
RJ: Kurt Vonnegut, of course. Also Doctor Who before the 1980s and Monty Python. British humorists in general. They know how to use wordplay and subtlety to get a point across. I really enjoyed shows like Are You Being Served and Fawlty Towers. Those were two of my favorites. As for American humor, there was M*A*S*H (the television show) and the Marx Brothers, which obviously informed a lot of the humor of M*A*S*H. You don't see shows like that anymore, that just get the characters involved in that kind of verbal dueling. I wonder if it's become a lost art or if tv and movie executives simply think that people don't want or understand that sort of thing. If that's the case, they're wrong.
GMG: They're wrong?
RJ: Of course they are. Audiences want to be treated like the intelligent beings they are. That's why "House, M.D." is so popular--because people are starved for something intelligent. That's why there's such a loyal "Firefly" following out there--because people saw something rare and they decided to hold on to it with all they had. But people in power are afraid to take a chance on something that may not appeal to the masses, so they create reality show after reality show and we forget that television and movies don't all have to be drama and explosions.
GMG: What made you want to become a writer?
RJ: An absence of things that I wanted to read, I think. For instance, I would think, "Well, wouldn't it be nice if there were a story that did this and this?" Or, "That's nice, but I wish they had done this instead." Then, of course, the inevitable thing is, "I'll bet I could do it." So then I'd try and I'd let someone read it and they'd say, "Ooh, I like that part." So then I'd try to do it again. I look back and think they were probably just trying to be encouraging and I took them at their word and look where it got me. The writing they were oohing and aahing over was pretty terrible stuff.
GMG: Where did the idea for Good Morning Galaxy come from?
RJ: Well, I've always wanted to do something like this, but I think I had some other things to get out of my system first. I'm not sure I could have written this story in my twenties, even if the concept had been given to me on a silver platter. It's a shame, because I think, "Look at all the fun I could have been having all this time," because writers tend to get caught up in whatever philosophies inform the work that they're doing at the time, and I spent about half of my thirties writing some pretty dark stuff. Now I feel as though I'm returning to something that's a lot more basic to who I am and how I really see the world. There was a period of time in my youth when I discovered Hitchhiker's and Doctor Who and Monty Python and the other British things that made me think, "Yeah, me too," and things made sense while I was reading and looking at all that stuff. Then like I said I had to go off and do other things for a while. So now I feel like myself again. I'm writing this funny stuff about how absurd life is and things make sense again. It's all in how you look at life, really.
GMG: What would you say Good Morning Galaxy is about? Any relevant themes?
RJ: Well, there's quite a bit in there about how people simply can't see what's in front of their faces. I don't write with themes in mind. I just sort of notice them as they fall onto the page. Or I hallucinate them. I haven't figured out which.
GMG: You've been writing professionally most of your adult life, is that right?
RJ: Yes, and it was a complete accident. I was what you might call an accidental journalist. I graduated from college and thought, "Ok, now I need a job. What can I do?" And after thinking about it for a while, I guessed I could read and write pretty well and so I began talking to newspapers. The first one I talked to hired me practically on the spot, so I guess I was right about being able to write pretty well. I had a lot of interesting experiences as a journalist. A lot of boring ones, too, but belonging to the press opens up a lot of doors. You speak to people you would never have gotten an opportunity to speak to, or that it would never have occurred to you to speak to. I had a nice conversation with Kurt Vonnegut on the telephone some years ago.
GMG: Kurt Vonnegut? Wow. What did he say?
RJ: He told me I didn't know anything because I'd been an English major in school and I should have studied science. He was probably right. He also told me he was too damned old to keep writing and he wasn't going to do it anymore. That was just after Timequake had been published.
GMG: Do you read a lot of science fiction?
RJ: Not really. I know people who read a couple of books a week and I can't get any writing done if I keep a reading schedule like that. I tend more toward studying the things I really like rather than trying to read everything. And I read such a wide range of things too. I'm going to re-read Tolkien's Ring Trilogy. And someday I'll probably re-read the Harry Potter series. I'm looking forward to the final book, by the way. I really enjoyed that one. I read the occasional Terry Pratchett.
GMG: Why did you choose to write Science Fiction?
RJ: The same reason I chose to write comedy, and the same reason I chose to write them at the same time. Good Science Fiction forces you to look at the world in a different way, the same as good comedy. And Science Fiction, from what I gather, has always been about ideas. I like ideas, thinking about the way things could be done, or what would happen if. I like to take an experimental approach to writing, put a bunch of characters together in a strange situation and see what they do. When you do that, things are always funny. Writing humor is just about recognizing it when it happens and getting the timing right.
GMG: What made you choose the online medium for the release of Good Morning Galaxy?
RJ: That's the word right there--"choose." The Internet represents a wonderful opportunity for writers, not just in what it allows us to do physically with hyperlinks and such, but just in getting our work out to the masses. You don't actually need a publishing company anymore to publish, and you don't need them to make money. They would like you to think that you do, or that you're somehow more valid as a writer if your work has their stamp of approval on it, but that just isn't the case. Internet publishing takes away the middle man, who is quickly becoming obsolete. And I think Science Fiction is the ideal genre to publish in this medium because Science Fiction is about possibility and the Internet is about possibility, and they are both about freedom. As for validation, you'll know you've written a good story if people respond to it.
GMG: Won't you make more money if you publish with a traditional company?
RJ: It's a possibility, but you have to be very, very lucky to do that, because it takes marketing to become popular quickly and the companies choose from the start whom they want to spend money on. So it's a lottery, and you have to be successful quickly. I'm not against traditional publishing and I'm perfectly willing to sign a contract with a publisher if someone offers me a deal that I like. I just think writers ought not be at their mercy. There ought to be choices, and there are a lot of pros to publishing like this--artistic control, for one. And for another, no one is going to yank this website off the shelf, so to speak, if it doesn't make hundreds of thousands of dollars in the first three months. It has time to be discovered and grow and evolve, and that is what art and artists should be allowed to do. Or else the same thing is going to happen in the publishing industry that's happening in the music industry, and that is disposable people. The Beatles never would have happened in today's world, because they were nurtured into existence. And the Stones aren't pretty enough, and never would have been given a second look by one of today's executives. Now it's very hard to find a band with actual musicians in it because musicians are more concerned with playing their instruments than with being pretty, which is as it should be. I think we'll get back to it though, and I think indie music is what's going to bring it back. The technology is there, so people don't have to be at the mercy of corporations. That's why I'm doing it this way. If a traditional publishing company wants to make a deal with me, I'll do it if it's a good deal. But I'm not going to sit around and wait for them to decide my work is worth looking at. It's good stuff whether marketing trends say it is or not.
GMG: What would you say to people wanting to make a living from writing?
RJ: I would say that it's very difficult and they'd better either enjoy it a great deal or have some sort of compulsion that forces them to do it. It's a difficult thing to do and it's something that everyone who doesn't write assumes is easy. And they also assume that money isn't important to you because you're "doing what you love," which is one of the strangest phenomena in the universe, I think, that assumption. And a lot of writers allow themselves to be cowed by people who are very good at making them feel guilty for actually wanting to be paid for their work.
GMG: And yet you've got free writing on this very site.
RJ: I've got samples on this site. Cookie companies give away samples to show people how good their cookies are. That's what I'm doing. The people who like it will buy the stuff that's for sale in the future, and the other people will talk about it to their friends, who will buy it. Word-of-mouth advertising is still a great thing. Word will get out and hopefully people will enjoy what they find here.
GMG: What in the world were you doing in Romania?
RJ: Writing mostly. As for the rest, I just wanted to see what was there.
Good Morning Galaxy: You've compared your work to that of British author Douglas Adams. That's a bit cheeky, isn't it?
Rhonda Jones: Well, of course it would be terribly cheeky if I went around saying that my work was better than his or even as good. The truth about writing is, the writer is much too close to tell how good it is. Sure, you may put down a joke and think, "Well now that'll have people spraying Pepsi out of their noses," and then someone reads it and hardly notices, and they laugh at something you didn't want them to laugh at. Or you may think, "This is utter rubbish," and it makes someone fall out of their chair. So you never know, really, you just do your best until you have some sense that it isn't terrible, or at the very least, isn't boring, which to me is the worst sin a storyteller can commit, being boring. But when I compare my work to his, I'm referring more to the style and subject matter than anything else. I'm acknowledging him as someone who had a profound impact on my writing. I read the Hitchhiker's Guide series when I was eighteen, and it was one of those experiences--it's always wonderful when you can describe reading a book as an "experience," but that's what it was in this case. It was one of those experiences where you think, "This makes more sense than anything else," or you just have this sort of, "Yeah, me too" kind of feeling. And I don't get that feeling very often, so it was very profound for me. In the movie "Shadowlands," in which Anthony Hopkins plays C.S. Lewis, he says that we read so that we will know we aren't alone. The Hitchhiker's Guide series made me feel as though there was actually someone out there who also seemed to be having a very absurd experience in this universe of ours. Because there is so much of life that is absurd, and you just have to laugh at it.
GMG: Who, besides Adams, are your influences?
RJ: Kurt Vonnegut, of course. Also Doctor Who before the 1980s and Monty Python. British humorists in general. They know how to use wordplay and subtlety to get a point across. I really enjoyed shows like Are You Being Served and Fawlty Towers. Those were two of my favorites. As for American humor, there was M*A*S*H (the television show) and the Marx Brothers, which obviously informed a lot of the humor of M*A*S*H. You don't see shows like that anymore, that just get the characters involved in that kind of verbal dueling. I wonder if it's become a lost art or if tv and movie executives simply think that people don't want or understand that sort of thing. If that's the case, they're wrong.
GMG: They're wrong?
RJ: Of course they are. Audiences want to be treated like the intelligent beings they are. That's why "House, M.D." is so popular--because people are starved for something intelligent. That's why there's such a loyal "Firefly" following out there--because people saw something rare and they decided to hold on to it with all they had. But people in power are afraid to take a chance on something that may not appeal to the masses, so they create reality show after reality show and we forget that television and movies don't all have to be drama and explosions.
GMG: What made you want to become a writer?
RJ: An absence of things that I wanted to read, I think. For instance, I would think, "Well, wouldn't it be nice if there were a story that did this and this?" Or, "That's nice, but I wish they had done this instead." Then, of course, the inevitable thing is, "I'll bet I could do it." So then I'd try and I'd let someone read it and they'd say, "Ooh, I like that part." So then I'd try to do it again. I look back and think they were probably just trying to be encouraging and I took them at their word and look where it got me. The writing they were oohing and aahing over was pretty terrible stuff.
GMG: Where did the idea for Good Morning Galaxy come from?
RJ: Well, I've always wanted to do something like this, but I think I had some other things to get out of my system first. I'm not sure I could have written this story in my twenties, even if the concept had been given to me on a silver platter. It's a shame, because I think, "Look at all the fun I could have been having all this time," because writers tend to get caught up in whatever philosophies inform the work that they're doing at the time, and I spent about half of my thirties writing some pretty dark stuff. Now I feel as though I'm returning to something that's a lot more basic to who I am and how I really see the world. There was a period of time in my youth when I discovered Hitchhiker's and Doctor Who and Monty Python and the other British things that made me think, "Yeah, me too," and things made sense while I was reading and looking at all that stuff. Then like I said I had to go off and do other things for a while. So now I feel like myself again. I'm writing this funny stuff about how absurd life is and things make sense again. It's all in how you look at life, really.
GMG: What would you say Good Morning Galaxy is about? Any relevant themes?
RJ: Well, there's quite a bit in there about how people simply can't see what's in front of their faces. I don't write with themes in mind. I just sort of notice them as they fall onto the page. Or I hallucinate them. I haven't figured out which.
GMG: You've been writing professionally most of your adult life, is that right?
RJ: Yes, and it was a complete accident. I was what you might call an accidental journalist. I graduated from college and thought, "Ok, now I need a job. What can I do?" And after thinking about it for a while, I guessed I could read and write pretty well and so I began talking to newspapers. The first one I talked to hired me practically on the spot, so I guess I was right about being able to write pretty well. I had a lot of interesting experiences as a journalist. A lot of boring ones, too, but belonging to the press opens up a lot of doors. You speak to people you would never have gotten an opportunity to speak to, or that it would never have occurred to you to speak to. I had a nice conversation with Kurt Vonnegut on the telephone some years ago.
GMG: Kurt Vonnegut? Wow. What did he say?
RJ: He told me I didn't know anything because I'd been an English major in school and I should have studied science. He was probably right. He also told me he was too damned old to keep writing and he wasn't going to do it anymore. That was just after Timequake had been published.
GMG: Do you read a lot of science fiction?
RJ: Not really. I know people who read a couple of books a week and I can't get any writing done if I keep a reading schedule like that. I tend more toward studying the things I really like rather than trying to read everything. And I read such a wide range of things too. I'm going to re-read Tolkien's Ring Trilogy. And someday I'll probably re-read the Harry Potter series. I'm looking forward to the final book, by the way. I really enjoyed that one. I read the occasional Terry Pratchett.
GMG: Why did you choose to write Science Fiction?
RJ: The same reason I chose to write comedy, and the same reason I chose to write them at the same time. Good Science Fiction forces you to look at the world in a different way, the same as good comedy. And Science Fiction, from what I gather, has always been about ideas. I like ideas, thinking about the way things could be done, or what would happen if. I like to take an experimental approach to writing, put a bunch of characters together in a strange situation and see what they do. When you do that, things are always funny. Writing humor is just about recognizing it when it happens and getting the timing right.
GMG: What made you choose the online medium for the release of Good Morning Galaxy?
RJ: That's the word right there--"choose." The Internet represents a wonderful opportunity for writers, not just in what it allows us to do physically with hyperlinks and such, but just in getting our work out to the masses. You don't actually need a publishing company anymore to publish, and you don't need them to make money. They would like you to think that you do, or that you're somehow more valid as a writer if your work has their stamp of approval on it, but that just isn't the case. Internet publishing takes away the middle man, who is quickly becoming obsolete. And I think Science Fiction is the ideal genre to publish in this medium because Science Fiction is about possibility and the Internet is about possibility, and they are both about freedom. As for validation, you'll know you've written a good story if people respond to it.
GMG: Won't you make more money if you publish with a traditional company?
RJ: It's a possibility, but you have to be very, very lucky to do that, because it takes marketing to become popular quickly and the companies choose from the start whom they want to spend money on. So it's a lottery, and you have to be successful quickly. I'm not against traditional publishing and I'm perfectly willing to sign a contract with a publisher if someone offers me a deal that I like. I just think writers ought not be at their mercy. There ought to be choices, and there are a lot of pros to publishing like this--artistic control, for one. And for another, no one is going to yank this website off the shelf, so to speak, if it doesn't make hundreds of thousands of dollars in the first three months. It has time to be discovered and grow and evolve, and that is what art and artists should be allowed to do. Or else the same thing is going to happen in the publishing industry that's happening in the music industry, and that is disposable people. The Beatles never would have happened in today's world, because they were nurtured into existence. And the Stones aren't pretty enough, and never would have been given a second look by one of today's executives. Now it's very hard to find a band with actual musicians in it because musicians are more concerned with playing their instruments than with being pretty, which is as it should be. I think we'll get back to it though, and I think indie music is what's going to bring it back. The technology is there, so people don't have to be at the mercy of corporations. That's why I'm doing it this way. If a traditional publishing company wants to make a deal with me, I'll do it if it's a good deal. But I'm not going to sit around and wait for them to decide my work is worth looking at. It's good stuff whether marketing trends say it is or not.
GMG: What would you say to people wanting to make a living from writing?
RJ: I would say that it's very difficult and they'd better either enjoy it a great deal or have some sort of compulsion that forces them to do it. It's a difficult thing to do and it's something that everyone who doesn't write assumes is easy. And they also assume that money isn't important to you because you're "doing what you love," which is one of the strangest phenomena in the universe, I think, that assumption. And a lot of writers allow themselves to be cowed by people who are very good at making them feel guilty for actually wanting to be paid for their work.
GMG: And yet you've got free writing on this very site.
RJ: I've got samples on this site. Cookie companies give away samples to show people how good their cookies are. That's what I'm doing. The people who like it will buy the stuff that's for sale in the future, and the other people will talk about it to their friends, who will buy it. Word-of-mouth advertising is still a great thing. Word will get out and hopefully people will enjoy what they find here.
GMG: What in the world were you doing in Romania?
RJ: Writing mostly. As for the rest, I just wanted to see what was there.
Bio
Rhonda was born in 1968 in Augusta, Ga., where she lived until 2006. She attended Augusta State University from 1986-94 between jobs. Upon graduating with a degree in English, she spent the next few years writing humor and features for the local alternative press while nursing a nighttime fiction habit and hanging out with an assortment of Irish musicians, guerrilla street performers, ballet dancers, goths, punks, fetish models and female impersonators. After that, she began her world travels by flying to a little town a few miles outside Amsterdam and accidentally taking a train to Hengelo, Netherlands. It was during her stay in Bucharest, Romania, that the idea for Good Morning Galaxy bonked her squarely on the noggin and she discovered a dangerous penchant for drinking with Australians.
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