Thank you to everyone who came today to the Tobias Buckell Q&A Session!
Here is the full chatlog of the event:
Raph: But in the meantime, I wanted to kick things off with a brief intro
Raph: of our guest Toby Buckell!
Raph: I met Toby at Worldcon, actually... introduced by mutual friends in the SF world
Raph: I naturally tracked down his books, and fell in love with them :)
Raph: Toby brings a unique flavor to his novels because of his background -- raised in the Caribbean, he adds a lot of island flavor to space opera
Raph: He also has a videogame connection, now that he has written a Halo novel
Raph: If you have had the chance to check out his blog, yo umay also know he writes often about the business of being a science fiction writer
Raph: So I am sure thos eof you curious about that sode will find plenty of knowledge and insight there as well
Raph: To put a question in the queue, please use the /question command. You can also use /q
Raph: So, no further ado... please welcome Toby Buckell!
Raph: Oh -- and you can /gsub stage to join a backchannel discussion
Raph: OK, welcome to Tobias Buckell! :)
Raph claps
tobiasbuckell: Thanks for having me out here!
Sunchaser: Hi all, and welcome Toby
tobiasbuckell: For those of you asking for the link to my website:
www.TobiasBuckell.com
Sunchaser: I'm going to ask Toby some questions, and then we'll give you a chance to ask yours
tobiasbuckell: where you can see that I haven't customised my Metaplace avatar, as this is what I look like:
Sunchaser: It's great to see you here Toby - we're thrilled you've been able to join us
tobiasbuckell:
tobiasbuckell: Thanks Sunchaser!
Sunchaser: You all set to go?
tobiasbuckell: ready!
Sunchaser: I thought maybe we would start with a little about you.
Sunchaser: You were born in the Caribbean, and now live in the US. How does your childhood in the Caribbean influence your story telling?
tobiasbuckell: Well, one thing I didn't find much of in the science fiction I was reading were positive portrayels (sp?) of people from the developing world
tobiasbuckell: so I set out to bring more of that
tobiasbuckell: the Cyberpunk writers really inspired me to feel comfortable about being an SF/F author, as Bruce Sterling set 1/3 of a book of his
tobiasbuckell: in Grenada, where I grew up
tobiasbuckell: so I wanted to infuse my SF/F, a genre I adored, and add this aspect to it
Sunchaser: I'm sure you get this question all the time, but what led you to science fiction in the first place?
tobiasbuckell: a lot of people act as if multiculturalism is a burden or 'PC' thing, but it seemed to me that the future is cosmopolitan and aried and mixed, so I wanted to see more of that
tobiasbuckell: SF/F became my love when I started reading very young, I remember reading Clarke's Childhood's End at 6 or 7
tobiasbuckell: blew my little mind
tobiasbuckell: so I wanted to recapture more of that, and looked for that genre after a while
Sunchaser: I felt that way the first time I read about the red planet
tobiasbuckell: it's the heroin addiction theory of Literature
Sunchaser: hahah
Sunchaser: So you decided to write Science Fiction. Can you talk a little about where the idea for "Crystal Rain" came from?
tobiasbuckell: so over the years, I found myself looking for the big ideas of SF/F
tobiasbuckell: Crystal Rain was the first book I attempted, so I rolled in a bunch of things that I'd been fascinated with at the time
tobiasbuckell: Aztecs, which I was reading about, where a trippy group, religiously, and I wanted to show some of that
tobiasbuckell: I love the 'Lost World' sub genre of SF/F
tobiasbuckell: and steampunk
tobiasbuckell: so I infused the novel with a bunch of that, Aztec, Caribbean, steampunk Lost World
tobiasbuckell: was my background, and I added a character, Pepper, who I'd written about in a short story that people loved
tobiasbuckell: Crystal Rain was the result:
tobiasbuckell: steampunk Aztecs invading a Caribbean lost colony world :-)
Sunchaser: Steampunk Aztecs - I love that!
Sunchaser: There's been a lot written about the dialect you used in Crystal Rain, with some saying it adds character and color, and others seeing it as distracting. Why did you choose to use the dialect, and how do you feel it contributes to the story's authenticity?
tobiasbuckell: Mark Twain had a real elegant defense for his use of dialect, in that he said something along the lines of
tobiasbuckell: 'this is the rhythm and truth of the language I hear used around me, why shouldn't I use it?'
tobiasbuckell: He was critized at length as well for using it
tobiasbuckell: it was often common for English writers to be critized for using 'vulgar' tongues, and growing up upper class Brits called dialect 'bad English'
tobiasbuckell: but Caribbean dialect comes from underlying Africanate grammar structures
tobiasbuckell: colliding with foreign languages (French, Spanish, and English in the Caribbean)
tobiasbuckell: in fact, Caribbean dialect is very similar sounding to English/African collisions in Nigeria
Sunchaser: so in effect it's a merging of languages into a new one?
tobiasbuckell: I was watching a movie, Blood Diamond, I think?
tobiasbuckell: I could understand the African Patois
tobiasbuckell: did a little research, and found the slaves taken from that area were taken to the Caribbean, and the African languages dominated the collisions in Nigerian patois and Caribbean
- Users Online (this place)
Arcturus, Aveliana, BaronJuJu, Bieeanda, Bundle, Cuppycake, Diogenes, DuMBoS51, Gaming-Gavan, JimboG, KStarfire, Lets_DANCE, Logikal, LunarRaid, Obo, Raph, SaraPickell, Slasrath, Sunchaser, Tank_Thibedeau, Zimzam, chooseareality, deidson, dubh, ferall, god, greyngreen, lucyinthesky, mike, oilei, pam, phaik, rod750, tobiasbuckell, warlocke
- 35 users found
tobiasbuckell: so representing it, much like Twain, was a reflection of my desire to just represent the reality I grew up with
tobiasbuckell: but you do get lingui-centrists who hate it LOL
tobiasbuckell: never mind that I live in rural Ohio, where there is certainly as much dialect and non standard English
tobiasbuckell: Appalachian English, your quote 'bad southern dialect' or 'ignorant sounding' is actually very influence by old english
tobiasbuckell: it's just fossilized
Sunchaser: like the music there
tobiasbuckell: and certain aspects of Southern dialects are Africanate
tobiasbuckell: Linguistics is fun! LOL
Sunchaser: yes!
Sunchaser: Back to the Aztecs -- why did you decide to bring them into the story?
tobiasbuckell: They're frickin' scary!
tobiasbuckell: :-)
Cuppycake: lol
Sunchaser: (for back channel use /gsub stage)
tobiasbuckell: The more I read about them, while the ethnic cleansing attempts of the Spaniards are horrible, what a lot of people don't get from the history books is that...
tobiasbuckell: ...Cortez got an insane amount of help from just about *everyone* around the Aztecs who when they heard this dude was heading their way joined up
tobiasbuckell: a lot of Spanish accounts of wars, we are now finding, leave out the fact that most of the time their bacon was saved by locals who had a serious anti-Aztec grudge
Raph: Toby, FYI, tossing tomatoes doesn't mean they hate you here :)
tobiasbuckell: I mean, here's a group that when they settled at the lake, and where just arrived, served as mercenaries
tobiasbuckell: for the local higher ups
tobiasbuckell: when a princess was sent to them, after a logn time asking, to cement the familial bonds between local tribes and the Aztecs
tobiasbuckell: they flay her and hand her cured skin back to the local tribe King, and are surprised when he's pissed off!
tobiasbuckell: They rise up against the Aztecs for that, and the Aztecs win that battle, and continue ruling
Sunchaser: nice
tobiasbuckell: even among the tribes of hte region the Aztecs were a bit over the top
tobiasbuckell: I'd be a Banana Cake, KStarfire :-)
Raph: Audience can submit questions to the queue with /q <question>
KStarfire: oh wait.. important one.. Pirates or Ninja?
tobiasbuckell: Pirates :-)
Lets_DANCE: how did you come to write the Cole Protocol?
Raph: how did you come to write a Halo novel?
tobiasbuckell: Ah, the Halo novel, sure:
tobiasbuckell: My first three books, Crystal Rain, Ragamuffin, and Sly Mongoose, all came out from Tor Books
tobiasbuckell: Tor became the publisher for the Halo books
Sunchaser: When you're ready for the next question, just say next...
tobiasbuckell: so Bungie, for the 6th book, asked Tor for a bag of Tor novels to see who they might be interested in asking to write the 6th halo novel
tobiasbuckell: and after reading my books they thought it'd be interesting to see what I could do
tobiasbuckell: now, I play a crapload of Halo (or did until I wrote a Halo book, I burned out a bit and then Left 4 Dead came out!)
tobiasbuckell: so when they asked if I was interested, I said 'sure' and sent them my gamertag so they knew I wasn't full of it
tobiasbuckell: then got to fly out to Bungie HQ and meet with them and toss ideas around, and since we all clicked, we went ahead with it
Lets_DANCE: what do you think about tie-in novel, in general? Will we see more of them?
tobiasbuckell: I read tie ins when I was in high school, so I have nothing against them. Just like normal books, some are good, some aren't!
tobiasbuckell: As for me writing more of them, it depends on 1) if its a property I like (Hey, Valve, I'd write a l4d book LOL), 2) pay me a fair wage for the time invested
tobiasbuckell: I've been offered some insulting offers, and been told 'if you just write it fast it's a good wage'
Raph: heh, I can let the fokls I know at Valve know if you like ;)
tobiasbuckell: Raph: I frickin' LOVE L4D, I play it way, way too much, my wife made me get a wireless headphone/mic comob
tobiasbuckell: combo
tobiasbuckell: The mythology can be challenging to keep straight in your head, but if you played all the games and read all the books, that's a good foundation
tobiasbuckell: I also have access to the Bungie Halo bible LOL
Sunchaser: SaraPickell: and that is why I want to moderate snow balls.
tobiasbuckell: LOL, how do I stand?
Raph: Hit an arrow key :)
tobiasbuckell: got it
Cuppycake: Here's a question
Cuppycake: From SaraPickell
Cuppycake: "You seem to be quite a history buff, do you try and mirror actual historical events in your work or do you just use them for more general inspiration?"
Sunchaser: Thanks Cuppy
tobiasbuckell: I use them for inspiration, not trying to mirror
tobiasbuckell: a short story I wrote once, called Necahual, was written in '02, based on some biographies about invasions and occupations I was reading
tobiasbuckell: but all the reviewers who read, in '04, read it through the lens of the current war
tobiasbuckell: so some of that stuff doesn't need to be detailed, it's timeless
dubh: What advice would you give aspiring SF/F novelists (in terms of balancing writing great SF/F and writing SF/F that sells)?
tobiasbuckell: I'm always dubious about the idea of 'writing what sells'
tobiasbuckell: it's like when my relatives are like 'you should write a bestseller!'
tobiasbuckell: "Wow, why didn't *I* think of that!" LOL
Sunchaser: :)
tobiasbuckell: obviously, writing a Halo novel will jack your sales up
tobiasbuckell: but that didn't come about b/c I set out to write 'what sells' but I wrote my own books that I enjoyed
tobiasbuckell: and I like Halo, so I wrote something else I enjoyed
tobiasbuckell: I had some *definite* ideas about areas of the Halo-verse that I thought were unexplored and wanted to
tobiasbuckell: frex: those poor Insurrectionists, who doesn't want to represent themselves? So I wanted to give their side of the story up instead
tobiasbuckell: leaving them as cardboard villians in all the books who serve as UNSC cannon fodder until the Covenant arrive
tobiasbuckell: So my advice to is to write what you like
tobiasbuckell: very few writers make 'big money'
tobiasbuckell: it's really really rare
tobiasbuckell: so make small money doing what you love
tobiasbuckell: or small money chasing the idea of writing what sells
tobiasbuckell: I know what I'll do :-)
Sunchaser: Great advice! Robert Sawyer famously said “virtual worlds are air guitar writ large.” What do you think of virtual worlds?
tobiasbuckell: well, human communication is so much more than just words
tobiasbuckell: you see that all the time as email discussions sometimes fall apart
tobiasbuckell: or comments in blogs (oh look, we hit Godwin's Law in just 2 comments!), and so on
tobiasbuckell: but virtual worlds allow an avatar, some extra emotive behaviour, and group arrangements
tobiasbuckell: humans are really good at processing metaphors
tobiasbuckell: so it's no surprise that virtual space is useful (as Mr. William Gibson predicted) as a way of layering more interaction into worlds
Tank_Thibedeau: do you believe virtual worlds will be inspiration to upcoming writers
KStarfire: what uses to you see something like Metaplace to a writer such as yourself other others like you who want to be writers :)
tobiasbuckell: for writers I see it as a great place to meet readers and chat, like we are right now
Raph: Looks like we approved two questions at once there :)
tobiasbuckell: this is a nice crowd!
tobiasbuckell: and you can leverage even larger crowds
tobiasbuckell: that would be hard for a mid-list writer like myself to get at any given event
dubh: Would you use Metaplace to craft games or virtual worlds that are inspired by your works?
tobiasbuckell: I imagine some writers would, dubh, as for me, I only have so many hours in the day, and I already spent most of every minute of the day packing in writing
tobiasbuckell: freelancing, and all sorts of things like that
tobiasbuckell: as I mentioned, fiction writing isn't big money, so I still do other things on the side (marketing copy, consulting, tech writing occasionally, whatever to fill in the gap)
Raph: How would you feel about fans making worlds based on your work?
tobiasbuckell: I'd love that, Raph!
tobiasbuckell: if fans were making virtual worlds based on my writing that would indeed be cool
Raph: Hmm. Maybe we should get that in writing ;)
tobiasbuckell: lol
Raph: Anne McCaffrey famously allowed text-based virtual worlds based on Pern as long as they were nonprofit
tobiasbuckell: some authors would get upset, I see the Dune estate got upset about sandworms in real life
tobiasbuckell: or should I say, Second Life
tobiasbuckell: right, I think that would be my approach, which is like a creative commons approach
tobiasbuckell: as long as big money isn't being made by everyone but me, fan expression is cool
Sunchaser: If you have a question for Toby, just type /q and your question
Sunchaser: What's your favorite character from your books?
tobiasbuckell: my favorite character is Pepper, no doubt
tobiasbuckell: love writing him
tobiasbuckell: something about pyschotic action heros
Raph: haha
Sunchaser: Will there be another Pepper and Ragamuffins novel?
tobiasbuckell: for now we're pausing, sales were not growing from book to book at the rate my editor wants
tobiasbuckell: so we're trying to take it up to the next level with a new book I'm writing right now called Arctic Rising
Sunchaser: Can you tell us anything about that?
tobiasbuckell: sure
tobiasbuckell: it's a nearish future techno thriller about the ecofuture that is designed to piss off conservatives and liberals
Sunchaser: haha sounds great.
tobiasbuckell: in that it posits and uses the worst case scenarios of global warming as a backdrop
tobiasbuckell: (which will annoy global warming deniers)
tobiasbuckell: and then show how people will adapt to them and how life will go on
tobiasbuckell: (which will annoy liberal chicken littles lol)
tobiasbuckell: can you tell I'm an independent?
Sunchaser: you mean a balanced view?
tobiasbuckell: truth is it should be intriguing to any open minded reader, but I feel little SF is dealing with this without strong agendas
Raph: You have surveyed authors on advances & how many novels written before a first sale. What's the most startling info you learned?
tobiasbuckell: and although my handful of short stories I've written about these issues keep getting me conservative hate mail (see my future of Detroit story 'Stochasticity')
tobiasbuckell: I think they're fascinating
tobiasbuckell: when Karl Schroeder and I wrote a story for Fast Forward 2 we were using climate change worse case scenarios to model our background for the story
tobiasbuckell: and those were adjusted downward by the time it came out to the point where we had used the positive upper specturm
Raph: You have surveyed authors on advances & how many novels written before a first sale. What's the most startling info you learned?
tobiasbuckell: I have the famous author advance survey for SF/F authors on my site (#1 thing people google their way to my site with)
tobiasbuckell: and the median advance for a first novel is $5,000
tobiasbuckell: if you write Fantasy the median is $7,500 so right away I learned I worked in the wrong genre LOL
tobiasbuckell: if I was just chasing money ;-)
Raph: haha
Sunchaser: oh that's too bad
Raph: Clearly, you needed interdimensional Aztec aliens attacking a fantasy island world
tobiasbuckell: so there are a lot of people who write/sell a book or two, then like bubbles, they kind of evaporate away from the book world
tobiasbuckell: most authors you see on a shelf don't make a living of it
tobiasbuckell: that was what was startling
tobiasbuckell: even up to then, I always assumed those names you saw, particularly over and over again, were just authors
tobiasbuckell: sadly, not the case
dubh: In this economic climate, is it really so bad to look after your income? ;)
Sunchaser: We're just about out of time.
tobiasbuckell: dubh: in reference to the Fantasy vs SF? No, that's a good point. But I think you need to follow what you love. Authenticity is important.
BaronJuJu: Other than Sci-Fi what other books or authors do you enjoy reading in your leisure time?
Sunchaser: One more after this
tobiasbuckell: I read a ton of non-fic. I'm currently reading The Bottom Billion about poor nations
tobiasbuckell: and how they stay/ended up that way
tobiasbuckell: was just reading The Myth of the Rational Voter
Sunchaser: Any more questions?
tobiasbuckell: I tend to read noir mystery when I'm not reading SF/F
Sunchaser: Sorry - Toby, didn't mean to jump in
BaronJuJu: Is there a topic you consider too taboo ro won't write about?
tobiasbuckell: not really, but there's stuff that just doesn't interest me that other writers do better
tobiasbuckell: I like adventure fiction, and stufff that's taboo (covered by other writers) is always grim
Sunchaser: We're finished with our hour, so I'll turn off moderation. Toby, thanks so much for joining us!
LunarRaid: Awesome. :)
Cuppycake: Thanks Toby!
Bieeanda: Yes, thank you!
Bundle: Great!!
Raph: Feel free to keep chatting as long as Toby is willing to stay ;)
BaronJuJu: Thank you
dubh: thanks
LunarRaid: Good to have you.
tobiasbuckell: thanks for inviting me out
tobiasbuckell: it was great to be here
