Out of Time: A sci-fi adventure series across time and space!

Some of you ask: "Are you ever gonna do science fiction again, Brin?" Well, in fact, my 90% completed book on Artificial Intelligence (AI), while intense and deeply informative on that vital topic, certainly treads along boundaries of the fantastic! (And sometimes crosses over.) 

And yes, I've also been trying to shake some tactical sense into the good side of America's current culture war.

But sure, I'm also putting out sci fi!

My two biggest SF projects have been a pair of series for Young Adult (YA) novels that are stirring, innovative and great diversions for you grownups, too! They also enable me to do a little pay-it-forward, by nurturing bright new authors in the Out of time series... 

...and the entirely separate High Horizon series of novels that I'm writing myself with top young collaborators.

So, let's start with...

== Only teens from across history can save the future and win humanity the stars! ==

The Out of Time series appeals to the most basic wish fantasy. – shared by teens and adults alike – to be taken seriously. To have a shot at doing something epic and great… or at least something having real importance. 

So what's different about this series of science fiction adventures, across both space and time?  What lifts it above the normal fare that’s being offered today in YA fiction?

Nowadays, sci-fi for young adults and teens will typically feature some post-apocalypse premise, or tyrannical dystopia, replete with cartoonishly illogical villains for the heroine or hero to fight, accompanied by a requisite suite of doughty pals. It’s a lazy trope that almost writes itself… and one  that has likely contributed to a whole generation’s deep pessimism about the future.

The Out of Time series pulls a switcheroo on this dismal pattern. The 24^th Century is great! In fact, things were highly optimistic for humanity… until our descendants suddenly face a set of big challenges. 

Abruptly they need help! And so, via a very narrow kind of time travel, a youth from our own era gets pulled-forward and recruited to help save that bright tomorrow. 

Which leads to the inevitable question: “Why me?”

“Because history shows you will later on be one of the heroes who make things so much better,” comes the answer. “Only we can’t ask that adult version of you for help. It has to be a younger version. It has to be you!”

               == THE PREMISE ==

All our best efforts in the difficult 21^st century bore fruit, and in the 24^th century, people live amid the very opposite of a dystopia. Only now their near-utopia is in desperate peril.

 Suddenly, they need heroes with grit and determination, who can teach them how to face trouble and prevail. So, they reach back through time in order to fetch such heroes...

... but only teenagers can survive the journey from our present to the future! 

And likewise, only teens can voyage to the stars. 

Hence, the heroes they bring forward must be from eras teeming with troubled hope — from today and from even deeper in the past.  Youths who are "yanked" to an uncertain tomorrow, where only their courage and savvy innovation can save the day.

While there’s always a teen character (or two) from our early 21^st Century, you also get to meet young team members from the 24^th… along with (in various novels)…

…an Icelandic Viking girl…

…a cabin boy on Sir Francis Drake's ship…

…an escaped Brazilian slave…

…a severely autistic girl from 2035…

…an Olympic athlete from the time of Alexander the Great…

…a London street urchin who knows Will Shakespeare…

…a Javanese pearl diver destined to confront Krakatoa…

...Joan of Arc's page...

...The someday-future president of South Korea...

…a Choctaw field hockey player who understands worms…

…and other brave kids from across time, some of them remembered and some of them simply lights that shone briefly across the darkness that eventually led to…

…hope.

The Out of Time series had an earlier incarnation with novels by sci fi legends Nancy Kress, Sheila Finch and others – each author bringing a unique voice and perspective to this imaginative series that captivates readers of all ages. See the brief premises of each of them here.

Those first five have recently been re-published in e-versions by Open Road and in print by Amazing Selects. 

And now Amazing Selects is proud to champion five exciting new adventures in the Out of Time series, bringing these exceptional stories to a wider audience. 

The new series debuted with Boondoggle, penned by Tom Easton and Torion Oey.  And then Raising the Roof, by Richard Doyle. Or start at David Brin’s main page for the series.

== And now… the latest! ==

Amazing Stories Announces the Release of Snowdance: A Thrilling New Adventure in David Brin’s Out of Time Universe.

What happens when teenagers from three different centuries are yanked into the far future and sent to a frozen alien world where survival depends on more than strength—it also relies on compassion? Readers are about to find out in Snow Dance, the newest entry in David Brin’s acclaimed Out of Time series.

Snowdance was written by Hugo and Nebula Award-winner Allen Steele and acclaimed author Robin Orm Hansen. (With some input - of course - from David Brin.)

When 15-year-old Lee Jarrett from 1978, Patience Whately, a farm girl from 1676 Rhode Island, and Sondre Auverson, a snow-savvy 19th-century Norwegian, are recruited by Operation Hourglass, they expect adventure. What they find on the alien planet New Horizon is far more dangerous—and wondrous—than they could ever imagine. With a colony under siege and mysterious beings emerging from the snow, these time-yanked teens must learn to trust one another, bridge centuries of difference, and discover whether humanity’s future lies in conflict… or in connection.

See the 1 minute video trailer!  

 An exciting tale of time and space travel that calls for courage, grit, insight and ultimately… love. 

ADDENDA: 

While Boondoggle and other new Out of Time novels will appear via Amazing Stories, the five older, original novels in the same series -- by Nancy Kress, Sheila Finch, Roger Allen and others -- are coming out via Open Road Press. (With print only versions available from Amazon Selects.)

A veritable feast of great science fiction adventures across space and time for teen readers! Or those who fondly recall the morale boost (don’t we all need one?) that we got from those Andre Norton and Robert Heinlein tales of adventure and optimism! 

And also for teen readers - a third publisher… HISTRIA PRESS… is publishing David Brin’s other YA series. Written by him in collaboration with fine new talents!

The High Horizon series: aliens kidnap a California high school – and come to regret it!   The first installment won the Hal Clement Award for best SF novel for teen readers! Here's one happy reader's review. And his followup review of book #2 of the series. 

A feast awaits...

Sci Fi Updates: Sailing space and sci fi stories that might save us all! (Plus a micro-rant.)

I've been mentioning that the TASAT Project is now up and running! A way that the very nerdiest readers of sci fi tales from the last 100 years might someday use their story-citing powers to save the world!  Drop by to learn how. Or see my blip about it at-bottom.

Just updated and re-released: Project Solar Sail: 21st Century Edition: A collection of stories and essays about the next step in interstellar exploration: Lightships and Sails propelled by lasers or sunlight! Classic stories by Clarke, Asimov, Anderson, Bradbury and Jack Vance, along with new/updated articles by JPL scientists and others, exploring present technologies and future possibilities for sailing the light fantastic. Edited by David Brin and Stephen W. Potts and - originally - Arthur C. Clarke. 

And another classic updated and refreshed. Not genre, but akin.....John Perlin’s newly re-issued tome is a classic. A Forest Journey: The Role of Trees in the Fate of Civilization* is a deeply-moving and persuasive elegy to the vital importance of the natural world - the groves and prairies and seas. Not as alternatives to civilization, but as the lungs and sinews and beating heart that allow us - especially our glittering cities - to stand and gaze upward.

*I cited this one in Earth.

== Sci fi updates ==

SF epic poetry! Homer may be dead but not his spirit, as the mighty literary form of poetical epics lives on. The greatest such living bard would be Frederick Turner, whose topics include Genesis: the terraforming of Mars, or the rise of Artificial Intelligence, or the genetic engineering of our organic successors.

Another: Epoch: A Poetic Psy-Phi Saga, by Dave Jilk, is science fiction in the form of an epic poem, with the first fully human-level artificial intelligence telling its own story as a sort of memoir. The book turns much of current thinking on existential AI risk on its head, and raises some uncomfortable questions about humanity even as it lauds our accomplishments. 

(Another mini epic poem by Ray Bradbury and J.V. Post is in Project Solar Sail!)

And there are updated movies. Oooh. The original is fine, but... I'm okay with plans afoot to remake the fine 80s sci fi flick Enemy Mine, based on Barry Longyear’s exquisite, Hugo-winning novella, which you can find on Amazon. (What I absolutely rebel against is the remake of perfect films. I mean carumba, leave Lawrence of Arabia alone!)

Flash fiction is a lovely exercise in rapid creation on the fly. I am pleased to recommend an allegorical fairy tale about a witch and a gargoyle.

== Sci Fi Roundup! ==

The mighty Kay Kenyon has finished her wonderfully entertaining series. Now available for pre-order, book 4, Keeper of the Mythos Gate, the exciting and moving conclusion to The Arisen Worlds. Publication, September 3. If you haven't checked out the series yet, dip in with this excerpt from Book 1.

Bruce Golden’s Evergreen centers around a mysterious artifact + themes of obsession, revenge, and redemption amid timber jockeys, uncouth frontier towns, and into the heart of an awareness so alien it defies common notions of "intelligent life."

One of the fine authors I’ve mentored in my Out of Time YA series (only teens can teleport through space and time!) is Torion Oey. His latest, a fantasy novel, is The Disgraced Mage. 

Tales of the United States Space Force is a new combination of science fiction stories and fact articles about – or related to - America's newest military service branch. Space is critical to the economy and our whole modern way of life, and that makes it a target. Let this volume open some eyes. And one of my classics is included.

 

Winter 1962. A child is discovered in the frozen Oregon woods. Mute and feral, wandering lost, naked and near death… and not entirely human. Nonesuch Man: an illustrated novel  by Steven Elkins.

Two of my out-of-print novels are now re-issued with fine new covers and fresh editing. Earth came in second for a Hugo and is on every “Top Ten Predictive Novels” list you can find. (See below!)

Also Glory Season is a Silverberg/Norton-style adventure on a world where human reproduction has been channeled down wholly new paths… with one of my favorite protagonists, plucky Maia!  The trade paperbacks are luscious. 

Terrific covers and Open Road allowed me to insert about 80 page breaks in Earth that give this edition a really classy look and feel.  Don’t miss free chapters and trailers on my website.

== Stories that predicted well? ==

I mentioned predictive tales? Well, whenever exploring new territory, you might ask the natives? What profession spends a lot of time seeking and extrapolating on 'signals from the future?" 

The top 10% of near future science fiction novels generally contain riffs to portray answers to the questions: "If this goes on..." or What if...?" From John Brunner's astonishingly prophetic 1968 books Stand on Zanzibar and The Shockwave Rider to Frederik Pohl and Ursula LeGuin and Nancy Kress... to my own Earth and Existence... to Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry of the Future, which has proved so influential that the UN is pondering naming a new agency after it.

 

Start here? 8 Books That Eerily Predicted the Future.   

Which circles us back around to TASAT or There's A Story About That.  

The idea cropped up well over a decade ago. In those days, whenever I was in DC for NASA meetings, I would always stop - on my way to Dulles Airport - at a little agency in McLean Virginia, to give a talk on 'future threats', some of which (alas) have come true. At the third of these talks to the Protector Caste, it occurred to me that these people - mostly super smart and sincere public servants - had very little clue about the vast number of thought-experiments in science fiction that have spun out dramatically dangerous possibilities. Very often about unexpected dangers that loom suddenly, when the present speeds into the future.

I blurted: "Suppose someday you encounter something strange - maybe very strange. You form a committee to look into it and give advice." (I have been on several such 'consultant rolladexes'.) "Shouldn't that committee have access to past ruminations that might have already explored similar ground? Tales that maybe poked at the first assumptions that you might mistakenly make, if you ever face a similar situation?"

The purpose of TASAT is to enroll folks who have read a lot of sci fi tales and who might be able to provide that very service!  See the full explanation at TASAT.org!

Lately, the first beta testers have been citing past tales about tech-sabotage, that eerily foresaw the recent "pager caper" wherein explosives got inveigled into an adversary's unsuspecting hands. Citations included Eric Frank Russells's Wasp and Harry Harrison's The Stainless Steel Rat Wants You, but it goes back even a century!

The TASAT project has stumbled many times. Turns out we needed Mr. Todd Zimmerman, expert programmer, to finally make it happen. (Thank you, Todd!)

And now we're hoping many of you will try out TASAT in the current beta and give feedback... because who knows? You may be the one to cite a story that shakes a false assumption, and maybe thusly save us all!

== A final grumble ==

Okay, it still kinda hurts. But my tribute to the recently-late Vernor Vinge... my friend and one of the greats of science fiction - can be found here.

So, what’s my grumble? The travesty - also raised by Harry Turtledove - that one of the best and most visionary SF authors of all time – Vernor – was never named Grand Master of SFWA - the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.  

(Hey, changing SFWA's name from the parochial 'of America' was long overdue.) 

But as for neglecting Vernor - despite many campaigns on his behalf?  No writhing excuse for this dismal spurning is anything other than masturbatory justification of pure bigotry, of the kind that George Orwell described in Homage to Catalonia. The same righteous circular firing squad behavior that demolished the left in the 1930s Spanish Civil War, opening up a path for Hitler & Mussolini. Or frippy fads like Nader and Stein, that led to the destructive presidencies of George W. Bush and Donald Trump, and could do it to us, again. 

Likewise, it is – today – the very essence of self-destruction, narrowing, cauterizing and neutering what should be an inspiring and multi-directional literature of progress.

Was that a Heinlein-like, old man shouting-at-clouds grumble rant? Sure, but prove me wrong, in comments? 

Or how about maybe let's try a gesture that will both re-establish some justice in our field and broaden -- rather than narrow-down -- a progressive, future-seeking coalition? It could begin with a simple act to honor one of the greatest science fiction authors of all time.

Nancy Kress for Grand Master of SF. 

-----------------------------------------------------------

Rant mode off, now.  But always on standby mode. ;-)

Have a great weekend. And check your voter registration.

Advanced tips for rising writers.

On this occasion, as we swing into a 2024 that cannot evade its destiny to be 'historic,' let me turn attention to something apolitical...

... the art and skill of writing credible fiction. 

Many of you already know my more general site of Advice to Rising Writers. But offered here below is a supplement - a cluster of specific tricks of the trade.  

But first...

Here's a link to a recording of the first public performance of my play “The Escape,” on November 7 at Caltech. A 'reading' but fully dramatized, well-acted and directed by Joanne Doyle*. The recording is of middling quality, but shows great audience reactions. Come have some good, impudently theological fun!  You can also read the script of The Escape: A Confrontation in Four Scenes - available on Amazon.

And now, for you would-be Great Writers...

== The "Advice to New Writers of SF" packet from David Brin ==

This is a ‘canned’ general essay about tricks and skills of writing. It's not an instruction manual to become a great author! More a compilation of ‘wisdom’ chunks about some common mistakes often trip up would-be novelists etc. 

Many have have told me they found this advice useful in their writers’ journey. You can find more for authors on my website. Let's begin:

Naturally, it’s terrific that you are writing and I do want to offer encouragement! Still, there is good news and bad news in this modern era. The good: there are so many new ways to get heard, or read, or published that any persistent person can get ‘out there.’  Talent and good ideas will see the light of day!  

The bad news? it’s now so easy to get "published," bypassing traditional channels, that millions get to convince themselves "I am a published author!" without passing through the old grinding mill, where my generation honed our skills by dint of relentless workshopping, criticism, rejection, revision and pain. 

Alas, fiction writing is a complex art that involves a lot of tradecraft... as it would if you took up landscape painting or silver smithing. It is insufficient simply to have ideas or to be skilled at nonfiction-prose. Nor does a lifetime of reading stories prepare you to write them, alas! 

Storytelling is incantatory magic and there are aspects to the incantation process that are mostly invisible to the incantation recipient (reader). This means that extensive workshopping and skill-building are as important today as they were 30 years ago.  And for that, you need to do one of the most difficult-but-rewarding things a mature human can do – relish and seek criticism.

This is not meant to be discouraging!  In fact I am appending (below) a slug of 'generic advice'... much of it probably already below your level! Still, some items may not be. In fact, many published authors have found these insights helpful. I hope you will. But either way, do persevere.

Again, let me point you to an "advice article" that I've posted online, containing a distillation of wisdom and answers to questions I've been sent across 20 years.  (Note, most authors never answer at all.)  This article is at: http://www.davidbrin.com/advice.htm

I can also offer a general site containing advice bits from other top writers. 

In this collection of writing tips, I especially recommend the short how-to books of my colleague Nancy Kress, such as Beginnings, Middles & Ends. Also The Craft of Writing Science Fiction that Sells, by Ben Bova. And The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction, by J. VanderMeer.

Then there is my advice video! 

And some from Robert Heinlein (via J Pournelle) 

But let’s get started on this list of specific examples: things that (alas) even very talented neo-authors do, all too often.

== The biggest problem ==

 Skills at rapid-opening, point-of-view, showing-not-telling, action, evading passive-voice and so on are achieved by studied workshopping and -- as in most arts -- the whole thing is predicated upon ineffable things like talent, e.g. an ear for dialogue that only some people have. Indeed, point-of-view is so hard that half of would-e writers never "get" it, no matter how many years they put in.

* By far the most important pages are the first ones, when you hook the reader. And you need a great first paragraph to get them to read the first page. Starting with the Pov’s (Point of View character’s) name is certainly okay… even Heinlein did it now and then. (Though just the first name suffices; leave the last name for later.) Still, it is often better to start with an italicized internal thought, or an ironic observation, or spoken words or actions.  See an example, below.

* Reiterating that key point: POV (point of view) is among the hardest things for most new writers to master.  It gives your characters a “voice,” and presence and offers the reader a sense of vesting in the protagonist’s feelings and needs and will. This is all ruined by authorial data-dumps that make you feel lectured-to by a narrator!  It's better to reveal info as efficiently as possible via conversation, action and the point of view character's internal thoughts. 

Yes, you have a lot of information to deliver! You want the reader to know all about your precious character and world and situation, I get it. But be patient and tell as little of that as you can get away with, while hooking the reader's curiosity to learn more.

One great way to break the bad habit of narrator dumps is to develop visceral discomfort with three words: ‘were,’ 'was,’ and especially ‘had.' 

Oh, sure —  “had”, “were” and “was” are permitted. They are even sometimes necessary!  But you should find each use regrettable. Each time should cause a wee bit of pain! Because ‘had’ – and to a lesser extent “was” — often indicates that the narrator, instead of the point of view character (or pov) is dumping or explaining, instead of showing.  

If you look at my books, you'll find I include lots of ideas and background of past events, but I pace them in with movement, action, conversation and internal thoughts. 

Seriously. right now go to your draft and do a global search for ‘had.’  (And the even-worse apostrophe-d -- 'd -- ick!). Then global-search "was." Do the pages light up?  Now do the same thing with your favorite novels, by authors you admire. I think you'll get the point.

== Example illustrating many of the points above ==

Here’s an excerpt - the opening line for a novel that someone sent to me, asking for advice:

Captain Bara Brakin hated the noise and turmoil of crowds, yet now she was stuck on crowd control in a busy tunnel-street of Deep Kinshasa while her patrol ship was in spacedock for repairs.  She'd joined Solar Space Force to get away from Earth cities, and the effect of crowds on her magneto-psi sense.  She'd loved every minute of her month of relative quiet on pirate patrol in the asteroids. 

Notice especially the telltale narrator dump cues of "had" and "was" and "were" and “‘d”. 

Were you vexed to see the word 'patrol' repeated in a single paragraph? Repeatitis is a far lesser sin. In fact there's no reason to diss Hemingway for ignoring the rule habitually! Still, many readers dislike it. Also, beginning with the character's full name isn't generally advisable.

Okay, let’s see if we can convey all the same information (and more from later paragraphs) dynamically by removing any presence of the narrating author. 

Try this instead:

Damn I hate crowd control duty.       

Over the tunnel noise and throng confusion of Deep New Delhi, Kara could barely hear her sergeant growl in agreement, as if reading her mind. 

“How long till the ship is fixed cap? I didn’t join SSF for this shit.”  

Of course it was a coincidence – Gomez didn’t have her magneto-psi sense.

“Belay that,” She snapped. “Well be back out there on comfy pirate patrol in no time.”

Do you see how I dumped in far more information via internal (italicized) thoughts, sensory input and conversation, without once using “had” or even “was”? Now add some spicey action… someone in the crowd throws something... and you’ve started rolling along, supplying lots of background info without an intruding narrator dump! 

Again (because these lessons only sink in from repetition) do a global search of your MS for "had" and "was" and "were." Every single instance should prompt: "Can I tell this another way? Or even NOT tell it, or let that info float in, later?" Try it. You'll write better stuff.

== Generic advice blips ==

* All else being equal, it's best to stick with... and master ... standard storytelling techniques before branching off boldly in new directions. Hence third-person in the immediate-past tense, with almost invisible narrator, is generally a good old style to use, especially your first few outings. (And it is preferred in the Out of Time series of YA novels I use to  mentor new writers.) First-person immediate-past is also fine (I've used it a lot) though it requires care in POV and has traps to evade.  

Lately we've all been seeing a lot of works in present tense. Yes, this can be done well (e.g. Vonnegut) and times do change, I guess. But far more often present tense invites authorial data dumps, POV flipping and nagging intrusions by an omniscient narrator, leaving us detached from the protagonist character. I don't like it, much.

* As noted, many readers hate “repeatitis” where a word gets repeated a lot. Even twice can be reader-irritating. English is so rich with synonyms and alternate ways of saying the same thing, that you can usually avoid it, unless repetition is a deliberate poetical device. 

This stricture has no strong reason for it. As I said, authors like Hemingway violated it a lot. But most professionals cater to this common reader whim. And hence, you’ll pick up a habit of minimizing even too many close repeats of “the.”

* Prologues can be nice, if short. But often they serve as crutches.

* One problem I used to see a lot, but perhaps less-so today, is excessive use of adjectives and flowery prose. Still, keep an eye out for it.

*  Want a simple trick to learn master craft? Find a dozen openings of novels you greatly admire and RE-TYPE THE FIRST COUPLE OF PAGES to see how that author did it!  Just re-reading those pages will not work!  I guarantee you will only understand how those authors did it if you retype the opening scene, passing the words through your fingers.  

And you’ll grasp that establishing POV early while minimizing data dumping is the hardest thing for neos to learn, yet absolutely essential. No matter how wonderful your ideas are, they are useless unless you master how to hook.

Talk this over with your colleagues.  Read aloud together and critique the first 5 paragraphs of lots of writers. Do nothing else in your workshop, till you all understand how to establish both the scene/situation and POV laced into conversation, action and internal thoughts.

*OVERALL WRITING RHYTHM: For novels:

Work out a significant part of the setting and plot elements, particularly socio-political dynamics of the world, as foundation. I do a lot of this in my head. But feel free to chart it out, as Heller and Vonnegut did!

-Start with interesting characters but don't get too specific till THEY start speaking up with their concerns and idiosyncrasies.

-Try to start with a scene that grabs readers with action and/or vivi imagery and a world and character they want to learn more about.

-Write about 30,000 words, then circulate a draft to consult with beta readers and experts for help refining setting and plot elements. Anything that confuses these readers "is my fault."

-Revise those first  30,000 words with all you've learned, esp. about the characters... and then continue forward, adding 30,000 words.

-Consult with more beta readers, do another revision of all 60K... then  add 30,000 words, and spin and repeat until complete. This pattern works for me because "my openings are the weakest part of the process so they get reworked till they pop. I write endings that work first draft. A different rhythm works for different authors.

* Finally, there are many other sources of good writing wisdom! One of the best is by my friend and colleague and ought-to-be-Grand Master of SF Nancy Kress, who details how you can create a main character readers won't forget and plant essential information about a character's past into a story? I cannot recommend this one too highly!  See "Write Great Fiction: Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint."

* Author James Murdo offers this handy tool to make a Glossary for your novel. 

Oh, there’s so much more that I discuss when teaching workshops. General skills and tricks specific to science fiction. Like why you should make your first novel a murder mystery!

Alas, though, that’s all I have time for. Still, I hope it’s been useful. Remember to read carefully my “advice article” at http://www.davidbrin.com/advice.htm, where there are links to the advice missives by many other successful authors… and some disagree with me on every point raised here!

Above all keep at it!  That’s the key to success, even more important than “seek feedback!”

 Persevere.

 Good luck! 

With best wishes, for a confident and ambitious 21st Century,

David Brin

* (Note, for copyright reasons video of "The Escape" goes silent, omitting some of the wonderfully apropos background music! For example after scene 2 (The Stones “Sympathy for the Devil;”) and at the end, when you see the audience cheering silently during “You Gotta Have Heart!” the great song from Damn Yankees, related to the theme of the play. Pity! Still, I think you’ll laugh a few times… or go “Huh!”)