As a kid, I’d do anything I could to avoid being on stage. In elementary school, I ran the lights and curtain for the school play. In high school, I avoided any class or activity that might involve making a speech. I put off my single public-speaking class in college until my senior year. In my early career, I much preferred spending time in the engineering lab to going to trade shows and talking to customers; in my later career, I enjoyed being the lone creative guy who went away, locked the door, and came back a few days later with brilliant concepts–hopefully that the accounts people would present for me.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the present. During the first dot-com explosion, I was invited to speak in front of a group of students at Loyola Marymount University, on the subject of the then-emerging “search engine optimization and internet marketing” phenomenon. I figured, hey, I was in this with our creative director, who was a very polished, well-spoken fellow, so how bad could it be? And I discovered something pretty amazing: not only was I good at presenting, but I was better than our creative director! I still remember him looking at me in amazement and saying, “Where the hell did that come from? You were good!”
Since then, I’ve become something of a sought-after speaker in the emerging marketing space. I’ve given presentations on social media and virtual worlds in front CEOs and CMOs and executive vice-presidents of Fortune 500 companies. I’ve stood in front of crowds of a couple of thousand people. And, you know what? Not only isn’t it that bad, it’s actually a lot of fun.
“Cool, now I know more about Stoddard than I ever really wanted to,” you’re probably saying. “How does this help me sell my novel/market my crap/enjoy my life?”
Well, you could look at it as a metaphor for today’s author. The old model of the author as the lone creative worked well in the past. If you were a pulp writer, the more you could produce the better you would do; even if you were a public name, your marketing was handled by your publisher, and you only had to perform at some carefully-orchestrated signings. You were expected to be a little unapproachable.
But today it’s different. Your chance of writing enough to make a living at the pulp market is exactly zero. Your publisher may not be able to do any marketing for you, and, even if they do, they may not be capable of understanding how to best use the rapidly-evolving online marketing ecosystem. Which means: the better you are at engaging with people, the better your chance of success. And there are so many ways to engage: post your status on Twitter, Facebook, or MySpace, and tens to tens of thousands of people will know. Blog and people will hear. Participate in forums and popular sites, and people will notice. And, if you’re comfortable speaking, either one-on-one or in groups, you can get interviewed on podcasts and radio and online video and TV, and people will hear and see you. There are almost unlimited opportunities out there, if you’re willing to take them.
“But I’m a brilliant old-school writer, crafting some of the finest prose in the known universe! The publishing industry must discover me and bring me in front of the world!” someone might be saying.
Well, yeah, life is not fair. And I’m sure we will lose some great voices in this new world. But I invite you to go back to the beginning of this post and read where I came from. Until a few short years ago, I’d be sitting in the windowless room with you, waiting for someone to slide a pizza under the door.
And maybe that’s the real point. Never say never. Always be open to change. Don’t be afraid to surprise yourself. And, above all–keep trying.
October 12th, 2008 / 1,106 Comments »
Here’s something I don’t often do: put a free story up on this blog. But. Hey. Economic meltdown. Elections. Topicality. Too late to shop it. So, here you go . . .
1337 in 2012
By Jason Stoddard
“I want to know how she did it,” Alexandra Jetter said, almost pushing Gary McCabe down the narrow hallway with her refilled-from-the-lunchroom-for-a-week grande Starbucks. Not a single thank-you for calling him in at midnight.
“Doing it wasn’t hard,” Gary told her.
Alexandra snapped around to look at him, baring yellow teeth. “You didn’t vote for her, did you?”
“Of course not.” Though it had been really, really hard to vote for their pet candidate who promised the Bureau more funding, more growth, good times for everyone again, go back to buying Starbucks every day, hallelujah.
“Then how’d she do it?”
“She ran it like a campaign.”
“Of course it’s a campaign!”
“Not that kind of campaign.“
A snort. “She rigged it.”
Gary just shrugged.
And then they were at the door to their holding room. The Portland FBI office was tiny. Alexandra looked angrily from the door to Gary and back again, then sighed and swiped her card to buzz them in.
“We took her phone and headset,” Alexandra said, as she walked into the room.
Gary said nothing. On the other side of a scarred wooden desk sat Susan Acker, the woman who had stolen the election. Random facts rattled through Gary’s brain. In the two weeks before the election, she had been unavoidable. YouTube. Blip. VuDu. MySpace. QQ. Gbook. Gvirt. Thirty-nine. Sold her first ecommerce company in the web 1.0 days, then sold a social network to Google five years ago. Blonde. Slim. Pretty in a knife-edged way. She wore a comfortable-looking gray embroidered blouse with a red “1337 in ’12” on it, against a QR-code background in blue and white, and jeans that were blown out at the knees. She looked up at him with ice-blue eyes and the edges of her mouth quirked, just once, almost a grin.
“Ms. Acker, I am Alexandra Jetter. This is Gary Mc—“
“Am I being charged with something?”
Alexandra frowned. “That remains to be seen.”
Susan rolled her eyes. “How theatrical.”
“We have questions for you.”
“Not without my lawyer.”
Alexandra laughed, a terrible laugh, mechanical, like a robot from the dollar store.
You know we don’t need that anymore, Gary thought.
But Susan just sat there, bored, like someone waiting in line for a soup kitchen. Which didn’t make any sense at all. Unless–
“Give me your pendant,” Gary said.
For the first time, Susan looked directly at him. She grinned, then handed him her little crystal bauble.
“What’s that?” Alexandra said.
“Hookup. Geolocator. Tells your friends where you are.” Gary used his phone to sniff the wireless spectra. “Seems inactive, though. She’s not transmitting anything.” Still. He pulled the little battery off of it.
“You’re the tech guy,” Susan said.
“Yes.”
“Did you vote for me?”
Gary said nothing.
“Let me guess,” Susan said. “Not enough cred to be leet. Didn’t work the crowdsourced nodes. Dropped into this job because you couldn’t make it in industry, let alone start your own gig.”
Gary struggled to keep his face neutral. Yes. Yes. And then you end up working for the FBI, who don’t care about your backtrail on the crowdsourcing networks, your coding contest wins, the magnitude of your profile on the social networks. And then watch your circle of friends nod, get strange looks in their eyes, and drift away as fast as politeness let them. And try not to get lost in the new rah-rah-americah circle you find yourself in.
Gary’s phone rattled against his thigh. He had set his personal agent to alert him if anything significant happened with Susan Acker-related tags. He fished it out of his pocket and squinted at the display. The network talking heads were still yelling about the election upset, their big infographic maps all gray instead of neat blue and red. The electoral college was still refusing to cast their votes for Susan Acker. The House looked to have over three hundred new names, all unknown, all from the 1337 party. The Senate, with only 33 seats up, looked to lose 28 of them to the 1337s as well. The clock flashed 1:18AM. Less than 12 hours since the bizarre election results started to flood.
And the new news: eBay auctions had been started for cabinet seats, and the new US Legal Wiki had gone online. Just as Susan had promised during the campaign.
“What is it?” Alexandra asked.
Gary showed her the phonescreen. She squinted at it for a few moments, then shook her head. “She’s started the cabinet seat auctions.”
Susan smiled. “I promised to put my changes into effect as soon as possible,” she said.
“You aren’t really going to sell the cabinet seats, are you?” Gary said.
“Why not? That’s what has happened at every election since, oh, well, probably the beginning of time. At least my bidders have to maintain at least 98% positive feedback for 1000 or more transactions. And then they have to keep their Gbook comments at 90% positive or neutral ongoing.”
“You really think that will work?” Gary said.
Her eyes slit. “Do you have a better idea?”
Gary said nothing. Not enough cred to be leet.
A snort. “That’s what I thought. You might as well let me go. It’s a sweep. They’re projecting 56% of the popular vote, and 43 of 50 states.”
“You rigged it,” Alexandra said.
“Not at all. It’s just time for a change. Government 2.0.”
“eBay isn’t exactly a 2.0 thing,” Gary said.
And, for the first time, Susan stopped a beat, and frowned. “That doesn’t matter.”
Gary fought a grin. Of course. Of course. Once a geek. Always a geek. They didn’t like to be challenged. They didn’t like to hear that their grand ideas might have holes in them.
“Even if we let you go, it wouldn’t work,” Gary said.
“What–“ Alexandra began, but Susan cut her off.
“What do you mean?” she sat up straight in her seat, for the first time actually angry.
“I mean, come on. Nobody can maintain a 90% neutral or positive on Gbook, once they get flooded with kinda-friends and not-friends. And what are they gonna do? Not friend them? Then their friends hear about it and go negative. It’s a no-win.”
“So I change the metrics.”
“And change one of the foundations of your campaign?”
“We wrote that into the terms of service!”
“Who reads those?” Gary asked.
Susan shook her head, her eyes shut, frowning. Gary kept on. “It was all kinda silly, wasn’t it? Legal wikis open to the public, so they can edit out duplicate laws, and the Supreme Court trials being ad-sponsored–”
“–hey, you know how much money CourtTV still makes?” Susan interjected.
“The House and Senate turned into a reality channel on YouTube, where the public can vote them out of their offices–“
“–no different than what we have now–“
“Digg as a feedback system for your campaign platform, and an online calculator where people can see the effects of the new programs on their actual paycheck–“
“—and can contribute if it takes us over budget, that was a neat PayPal tie-in, don’t forget that,” Susan said, her lips tight-set.
“But where is the money going to come from? With the Second Depression–“
Susan stood up suddenly, knocking over her chair. “And this is my fault how? This is your fault! This is the whole old system’s fault! We’ve let you run the place for, what, two hundred years, and we end up with a country owned by China, grabbing used Starbucks cups to feel better? What’s sillier, running the United States based on shit that was made up 200 years ago, or trying something new?”
“Did you rig the election?” Alexandra asked.
“No! No! No!” Susan put a hand to her brow and turned around. “People want change. It’s that simple.”
Alexandra shook her head. Her eyes settled on Gary. “You. You said it wasn’t surprising.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Why not?”
Gary sighed. Alexandra knew nothing about technology. She was one of the last few who had had a choice. Late 40s, early 50s, he imagined her angrily pecking at her pristine keyboard with two fingers, cursing old-style spam. How could he explain? As soon as he’d seen the 1337 party’s campaign, he’d thought to himself, This is good. Really good. Someone’s finally using all that information that’s out there. Finally. And when the confused announcers started showing up online and on the remnants of the networks, talking about errors in the vote and an upset in the polls, he’d known exactly what had happened.
“What social networks are you on?” Gary asked Alexandra, taking out his phone. He set it looking for info on her.
“I have a MySpace.”
“And what did you put on it?”
“Just some photos,” she said.
Gary looked at the display. It showed Alexandra’s MySpace, with photos of her three kids, an ancient AOL profile, a rant against her ex-husband and a long trail of threads in a cruiseline’s forum. His ConText software knit it together into a synthetic profile of her life, complete from marriage dates to likes and dislikes. Gary turned it to her and waited for her eyes to focus.
“So if a candidate promised you a free cruise with your two tween kids, you might be more favorably disposed towards them?”
“Where’d you get this?”
“Or if that candidate showed up as a cruise-ship captain, who also had three children, would you be more likely to vote for them?”
Alexandra’s mouth hung open. “She rigged it like that?”
Gary sighed. It got tiresome, so damn tiresome. Alexandra wasn’t a terribly dumb person, she just refused to understand anything with technology in it. Even when the penalties for falling behind got greater and greater every year, she could barely use a desktop when handsets were the standard and eyesets were coming on strong.
And there’s no way to explain what Susan had done in simple language, he realized. It took deep understanding of how things worked. It took realizing that the old days were well and truly over, that YouTube was bigger than all the world’s television networks put together, that data-scraping and psychographic targeting were just things that everyone did, that there were millions of chatterbots smart enough to fool most of the US population into thinking they were human, and that the ongoing grind of the depression had honed and sharpened advertisers targeting techniques to razor-sharp levels. This was the new system, this was how it was done.
It’s actually amazing that it took this long for someone to figure out how to use the system, he thought.
“It isn’t rigging to use publicly-available information to target messages specifically to your audience,” Gary said. “In fact, that’s the basis of every modern advertising campaign. Susan ran this like a modern short-spike net campaign centered around an alternate reality game, as did all the leet candidates. They waited until a month before to submit their candidacy, they did highly targeted social activation programs on a short timeframe so people wouldn’t be bored, and they offered a helluva prize for the win: control of the United States government. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the voters really thought this was a game.”
Susan smiled and nodded in grudging respect. “Very good, tech guy.”
Alexandra shook her head. “So she did rig it?”
“She ran a very unorthodox campaign, but she didn’t rig the election. She just told people what they wanted to hear.”
Susan’s smile grew wider. “In other words, no different than any campaign in history.”
“It’ll never work!” Alexandra said. “We’ll re-run the election with paper ballots.”
“You don’t think we factored that in, too?” Susan said.
“We can just . . . make you disappear!” Alexandra’s face was twisted in hate and rage.
“You can’t do anything,” Susan said. “You’re just functionaries, set to babysit me until your lazy bosses get out of bed at ten. I know how government works. Waste, laziness, waste, and more laziness. That will change.”
Alexandra shrieked, pulled her little 9mm out of her shoulder holster, and pointed it at Susan.
Silence in the room. After some time, Susan shook her head. “Do you really think you can do that?”
“It’s not like we’re going to post it on the internet!” Alexandra screamed.
“If there’s video, it will be found,” Susan said. “If there isn’t, they’ll reconstruct it in virtuality.”
“Either way, she’ll be a martyr.” Gary’s heart pounded enough to blur his vision.
Alexandra turned to snap at him. “Thanks, Gary! Thanks for that upbeat thought!”
Gary said nothing for a long time. Finally, softly, in a voice that didn’t even sound like his own, he said,“Don’t do it. Think of your kids.”
Alexandra grimaced and turned away from Susan, dropping her gun towards the floor. She sobbed, quickly, twice, and put the gun back in her shoulder holster. “What do we do?” she asked. “What do we do?”
“We wait until morning, when your bosses show up,” Susan said. “You can let me go then. Or maybe a little sooner.”
“Shut up!”
Susan shook her head, but said nothing.
“What do we do now?” Alexandra asked again.
Gary shrugged. Probably nothing, he thought. Probably just like she said. Wait until the bosses show up–probably earlier than later now–and then release her. And then they’d try to discredit every 1337 candidate they could, from Susan to Kevin Rose, the new Governor of California, and the ones they couldn’t discredit they’d try to tie up in court, and rerun the election, this time with paper ballots, and they’d hem and haw like they always did, and nothing would get done . . .
Gary’s phone buzzed again, causing him to almost drop the thing. What it showed on the screen came directly from Google Maps. He looked at it for a while, thumbed through different cities, and laughed.
“What’s going on?” Alexandra said. “What now?”
Gary just laughed. Susan grinned at him, as if they were sharing a secret.
“They factored this in, too,” he said, showing the real-time traffic of cars streaming into Portland, converging on the FBI office. In many other cities, the same thing was happening. Early news footage showed protesters holding 1337 in ’12 signs, yelling for the release of Susan Acker.
And in that moment, Gary saw it. This was really a revolution. This was a fundamental change. It hadn’t taken rewriting the Constitution, it hadn’t taken a single weapon. It just took knowing the system.
Everything would change, and there was nothing they could do to stop it.
“What the hell do we do?” Alexandra said.
“We let her go.”
“We? We can’t do anything!”
“You know what I mean,” Gary said, waving his phone. “We can’t stand against this.”
“Yes we can! We can!”
Gary shook his head. Everything was so clear now. His mind thrummed along, singing crystal. “No. We can’t. It’s going to change. From now on, we’re a leet nation, whether we like it or not.”
“Thinking of joining us?” Susan said. Her eyes searched him up and down, as if waiting for an eyeset to scan his face and spit up data. But it didn’t. She wore no eyeset; she didn’t even know his full name. Gary smiled at her, and her grin flickered uncertainly. He liked that.
“I resign,” he told Alexandra. He put his ID on the table and turned towards the door.
“You can’t do that!” she screamed, putting herself between him and the door.
“It’s still a somewhat free country.”
“And it will be freer soon,” Susan said. “You’re joining the right team.”
Gary pushed past Alexandra and put his hand on the door.
“No!” She wailed. “Don’t do this!”
“You know it’s the right thing to do,” Susan said.
Gary paused for a moment. His heart still hammered, but his mind still raced in a way it never had before. He didn’t know what he was going to do tomorrow. The next day he might be in the soup lines, or working a rich guy’s organic farm, or heading off to Canada or China.
Or he could finally pick himself up, use his own code skills, and do something. Maybe in a small way. Or maybe not.
He looked back over his shoulder at Susan. “Do you know what you’ve won?” he asked.
And it was Susan’s turn to blink and look confused. He liked that, too.
“You’ve proven the new rule is how well someone can use the system,” he said. “But now the rule is out. How long will it take another leet haxor to do the same thing? Will they wait until 2016?”
Susan’s grin disappeared.
“Will they let you get in office at all?”
Her eyes, wide.
“And who’s going to come up next? You’re not super-high profile. What kid is going to come out of nowhere and knock you down? What kid is gonna invent a new system, one you’re not on top of?”
“But . . . we need to change.” Susan’s voice was very small.
Gary turned back to the door. He thought of saying, Yes, of course, I agree, that’s why I’m not working here anymore. He thought of saying Yes, of course, I agree, but this isn’t a meritocracy, it never will be one, it can’t be a utopia, and I can’t imagine anything that isn’t a popularity contest in the end.
But he just opened the door, and stepped out into the new world.
October 7th, 2008 / 1,289 Comments »
Note: Revised 10/1/08 in response to Jetse’s comments below. Key revisions: (a) Renaming the “manifesto to a “platform,” and (b) An open invitation for everyone to chime in, remix, add, change: consider this the beginnings of an open source platform on positive science fiction, and use it as you’d like, (c) some clarification about characters, big and small.
Okay, so it seems that the debate about positive SF has heated up. Starting with Damien Walters’ blogpost in the Guardian, continuing with Lou Anders and Jetse de Vries and Gareth Lyn Powell and Kathryn Cramer.
I feel slightly responsible for all of this. After all, following Jetse in January, I called for positive change in SF back in February, and followed it up with clarification after that original post was picked up on i09, Futurismic, WorldChanging, and Velcro City here.
And, despite lots of words about how positive science fiction can still be gritty, realistic, and encompass lots and lots of scary crap, people still don’t know what positive science fiction is. So, here’s a shot at a definition:
Positive science fiction starts with acknowledging that there are positive things happening, now. Whether we’re talking about real advances in science, or simply the fact that there are people out there trying to do good things, the world is not, and never will be, a monolithic entity seeking to destroy the ecosystem and enslave the population. Such a monoculture is impossible outside of scenarios that include complete mind control of everyone on the planet. And novels set in such a world would be very, very boring.
Positive science fiction is about the possibility of positive change. If the system is so big and the characters so small, there is no possibility for change. All we can do is watch as the mechanism of the world turns. All we can take away from this is that we can do nothing; we might as well roll around on the ground, crying, saying, “Woe is me! There is no hope!” There has to be a possibility of change. Even if that change isn’t fully realized. Even if that change isn’t what we expect. Even if that change is, in itself, frightening.
Positive science fiction has a protagonist or protagonists that can effect change. Small characters are perfectly fine—but if they can’t pick themselves up and rise above their origins, then why are we spending any time with them? Why can’t we include a full palette of characters who are captains of industry, or doods-next-door with a mission, or brilliant scientists, or girls who bootstapped themselves to fame, or even trust fund babies bent on doing good–or evil–or simply serving their own complex personalities? We need to remember that Elon Musk is not only an “Evil CEO,” but that he made his billions in the dot-boom ecommerce days–and is now head of such forward-looking companies as SpaceX and Tesla Motors. It seems to me that many authors would be well-served by continuing to spend time in business and industry (and not just at a copywriter level). The perspective is invaluable in creating real, believable characters on every level.
Positive science fiction isn’t afraid to look at challenging definitions of “positive.” What we consider “positive” is heavily colored by our politics, our scarcity-based economy, and the current state of the world. A positive mid-future or far-future world might be very, very different than we expect, especially if we start heading into post-scarcity based scenarios. I think of an iPod Touch full of rap videos and Torchwood torrents being transported back to Victorian England. Would they be in awe of our technology—or would they recoil from our mores?
Positive science fiction inspires people to act and influence positive change. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to live in a world of slackers who can do nothing more than complain about “the man” and “the system.” I want people to be inspired to get the education and do the work necessary to get us off the planet. To fix the environment. To figure out systems that don’t need to go through destructive boom and bust cycles. To extend our lifespans. To discover wholly new frontiers. To create new life. To develop true artificial intelligence. To make workable nanotechnology. To create space elevators. We will not do this by wallowing in sorrow; we will not do this by bemoaning our fate; we will not do this by laying about on the couch.
So, is this the do-all prescription for instant science fiction relevance and growth? No, of course not. Like I append many of my posts with: this is one doods opinion. This is a start. If you’d like to chime in, that’s great. If you’d like to take this piece in its entirety and remix it, change it, and make it your own, have at it. I have only a single agenda: I’d like to see science fiction succeed.
And, in the end, I agree with Jetse. Moving science fiction in a more positive direction isn’t an option, it’s a requirement. If we can’t help point the ways to the answers, then what use are we, really?
September 27th, 2008 / 1,386 Comments »
