Paragons: Twelve Master Science Fiction Writers Ply Their Craft

by Robin Wilson (Editor, Contibutor), Nancy Kress (Contributor), Bruce Sterling (Contributor)

Show, don't tell is the first thing a fiction writer learns. The dozen masters assembled here each take one of their own stories and show exactly how they crafted a particular aspect of it - the style, the theme, the characters, the plot, the setting, or the point of view. A dozen of today's leading science fiction writers provide an inside look at how their craft is accomplished. An invaluable and delightful tool for anyone who writes, "Paragons" includes advice from Kim Stanley Robinson, Bruce Sterling, James Patrick Kelly, Karen Joy Fowler, Greg Bear, and seven others.

Genres: Writing, Science Fiction

388 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1996

About the author

Robin Wilson (born September 26, 1969) is an expert in the Clean Design, wellness and sustainability advocate. She is the founder of Robin Wilson Home, an interior design firm based in New York City – and she is chief creative officer of the licensing division of her eponymous brand which has generated over $80 million in branded revenue from textiles and cabinetry since 2010.

Wilson’s design work emphasizes the integration of eco-friendly and sustainable design with a focus on social good. Her clients have included Panasonic USA, the White House Fellows office, and the Lake Nona Laureate Park development. In addition, she has worked on showhouses, and for both residential, developer and commercial clients.

She is author of 'Clean Design: Wellness for Your Lifestyle' (Greenleaf, 2015). Her first book was 'Kennedy Green House: Designing an Eco-Friendly Home from the Foundation to the Furniture' (Greenleaf, 2010), with the foreword written by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. She is an ambassador to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America and she has served on the Board of the Sustainable Furnishings Council.

In May 2013, her furniture line, Nest Home by Robin Wilson, premiered at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) in New York.

She regularly appears on the speakers circuit, on television and offers commentary in print on design, wellness, sustainability and allergy & asthma issues.

Reviews

[Dan'l Danehy-Oakes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Subtitled "12 Master Science Fiction Writers Ply Their Craft," this is a sort of 25-years-later follow-up to Those Who Can: A Speculative Fiction Anthology, which contained stories by a dozen writers, all major names in the '70s, each followed by a comment fromthe writer on a specific nominally writerly topic. This volume does the same with a dozen major names from the '90s.

The topics here, as there, are "Plot," "Character," "Setting," "Theme," "Point of View," and "Style," and each topic has an introductory essay by Wilson (slightly brushed up from the originals), followed by two stories and two essays.

PLOT:

Nancy Kress
"The Price of Oranges" - An elderly man travels regularly in time to the Depression, where things are better (and cheaper). He looks there for a boyfriend for his granddaughter.
"One Damn Thing After Another" -- How the plot of "The Price" evolved as Kress worked at it.

James Patrick Kelly
"Monsters" - A man who may be a psychotic or may be semi-possessed, considers the possibility of violence. A miracle happens.
"Making Monsters" - How ideas become stories by plotting and compromise. More or less.

CHARACTER:

Greg Bear
"Sisters" - One of the few not-genetically-enhanced children in her high school deals with social and personal problems which her situation causes. So do her genetically-enhanced peers and their situations.
"Characters Great and Small in SF: 'Sisters'" - how a "small" character's story illuminates a much larger story.

Pat Murphy
"Rachel in Love" - A chimp with the mind of a human (but the heart of a chimp), after the death of her 'father,' discovers that not all humans are nice.
"Imaginary Friends" - Mostly about how plot and character determine each other.

SETTING:
Kim Stanley Robinson
"Glacier" - The ice is returning, and Boston is right in the path of a glacier coming down from the White Mountains; as experienced by a young boy.
"The Psychic Landscape" - "There is an idea that setting in fiction is merely the backdrop... Reverse that: Imagine tha tplots are merely the stage business allowing us to visit places..."

Lucius Shephard
"Beast of the Heartland" - I'm not really clear on how this is SFF. But, it's an interesting story about a washed-up boxer preparing for that last Big Fight.
"God Is in the Details" - About, well, details, specifically, which ones you show to the reader to attain the desired effects.

THEME:

Karen Joy FowlerLily Red" - A dissatisfied woman takes off on an adventure and has a mythical encounter.
"Once More, with Meaning" - On not providing solutions or answers, but meaningful questions.

Bruce Sterling
"Our Neural Chernobyl" - A review, written in the late 2050s, of a book about the disastrous results of biological hacking.
"About 'Our Neural Chernobyl'" - More of a critique of SFF than an actual essay on theme, but does discuss how details of the story support its theme.

POINT OF VIEW:

Joe Haldeman
"Feedback" - An artist who rents his skill and talent for others to use encounters a truly troubled client.
"Point of View" - a particularly analytical approach to it.

John Kessel
"Buddha Nostril Bird" - The only really far-out story in the anthology, and a truly weird take on "escaped prisoner seeks revenge."
"Uncle Henry, Uncle Zorp, and Crazy Cousin Bingo" - on different kinds of point-of-view characters.

STYLE:

Pat Cadigan
"Pretty Boy Crossover" - A hot young man is tempted, against his will, to be turned into software.
"The S Word" - More or less, how style supports the other five topics.

Howard Waldrop
"Fair Game" - Ernest Hemingway vs. the Wild Man of the Mountains. No, really.
"Iceberg, Goldberg, It's All the Same to Me" - Why he wrote a Hemingway story, about Hemingway, but not in an inevitably-bad imitation of Hemingway's style.To sum up: Twelve stories, all of them pretty darn good, some of them really good; only one of which I'd actually read before (the Murphy). Twelve essays of varying depth (but all firmly oriented on the specific practice of the writer) on six writerly topics.

[book reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating a short story collection is always difficult. Some of these I enjoyed very much, some of them I couldn’t wait to be over. I did very much like the essays written by the authors after each story.

[Lucas · Rating 3 out of 5]

The stories are okay to good, the author commentary about each story is the really valuable part. I get a brief inspirational buzz after reading something by an author about writing where I can imagine myself writing, but then get bogged down in coming up with story, characters, and dialogue (are those really necessary?).

Most entertaining is Bruce Sterling's guide to the way SF workshop attendees talk about stories (a version is here http://www.sfwa.org/writing/turkeycit...). Ronald Moore should have read this one:

"Adam and Eve Story

Nauseatingly common subset of the "Shaggy God Story" in which a terrible apocalypse, spaceship crash, etc., leaves two survivors, man and woman, who turn out to be Adam and Eve, parents of the human race!!"

[Thom (T.E.) · Rating 5 out of 5]

For those who dream (or do) write either hard or soft science fiction, this is an exceedingly well-chosen group of authors and stories, accompanied by clear essays explaining selected aspects of their personal writing process. I might not have read some of these authors but the editor won over my confidence with the early selections in the book--something that I thought all editors knew to do (but too many don't).

[Daniel]

Editor Wilson, founding father of the long-running Clarion Writers Workshops for science fiction, is well qualified to compile this anthology that also affords its contributors' instructive behind-the-scenes comments on the sf writer's... (see Notes)