So I’ve been doing tons of extensive planning for my novel-to-be, Prodigy, and have been successful with fixing a lot of plot holes. I still have a few unanswered questions that plague me and I’m searching blindly for a plausible answer to them. First off is the reason for the motive of my pseudo-villain, Max. It’s easy to brush off his motives with a simple assumption that “everyone wants power,” but why does Max want it? What aspects of his personality and life has led him to desire power? I’ve tried asking these questions of myself, such as ‘why would I want power?,’ but the problem is that I’m not Max so I would want it for very different reasons. It’s difficult to figure out his reasons, so I’m sort of stuck in that regard. In the early drafts of Prodigy, Max was merely vindictive, but now I’m not so sure that concept accurately sums up his actions and reasons. I’ve got another plot hole to work out, which deals with some sort of worship between characters — the details of which, I cannot say at this time (classified information).

I’ve been making my pseudo-villain a lot more dark and cruel, which would serve to draw readers into the trap of considering him a ‘villain’. Yet Max is not a villain in the traditional sense of the word, unless you are just labeling characters based on personal opinions. For the sake of the story, he isn’t. In fact, I don’t think there are any real villains in the story. Certainly there are a lot of corrupt, self-centered, and violent characters, but for the most part they are considered normal (especially since the city is full of them). With the exception of Max, it seems that he is being treated as a criminal when his actions are not much different than, say, the CEO of Omni Industries who kills off the competition as well as other things (which are classified). And then there is Eight, who is a lot more capable of violence than any of the others, and yet is never considered (by the other characters) as being villainous — maybe towards the end they start to realize the error of their logic, but by then it’s too late.

So I think that the concept of villainy actually is a personal opinion that varies from person to person. A mass murderer might not consider themself a villain, whereas ‘moral’ individuals in society might think otherwise. But these conclusions are not ground in fact, but opinions and laws passed by society. Yet in a society where corruption and corporate espionage (with assassinations of rival companies) are considered normal, then who would they consider villains? So I come to the conclusion that anyone who goes against what we want can be considered a villain. What we want in others varies depending on who you are, so the term could be applied to anyone really. This is why I never liked clear-cut definitions or roles of villain and hero. I preferred anti-heroes because they felt more real to me, and anti-villains who were a lot more difficult to quickly condemn. Max’s actions are justified (well, not in the beginning of the story), but are still quite horrible at least to our standards (and the standards that live only on legal documents in Prodigy‘s society).

Yet the question of why Max ultimately chooses his actions eludes me. Sure he is megalomaniacal and would therefore want as much power as possible, but with the turn of events it makes things harder for him to be merely acting on those desires. He isn’t in the same sort of control he started out with and his life is on the line. Some of his actions are self-defense, but the others aren’t and those are the ones I’m having the most difficulty explaining the reasoning behind. If you were obsessed with power, but on the run from people who want you dead (and can easily kill you) and you had the opportunity to obtain some form of power (not the same type of power as before, but that’s classified*), would you still go for it even if there was a slim chance you could obtain it? Would just the obsession be enough to drive you?

There is a lot more turmoil with this plot hole than I’m willing to divulge, but essentially that’s the gist of it. And note*: by classified, I mean that I can’t discuss any possible spoilers.

I just read an article, Is the Universe Expanding or Contracting? by Bethanne Kelly Patrick and Michael Coffey, and it got me thinking (as most things do). It discussed how our expanding world, in terms of technology, is detrimental to science fiction. 

“The genre is having a hard time retaining readers who see that today’s world is in no way related to the visions SF was peddling in the last century.” Today’s world was supposed to be about “living in outer space,” says Sawyer, “not living in cyberspace.” And the cyberpunk world envisioned by William Gibson was wrong—”that world is not underground and malevolent, but above ground and universal.”

I partially disagree with this statement. Obviously we’ve largely forgotten about those dreams of space exploration. As the years go by I see fewer and fewer people show up at space museums and conventions, etc. But that does not necessarily mean that sci-fi is dying, it’s just moving in different directions. Technology is the new subject, with people these days living in the future envisioned by sci-fi writers in the past. The future is now. Just look at how fast we’re accelerating with all of our high-tech gadgets and so forth. And there’s still a market for speculation on future accomplishments. In fact, I’ve always believed that sci-fi writers fueled the dreams of tomorrow and gave inventors a push toward the unknown. 

I also believe that William Gibson was spot-on with his take on the world. We are currently in that cyberpunk world, we are “underground and malevolent” in some parts of cyberspace (*ahem* Anonymous…).

Although there may be evidence of old fashioned/hard SF dying a little, cyberpunk is flourishing. Hollywood loves this genre, especially after the success of The Matrix. I’ve heard about remakes of Akira and Ghost in the Shell in the works (although I’m not entirely supportive of this, but that’s another rant for another day). So I’m quite confident that my genre will not die out any time soon. I’m also certain that we’re only experiencing a slight downtime for old fashioned/hard SF right now. Fantasy seems to be doing very well lately and so are other similar genres. Maybe it’s just their day and we’ll be back up next time as the hottest thing again (“sleep well now [fantasy], for it is the last peaceful sleep you shall know”).