Showing posts with label Jack Campbell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jack Campbell. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 26, 2021

Reviews 68

Boundless

by

Jack Campbell

Reviewed by Jacqueline Lichtenberg


My Review posts have not been indexed.  


https://amazon.com/Boundless-Lost-Fleet-Outlands-Book-ebook/dp/B08GJVC9DZ/

Boundless is the first volume in a new sub-series about The Lost Fleet and the legendary Black Jack who becomes Admiral Black Jack Geary.

After settling a century old war, Geary has brought his Fleet home - only to encounter ferocious politics.  Wisely, he accepts a new assignment - to go way out beyond the limits of known worlds and make contact with the Aliens he encountered in the earlier adventures.

This #1 in a new series within that series has the characters we learned to love, some new problems, and an example of Geary's ability to maneuver a combat fleet in space.

But it is mostly a political-power story, about personal power, the power of reputation, and the control of the military by civilians. 

Geary's fleet is escorting an unarmed Diplomatic ship complete with Ambassador and staff, plus scientific researchers. This puts him in a new position, career-wise, the fate of the maturing combat professional -- desk work and politics.  

He is married to the Captain of his flagship, and she is as clever and powerful as he is.  Some of the Captains in his fleet are his friends, some maybe not-so-much, and some are competent and some who-knows?

Judging from this first entry in the new series about the same people, this will be a story about Geary's ability to assess the talents, abilities, maturity, and potential of his officers, and very likely of the Aliens he will have to deal with.  The Ambassador and her staff are supposed to do that, but it just doesn't seem like that's how it will play out.

I highly recommend the entire LOST FLEET series, and this new sub-series is already a delight.  The Romance leading up to the marriage and subsequent career issues truly makes this series a worthwhile read for Romance writers. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com 

Tuesday, July 23, 2019

Theme-Plot Integration Part 18 Stating Your Theme

Theme-Plot Integration
Part 18
Stating Your Theme
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous entries in Theme-Plot Integration are indexed at:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/index-to-theme-plot-integration.html

By the end of the first scene of your novel, preferably the end of the first page, the reader should have a grasp of your theme.

Oddly enough, though it's not discussed in books on writing, and most readers would deny it, THEME is the reason people read books all the way through, or toss them aside half-read.

THEME is what the novel, story, book (non-fiction, too) is about.

It's the topic and you need a topic-sentence on your opening page, something to frame the story so the reader can tell if they want to invest the time (and money) to read the entire thing.

What you're talking about has to be something the reader is interested in.

Writing craft instruction usually starts with "make it interesting" -- or write about something interesting -- and other phrases that seem to assume that some topics are inherently interesting and others not.

In other words, the FALLACY underlying writing craft instruction is simply that "interesting" is an objective property of topics.

We discussed various fallacies masking ultimate truths in our world in Parts 6 and 7 of this series of posts.

Fallacy is an aspect of our culture that can be exploited by fiction writers, especially Romance writers, to interest a reader in a topic, a THEME.

The theme itself doesn't have to be interesting.  In fact, all themes are interesting to the writer who is stating their own angle on a topic.

"Interesting" is not a property of theme.  All themes are equally interesting.

And in fact, a particular reader doesn't have the property "interested in" as an inherent trait of that person.

What interests a particular person at a specific moment will be whatever problem is currently between them and the satisfactions of life they crave most.

Children are always interested in how the next older age-group copes with whatever problems they are up to in life.

Adults are eternally interested in The Mating Game -- even after having solved the problem "Who Should I Marry" people are interested in where other sorts of choices might have led, and how they'd cope with those situations.

When you add science fiction to the mixture of fictional ingredients in theme, you can lead the reader from their own (boring) here and now, to a "there and then" which you can use to cast the spell of "this is interesting" over them.

What is interesting about science fiction?  It isn't where the reader is living at that time.

Life, the treadmill of work, housekeeping, kids, carpooling, school meetings, and all the drudgery that goes with it gets boring with repetition.  All that boring drudgery can become refreshingly NEW after reading a good book.

But what is a "good book?"

Is a "good" book the book you want to write?  Or is it the book the reader wants to read?  Or - is it really the UNEXPECTED?

The best writers best books are about themes that ask questions most people never think to ask, and present answers that challenge everyday assumptions about the common world of daily drudgery.

Two such series are currently being published that, while barely acknowledging Romance and only occasionally nodding to Relationship as a plot moving dynamic, nevertheless give the Science Fiction Romance writer many themes to pursue.

Pass of Fire (Destroyermen Book 14 ) by Taylor Anderson
https://www.amazon.com/Pass-Fire-Destroyermen-Book-14-ebook/dp/B07HDQXWYW/










Triumphant (Genesis Fleet, The Book 3) by Jack Campbell
https://www.amazon.com/Triumphant-Genesis-Fleet-Book-3-ebook/dp/B07GV29RDX/

These are good books, can't put it down reads, about a topic that will bore you to tears -- war.

Yet how many grand War Romances have you seen on film, usually World War II settings?  How many marvelous novels have you read which are War Romances, and how many of your favorite kick-ass-heroines are from books set in a war zone?

War is a male occupation, a fascination and inherently interesting.  Therefore, male writers, when using a war-plot, waste no words trying to convince their readers that war is interesting.

How many chapters of plot development do you build into a Romance to convince your readers that Romance is interesting?

When was the last time you asked yourself why you find Romance interesting?

What's interesting about it?  Why would anyone WANT to meet that Perfect Stranger?  What's wrong with the boy next door?  Why would anyone WANT to fall in love with the boy next door when they could adventure with a Stranger?

What do we write about that needs no explanation?

That topic is what must be explained, (e.g. used in the THEME) to non-Romance readers in order to convince them that Romance is interesting, and then to intrigue them into being interested.

None of that process is evident in either Taylor Anderson's writing or Jack Campbell's series-of-series.

I love them both, gobble them up, but fight through the flat-boring and tedious wordage that doesn't acknowledged the Relationship energy necessary to drive a war-plot.

I've discussed both these writers and their series at length - there is so very much to say about what a Romance writer can learn by studying these two exemplary series, so I'm pointing you at the latest entries.  Here are previous posts where I've discussed them:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/05/orson-scott-card-mormon-jack-campbell.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/reviews-2-by-jacqueline-lichtenberg.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/02/depiction-part-6-depicting-money-and.html

Depicting Political Disruption From China To Today
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/07/depiction-part-16-reviews-26-depicting.html

Depicting Interstellar Commerce
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/08/depiction-part-18-interstellar-commerce.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/09/lost-fleet-beyond-frontier-leviathan-by.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/08/reviews-38-jack-campbell-genesis-fleet.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/01/reviews-45-military-science-fiction-and.html

Why would a writer of Science Fiction (or Paranormal) Romance need to read these books?

Surely, you've studied military tactics and weaponry issues.  If you've ever played a video game, (and won), the principles of resource conservation and weapons superiority are ingrained in you.  Tactics are second nature.

If you've ever captured a guy's attention, you've mastered the fine art of war, strategy, tactics, and that little black dress is your most potent weapon.

On your own battleground, you know what you're doing.

But what makes your battleground of interest to readers who hate Romance Genre?

Notice the phrasing of that question: "of interest to"  -- that's the key. "Interesting" is not a property of a static element in the equation.  It is something that the Artist Makes.

In graphic arts, we learn how to "lead the eye" of the viewer, and focus attention where we want it.

The same is true of writing stories -- grab the reader's attention, then lead that attention through an obstacle course to a goal which becomes more enticing with each passing page of the narrative.

The THEME hint on page 1-5 "grabs attention" and just before the final climax scene, the THEME STATED image-or-dialogue congratulates the Reader on having guessed correctly what is to be REVEALED by the nature of the ENDING.

The initial problem from page 1 (where the two forces that will conflict to generate the plot first meet) asks the question the writer thinks will intrigue the target reader for this novel.

The same story can be opened with a dozen different page-1 questions.  The artist chooses an approach angle to the story's main problem the same way a photographer chooses an angle to snap a portrait image.

It's all about composition, and that is all about what is concealed and what is revealed.

When you write out in plain language what your theme is, you are presenting that them "on the nose" -- a blatant, can't-miss-it, insistent statement that will not allow the reader to use their imagination to "fill in the blanks."

What makes War and Relationship connected lies in that blank space the reader has to fill in.

But to entice the reader into a story framed in a genre they are convinced is un-interesting, the writer has to frame the blank space so that the reader wants to know what's in that dark hole.

The most boring material in our current world is considered to be philosophy, but it is in fact the most interesting material.  And in fact, at this point in history, philosophy is the most explosive issue.

For example, a lot of people now think that Capitalism is Evil.  But just a few decades ago, Capitalism was considered the greater Good.

Capitalism is a word that's been redefined, as has Socialism.  That redefinition is possible because each of these words represents a system rooted in vast, but different, philosophical systems.

We all live in the same objective reality, but we all craft our own subjective reality from what we observe, then proceed with life assuming that what we don't see isn't there.

The writer's job as an Artist is to reveal what we are not seeing.

What we, today, are not-seeing is what we call Philosophy.

Both Jack Campbell and Taylor Anderson have created imaginary wars in which the sides are divided along the same philosophical line -- Totalitarian Vs Democracy

But each is analyzing Democracy differently, and in some instances peppering the argument with "Republic" -- or the USA hybrid a "Representative Democracy."

Taylor Anderson's alternate universe reality has peoples who are not "human" (anthropoid) but have governing philosophies based on their physiology.  At the same time, his Global War has many human factions, torn from our Earth at different points in history.  These human factions have evolved governing philosophies along different paths than our Earth has taken.

Taylor Anderson's Destroyermen series pits a wide variety of governing philosophies against each other, but follows a number of evolving Relationships among exceptional individuals whose decisions reshape the course of history on his well built world.

Jack Campbell's universe is huge, and contains several Series set in interstellar war-torn landscapes.  The Genesis Fleet series focuses on an epoch of human expansion among the stars using "jump points" but ships that fight each other within Newton's laws.

Campbell's 3-D warfare tactics are Heinleinesque, and remind me also of Edward E. Smith's Lensman series.

Campbell develops the reasons why the newly settled planets far out there, barely able to conduct commerce with each other, using humanity's known history.  On Earth, we spread out, settle new areas, then fight over resources, or just territory, and very often just over control of large populations.

And that's where Campbell uses philosophy so very well.  He's drawn the newly settled planets' cultures based on  the essential philosophic dichotomy currently splitting our own real world, "Totalitarianism vs. Democracy" in various versions.

Humanity's enemy of freedom is born within us.  Given a few generations of freedom, we will breed a faction that is driven by the urge to CONTROL -- people who can't feel safe or at rest while other people make their own decisions.

Where those who need to control others gain command, war happens because they notice all these surrounding peoples who won't knuckle under.

So battle lines are drawn, alliances formed, and shooting wars held.

On Earth, now and historically, warriors battle without knowing what they are fighting for, but believing in their Cause, stated in some two-word motto.

Jack Campbell articulates what such mottos stand for, and what motivates large populations to espouse one or the other form of government.  His THEME is that people who believe in the same values are natural allies, and even lovers -- with Romance in there, and true love as well.

Campbell's Characters have Relationships which they set aside in order to go into mortal combat to protect those they love.  He has male and female warriors, equally good at personal combat, strategy and tactics, and computer hacking.

Interwoven with the action scenes, there are short dialogue scenes where the Characters articulate what they are fighting for, against, and why these ideas are important enough to die for.

For example, in The Genesis Fleet TRIUMPHANT, one of Campbell's Characters, Freya, says...

-------quote--------

"...I think there's an important point there.  Those who have sought to impose their will on others have often done so in the name of peace and law and order, arguing that freedom must be given up to accomplish those aims.  We know that's false.  That's why we balk at giving up even a little of our freedom even when we see danger at our doors.  But perhaps we should be thinking of it as if all of us were in a fight, and standing back to back to protect each other.  We'd have given up some freedom of movement, but nothing that matters compared to knowing we can't be stabbed in the back."

------end quote---------

The quote is from a discussion about forming an interplanetary alliance of freedom-loving planets to fight off encroaching totalitarians who aim to take over an entire region.

That quote is from page 119 of 327 pages in book 3 of the Genesis Fleet sub-series all set in the same universe, but about the same War.  Being an intermediate restatement of the theme, the reader doesn't get a feeling of finality but rather of progress.

The Characters are trying to figure out why they are doing what they are doing in order to figure out what the enemy is doing, in order to figure out what to do next to win this war.

But given other thematic utterances previously, the reader sees "this war" is a war against human nature, and war isn't the correct tool to win it.

Without war, though, humanity as a whole will definitely lose.

So War isn't the correct tool to solve the problem posed by War.

Later in his timeline, Campbell introduces Aliens who are playing a game of "Let's you and him fight" -- pitting these two factions of humanity against each other in order to conquer (perhaps wipe out) humanity.

The entirety of this Work of Art directly addresses the thematic issue of the role of government in species survival.

There is so much to be said on that theme that is better suited to Science Fiction Romance than to the Action Genre format Campbell is using.  But he does have his most potent Hero Characters deeply involved in committed Relationships.  Their primary motive in every act of war is protecting those Relationships.

It would be so easy to spin off a sub-series of pure Romance from this material.

I highly recommend you pay close attention to both these writers, and both these series.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, August 21, 2018

Reviews 38 - Jack Campbell The Genesis Fleet Series

Reviews 38
Jack Campbell
The Genesis Fleet Series 

This is the 38th post focusing on reviewing books in print.

The Genesis Fleet started in 2017 with Vanguard, and book 2, Ascendant, came out in 2018.

 


I've often referred to the various novels or series I review here as examples of one or another writing craft skill or technique.

And I always elaborate on the reasons writers of one genre should read genres they do not like.

Jack Campbell does not write Romance -- but he understands the place of the Love Story in the unfolding of governmental affairs on a galactic scale.

He is famous for The Lost Fleet Series, and The Lost Stars series -- which I've mentioned many times as examples of the best way to structure an adventure with a Love Relationship driving the action.

The Lost Stars focuses on a subset of Characters who are in an intimate Relationship that affects the vast political landscape in a Stellar Cluster.  These events spin off from the Events of The Lost Fleet series, which I also recommend because the Relationship thread of the Main Character's life (Geary) deeply affects the course of the Plot.

The Lost Fleet Series is about Commander Geary, Black Jack Geary, a young man with a background in space warfare who has awakened to find himself in an era when the war he fought in has long been settled, though it is not over.

The initial colonization effort Geary had been a part of grows into two opposed factions fighting a war of attrition over a good part of the Galaxy.  Geary had gone missing in the first part of this galaxy spanning conflict, but had thus generated a Legendary Reputation that grew and grew.  When he wakes, he doesn't recognize the Identity his rescuers impute to him.

He is rescued from a suspended animation capsule, and immediately finds himself an officer on a warship, and very quickly becomes in charge and then commanding the whole war fleet, desperately trying to get home because it is "Lost" as in the title.

As Geary uses strategy and tactics from his own, long forgotten, era to get the Fleet home, bits and pieces of who he was are mentioned along the way.  He pulls off miracle after miracle, seemingly by magic, and the readers keep asking for the story of how he became this man.

The Genesis Fleet is the story of Black Jack Geary's early life, before his long cold sleep, and of the forces that annealed his Character into the leader he is when we first meet him in The Lost Fleet.

The first book of The Genesis Fleet is Ascendant.  Geary arrives on a new Colony planet founded by a small group, operating on a shoestring budget.  The Colonists apply for jobs, and buildings are erected by machinery.  It's a nice world, good potential –– so along comes a warship from another colony looking to take over.  Geary is handed the job of getting rid of that Warship -- but he doesn't have a Warship of his own to throw against it.  He takes the meager resources available and kicks butt.  Whew!  And he goes back to work at the job on the space station in orbit around the new colony.

The second book of The Genesis Fleet picks up Geary's life after his wife has had one child and is pregnant with a second -- he has a huge stake in this new colony, keeping his family safe.  But he doesn't want to go off taking wild risks because there are children to think about.

However, when pressed into service, he captains their only defensive warship to escort a vital freighter across enemy infested space.  This universe Jack Campbell has created uses several bits of science to move ships through space -- there are local Newtonian mechanics engines but they can achieve appreciable fractions of the speed of light.  There are "jump points" which seem naturally occurring, and eventually there are "stargazes" -- structures that create artificial jump points.

The power of this ships is by "fuel cell" -- large objects that act like batteries.

Geary takes it on himself to stretch his orders (well, to the breaking point) when his gut tells him he has to follow his cargo freighter all the way to its destination, not just through the enemy territory.

And he jumps his ship right into the midst of an all-out attack on another planet.  He can't risk his little warship because it is all that can defend his home and family (besides, it's expensive), and he can't let the enemy take over this neighbor planet because then the enemy will have a grand staging area to launch an attack against his family.

These two novels are about Geary.  The point of view and focus are tight and precise.  The writing is excellent.  Geary's motivation is to seek out or create the HEA -- he's got part of it, wife-and-kids, but they aren't safe and secure, so it's not a Happily Ever After yet.

If you don't understand why readers refuse to believe in the Happily Ever After ending, read all these Jack Campbell novels to glean a counter-argument that can convince your biggest skeptics.  The HEA is not something that just happens.  It is something that is created -- by heroic actions fueled by deep love and absolute commitment to the welfare of others.

I particularly like the Newtonian mechanics limitations on space-war tactics, and the reliance on automated systems for firing solutions.  The time-delay in communications caused by light speed and distance complicates everything.

Maybe the least plausible part of these novels is Geary's continued (but not continuous or easy) success at diplomacy.  It is very rare to find a polymath human who has both combat ready strategy and tactics plus political savvy.

We see that in our Pentagon Generals, and retired Generals who go into politics, so we think it is a common combination.  But it is not.

Black Jack Geary is a Legend, created out of real people, but a Legend nevertheless.

Create some Characters who are the material from which Legends grow.  Consider how their Legends distress the Characters themselves.

Military Science Fiction is a sub-genre that is the natural home of the hottest Romance.  Watch some old World War II movies, and read some Military Science Fiction.  Create yourself a Legendary Character.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Lost Fleet: Beyond The Frontier - Leviathan by Jack Campbell


Lost Fleet:
Beyond The Frontier
Leviathan
by Jack Campbell
 

I've recommended Jack Campbell's space-war novels (actually several series in the same world he has built) since 2013, and I'm still recommending them considering the 2015/2016 entries in this series of series.

Here are some previous discussions pertaining to Campbell's worldbuilding in space: 







These Jack Campbell novels have several love stories in them -- super fantastic love stories -- and the material for a Romance is right there on the surface, but these novels are not category Romance.

I've discussed them from several different angles, all of which are salient to the Romance field in general, science fiction Romance in particular -- and even Historical Romance because Jack Campbell is doing meticulous worldbuilding.  The same worldbuilding techniques he uses apply to Romance -- though the worlds and themes might not.

He focuses on the combat, the politics, and the "bear trap" plot of a mostly regular sort of Character volunteering for a job and finding out that it entails much more than expected, leadership of an entire battle Fleet, or several solar systems.

Technically, both the Lost Fleet and the Lost Stars series are not "war stories" or even battle stories.  All of these series, including the first contact with Aliens novels, are about what happens after a 100-year war, how humans can't adjust and after 5 generations of war just do not have the cultural background to think non-war-thoughts.

This is the fabric of dynamite Romance, and it is not plagiarism to lift a concept like that from published work and run with it.  There is much more to say about how humans would relate to each other across interstellar distances.

In the Lost Fleet and Lost Stars series, Campbell has explored what would happen if Aliens (really alien aliens) discovered humanity expanding among the stars and played a high-tech game of "Let's You And Him Fight" (a situation you can rip from today's modern headlines about the Middle East).

By ripping the material from modern headlines, Jack Campbell has produced a timeless work of art.

To get that "timeless work of art" perspective, you need to read most all the books, think about them and remember them as you read on.  It is the Big Picture that shows the art.

Large portions, pages after pages, of these novels are pure narrative describing space battles between fleets of ships (a fleet is like a symphony orchestra, composed of many kinds of instruments that must be brought into play with precise timing).  These battles take place under strict and limiting Newtonian laws of motion.  The fleets maneuver for hours or days then flash by each other in split seconds at perhaps .2 Lightspeed, which requires weapons to fire by computer.

The world Campbell has built includes two kinds of FTL travel, one natural wormholes and one kind using "Gates" that people can build and put places where wormholes are not stable.  Transit is different depending on which kind of entry is used.

So fleet maneuvers can include dodging in and out of some other dimensional space.  When sitting in Newtonian space, sensors "see" only at Lightspeed -- so when ships appear on the other side of a solar system from the Fleet you are in, you "see" them appear hours and hours after they actually appear.  Computers can compensate for some Relativistic distortions, but not others.

Campbell has figured the time-delay issue into Fleet Maneuver decisions and DEPICTED the effect Newtonian mechanics and the Lightspeed limit would have on success or failure of Fleet combat.  He includes some inertial damping on his ships, but it is not perfect.  Human presence aboard limits what a ship can do when changing vector.

Here is the index to Depiction

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/index-to-depiction-series-by-jacqueline.html

What can a Romance writer learn from reading the depiction of Newtonian space combat?

Combat is a form of communication where each maneuver is a sentence in a conversation.

Sex is a form of communication where each maneuver is a sentence in a conversation.

It is very hard to learn to write great sex scenes.  Reading great combat scenes is boring to Romance writers.  Combat, fight scenes, are just plain boring.  So, since you do not get caught up in the material, do not bring a thousand assumptions to the scene, you are able to penetrate the facade of the scene down into the mechanism of the writing craft that produces the scene.

Once you can see what Campbell is doing that so enthralls his intended audience, you will be able to block a sex scene that moves your Romance Plot ahead just as compellingly as Campbell's fleet battles move his vast Interstellar Politics and Human Nature plot ahead.

In THE LOST FLEET: Beyond The Frontier: LEVIATHAN, Campbell explains (in show don't tell) how and why it is that his Hero, John "Black Jack" Geary, has no interest in taking his Fleet to the home world and taking over the government, setting himself up as emperor or something like that.  Many people want and expect him to.

In part, Campell depicts the Character of Black Jack as dedicated to the Republic model of government by democratically elected officials by showing how he befriends (in previous novels) the aliens called The Dancers (because of their ship Fleet maneuver grace), and now by how The Dancers choose to help him defeat this new enemy.

And we come to the new enemy.  It is "the enemy within" -- and enemy created by the very government Black Jack supports.

When the interstellar war against the other half of Humanity (the Syndic) was being lost, Black Jack's side created a last bastion the government could retreat to if they lost their home world. And they created a Fleet of battle ready ships, with no human crews, because they thought there wouldn't be anyone to man a fleet if the home world was overrun.

This fleet was run by autonomous Artificial Intelligence recently programmed to flight like Black Jack Geary.  In other words, Black Jack must now pit his fleet against HIMSELF.

And, in true Major Motion Picture form, Campbell brings Black Jack's win from a B story, a sub-plot, led by a Character who seemed mere window dressing (a love story distraction).  She turns out to be The Hero of the final triumph.  Yes, Black Jack wins by dint of the efforts of women who get full credit for their efforts, not just from him but from society.

By this point in THE LOST FLEET - Black Jack is married to the Captain of the flagship from which he commands his Fleet.  There's a lot of sexual tension on that bridge.

But there are two major lessons in the fleet battle scenes: A) They Occupy The Place A Romance Would Have A Sex Scene, and B) If The Battle Scenes Bore You, You Now Know Why Romance Bores Other Readers.

Note how many words each battle scene goes. Note where you lose interest.  Write your sex scenes to the length you want the battle scenes to be, and you will broaden your readership.

Beyond that, you can learn a lot about worldbuilding by noting how Campbell "reveals" bits and pieces of the entire canvas of interstellar civilization(s) he is using.  He does not tell you everything at once, does not spend pages and pages giving you information about politics, the different planets, their economic inter-dependencies etc.  If you learn any of that, you learn it by figuring it out.

Examine the entirety of all of these novels and you will see that you do not need to use everything you invent for your universe.  The reader does not have to know most of it.

Note how Campbell using a very tight point-of-view technique to show you the slice of that whole universe he's built that actually pertains to this one person's life and life-choices.

The dilemmas and conflicts that drive Black Jack Geary are clear, human, immediate and comprehensible -- even though he lives in an incomprehensible universe.

Now remember that to most of your readers, the condition of being "In Love" -- the reality that suddenly becomes tangible to those caught in Romance -- is as alien as Black Jack's interstellar civilizations are to you.

Depict and explain it to those readers in Show Don't Tell.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Tuesday, August 16, 2016

Depiction Part 18 -- Interstellar Commerce by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Depiction
Part 18
Interstellar Commerce
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous parts in this series on Depiction, a writer craft tool essential to Romance Genre because it is the core of Characterization, and essential to the Science Fiction Genre because it is the core of social impact is here:


China, as noted below, is trying to build a new "Silk Road" - an intercontinental trade route that will give them a sort of ownership of Global Commerce.  The USA did that with the Panama Canal, so now we have a second Panama Canal about to open.  

So let's look at this pattern and project it onto an Interstellar scale.  
Science Fiction as we noted last week, is the Literature of Ideas, while Romance is perhaps best identified as the Literature of Soul Mates -- or possibly just the Literature of the Soul.  Or the Literature of the Happily Ever After -- the Literature of Happiness.  Or maybe the Literature of Relationship -- but "relationship" seems way too broad since it includes too many kinds of relationships.
So Science Fiction Romance might then be regarded as the Literature of Romantic Ideas.
One of the reasons we have the Internet and the Web (they are two separate inventions) is the TV Series, Star Trek.  The series sparked a
"romance" with science in many viewers who could imagine the world in which Spock commanded the Enterprise Computer.  Kirk's romance with adventure, with going where no man had gone before, and Spock's romance with (he has 6 Ph.D.'s) innovation, combined to inspire a generation, which one day might earn the title of The Greatest Generation.

The Ph.D. degree is traditionally awarded for adding to the sum total of human knowledge -- of ideas about how this universe actually works (scientifically).  The Ph.D. degree is all about going where no one has gone before, and doing the impossible while you are there.  Before the Ph.D. candidate does it, it is considered "impossible" because "you can't do that."  

In other words, the main Character Trait of the Ph.D. type person (school or no school) is that they never just do "all I can" -- but they do the job, regardless of what they can or can not do.  The Ph.D. Character Trait is "doing the impossible" even though it takes a little longer.  The Ph.D. type Character accepts no limits, especially those imposed by others, or most especially the limits imposed by the imagination of others.

So Spock is a Character depicted as having earned 6 Ph.D. Academic Degrees.  His curiosity knows no bounds.  That is the core of that Character, according to Roddenberry -- curiosity.  The intangible of "curiosity" is depicted by casting Spock as the Science Officer.  His having been cast ALSO as the First Officer (Command, not Science department) was due to Network Officials who would not buy the show with a female (Number One) as First Officer.  Roddenberry fineagled Uhura onto the bridge by persistence and subtrefuge.  

Star Trek depicted humanity's curiosity let loose in the Galaxy.  The show is a Romance with The Unknown, which is a core definition of Science Fiction and of Romance.  Romance is about getting to know a stranger, and science is about getting to know reality.  Knowing is Ideas.

Humans (and Vulcans, apparently) are capable of establishing and maintaining Relationships with intangibles such as Ideas, and tangibles such as The Enterprise, as well as processes such as Exploration, Innovation, or Commerce, and Curiosity.

No single human can exemplify all these kinds of Relationships, all at the same time.  But over a lifetime, humans can and often do cycle through the panoply of Relationships.  

A Character may "arc" (or learn from the plot events) from the beginning of a Relationship to the end or transition point of that Relationship, a point in the Character's fictional life when the focus of his/her Romance shifts to one of the other types of Relationships.  Each such "arc" has its own readership.  In targeting a Readership, we have discussed the elements of romance stories that different readerships enjoy.


There can be a Romance with Commerce as a process, a way of life, a life style.  Several branches of Romance Genre -- most notably, Historical Romance books -- explore the Archetype of The Trader.  

Science Fiction has many stories and novels about the Tramp Trader, the free trader, the pirate (Pirates are a part of The Trader archetype).  Historically, on Earth, we have had Pirates and Traders, owning their own ships, plying the trade winds among the South Sea Islands, the Carribean, and so forth.  Today it's Liberia and funding some disruptive Causes, but Pirates and the Shadow Banking system have always been part of the human world order.


Even non-fiction books have been written about being one of the two or three passengers on a Tramp Steamer, traveling to places tourists don't go, or are not welcome.  Seeing the world is the story that targets the house-or-town-bound readership.  If you live shackled to a single place, your "Romance" is with traveling elsewhere.  If you live by traveling, (say with a Circus) or as a "Military Brat" -- your "Romance" is with the stationary, settled, suburban lifestyle.

Or take the Western, for example.  Best Selling Western Romance has been written about the Drifter who begs a job on the ranch of a recently widowed woman (sometimes with children). 

There is something about the Character who has been doing what enchants readers that sparks Romance.  

All these "settings" -- South Sea Tramp Steamer, Western High Chapparal, Australian Out-Back, African Safari -- are ripe settings for the Romance story to blend with the Science Fiction plot of Confronting The Unknown.

The Science Fiction novel is the Quest of the Hero for a Ph.D. -- for adding some crucial bit to the sum total of human knowledge.  

Take, for example, the movie The African Queen:


In Africa during WW1, a gin-swilling riverboat owner/captain is persuaded by a strait-laced missionary to use his boat to attack an enemy warship.

Yeah, and it's a HOT ROMANCE, Intimate Adventure all the way.  "The Unknown" includes leeches, boat breakdowns, and being hunted.  The plot is about floating around in an old boat, and the story is about how Danger causes two susceptible people to Bond.

You can do that in the Galactic Setting, too.  

So, let's say you decide to write The African Queen set during a Galactic War.

If you've got a Galactic War, you need to depict two conflicting sides.  Maybe it's two human factions, or two non-human species.

Say it's two non-human species fighting each other for the right or privelege of owning all humanity as slaves, or possessions of some kind (maybe they're so alien, the concept slavery just is not translatable to them.)

Now create a Character from one side of that War, a venerably worn down Starship, and a Character from the other side of that War.

Here is where the Theme-Plot-Story-Worldbuilding blend has to be teased apart.

The theme is what you have to say by writing this book.  What is the take-away for the Romance reader?  What is the take-away for the Science Fiction reader?  

Why do you want to write this book (as opposed to some other book)?

Maybe you want to talk about the intrinsic worth of the human spirit?  Or the ineluctible value of the individual?

If you want a theme about the worth of the human spirit, you need Aliens who are fighting each other over some Religious premise, or the lack of Godliness).  The War, the conflict, has to be about Spirit -- whatever aspect of Spirit you want to talk about.  That specific aspect becomes your theme.

If you want to talk about the Value of a human individual -- and where that concept fits into the Idea of the value of humanity as a whole, or specific human Groups -- the two Alien species have to be at War over some sort of issue involving Value.

On Earth, historically, we fight over arable land, over potable water, or irrigation water, over Valuable Minerals (this century it seems to be Oil, but it was Gold at one time).  

So what would galaxy-spanning Alien Civilizations war over?

Habitable Planets - good stars to hold them in orbit, etc.  In other words "land" or "territory" is always a motive that is easy to explain to modern readers.

Shipping Lanes -- or paths from one place to another such as "Worm Holes" or artificial ones left by some previous star-faring civilization.  Command of Commercial Transit has always been worth War -- think of the Silk Road and Marco Polo.

China is funding a rebuild of The Silk Road to open commerce with Iran etc. and the West is suspicious that the commerce involves fissionables.
--------------quote---------
The maps of the two Silk Roads drive home the enormous scale of the project: the Silk Road and Maritime Silk Road combined will create a massive loop linking three continents. If any single image conveys China’s ambitions to reclaim its place as the “Middle Kingdom,” linked to the world by trade and cultural exchanges, the Xinhua map is it. Even the name of the project, the Silk Road, is inextricably linked to China’s past as a source of goods and information for the rest of the world.
China’s economic vision is no less expansive than the geographic vision. According to the Xinhua article, the Silk Road will bring “new opportunities and a new future to China and every country along the road that is seeking to develop.” The article envisions an “economic cooperation area” that stretches from the Western Pacific to the Baltic Sea.

-----------end quote----------

So just expand that map into a connection among the "arms" of our Galaxy.  Suppose that, with some massive capital investment, one faction of your Waring Species could gain CONTROL of the access to all the others?

Of course, one of the species fighting for control might be "part human" or some kind of genetic hybrid.

Suppose it was not humanity per se that these Aliens are fighting to own.  It isn't slaves they want or need -- but genes.  

They need to inject human genes into some Aliens (maybe their own species, maybe some non-sentient species they've found somewhere) to create Pilots or some kind of necessary functionary to explore, open and/or hold the Commerce Access Points -- the Interstellar Silk Road.  

And of course, at some point, someone uses the same process to inject Alien genes into humans.  

Would they engineer the hybrid to be sterile?

Would such a sterile hybrid be able to Love?  

So, suppose the galaxy is fighting a Trade War, and the object-item-resource being Traded -- the market being cornered -- were fresh human genes.

Many good Science Fiction novels have been written about genetics, even interstellar civilizations at war, and many of the "species" involved are genetic hybrids between Earth humans and Earth animals.  S. Andrew Swann is master of complex galactic civilizations, plots-and-counter-plots, all mixed up with arcane (and fantasy) genetics.
S. Andrew Swann creates many complex and compeling Relationships for his Characters, but not Romance Genre.  Check out the Moreau Omnibus.
This does not narrow the choice of Theme very much.  There is the morality of genetic commerce to explore, and there is the morality of mixing species to discuss.  There are the ramifications of creating such living hybrids -- what are they?  What rights do they have?  What will they do to assert those rights?  

So another thing humans and Aliens might go to War over would be the entire spectrum of "rights," "priveleges," and where there are no rights or priveleges, then "power."  

Leading science fiction writers, such as David Brin and Robert Sawyer, have suggested interstellar commerce, especially with Aliens, would be conducted in beamed transmissions of coded patterns from which things can be constructed - 3-D printing of genetic constructs.  The human genome has already been "reduced" to code, to numbers.  

So the transport of physical objects might not be what "commerce" means among Alien civilizations.  

Knowledge -- that Ph.D. concept of adding something new to the sum total of human knowledge -- could be what is trafficed via interstellar commerce.  

Jack Campbell has done Interstellar War (two wonderful, related, series) among human factions, with some Aliens fomenting the humans to a 100 year war by playing "Let's You And Him Fight" so they can pick off the weakened winner later.



His books depict wonderful space battles that use plausible understanding of time and distance, plus 3-dimensional maneuvering.  The technology is likewise plausible.  And there are some good Love Stories!  
Jack Campbell's themes center on the Human Spirit, and the value of the individual in combination with differently talented individuals.  He relies on inherent personality, plus acquired skills, to round out his Characters.
Ownership can be very sexy.  We often evoke the satisfaction of "possessing" in depicting sexuality.

And we have seen what the Creator of Buffy The Vampire Slayer did with professionalism in Prostitution in Firefly.


 Read the one-line descriptions of the episodes to get an overview.

Note in Serenity -- "precious salvaged cargo" -- in The Train Job "cargo turns out to be badly needed medication" -- in Shindig we have a "smuggling transaction."

The prostitution/companion hired-woman concept is about "commerce" and the material goods being moved theme is about commerce.  Commerce is the envelope theme, and each story depicts a sub-theme of commerce.

In Old Mrs. Reynolds it says:

--------quote---------
After ridding a peaceful planet of a group of bandits, Mal and his crew are honored for their heroism. But when he returns to the Serenity, a horrified Mal is told he inadvertently married one of the local women during the celebration.
---------end quote--------

Bandit, married, two types of commerce, as is "being Honored."  The trade of tangible and intangible value -- commerce.  Firefly is famous for the lack of non-human Characters.  What if there were non-humans? 

See how tight, focused, pointed the thematic structures are, then see how the fans of this show react to the show. Few, if any, fans will say they are reacting to the tightness of the thematic bundle structure -- but that tightness almost always attracts dedicated fans.

Inside the envelope of "Commerce" -- you find your statement, your theme, your reason why you want to write this particular story.  For example, "All commerce is good."  "Commerce is only trade for profit."  "All commerce leads to war."  "Trade is Trickery."  

Pick some statement about barter, value, as a theme and it will instantly define the Main Character and the Mate to that Character.  The Plot begins when the two meet, working at cross-purposes, or to similar goals but by different methods.  See again, the film, The African Queen.

If your theme is, "All commerce is good and leads to Peace," your Main Character may be trying to Open Trade Negotiations with Aliens while the Soul Mate Character is a thief, grifter, guerrilla warrior, freedom fighter, or just plan smuggling scalawag. 

Or perhaps the Soul Mate is an Alien guerrilla marketer looking to promote a product on the cheap to humans.  Maybe the product would be the Fountain of Youth for humans, or perhaps it would be the most potent poison known (possibly a drug that gives a High then kills.)  Or maybe he's selling Tribbles.  Or perhaps he's selling "protection." 

Choose the Soul Mate's endeavor or business model from the master theme, and give it a sub-theme of that set.  

For example: "All commerce leads to Peace" might generate the sub-theme for the Soul Mate of the Trade Deal Negotiator of "Creative Accounting is in the Cost of Doing Business" (meaning skimming and bribes are included in the shelf-tag price as are tariffs.)

The skimming, bribes, etc. are a normal part of an employee's compensation in many countries, and there the Peace Shattering Offense would be to object to skimming or bribery.

Many low or minimum wage employees in the USA today look at Office Pilfering and approximating the "petty cash" envelope's due when making change out of it as a legitimate part of their compensation for loyalty to their jobs. 

So suppose your Trade Negotiator tried to hire a local for the equivalent of what we call minimum wage.  Then various items go missing from the Embassy offices.  That is PLOT generated from Theme via Character.  "Items go missing" is a Plot Event that illustrates the envelope theme of Commerce and the sub-theme of Creative Accounting (minimum wage being redefined as only part of the job's compensation.)  What your Main Character does in response to discovering items missing is Plot.  Why he/she does it is Story. 

Falling in love with your New Hire, accusing some High Ranking Noble you are negotiating with of petty theft, then discovering the New Hire is your Office Thief generates the STORY that is welded to the Plot via the Theme.  The story is about trust and betrayal, two of the core elements in a Commercial Transaction.  

Entire civilizations and even religions open up behind that bare bones conceptual outline set in a Trade Mission's office where the objective is to make Peace with Aliens, not fleece them.  

Some other member of the Trade Mission may have orders to fleece the Aliens (because it would be stupid to expect to make Peace with Aliens), and see the theft by the New Hire as proof it is morally obligatory to fleece the aliens. That is Story generated by the Setting which is generated by the Theme.  

Each of the characters has family, trigger issues, blind spots, and mission-critical, life-or-death results to deliver to superiors.  Each of these Character Traits is derived from the Master Theme, and depicts the individual Character's theme. 

By the time you have all these elements put together, they become so blended you can not distinguish plot from story from character from theme -- all these elements contain and depict all the other elements.  Often the best way to communicate all that to the Reader is via Symbolism.


Pick a set of elements and blend them into a Depiction of Interstellar Commerce you could write.  As an exercise, you might do three or four outlines of this type.

If you run out of Ideas, check out Polesotechnic League: Book 1 of 7 (also known as The Man Who Counts):

Poul Anderson was famous for his socio-economic science fiction with believable Aliens, derived as I've said many times, by imagining what various Earth animals might be like if they developed intelligence and an interstellar civilization.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Tuesday, July 12, 2016

Depiction Part 16 - Reviews 26 Depicting Political Disruption From China To Today by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Depiction Part 16
Reviews 26
Depicting Political Disruption From China To Today
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg 
Previous posts in the Depiction series are indexed here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/index-to-depiction-series-by-jacqueline.html

This post has two titles because I have two books to review which are perfect examples of an article which discusses a non-fiction book.

We have discussed in Parts 19 and 20 of Marketing Fiction In A Changing World how non-fiction writing is the mainstay of a professional writer's income.

Now, if you have many contracts for fiction novels coming in, as many mass market Romance Writers do, you can't dabble on the side in writing non-fiction.  There's no time or strength.  But even when selling fiction, you have to read a lot of non-fiction.  Romance writers and science fiction writers do a lot of research reading.  If you are writing the hybridized field of Science Fiction Romance, that is more than double the amount of non-fiction reading per novel produced.

Some writers shun reading fiction while writing fiction -- so as not to be "influenced."  Others gobble up books in the field they are writing in.

But no matter how you go about doing it, your fiction must connect the reader's real world with some less tangible world -- an ideal world, a future world, an alternate reality, or just artistic imagination.

Connecting layers of reality and imaginary perception is what writers do, in fiction or non-fiction. Readers most enjoy experiencing connections they haven't found for themselves, yet.

So today let's look at some science fiction and some fantasy that depicts political disruption by using Romance.

In April, 2016, Fortune Magazine posted the following article:

This Ancient Chinese Text Is the Manual for Business Disruptors by  Michael Puett ,   Christine Gross-Loh  APRIL 11, 2016, 8:00 AM EDT

http://fortune.com/2016/04/11/laozi-manual-business-disruptors/

Michael Puett and Christine Gross-Loh are the authors of The Path: What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us about the Good Life (Simon & Schuster, 2016)

The article starts out:

--------QUOTE---------
And no, it’s not Sun Tzu’s “Art of War.”

When disruption became the rallying cry for innovators a decade ago, they seized on ancient work of Chinese philosophy to prove their point. In Sun-Tzu’s Art of War, a new class of business disrupters claimed to have found the original manual.

They were right about ancient Chinese philosophy, but wrong about the manual.

As it turns out, another text from China, the Laozi, actually offers a much more expansive—and revolutionary—vision of innovation.
---------END QUOTE----------

And concludes:

-----------QUOTE-----------
That’s why those who aspire to innovate are better off seeing the world through a Laozian, not Sunzian, lens. If life is like a game of chess, Sunzians concentrate all their effort towards winning in a situation in which the board, the pieces, and the opponent are immutable. Laozian innovators know the chessboard can be tipped over at any moment. So they shift to another game entirely without anyone even realizing what is being changed.

---------END QUOTE--------

Read the whole article if you can because explaining these two views of "disruption" can give you a deeper understanding of the world your reader lives in.  The writer's business is explaining the reader's world to the reader.

Now here are two books (both plotted around super-hot Romance) -- both in series -- one blatant military science fiction genre by Jack Campbell, the other equally blatant Fantasy by Marshall Ryan Maresca -- each depicting Political Disruption in such a way that the reader can recognize and relate to the Disruption Forces driving today's headlines.

The first book I want to draw to your attention, the latest in a long series, is by the New York Times Bestselling writer, Jack Campbell.

The Lost Stars: Shattered Spear by Jack Campbell ...
http://www.amazon.com/Lost-Stars-Shattered-Spear-ebook/dp/B013Q7041I/



... is the 4th title in the Lost Stars series, but The Lost Stars is in the same universe, with the same characters, as 11 previous titles, 6 in Campbell's The Lost Fleet series, and 5 in The Lost Fleet: Beyond The Frontier series.

This series is huge in scope, depicting the clash of two human civilizations in a 100 year war that hammers both of them to flat out desperation.










It turns out that this 100 year war is the result of non-humans (very alien aliens? - we don't know because nobody's ever seen them) playing a very human game of "Let's You And Him Fight."

http://www.amazon.com/Games-People-Play-Eric-Berne-ebook/dp/B005C6E76U/

Games People Play is so "disruptive" and currently interesting that it was reissued in a variety of modern formats in 2011



So taken as a whole, this 15 novel set by Jack Campbell accurately depicts a group of interstellar civilizations from the Chinese Laozian innovators' point of view.

This is accomplished rather neatly by introducing the rapidly changing political variables of these civilizations from the point of view of a man who grasps and understands 3-D interstellar war fleet combat in .

THE LOST FLEET part of the series gradually walks the reader through changing from a   point of view to a Laozian point of view.  The main Character, Black Jack, has an unconscious bias for the Laozian method of problem solving. The other characters, who have failed to understand that Constants are actually Variables, can't stop him from disrupting their 100 year war.

The Beyond The Frontier part of the series follows other characters who ride Black Jack's wave of disruption out beyond the borders that have been considered Constants and there they discover and bring back data about what is really going on.

You may remember me talking about The Alien Series by Gini Koch (here with me in the background)

and my delight at how Gini's main character figures out "what is really going on" --- which she does by applying the Laozian innovator's problem solving methodology.



Alien In Chief is the 12th and not the last in this Series.
http://www.amazon.com/Alien-Chief-Novels-Book-12/dp/075641007X/

In the Lost Stars series, Jack Campbell shows, without telling, how those whose lives have been disrupted by Black Jack's victories, now rebuild the shattered civilization into a new model, a little bit more of a democracy (but not too much, you understand).  They are forming alliances and stabilizing thing among the stars in their region of the galaxy.

The Lost Stars sub-series has a genuine Romance story-arc beautifully blended and balanced with long, long descriptions of space battles.  The space battles are long because they are realistic -- it takes a long time to maneuver whole fleets traveling at measurable fractions of the speed of light.

Doing the unexpected, (disrupting expectations) is the key to battle success, in the Romance story, the Battle Plot, and the Political Machinations.  These books form a poetic example of the Laozian view of the universe.

Marshall Ryan Maresca's THE ALCHEMY OF CHAOS...

...is a Fantasy series incorporating a School of Magic campus, a former Circus Performer, a Drug Cartel (or two), and a social fabric straining under Laozian Innovation and the ultimate Disruption.

The Alchemy of Chaos is the direct sequel to The Thorn of Dentonhill, which I also loved.

In The Alchemy of Chaos we see the Romance between the main character and a real kick-ass-heroine heat up to dominate the action-plot.

The venue is the Magic School's campus plus the surrounding business and residential district (dominated by street gangs manipulated by organized crime).  

It is a wheels-within-wheels world where the Circus Performer-Mage Student is The Disruptor, solving his personal problems by understanding how Constants are actually potential-variables.  Being young, he thinks (Sorcerer's Apprentice style), that he is in control of all those disrupted constants he is trying to vary.

The author obviously has much more to say about disrupting nice, quiet, reliable constants when you are so absolutely (20-something-year-old) certain you are in complete control of the results.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the Maradaine novels, for me, is the Romance and how true love, true soul mates, come together to deal with unexpected chaos together.  

Emergency Crisis Management is one of the major, core topics of all Romance but is especially relevant to plotting the Science Fiction Romance, or perhaps especially the Fantasy/Paranormal Romance.

In the Maradaine novels, Maresca has shown how a civilization might treat Magic and Science as separate topics that can not be mixed -- only to discover that they are not so separate.

So take all the Jack Campbell titles together with, interwoven with, the Maresca titles, do an in depth contrast and compare among those, then review the Chinese Philosophy discussed in that Fortune Magazine article.

There is, of course, much more to say and write about Disruptors.  The most devastating chaos always results from Soul Mates finding each other.  The best case scenario is that the chaos might be just transient, and stability might ensue.  Then again, it might be a hundred year war.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg



Tuesday, February 03, 2015

Depiction Part 6 - Depicting Money and Wealth by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Depiction Part 6
Depicting Money and Wealth
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

In Depiction Part 5
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/01/depiction-part-5-depicting-dynastic.html
we started to look at Depicting Dynastic Wealth with an eye toward the Romance form of how to marry a millionaire, billionaire, Prince, King, Duke -- how to marry above your "station."  How to marry into the 1%.

The previous parts of the Depiction Series are:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/09/depiction-part-1-depicting-power-in.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/09/depiction-part-2-conflict-and-resolution.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/09/depiction-part-3-internal-conflict-by.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/12/depiction-part-4-depicting-power-in.html

This type of novel depicting the uber-wealthy from the inside is difficult for a writer to create because most writers aren't wealthy. 

Like musicians, actors, and other performing artists, writers are generally work-a-day schmucks, more like Cinderella than like the Prince.  

Those who hit it lucky often live like suddenly discovered movie stars, or suddenly popular athletes on a winning streak, and adopt a lavish lifestyle that eventually bankrupts them.  Those who work for a living (other than Investment Bankers) usually have no reason or means to learn Wealth Management. 

It is difficult to portray real wealth, from the inside, to portray a Character who was raised to wealth and privilege.  From the outside they all seem stuck up, and that makes them plausible to your reader and easy to portray.  

We ended off Depiction Part 5 with the observation that a shift of point of view produces strange inversions. 

In Historical Times, Kings ran the government and made the decisions.  Today voters run the government and make the decisions, then hire working-stiffs to carry out those decisions, bestowing such titles as Prime Minister or President.  But voters (working stiffs) are King now, and now Kings don't run the government, voters do.  It is a point of view shift.

However, while the people we elect either are wealthy, magically become wealthy while in office, or are from dynastic wealth, the voters in general are not. 

We are hiring people to manage trillions of dollars while we have no clue what the world looks like from the point of view of a Billionaire, or what skills it takes to manage trillions. 

The voters are looking at the wealthy from the outside and seeing aloof or stuck-up people.  Is that true insight or just a perspective? 

If you are interested in writing a Science Fiction Romance with a theme centered on Dynasty, you could find some interesting material studying the family backgrounds of dynasties where transmission worked, and where it failed. 

But before you dive into that research, think about what you know about our world, today. 

What does it take to learn Wealth Management?  What does it take to learn the difference between money and capital?

http://amazon.com/Rich-Dad-Poor-Robert-Kiyosaki-ebook/dp/B004XZR63M/

RICH DAD - POOR DAD is a key work by Robert Kiyosaki that's been around for years, yet still holds a truth that is the core of depicting the ultra-wealthy, or the scion of the uber-wealthy. 

We learn our initial attitudes from our parents, most especially our attitudes toward possessions, toward power over others ("Come here this instant or you're grounded for a week!"), and toward money and wealth, ("No you may not have an advance on your allowance.") from our parents.  After that, in college, peers and teachers toss in some adjustments, and eventually with our own paychecks, we see what works and what doesn't.

Most people never figure out why the behaviors that work are effective -- or why they can't control a budget or a diet. 

Self-control, self-discipline, self-governance can't be transmitted from parent to child with words. 

It's a do-as-I-do situation. 

Parents have to "model" budgeting, saving, investing, and all the fact-gathering and decision-making processes that go into wise behavior in order to transmit these behaviors.

The children of Aristocrats who grew up to manage inherited wealth well (rather than drinking and gambling it away) were trained from pre-verbal years to view privelege as a responsibility. 

The successful ones absorbed by osmosis the assumption that power must never be used for personal gain, particularly not for the "gain" of soothing one's own emotions. 

We are now seeing some new Fantasy Romances, and Science Fiction Romances, that depict the well-raised (well-mothered) scion of a rich, or nobel family who has internalized this attitude.

Here is a must-read novel from RoC by Juliet Marillier titled DREAMER'S POOL.  It contains a magic-using "Wise Woman" (herbal healer), a Prince, an Arranged Marriage fraught with real Romance, and mistaken identity all rolled into a fast reading tale of wealth and privelege properly stewarded.



Why are these novels of historical Aristocracy such successes in today's market where everyone knows Aristocracy was an utter disaster of a governing process, where the bloody French Revolution taught us so much, where women would never let their parents choose their husbands, and where being a Billionaire is prima facie evidence of skullduggery? 

Why do we think Cindarella got a better deal than her step-sisters? 

Why do we dream of being rescued into a life of wine and privelege when in real life we throw rotten tomatoes at the limos of the 1%? 

Perhaps it is because we are convinced that, given wealth enough to wield real Power, we would do it right.  Consider the biographies of winners of the Lottery twenty years later.  Very often, they lose everything within 5 years.  Could that be because they were not raised by wealthy-powerful parents and don't know the difference between money and wealth that we discussed in Depction Part 5? 

The poor -- or merchant/craftsman/artisan middle income folks -- look at Real Wealth from the outside and see it as easy to live that way. 

When such a 1%'ers life is lived by a person who was raised to it by a woman who was raised to raise boys to wield power without bullying, that 1%er's life looks easy -- from the outside. 

In fact, that "looks easy" effect is the definition of "Mastery."  When a master of a craft does it - it looks easy.  It looks as if anyone could do it without schooling or training or practice.

Have you ever watched a master glassblower?  Then tried it yourself? 

Massive wealth is fragile and must be handled delicately -- and it is very dangerous if it shatters.

History, and historical fiction, is littered with tales of the ne'er-do-well playboy, scion of a Titled Family, who fritters away his inherited fortune, goes into monstrous debt, and either finds his Soul Mate or ends badly in a duel.

Great fiction is composed of the juxtaposition of improbables.

SAVE THE CAT! calls that story type the "Fish Out Of Water."  A person who is out of his element, coping with the resultant conflicts.  A Lottery-Winner is a fish out of water if he/she wasn't already a 1%-er raised by 1%-ers. 

A mermaid on land is story material.

A human in space is story material.

An Aristocrat without principles living in the gutter is story material.

A gutter rat with principles living in a Palace is story material. 

A cop who does a great job as a cop is not story material, unless the story is based on the conflict between the Master Cop and Master Criminal -- and that's not a fish-out-of-water story. 

A cop who gets sucked into the vortex of some Bad Cops (maybe drug running or taking mob money to look the other way), is story material, and potential hero or villain.

An Orthodox Jewish Master Detective from Los Angeles who retires to be a small town patrol cop, but busts an international art theft ring and runs afowl of a Federal government plot involving the library collection of the most respected Rabbi of modern times -- THAT is story material.

Faye Kellerman has been writing a post-Romance series (22 books and counting) called the Decker/Lazarus novels.  The 2014 entry is exactly the fish-out-of-water novel I just described.  It's titled Murder 101.



MURDER 101 gets its title from being set in a college town, where the veteran Detective has taken on a protege.

The Dynastic Transmission of his professional skills (which are a power-management skill set, just like being a King or a Billionaire) is evident in the one family-dinner scene set in a restaurant where his kids and children-in-law gather, where an engagement is announced, and the protege who comes from a rich but dysfunctional family sees a functional working-stiff family functioning.

Decker's kids are cops, or work in allied fields using similar skill sets.  They all manage Power well.  The dominant factor in that values transmission success is Rina, Decker's wife, but his daughter by his first marriage is a successful cop, too.  She gets it from Decker, though she was raised by her mother. 

As I noted in my Amazon review of MURDER 101, the portrayal of the young protege is "off" just a bit.  He goes around with Decker, and Decker gets him to look up information online using the boy's iPad.  OK, fine, a small town police department would not issue high end equipment, but the iPad is the boy's own hardware.  The boy keeps asking people they are questioning the logon code for their wi-fi networks -- NOBODY WOULD DO THAT. 

Furthermore, they are in New York, where Verizon has LTE coverage, and no way on earth would a trust-fund-kid like this one ever fail to connect his iPad to Verizon's LTE (or something faster).  It's cheap and much more secure than strange wi-fi networks.  No way would a trust-fund-kid who is RICH fail to upgrade his iPad to wi-fi capable.  That is a FAIL on the author's part in "depicting dynastic wealth" (trust-fund-kids qualify as dynastic wealth portrayals.)

I call the Lazarus/Decker novels post-Romance because the first novel in the series, RITUAL BATH, is the actual romance -- where Decker and Rina Lazarus first meet.  After a while, they get married, have kids, raise kids, have crises, get invaded by the bad-guys who Decker is chasing, defend themselves well, and get through it all to retirement. 

Meanwhile, in other novels, they also deal with Decker's parents (who adopted him) - with a boy they adopt whose father is a mobster handling Power in a different way - and with Rina's very Orthodox family.



In MURDER 101 we see the Power-handling-skill-set being passed on to another kid who is bound for Harvard Law School and inheriting a serious fortune.  We see the step-by-step progress Decker's tutelage makes on this kid who has lost his way -- and we can infer the effect Decker's teaching will have on how the kid manages the extreme power the inheritance will bring.

In Jim Butcher's new Dresden Files novel, SKIN GAME, we see MAGICAL POWER in the hands of a man who lives, financially, hand-to-mouth.

He is a cop, of the magical variety, and regards that as a responsibility for the safety of Chicago, not as power over the peasants of Chicago.  He's had some love affairs -- and is currently getting more and more involved with a mundane cop who now knows all about the covert world of magic under Chicago.

Dresden comes back from exile on an island to find his woman and his protege and some friends have been trying to keep Chicago safe in his absense.  In the process, they have grown braver, gained skills, and amassed much power as well as wisdom in using it.

His style of power-management has rubbed off on them -- or he is friends with them because they share that attitude.

Jack Cambell is writing two series in the same universe.  I like one better than the other, perhaps just because I like the Hero.  Cambell has a whopping love story holding his THE LOST STARS series together, two military leaders trying to turn themselves into politicians co-ruling a star system even though their training conditions them to distrust each other.

In the IMPERFECT SWORD, they are separated and fight two different battles, winning despite the tricks played against them.  They win by applying their new theory of governance acquired from their former enemy, BLACK JACK.

Most of these novels, in both series, are nothing but large battles told from the POV of the General in charge, or the ship's captain dealing with enemy ships.

But the story and motivations of the characters is all about Relationship.

Taking a purely Relationship driven story, fraught with political philosophy, to an audience that hates romance and won't read non-fiction, and succeeding so very well at it, makes Jack Campbell a phenomenon to behold.



I've just given you 4 very recent novels, all aimed at very different readerships, all sharing a single attribute -- transmission of power-handling-skills.

Each of these novels depicts dynastic wealth of some sort.

Remember, wealth isn't money.  Money symbolically represents wealth, but wealth is not money. 

Wealth is something else.

Many people say that if you have a loving, functional family, you are wealthy even if living hand-to-mouth.  If you have your children around you, you are wealthy -- even if squatting on a dirt floor nibbling raw moldy potatoes.

Others say the only wealth they can't take away from you is your education.

In the Middle Ages, wealth was the ability to apprentice your boys to a Master Craftsman. 

In the Dresden Files, Dresden had built a magical laboratory, spending countless hours tediously creating magical tools from scratch.  By SKIN GAME, all that wealth had been ripped away from him, and he's left with only one tool he's just built plus his training and talent.

Wealth is fragile, but the responsibilities that go with such wealth are enduring.  Long after the wealth has shattered, the responsibilities will hound you. 

Wealth is the potential energy inherent in your very existence which you have packed into the forms of material objects.  If the wealth shatters, the material objects disappear, or wander into someone else's hands.  The objects themselves are not wealth. 

The energy of your life is your wealth.

So Wealth Management is self-discipline.  Wealth management is your ability to  make friends with yourself and persuade yourself to behave well.

So what is Dynastic Wealth?

Is there such a thing as inherited wealth that you have not earned?

If you assume that the concept "Soul Mate" has a valid corrolary in our everyday reality, then you have to consider that the children of Soul Mates somehow actually 'belong' to that couple.

If Souls are Mated, then the personal potential energy that each brings to the One they are when joined manifests as their wealth.

Children are one concrete manifestation of potential energy actualized. 

Children contain some of the potential energy contained in each parent Soul.

If the wealth generated by two mated Souls is inherited by the Child of those Souls, that inherited wealth is, sum and substance, an integral part of the two Parent Souls and the Child Soul. 

You can earn money, but you can't earn Wealth.  Wealth is the substance of your Soul made manifest -- you don't "earn" it; you "are" it. 

Your Wealth (in this science fictional theory) is part of you, just as your body is.

A strong man (or woman) can exert a considerable Power -- with muscles, or clever engineering -- creating a physical blow that can change things.  Hammering a nail.  Blowing up a dam.

What prevents a strong man (or woman) from hammering everything around them to smitherines?

Self-control governs -- the stronger you are, the stronger your self-control must be. 

Laws can't control you.  Taxes (Kings stealing your wealth) can't control you.  Kings can't control you.  "You" are both body and Soul, welded into a unit. 

Historically, we are still here, but Kings are pretty much gone. 

The Kings that are still here rule a constitutional monarchy.  The despots and strong-men are on their way out. (they keep popping up, but my bet is on democracy).

Dynastic Wealth is wealth accumulated over time, over generations.  The demonstrable fact that a second, maybe a third and fourth, generation has hung onto the inherited wealth, and added to it, shows that the wealth is truly theirs - truly a part of their Soul as their Soul is part of their Parents' Souls.

The Mate chosen to marry into a massive fortune (as the Princess-to-be in DREAMER'S POOL), both acquires that fortune and contributes to it, then produces an heir.

The heir is part of the Two Souls Joined, thus part of that fortune, not separate from it. 

That statement is almost a THEME.  To make it into a theme, you need to take it apart and inject the CONFLICT. 

For example, "Only Legitimate Heirs Can Manage Dynastic Wealth And Pass It On."

That would be a theme.  The conflict is in the question so urgently begged by the thematic statement: "So what constitutes Legitimate?"  And is loss of wealth under your management proof you aren't Legitimate? 

Does the husband have to be the father of the child for the child to be Legitimate? 

Is an adopted child a Legitimate heir?

What if something was wrong with the magical component of the Marriage Ceremony?   Would the children be Legitimate?

What if the Parents aren't of the same species? (Think SPOCK!)

What sorts of Tax Laws on inherited or Dynastic Wealth would species on other planets make?  What if they didn't have Souls, but humans did --- or vice-versa? 

THEME: Dynastic Wealth Accumulation is Toxic to Civilization.

CONFLICT: The Legitimate Heir to a throne flees the clutches of those who would place that heir on the throne (and manipulate them?) because the heir believes Dynastic Wealth is bad for Civilization.  Those who want to enthrone the legitimate heir believe the only way to avoid total war is to enthrone a legitimate heir.

ROMANCE: The current occupant of the throne (who is not legitimate) falls head over heels in love with the True Heir, who wants no part of any of this.

This scenario plays out in our real world in varying degrees all the time, especially in the USA.

Today a King doesn't have to be a Billionaire, or a 1%-er.  Today, the owner of a store, a business or a farm, or even possibly just a house, is a King, or at least a Duke, and the heirs have this same tricky problem of somehow managing to hold it all together, add to it, and pass it on.

Since, historically, some of the largest Fortunes (Rockefeller, Railroad Barons, Shipping Magnates,) from the 1800's industrialization, have been inherited by people who have apparently abused that Power, the USA has soured on the entire concept of Dynastic Wealth.

We are all "self-made" successes (or failures). 

Today's 50-somethings do not expect to inherit a single cent from their parents, and expect they won't be getting social security.  It's a bleak outlook.

Those folks are part of your audience, as are their children. 

In the 1940's, Congress made a series of laws essentially oblitterating the ability of a family to build dynastic wealth.

Tax laws were used to break up budding fortunes before they could become big enough to make politicians dance to the tune of the 1%.  (OK, yeah, it didn't exactly work out that way, but we're writing fiction here.)

Here's from WIKIPEDIA (I said we're writing fiction, so this is a good authority.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estate_tax_in_the_United_States

---------quote--------------

The term "death tax"

The caption for section 303 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954, enacted on August 16, 1954, refers to estate taxes, inheritance taxes, legacy taxes and succession taxes imposed because of the death of an individual as "death taxes." That wording remains in the caption of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended.[58] The term "death tax" is also a neologism used by critics to describe the U.S. federal estate tax in a way that conveys a negative connotation.

On July 1, 1862, the U.S. Congress enacted a "duty or tax" with respect to certain "legacies or distributive shares arising from personal property" passing, either by will or intestacy, from deceased persons.[59] The modern U.S. estate tax was enacted on September 8, 1916 under section 201 of the Revenue Act of 1916. Section 201 used the term "estate tax."[60][61] According to Professor Michael Graetz of Columbia Law School and professor emeritus at Yale Law School, opponents of the estate tax began calling it the "death tax" in the 1940s.[62] The term "death tax" more directly refers back to the original use of "death duties" to address the fact that death itself triggers the tax or the transfer of assets on which the tax is assessed.

Many opponents of the estate tax refer to it as the "death tax" in their public discourse partly because a death must occur before any tax on the deceased's assets can be realized and also because the tax rate is determined by the value of the deceased's persons assets rather than the amount each inheritor receives. Neither the number of inheritors nor the size of each inheritor's portion factors into the calculations for rate of the estate tax.

Proponents of the tax say the term "death tax" is imprecise, and that the term has been used since the nineteenth century to refer to all the death duties applied to transfers at death: estate, inheritance, succession and otherwise.[63]

Chye-Ching Huang and Nathaniel Frentz of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities assert that the claim that the estate tax is best characterized as a "death tax" is a myth, and that only the richest 0.14% of estates owe the tax.[64]

Political use of "death tax" as a synonym for "estate tax" was encouraged by Jack Faris of the National Federation of Independent Business[65] during the Speakership of Newt Gingrich.

Well-known Republican pollster Frank Luntz wrote that the term "death tax" "kindled voter resentment in a way that 'inheritance tax' and 'estate tax' do not".[66]

Linguist George Lakoff states that the term "death tax" is a deliberate and carefully calculated neologism used as a propaganda tactic to aid in efforts to repeal estate taxes. The use of "death tax" rather than "estate tax" in the wording of questions in the 2002 National Election Survey increased support for estate tax repeal by only a few percentage points.[67]

--------END QUOTE----------

So now, instead of being run by Aristocrats who have inherited Dynastic Fortunes, the USA is run by self-made million&billionaires.

Many first-term electees who are elected to the Federal House of Representatives or the Senate start out so stretched financially that they camp out in their Federal offices between trips home.  They can't afford an apartment in DC. 

If they are re-elected a few times, eventually they retire with a lot more money than you or I would ever imagine.  Nobody says how this little miracle happens, but one famous Mayor became famous trying to sell Barak Obama's Senate Seat because it was "Gold."  What do they know that we don't know?

Most of these self-made 1%-ers were raised by the Poor Dad described by Richard Kiyosaki in Rich Dad: Poor Dad.

The rags-to-riches stories of these people make great reading, very inspiring.

Many, however, did not rise from rags but from comfortable middle income families where they got a fairly good start.  The Founders of Microsoft and Facebook were college students at the time they quit school because their little fledgling enterprise was taking off into a full time job.

-------

Now pull back and take the long view of our Civlization -- not just the USA, but all of Humanity worldwide.

Take a view with a deep perspective showing Civlization all the way back to 7,000 BCE and the advent of Agriculture.

It seems Civilization has always been run by Dynastic Fortunes. 

If we run into Aliens in Outer Space who function on Dynastic Wealth, we should have no trouble understanding them. 

And we've always had "The Poor" -- usually if you were born poor, you were poor all your life and died really young.  Only recently has that changed, and it has not changed everywhere on Earth. 

We've always had Poverty as a fate.  Now we have poverty as a period in a person's life when they barely have clothes and food (think modern College Students).

It's healthy for the human spirit to learn just how little material wealth we actually need.  Some Eastern Religions (and Christianity, too) advocate shucking material "stuff" and venturing out into the world to live on luck and faith.  It works.  It changes people, and they think they're better off for it later.

But people who have never been "poor" (not knowing where your next meal is coming from) -- people raised in comfort if not luxury, taught by parents who imposed strick discipline because the child would become an heir to dynastic wealth, raised by people who had Kiyosaki's RICH DAD perspective and transmitted it, make decisions using a different process.

If you are so rich you don't know that you are rich, you don't look at the world from the perspective of fear or of poverty (except the mob may storm the palace.)

You don't "spend money" -- you achieve goals with your wealth.

True, the goals you choose may not serve the best interests of the poor.

But I'm talking here about a perspective - the attitude of a Character that would color their relationship with a potential Mate.

Civilization has always been run by Kings -- so much so, that when Israel was just starting to become a Nation, they asked God for a King like other countries had.  The Prophet they asked didn't understand why they needed a King when they had God.  A people where all the individuals behave according to the Commandments doesn't need much government -- people behave well and don't hurt each other or steal, and those who have take care of the poor.  If there's a problem, there are Judges in the Gates.  What do you need a King for?  Well -- everyone else has a King, and they won't talk to us farmers and ranchers; they want to talk to our King.

So Kings were the way of the World long before the Book of Kings.

A King who doesn't gain the throne by force of arms gains it by inheritance.

Thrones are all about Dynastic Wealth.

Dynastic Wealth has always run things -- for thousands of years -- and we're still here, wealthier for it.

In the 1940's, after WWII, in the USA, the Inheritance Tax was systematically rewritten specifically, (as a matter of the theory of governance by what we now call The Progressives) to prevent Dynastic Wealth from accumulating. 

So as I said above, we are now governed by New Money.

In this blog about the 1% I pointed out a quote from ROYAL PAINS on "New Money" and referenced the Estate Tax.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/10/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-7.html

New Money settles things with Lawyers; Old Money settles things over coctails. 

How much of the ineffectual decision-making we see in our current government is due to the decision-making processes inherent in the mind of a person of New Money? 

People raised by a Poor Dad (or no Dad) trying to handle the Power of real Wealth (and wealth that isn't their own) will grab at The Law to cure whatever problem they have.  Old Money knows how to apply dynastic power to finesse away problems and keep stability.  (If you hate the status quo, old money is the enemy!  Wow, Conflict!) 

Now go back to the 1960's and Johnson's WAR ON POVERTY initiative, and check out what progress we've made.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Poverty


http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2014/09/the-war-on-poverty-after-50-years
----------QUOTE------------
Since that time, U.S. taxpayers have spent over $22 trillion on anti-poverty programs (in constant 2012 dollars). Adjusted for inflation, this spending (which does not include Social Security or Medicare) is three times the cost of all military wars in U.S. history since the American Revolution. Despite this mountain of spending, progress against poverty, at least as measured by the government, has been minimal.
------------END QUOTE----------

You want to write a HOT ROMANCE? 

Remember the STAR TREK episode CITY ON THE EDGE OF FOREVER by Harlan Ellison.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708455/combined 

Kirk - adventure Hero Extraordinaire and crazy sexy playboy - meets up with his TRUE SOUL MATE who runs a soup kitchen during the Great Depression.

You can write that Romance, and end it with an HEA.

Worldbuild a place where Dynastic Wealth has been destroyed, and some hotshot yoyo idealist wants to get rid of all restrictions on inheritance and rebuild the Aristocracy of Extreme Wealth.

Opposing is the Soul Mate who sees any wealth in the control of a private citizen as purest Evil. 

This would work easily on an alien planet, maybe a shipwrecked human colony  living with some Natives (think about C. J. Cherryh's FOREIGNER universe).

Play that conflict out until their child comes of age with an opinion of his own -- maybe there are siblings?  Maybe one sibling is a clone of the father? 

THEME: we must rebuild the capacity to accumulate Dynastic Wealth
CONFLICT: The Couple accumulates wealth and is attacked by The Mob that greedily wants to steal or destroy it all (think French Revolution).

To make this work, you have to create a scion of a family that inherits Wealth and uses it well to keep people safe and government stable.  Opposing him/her, you need The Poor -- and you need a scion of a dynastic fortune that isn't a wastrel but is bent on gaining personal power.

Many of these novels have been published, many very well written, but there are still variations -- especially in the Science Fiction or Paranormal Romance hybrid genres -- that have to be treated.

Consider the role Romance novel has played in feminism, presenting the kick-ass heroine in a good light, showing young women what it is to be a hero and a woman at the same time. 

In the Western, we have heroic women who can keep a home together without a man to protect them and the children.  In Romance, we have women who rescue themselves and then turn around and rescue their guy. 

By looking at what it means to be a woman from every possible direction, women readers have come out of trying to dress and behave like men, to being charming and feminine in dress and manner, yet assertive and when warranted even aggressive at work, play, and local politics.

Perhaps it's time for the Romance hybrid genres to tackle the issue of what it means to be a Soul Mate, produce children, and bequeath them a Fortune.

I expect to see novels where children are tasked by their semi-wealthy parents to double their inheritance and pass it on, creating in 300 years or so, Dynastic Wealth in order to eradicate poverty as the "War on Poverty" has failed to do by destroying Dynastic Wealth? 

The four novels I've discussed here, Murder 101, Skin Game, and The Lost Stars: Imperfect Sword, and Dreamer's Pool, as well as the TV Series ROYAL PAINS, all in different genres aimed at different readerships, tiptoe around the edges of this theme of Dynastic Wealth as the prime weapon in the war against poverty. 

THEME: To command extreme wealth without destructive errors, one must be born and raised to the task.

Or:

THEME: Civilization will disintegrate without Dynastic Fortunes.

Consider, if today we decided the inheritance tax has to go -- so that we can rebuild dynastic wealth -- then what experienced people could train the next generation to wield that power in a constructive way?

Depict your King/Billionaire from the inside as understanding and acting upon the distinction between Money and Wealth, between Cash and Capital.  But when depicting such a King/Billionaire from the outside, those same actions will seem Greedy, callous, and irresponsible to the 99% who can not perceive the distinction.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com