I think there are five things I look for in an SF work:

Ideas
Plot
Characters
Storytelling
Prose

The quality and originality of the speculative IDEAS is very important when it comes to speculative fiction. Truly original ideas are generally better than simply giving old ideas new twists or exploring them in new ways, and that’s definitely preferable to simply rehashing old tropes in predictable ways (at some point that no longer truly counts as an ‘idea’ at all). The consequences of these ideas should be extrapolated and explored in as much depth as possible. And a bunch of different ideas all being played with at once is almost always greater than the sum of its parts.

A story’s PLOT should be exciting, intriguing, compelling, and/or powerful. It should put you on the edge of your seat, keep you pondering the possibilities, force you to turn the pages, and leave a deep impression upon you when all is said and done. It should never be contrived, forced, or (worst of all) boring.

The CHARACTERS should be well-drawn, believable, and distinct. If at least some among them are meaningfully changed during the course of the story, that’s all for the best. Characters should never be flat, forced, or dull.

The STORYTELLING needs to be clear, concise, and effective. Pick any two. Although having all three isn’t a bad thing, either. At its best, storytelling will enhance the characters and plot and ideas. At its worst, storytelling will interfere with the characters and plot and ideas.

An author’s PROSE should be beautiful, evocative, clear, and concise — or, at the very least, some effective combination thereof.

Confused by some of the distinctions of the five facets? The plot is what happens. The characters are the people to which it happens or who make it happen. The storytelling is the actual means by which the author communicates his plot and his characters to the audience (his choice of scenes, his narrative structure, his choice of where to begin and where to end). The prose is the actual language upon the page. The ideas permeate everything — although the speculative ideas which are the bedrock of speculative fiction are generally found exclusively in the plot and characters.

In truth, I think these five facets are important in any work of literature. Perhaps ideas do not need to be speculative in other genres, but I still think a work will benefit from charting a new course or playing with an original concept, rather than simply rehashing old tropes. For example, look at Sherlock Holmes or Harriet the Spy.

In the end, an effective book doesn’t necessarily need to excel in every facet. Rendezvous with Rama, for example, is one of my favorite books — despite the fact that its characters are just a few degrees away from inhabiting Flatland. The book succeeds because it is driven by a compelling plot and some ideas of epic scope, with transparent storytelling and prose that don’t get in the way. (And, actually, that last is not true: The storytelling is actually brilliant, albeit subtle. One of Clarke’s storytelling decisions is, in fact, responsible for Rendezvous with Rama being a classic rather than just a pretty good book. I am, of course, talking about the last line.)

If I had the power to take over the Star Trek franchise at any time during its history, the moment I would choose would be just after Unification, Part I: TNG was at its height of popularity. Every thread had come together to form the seed of a vast, star-flung epic of interstellar war between the Federation and the Romulan Empire.

And then, with Unification, Part II, the producers and writers chickened out: The crisis was averted through a convenient deus ex machina, the character of Sela was conveniently shuffled off-stage, and Spock’s insurgent philosophies were wiped from the series’ memory.

Perhaps we’d lose the brilliance of “I, Borg”, “The Inner Light”, “The Chain of Command”, and a few other classics… but TNG could be turned from its eventual decline to a vibrant new life in which the political machinations of the Klingons, Romulans, and Cardassians would all be interwoven into a compelling saga.

If we wanted to get really daring, Picard would be promoted to Admiral – although his role on the series would continue (he would be the lynchpin which would allow us to get a wider perspective on the war without contrivance; and the Enterprise would be his pet ship for black ops assignments).

Then, when TNG had come to its natural conclusion along with the Romulan War, we would skip the ultimately stagnant waters of DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise – opting to take the franchise in a bold new direction: Hiring visionaries like Vernor Vinge and Iain Banks, we would re-imagine a future a hundred years in TNG’s future… in which all of the scientific devices and innovations we have seen on the series are taken to their logical conclusion.

During my two months incommunicado with an internet connection best described as gulping-air-through-a-short-straw, I did three things of particular note: I bought a new car. I made significant contributions to the Wikipedia articles on “Dungeons & Dragon”, “Star Wars”, and “Expanded Universe (Star Wars)”.

And I started a new exercise program.

EXERCISE CARPE DIEM

My old exercise program was a brute force affair: Five times a week I would engage in a full suite of exercises involving stretches, sit-ups, push-ups, free weights, an exercise bike, and more. Or, rather, I should say that I attempted to do so five times a week.

The problem was that this exercise program took at least an hour, usually two, to complete. And I would sweat so heavily that I would need to take a shower after completing it. That’s a significant chunk of time, and there are only so many hours in the day. So if I had any kind of social commitment – or was just feeling lazy – the exercises wouldn’t get done. Eventually it would be one missed day… a missed week… a missed month…

… When was the last time I exercised, anyway?

And then your body starts feeling it: You’re lethargic. Your muscles ache after a normal day of activities. You’re so far out of shape that you don’t feel like exercising. (Plus, the exercise bike has become a shelving unit.) It doesn’t take long before that vicious cycle has pulled you right back to where you started.

So I decided to try something different. The problem I was having was that, with a busy schedule, it’s not easy to squeeze an hour or two hours or even half an hour of exercise into your daily routine. Plus, for a lot of exercises to be successful, you need to give your muscles a chance to rest, so you can’t do them every day. As a result, since you simply can’t do it every day, it’s difficult to make exercise habitual.

The concept I embraced was “carpe diem”, seize the day. Or, more accurately in this case, seize the moment. Rather than trying to design a half hour exercise routine to fit into my daily schedule, I found some simple exercises that could be done in a minute or two… and then squeezed them into all those little dead moments between one task and the next throughout my busy day.

Basics: I chose sit-ups and push-ups as my two simple exercises. I started with 10 sit-ups and 5 push-ups, and in less than a month I’ve built myself up to 25 sit-ups and 20 push-ups. I alternate between the two: On one day I’ll do push-ups; on the next I’ll do sit-ups. This gives my muscles a chance to recover and maximizes my results.

Schedule: I do one set first thing in the morning, and then I do another set every hour until the end of my work day. That ends up being eight or nine sets each day. So when I was first doing 10 sit-ups in each routine, I was actually doing 80 or 90 sit-ups each day. Now I’m doing 200 or 225 sit-ups each day.

The trick is not to fret too much about doing the exercises at a specific time. Rather, find those natural moments throughout the day when you’ve got nothing immediate to do or just want a quick break from what you’re doing, then drop down and do a quick set of push-ups.

For example, I try to get a set of “8 o’clock push-ups”, a set of “9 o’clock push-ups”, and so forth. But I don’t worry too much about getting them done at 9 o’clock sharp. If they don’t happen until 9:15 that’s fine. If I’m in a meeting from 9 to 11, I’ll do them every half hour instead of every hour until 1 o’clock and then I’ll be caught up. If I’m having a particularly busy day at work, I’ll squeeze in a couple of quick sets after I get home. (Heck, if I feel like it, I’ll keep doing additional sets throughout the evening.)

Tips: Do the exercises seven days a week. I usually end up taking it a little bit easier on my days off – largely because I’m not as time conscious as I am at the office – but I still make a point of doing them. If you do them every day, it’ll become a habit to do them every day.

Got a desk job? Put a Post-It note on your monitor at work with a single word like: “Push-Ups” or “Sit-Ups” or “Exercise”. Whenever your eye happens to catch the Post-It Note, make a point of getting up and doing a quick set.

Increase the number of repetitions slowly. The best time to make a judgment is in your last couple of sets in a day: If you’re completing those without any real sense of burn, then it’s probably time to add another 5 reps to your routine.

Do you work in a setting or with a dress code that makes it difficult to drop to the floor for sit-ups and push-ups? Find some exercises you can do while still sitting at your desk. Buy some freeweights and set them next to your chair. Or find a nearby conference room you can retreat to for ninety seconds.

Cardiovascular: These carpe diem routines are going to build tone and push your body back into shape. But if you’re looking to lose weight, you’re going to need to burn some calories. And you need solid cardiovascular exercise to keep yourself fit in any case.

Effective cardiovascular exercise takes time; it’s not something you can squeeze into five minute blocks throughout the day. So what you want to do here is find a cardiovascular activity that you can incorporate into something you’re already doing on a daily basis. For most of us, watching television should do the trick.

I’ve got my exercise bike setup so that it faces the television. At the moment, I’ve got a DVD set of Naruto (a half-hour anime series) and another DVD set of Lost (an hour-long drama). These are both shows I really enjoy and that I really want to watch, but I’ve simply promised myself that I will only watch them if I’m peddling on my bike. These give me pre-built 25 minute and 45 minute exercise routines, and I’m eventually going to build up my endurance so that I can handle feature films in one sitting (giving me 90 minute and 120 minute routines, depending on the film).

Since these are shows I want to watch, I’ve got an immediate motivation to get me back on the exercise bike each day, since I want to watch the next episode. (Stuff with cliffhangers at the end of every episode is great.) And since it’s something I would be finding the time to do anyway, I don’t have to go out of my way to find time in my schedule. All I have to do is condition myself to sit on the exercise bike instead of the couch.

“Justin!” I hear you cry. “Why have your updates not been forthcoming? Why have you left us bereft upon the cold currents of the barren Internet? Why have you abandoned us? Why have you robbed us of your pearls of wisdom?!”

Or, at least, the six of you who check this page on a completely irregular basis may be wondering why I’ve only updated twice in August. Possibly. (I’m not putting any money on it.)

Well, partly because of My Bedroom the Swamp. And partly because my brother graduated from Iowa State University yesterday. (Congrats!) But for the past couple of days it’s because my brain has been eaten by a Bigger Better Fnord. Check it out. And then you can pop over to this thread and give us all a helping hand in untangling the unfathomable mysteries of the Fnord.

And tomorrow I’ll have some honest-to-god content. Maybe. (I wouldn’t put any money on it.)

Yesterday evening I was talking to my oldest friend in the entire world about the general discontent and dissatisfaction we were feeling with our lives. I sit here, at twenty-five, and I wonder where my life took a wrong turn. And, basically, I know where my life took a wrong turn: Sophomore year in high school. That’s the year where the utter mediocrity of the education system broke my soul. After an illness which took me out of school for the better part of a month, I returned to discover that I could, in fact, catch up on an entire month’s worth of school work at A+ levels in two days. Two days.

Up to that point I had always faced school as a challenge. A competition which could be won. And, as a result, I was an over-achiever. Just a year earlier I had stayed up for 48 hours straight to complete an 80-page biography of Shakespeare… for an assignment which only required a 5-page research paper.

But, ultimately, the lesson I ended up carrying away from school was this: I can put off any assignment to the last minute, crank it out in a couple of hours, and expect marvelous success. I can slack off to an astonishing degree and still succeed, because I am so gosh-darn smart and my teachers love me for it.

These are piss-poor lessons to learn, and I wish I never had. Because once I became actively conscious of the charade I had been playing, the new challenge became, “Just how far can I push before anybody holds me to account?” Well, the first and easiest answer: If I miss two months worth of school, they’ll knock down my grades from their former highs (even if I’ve completed all the work). But that was just playing games with the backwards absenteeism policies of a bureaucratic school system. So now I focused on procrastination and putting the least amount of work into assignments that I could manage while still pulling down A+ grades.

The worst part is that, actively conscious of the charade as I now was, I wasn’t actively conscious of the new games I was playing. Not for awhile, any way. And I learned a very bad life lesson.

I lack discipline.

I don’t meet the goals I set for myself. I don’t achieve the things I want to achieve. I don’t have the life I want to have.

And I’ve known that for awhile now, and I still can’t fix it.

That’s the conversation I had this evening. And then I got off the phone, logged into my e-mail account, and discovered that Kris Okins had died. She was a friend and classmate when I attended the Minnesota Arts High School. We hadn’t talked since we graduated, so I didn’t know that in the years since she’d moved to Portland, Oregon. That’s where she was hit by a truck while riding her bike.

The e-mail that delivered the news to me included a news article, which read in part: “When Melissa encouraged her to get back to her career as a graphic artist, Kristine shrugged it off. She had had a taste of sitting all day in front of a computer screen, she said. Right now, she loved her life, loved her freedom and wanted to enjoy it a little while longer. She had a whole lifetime ahead of her to spend in front of that screen.”

Thus, we have a moment of personal crisis, a moment of tragedy, and a moment of synchronicity. (One might even say serendipity, since a picture of John Cusack just popped up in the background as I type this.)

The lesson I should be learning here is simple: Life is short. Live it. Don’t Waste it.

But the thing which frightens me is that, even knowing this, I still won’t have learned it. Twenty-five will become thirty, thirty will become thirty-five… and I’ll still be sitting here. Living the hollow shell of a the life I could have had.

My dreams shall be the stuff of nightmares…