Sortmind Blog – Michael D. Smith

The Sortmind Draft One Project

Posted on November 18, 2024 by Michael D. SmithNovember 18, 2024

Why

I sometimes reread first drafts of my novels, usually amazed by how the sprawling but somehow compelling mess eventually congealed into a publishable story–or in some cases, was so bad I abandoned it.

When I rediscovered the first draft of Sortmind, 1987-1988, I stumbled into a writing project with unexpected high energy. The rough draft, seen from my current position of not being under any pressure to rewrite it, and not really remembering huge amounts of it, is something I can appreciate as its own finished novel. There are first draft errors, but there’s good writing in this book all the way through, especially considering this is a rough draft.

I’m finding much of my writing legacy in this draft. If it weren’t for the fact that a better, and much rebooted, final published 2019 version exists, and that the 1987 computerization thoughts would need a lot of reworking, this thing might be cleaned up and presented as a massive Bildungsroman.

How It Came About

In my typewriter days I made photocopies as backups of my novels and so I have a lot of rather useless novel folders now. I figured I could pull some of them from my cramped file cabinets and store them in binders in banker boxes. As I did with other photocopies in the past, I intended to turn some of these into scrap paper. In fact, I assumed I didn’t need an old photocopy of Sortmind’s rough draft and was preparing to turf it as well.

But the photocopy looked pretty clean, and I figured I might want a handy digital copy to reread. Sheet-feeding thirty-some pages at a time, I quickly got the entire 1,075-page manuscript into PDF format. But something compelled me to go beyond that, and I found myself uploading the PDF chunks into Google Docs, which does a great job OCR’ing the text; then I glued it all together.

My instinct to save the photocopy was on target, as I finally discovered that, though it did get a few corrections in pen and obscuring marker, it’s essentially a perfect version of Draft 1, as opposed to the first typewritten version which was thoroughly marked up for Draft Two work. The difference between photocopy (left) and typewritten (right) is telling:

Getting all this formatted into a single Word document was a pain, but Draft One now incorporates the corrections and deletions made during the first draft (3/13/87-9/9/88), as well as those made on both typescript and photocopy through the beginning of Draft 2 on 2/5/89; I’m still astonished that I kept both typescript and photocopy congruent with updates during that time.

Thus Sortmind Draft One is a somewhat polished first draft, not the UR-draft. It obviously won’t be published since the 2019 version of Sortmind is the final one. Draft One’s word count is 401,571; the final’s is 132,854–33.08% of the original.

There are no changes to the original Draft One manuscript except:

Correcting typos and standardizing capitalization and spelling
Making formatting changes for clarity
Adding back a few items (17 total) deleted between September 1988 and February 1989 that struck as being part of Draft’s One’s flavor.

The Vast Differences

Since I dated every writing session, I know that Sortmind’s drafts ran:

Draft 1, 3/13/87-9/9/88
Draft 2, 2/5/89-6/21/90
Draft 3 to 1994 MS., 6/30/90-4/10/94
Draft 4, 2/13/06-2/15/07
Draft 5 to 2008 MS. (envisioned as a trilogy), 11/8/07-4/26/08
Draft 6 (trilogy concept abandoned), 5/17/10
Draft 7 (major reboot), 4/9/16-8/14/16
Draft 8, 8/25/17-12/21/17
Draft 9 to 2019 MS., 12/22/17-2/11/19, then various formats published by 2/14/19

Though the second draft shed much of the first’s meandering storylines, it was faithful to the initial vision, and I sent out numerous publisher queries for the resulting 1994 manuscript. The 2006-2010 versions likewise worked off the original concept as I struggled to get this lengthy book into what I thought was a more publishable shape. But I finally recognized my desperation here as I polluted the style with italicized thinking and tried to market the thing as a trilogy.

By the time I got on top of what I really wanted from this novel, I produced a major 2016-19 reboot which shortened the book, moved the action away from the library world, updated the technology, dramatically altered the plot, removed any consideration of eighties-era architectural considerations in favor of telepathy and alien contact, and centered and developed the characters.

Looking back at the original version, I’m struck by the immense amount of cut storylines, many of which I had forgotten writing. Here are some I dropped along the way. These weren’t just minor character mentions, either; they had themes that went through the book and reappeared at decisive plot points:

Laura Plaster, the assaulted alien, and Ben Plaster, her malignant stepfather
Lucinda Zavala Duce, Tree Leopard sorceress, and her alien friend Thalia from Cnzaar
Michael McNamara, Ufologist; he and Lucinda, long gone by the final version, have rich histories and serve useful purposes.
Seventeen-year-old Oliver’s award-winning adolescent short story, and his barn suicide attempt
Terrorist Edward Duce’s song-writing career twenty years previously at Darkforce Theological Seminary
Blar the hapless victim, Blar the inspirational leader, Blar rescued by aliens and transformed into an eloquent robot to calm a riot
Future demagogue Randall Perrine, Blar and Laura at the Tollhouse in the madhouse of “New Fascist Australia”
The Air War and Perrine as a Mindwiped bomber tail gunner in Nightmare Mode
Mitchell Krazmotik’s extensive Nightmare Mode in the scary slums of East Drulgoorijk, where he has illuminating engagements with Oliver’s sister Elise and the alien Shelley
Oliver and Suzanne’s thwarted romance in the face of the South Pacific Conference disaster
Suzanne the librarian-in-training kidnapped by the street person Geniushead
The library director’s pathetic attempts to salvage a failed love affair via lucid dreaming
Hostages held by For the Triangles Foundation militia on the freeway overpass
Barbie the cheerleader/Tree Leopard-sorceress

Draft One doesn’t contain the final version’s psychologically correct endings–Oliver choosing the real Teresa over the computer program Suzanne, and deciding to burn his apartment to wipe out the cesspool Edward Duce, but I can still see that its ending works pretty well. Oddly for one of my rough drafts, despite all the meandering storylines, this novel as a whole is one completed narrative that does hold together.

Originally the Telepathic Database problems were conceived of as worldwide until midway into the first draft, when it became necessary to limit all of the action of the novel to one city. Most of the edits to Draft One had to do with this issue. By the time of the final draft, this was developed as a telepathic app available only in the city of Canterra.

What was oddly prescient about 1987-88 Sortmind Draft One:

The Telepathic Database scraping content from all over the world
The Anti-Artificial Intelligence group
The addictive nature of searching, and potential Mindwipe
The nature of library databases, indexes, and networks
The shrill debates between rival left and right political factions, though in this case they fought about triangles on top of buildings.
Ruminations about library and city politics that would kepe unfolding through a few more decades

The Library-Centric Version

The library setting doesn’t bother me as much as it did when I decided to reboot the novel in 2016, but now that I’m retired from the library world, I can accept Draft One’s library emphasis more easily.

By the time of the final Sortmind of 2016-2019, I was eager to dethrone the library from the novel, eliminating all references to my earlier librarian career and replacing the library setting with a business start-up. I thought that writing about libraries demonstrated how much in thrall I’d been to libraries, that “Write what you know” had become cute and self-serving. I still feel there’s truth in that, but now I find myself rather glad to see my 1980s ideas about the library so well-documented. The only problem is that despite all the prescient stuff in there, it’s still 1980s tech and so there’s no way I’d feel comfortable releasing this as a “alternate Sortmind novel,” even if I figured out some way it wouldn’t conflict with the final Sortmind. Yet it’s good to see this original effort as a testament to that other profession.

As for New Fiction …

Creating this document was an amazing experience despite doubts along the way that I’ve just been locked into past-tripping. But there’s important energy here, and I have no fear of my new fiction voice going away.

I got the final PDF to lulu.com and made a quirky, 775-page “private access” paperback. I came up with a cover that reverberates, especially for a book that won’t be published–note the title on the spine only. I made good use of styles to keep the format adjusted as I got the MS. under the 800-page limit, and I think the final result looks good. I’m sure there are still scores of minor errors throughout this thing, but that’s not a concern.

I’m still amazed that, even as a rough draft with meandering sections that were long ago cut from the final Sortmind, this story holds together so well. It really is one of my foundational documents, like Akard Draft One.

In fact, I’m a little jealous of this amazing rough draft and for a while now I’ve felt the blunt energies for another long novel, despite the frustration of not knowing what it is to be. I think this issue is central to why I choose to go ahead and continue the Sortmind Draft One Project through a mere PDF to a final Word document and to an unpublished paperback.

Dreams Used in Zarreich

Posted on September 1, 2024 by Michael D. SmithSeptember 1, 2024

Emily Donne

Since one of Zarreich’s aims was to make sense of and tie together numerous Other World dreams I’d had over the years, I went through my journals in May 1981 to make a compilation of such dreams in preparation for the novel. I called these Other World dreams because they seemed to imply actual, real realms I was visiting in dreams, as opposed to being purely psychological scenarios.

I’ve always called this compilation 100 Dreams, but the final total is 121. Of these, 22 were used in the first draft; of these, 13 survived into the second draft (shown in blue text below). Three of the dreams came later in 1981 after the compilation, as I was underway on Zarreich.

I still have no plans to publish this novel, especially in its current Draft 2 condition, but I’m curious to keep investigating the forces behind Zarreich/

8/18/73

Library Raskolnikov dream: my little garret on the fifth floor of a surreal ancient library; my cheerful isolation yet politeness to other people. I drive in last nostalgic year to see about a job, to go over old memories.

10/25/73

I had been in the rural bathroom (in the college park) earlier, and the light worked then (as did the surreal gym and locker room). However, one night I parked my car and went inside, feeling very unsteady. The light would not go on. I was terrified, tried to urinate. I knew the walls were sick and green. The floor became alligator scales, greasy. I began to fall and fall. Suddenly I knew I had been poisoned, completely overdosed. In the space of seconds this nauseous feeling accelerated into total mind disorder, the perceptions broke apart in horror. I was dimly aware that I would keep accelerating until I became a vegetable person. “I must be crazy,” I thought, and this thought seemed to be an intense work of art on my part. I ran to the door and opened it: the gray night light came into the black bathroom.

1/16/76

The drive to a mythological college (Rice?) from Maryland to South Texas–complete isolation of myself there, the endless, fruitless drive. The vast curved yellow plain/ my love of the freedom in that situation. The University is a pleasure, and connotes union with the female.

Jim Cathedral

3/31/78

The corridors continue under the entire surface of the earth–they are international and non-denominational, like one big high school down here–I go five levels down, it’s a real basement, thinking of M. who works as an accountant on the surface (in a building, to be sure, connected to the underground). But that’s why no one has seen him recently–he works too much–late at night with his books and dingy office and dim yellow cheapass light. Meanwhile around one corner I find anarchy: kids my age living here in a level five commune. On a bulletin board I encounter pictures of Jim, obviously put there by Jim himself: Jim is a Japanese dude with sunglasses, very small, and is obviously the resident “kick-me” asshole. He has put up signs over his pictures which say: “The Greatest Commune Member,” or “Jim, the One You Love,” etc. After talking with some other California commune people, I verify that everyone dislikes Jim.

But he has power. He makes them play his “kick me I’m an asshole” game. I watch him being filmed in a Coca-Cola/sex commercial. His girl is flipping out at his asshole humor. “I’d sure like a Coke!” he says. I resolve to understand Jim better, though I fear his asshole games.

9/5/78

Speech to river university (Rice and Richland, deep night) concerning justice–me, alone, to cut down some attacker and/or defend an innocent, other aspects of this university.

Cindy Vespertine

9/9/78

We return to Rice–media center/dorm. Lunch bags–garden–midday–vine-covered house–everyone loose in the head. I read a women’s college magazine:

1) Interview with a Rock Star
2) “Sea Girl of Texas”–from the coast and obviously the editor, writes of her love for sex, but extremely poetic and full of soul. I see the editor in her (hospital) room–minor sex episode–everything so loose–night.

9:00 AM and my balcony (indoor) room–much exploration of consciousness to be done.

Peter Pentacre

12/30/78

Back room–A.’s commune–Illinois–me alone (TV there?)–I wonder at who originally bought this house and then forgot it, moved out as this neighborhood “went to seed” and drugs. Drug commune (C., D., and others). Green shades, green texture–my separation from commune (I’m a visitor). The most minor hint of Akard commune. Outside screen door, humid wetness (slight winter) and carport–a cat, black and white, is in my room–chicken carcass on a black mat outside in carport– I eat some chicken meat, but don’t allow cat any, as I don’t want it to have chicken breath, as it will sleep with me. Girl (Crystal type) hides behind sculpture in the hallway leading here:

Rest of commune involved in drug party. It is both 3 AM and dawn. House next door occupied by other freaks I don’t know–M. S.’s yard is the feel here.

C. slowly advances, laughing. I close my eyes and pretend I’m asleep. But she comes to my bed and (she is the anima). Nothing evil about her at all. She is good humored, but also a part of a commune which I don’t understand. The house is more M.s house. I am a total stranger at the place; my sleep in the little room smacks of doing penance. C. is not really supposed to have any contact with me.

1/11/79

I’m driving a car (and/or walking) on a completely conceptual interstate towards Los Angeles (which has taken on an “importance” in my thoughts recently). Strangely shaped blocks, symbols, kinetic sculptures, everywhere. The L.A. skyline looms ahead (no California mountains in the dream–it’s all a vast green plain)–equally cubist, blocked, insane, powerful, working well. To the north I see San Francisco (c.f. S.F. buried dream within past month–hotel, parents, insanity! Other World–same S.F. as this dream). S. F. is equally blocked–but the sculptures and buildings are “thinner” and “gentler,” more artistic and cultural. (Cut to rooftop speculation on bullshit in Dallas skyline–flying horse, clock, Republic National Bank rocket.)

I consider as I (humorously) travel on the interstate (shapes everywhere, I go at varying speeds to interact with all obstacles), the S.F./L.A. duality as being similar to the Dallas/Houston duality. Also, how neat it is that both skylines are visible on this Other World interstate. Interstate packed full of conceptual automobiles, people, problems–a great caravan of humanity journeying on this Interstate.

3/7/79

August night (complexion cream). Our house–behind it a garage apartment. “Similar to my old one.” An Interstellar Wombat picture there, but one I dislike. I set up two canvases up there, 5 x 5, on chairs, they tower over me, giant walls, one is I.W., with deep blue swirls and orange, the other is blank. I intend to “rewrite” I.W. on the new canvas. But I think that I could also paint right over I.W., do two canvases at once. I begin to like the deep blue tones, clouds of I.W. more.

Eric Cathedral

8/1/79

The shapes are the shapes of keys, concepts from intelligence tests, the mall is modern. It is the blocks of technology. I scramble to the railing and five or fifteen or fifty stories below me, the concrete of a more massive mall. Dizzily I fall backwards, vertigo, pebbled walks, planters, cheerleaders. But above the mall extends into more keys, blocks, levels–and the sky. The anti-vertigo is worse. Gravity slides. But I find a sunlit block of crabgrass. I concentrate on the crabgrass, and calm down. Later, in the lower mall, I explain it all easily.

12/4/79

S. or C. or both at first day of Rice–August 1970 (yet also, familiar summer–could be beginning of sophomore or junior year). Dark, cold monastic Wiess College–in summer, Saturday morning, and currently run by Catholic nuns and cheerleaders and bankers’ group. The second floor (stone) interior corridor. The two guys I met at 11/3 homecoming. Students start arriving. The marsh outside. Green-blue-brown. Damp and cold. Possibilities. S/C is my friend.

Larry Cathedral

12/17/79

It is May. Implying first house in Australia–as my dorm room. G. gives someone else speed. I’m afraid to ask but he gives me 5 or 6 beautiful hits. Near end of semester. The open-ended feeling/apocalypse and triumph. The deep night. The forest around the school. I plan to stay up all night. X. is there. “Where are they hiding all the speed?” she says. I offer her one of my hits, tell her of my plans–and tell her she can get more speed from G.

11/16/80

I have returned to Evanston to take a room and relive my past there–some necessity. All very compelling. An old poet and his two sons offer to go on a walk with me–at first I decline, but then I accept on the condition that we cover all the places I need to. White room with bright window–to the lake–

12/20/80

A community celebration, lasting for weeks, in a large indoor shopping center–and spreading out far past that. Total celebration mood–standing in line at ice cream store to get my 20th cup of beer. I am free to do exactly as I please.

1/20/81

I have a motorcycle with no hand grips–riding with X. in traffic–to weird stone amusement park stand run by middle-aged man and woman–bright morning–I put the bike in the back seat of the VW and drive it home. But then I pull into a gas station, deciding to take the motorcycle after all. When I start to pull it out, it turns into Ming, sleepy, fat Siamese. Ming puts his claws into the seat and refuses to be pulled out. I do succeed in getting him over a couple feet, but by this time he’s so pissed off that I decide it will be best to leave him alone. He goes back to sleep, and I resume driving. That very open and clear road–“to the north, running east/west through a relaxed urban space”–like North Rice Blvd. in Bellaire?–opening up into other “green urban” buried dream scenes.

1/31/81

The blue corridors … level X of an N-leveled library, university, etc.–this area being nothing but solid corridors. None of it is scary. I am exploring–I’ve come from the black and white corridors to the blue ones (related to an earlier “library levels” dream written earlier, I believe–probably the same structure.)

Dazzy Radbiest

2/7/81

In haunted house all night party–building a giant wrap-around table in different layers. Paintings, stairs, laboratory in it. My power (even “evil.”) All the personalities there–G. S. at the end driving his car up the Dark Hill as I prepare to leave the old millionaires’ burnt-out five AM conversation. We discuss (he is now D. U.) German grammar.

3/31/81

Dream: entire perspective of my life, nearing 30 … in terms of an open-ended house (Fair Haven, New Jersey atmosphere?) Traveller(s) in trucks visiting … S.? … with X., talking about direction of my life. Realization that I am on the verge of some great writing … in terms of that entire perspective. “I don’t mind if my life accelerates from 30 on out–as long as I get that powerful writing out …” Pond, morning twilight … vast spaces, prairie, beyond the house. Begins: Truck driver-me pulling into house? S. visit? summer night–then it becomes my open-ended house.

4/19/81

The village in the sunny valley (arranged as plain, valley, hill, 2nd plain–the first valley is the quaint village–the 2nd plain is the magnificent city built out of nothing.

Into this I come, a Jim Piston character, with my .38. I live in the first valley with my grandmother. But a guy next door strikes me as evil and so I shoot him– several times–but though I know I am doing damage, he keeps standing in the doorway laughing. In paranoia I keep loading my gun and firing it at this guy. In the kitchen. Finally I say to myself: “C’mon, you’re acting just like Jim Piston now.”

6/14/81

Driving VW with X. on a black rural road at night–which has been roadblocked–a hundred-foot-deep barricade–by the road’s construction workers, who are on strike. Anger and tension in the air–the workers, the cops, the stranded drivers. Sense of a giant interchange half-constructed behind the barricade. All headlights are turned off, and I realize I cannot see anything at all–it is complete and total blackness (such as I experienced in the cave near Llano in ’71) and I walk around the cop cars and the drivers parked at the side of the road maneuvering by “a sense of the volumes I can remember.” The blackness seems to be the result of the roadblock. I know the black fields go on, uninhabited, for hundreds of miles around us. Some of the cops do occasionally use a flashlight. X. and I have a long red flashlight. I shine it on the ground. “We will be able to survive, at least,” I say.

Matthew Gegenstand

7/20/81

Me downtown at night–rainy–in my raincoat w/suitcase–having so much trouble walking–fighting the wind. After a movie, or business consultation, “The Hilton” (the library)–needing more business, needing sex. Other people on the street (Commerce). Then: in “rental room” of “M.’s house” at night, He informs me that if I sign the contract, at 9:00 the next morning, S. will be here. Yet: I am horrified–it is 10:00 PM and X. must be home waiting for me–I gather my things and leave (instead of staying all night until 9 AM).

But: no conversation with X. shown in this movie. It is 9:00 AM the next day and I am greeting M. at the modern high school bowling alley. He says: “Come into my cubicle and we’ll discuss that contract.” (Dream ended here by alarm. Very deep–with all sorts of side situations, such as “my sunlit shack at the side of the road.”)

9/16/81

Dream: on Willow St., Fair Haven–1981 perspective–other world–beings–the sense of total release–the same as (tied into?) the “South Pacific series of islands and world geography dream.” Also triggered by this: the drive down “Lake Shore Drive” dream–Northwestern–or something–on the lake (very old dream). In a book I read about the sea and islands north of the U.S.S.R.–was tied into this feeling of: infinitely beautiful world–I am totally free to explore it–

Sunlight down Willow–somehow sunlight down to Hance Rd. (connecting the 2 schools?) in fog–the “beings” are on this street–from another planet? At any rate I am one of them.

Zarreich – The Draft Covers

Posted on August 29, 2024 by Michael D. SmithAugust 29, 2024

I cleaned up Draft 2 a bit since the previous blog post but froze it there and created a document for a potential Draft 3. Along the way I decided I wanted a cover to focus the project, and wound up creating such a good one that I seem to have prodded myself to someday publish Zarreich. It’s really up in the air; Draft 2 can’t be published but I’m not sure what will follow. Yet the cover seems to compel me. There are actually two draft covers; I bought two images, but the first (highway to city, iStock.com/bulgac) is better–though the second (brown city, iStock.com/mppriv) probably more accurately conveys what the city of Zarreich looks like:

I still don’t know whether to feel proud that I pulled “the real novel” out in Draft 2 or whether this is some idiocy I should be ashamed of! Would I want anyone to read Draft 2? I do need some time to consider whether I should attempt a Draft 3, a true reboot. A few interesting ideas for changes have arisen in the past few days, but it’s time to let this thing lie fallow awhile and see what subconsciously unfolds.

I see Zarreich as something that might develop and emerge, though I have the responsibility to make the right decision on whether to publish.

Zarreich – Character Images

Zarreich: The Unexpected Second Draft

Posted on August 13, 2024 by Michael D. SmithAugust 13, 2024

Diana Arbor copyright 2024 by Michael D. Smith

Diana of the Commune

This summer’s successful resurrection of The University of Mars got me wondering if I couldn’t do the same for another older novel I’d once declared dead. I’ve just finished a second draft of Zarreich, but this novel isn’t ready for publication, nor may it ever be. In fact, not committing to publishing helped me loosen up and write Draft 2.

Rough Synopsis

Jim Donne, a recent college graduate, comes to live in a small town after the death of his mother, only to discover that all his memories have been wiped out. Now living with his grandmother, he kills what he thinks is a gang leader invading her home. But he panics, wondering whether he’s overreacted to a harmless student prank, and he cuts up and hides the body. Soon he finds himself under a ludicrously botched police investigation. Slipping into hallucinatory fevers, he tries to disappear into a stifling clerical job at a mortgage company in the ruined city of Zarreich. Yet he’s soon drafted into a secret commune of twelve dreamers in an underground university he can only faintly remember.

Revisiting a 2015 Condemnation

Oceanmouth copyright 2024 by Michael D. Smith

Oceanmouth, sixteen-year-old car mechanic

I bade farewell to Zarreich in a 2015 blog post. The 1981-82 rough draft was a psychic mess. Part of my reluctance to revise was that although I initially broke my internal censors and taboos, I finally lost my nerve and re-censored the book in its final four chapters, carefully editing the original shocking forces into a nice, tidy ending. I further censored myself with a 1983 second draft that truly defanged the entire work. But I never bothered to look at that disastrous second attempt when I began revising Zarreich this year.

I had to ask myself whether there was any heart in the rough draft, any spark. Could it be rebooted without censoring? And what about the “Roadblock” chapters already published as a story in my collection The Damage Patrol Quartet? I decided I wouldn’t reread the published story but just revise the rough draft again–so I may have actually improved some phrases in comparison to the published work, which in any case lacks the necessary references to other action in Zarreich.

Two things struck me in reading Zarreich this summer: the twelve characters of the commune are surprisingly well-drawn, and the settings are detailed: the desert, the plants and flowers, the village of Eicsine, the ruined nightmare city of Zarreich. There’s much color and description in this novel; it’s not just conceptual.

One of the book’s foundational energies is the world of dreams and their relation to reality. Jim Donne’s endless blunders through endless psychic minefields are really just symptoms of a struggle to attain that perspective. It might seem that his week and a half in Zarreich is one lurid mental breakdown, but maybe all that’s necessary to get his attention.

Draft Two Goals

Reclaim the rough draft’s energy, bringing out the original story as best I can, even if the final result is uneven. I think I accomplished exactly this!
Get rid of all traces of censorship, especially the original vapid ending. I think I succeeded here as well. I also made new and integrating connections, though I’m still not sure precisely how to end the book.
Cut verbiage and get the novel into my modern style. I rearranged the original thirteen chapters into forty-seven. I cut 146,000 words down to 100,000. It all reads much better.

Character Drawings

In preparing for Zarreich in 1981, I drew ink sketches of the twelve commune members. I’m still agog that all twelve capture the essence of each character. After scanning these and printing them on textured paper, I used them for colored-pencil versions. They came out well, a good marriage of 1981 and 2024 energies that emphasize the importance of all twelve characters to this story.

Jim Donne copyright 2024 by Michael D. Smith

The upgraded Jim Donne

Jim Stunde copyright 1981 by Michael D. Smith

The original Jim Stunde

Chapter Titles

Here’s where they stand in Draft 2; I hope they add flavor to the novel’s description:

1. Jim Donne’s Arrival
2. Emily
3. Attraction or Friendship?
4. Regarding Emily’s Art and His Own
5. Dorch

6. Diana
7. The Investigation
8. Jim Nearly Confesses
9. Eric Comforts Jim
10. Nothing Superfluous About Her

11. Emily Taunts Jim
12. The Dilapidated Subdivision
13. The Doomboat Freeway
14. Jim’s Donation to the City
15. Cathedral Mortgage Corporation

16. Buddha Pong
17. The Defeat Lounge
18. The University of Zarreich
19. The Bathroom Elevator
20. The Corridors

21. All This Loveliness
22. Jim Cathedral
23. Larry Cathedral
24. Jim’s Research Project
25. The Shack Afterwards

26. Diana’s Own Sex Project
27. The Promise of Bed
28. The Awful and Cruel Party
29. Millionaires
30. Turtle Man

31. The Proper Grammatical Use of Dorch
32. Registration
33. Sea Girl of Cuxlacjs
34. An Inquiry into the Meaning of Tonight
35. The Bonfire

36. So I’ll Probably Marry Her
37. Jim and Oceanmouth
38. On to Drulgoorijk
39. The Roadblock
40. Polyhedrons

41. A Sad Journey to Work
42. Larry Helpfully Piles It On
43. The New Mail Boy
44. Maybe I’ll Let Him Live
45. Jim Finds the .38

46. The Transfer Center
47. Zarreichians

Steve Dorch copyright 2024 by Michael D. Smith

Steve Dorch: gang leader or student prankster?

Draft Three?

Maybe. But a third draft might imply publication desire. What I’d want from it would be a fresh overview of all these surging energies. Zarreich is still an experiment and I’m not sure if it should be released into the wild. Before making any decision I need time to assess this thing, and there are other writing projects like the Supreme Commander Laurie sequel I want to get to.

At times I’ve run myself down for past-tripping on this undertaking, as if I were merely taking on a knitting project, or academically playing with defunct issues. But I do feel important energy here.

Homage Part 2: The Zarreich Enigma (2015 Blog Post)
The Twelve Commune Members

The University of Mars – Publication

Posted on June 12, 2024 by Michael D. SmithJune 13, 2024

In a dysfunctional 2065 where religious zealots restrict the world to outdated twentieth-century technology, eighteen-year-old Zeke Venan dedicates himself to the life of the mind and to the further evolution of humanity. He drags his Australian girlfriend to an impoverished University of Mars in a bombed-out Texas city, but Tansley quickly pegs this school as a mockery of their dreams. Yet they both begin to wonder whether aliens have infiltrated this fraudulent institution to research their own psychological flaws.

eBook:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Books2Read (offers numerous distributors)
Smashwords

paperback:
Amazon
lulu.com (mass market size)

The Publishable Work

From 2005-2009 I polluted several novels with overuse of italicized thinking before seeing my error and revising them all back to sanity. In fact mastering this technique of retranslating italics convinced me I could produce a 2024 version of The University of Mars fairly quickly. Despite earlier disappointing versions of this novel, I’ve always found myself drawn to its story and its themes.

I’d really gone overboard with italicized thinking in the 2009 version, with three of the thirty-four chapters entirely italicized, and similar italics dominating almost every page. At the time I thought this technique infused the story with emotional resonance, but I finally saw how it slowed the reader down and muddled the narrative.

Simply changing the main character names to Zeke and Tansley transformed how I felt about this novel. I hadn’t expected Tansley’s Chapter Six and Zeke’s Chapter Seven to suddenly strike me as a compelling story. And as I converted italics to regular narrative I was surprised by the high-energy fiction underneath all that italicized clamor.

When I started this project I’d assumed the 2009 manuscript had several rambling parts, but I was heartened to find no plot holes or dull sections in the novel. I must evaluate for self-delusion, but I do navigate by high energy and I feel pangs of dread at letting crap stand. I don’t think I’m fooling myself with the structure of this novel. It all works, after forty-four years, and I’ve been able to infuse this novel with my current consciousness.

I also managed to reduce the book from 69,592 words to 57,923, saving you the reader from having to slog through 11,669 unneeded data bits.

A vision for a great cover hit me during the revision, and I was certain I had to make that cover and publish this book at last.

Astonishment

Of course it’s puzzling that I’m now excited about the same novel I once declared unpublishable. In fact, for most of my writing career I assigned this book the status of failed experiment. Now after publishing what I think is an excellent 2024 version, I’m astonished that I once emphatically rejected The University of Mars at two different eras in my life:

The 1984 typewritten manuscript was way overlong and meandering, though I was proud that a good story lurked in there … somewhere. I stopped shopping the novel in 1986 after rejections from twenty-three publishers and agents.
The 2009 reboot offered a compelling new structure, removing unnecessary characters and strengthening the plot, but italicized thinking polluted the novel and I called it unpublishable after seven rejections.

But now that I have a finished and I think valuable University of Mars, I guess I’ll live with this astonishment. This novel has meant a lot to me over the years, and it’s wonderful to see it finally surface.

A Brief History of The University of Mars
More background

A Brief History of The University of Mars

Posted on June 8, 2024 by Michael D. SmithJune 8, 2024

As I mull over a forthcoming post to celebrate the long-overdue publication of The University of Mars, I’ve reflected a bit on its extended history.

I. Draft 1, 1980-1981

The novel began with a longing to describe an archetypal University of Mind. Mixing in was a rereading of Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and the mythic legacy of WWII. Then came a morbid fascination with UFO abduction literature. Soon I was churning out a science fiction “novel of ideas,” but after a while it got dull. Was incorporating a farcical short story about Nazi Germany’s Me-163 rocket fighter a good idea? Was all the belabored plot and exposition about the West Texas Revolution of 1999 just a tired joke? Where was the sensuous flood of characters, situations, or even sensuous ideas? I tried adding an autobiographical Part II about my second-semester sophomore year at Rice, but that in turn meandered aimlessly. I couldn’t bring myself to feel any enthusiasm about finishing this book and finally had to declare the experiment over at ten chapters and 250 pages. The decision was made easier by the fact that I had sighted a better novel.

II. Zarreich, Draft 2, and Manuscript, 1981-1986

Amid the ongoing confusion about what was wrong with The University of Mars, I kept returning to the idea of a psychological novel. I knew my writing was not adult; my early novels had aimed at serious issues but usually veered quickly into irony and cynicism.

Now Zarreich broke through my previous taboos. In this novel an adolescent comes to live in a small town with his grandmother, only to discover all his memories wiped out. He panics and commits a murder, then finds himself a member of a secret commune remembered only in dreams. Zarreich wound up being an extremely rich but disordered effort, yet its 1981-82 draft smashed my inner censor. I found a new voice in which the main character of The University of Mars could ponder his romantic feelings for the female lead, and I had my first practice writing from the female’s point of view. And I saw a way to a breakthrough ending.

Proud of my efforts, I typed a 320-page manuscript and sent The University of Mars to twenty-three publishers from 1984-1986. Yet I finally withdrew it from publication efforts not because I’d lost faith in the novel as a whole, but because I saw how badly it needed a tune-up. The eight chapters were overlong, with crazy detours, long unnecessary exposition, confusing flashbacks, and dialog that would would disappear for hours. I didn’t have one of the new PCs yet, but figured that if I did I could rewrite this book magnificently in three or four weeks. But as other novels beckoned I lost sight of The University of Mars.

III. 2009

By 2009 I’d scanned and edited most of my earlier typewritten novels. The University of Mars had been OCR’d but was in such a rough state that it really wasn’t much of a backup. I decided I might occasionally proof one or two chapters against the typed MS. just to have a final archival copy. But now I saw that there was indeed a lovely novel somewhere in there; in 1984 I just hadn’t known how to bring it out. So I consolidated characters, streamlined the plot, removed exposition, and chopped its eight dense chapters into thirty-four lively ones.

But the entire effort was fatally marred by a tactical writing mistake. For a few years I’d been adding more and more italicized thinking to my novels, feeling that italics added “fast and real emotion.” Otherwise excellent successive revisions of Akard Drearstone, Sortmind, and The Soul Institute, along with the first four Jack Commer SF novels, were polluted with characters thinking in highly irritating present-tense italics, sometimes for pages at a time–that is, before I sensibly translated all those novels back into useful narrative.

The 2009 University of Mars, despite its excellent new plot, was spoiled by overwhelming amounts of this putrid italicization; I’d never used so much before and still can’t conceive why I did that. Yet, apparently hoping that fast and real emotion would land a contract in the brave new world of eBooks, I sent the 2009 version to several publishers. But after a few rejections I began to realize what was wrong with the novel and declared it unpublishable.

See the merciless 2015 post, Homage Part 1: Farewell to The University of Mars, for a devastating analysis of everything wrong with the book, plus further ruminations.

The University of Mars wraparound cover copyright 2024 by Michael D. Smith

The wraparound cover

IV. 2024

The memory of that debacle was so ingrained that for years I continued to scorn The University of Mars as a failed experiment best left in the desk drawer. Yet earlier this year I found myself intrigued by the thought of just cleaning it up as an exercise, not for publication. The goal would be to simplify an existing book and bring it up to a respectable standard.

The major thrust would be rewriting italic thoughts into narrative, but I figured I might as well correct typos and cut down as much verbiage and exposition as possible as well as change boring or cute character names.

Then I was truly surprised to see, as I translated italics back into a real narrative, a compelling story underneath all that pollution. I saw that the 2009 version had in fact pulled together a great plot and characters. Tansley’s Chapter Six and Zeke’s Chapter Seven were revelations. A cover idea hit me and my enthusiasm for the project ballooned. At first I thought I might publish this in a low-key manner, maybe only as a small mass market on lulu.com, but as more and more fictional quality emerged from successive edits I began to see a true novel in front of me. Somehow I’ve reached back into an impulse from decades ago and expressed the real thing I’ve wanted all along.

More background

The Soul Institute: The 2024 Update

Posted on April 29, 2024 by Michael D. SmithApril 29, 2024

Flagship

I’ve just finished republishing The Soul Institute, my flagship novel. Exploring my main themes via numerous archetypal characters, complex at 183,000 words and 552 pages, TSI is nevertheless tight and reads quickly; I find its energies high all the way through.

paperback:
Amazon (trade)
lulu.com (mass market)

eBook:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Smashwords

I certainly wouldn’t say the same about its problematic, sprawling, 377,145-word first draft. I’m leaving the history of the novel’s gestation to a forthcoming seventh installment of my Writing Biography posts, but the short history is that I printed a final manuscript of The Soul Institute in 1999 and considered the novel completed, ready to send to publishers. But I wound up leaving it untouched for ten years as I concentrated on shorter works, figuring that such a long novel couldn’t be published until after some shorter ones found an audience. I’d assumed this book might just need a little light editing.

Jipo Jarg Reconsidered copyright 1997 by Michael D. Smith

Jipo Jarg, vice president for Academic Affairs and disinherited heiress

So I was surprised to reread the novel in 2009 and find it required a major revision. Then it needed another tweak in 2011, another in 2014, and yet another in 2015 when I published it on Sortmind Press. I still consider the 2015 edition to be the final version of the Soul Institute story; by itself 2015 is still a good novel, but to correct typos, deal with some formatting issues, and cut some repetition, I issued an updated edition in 2020. Now I’ve made another update with a much better cover. I want my flagship novel in the best condition possible and ready for new marketing.

The novel describes a chaotic November at a small Texas coastal university founded on royalties from its unhinged director’s bestselling novel. It came from my recurring dream of a return to Rice University–not the common anxiety dream about getting behind in classes, but the urge to explore a vast, stupendous, mystic Source, the Other World, the sanctuary of a foggy university of Soul. The stories of several sets of characters eventually interlace:

TSI administrators and faculty pursuing farcical love affairs, power struggles, and fantasy life.
Students who came for the life of Soul but find themselves dismayed by the surfacing chaos.
Ninth graders at the local junior high school with their separate world of inhalant abuse and gang violence.
Members of a past paradise, Waxtor Carnationist College; though they have deep genealogical ties to TSI, Waxtor is the Other World they seek to return to.

Clean-up

Derrick Dexter copyright 1996 by Michael D. Smith

Derrick Dexter, chair of the English Department and refugee from Waxtor Carnationist College

To my dismay, I’ve known for some time that even repeated proofing will leave some typos and grammatical errors, especially in a long manuscript, even given the thorough 2020 refresh. So the time came last month to give the novel yet another scrubbing as well as a new wraparound cover to impart an improved feel to the printed object.

But though my initial plan was simply to use Grammarly for a quick error check, I soon saw I was in for a big project. I began to see formatting and style issues that impaired the reading flow, and I discovered that my 2020 reduction of characters’ italicized thoughts didn’t go far enough; the remaining italicized thinking now struck me as forced and awkward. I easily converted it to narrative voice or, where redundant, just cut it. Although I once overindulged in italicized thinking, I found it strengthened The Soul Institute to eliminate it.

As far as typos are concerned, Grammarly is useful for finding the true howlers, but is imperfect. I ran it three times because I noticed that it sometimes doesn’t catch all the errors, or might only catch three of the same four errors.

So I came up with thirty-eight embarrassing typos to correct, discounting hordes of formatting changes, hyphenations, and minor issues the average reader wouldn’t stumble over. Thirty-eight out of 183,426 words may indicate a 0.0207% error rate, but each of those thirty-eight will jerk the reader out of the willing suspension of disbelief.

I also updated the Waxtor genealogical chart that’s now included in trade and mass market paper editions, as well as the eBook versions.

Cover

I took 117 new photos of chessmen (just counted) with a wraparound cover in mind, and discovered an interesting problem in my last couple designs: getting distracted by the loveliness of the entire back/spine/front image, which people generally will never grasp in its entirety. You must keep in mind that only the right half, the front cover, can be the focus. The wraparound in other words must serve the front cover’s impact. People will obviously note it’s a wraparound cover, but generally will never spread open the book from the rear to admire the full image. Weirdly, and this may be a result of how I compose images, way too many of my 117 photos emphasized the left side (thus the back cover) of the image.

There’s also always an interesting war going on between image and text. The text must be readable, even on a thumbnail, and the image and text mustn’t cancel each other out. The text color can also make or break the image.

Fairness

Moolka Waxtor copyright 2015 by Michael D. Smith

Moolka Waxtor, writer in residence, cousin to Derrick and his anima

As I wrote in this blog in October 2011, my goal in The Soul Institute from its first conception was what I’ve long called “Shakespearian fairness” to all characters. Each character, no matter his or her moral or mental state, no matter how noble or ridiculous or pathetic, is an actor on the stage of the novel, to be respected and understood, given time to develop, and fully integrated into the framework of the story. I wanted to present all these character entities and what they meant to an ideal reader. This ideal reader is sometimes myself, especially in editing mode, but almost always winds up going beyond my personal concerns and striving to connect with other human beings who are open-minded and curious, willing to both severely judge my writing and learn from any honest energy in it.

Fannin Richardson copyright 1996 by Michael D. Smith

Fannin Richardson, chair of the Art Department, passionate painter, secretly in love with the director’s wife

I marvel at this novel. What a gift from the universe this book was. Naturally working on this update makes me want to write another long literary novel, but I know from unhappy past experience that you just can’t force something like this. If it’s appropriate that I write another such novel, it shall be.

The Soul Institute – Background

Relevant TSI Blog Posts
10/18/11: The Soul Institute
12/16/15: The Soul Institute is Published
1/11/16: The Soul Institute in Paperback
1/19/16: Jipo and Derrick
1/22/16: Mitar, Rhea and Inhalant Abuse – from The Soul Institute
2/4/16: Himal and Moolka
2/6/16: Fannin and Felicia: Wasn’t Art Enough Passion?
6/13/17: Milton Raeynold Glouair IV from The Soul Institute
4/10/20: The … 2020–Soul … Institute–Clean-Up!!!!!!

Supreme Commander Laurie Publication

Posted on March 18, 2024 by Michael D. SmithMarch 18, 2024

United System Space Force leader Jack Commer has resigned to probe a dangerous cosmic irregularity, elevating physician/engineer Laurie Lachrer to take his place. But when she finds herself inexplicably transported onto his suicide mission, she must struggle to assert herself as the new supreme commander. Meanwhile fascist elements overthrow the United System and hunt Laurie as a traitor, and a malfunctioning, decades-old robot, in love with her, writes a sardonic science fiction novel asserting his own control over the narrative.

Published by Sortmind Press

paperback:
Amazon

eBook:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Draft2Digital
Smashwords

The excellent cover art comes from Kara D. Wilson at Emerging Ink.

Supreme Commander Laurie, Book One in a series of the same title, follows Laurie’s new challenges. I decided from the beginning not to plot an entire novel series at once, but to throw whatever I had into Book One now and let subsequent novels explore newer themes. The first book pulls Laurie forward as the main character and pushes Jack back into a supporting character role. But along the way a couple interesting new characters threatened to take over the narrative.

Pulling Laurie

Laurie Lachrer was one of my favorite people in the Commer series. She began as a walk-on with a handful of lines in Book One, The Martian Marauders. As a nineteen-year-old USSF airman first class in 2034, she was mainly present to amaze the rest of the novel’s characters that Jack’s feckless younger brother John had such a stunning, super-intelligent girlfriend.

Forty years later Laurie became a main figure in the Commer series’ fifth book, The Wounded Frontier. By the 2070s she’s abandoned a succession of low-level United System Space Force jobs to reinvent herself as physician/engineer on the newest Typhoon spaceships, and though sixty-one, rejuvenation technology has kept her and most other series characters looking thirty to forty.

In the last Commer book, Jack decides to retire. But before flying the brand-new Typhoon VIII spaceship into a star in a doomed attempt to probe a dangerous cosmic irregularity, he issues a rather offhand last will and testament that promotes the stunned Laurie to admiral and makes her supreme commander of the USSF.

Her challenge is to assess whether she has what it takes to really be that leader. But as she begins to understand that the anomaly threatens the structure of the universe she’s finally driven to claim her new responsibility.

Pushing Jack

It was difficult at first to shoo Jack offstage, as well as other Commer series figures, but as I began focusing on Laurie, Jack naturally receded into a secondary character. Of course there’s no way the new book can ignore his final mission in Balloon Ship Armageddon, especially since Laurie mysteriously gets added to his crew on his dubious enterprise. This in turn led to further meditations on the nature of the anomaly at the center of the universe.

Since the novel emerges from his SF series, Supreme Commander Laurie includes relevant details of the Commer history to get a sense of how Laurie tackles her new role. But Books Two and beyond will definitely need much less, if any, of that background.

Surprises

Two ostensibly minor characters unexpectedly evolved into major forces: the insouciant Mickey Mal Michaels and the deluded but secretly honorable Major John West. Both are decades-old robots from the collector’s series Heroes and Villains of the Thirties, both eager to receive the latest robotic software upgrades.

A Lieutenant Mickey Mal Michaels HAVOTT robot was created with as much detail as its programmers could find about the dead Typhoon I turret gunner, including his online writing journal of 2.6 million words and his secret aspiration to be a science fiction writer. Absurd chapters of this interstellar anti-hero’s Fathom the Doomboat Stars are thus mixed into the narrative. The robot’s style is bombastic, sarcastic, and polluted by his insistence that he can just guess what is happening in the novel’s plot by using his AI methods to sort through billions of possibilities. But the weird thing is that he usually gets close.

After finishing the book I was struck by the stylistic similarities with Michaels’ style and my recently published Man Against the Horses! Four Theater of the Absurd Novelettes, which features four long freewheeling stories I wrote at age twenty-two.

Can Mickey Mal remain in the series? He does get sent on various celestial duties which we assume he’ll never return from. But who knows?

Robot Major John West, another HAVOTT recreation of a Martian Marauders character who died in battle in June 2034, finds himself in thrall to the new fascist president of the United System, Robert Easterling. Always eager to rise in the USSF organization and serve his human masters, he’s just been appointed Director of USSF Public Relations, since he’s a top expert with the USSF’s new business model of Frenzied Performance.

However, when sleazy Detention Services head Carla Posttner destroys the Typhoon VII spaceship at Easterling’s urging, West is horrified and begins to realize where his duty lies. Now he feels ashamed of ever having kowtowed to Easterling and his business jargon, and vows to rectify things as a loyal USSF man.

West was never arrested for his role in the fascist takeover. He might return in Book Two.

The first book also introduced some relatively minor characters I want to explore in subsequent books, including Typhoon III copilot Commander Mavis Wheeler, Detention Services guard Cadagasgar Wirlmann, Jonathan Commer navigator Lieutenant Pam Jonson, and Typhoon VI copilot Commander Saxon Greenhill. Though Greenville met an unfortunate demise during the Typhoon VII obliteration, he can always be reconstituted as a robot.

Selling Books

My final edits produced what I now think is a good novel. The cover kicks my ass to move forward with new kinds of marketing. If ever there was a cover to sell a book, this is it.

Most authors moan about marketing. I’ve had various seasons of committing to it, then withdrawing in favor of concentrating on the art itself, and I’ve heard other authors say similar things.

But why bother to write this stuff and publish it if you don’t make a valid effort to sell it? I decided not to immerse myself in marketing schemes in 2023 as I accustomed myself to retirement, but now I see there may be new tactics to explore. Above all cut out “marketing theater,” tasks that seem to promote your work but waste time and don’t give anything in return.

What reverberates for my writing right now:

Pushing Supreme Commander Laurie with a real eye to selling it. I like the term “selling the book” rather than “marketing the book.” If SCL is important, I should act as if it were!
Focusing on my flagship novel The Soul Institute with a new wraparound cover and a new feel to the printed object.
Continued musing on new kinds of fiction. Not necessarily beginning a new literary novel this year, but being open to it.
And of course also musing on SCL Book Two.

Supreme Commander Laurie Background
Emerging Ink
Kara D. Wilson

Just Published – Man Against the Horses!

Posted on March 2, 2024 by Michael D. SmithMarch 19, 2024

Four Theater of the Absurd Novelettes

$Man Against the Horses! by Michael D. Smith$ Bumbling officer Marty Brimfeeler probes the death of a brainwashed terrorist in Houston. Five horses break out of their corral and reduce the city of Dallas to rubble. Hapless insurance executive Bobby Thompson proves his manhood on the mean streets of Dallas. Special agent Atoka surveils Houston on his nuclear-powered bicycle until software glitches trap him on a coastal freeway.

lulu.com mass market-size paperback
Smashwords eBook in numerous formats (incidentally free on Smashwords’ Read an Ebook Week, March 3-March 9)

Three weeks ago I wondered whether I should give in to a sudden urge to publish four 1975 novelettes. Not my earliest writing, but the first long stories composed during my first year of marriage, my first year in Dallas, and my first year out of Rice. Definitely overwritten and sounding quite counterculture, they all were instrumental in my writing development. They also all have a decent heart to them that may appeal to at least some readers. So this informal collection developed into something like an autobiographical investigation of fresh creative energies arising in my 1975, shortly before I began my breakthrough novel Akard Drearstone.

I always referred to these works as stories but hadn’t been aware until recently that they can be classified as novelettes, with word count between 7,500-19,000. This may account for their many rejections from short story magazines. But these lengths show how eager I was at the time to abandon story writing and move into the exploratory possibilities of the novel.

From the beginning I acknowledged that this MATH project was more created for my own satisfaction than to become a new expression. Thus I felt my initial options on February 7 were:

Just assemble a manuscript but never publish it.
Create a paperback on lulu.com that no one can see, like Akard Drearstone Draft 1.
Publish a paperback on lulu.com only, like The UR Jack Commer, with minimal marketing and minimal profit.
In addition, or instead of, put it on Smashwords for free.

$Man against the Horses! by Michael D. Smith$

The Wraparound Cover

Two days after these first musings I decided I would, after all, like to hold a paperback of this project in my hands. Sixteen days after conception Sortmind Press published a lulu.com mass market paperback.

But I decided not to put Man Against the Horses! on Amazon as a trade paperback or Kindle eBook. Despite my being one of a zillion authors on Amazon, I still want to maintain a brand there with only my best novels showing.

Light Revisions

I decided I wanted to maintain these stories’ 1975 quality, but I also wanted to feel comfortable with what I now choose to display on the page. I feel I’m bringing out the true 1975 versions as they should have been finalized at the time. However, I left in all manner of stylistic frills that no modern editor would allow; that’s my 1975 style, heavily influenced by late-sixties and early-seventies counterculture.

Space, Time, and Tania

Bumbling ex-Texas Department of Public Death officer Marty Brimfeeler probes the death of metaphysical terrorist Tania in Houston shortly before World War III erupts. This is a fun, intelligent, loopy story, despite being inspired by the kidnapping of Patty Hearst and her brainwashing by the Symbionese Liberation Army in 1974. “Tania” strikes me now as properly channeling the universe. There doesn’t seem to be a career-minded ego trip to it. Of course it’s not really about Patty Hearst.

Begun in 1974 and completed in 1975, “Tania” was published in PigIron Magazine in 1977 after three or four rejections. I’m fully satisfied with the story the way it was published, except for PigIron’s occasional spacewasting edits (for instance, adding a two-word paragraph, “A raindrop,” to even out the end of a page in the era before computers) and the editor’s last-line change of “this little Marty” to “this little Marsden.” He can be excused for thinking “Marty” was a typo, but I really did mean that the motorcycle revolutionary Marsden Oillamp was a tiny version of our deluded Marty Brimfeeler. Beyond that I just made a handful of error corrections.

As I was working on this project I suddenly saw the weird relation between my 1975 style, especially in “Tania,” and the disgruntled robot Mickey Mal Michaels’ overbearing discourse in Supreme Commander Laurie, soon to be published. Maybe that was why I’ve so reverberated with 1975 consciousness.

A 1975 View of Vengeful Horses

Man Against the Horses!

Five horses in Paris, Texas have finally had enough. They break out of their corral, charge down the highway, and, imbued with fresh superpowers, tear the city of Dallas to pieces. This rough draft manages to express my antipathy toward my new city of Dallas and my post-college job’s bleak regimentation, which felt like a return to high school compared to my insular, satisfied university life in Houston.

After “Tania,” the other three unpublished stories received a bit more clean-up for this collection, but these edits aren’t extensive and usually just excise the occasional eruption of obvious BS. But I did rethink my initial vow not to revise any further, because the original end of “Man Against the Horses!”–which after all never emerged from rough draft, was never finalized, and was never sent to any magazine publishers–has a jarring, cynical, depressing tone, along with a sense of animal cruelty I can’t bear. I just excised 166 words from the last section and changed the tone from despairing to, I hope, karmically mystical, which I think was the whole point of this bizarre plot. I have to hope my 1975 self would’ve similarly finalized this story.

Bobby Thompson copyright 1975 by Michael D. Smith

A 1975 View of Our Anti-Hero

The Highland Park Cadillac Races

This piece continues my vengeful satire of my new city as it showcases how hapless insurance executive Bobby Thompson, plagued by numerous philosophical questions, races Cadillac against Cadillac to prove his manhood on the mean streets of Dallas. I removed a disgusting and unnecessary first scene which probably accounted for the continual rejections of this story. My instincts here have proven correct; what follows is the real narrative, much improved with the loss of the gross first section. Something even heartfelt and endearing emerges from Bobby’s whacked-out terror near the end.

Otherwise I just made light edits, broke sprawling paragraphs into shorter ones, and took out a handful of distracting embellishments. Note that whenever I needed to impress the reader with Cadillac engine technology, I just made something up.

“The Highland Park Cadillac Races” collected rejections from five publishers. Again, it was probably that first obnoxious section that kept editors from ever seeing, or laughing out loud at, the first crazed Cadillac race on Beverly Drive in Highland Park.

The 66,000 M.P.H. Bicycle

Special agent Atoka evades “the Americans” on his nuclear-powered, 66,000-m.p.h. bicycle until he’s trapped on a Texas coastal freeway. This final 1975 story only needed very light edits. I think the discerning reader can enjoy the story even though the author was able to ignore numerous physics problems–though I don’t think this was why six magazine publishers rejected this work. I recently came up with some glib answers to these problems, italicized below:

Above all, 66,000 M.P.H. is more than twice escape velocity, so that Atoka would’ve been out far past the orbit of the moon before his four hours of patrol were up. [Unless special rocket tubes thrust downward to keep him on the ground. Would this work, though?]
Inertial problems are not addressed. Getting to 66,000 M.P.H. in 300 feet would turn Atoka into pudding. [Unless there is a great inertial subsystem–but the vacuum-magnetizing spacesuit does not seem to be it.]
The bicycle’s tires are not mentioned in the final MS., although they are in drafts 1 and 2, where their physical composition is described and the tires are said to be pressured to 5,200 PSI. But the strain on hubs and tires and bearings can only be imagined.
Friction effects and burning up at high speed is somewhat addressed. But that a bicycle shape could stand this strain does not seem believable. [Of course you can just postulate that Atoka and his design team solved this issue.]
Then we have the problem of the continual breaking of the sound barrier for four hours throughout the night. That would surely give Atoka away, not to mention that he might be setting the air on fire behind him. [Postulate that this problem is solved with complex algorithms and atmospheric cooling devices that “replace the air exactly as it was” and also mask all sound barrier effects. Or perhaps the bicycle actually slips outside spacetime and in effect doesn’t exist until it’s time to make a turn! That would definitely accentuate the pointlessness of all the technology brought to bear on these nonsensical “patrols.”]

Further observations:

What works here is the ludicrousness of Atoka’s mission, never explained. The description of the rider’s surreal disorientation in four hours of acceleration, deceleration, and thousands of random turns demonstrates the rebels’ determination. That’s a hell of a lot of work, but for what?
The computer programming stuff is great for 1975, considering I knew nothing about computers at the time. “Form B” is the equivalent of “Restart.” The logic behind many of the computer scenarios is decently thought out, although giving the rider fifteen seconds to respond to a Form B before bike explosion is pretty tough.
We never know if Nerf Woman betrays Atoka or if, in caring for him, she passes on, against orders, her foreknowledge of his demise.
The Americans must really be obsessed with Atoka and his ilk if they’re willing to destroy an entire section of freeway just to get one rider.
“Acknowledging the Leader with a wave” was a deliberate ambiguity in the 1975 MS. To me it reads as if there is, even in espionage and rebellion, a sense of kinship to, or grudging respect for, the society Atoka is undermining.
I’m not sure I’d read up on the benefits of zero-gravity manufacturing by 1975, but the bike being built in orbit in zero gravity indicates that the rebellion is well-financed and powerful. After all, even though Atoka designed the bike, he’s only one of many riders.

Further MATH background

So What Did I See on May 13, 1968?

Posted on February 5, 2024 by Michael D. SmithFebruary 5, 2024

I don’t think I’ve ever written in any detail the story of May 13, 1968 at the Art Institute in Chicago, the day I realized I was an artist.

May 13, 1968 was a Monday, and I rode a bus on a high school field trip from Northbrook to the Art Institute. A note saved in my high school papers comments about a class in which I evaluated various students reading poetry on May 13. So that class must have been in the morning because I know the field trip was in the afternoon.

All I recall of the bus journey there and back–and I’m thinking this was on the way back, but am not sure–was a girl with long blond hair, I think part of the affected theater crowd, sitting across from me at the front of the bus, declaiming some insipid story recursing upon itself as she rattled off first-person plot, each section ending with a calamity and then: “But I didn’t die.” Seemingly a hundred more adventure/disasters each ended with “But I didn’t die.” It was irritating, but I didn’t really care. If it was before my realization, my unconcern was probably because I was keyed up about the upcoming field trip; if after, it was because of what I’d just found out about myself.

My first visit to the Chicago Art Institute was its own revelation, and my memories of some of the paintings and sculptures may come from later visits, but the May 13 event was simply that I separated myself from the group, sat on a bench in a small room with a small Andrew Wyeth above a door lintel opposite me, and at once I knew my destiny lay in art, that I was an artist. I sat there for some time, in calm contemplation of this fate. The other memory of that day is buying a paperweight for $3.00 in the gift shop. I’ve kept the paperweight to this day. It’s always symbolized my relationship with art.

But now we have some memory issues that the Internet isn’t solving for me. I think I saw the painting “Northern Point,” but, maddeningly, I can’t prove that.

I searched The Art Institute and found there was a Wyeth retrospective the year before, Apr 21-Jun 4, 1967, which included the 1950 tempera. But my seeing this in 1967 is impossible as I was living in Wilmington, Delaware at the time.

So what did I see on May 13, 1968? A print? But why would a museum hang a print of a painting?

Was it possible I saw another Wyeth painting? Yet the Art Institute only owns two Wyeth paintings as far as I can find, and neither fits the description.

Is it remotely possible that after the exhibition closed this particular painting was allowed to remain at the Art Institute for another year? Do these things happen? And why? I can’t find proof.

Or did I see another painting by another artist and just assumed this was a Wyeth? But I’d like to think that as an overachieving high school sophomore I would have read a title/artist label about a painting I was so taken with.

The only other option would be a novelistic fantasy in which young Mike so needed to see that particular painting on that particular date that it was mystically transported to the Art Institute on May 13, 1968 for him to view alone. That special transcendent guidance was invoked for him having missed being in Chicago the previous year.

I have a feeling this latter is a long shot.

IN ANY CASE … “Northern Point” embodies that vision. And I know I paid $3.00 for the paperweight!

It would take me another year, to May 1969, to verbally acknowledge that I was also a writer. Funny that the art vision came first.