Who owns the meaning of a story? There?s an anecdote about Kurt Vonnegut that may be apocryphal. It goes like this:

A university student contacted Vonnegut and told him that the professor teaching Vonnegut?s book had bizarre interpretations of it, and insisted that the class embrace his views to pass the course. Vonnegut sits in on a lecture then argues with the professor on the interpretation. The professor?s finally refutation is along the lines of, ?What do you know? You?re just the writer.?

Arrogant, isn?t it? Why am I thinking about this? I just had a twitter conversation that would fall along those lines, with me arguably cast as the nutty professor.

Ah, but that can wait? First, I want to address the idea of creator intent versus reader ownership. Even what to call these two sides of this argument is debatable. Should it be creator authority, creator knowledge, or creator intent? On the other side, is it reader ownership, reader investment, reader interpretation? Each word gives a different level of power to either side.

Does our hypothetical Kurt Vonnegut know what he?s written? Could there be subliminal ideas there that he may have felt needed to be there without understanding why exactly he was putting them there? As someone who has been struggling to write not one, but two novels over the past decade plus, I would say that sometimes I include things that instinctively I know need to be there, but I can?t rationalize (sometimes, it clicks later and I understand, other times I?m still waiting for enlightenment.).

Can someone other than the writer be the definer and keeper of the story?s meaning? That would be harder to accept. Even if a writer doesn?t understand everything that they?ve written, it was written with an intent, and they are the keeper of that, and it should have primacy. When I?m talking about a writer not understanding what they?ve written, I?m thinking of examples along the lines of autobiographical stories that accidentally reveal truths through exposition that the author may not have wanted others to see.

Let?s look at one of the most famous examples of creator intent versus reader ownership:

?Han shot first!?

You should know what that means. There?s been a feud between George Lucas and his fans ever since the release of the Special Editions of the original Star Wars trilogy. In Star Wars (1977), Han Solo clearly shoots a bounty hunter who is confronting him and possibly drawing a gun on him. In the Special Edition, the bounty hunter shoots first and misses, and Han?s shot is much more clearly self-defence.

Fans have hurled vitriol at Lucas for that 2 seconds of film, saying that it robbed Han of his character. You can buy ?Han Shot First? T-shirts pretty much anywhere fans gather – comic book shops, conventions, online? Yet Lucas is the creator and he has said repeatedly that he always intended Han to shoot second. (Full Disclosure, I?m firmly in the Han shot first camp, but I never bought the shirt.)

Another, more recent example of creator intent versus reader ownership:

Cameron Crowe recently released a film called Aloha. There?s a character named Allison Ng – a character described as 1/4 Chinese, 1/4 Hawai?ian and 1/2 European. Then Crowe cast a very white woman to player her. Crowe wrote the script (it?s not from a book), he made the character, can?t he cast who he wants? That?s the creator?s intent. A lot of people weren?t impressed. In their interpretation, the character should physically reflect the mixed ancestry.

(My problem with the movie, beyond Emma Stone?s exuberance, was how it telegraphed the plot. For example: Woman hasn?t seen or spoken to her old boyfriend in, oh, 13 years; introduces her 12-year-old daughter to him. Gee, what?s the significance there?)

What?s less talked about is when creator intent and reader ownership align. Prior to the casting of the first Harry Potter film, there was a lot of concern among the fanbase that they couldn?t cast the characters to everyone?s expectations. Yet somehow, they did (or got so close that any discrepancies were forgiven). Best yet, they managed to avoid some obvious but possibly bad choices – Ian McKellan as Dumbledore, for one.

Which brings us to my little story alluded to above.

I?ve been reading a series of books collectively called The Expanse. The books are co-written by Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. As I?ve been reading these stories, I?ve developed images in my head of what the characters look like.

Well, the series is being filmed by Syfy, the network that brought us the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, then fell in the crapper of Sharknado I-IV. It doesn?t currently have a lot of cred for getting science fiction right (Ascension, anyone). But Syfy is trying hard to make up for that by creating shows such as The Expanse.

Today I finally saw cast photos for the filmed version of The Expanse. In my mind, they got one character right, Naomi. The rest are cast far too young. I tweeted as much:

And Daniel Abraham tweeted back, ?correcting? my understanding:

Which is all well and good, but we come back to creator intent versus reader ownership and how it applies to casting. I?ll have a hard time watching a young-looking 29-year-old playing a character that I visualize as 40+. I?ll have a hard time watching a young-looking 63-year-old playing a frail but spunky and feared centenarian. That doesn?t mean that I won?t check it out when it arrives.

I hope it?s good. The source material is quite entertaining, and the authors are producers on the show, so hopefully that will help the transition from print to screen. We need a new Battlestar Galactica-level show (Killjoys is OK, but not that good). But I know going in that I need convincing. I may not watch beyond the pilot episode if the characters strike me as not true to my internalized vision.

That?s not a problem for the TV show?s creators, unless I?m not alone in my interpretation of the characters.

Time for you to speak up in the comments: Who owns the meaning of a story, the creator or the reader? Do we have the right to say that Han shoot first?

Recently France?s privacy commission ruled that the European Union?s ?Right to Be Forgotten? law applies to Google worldwide, not just Google?s European operations. Google?s response, that such a ruling extends French law beyond France?s borders, was rejected by the French regulatory body.

In theory, the right to be forgotten sounds like something that we should have. Why should your drunken university days show up in search results twenty years later? Must everybody know everything about everyone else? Can?t we have a little privacy somewhere?

In practice, such a ruling, if corporations are forced to implement it, would be tantamount to censorship. Any country could declare that any bad news was to be forgotten and search engines would have to comply.

There are scenarios where a right to be forgotten would be good, but others that clearly show how it could be abused. Let?s look at one of each.

Scenario 1: Amanda Knox
Amanda Knox was a young American living in Italy when her British roommate was gruesomely murdered. Somehow, Knox and hr then boyfriend weren?t only accused, they were found guilty of murder, even as another, unrelated person was also found guilty of the same crime. Eventually, and it is a loooong eventually, Knox was cleared of the murder.

Shouldn?t she have the right to have references to her ordeal, especially to the guilty verdict, removed from Google? To me this would seem like an easy ?Yes.? If I were Google and if she were to ask to be forgotten, I?d be tempted to do it.

Now let?s look at the other side.

Scenario 2: Ali Mohammed al-Nimr
Ali Mohammed al-Nimr is a young Saudi man, a Shia?a, as apparently that?s important. Saudi Arabia is mostly Sunni. Ali was 17 years old when he attended an anti-government demonstration. He was arrested, thrown in prison and as of this writing, is scheduled to be executed. Not just executed: He is to be beheaded, then his headless body is to be crucified in his home town for all to witness. Amnesty International is fighting to save this boy?s life.

If our hypothetical ?Right to Be Forgotten? law is enforced worldwide, couldn?t Saudi Arabia claim that to protect the dignity of the child, all mention of him should be removed from Google. This apparent act of kindness would make it much harder for critics of the government to monitor its activities.

How can any organization be left with the task (or entrusted with the task) of differentiating between these two scenarios. How could any such organization stand against or above a country?s laws if those laws are applicable extraterritorial?

I have questions, but I don’t have answers.

I know I’m getting ahead of myself here, worrying about what would happen to my characters after I’m dead given that a) I’m not even published yet and b) I’m alive (as of this writing), but re-inventing or re-interpreting or re-imagining another’s masterpiece feels wrong.

Doing it after they’re dead and can’t respond, is worse.

I’m not talking about West Side Story (a re-imagining of Romeo and Juliet). I’m talking about Wicked, a story that completely redefines the roles of good and evil in The Wizard of Oz. If Frank L. Baum had wanted the Wicked Witch of the West to be a sympathetic character, he could have written her that way. If the author of Wicked wanted to write about misunderstood, sympathetic witches, he was free to do so, but doing it within Baum’s universe feels incredibly disrespectful, like peeing on a grave.

I clearly remember the first time that I heard about a different author writing a sequel to a famous book. My first thought was ‘how the hell can this happen?’ The book in question was Wuthering Heights. Someone wrote a sequel, called ‘H’ about Heathcliff. Now, I’ve never read Wuthering Heights but even I know that Healthcliff died in it. Well, it turns out that there is a 3 year absence in the middle of the story and this author decided to fill it.

I guess in some ways James Bond got away from Ian Fleming, so seeing myriad books written by a string of writers shouldn’t be to surprising, even if they lacked a certain je ne sais quoi. The movies have long since run past Fleming’s stories, so a proliferation of books clouding the character?s history doesn’t feel as much like a violation.

For me, Dune is the saddest and greyest example of a new writer changing the original writer’s intent. Sadly, in this case the new writer is the son of the original author, Frank Herbert, and expanded the saga with his blessing. Dune – the original book, and to a lessor extent the completion of that trilogy – could have and should have stood the test of time as a paragon of world building, of political intrigue, of the idea that themes and subtext were not only acceptable n science fiction, but a sign of a great story. Unfortunately, Frank started picking away at that legacy with a second trilogy that lacked the gravitas of the original. That deterioration in quality was continued by his son, Brian, until we get to the point where Bene Gesserit no longer know the litany against fear (Hunters of Dune).

There have been some authors, or their estates, that have refused to allow any continuance or in-universe extensions. JRR Tolkien’s estate is known to be litigious against anyone who tries to write stories in Middle Earth. Terry Pratchett’s daughter has stated categorically that there won’t be any non-Terry Discworld stories. I had expected the same from Douglas Adam’s estate, but they have allowed a continuation of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, ‘And Another Thing’

It’s scary to think that after an author is gone, someone else can tinker with their legacy. As we saw with Wuthering Heights, even if an author kills off their characters that’s no safeguard against later meddling.

Since the most common-sense idea — “no guns” — won’t work in America, here?s a simple idea, and not even my own, although I?m going to build upon it: Pre-emptively removing fame from the equation. Let?s ensure that people who commit atrocious acts will be belittled by society. Let?s agree that they will be publicly shamed and then forgotten. Yes, I know this is childish, but it’s the mindset we’re dealing with, and we need to speak to their level.

The most common-sense idea, no guns, won’t work in America.

There?s been a lot of talk lately, starting with the shootings at that church in the US South about the role that fame or notoriety plays in encouraging such attacks. Some news anchors have suggested not naming shooters, as have some of the communities affected. Others have defended the practice. My idea is simple, just like with hurricanes, we publish a series of names – but annoying, ugly names – and make the public aware that these are what the next rampage shooters will be called.

Remember when the idiot who attacked a movie theatre was arrested? People started calling him Sideshow Bob because of his resemblance to that fictional character. The idiot got furious, demanding that people refer to him by his own name. What was the point of committing such a vile act, he all but shouted, if he wasn?t going to be notorious for it?

Let’s take the notoriety out of it.

And that?s the rub – let?s take the notoriety out of it. We won?t remember you by your name, we?ll remember you as ?Moist Fart? or ?Used Tampon? or ?Fungal Growth?. What macho-craving, chest thumping douchebag of a mass murderer would want to go down in history as ?used tampon?? Even terms such as ?weakling? or ?sissy? could be applied, although I?d rather use stronger imagery for names.

Thoughts? Or suggestions for a list that we could build?

Obi Wan called it a more elegant weapon from a more civilized age, but is the lightsaber really all that great a weapon?

When all we had was the original trilogy, the lightsaber appeared to be the top weapon in the food chain: it sliced, it diced, and it made limbs go away. But then George Lucas gave us the prequel trilogy. Suddenly Lightsabers were both more and less than they were before.

I?m sure everyone remembers watching Qui-Gon Jinn using his lightsaber to melt through a door. But then it wasn?t a weapon good enough to defeat droidekas. Niether Qui-Gon nor Obi Wan even tried to throw his saber at one of those shielded mechanical beasts.

Attack of the Clones gave us the Obi Wan versus Jango Fett fight in the rain. This showed us that the lightsaber was best used as a defensive weapon, something that Jedi are apparently good at, but not as an offensive weapon, which kind of makes sense, since aggressively attacking someone with the intent to do harm sounds more like a Sith than a Jedi. When Sith fight with the lightsaber, it is one of a number of weapons that they use. Their best weapons are quite often the improvised projectiles that they throw around.

The Sith know it’s not a primary weapon, why don’t the Jedi?

So, now the lightsaber is at best a defensive weapon.

Then it got worse for the venerable lightsaber: Episode III Revenge of the Sith came out. Now we see that there are weapons that are immune to the lightsaber?s energy. The weapon of a Jedi is no better that of the double-ended power sticks used by General Grevous? guards. This movie also gave us a clear indication that for the Sith, the lightsaber is only one weapon among many, and not an offensive one. Each Sith Lord we meet uses Force Lightning and Force Push (throwing objects around) as offensive weaponry. So the Sith know that the lightsaber is not a primary weapon of combat. Why don’t the Jedi?

It takes a Jedi to make one but anyone can use it?

This film also taught us that, although it takes a Jedi to make one, anyone can handle a lightsaber. General Grevous is not a Jedi, and there’s no indication that he’s Force sensitive. Worse, as a defensive weapon, we repeatedly saw the lightsaber be overwhelmed and become ineffective in protecting the Jedi once Order 66 was given to the clones. So it’s not even a good defensive weapon.

Now we see in the trailers for The Force Awakens that even lowly Storm Troopers carry weaponry that is capable of defeating a lightsaber.

So why all the mythology and love for the lightsaber? Because the first time we saw it (in 1977) it was unprecedented?

Sure, OK, that works for the fans.

The lightsaber is a mediocre offensive and middling defensive weapon.

But why do the Jedi invest such symbolic power in it – it isn?t an alpha predator weapon, not even Darth Maul’s double-bladed one, not even Kylo Ren?s flaming cross. The lightsaber is a mediocre offensive weapon and a middling defensive weapon. If evidence shows that it isn?t as grand as we were first led to believe, maybe we should re-think the respect we give to the people who held it in such high esteem, the Jedi.

This is the story of the frozen protagonist, but it’s not fiction.

Over at SFF Chronicles, a British science fiction community website, there?s a writer’s topic that?s run hot and cold for a few months now in a couple of different threads: Does a novel?s main character have to change over the course of the story? There?s been a lot of back-and-forth on this, but interestingly, most of those arguing ?no? are referencing TV shows as their rationale for why the character shouldn?t change.

So let?s examine that.

Traditionally, as I was taught in creative writing courses in uni, a story is the biggest event to happen in a character?s life. It will be life altering by definition, and it will end with the character(s) somewhere that they?ve never been before.

Does a main charcter have to change over the course of the story?

In the stories that I am writing (and others I intend to write), the characters go on an incredible journey. They can?t help but be changed by that. As I noted in the discussion thread mentioned above, this isn?t always true – for the most part Isaac Asimov?s characters didn?t have transformative experiences (especially when compared to, say, Heinlein?s or Herbert?s novels) In fact many of Asimov’s charcters turn out to be robots. The exception for Asimov is Elijah Bailey, who changes considerably across his two novel story arch.

I always took this lack of change to be a sign that Asimov wasn?t really interested in characters as much as ideas. Which is fine.

But the idea of the character not changing isn’t a common thread in written sci fi. It comes to us courtesy of sci fi TV. It was dictated by networks so they could syndicate a show later, and not have to worry about the airing order. This meant that each member is frozen. They can’t change. No matter how dastardly Doctor Smith acts, the Robinsons won’t abandon him, because that doesn’t fit the needs of TV syndication. So, at the end of every episode, everything has to come back to normal. All may not be forgiven, but it certainly is forgotten by next week’s episode.

This dictate did change, but only once there were viable alternatives to the big three networks. The frozen protagonist thaw probably started with Babylon 5 and Deep Space Nine (and yet somehow never took hold in Voyager, the story whose premise would most comfortably accept a continuously changing status quo). But the most notable practitioner of this new freedom to have stories matter and have characters grow was undoubtably the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica.

The thaw started with Babylon 5 and Deep Space Nine.

Coming back to books, think about stories in the past that had sequels (and how few of those there were, another point to consider later). Think of Dune – Paul and his son Leto definitely both changed over the course of those stories. Writing a series of stories with a frozen protagonist wasn’t ever a part of the sci fi thesis (Keith Latimer’s Retief being a possible exception, but Retief was “Bond in Space” and seemed more influenced by Albert Brocolli’s movies that Ian Fleming’s books).

This brings me to The Lord of the Rings, arguably the first epic of modern fantasy, published in a time when trilogies and series were rare. I mention it for completeness, because it isn’t an example of a story where the MCs never change. It isn’t even technically a trilogy. It’s one long story told in five novels/novellas published as three books due to press limitations. Even here, the characters all substantially changed over the course of the story, hence the raising of the Shire (which somehow didn’t make the twelve-hour movie).

And now I?m scrambling to find a contemporaneous second example because trilogies were unknown back then. Sure, there might be a sequel (Herbert’s Whipping Star comes to mind), but it wasn?t part of some over-arching trilogy until we get to the Tolkien-inspired writers like Stephen R Donaldson, Terry Brooks, and Philip Jose Farmer. I?ve never read Farmer or Brooks, but I have read Donaldson, and his characters absolutely changed. They grew. So even then a trilogy or sries wasn’t grounds to lock your characters into unchangeable monotony.

I wonder if TV?s influence on novels can be traced back to James Blish?s successful adaptations of Star Trek episodes (hence the book cover at the top of the article). This would be the first series of printed stories that I?m aware of where characters in print never learned from their previous experiences, never grew, never faced the one and only biggest story of their lives. (I don?t blame Blish, if he is indeed the culprit [or more likely bellwether] – he wrote some excellent sci fi separate of Star Trek).***

Alternatively, perhaps this rather non-literary idea came from comic books. If the characters changed enough in a comic book, you just re-set the universe and started over. Maybe it comes from Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, serial movies derived from comic books (yes, I’m aware of Armegeddon 2419).

Perhaps this idea comes from comics.

In any case, we now live in a culture where writers are expected to make at least trilogies of their stories, if not longer series. Hunger Games, Divergent, The Maze Runner all would probably have been better epic fantsy/sci fi if they’d been told as a single story instead of parcelled out as trilogies. But now writers who grew up consuming TV wonder if the over-arching tropes of literary writing apply to them. Readers, who also grew up on TV series, want their characters to be recognisable, repeatable, and ?safe? in the sense of not challenging the reader?s assumptions about them. Thus we have our Jack Reachers, protagonists psychologically frozen in a series of books that can be read in any order. (Even Fleming?s James Bond grew over the course of the novels, if not the movies.)

So as a writer, I now have to decide if I’m going to juggle telling the most important story of a character’s life with telling a story that leaves room for a sequel, for the characters to be ‘known’ and ‘comfortable’ for the next episode, the next visit by the friendly, money-paying reader. I?m not sure I can do that and I don?t know how failure to do so may impact my career development as a writer.

As always, thoughts and ideas are welcome below?

*** ADDED LATER: I never read the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew as a kid. I don’t know if they are examples of the frozen protagonist, but I suspect they are.

When I first arrived in Kuala Lumpur, my employer gave me a list of real estate rental agents to contact – these are people used to helping foreigners, and who apparently “know what we want.? I thought that was odd at the time, but just dismissed it as expat hubris.

After three years in the same place, we?ve begun looking for a new place to call home. We need a bigger place, and one that better fits both of our commutes. Now, after seeing a few places with agents who aren?t used to renting to foreigners, I understand completely those remarks from three years ago.

We saw a number of nice flats in a one-year-old building not far from the university hospital where my partner is starting to work, and close enough to the train line to allow me to commute. The price was cheap, the building in nice shape – but? we ran into the difference between places that foreigners rent and places that locals rent.

Foreigners expect the place to be in move-in condition when we see it. This building is one year old and yet most of the flats aren?t finished. Why? Because the landlords won?t finish them until a tenant has signed a lease. Only then will the landlord complete the construction.

So what does ?unfurnished? mean in this case? No lights, no fans, no air conditioner, no kitchen cabinets, no hot water heater.

These are called “unfurnished” apartments. So what does ?unfurnnished? mean in this case? No lights, no fans, no air conditioner, no kitchen cabinets, no hot water heater. Just lots of wires hanging down from the ceiling and walls.

So you have no idea what any of these things will be like, quality-wise or aesthically, until after you sign the lease and move in.

That was the first eye opener.

The second was internet. The national telecom provider, TM, provides all the cabling and switches (the ‘backbone’), then the ISPs compete for your dollars. But TM won?t set up an internet access point for this building until there are at least 500 tenants asking for it (not just 500 tenants). New buildings in Malaysia have a difficult time getting internet access, because it won’t be installed until after the demand exists for it.

I?d never heard of this, and it seems like a really excellent way to ensure that a building never gets tenants – sorry you can?t have internet until enough people agree to move in without it. Then you can all have it?

One of my friends just moved out of a building after 9 months without internet. The building never hit its occupancy quota and so internet was never connected.

At work today, discussing this inanity, I learned that one of my friends has just moved out of a building after 9 months without internet. The building never hit its occupancy quota and so TM never connected it to the internet.

We?re not taking one of these shiny new apartments, as nice as the view is, as cheap as the rent is (half of my current rent for twice the space, and a 20 year younger apartment). Nope, sorry, not without it being finished before we sign, not if it means no internet for God knows how long.

Malaysia is going through a housing boom and an occupancy crisis simultaneously. Too many new places are remaining empty, even as they tear down old neighbourhoods to put up new skyscrapers. Friends recently told of visiting a place where they were shown one rental price, and when they scoffed at it, were immediately offered a 50% discount. They still chose not to take it, instead moving into an older house in an established neighbourhood – that is to say, into a property that would have high speed internet.