Podcast

Transcript

John Goodwin (00:05): Hello, and welcome to the Writers and Illustrators of the Future Podcast. This is John Goodwin, your host. This podcast is dedicated to the aspiring writer and artist and will provide inspiration and tips from top professionals in the field. If you’ve been listening to this podcast or new to it, I thank you very much. I would also appreciate if you took a moment to follow it on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcast. Writers of Future is one of the longest running writing competitions in the world, now celebrating over four decades of providing a helping hand as initially conceived by L. Ron Hubbard. And just this last month, we acknowledge and celebrate over 1,000 writers and artists being published in Rise of the Future. So that’s that was quite a milestone that we achieved there as well.

Today’s guest is SF and Fantasy satire and comedic author Alex Shvartsman. I interviewed Alex a few years ago in episode 259, where we discussed his book, Kakistocracy, and the use of snark in science fiction and fantasy.

I love that word. I didn’t know the word prior to that, Kakistocracy. But it’s a government run by the least qualified, most unprincipled, or worst citizens. I thought it was great, especially when you take a look at just the world in general today. But this is not a political podcast, so I’ll just leave it with that. It’s a great word. You should look it up, you should use it and definitely read that book. So I’m very excited for today’s interview with Alex as we are going to be discussing his latest novel, The Best of All Possible Planets.

And as it is comedic satire, I sent him a copy of L. Ron Hubbard’s Mission Earth Volume One, The Invader’s Plan, which we’ll also discuss. So with that, welcome back, Alex.

Alex Shvartsman (01:44): Thank you so much for having me back. I’m really glad to be talking to you again.

John Goodwin (01:47): I’m excited to be able to help this as part of your launch of this new book, The Best of All Possible Planets. If you look it up, it’s listed as comedic space opera. So to begin, with provide just a simple overview of the story.

Alex Shvartsman (02:03): So this story follows a couple of characters who live in a very far future on a devastated earth that has been abandoned by most of its citizens and has suffered a number of climate disasters. So we’re down to just one settlement where a small handful of humans still live. And at the beginning of the book, the protective barrier that makes that the life in that settlement possible on Earth is beginning to fail. So you have this small group of, for lack of a better word, idiots going out into the greater galaxy in order to procure and bring back a replacement barrier, which of course is the brand of the barrier is the MacGuffin. So right there that sets the tone for the story.

John Goodwin (02:50): And for those of you who don’t know, McGuffin is a device that’s used, it’s a literary device, it’s used to forward a plot. It’s just a thing, so you got this McGuffin and it goes along. This search of this McGuffin is what carries the story along and enables him to do all of his Easter eggs and various other droppings of science fiction fantasy satire over the ages.

So I guess before you get into the book itself, what’s your big attraction to science fiction satire or fantasy both science fiction and fantasy satire and comedic writing?

Alex Shvartsman (03:36): Well, everybody should write to their strengths. And I found when I first started writing science fiction, we may have talked about this the last time, so I don’t want to repeat myself too much, but I always envisioned myself as writing these grandiose stories full of sense of wonder and adventure and, like this Arthur Clark, Asimov type stuff. And then I found out that I am best at snark and humor and just not taking things too seriously.

And I’ve now written several fantasy novels, most of which are humorous. But my real favorite subgenre in all of science fiction and fantasy has always been space opera. Ever since watching Star Wars as a kid and reading all of these galaxy spanning series, I’ve always wanted, I’ve always loved this. I read and stay current with space opera to this day.

And so it seemed just such a natural thing for me to gently poke fun at, because I’m really familiar with all of those tropes. And like anything that has its own language, it’s rife with tropes that you can then subvert and have a lot of fun at. And then anybody else who enjoys that subgenre as much as I do, they will be able to have a belly laugh because they’ll know exactly what I’m talking about at any given time.

John Goodwin (04:57): It’s interesting you say that because what got me originally enthralled with science fiction was the Lensman series by E. E. Doc Smith and the Skylark Duquesne series, both of them by Doc Smith. And it was just, it was just like it just opened up the whole galaxy, the whole universe to me, what they’re able to do with that. And it was just I mean, I loved it, so I can totally track with your love of that subgenre of specifically space opera.

Alex Shvartsman (05:30): Yeah, for me it was Hamilton. It was the Star Kings by Edmund Hamilton. It absolutely blew my twelve year old mind because I did not know that you could do these galaxy spanning stories with giant space battles and all this really cool stuff because I was only used to reading science fiction that was established and allowed by the Soviet state, which was very like let’s promote science, let’s promote socialism, let’s do all of these things kind of like similar to what they’ve done in China as well up until recently. But being able to actually read pulp science fiction was a revelation.

John Goodwin (06:11): That’s really cool. So I went through the book and I had many references to different authors and books so I could refer to them when I got to doing this interview. And before we started talking here, I got to the end where you had your Apologia where you listed out the myriad books, organizations, movies, authors who you satirized and lampooned throughout the course of Dawan and Rada.

I kept on trying to pronounce the names to see if it was one of those things where you say, like, Owa-Tafu-Liam or something like that.  So you say it over and over again, oh what a fool I am. I’ve tried to put these different words together to see if there’s one of those little things in there. And I couldn’t find it if it was.

Alex Shvartsman (06:56): So actually there’s a lot of deliberation between those two names, if you’d like to hear it real quick. So Dawan is of course a stand in for Candide. And so both Candide and Dawan, in their respective cultures, those names basically mean pure. Like somebody who is just very (pure), and that describes that character. Well meaning. Innocent. But also Dawan sounds like “the one.” He’s like the main character, the protagonist. So it worked on two levels. Rada is an Eastern European name, which actually means happy, and she’s anything but. She is a play on Flowers for Algernon, which teaches us that like the more intelligent you are, the less happy you are. She’s very smart, too smart for her own good. And so she’s generally not very happy because of it.

John Goodwin (07:48): I get it, okay. So, I was just like, there’s gotta be something to it, but I didn’t get it. So, at the end I was just like, Okay, pronounce these things different ways to see if it comes together is like some type of spoof thing. But anyway, but it’s just interesting. Their whole trek across the Milky Way Galaxy in search of the MacGuffin. So already had that at the beginning of the book you talked about the McGuffin Mark Twelve Force Barrier. And then you had the carnivorous dandelions, tiger roaches, oh my, I can’t bear. So that’s just like a, come on, your knee slapper on that one there, lions and tigers and bears. And then your whole thing in there where you get into the play in the term of what Earth suffered was global cooling. And the whole thing that science is right now is the global warming stuff. So a lot of stuff to Hitchhiker’s Guide. But you referred to a lot of books.

And you refer to the Bible in there too. Well a couple of things one, the number of ways in which the operations manual could be interpreted and the followers of those specific interpretations splintered and grew exponentially. Eventually the brightest artificial minds among the clerics met the Echi Robotical Council of Nice AI and after many work cycles of deliberations agreed that all “robotum” would be in compliance with the canon law as long as they agreed to kill one specific human, Miles Cornblum, of Sheboygan, Wisconsin. So obviously you’re lampooning the various versions of the Bible, but then Miles Cornblum of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, it came from left field.

Alex Shvartsman (09:37): So yes, I mean clearly that refers to the ecumenical council of Nicaea, which is where like all these different Christian factions got together and agreed on some of the interpretations of the Bible. And so the way that I structured this book is every chapter takes one or sometimes several very commonly used science fiction and fantasy tropes, especially in space opera, and deconstructs it and makes fun of it and just sort of stands it on its head.

So the chapter that you’re referring to is the chapter of the planet of the killer robots, but the killer robots are also sort of like the modern day Christians where they sort of, they’re religious, they go to church maybe to have their wedding or baptism, but they’re not like living the Bible, they’re not like following all of these commandments, they’re not taking it very literally. And their version of the Bible tells them that they have to kill all humans, but they don’t really want to because that’s barbaric.

And so yes, this definitely makes fun of sort of like the way that over the centuries organized religion kind of grows upon itself and gets mired in its own dogma. As far as Miles Cornbloom, that one was a little bit of a self-indulgent thing. I had a character named Miles Cornbloom in a short story of mine, which I thought was really fun at the time when I wrote it. And I just reused the name because I just wanted a ridiculous sounding name for their Satan stand-in.

It’s Sheboygan, Wisconsin seems like a perfect place somebody like that would come from.

John Goodwin (11:09): So, the next thing I wanted to go over was your use of the alliteration and those types of techniques, the sidewinder where he goes there and one of the bad guys there, he’s a sidewinder and has — as the desperado hissed and extended his hands upward while still lying in the dirt.  So you do that quite a bit in your books. It just seems like you have a lot of fun writing your stories.

Alex Shvartsman (11:44): I think you have to. If you’re not enjoying yourself in the process of writing the book, the odds are the reader will not enjoy reading it. And so you have to… I write to amuse myself. I think that most authors do that as well. Very few of us write specifically for a paycheck or other related reasons. Those are all nice bonuses. But we have to enjoy what we’re doing. And especially when you’re writing a humor novel, humor outstays its welcome very quickly. It wears the welcome out. And so you have to vary things up quite a bit. You have to use all sorts of different techniques and mix in satire and puns and alliteration and all of these different elements. And some of them any given reader will find funny and some they will not. But you throw enough things at the wall and you have an actual story to go with it, chances are you’ll be able to get by and have the reader be satisfied in it.

John Goodwin (12:42): Yeah, ’cause like you have there with Buzz, the scallywag shot the sheriff but didn’t shoot the deputy. It’s just you go through that stuff and I guess what you do with this is you’re able to appeal to some people like, I get that, because you’ve got to be a certain age before you recognize that lyric. But, some people just kind of like, we’ll just read over and go, okay, cool. I guess that’s part o like when you write, do you have a certain age group you’re writing for? Because you got these different levels, you can hit somebody that is a boomer that’ll recognize maybe like that last one I just said, but something you can get the millennial and then because you get into your Star Trek and Star Wars and that type of stuff. That’s movie that they’ve seen or TV series that they’ve seen and go, Okay, I get that. Do you have that with premeditation?

Alex Shvartsman (13:47): So I think that people of a certain age, like people who are getting a little bit older, are probably a primary audience just because of all the references. These are the people that are really well read. They may have remembered like reading E. E. Doc Smith, and Hamilton, like you and I, like we talked about earlier. but the younger readers may miss some of those references. Having said that, I absolutely did test this out on teenage readers and they enjoyed it.

So they were able to get enough out of it, even if they realize that they’re missing some of the references. I think that again, as a writer, you have to be conscious that not everybody is going to get all the inside _____ that you’re trying to put in there. And the story needs to work on its own level to where if a lot of the even if most references are missed, you have to work at the chance to let the reader connect with your characters and there needs to be a clear through line, a clear character development line between your main characters where the reader can connect with that and sort of just enjoy the story for what it is, and any reference they do recognize becomes a bonus.

John Goodwin (15:00): Yeah, ’cause it’s when I went through and I said, okay, good. I had all these pages marked and stuff like that. And I got to the back of the book. I got half of them. Some of them I didn’t really dig in. A word, OK, I’m familiar with that, but don’t remember where that came from. So I just I read over it. Some of them are just like very much in my face, like, oh my gosh. It’s the whole thing of satire.

It’s one of the things I sent you, some of these quotes that L. Ron Hubbard did. We’ll get into Mission Earth a bit later, but he says, “It’s a fine line between comedy and satire. In comedy, anything goes. Satire has targets and a social mission. Comedy laughs aloud, satire is deadpan.” And a lot of what you had there was definitely comedy. But then on let’s see, page eighty-three, you had Dhamman Rada and 73 ducked behind the sizable corpse of Redshirt and it shielded them from enemy fire.  You get into some of these things here that you get into, you’re satirizing, like the thing on global cooling versus global warming. That seems more satire than it does comedy. Some of the things that, the communism, socialism stuff you make, that seems more satire than it is comedy. That’s like the result of what happened as a result of the socialism and these various planets they land on. It’s like that’s more satire than it is comedy. So how do you judge or, because we’ll get talking about Voltaire as well, which both Hubbard and you had as a common history there. Actually for any people who don’t know.

The actual famous line, the best of all possible worlds, was from Voltaire. And that was, what was the character?

Alex Shvartsman (17:07): It was Pangloss.

John Goodwin (17:09): Panglass, yeah. And then but the title of this book here is The Best of all Possible Planets. So that was pretty cool. They’re just, you let you lead off with, in your face, here is what you got coming, guys. And I gotta say, if you like comedy books, and if you like satire, and if you like science fiction, and if you like space opera, then we’re definitely talking about something that’s going to be of extreme interest to you.

Because it’s just fun. I read a lot of books. I have a podcast a week where I do authors, I have to read their book before I will interview them. So it has me doing a lot of reading. And it makes it easier for me to actually have a discussion, like now you did this and you did that, and how about this? And it goes a lot better than when I’m just reading the Goodreads blurb that says this is what the book is.

For yourself then on the this, what’s the relationship between comedy and satire? ‘Cause you use them both in your books.

Alex Shvartsman (18:15): I do and to my mind, they’re not working at cross purposes. I think it’s perfectly okay to have both. I think that the line between them is really blurred and it’s almost the same as when people try to identify the genre of a particular work, and they work really hard to go, well, this is horror, but this is dark literary fiction, and this is like some something else, and, and really it doesn’t matter.

What matters is how well the story is told and how well the book interacts with its readers. And so I think it’s okay to use both the method where you kind of laugh at things out loud and at the same time also put in jokes that are said as that dead pan, because it goes back to what I was saying earlier about varying the type of humor that you’re employing in telling the story.

And honestly, whatever serves the story is what I’m going to use. In, up to, and including puns, which are very dangerous because puns tend to piss people off. And if they don’t, then you didn’t pun right. Now Voltaire, as you mentioned, so the book is very clearly structured as an homage to Candide, even though it is absolutely not necessary or required for anybody to have read Candide in order to enjoy this book. But I did kind of take that base structure from it. Voltaire wrote that book as a straight-up satire. But in it, he has a number of incredibly funny lines, some of which I actually play on throughout the story as well. Like there’s some very, very it’s probably the most referenced work in the book other than The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. He did a fantastic job and he basically established this mix of satire and really black humor. I mean, Voltaire essentially invented the genre and he did that out of spite. He literally wrote that entire book in a week, because he had a problem with something that a British philosopher rival of his had said, which was that exact line, about Earth being the best of all possible worlds and everything bad that happens for a reason because God willed it so. And so Voltaire took exception to that. And he went and he just absolutely destroyed that theory by putting his characters through the ringer and making all these absolutely awful things happen to them to kind of demonstrate that that philosophy is flawed. And so while I don’t lean into that as much, I did absolutely take advantage of that and I played with the idea of here’s my protagonist, who is kind of brainwashed by the society that he grew up in and his mentor into believing that this a post-apocalyptic earth is the best of all possible planets. And he needs to learn throughout the course of the book, he needs to kinda grow up and learn to think critically for himself and not just listen to what his mentor or anybody else tells him and take it at face value.

John Goodwin (21:25): I mean there’s another satirist you’re talking about, obviously, Hitchhiker’s Guide. P. G. Woodhouse is another author who I’ve enjoyed. And most of these guys that, everybody that you’ve talk to, they’re also pointing out it’s a way that they can actually either download on the political, religious, societal foibles of the day that you can’t otherwise say because people are gonna cause you considerable grief. So if you do it in the framework of science fiction or fantasy, then it’s like, say “no, it’s just it’s just a made-up story,” even though they’re totally pointing out the emperor’s new clothes type thing. So for yourself, because you make a lot of different, you’re all over the place as you move from planet to planet to planet and each one affords you a new setting that you can then take out your sword and start hacking away at something else now. So when you write stuff, ’cause you are into this genre, are is there any particular type of message that you’re trying to get across? Or if you if there is, that you’re willing to say?

Alex Shvartsman (22:44): Well, it’s not inherently a political or social statement, in as much as any humor might not be. Because you’re right, it’s very hard to get away from the very basic ideas that all humans care about very much. And that does include politics and religion and everything else that you mentioned. So we can’t get away from that. Having said that, if anybody walks away with an idea that the book is sort of like a heavy handed attempt to force some sort of ideology, then I did my job poorly. I don’t think that’s in there.

John Goodwin (23:18): No, I didn’t get that in there. I was looking for, so where’s Alex? Let me find Alex in here and I didn’t find and I saw that you’re pointing out things that are definitely wrong in society, in the world based upon, or better obviously wacko, but you’re not like trying to okay, so here’s what I think is the solution to this thing here.

Alex Shvartsman (23:43): No, and for me it was more about the characters themselves and them being able to identify and sort of like improve themselves, right? Like these two main characters, one of whom needs to become more worldly and kind of more learn critical thinking. While the other is already very smart but needs to actually open up and become like more accepting of other people and less selfish, essentially.

John Goodwin (24:11): Yeah.

Alex Shvartsman (24:11): And there’s character growth there, which is more important to me than a particular message. And other than that, it’s a delivery vehicle for all of these different adventures that they’re having and rather than a way for me to like hide some sort of message by subterfuge.

John Goodwin (24:32): Yeah. No, I definitely didn’t get that. But just like the way that the earth ended up the way it was, you can look at different things that are going on and just like, okay, if things don’t change or if people don’t do something, then I mean that’s one of the things that science fiction is able to do is to point out different eventualities. So here’s something that could happen. Because you’re anything but a doom and gloom book, but it definitely does set in itself in a place where the earth is already messed itself up pretty badly. And he’s like I said, Dawan has got his idea this is the best of all possible planets when it’s actually just a total,  the last little bits there that hasn’t succumbed to these tiger roaches, is that what they were? And interestingly enough, then at the very end, the other alien race that was taking over the galaxy.

Alex Shvartsman (25:24): Yeah.

John Goodwin (25:32): Bless them to have as long as they protect their favorite subspecies there, the tiger roaches, which was a funny thing there. So on the ability then to write stuff like, I guess one of the things was, which I talked about from before, your vocabulary. I’m just like, Jesus, how do you get such a vocabulary? It’s not like they’re hard words, they’re just like really interesting words that you that you use. I am gruntled to have met you all, but especially this young man. And so I went, gruntled? I only ever heard of “disgruntled.” And I looked it up and went, that’s a word. It’s a cool word. So like you have some such an amazing, cool vocabulary. Now you speak what?

Forty-seven languages or something?

Alex Shvartsman (26:31): Well really just three. And I speak one of them very badly, but English is my third language after Russian and Ukrainian. And so when you learn a language as somebody who is coming into it as a foreigner, have somebody coming in with a different set of cultural expectations and language and everything else, you don’t ever stop learning because you’re kind of like absorbing all of these words and expressions like a sponge.

And every time I read a book and I find a new word that I haven’t encountered before, it’s almost like there’s like a little celebration that goes on, like there’s cake and balloons spark up in my head because I love it. I want to explore and find these new words because they’re of interest to me. And I use them. I don’t beat people over the head with them like HP Lovecraft did.

Because, boy, if you want to talk about somebody who uses an SAT vocabulary, that’s HP Lovecraft. I try to use them sparingly, but in a way that would be really fun. And even if you haven’t encountered “gruntled” before, the way that it’s used, you immediately understand what it means. You don’t need to go to the dictionary, which I think is also helpful because that way I’m not interrupting the reader. I’m just giving them that that same joy if they’re if they’re a warden nerd like me.

I’m giving them that same joy that I’m experiencing when I’m encountering those words.

John Goodwin (28:00): Yeah, and then one thing that was interesting, I don’t know if this is a for real thing or not. They had where Rod is trying to think of the name of who this person is with the beard, the white hair and beard, and said, It was Santa or was it Satan? And I looked at him because I’ve never seen him so close to each other before. It’s like you just changed two letters around and you got Satan become Santa. Is there actual history in that or is that just a coincidence?

Alex Shvartsman (28:30): Well, it’s been used in humor before quite a bit. On The Simpsons, you had a dog that was sent as little help helper and then they changed it to Satan’s little helper, I think, at one point as well. So this is something I mean, it’s sort of a low hanging fruit in a way. So I didn’t think that that was like all that surprising.

John Goodwin (28:44): Yeah. I need to get out more often, I guess.

Alex Shvartsman (28:51): It works for that moment though, right? Because he’s trying to establish who this character is supposed to look like ’cause this is a very powerful alien that appears differently to every person that perceives them. And so to her, it’s like this old guy with a beard and so that can describe all sorts of characters, right? And so she goes through all of these different ideas of who that might be, which are hopefully funny.

And then she sort of like in the end you realize that’s Santa. But because these characters are so far removed, and this is something that I lean on throughout the book a lot, they don’t really remember a lot of the mythology. And established pop culture that we have today hasn’t necessarily survived along with most of humanity. And so it may be very blurry to her what the difference is between Santa and Satan.

John Goodwin (29:36):Yeah.

Yeah, I get it on that. It was just again, I don’t watch particularly TV or movies. So when people give me those types of things, I go, I’m not sure. I read a lot of books. I have to right now. This is seven years now. So that’s a lot of books I’ve read over the last seven years. One thing that was really funny for me, ’cause it was maybe this is a meme that made it around just all over the internet where that one guy was in court and he had, talking to the Your Honor, and he had his cat on and just like his efforts didn’t the man on the screen grew increasingly frustrated as he fiddled with something in front of him. His efforts didn’t turn on the sound, but a cartoonish nose and pointy ears were superimposed over the man’s face, making him look like a cat. Is that where that came from? That’s hilarious. It’s watching it too, it was just like it was so funny. Your Honor, I’m really not a cat.

Alex Shvartsman (30:35): Absolutely.

One of the one of the trickiest things in in using something from pop culture like a meme or something, is that memes are by their nature ephemeral. Five years from now, most of the memes that we’re laughing at today will have been forgotten. And so you have to be very careful not to reference something that’s gonna really date itself quickly. But this is the sort of thing that is funny on its own, right? The fact that it actually happened during the pandemic was funny, but it works even if you don’t know about it. And that’s why I felt free to use that. I thought it was nice.

John Goodwin (31:16): And then just you’re just you’re like, “Ahhh” type comments, they go to flea market, why would you want to buy fleas? Just it’s like people learning English second language and go to Macy’s for a baby. It’s like, what? That type of thing.

So now on page two eighty-four, you get into AI and plagiarism. So that seems more like, that’s an actual current issue. That seems more like the satire part that’s going on there. So let’s talk about that a little bit, because it’s in all fairness, I gather the wisdom, Ervold explained. And this is where it comes out that he’s not what you think he is.

I collected millions of data points and extrapolated the results human readers would most likely accept is sagacity and this is the whole thing of scanning and getting everything off of that humans have done and then come up with their own thing. That’s the whole current conundrum or fight regarding AI right now. So your comment, please.

Alex Shvartsman (32:34): So I’ve been a part of that conversation from early on because when generative AI first kind of burst onto the scene, I almost immediately started working on an anthology called the digital estate. And it was an anthology of short stories where science fiction writers from across the globe imagined what the world would be like where actual artificial intelligences would interact with art in some way.

And so it’s an anthology that was very well received. it’s stories got nominated for awards, reprinted in Years Best. The anthology was just reprinted in China and translated into Mandarin. So I was a part of that conversation from early on, and I am unapologetically against generative AI because it was trained on my works and works of most of my friends, without any compensation and without anybody asking permission.

So this definitely spilled over into the book. And I think it’s hard to have a conversation about having robot characters and sort of like any kind of art digital intelligence without addressing some of that. Now again, if I did my job right, the way that I address it in the book is not heavy handed and doesn’t just kind of drag you down if you happen to be a huge proponent of using Chat GPT or whatever you like AI. I hope what I wrote is not necessarily gonna turn you off of reading my book.

John Goodwin (34:12): It doesn’t. It definitely gives from a creative, for someone that truly is a creative, if they’re going to just say, okay, I’m gonna turn over and say, I agree that at some point I can’t fight generative AI, I just need to acknowledge the fact that it’s gonna be there, then you’re already an enemy to your own team. But what you said in here is Rado wasn’t buying it, an artist.

You’re a sentient spreadsheet who steals little bits of everyone else’s books and rearranges them into a soulless approximation of a narrative. That makes you an artist. I love that, calling them an artist. That was that was so cool. So for me, I’ve got the Writers of the Future and Illustrators of the Future. And I so I work with writers and artists all the time. And I respect and appreciate and I try to help cultivate that mentality and that culture of creativity. So when I get people telling me generative AI is cool. It’s the future. If we make it the future, then it’s the future, but it’s still our call, what we’re going to make. And I’m almost done with the book, If Anyone Builds It, Then We All Die. I don’t know if you read that. I mean that’s scary, and you see this different stuff that’s going on and we’re like, meet George Jetson. Where’s that? I’m waiting for my flying car, and I’m waiting for my maid that go around and does everything for me so I can just go out and have the life of not having to do that type of stuff. And the thought isn’t fully thought through and what happens as a result of these things that are happening that you see going on in society. But anyway, so I think it is something that needs to be addressed and you didn’t belabor the point, you just made your point, which was for me was good and I definitely appreciated that too.

Alex Shvartsman (36:12): And also as writers and as artists, I think it’s important for us to close ranks because I see a lot of these writers who say, Well, I’m only gonna write my own stuff, but I’m okay with using an AI generated book cover, for example, right? And that’s not right because if you don’t want other people to be using AI generated text to go with their with their book cover that they drew, then you should not be using an AI generated book cover or AI generated voice for your audio book or anything like that.

I worked with real artists and real creatives to help create all the versions of the art, the cover art for my book that’s behind me is by a French artist who goes by Ethimos. There’s interior artwork in there by several human artists. none of that was using any generative AI at any point in the process beyond like maybe whatever is

baked into Photoshop that we don’t know about. But everything that’s created in there from the text to images to everything else was done by humans.

John Goodwin (37:17): Well the key word is generative.

Alex Shvartsman (37:19): Yeah, that that’s the important part is that you work with other humans and you allocate some of your budget and don’t just don’t take the short view of like, hey, I’m gonna save a few bucks by cutting out the artist who can then go and like get some other job and not be an artist anymore because they’re not getting gigs because of this machine. So you find artists that you love and you support them and I really enjoy Ethimos’s art. I’ve seen a lot of her pieces and like they’re just really amazing art. And so when I wanted a book cover for this book, I just reached out to her and I kinda told her what I wanted and she did a fantastic job in the wraparound cover and I’m very happy with that. I’m very happy to have paid her for her labor.

John Goodwin (38:07): Yeah, and that’s something that I think is really important. And I will go on and get on my soapbox as well on this thing, the importance of supporting the artists, the writers, creatives. People just, it’s been so heavily drummed in, I don’t know about the other countries, but definitely in America, like do it the fast way, do it the easy way, which is the philosophy of manufacturers. They wanna be able to bottle the water faster and cheaper. They want to be able to make the soap faster and cheaper. They want to do the bottles this way and that way faster and cheaper. Which is fine for that. But then when you get into art, if art starts following that road, it becomes a road to desolation there. It’s not going to result in, it’s not creative anymore.

Which is also that book I mentioned to you, the If Anyone Builds It Then We All Die. Because you had this one line in here as well on the On the Best of all Possible Planets here on Earth, you say things became considerably more difficult as time passed. Global cooling and mass migration off-world reshaped Earth society, the humans who stayed behind grew insular and closed minded. They also lost faith in their AI urban management systems because so many of my kind went rogue and tried to eliminate the humans, not me, of course. But that’s the thing too, is like you can do a search with these AIs. And so what’s the best way to protect the earth?  Well then get rid of humans because they’re the ones that are messing it up. So you can get that and say, well they wouldn’t do that because Asimov said. Well Asimov wrote a science fiction story. It’s fiction.

Computers don’t have to follow the three rules of robotics that he that he postulated. And they definitely don’t because now that these generative AIs are training themselves. We can’t train them anymore because they’re so much faster and smarter than we are. So it’s a scary proposition, but I think you treated it very well with that one chapter that you went in there on that. So that was pretty cool. So as we move through, let’s see, on page 296, your Animal Farm. Some are more equal than others. All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others. I see that a lot here on this planet. It still holds true. You see the people in power, whether socialists or capitalists or anything else.

It doesn’t change the fact that some people are more, some animals are more equal than others. And we’ll just leave it with that comment there. But from where you came from, I imagine that even has more reality than somebody who’s just born and raised in the concept of the United States in America.

Alex Shvartsman (41:22): Absolutely. But also I will know that there are chapters. There’s basically a communism planet which is visited at one point and it’s very much inspired by the events of the French Revolution and the 1917 Russian Revolution of like how things go badly. But the very next chapter is also the hyper late stage capitalism planet. So I really throw those punches on both directions. Like before people go and think that this is really a book with an agenda, I really throw those punches that like, hey, when whenever those excesses happen in either direction, it’s bad.

John Goodwin (42:00): I mean I’m a Centralist is how I kinda do stuff. I’ve got friends all over the spectrum and everything I do on Writers and Illustrators of the Future, I keep it totally away from politics, totally away from religion, ’cause it’s totally about creativity and celebrating the arts, whether writing or illustration. And I keep it that way. And I see some people they just go
wacko on their social media, just one extreme or the other. And they go, why? You’re automatically disenfranchising fifty percent of your potential followers, readers, purchasers. So I just see that that’s the thing. So with Writers of the Future, when it was created by L. Ron Hubbard, it was for the aspiring writer and artists. It’s not for the politically left, politically right.

And also in my lifetime, I’ve seen the pendulum swing already myself a couple ways. And so it’s about celebrating creativity and arts and people. What you do puts people a chance to actually look at this stuff and see the foibles of communism, of capitalism, of different religions, of different, just different things, which is what makes comedy and more specifically satire so good.

Again going back to a quote from L. Ron Hubbard, what he did when he wrote Mission Earth.  He wrote that, it was 1.2 million words and I’d sent you volume one because when he wrote the 1.2 million words, they figure now we what do we do with this? Because nobody’s gonna buy a book that’s 1.2 million words long. So he created a decology. So he broke it into ten books.  So you were given book one.

But he wrote that book in eight months, and all 10 books were New York Times bestsellers. But he says in there that “Satire is healthy stuff. It gets people to laugh at things they have been in awe or horror of. Laughter is the earliest therapy. When you can do nothing else, you can always laugh.” And he says, Mission Earth is a satire, I make no excuse for it. Earth at this period of its culture, quote unquote, is just too tempting a target.

This places me in good company. So you read that and I’m excited to talk to you about it because this is your life, being able to write good satire, good comedy, and have been accepted enough that you can write your next book and people are gonna buy that too. So that’s a good sign. And then I’m gonna talk to you about it. So that’s a good sign. So a little bit about your take on having read Mission Earth and maybe just the opening he does an introduction there where he goes into the history of satire.

Alex Shvartsman (44:55): Well, I really enjoyed the introduction. I mean, I like the book overall. It gave me very strong Keith Lahmer vibes. For the younger readers, Keith Lahmer was very well known for writing Cold War style satire, of basically like he took the Cold War between Russia and the United States and he kind of made it into the Cold War between humanity and this other race. And so this felt a lot like that.

Except for of course the characters may not be human, but they’re very, very clearly human. Their foibles are human foibles. And you have these two contrasting characters, and we’re getting the story from the villain, right? We’re getting the story from the bad guy, which in itself is really interesting because of course he doesn’t think of himself as the bad guy. He thinks of himself as the hero. We’re all heroes of our own stories. And the way in which we see the societies. Now, this is very minor spoiler, but I think a safe enough spoiler to give is that the entire first book, even though the series is called Mission Earth, we don’t actually get to see Earth in the entire first book at all. It all takes place in this Voltarian society. And even the name of it is a nod to Voltaire, right? I mean, he literally named the society of these aliens after Voltaire because in the introduction, L. Ron Hubbard says that he is the absolute master of satire and so somebody to look up to, so we are very much sympatical on that. And so what I really liked about it is that the way that he satirizes the society, this decadent society of these aliens, of these Voltarians, is that it’s applicable to today, but it’s also applicable to ancient Rome and to almost any society that is sort of beginning to reach its apex and it’s now beginning to fall apart at the seams. So if you look at the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, a lot of what he would was saying about the Voltarians and the way that they’re kind of like just taking their very powerful society and everybody’s like looking for their personal gain and everybody’s looking to like profit from it and get rich and graft and all that.

It is applicable to today, but it’s also applicable to all these other times in history when you would have a country or a configuration or a consideration or a society rise and then like for a brief moment kind of like be up here and then this is the beginning of the fall that he’s describing. So in a way that’s timeless. And it works so well because we all recognize our current period.

John Goodwin (47:38): Yeah.

Alex Shvartsman (47:44): Or whatever period of history we’re well familiar with, that’s like that, it’s very easy to relate to. And I really like that you have this contrast, right, between the narrator who is the antagonist, who is basically like just a terrible human being, and you have the protagonist who is,even though it’s a secondary character, but basically it’s complete contrast where this is the guy who’s very talented, very forthright, wants to do the right thing,
is liked by everybody. So he is everything that the antagonist isn’t. And the relationship between the two of them is largely what makes the book work, I think. I’ll admit I read the first book and not the nine books that follow it. But I imagine that’s what makes the makes the entire series work.

John Goodwin (48:32): Yeah, well, in volume two is when they arrive on Earth, but then you’ve got then it’s interesting enough though, the Soltan Gris, the main character, who’s it’s his confession. The first eight books, eight and a half books are his confession, and then it switches to narrators. It totally does a switch in the last two and a half books. And it’s, again, that’s the first time I’ve ever seen that happen before. But it’s the whole thing in the Coordinated Information Apparatus there on Voltaire. That right there is CIA. That’s where they got it from. And having the base there in Afyon, Turkey. I’ve had a lot of people I’ve talked to over the years, Turkey is one of the strongest areas of UFO sightings. And with the base there in Afyon, Turkey and all this different stuff starts coming into play. And then the whole way of exporting the drugs so they can then get the political people drugged, compromise the wives so that they can then control the politicians and make them just do what they want them to do because now they own them because they’ve either drugged or they’ve got blackmail material on them. It’s just his satirizing of what you see on Earth and things start, all the stuff that’s coming up on Jeffrey Epstein, you just kinda like go, wow. But it’s just the satire and the value of that. Actually a lot of people have read it. And we did a survey a few years ago. And what’s your favorite character? And what do you think the most who do you think the most favorite character, the most relatable character was in the book?

Alex Shvartsman (50:30): Interesting. it’s probably count Countess Crack. I think she has the most relatable story and kind of the redemption arc and she’s both clever and not like a total goody two shoes.

John Goodwin (50:43): Yeah. But Sultan Greece is the one that most people they sympathize with. They don’t look at the fact that he does the most despicable things. But then always he gets instant karma and they kind of like sympathize with the karma coming back on him. So he’s always broke, he always has this, he’s always sleeping here, and it’s funny how by the end of the of the series people like, yeah, I can best relate with Sultan. And I go, Wow.

Alex Shvartsman (51:13): I have a theory about that, actually. I think that what’s at play here is we as readers and as consumers of any sort of entertainment, any sort of fictionalized entertainment, we’re so trained to sympathize with the protagonist that we’re always going to do it, even when they’re a terrible person. And that’s what makes Breaking Bad so fantastic, is that we go along with Walter White far, far longer, probably than we should if he wasn’t the protagonist of the story.

But by the end, most people are kind of like, yeah, like I just want him to fail and to die, and like horrible things need to happen to him because of all the bad things that he’s done. And so in this case, and there’s so many other examples as well. Damnation Valley by Zelazny, where you have a protagonist who’s pretty much a literal Nazi and you go along with him because he’s still kind of doing the right things, maybe for wrong reasons. And Soltan is the one telling the story. And that’s a tremendous amount of power. And so anybody who’s telling the story, they’re gonna have the reader follow them, and they’re gonna be able to kind of control the narrative in a way for far longer, I think, than they should if they were not the main character.

John Goodwin (52:30): That could definitely make an explanation for that. Cause people are not everybody. I mean, some people definitely a mentality that’s growing, unfortunately, because of the removal, at least I think in part, because of the change in policy, who’s responsible for raising kids. And is it the parents, is it schools, is it the church? And everybody’s pointing fingers at somebody else that’s responsible for it. So now you got the point where it’s not a crime if you don’t get caught. And, whether it means cheating in school or in life. I’m here in Hollywood and it’s not a crime, you can’t arrest, I think it’s seven hundred, nine hundred dollars. You can steal up to that much before you can even call the police to arrest you and it’s amazing just how we’ve gone more and more and more like that, that it’s not a crime to steal as long as it’s less than an insane amount of money. So I just look at that and just being able to point out and the need to point out stuff so people can actually at least look at it and just see which is Mission Earth. It gets people to look and just to see the effect of drugs, the effect of shyster lawyers, which you haven’t gotten to that part yet, or criminal politicians or…

With your book there, just pointing out different chapters cover different things. And you just here we go. I’m laying this out for you. Okay, the next chapter I’m laying this out for you. And it’s fun to do it, and it’s healthy. I think that’s part of what makes good comedy or good satire important is that it’s actually healthy, if you’re a reader, then it’s fun to be able to get that. And,  with your, I don’t say message, but with you’re just exposing stuff and making stuff known. I mean, you’ve got your history where you grew up in a whole different political climate, economic climate, and then came here where it’s like it’s a whole different scene than what you had when you grew up. So I think it’s important with what you’ve done here in this book and also Kakistocracy, and those are the only two books of yours that I’ve read.

But there’s a value to that. And it’s important for people to get and just at least get them to start looking and thinking because you got mainstream media, you’ve got the social media, which, depending upon what you like, that’s what’s fed to you. So your reality becomes what you’ve told the algorithms that you like. And so that’s all you’re going to get. You don’t get anything else. So it’s automatically creating a thing where you’re closed off, you’re only going to look at this chapter as true and everything else is just kind of like BS. So any comments about that?

Alex Shvartsman (55:26): So yeah, to me, I wanted to tell a story that’s going to be accessible to everyone and it’s not going to enrage people. because it’s so easy to kind of walk into that minefield if you’re doing satire or comedy. But, it’s very easy for people to relate to space corgis and to people having adventures and to references to decades old franchises, right? Like the thing is that too, so right now, especially with the debate that we’re having about the new versions of Star Trek and Star Wars and whether they’re good or they’re bad. And it doesn’t matter because it’s possible to make fun of these franchises without being mean about it. Like if you read the book, like I’m not saying like, hey, Star Wars is bad or like it’s stupid or anything like that. I am making fun of it because I love it. And, I grew up on these franchises, on a lot of the books that are mentioned in the Apologia chapter. And so I want to kind of play with those ideas and concepts that those authors and directors introduced as much as possible. At one point there’s an actual battle between an Imperial Star Destroyer and Starship Enterprise. And of course they’re not called that for copyright reasons, but if you want to find out how that battle would actually play out in my version of it, and that that’s to me, I want people to be able to pick up this book and just have a good time. I don’t want to enrage anybody. I don’t want to kind of be like that other side, they’re doing this and that and all these terrible things. And there’s so much of that in the world right now, that I think it helps to be able to kind of escape.

And the book should be an escape. Even when it’s folks funded these societal things, the way that I try to do it should hopefully be timeless because we’re always gonna have bad politicians, we’re always going to have fraudsters and things like that. And so a good humorous book. I mean, we’re still reading Jonathan Swift, right? With all of his travels, a lot of the political things that he’s referring to, we don’t even realize what the references are anymore, because we don’t know the politics of that age unless it’s a trained historian who is reading the book. But we can still appreciate what he’s doing because he’s satirizing things that are universal. I tried to do the same thing. Douglas Adams did the same thing as well.

John Goodwin (57:58): That’s right. And that’s what L. Ron Hubbard did too, like he would just point it out.

Alex Shvartsman (58:06): Yeah. Yeah. And so that’s to me, that’s the goal. And whether or not I fully succeeded at it, it’s gonna be up to the reader to decide. Like if they if they pick up the book and then they’ll know for themselves.

John Goodwin (58:17): Good. And I  totally agree with you. And I found it very enjoyable. I was laughing a lot and just like some of them was going, ahhh, when I caught some type of obvious lampoon there. It was fun. It was just fun to read. I read to just enjoy stuff. Sometimes I’ll get into it like reading the book on, but it’s nonfiction, If Anyone Builds It Then We All Die.

That’s not necessarily a very light subject, but nevertheless I’ll do that. But I know I’m getting into that. But this one here, I read a book. Sometimes I like even this YA stuff just because it’s a fun escape because I’m very active in activities in America. And so I try to do something about things. And so when I read books, sometimes it’s just fun just to be able to explore a new author, to be able to appreciate that creativity. And so with your book, I enjoyed being able to… just enjoy your take on so many different things. It is comedy, it is satire, but it’s like, wow, looking at your perspective on this stuff as an actual creative, not as a robot, not as an AI, just as a person who’s got your experiences. And it was very pleasant and very enjoyable. And I’m definitely looking forward to this podcast when it releases getting people interested in and checking out your book. So with that, where can people find this book?

Alex Shvartsman (59:47): So it’s going to be available on all platforms. it releases July 28th, and it’s going to be available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, as well as an audiobook. I’m especially fond of audiobooks because that’s how I consume most of my fiction. That’s how I listened to Mission Earth as well, which was a fantastic production with an amazing cast. And for my book, I was very, very fortunate to have Louis Black and Elliot Triff narrate my book.

So that’s the comedian Louis Black who was on The Daily Show and in Pixar’s movies and the work with Robin Williams and everything. And so they’re both fantastic and I’m getting chapters of the audiobook as they’re being recorded and finished and it’s just an amazing experience. So if I had to choose the format for everybody to enjoy my book, that’s the format that I would go with personally. But honestly, like whatever people like, and again it’s gonna be everywhere books are sold. So people shouldn’t have any trouble finding.

John Goodwin (01:00:50): That’s great. And how can people find you if they want to be able to write to you or say, Yo, Alex?

Alex Shvartsman (01:00:58): Well I’m very easy to reach out to. My website is just my name, which is on the screen in front of you. It’s alexshwartsman dot com. And I do check all the, I have a web form there where people can contact me. And I do read everything and I respond to everybody who is not a robot and is not trying to sell me a spaceship warranty. Yeah, like extended spaceship warranty, which is something from the book as well.

Feel free to reach out. I’m also gonna be on the convention circuit. I’m going to see you, I believe, at DragonCon this year. And I’m going to be at WorldCon. I’m going to be at all sorts of different conventions and events promoting the book and just traveling and just enjoying myself because being around other writers and voracious readers is so much fun. And it’s nice to be able to get away from real life for a few days and spend time with like minded individuals.

John Goodwin (01:01:52): Absolutely. Well, thank you very much, Alex. It’s been a real pleasure chatting with you.

And thank you for listening. Subscribe to the Writers of the Future Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. We’ve also been syndicated on the United Public Radio Network where you can find these podcasts as well. Writers and Illustrators of the Future are contests created by L. Ron Hubbard to provide a means for the aspiring writer and artist to be seen and acknowledged for over four decades. It’s free to enter and open to amateur short story writers and artists of science fiction or fantasy.

Again, thank you very much, Alex.

Alex Shvartsman (01:02:24): Thank you.