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Nonprofit
Ladies
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2008-10 Revision | Synopsis | Background | Characters | MS. Info | Contents
Writing Inventory | The Martian Marauders | Jack CommerThe novel, Nonprofit Ladies, and all writing on this page copyright 2010 by Michael D. Smith
The ms. of Nonprofit Ladies, the third novel of The Jack Commer Trilogy, is complete. I’d finished what I'd thought was a final Nonprofit Ladies in 2003, then went back and brought earlier drafts of the first two novels of the trilogy, The Martian Marauders and Jack Commer, Supreme Commander, USSF, up to date. Those first two novels work well and I’m excited about them--but I only realized after finishing them that the 2003 ms. of Nonprofit Ladies needed a thorough overhaul.
The 2008 changes have been extensive. I was happy to give Jack Commer himself a major part in the novel. In the 2003 version he was merely an offstage figure from whom Joe felt estranged. The revision puts their conflict into the middle of the action.
In May 2010 I again revisited the manuscript, cutting 2,500 words, most of which were unneeded exposition. Also, the initial 2000 vision of Nonprofit Ladies had tied the novel to some of The Soul Institute characters some years in the future--and though this later proved unworkable, I found to my chagrin that there were some lingering references to the latter novel, and these were also cut.
The 2020 conference of The Committee to End Suffering on Planet Earth is ruined when Joe Commer, former United System Space Force pilot, inadvertently time travels from 2036 to find himself lecturing CTESOPE on the coming breakdown of the solar system and the destruction of the Earth itself in 2033. Tormented by his role in dropping the Xon bomb that ended the Final War but rendered Earth uninhabitable, Joe has quit the Space Force, much to the disgust of his older brother Jack, Supreme Commander of the USSF.
The irresponsible young Urside Charmouth of 2020 fears he’s ruined the universal timeline with his obsessive experimentation with Heuristic Time Transition. Ranna Kikken seethes at Joe’s invasion of her CTESOPE conference, but against her will is intrigued by his suffering and his apocalyptic predictions for the next thirteen years.
Derelict Robbert Geswindoll worships the all-powerful Celestions, knowing they'll provide answers to the shocking natural disasters befalling the entire solar system. Joe is stunned to find that a younger version of Jackie, the woman he loves in 2036, is Ranna Kikken’s sister.
Urside and his girlfriend Mandy travel to October 2033 to discover a crippled moon and the proof of Intruder Joe’s predictions. Mandy then forces them to 2036 Mars where the faithless Urside immediately falls in love with Alycia Klave, former Technical Sergeant in the USSF.
Joe forms a partnership with his brother Jack’s detested enemy, the treasonous Huey Vespertine. On their radio program Joe and Huey interview Geswindoll, who has reformed himself with the aid of the Celestions and become a high-ranking public relations official for the USSF--which is becoming infiltrated with dangerous Celestion philosophy. Geswindoll badgers Joe with the cruel news that Joe’s own ship, the Typhoon I, was responsible for the 2033 death of Geswindoll’s ex-wife Ranna in the evacuation of Earth.
In 2033, during the hectic evacuation of the remainder of Earth’s population to Mars, Ranna rides Passenger Shell Pegasus sixty miles into the atmosphere to experience its destruction.
Urside wastes the universe’s final Heuristic Time Transition revisiting his high school graduation night.
2036 Joe tries to persuade Jackie to marry him, but they both realize he loves the dead Ranna. Against his will he Transitions back to November 2033 where his spaceship Typhoon I, mated to the doomed Passenger Shell Pegasus, is accelerating into orbit.
In early 2000 I started a novel process. Like The Soul Institute, it was intended to be a purely literary novel. I also wanted it to be a short six-month project which would pull together a lot of recent themes. Spending 1994-1999 on The Soul Institute meant that by the time I was finishing with the ms. I was several years out of date, that life themes had arisen in the meantime which demanded attention.
I began sifting ideas with a method which sometimes produces stunning results and which sometimes just wastes energy on bland sorting: collecting disparate ideas written on slips of paper over the past few years, adding new ones, then sorting them across a table until something jelled. I included not only saved notes, but folders of photos, clippings, newspaper and magazine articles stretching back ten or twenty years, along with idea files, recent dreams, and any older writing that attracted my attention.
Basically the point was: I must have saved all this stuff for a soul reason--what was it? Maybe all this sorting took longer than it should have, but I did wind up reading a lot of old saved articles, old ideas, novels and stories of mine, and did a lot of ruminating. Before long I had seventeen stacks of notes in these categories:
1. Animals--Wild / Nature / “Physics”
2. Raw Tao
3. Zany / Future / Sci-Fi
4. Nonprofit Ladies
5. Big Shared Nightmare
6. Children / Beauty
7. Libraries / Preservation
8. Sorrow / Passion
9. Art / Raw Energy / Sex
10. Zen / Taoists / Science!
11. Old Things--People--Society--Methods / History
12. Absurd / Humor
13. The Aristocracy
14. Animals Interacting With Society
15. Kids in Trouble
16. Politics / Civilization
17. OverviewsThe sorting wasn't merely conceptual. The final categories were heartfelt. However, it’s easy to see how sorting all my notes into these categories hindered the deeper feeling necessary to pushing out the real story beneath all that sorting consciousness.
But a July 2000 dream did begin coalescing the notes into a science fiction story. In the dream, I open a dull brochure and let my “cursor of attention” rest on a picture of a Houston school bus. The cursor shows the picture to be a hyperlink, and it warps me and a coworker straight there from Dallas, to that bus on a deserted Houston street. Now here’s a business opportunity, I think--to create human transport hyperlinks. We then link to Austin, where my coworker steals my car and drives north, abandoning me to a mysterious double life I've apparently led in Austin for some time.
So time travel became central to the novel. Though I intended Nonprofit Ladies to be purely literary, somewhere during the sorting a science fiction series of mine intruded: The Martian Marauders and Jack Commer, Supreme Commander, USSF. I wanted to explore some of the traumas the main characters endured in the earlier novels, especially Joe, with his guilt about having pressed the button that destroyed the Earth in 2033.
Experiments that did NOT work included inserting characters from older works like Sortmind and The Soul Institute into the novel, as well as incorporating an ancient short story, “Zorexians.” The long detours these additions caused was a major lesson for me. While it did make emotional sense to make Nonprofit Ladies function as the third of the Jack Commer trilogy, there was no point in trying to tie in those vastly unrelated works.
Earth 2020
Ranna Kikken, 39
Founder of the Cat Farm and the Committee to End Suffering on Planet EarthUrside Charmouth, 24
Webmaster of the Cat Farm, heedless experimenter with Heuristic Time TransitionChurchill, 5
Russian Blue cat at the Cat FarmRobbert Geswindoll, 50
Ranna Kikken's derelict fiancé, bathetic poet, later a USSF public relations officialHedrona Bhlon, 32
Ambitious manager of the Cat Farm and later Director of the Artemis MuseumMandy Frederick, 22
Reincarnation of an ancient Martian empressMars 2036
Supreme Commander, United System Space ForceJack Commer, 32
Joe Commer, 31
Former USSF space pilot and inadvertent time traveler, younger brother of JackDar, 2,216
Emperor of the MartiansAlycia Klave, 24
Former USSF spacecopter pilot, later Urside Charmouth's loveHuey Vespertine, 31
Dissolute, treasonous cofounder of the Vespertine and Commer AresNet programJackie Kikken Vespertine, 35
Huey's husband and Ranna’s errant younger sisterPolot, 212
Ship's Archivist aboard the Alpha Centaurian Imperial Flagship GnlSaljPraraq
Written
2000-2010 Chapters
29 MS.
331 pages (Times New Roman 12, double-spaced) Words
81,000 Currently input in
Word 2000 Previously published
No parts yet published
1. The Committee
2. It’s Not Only Later Than We Think--It’s Later Than We Can Think
3. Planetary Malaise
4. The Celestions
5. Jackie in Turquoise Jewels6. Princess Captured Through Foliage!
7. Logon to the Big Shared Nightmare
8. Dar
9. Vespertine and Commer
10. Found in the Wreckage of Passenger Shell Pegasus11. Home
12. Alycia of the USSF
13. Society is an Awesome Phenomenon, Not to be Lightly Dismissed
14. World Mystery Karma
15. Meanwhile, the Animals …16. At StarSeed
17. Strange, Festive Dreamscape of Pollution, Despair, Defiance, Defeat
18. Repairing the Moon
19. Slaughter of the Fantasies
20. Final Transition21. Graduation Drive Anomaly II
22. Earth Renewal Party
23. The Dented Painting
24. Polot of Zorex
25. Prison Planet Earth26. DamnStar
27. USSF Detention
28. The Writhing, Pre-Universe Foam of Energy Possibilities
29. Last Links
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