Marie Brennan's Blog, page 231

A long-delayed report

I mentioned some time ago that Bear McCreary, composer of the score for Battlestar Galactica, had released a book of piano arrangements from that show. After squeeing over this, I promised to report back once I'd had a chance to test them out . . . but I forgot all about it, until yhlee gave her own report. So here, much delayed, are my thoughts, on both the arrangements and my own experience with two sessions of playing.

So, um. First. My skill at playing piano? Not what it used to be. I took roughly seven or eight years of lessons, but that ended around 1993. I continued to play casually while I lived at home, but haven't had regular access to a piano since 1998. Kept playing French horn until 2001, which means I can still read treble clef without too much trouble -- mostly; once you get up into the ledger lines I have a lot more trouble, since horns rarely go above a high G -- but gah, bass clef. When I sat down to try out these arrangements, I was actually having to do the thing where you go "Okay, that space is C, so this is E, G, okay, the note is an A-flat." Really. My sight-reading ability warmed up with renewed use, but it's still verrrrry slow.

The really funny part, though, is the extent to which I still have certain reflexes, but they don't work right anymore. I'll be going along, eyes on the music, okay now that left-hand chord is a fifth -- but my hand doesn't quiiiiiiite remember how it should position itself for a fifth, so I hit a sixth instead, and then have to stop and look at the keyboard to figure out why the music sounds terrible.

Mind you, this being Bear McCreary, sometimes the reason it sounds terrible is that I'm playing too slowly. And that's where we get into the arrangements, instead of my butchery thereof.

See, the reason I love his music is its complexity. He has lots of odd, syncopated rhythms, weird harmonies that aren't quite what you'd expect, extensive use of both the high and low ends of the staff, etc. And it turns out that all those things I like when I'm listening . . . become a nightmare when I have to play them. How do you count this bit? What the hell is that note three ledger lines below the staff? Is the chord crunchy because I overlooked an accidental, or because it's a deliberately discordant suspension that would sound a lot better at tempo? At my level of non-skill, it can be surprisingly hard to tell.

I haven't attempted everything yet; my focus has been on my favorite pieces. To rank those in order of difficulty:

"Roslin and Adama" (simplified) -- with a bit more practice, I'd be able to play this one just fine, and probably upgrade to the non-simplified version soon after.

"Kara Remembers" -- a small amount of practice would get me to the point where I could play the primo line of the duet. The secondo part, not so much; see previous statements re: odd syncopated rhythms, and fill in lots of sixteenth notes.

"The Shape of Things to Come" -- a much larger amount of practice might bring this one within reach. I blundered my way through the entirety of this one during my second session, nowhere near up to tempo, and was very proud of myself for being able to dust off my musical skills and work out how to count the bits in the last line. (For the curious: it's in 6/8, and each 3 consists of an eighth note, a sixteenth-note triplet, and another eighth note. Been a while since I had to deal with anything like that.) So this one is achievable, I think.

"Prelude to War" -- ahahahaha NO. This one is, shall we say, aspirational. In large part for reasons of tempo: this one contains lots of very rapid sixteenth-notes in a pattern whose name I can't remember. (What do you call it when you have a three-note arpeggio cycling across a 3/4 measure? GBDG BDGB DGBD. I know there's a term for this.) Anyway, it's is currently way out of my reach, though by the time I get to anything resembling competence with "The Shape of Things to Come," I could probably tackle this one.

I should also try "Passacaglia," which looks entirely feasible.

In general, I would say this book has been handing me my head. But if you ask me what I think of it . . . well, visualize me clapping my hands together and bouncing up and down with an idiot grin. Probably the best recommendation I can give is that after two sessions of playing at a friend's house, I'm seriously looking into the possibility of acquiring a keyboard for myself. And not one of yer wimpy little short-range plastic keyboards, either, but an 88-key weighted-hammer machine -- a piano that happens to be digital. (I'd get an actual piano, but we have even less space for that than we do for a keyboard, and it would be a pain in the ass to tune/move/etc.) I've purchased another book of piano arrangements -- Cirque du Soleil music this time, which I can also report on later if there's interest -- and want to photocopy the stuff I left at home, too. So in short, this book has re-awakened my love of playing piano, and I really can't think of a higher recommendation.

update on parallelsfic

I went ahead and put in some nominations for parallelsfic , with a specific eye toward variety: one Hong Kong source (The Bride with White Hair, an awesome old-school kung fu fantasy flick), one Korean (The Good, the Bad, the Weird, a crazy 1930s Western), one Indian (the Ramayana, because it's a more manageable epic than the Mahabharata), and one Japanese (K-20: The Fiend With Twenty Faces, aka the alternate-history Art-Deco-punk superhero movie I keep meaning to make a post about). In general I tried to go with the theme of "crazy fun;" the only reason I nominated the Ramayana instead of Om Shanti Om was that somebody had already beaten me to the latter. :-)

Anyway, I still don't know for sure if I'll be participating; you're required to offer four sources, and so far -- apart from my own nominations -- there's only barely enough things listed that I feel I know well enough to write. But nominating isn't a commitment to participate, so I figured why not.

Nominations are open until the 25th.

The DWJ Project: The Ogre Downstairs

Caspar, Johnny, and Gwinny are none to happy with their mother having remarried, to a man they think of as the Ogre. The Ogre's sons, Douglas and Malcolm, aren't very happy with it either. Then the Ogre buys Johnny and Malcolm chemistry sets, and wacky hijinks ensue when some of the chemicals turn out to be magic.

This, like Witch's Business (aka Wilkins' Tooth), is in the camp of "books I read once and never went back to." It's not hard to see why. This isn't a bad novel; it may bear a strong resemblance to the stories in Stopping for a Spell, but it's far better than any of those, probably because it's longer and therefore has more time to develop its ideas. But there's no deeper, more fantastical layer -- not even the hint of one you get in Witch's Business. The chemicals that drive the plot never get explained, and their source vanishes at the end of the book, without ever having made more than a cameo appearance in the tale. So basically, this feels more like standard-issue children's fantasy, less like Diana Wynne Jones.

There are a few characteristic touches, though, discussion of which I'll put behind the cut.

I don't remember my reaction to this book when I first read it -- which was, I believe, when I was in college -- but this time I was sympathetic to the Ogre from the beginning. The kids are pretty bratty, and he isn't that terrible; the only thing he does for most of the book that really appalls me is when he hits the kids. But of course I'm reading this in 2011, and the book was written in 1974. I don't know how widespread corporal punishment remained in Britain back then (the reference to caning in school implies it hadn't gone out of style, unless that's meant to be anachronistic), but I suspect it wasn't nearly as much of a villain flag then as it comes across now. The only other bit where I don't like him is when he lies to the kids about where Sally has gone, which is soon acknowledged as his bad attempt to deal with the fact that he doesn't know. So when Gwinny has her heart-to-heart with the Ogre, it doesn't come as any kind of surprise to me: it's just a relief, that everybody's going to stop being so rude to one another.

Some of that might be a pov thing. We're mostly in Caspar's head, and so we can see his lack of consideration for other people. We aren't ever in the Ogre's head, so we don't know until he says it that he had completely given up on trying to understand the kids -- including, apparently, his own. But mostly I think it's that I've read DWJ books with truly bad parents; since I have them for contrast, I immediately recognize the Ogre's attempts at kindness for what they are.

I wish she had spelled out the chemical names rather than abbreviating them; it would have made the Chekhov's Latin a bit easier to spot, but would kid readers be able to recognize that? (I doubt most of them would now, anyway. Dunno about in 1974.) And the "Greek" of the Hell's Angels is cute, though the mashing together of words makes it harder to decipher than it otherwise would have been. That felt very DWJ to me. But man, I wish there had been more backstory to the chemicals. As it stands, they're just a plot device, and even more obviously so at the end, when "Peter Fillus" helps the family buy a bigger house.
I think I'll try to finish out the month with Eight Days of Luke, which is the favorite I haven't gotten to yet, and another of her early books. Then I'll probably skip down the timeline for The Merlin Conspiracy, which has been requested. Onward!

The DWJ Project: Witch's Business

Originally published as Wilkins' Tooth. I don't know why the title got changed, unless it was because some marketing person thought the original might be mistaken for a mundane story about Wilkins going to the dentist.

This was Diana Wynne Jones' first fantasy novel for children (her second novel at all, after Changeover, which I can't find for less than eighty dollars and may never end up reading.) In it, a pair of children whose pocket-money has been stopped set up a revenge business -- Own Back, Ltd. -- but run into trouble when the local crackpot turns out to be a witch who feels they're intruding on her territory.

The premise feels pretty standard for a children's book, whether fantastical or otherwise -- much moreso than her later novels do. The protagonists sort of hope somebody will hire them to get revenge on the local bully, but instead the bully hires/blackmails them to get revenge on his behalf. Their efforts to carry out the job lead to more trouble, things snowball, the kids hit a point where they owe too much to too many people, etc. It's pleasant reading, but not memorable; I'm not surprised that I've never gone back to re-read this one.

The one almost-memorable part has to do with the witch and the Adams family (not to be confused with the Addams family). Another author might have stayed with the simple plot of escalating problems, but DWJ hints at a deeper layer that created many of those problems in the first place. Unfortunately, she only hints: we never get much detail about why the Adamses were cursed, etc. I wish there had been more of that, to underpin the fun with something a little more substantial. But I'll have more thoughts about that when I report back on The Ogre Downstairs.

okay, not ALL the links

Despite my efforts last night, I missed not one but two of the links I meant to post.

First, a bit belated, the usual link to my monthly SF Novelists post. This time, it's Worldbuilding, from the ground up, as I talk about the interesting challenges I'm encountering as I work on A Natural History of Dragons. (Comment over there, not here; you don't need to register, but there will be a slight delay while I fish the comments of newcomers out of the moderation queue.)

Second, Sideshow Freaks has a background post on how I came to write "Love, Cayce" (aka the "letters from a D&D adventurer's kid" story).

. . . I think that's it. But just you wait, I'm sure I'll trip over more I forgot as soon as I turn around.

in which I post ALL the writing links!

Seriously, I've got a lot of these piled up.

First: genarti ! Congratulations! You have won the "ARC and Desk Delivery Day" giveaway. Email me your address (marie dot brennan at gmail dot com), and I'll get that on its way to you.

Second, you have a chance to win a complete set of the Onyx Court books by bidding in Brenda Novak's 2011 Auction, raising money for diabetes research. That runs until the end of the month, so you have about twelve days left to bid. (The prize will ship in summer, when I receive my author copies of With Fate Conspire, or I can arrange to send the first three earlier if desired.) Also, there are lots of other awesome things on offer there, so go browse.

Third, you also have until the end of the month to buy one or more of my stories from AnthologyBuilder, and get a dollar off the cover price. (Fuller details here.)

Fourth, some of you may be interested in parallelsfic , a Yuletide-style fandom exchange for Asian fandoms (e.g. Japanese anime, Bollywood, Hong Kong action flicks, etc). Nominations are open until the 25th, and I'm vaguely tempted to participate; I had fun writing my K-20 story for Yuletide last year. I'm waiting to see how many of the nominated sources I know well enough to write, though, since a lot of the current ones are totally unknown to me.

Fifth, for the language wonks reading this, "Singular 'they' and the many reasons why it's correct." I am a big proponent of "they" as a gender-neutral singular third-person pronoun, largely because it's one we've been using for that exact purpose for centuries now, and it's a lot more graceful than "he or she" and similar constructions. Mind you, I do find it unsatisfactory for referring to a specific individual who doesn't fit into standard gender categories; for whatever reason, in those cases my brain seizes up on the apparent plural meaning of the word. (And it's politer anyway to use whatever pronoun such a person prefers, though that can be hard to do -- and the pragmatist in me does wish we could settle on a single alternative, rather than the motley assortment currently in use.) But for sentences like "everyone took out their books," or referring to somebody whose gender identification is unknown (frex, somebody you only know online), I like "they." We're already using it; I think grammar pedants should accept it.

That's enough for now, I suppose. There may be other link salad-style posts in the future, though; Firefox's new tab-grouping setup has really encouraged my tendency to hoard these things. :-/

Two arrivals

The mail brought lots of exciting stuff yesterday. First:

That's right, I gots me a shiny, shiny ARC! A whole box of them, in fact, about which more anon. But before I get to that, the second thing that arrived is my new desk!

     

After some consideration, I did indeed go ahead and buy a GeekDesk. It comes with a little motor that will, within a few seconds, move the desk between sitting and standing height (the latter going high enough to be comfortable for kniedzw, who is 6'3"). I'll deliver a review once I've had more time to settle in with it, but my initial impression is definitely positive. My one complaint off the bat is simply that it doesn't come with a keyboard tray; the one you see in those photos is taken from my old desk and screwed onto the underside. (The drawers are also from the old desk, and will be replaced soonish, since without the old desktop there's nothing to cover the upper drawer.)

Anyway, in celebration of both book and desk, I'm giving away an ARC! Tell me in comments what your ideal work environment is: coffee shop and a pad of paper? Lying in bed with a laptop? Floating on a raft in the middle of a swimming pool in the tropics, while well-muscled young men bring you grapes and cool drinks? (It doesn't have to be your actual work environment, just one you like the sound of. So feel free to be creative.)

(Also, if I previously promised you an ARC (because you made me an icon or whatever), feel free to ping me with a reminder, marie [dot] brennan [at] gmail [dot] com. I'll be going through my records and making a list, but the notes are scattered and I don't want to miss anybody.)

The DWJ Project: Dogsbody

Tackled this one at the request of marumae . (Or rather, moved it up in the queue at her request.)

Quick synopsis: Sirius is a luminary, a member of a godlike race of entities that inhabit and personify the stars of the universe. At the beginning of the book, he's put on trial for having killed another luminary using a Zoi, which is an object of great power. But instead of being executed for his crime, he's exiled to Earth, in the body of a dog. If he can find and recover the Zoi before the dog's natural lifespan ends, he can return home.

It is, as marumae said, a very bittersweet book. Sirius, born as a helpless puppy, takes a while to understand what's going on around him, but we the readers can see the unpleasantness of it from the start. There are a lot of of awful people in this book (as well as some very good ones), and the worst part is that they're completely plausible in their awfulness: not mustache-twirling villains, but people with ordinary cruelty and lack of compassion. And then there's a second, subtler kind of unpleasantness, which is the inhuman nature of luminaries; they aren't necessarily bad, but even at their best they don't have human considerations.

The interesting thing for me, reading this book, is that I now have the perspective to see how this feels like a Diana Wynne Jones who hasn't fully hit her stride. (Dogsbody was published in 1975; it was her fifth book, and fourth work of fantasy.) All her usual touches are here: finely observed detail, souls both generous and stingy, abused children, numinous wonder breaking through into the ordinary, and more. But there's a lot at the end, after Sirius and the others follow the cold hounds, that is fabulous in concept but (for me) not quite there in execution. Explaining why involves spoilers, so stay outside the cut if you want to avoid the next two paragraphs.


Arawn and his hounds are beautifully creepy, and I love the mingled sympathy and cruelty of that whole chase. But once the characters get below ground, it falters; Arawn asks for his freedom, doesn't get it, and fades away without further ado. I wanted something more, there. Then the fight over the Zoi, which leads to Sirius ending his life as a dog -- and while I fully approve of the way that he didn't realize how he was about to cheat Kathleen, the moment as presented on the page doesn't pack quite the same punch that I think her later books manage. I have to do more filling-in for myself to really see how awful that is, and not in the way I've mentioned before, how she presents enough information for the audience to understand, but leaves the degree of unpacking up to the individual reader's inclination. I don't think I really got that as a kid, and reading it now, I want to be a bit more gutted than I actually am. It would really help setup the final bit, about Sirius leaving his Companion star open.

The Zoi is, unfortunately, a bit of a macguffin; we never get any explanation of what it really is or where it comes from. And I almost feel the book should have begun with Sirius as a puppy, filling in the trial and exile as we go along, because it would allow DWJ to more gracefully hide the fact that Sirius knows what his Companion did. I realize that he's irrationally devoted to her, and people are capable of lying to themselves, but once that information comes out, the opening scene starts to feel a bit false. The gradual emergence of his "green nature" in his limited dog brain makes for a much better conceal, as he remembers bits and pieces of what happened with the Zoi, leaving the most hurtful parts until last.


So I guess my evaluation would be that it's a lovely story, but not quite a perfect book. I'm a little too craft-minded these days to overlook the bits that fall short. They don't stop me from enjoying the tale, mind you; I will take an awesome story with imperfections over a boring story with perfect execution any day. But now I'm considering bumping the earlier books up in the queue (Wilkins' Tooth aka Witch's Business, The Ogre Downstairs, and Eight Days of Luke) to see if I can see any patterns there.

One final, silly note: Jones is the only author I've personally read who seems to have equal affection and affinity for both cats and dogs. I'm a cat person myself, but she did make me fond of Sirius and his dogly behaviors -- I giggled out loud at the line about how his mind is "like an amiable sieve." Given that people generally grativate toward one or the other, her ability to love both is admirable. :-)

The DWJ Project: Stopping for a Spell

I decided to spread the short-fiction collections out between novels, and tackled this one first.

All three of the stories contained in it were originally published independently; Fantastic Fiction lists Chair Person and Four Grannies as novels, and Who Got Rid of Angus Flint? as a picture book. All three come with illustrations in this collection, though, and they're all about the same length, so I wouldn't be surprised if the first two were picture books, too.

I know I've read some, maybe all, of her shorter work before, but I can't say any of it ever really made an impression on me. Coming at it now, I have to say the impression made by these three stories isn't very good. The magic in all three is thoroughly arbitrary, working for no particular reason and then stopping when it's no longer needed. "Chair Person" and "Who Got Rid of Angus Flint?" also share a structure I don't like very much, namely: "Horrible person moves in and is thoroughly abusive to a family; parents are too polite to get rid of him no matter how bad his actions are; the kids eventually solve the problem with magic." It's like the Goon from Archer's Goon, but without a broader story to dilute the nastiness, and both the Chair Person and Angus Flint are far, far more unpleasant than he is. And I can't say I was terribly fond of Erg in "Four Grannies," either, for all that he was nominally the protagonist.

So yeah, not the best. I'll be interested to see how the rest of her short fiction compares; some people just have a knack for one length over another, and I suspect that may be the case here. So if you're looking for Diana Wynne Jones books to try out, this is not a good place to start. Aside from the occasional bit of clever description -- one of her trademarks, after all -- these stories really don't showcase her strengths.

What do I do with this wall?

Ever since I moved to my current residence, I've had a map of London on the wall behind my desk: Restoration-era, Georgian, Victorian.

I've taken the last of those down now, and the blank space is staring at me. It's a wide horizontal gap, too big to be filled by any of the pictures I have around. I don't know what to do with it.

A map of the world A Natural History of Dragons takes place in, perhaps. But I don't have such a map yet; I'm still trying to figure out the geography of that world.

What the heck do I do with this wall?