C. Litka's Blog, page 18

My Universe - The Technology

 

While I don't write hard science fiction, I try to keep my stories somewhat within the limits of actual physics. My space ships don't exceed the speed of light. They don't stop on a dime - they still have inertia. Speed is built up slowly, and then they have to be slowed down by reversing the process. I don't write my spaceships like UPS vans driving around the galaxy delivering a few crates here and there, like in the TV show Firefly and a bunch of other SF books I've read. I base my spaceships on container ships with economically viable cargoes. I recognize that radiation in space is very dangerous, and I have invented materials to protect my spaceers from it, as well as creating Homo Stellar humans to counteract the long term effects of little or no gravity.
My greatest actual, practical invention is the six day week, with four work days and two free days, with five weeks per month, and five or six days holiday week. In The Black Bright Sea I tried to imply that they used a 12 digit numerical system rather than a 10 digit one, which is why some of the measurements are in fractions rather than percentages. Just one of those things I do to amuse myself.
I decided to go full retro when writing The Bright Blacks Sea, no faster than light drives, no artificial gravity - just rocketships and magnets in the soles of your space boots to keep you on the deck. However, I couldn't bring myself to confine my stories to just our solar system, so I set them in another star systems To get there in rocket powered ships they needed to take many thousands of years, so that the humans, and embryos humans and other living creatures travel in suspended animation in stasis pods or sleeper pods. In later books I added quantum to the description to imply that the organisms within the pod are held in a state of suspended existence, a quantum state that is only resolved once the pod is opened - a literal interpretation of the Schroeder's Cat thought experiment, where the outside observer doesn't know if the cyanide capsule had been broken, killing the cat in the box, or not, until they open the box.
I invented designed materials, D-matter. The idea being that all the elements of the universe are product of "codes" which humans have discovered how to manipulate, and have "coded" new elements for specific purposes. Thin layers of various D-matter materials can be used make armor against projectiles as  thin as fabric, extremely strong steel, another material that blocks the full spectrum of radiation, and yet another is a super thermal insulator, that prevents the escape of thermal energy. These inventions, when combined together, allowed me to imagine very efficient use of nuclear power, since all the radiation and heat they generate could be contained by thin layers inside of the D-matter super strong steel container. This in turn allowed me to have super efficient rocket ships driven by nuclear reactions, nuclear power cells that could be the size of soft balls to power all sorts of devices and vehicles, including flying cars. And, of course, I had to have flying cars. In my case they fly using either small arrays of rockets or powerful hyper fans, all powered by small nuclear reactors. I also use power cells that are super capacitors which can hold a great deal of electrical energy - probably also using some D-matter material. I also invented clearsteel, which like its name implies, is a transparent alloy with the strength of steel used in buildings and space ships.
Flying cars, of course.
I also used sentient level machines that are built of D-matter materials and powered by the small nuclear power cells, with almost unlimited life-spans, since any failing part can be replaced. In Earth's Solar System, these sentient-level machines were banned, but they were developed and used in the Nine Star Nebula, until they liberated themselves and most, though not all, migrated to the drifts to start their own society. I've had a lot of fun with sentient machines in my books.
Another invention was the med-units that can treat all the various injuries and ailments that afflict humans, including regenerating organs, at least up to the somewhat artificial 200 year lifespan of humans. 
For law enforcement I invented a machine that can read the memories of humans, and erase memories as well. Suspects of crimes have their memories searched to establish their innocence or guilt in the crime they are suspected off via their own memories. Similar machines are used to reprogram criminals, with mixed success. 
I use terraforming to one degree or another to create human-friendly worlds from not only suitable worlds but airless moons as well. I envision this process varying from planet to planet. On Dara in the Tropic Sea stories which had is own life, it was the humans, their animals, and plants that were genetically adopted to survive on Dara. On other planets with a suitable environment already in place but without advanced life, a carefully selected, but small, subsection of Earth's environment is introduced - enough that everything works together, but without mosquitoes, cobras, and all other dangerous organisms, large and small. This was the case with Beneath the Lanterns. The fact that the environment is entirely artificial meant that I could not come up with anything more dangerous that feral dogs to threaten my heroes with, since all the wild and potentially dangerous beasts would not have been introduced. Other methods than using dangerous to human predators are used to maintain what balances are needed in these designed environments are used, for example, modified birthrates in the "wild" animals that prevent overpopulation without the use of predators.
I have humans creating human friendly environments out of very hostile worlds and moons, like Mars and the Moon, but this process can take ten thousand years or more. In the case of the Moon, and various moons in the Nine Star Nebula stories, I envision a sort of D-matter nanoparticle layer that floats on the top of the artificially created atmosphere that shields the inhabitants from radiation, keeps the atmosphere from escaping, and regulated its climate, smoothing out extremes of heat and cold. This layer isn't completely transparent, so that the Earth is the Blue Lantern in Beneath the Lanterns, with the sun being the yellow one. 
Let's see, what else? I did have the sentient machines of the Nine Star Nebula inventing quantum communication devices using "entanglement" that allows for instant communication over unlimited distances. I use darters powered by power cells as my standard weapon. They propel via a beam, small "darts" fired along the beam that hold electrical/plasma charges, which release their plasma energy on impact, disrupting, or in extreme cases, destroying the human nervous systems. This invention allows me to have a lot of non-lethal gun-fights and such. While violence in my future still exists, it is tame compared to our present day primitive society.
And that's all I can think of. Most of what I invented, I invented to make the story work. As I mentioned, I have certain ideals as to how humans might evolve and things like non-lethal weapons, a justice system based on being able to establish the facts from memories, political issues long settled, are facilitated by my inventions, but for the most part the just work to make my worlds possible.
ADDENDOM  Sex and race. I forgot to mention anything about sex or race in my piece about my societies, mainly because they don't play such a a large part in society as they do in our day. Because I set my stories tens of thousands of years in the future, I assume that human society on Earth the Solar System and the worlds humans settle, the distinctions that define race today will have long been eroded away. While there may be local distinctions, customs, and history, these would be based on location rather than skin color. I make it a point not to indicate the skin color of my characters, in part because it would not be a defining factor in the characters within their society and thus, on my pages. That leaves readers free to picture them as they choose to as they will. Indeed, I have no mental pictures of any of my characters outside of the sparse description I assign them. Given that my inability to form visual images in my mind, this is not surprising. 
As for sexual orientation, that too is beyond social distinctions by the time my stories are set. I have several LGB+ characters in my books, but never specifically treat them as such, since in their society, this is a non-issue. You are what your are. Utopian, I know.
And with this entry, I think I've briefly covered the main features of the "universe" I've set all of my stories in since Some Day Days.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 65)

 

I'm still on a non-fiction history kick this week. But this week it's the American Revolution or if you're English, the American Revolt. The book I am reading is from the English point of view. 

Reading it has been a new experience. It's a library ebook, and usually our library service offers ebooks via Amazon for the Kindle readers, or in my case, my Fire tablet. However, some ebooks are offered via Overdrive and the Libby app. Usually, for these ebooks I can download them via my Kobo ebook reader, as Overdrive is owned by the owner of Kobo. But for some reason, this book though it was offered by the library via Overdrive would not show up on my ebook reader. I could download it to my computer, but I hate reading books on my computer, and for some reason, I rarely, if ever, get the downloaded book to transfer from my computer to my ebook reader, even though I've jumped through all the hoops to do so via the Adobe system to do so. I was, however, able to download the Libby app on my phone, and borrow the ebook via that app. So I started reading this book on my smartphone, a first for me. It was an okay experience, but I when I discovered that I could also download the Libby App to my Amazon Fire tablet, and sync the Libby App between my phone and tablet, I was able to read the last half of the book on my tablet which is a better reading experience.  Anyway, on to the book.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below. 

Fusiliers by Mark Urban  C+
This is the history of the British 23rd Welsh Regiment serving in America during the time of the revolt of those colonies. It is drawn from the memoirs, letters, and history of that regiment, as well as other contemporary accounts from other English regiments in that war. I find accounts from the English point of view interesting, as they offer a counterpoint to the American version and its founding myths. For example, he noted the fact that the continental armies executed a lot more of their men for desertion in order to discourage their soldiers from deserting than did the English. And that at least some of the American revolutionary armies killed their own countrymen who they suspected were still loyal to the King. The war, it seems, from my reading of this book, to have been pretty much guerrilla war, with a lot of ugliness on both sides.
I know that I have read one novel set in the period where the main character was an an American loyal to the Crown. Fifteen minutes of a Google Search brings up the most likely suspect, Oliver Wiswell, by Kenneth Roberts published in 1940, which sounds right, as I remembered that the book had the main character's name as the title. In any event, I did know that there were plenty of people in the colonies who were not revolutionaries, and that they didn't fare well in the end.
This book takes much the same route as A World On Fire, in that it follows characters connected with the 23rd Welsh Regiment throughout its ten years of serving in North America, using their experiences to drive the story. The problem with this approach, I feel, is that all the characters are drawn from preserved letters or official records, and are not really fleshed out characters. Each at best  has a page of bio spread throughout the book, and as such, are more of a distraction then a feature of the narrative. They're too thinly drawn to care about, and their stories are not all that interesting. These little episodes make for a somewhat cluttered and confusing read. I gather that the author used this approach for a Napoleonic era British rifle regiment as well, but he had a lot more written material to work from. I think that this story could have been told with less words and greater clarity in broader strokes, rather than as the narrow focus of the story of this regiment.
I think that to appreciate this book to its full extent, you need to be somewhat familiar with the American Revolutionary War in order to put the events described in the book into the larger context. While there is some background necessary to the story of the 23rd, there is a much larger picture surrounding the events that the 23rd participated in that is not fleshed out, so that you only get a small, and far from complete understanding of the events of that era. 
All in all, this is an interesting, ground level view of that conflict from the point of view of the English army. While I learned a lot about the American Revolution (or Rebellion), I feel that I would need to read a lot more about it to put what I learned in this book to fully appreciate it for what it is. 

My Universe - The Time Line

The history of my "universe" began with writing The Bright Black Sea. It did not start out as a fully fleshed timeline, but rather it evolved, with each book set in that universe adding another layer to it. I don't think that there are any revisions needed to the original time line, I just added more "data points" to it as I went along.

The hallmark feature of my timeline is that I set my stories in the far future - 50,000 to 100,000 years in our future in order to make it credible that humans had expanded beyond the solar system to colonize the worlds of other stars - without faster than light spaceships. I have no specific dates in mind. 

In The Bright Black Sea, I recall mentioning that the ships from Earth arrived some 40,000 years before that story was set to allow the time needed for humans to settle hundreds of planets and moons, and spread to uncounted of rocks and planets in the Drifts beyond the formal human civilization of the Nine Star Nebula, The Unity. Figure another 10 - 20 thousand years needed to reach the Nine Star Nebula from Earth, and you have 50 - 60 thousand years since they left the Solar System. There is also several human colony-ships within the Pela, that may've come from Earth, or perhaps a world settled by Earth long enough to have developed to the point where they can send out their own colony ships. Who knows? (I don't.) 

The Nine Star Nebula Mystery/Adventure stories are set maybe a century before the events recounted in The Bright Black Sea, since they recount the tales of the youthful Rafe gil'Giles, the systems mate of the Lost Star, though under a different name. He uses a lot of names.

In the Tropic Sea stories, I had it take the colony ships from Earth 9,373 years to reach Dara, and those stories are set almost 5,000 years after the settlers landed on Dara. I have no idea when they left the Solar System. I haven't settle on any definite time line for the settlement of the planet I've set Chateau Clare on, save that it's been at a little less than 1,400 years since a revolution outlawed much of the high technology brought from Earth, labeling it sorcery. However, I would think six or seven generations of settlers would've lived prior this revolution - so say the planet may've been first settled around 3,000 years before the story told in Chateau Clare. 

Though I can't say when all these colony ships left the Solar System, I can say that they all left prior to the "Death" - the mass flowering of fungi that had been dormant in the lungs of three quarters of the humans of the Solar System. The flowering filled the lungs of everyone it had lodged in, sweeping across the Solar System killing three quarters of humanity in a week, and putting an end, as far as I know, to interplanetary travel within the Solar System, and of course, the interstellar colony ships. Again, I don't have any date in mind, but it would be tens of thousands of years in the future, as I envisioned it taking something like 10,000 years to terraform Mars, so there's no need for us to worry about it. Two of the three three Post Solar Age stories, Keiree and The Girl on the Kerb are set about 1500 after that event. The third, Beneath the Lanterns, which takes place on the terraformed Moon, is set sometime latter. Beneath the Lanterns was the first story in which I invented that event (though only in my mind), in order to use it just to explain my premise of a fallen civilization on a terraformed Moon. Because of the way timekeeping on the Moon works, and the fact that I had the event unknown by the narrator, lost in the mists of legends, so I'm not sure if I set an actual date. Still, my if my memory serves, I think it was more like 2,000 years before the events in the book, and thus, likely after Keiree and The Girl on the Kerb. This would suggest that interplanetary travel did not recommenced any time soon, if ever, since there is no evidence of it in that story. However, there is that other, unknown and unexplored, side of the Moon... Who knows? (I don't.) 

I guess I find it pretty easy to throw thousands of years around like decades, in part because generations are almost four times as long - five lifetimes per a thousand years. While this give me leeway to tell the stories I want without violating too many laws of nature, it does mean, as I mentioned previously, that I have to turn a blind eye to how humans might evolve over such a long time span. In any event, as you can see, there is no definite timeline to my stories, though I think that the stories set in the Nine Star Nebula are probably the outer limits of my timeline.

I have one more installment of this series to write - a piece describing all the things I had to invent to make my stories work. I make no claim to writing "hard science fiction" but I did try to keep things at least seem possible. Stay tuned for all my inventions.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 64)

 
The Sherlock Holmes of my readers are likely going to discover an ongoing theme with the books I am reading. There is an explanation for this, laziness and a lack of inspiration. But hey, I'm learning something, and this time a part of my current historical interest that I never even considered. 

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

A World on Fire by Amanda Foreman  B

This is a long book. The paper edition runs 1040 pages. It boasts 5 pages just listing the illustrations, 4 plus pages of listing the photographs, a page plus listing the included maps, and 18 plus pages listing the "Dramatis Personae" i.e. the cast of historical characters that she follows over the course of her history of the English involvement in the American Civil War.

She writes that her original intention was to write a history of the English volunteers in the American Civil War, but she found their involvement part of a very complex web of interactions between England, The United States and the Confederacy. She says that recalling, "... Trevor Nunn's 1980 Nicholas Nickleby, and extraordinary "theater-in-the-round" production that brought together a vast panoply of characters through a combination of three-dimensional staging, shifting scenes, and running narratives that created  an all-enveloping experience for the audience. This memory became my guide and inspiration..." In short, she decided to tell the story of England and its peoples involvement on all levels in the Civil War through the letters. memoirs, and previous histories to paint this complicated picture.

She certainly succeeded in creating a complete and complicated account of this relationship, though if you're someone who must have a clear idea of who's who in a story, you'll have your work cut out for you reading this book, for, as I said, it has a cast of over 200 characters, some mentioned, some followed in detail throughout the history.

As I said it is a history of American/Confederate/English interactions, both diplomatic and personal during the Civil War. I learned a great deal about the Civil War from reading this book that I never knew that I didn't know. Things like how close the United States and England came to war during that period over various disputes, how popular the South was in England, seen as underdogs fight for freedom - as long as they turned a blind eye to slavery - and how much effort the South put into trying to get it recognized as a country. Her choice to include the personal accounts of so many people may have created a sense of how complicated all the issues were, but it makes it a challenge to keep track of more than just a few of the major characters, and makes for a long book.

A must read for serious scholars of that war, and an interesting read for history buff of England and the Civil war. But it is a long book. Still now I know what I didn't know that I didn't know.

My Universe - My Societies

In my last post I about the impact of a 200 year lifespan on my characters. But what about the society they live in?

In our society we rely on a constant turnover in the hierarchy of every aspect of our lives. You put your time in and over the course a several decades, move up the hierarchal structure, be it from kid to adult, to parent, to grandparent. Or in your career or job, from new hire, through various levels of management, to maybe, CEO, or from apprentice to master craftsperson. These steps involve often little more than a decade or two due to the span of our current lives. However, what would society and our lives look like if people could, in theory, stay in a position at the top for a century or more blocking everyone's advancement down the line? Would most humans be content to advance in their career at a glacial pace - spending 50 years to accomplishing what takes 10 years for people today? And then there is the question of how long would it take to get bored with any job? In my view, I see a society where most people would not want, or expect, to stay in the same job or even the same field for their full lifetime so that most people will periodically embark on new careers. This need and ability to start over a number of times would have to be built into the society one way or another.

Another related aspect of a long lifespan is how it would affect the shape and dynamics of the society over time. Given the time and opportunity to change not only relationships but careers, and a population of people with a wide variety of ages and experience, it would seem that society might by in constant flux. Change would happen because there was time to change and change again within one lifetime. 

And yet... We see that in our society, changes come very slowly, generation to generation. Paper newspapers are still printed, I have to believe because the generation that grew up reading them is still around. My wife still watches the half hour national news program everyday, even though all the news is available all the time on the internet. The life and outlook of people are formed early, and are retained, at least in part, throughout their lives. Would not this be true as well, if their lifespan was doubled or tripled? I'm sure the issue can be argued from both ways - frequent changes because people have time to change vs slow changes because people don't change.

I have generally adopted the latter view for my stories. I have my societies very static because of the innate conservative nature of people, which when held for the better part of two centuries, would tend to extend and impose the values and ideas of their youth on many subsequent generations, despite the multi-generation mix and flux of a long lifespan. And in much the same way, I think that families and children will be postponed or widely separated throughout a long life, especially with woman being able to control their fertility. 

I also use semi-utopian societies in my stories, unless the initially advanced civilization has collapsed for some reason - also a common feature of my stories, like my Tropic Sea stories. My assumption is that 50,000 years of civilization will slowly evolve into a single, homogeneous and inclusive society. In the stories set in the Nine Star Nebula, I pictured a very stable and secure society - The Unity - with a built-in safety valve that allowed the tiny percentage of people who do not fit into the main society to set up alternate societies - dissenting communities - on the various moons - just so long as they met certain human rights standards, and allowed their inhabitants to opt out of it at any time. For those who found even dissenting communities still to socially claustrophobic, they could immigrate to the "drifts" beyond the control of The Unity. This feature allowed me to easily set my characters in more historically backward locations, which I like writing in.

I also like portraying my societies without politics. Given a homogeneous society without outside threats in the form of other countries, I picture a society where all policy issues have been decided upon thousands of years before. Therefore, no new laws would be needed, and the society is administered to by a professional bureaucracy according to detailed long established rules as in the Earth of The Girl on the Kerb, and my upcoming novel Chateau Clare. Just dreaming.

All this said, I don't spend a great time on thinking about my societies, no more than I need for the story's backdrop. As I said, I'm not an ideas writer, I only invent things that I need to write the story I have in mind, and build a world of sorts as a backdrop.

 

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 63)

I am still reading about the American Civil War. This time it's a non-fiction book, one that addresses all the issues that I avoided reading about in the Shaara book I read. I figured I owed Franklin that much.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

The Fall of the House of Dixie by Bruce Levine  B+

Looking through the ebooks available via the local library on the American Civil War I came across this book, and it sounded really interesting, in that while it concerns the war, it promised to address the everyday life of the South in the war. Histories that concern themselves with the everyday life of people are the type of history that I most enjoy. I am less interested in the doings of kings, than the how people lived in the past. 

I am happy to report that I not only enjoyed reading this book, but learned a lot about the era, and the causes of Civil War. While it is more focused on the big picture of how Southern society changed with the impact of war rather than everyday life, it drew on contemporary accounts recorded in diaries and newspapers to draw a picture of the vast changes in the life, and in the outlook, of the Southerner from the 1800's to the end of the Civil War, and how the war they started to preserve their society destroyed it.

This is a readable history that covers the era and subject in depth and detail, but not too much so as to make it dry reading. As I mentioned above, it uses the words of the people of the time to paint its picture of the time. I think it could've been shorter since the same viewpoints are repeated by various people. Still, I was never bored and actually read it without skimming. And since I get bored easily, I think I can safely say that if you are curious about the era, and the effects of the American Civil War in the southern states, you will enjoy this book while learning a lot.

My Universe - The People

The distant future? Well, yes. As I write it.
The city of Lanterna from Beneath the Lanterns
"My universe" seems like a rather extravagant claim. Let's just say that I have a standard background setting for most of my stories, one that I have developed over the years. Other than A Summer in Amber, Some Day Days and A Night on Isvalar, all my stories have a common background and back story. In this post I'm going to talk about the people in the rest of the stories. Be warned, I've never set this backdrop down in words, until now, so I tend to ramble.
First off, all of my character's ancestors come from Earth and all of the stories are set far into the future - 50,000 to 100,000 years or more in the future. The underlying premise is that humans have bio-engineered themselves into a "new, improved" species, "Homo Stellar", in order to eliminated the ill effects of weightlessness and space travel, to made them resistant to all known diseases, to give people conscious control over their emotional responses, and women control over their ovation, as well as extending their lifespan to around 200 years. This extension does not double the whole life cycle. It keeps youth and the "golden age" (sic) the same, i.e. about 25 years each, but increased our "prime" middle years five-fold, i.e. 150 years. I also introduced robotic and enhanced medical treatment in most, but not all stories.
What I didn't do was change the nature of humans. They are very familiar. indeed, no different than what we are today. This, given the timeframe is probably not realistic. Humans, if still around 50,000 years from now, would probably be unrecognizable to us. I turned a blind eye to this because I had no interest in speculating as to just how they might be different. Plus, I wanted to write stories with relatable human characters (plus dogs & cats), not Morlocks.
One reason why I lengthened my characters' lifespans was so that I could tell the stories I wanted, without having to rush through them. For example, the story arc of two Lost Star Stories spans over 20 years, starting with the characters in the range of 40 -50 years old and some more. The extended lifespan gives them plenty of headroom to have as many adventures as I could dream up without fudging either ages or compressing the time line in the stories. They can take several months to get somewhere, instead of minutes or hours. Longer times spans make my universe bigger.
I'm not an "ideas" writer even though ideas are the tentpole feature of SF. However, with this longer lifespan, there are issues to explore, and I do occasionally explore ideas. One of those ideas is what impact would a 200 year long lifespan have on human life and society? What would people do with all that extra time? Would people still fall in love and get married in their 20's? Would many/any of them stay married all their lives to the same partner? We're talking 170 years or more. How long can love last? Given two centuries of life, would it be normal to have several or numerous marriages/partnerships? How many children, and how often will couples raise a family, given 150 years to have them? How many children would a woman want over the course of 150 years given that they would have a choice? Would people raise numerous families with different partners over the course of 150 years? Lots of ideas to explore.
While I am aware of these questions, still, I've kept most of these considerations largely in the background of my stories, by either focusing on "spaceers" in space ships, or young people in the Tropic Sea stories. Many are largely unresolved in my mind. Some I do address rather obliquely. In my upcoming Chateau Clare story I've had to touch on many of these questions, since families and family relationships are an important element in the story, as well as in how the society operates in an otherwise very familiar world. In that story, an adult may have great-great grandparents alive and not consider it unusual. One might have many cousins of varying degrees, some as old as our grandparents or as young as our grandchildren, if you're that old, as well as a variety of half-siblings who might also be a century older or younger than yourself. However, because I use a first person narrator to tell these stories, this aspect of life is seen through his eyes and taken as customary, so that exploring these feature in great detail with sweeping descriptions of the society would be too much out of character for a character grown up an intimately familiar with that society. You almost always have to cheat anyway, but you can make it a little less obvious with little, off-handed explanations as you go along. Which works for me, since even I don't have a sweeping overview of it myself. I explore it as I go along.
I'm just rattling on and on, so I'll cut my discussion here, and return next week to rattle more about the my societies. 

 

The Saturday Morning Post ( No. 62)

 

We have another civil war novel this week. This is the fourth and last book in Jeff  Shaara's civil war series. 

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

Fateful Lightning by Jeff Shaara  B

This is the fourth and last of his books on the American Civil War. It opens in Alabama, 1864. The previous installment ended with the Confederate defeat at Chattanooga in the fall of 1863. This installment begins with General Sherman leaving a burning Atlanta and Scarlet O'Hara behind him in the fall of 1864, thus skipping Sherman's entire campaign of the spring and summer that culminated with the capture of Atlanta. Shaara mentioned that he skipped this section as his publisher wanted only four books, so he had to choose what to write about, and me chose Sherman's famous March to the Sea, and subsequent march north through the Carolinas for Virginia to meet Grant's army laying siege to R E Lee's army at Petersburg.

Like the previous volumes, this is a novel that uses historical characters as point of view characters, drawing from their memoirs and those of their contemporaries. General Sherman plays a large role in this book, as does General Hardee, the Confederate general who had to deal with Sherman's advance through Georgia. In addition we have a Confederate cavalry captain, and a freed slave who became attached to the Union Army as point of view characters as well. While there are half a dozen engagements described in the book - which I skipped - most of the novel from the Union side, provides a view of what was a long march against mostly the weather, swamps, and poor roads, while on the Southern side, we see the often futile attempts to do the Unions any harm, and the growing realization that the war was lost.

Shaara uses the freed slave, Franklin, to tell the backstory of slavery in the south, and how they faired during the war, as thousands the freed slaves followed the Union army, knowing that they would likely be killed by the Southern cavalry if left behind, since they were considered runaway slaves in the eyes of these Southern soldiers. I must admit that I skipped parts of his story as well, as I found it too great a digression from what I was most interested in. But you probably should read it.

All in all, a pretty good book. I learned a lot about the campaign that I knew next to nothing about, save for what the "march to the sea" would tell me, and nothing at all about Sherman's campaign north. I don't think it replaces a modern, well written history book on the subject if you are interested in the campaign's history, but as a novel of the period, it worked well.

Chateau Clare Floor Plan, Maps, and Art

 

A scene from the story - Lan meeting Cia at Mayfair Square
Since the Chateau Clare, the estate that Lan Taya inherits is central to the story, I had initially considered painting a view of it as the cover art. However, I know that painting buildings in any detail is not my strong point as a painter. I'm more comfortable more organic forms and the "impression" of buildings. In addition, as a practical consideration, given the portrait shape of the cover, if I wanted to fit the whole chateau in on the front cover, it would've had to have been very small, with a lot of sky. Instead, I chose the more intimate scene, above, for the cover. It has Lan meeting Cia at Mayfair Square on a summer's morning. It is the type of scene I am more comfortable painting. My inspiration for the cover was the painting below, one of my earlier paintings. I didn't quite get the richness of the sunlight that was present in Crescent Morning, but I ain't the painter I used to be.
Crescent Morning
Having painted the scene, I then, in Gimp, added the black outlines, the so-called "cartoon" effect to the painting, which I feel gives the painting a bit more crispness and texture, making it a little more interesting, at least for a book cover. I need all the help I can find these days. I usually add this effect to all my cover art. 
I like books with maps. And so...

I felt that to describe the chateau and its interior I, at least, needed a floor plan of the place. I am not a draftsman, so the drawing are a bit crude, but using graph paper I laid out the floor plan of the chateau - a good exercise in making sure that I knew what I was talking about when moving about the chateau. Below are the floor plans for Chateau Clare that I drew up for my use. They will at least be in the print version, and maybe the ebook as well.

As for the appearance of the chateau, Lan Taya, who discovers that he has inherited a chateau, describes the chateau, on his first sight of it, as looking like a factory building - the effect of all of its many large, small-paned windows. And indeed, that is what I drew my inspiration from - an old factory building in France that I passed by in one of my YouTube virtual train rides. 
The chateau is located some 20 km south of Celora, the capital city of Lorria, on the Isle of Autumn. This island is an "island" created by a wide loop in the River Fair around a long ridge, which has been made into an island by a canal and a series of locks that were cut through the narrow base of the loop to shorten the distance barges have to travel to the city from the sea, and manage river depth. The Isle of Autumn is the exclusive haunt of the Great Houses and New Wealth of Lorria. Its river shore is lined with these large estates. Chateau Clare is one such mansion, located on the south shore of the Isle. I've made a rather simple sketch of the chateau and grounds below. 

I also did a small painting of Autumn Avenue, which is the road that circles the Isle of Autumn. It is lined on both sides by the walled estates. The isle also has its own tram lined, the tracks which you can see along the left of the road.

And finally, I created a map of the central portion of the city of Celora, showing the locations mentioned in the novel. Being founded by settlers from the Solar System, rather than growing organically over a long time, it was laid out in a strict grid, with boroughs created by wide boulevards and avenues. These grand roads have elevated tram rail lines running down their center boulevard. Where the grand boulevards and avenues cross, there are large traffic circles, with the raised elevated train stations in the middle of the circle with walkway bridges to the four corners of the intersection. I've named some of the boroughs created by the grid of grand avenues, (ALL CAPS) but not all of them.



I wanted to get the look of the city maps like they are portrayed in the old travel guide books I have, but without drawing the city of Celora by hand. At first I considered taking photos of those guide book city maps and mixing and matching them. But most were too large scale. I then thought about using Google Maps instead, and so I used the satellite version of some of suburban London, just to create the texture of a city. I used screen shots of various locales, made them into tiles to fit in between the boulevards in with varying orientations so that they don't repeat too much. The map isn't really necessary to follow the story, it is just there to add a level of realism to Celora. And as I mentioned, maps are fun. 

A rainy evening in Celora
I hate to spoil stories so that I don't know what else I can say about this one, especially at this point, when, at the time this entry is posted, it had not been released. I do plan, however, to talk about the larger setting, in which most of my far future are set, so stay tuned!

The Saturday Morning Post (No.61)

 

Back to the American Civil War this week, with a second novel by Jeff Shaara. This time covering the events leading up to a single battle in that war in the west.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

The Smoke at Dawn by Jeff Shaara   B

I enjoyed this installment of Jeff Shaara's American Civil War books more than the first one I read, Gods and Generals. I think it was because of its focus being narrower, on just one battle, or rather the events leading up to a battle. The battle itself was perhaps the last 15% of the book, and given my disinterest in the chorography of a soldier's view of the battle, this focus on events and characters other than the battle itself made it a more enjoyable book for me. 

The book recounts the months after the Union defeat and rout at the battle of Chickamauga Creek and their retreat to the city of Chattanooga followed by the halfhearted Confederate siege of the city by General Braxton Bragg, General Grant's arrival, and then the battle of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Hill several months later that breaks the siege and sends the Confederate army running. 

Like in the book before, the novel uses real historical people as characters. We have as viewpoint characters General Grant, and Sherman, as well as General Thomas, and a private in the Union Army. On the Confederate side, we have General Braxton Bragg, the commander of the Southern army - a man who easily  made enemies of everyone he met, including his subordinate generals - and General Patrick Cleburne. The novel offer a fictionalized glimpse of the problems and hardships both armies faced in the field due to poor weather and the lack of food, as well as an imaginary re-construction of the main characters thoughts and relationships. I'm quite sure Mr Shaara did all the research he could on the battle and personalities from original source material. However, not all of the characters left memoirs to draw upon, so that there is always an element of fiction in these historical characters. But that said, this is the way I like to learn about history - well researched novels like Shaara's, and Fraser's Flashman books.

The next and last book in this series, A Fateful Lightning covering Sherman's March to the Sea, was available, so I picked it up as well. Its review is on tap for next week.