C. Litka's Blog, page 47

Life w/Bots

 

Bertie knew that Barkley only needed a hard reset to be restored to his normal, loving, playful self. But there his troubles began. He found himself not only without the necessary paper clip, but earlier in the evening, in what, when looked on in hindsight, seems to have taken on a much less playful, mischievous cast, Barkley had eaten his cell phone.

I found two more pieces of art for the project, both dealing with robotic dogs. This is one of them.

Keiree

A week from today -- on 17 Sept 2020 -- I will be releasing my newest story, Keiree,a novella set on Mars.

Keiree is the story of the brilliant and wealthy engineer, Keiree Tulla, her chauffeur and love, Gy Mons… (Ssh! I’m getting to you.) ...and the silka cat, Molly. Deciding to escape scandal and start a new life on the distant planet of Fara V, they sign on as expedition crew members. Keiree as the director of the initial construction section and Gy, along with Molly, as a pilot with the advanced survey team. Upon completing their training, they were put in stasis pods to “sleep” away the centuries long voyage to Fara V. and stored on Mars awaiting their scheduled time to be uploaded to the vast settlement ship in orbit.

The expedition never sailed. After they were put in their stasis pods, but before they were uploaded to the settlement ship, a deadly plague swept through the solar system, laying waste to its planets and moons. Mars was not spared. Gy and Molly’s storage facility was quickly abandoned and then forgotten for seven hundred Martian years. When it was finally rediscovered, and Gy and Molly revived, they find that Keiree’s section had been stored elsewhere on Mars. Gy and Molly set out to find her so they can face a familiar, and yet strange, Mars together.

Keiree takes place in the far future, after Mars having been extensively terraformed into an Earth-like world, but with its own unique quirks. The story is set in the fictional universe that includes The Bright Black Sea, The Last Star’s Sea, Beneath the Lanterns, Sailing to Redoubt and The Prisoner of Cimlye.

My Library -- Glen Cook

I have gone on record as not being very fond of fantasy. I do, however, make one exception, and that is for Glen Cook’s Garrett PI series. That is one fantasy series that I love. Glen Cook is perhaps more famous for his Black Company stories, but I’m not into dark, gritty war stories. Nope, I’m all in for Cook’s Raymond Chandler inspired take on a wise-guy private eye in a fantasy world. A fantasy world that includes everything in fantasy from gods, to a dead Loghyr, plus elves, vampires, centaurs, ogres, pixies, wizards, witches, grolls, giants, rat people, shape changers, space aliens, woolly mammoths, to rampaging dinosaurs. And I’m sure that’s not an exhaustive list, since the series is fourteen books long. The series, which he began writing in 1987, has a sort of urban fantasy vibe to it since the stories are often set in and around the city of TunFairee. Garrett operates a detective agency out of his house on Macunado Street. A house that he shares with the slowly decaying body of a dead Loghyr, who, despite his body being dead, is still alive and able to communicate telepathically. In addition to the Loghyr, we are introduced to a whole slew of Garrett’s friends who come and go in his life, from a rat gild to a club owner, gangsters, thugs, and mercenaries. Plus his rather iffy clients and deadly enemies. One of my requirements for enjoying a book is that it has characters that I would like to hang out with. I want likable characters. I don’t crave being around unpleasant people either in my life or in my reading. While I am sure some readers find unpleasant characters interesting, or are more interested in the plot or idea of the story, than the characters, I’m a character focused reader. And in the Garret stories you not only have the first person narrator, Garret, but you soon come to know his wide circle of friends as well. And as the series progresses, it sort of takes on the air of a cozy mystery. You have Garrett in his house, with its deep well where he keeps his beer cold. You have his brilliant friend, the dead but still telepathically alive Loghyr. And one by one, his friends turn up to do their part in solving whatever outlandish crime or mystery Garret is hired to solve. These old friends make for a comfortable story to to get into. I have to admit that I’ve read most of them at least three times. Every four or five years, I’ll pick up the first book, and end up reading through the whole series. Heck, I’m half tempted to start again. In times like these, a long, cozy series is just what the doc ordered. While Glen Cook is not quite Raymond Chandler for pure writing style, his writing is entertaining, his plots, and world building are intricate and creative. While the covers, which have Garrett looking like a ‘40’s detective complete with a trench coat and fedora, are a bit of artistic license, Cook writes Garrett in the spirit of a tough, but honest private eye in the Philip Marlowe mold. And he takes that character and plunks him into the middle of a city that has all sorts of mythical creatures, against a backdrop of a never ending foreign war, civil and racial unrest, and corruption, high and low. I’ve read a number of other Glen Cook books, some of this speculative fiction, Passage at Arms, and The Dragon Never Sleeps, which were interesting. I also have read one or two of his Instrumentalities of the Night series, but they were closer to the type of fantasy that that doesn’t appeal to me, so I haven’t read them all. And as I’ve read a Black Company story, which isn’t my thing, though I seem to recall that it’s been optioned for a TV series. I’m an author orientated reader. If I like the way an author writes, I’ll usually give all his or her books at least a try, and collect the ones I like. So my library shelves are often devoted to the works of one author. Glen Cook has his shelf, and I’m sure I’ll get around to highlighting my other favorite authors with their own shelves in future installments. Keiree, my newest story, a 34,000 word novella, is scheduled to be released on Apple, B & N Kobo, and Smashwords for free on 17 Sept 2020. It will be released on Amazon for $.99 on 17 September 2020.

Life w/Bots

 

 Asimov’s Three Robotic Laws.

1. A robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot mus protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First and Second Laws.

Upon reflection, adding “except for jerks,” to the end of the first robotic law may not have been prudent. But damnit! How was I to know that they think we’re all jerks!

Some twelve or fifteen years ago I had a brainstorm. I’d do a series of one panel comics a’la The Far Side, that explored humanity’s place in a robotic world, at times playing off of Asimov’s three laws of robotics. It would be called Life w/Bots. And over the course of two days, I came up with ideas for something like 50 panels with captions. Enough in hand to launch a series, with the idea of selling or syndicating the series to publications or websites.

All I need to do to get this project underway was to sit down and draw the comic panel to go with them. I have some talent for art. But it is rather narrow. My interest in subject matter is also rather narrow. And ambition is not my strong point. Plus, I can get discouraged easily. Oh, I have plenty of excuses. But long story, short, my brainstorm ran aground on the reef of actually having to draw the darn things.

Part of the problem was that the style of  cartoons I pictured in my head were the very intricate ones you might find in Punch Magazine a hundred years ago. Knowing that I couldn’t do that, I settled on a much simpler style inspired by the work of Cyril Kenneth Bird, who signed his work “Fougasse” which did appear in Punch in the 1930’s & 40’s. And I produced the three cartoons that illustrate this post in my approximation of his style.

True, these newfangled robotic cats are easy to care for. But they're rather standoffish and independent. Snuggles, over there on my window still, is actually Agnes Willis’ robo-cat from apartment 731.

 However, drawing them was only half the problem. In doing so, I discovered another problem – one I’ve noted in my paintings as well. That is the problem of “framing” a scene – getting everything you need into the frame of the comic. I don’t have a visual mind. I can only get sort of an impression of the scene I’d like to do. But all to often I’ve found that my impression just can’t fit into a frame. I can’t find a point of view to “shot” the scene, as a movie director would say, so that even if I knew what I needed to be in the panel, I couldn’t picture how to stage it so that everything fit in the panel.

Still, the project remains in my files, after having been transferred from my old Mac “Pages” program to my current LibreOffice program years ago. I hate to see things go to waste, so I’m thinking that I’m going to try to turn those little gags into very short stories, and see what happens. I may post them here on the blog, or publish them in an anthology, or both… If I get them done, and they turn out okay.

But in the mean time, here are three cartoons I did produce.

 Art Flitter, the human foreman of Warehouse 73B, had, after three years of sitting at his desk with nothing to do, began to suspect that the small, sealed box labeled, “Do not open for 30 years,” which had been included in the “Welcome to Warehouse 73B” information packed that he'd been handed on his first day of work, contained an inscribed gold watch.

Keiree, A Novella, Coming 17 Sept. 2020

 

 

Yet another Mars story. It almost seems as if every writer of speculative fiction pens at least one Mars story. I suspect that one of the reasons Mars stories are so popular with authors is that to be even considered for membership in the Fraternal Order of the Aether, an author must submit a Mars story to the committee. It’s in their bylaws. So… Keireeis my Mars story.

Keiree is the story of the brilliant and wealthy engineer, Keiree Tulla, her chauffeur and love, Gy Mons… (Ssh! I’m getting to you.) ...and the silka cat, Molly. Deciding to escape scandal and start a new life on the distant planet of Fara V, they sign on as expedition crew members. Keiree as the director of the initial construction section and Gy, along with Molly, as a pilot with the advanced survey team. Upon completing their training, they were put in stasis pods to “sleep” away the centuries long voyage to Fara V. and stored on Mars awaiting their scheduled time to be uploaded to the vast settlement ship in orbit.

The expedition never sailed. After they were put in their stasis pods, but before they were uploaded to the settlement ship, a deadly plague swept through the solar system, laying waste to its planets and moons. Mars was not spared. Gy and Molly’s storage facility was quickly abandoned and then forgotten for seven hundred Martian years. When it was finally rediscovered, and Gy and Molly revived, they find that Keiree’s section had been stored elsewhere on Mars. Gy and Molly set out to find her, so they can face a familiar, and yet strange, Mars together.

Keiree takes place in the far future, after Mars having been extensively terraformed into an Earth-like world, but with its own unique quirks. The story is set in the fictional universe that includes The Bright Black Sea, The Last Star’s Sea, Beneath the Lanterns, Sailing to Redoubt and The Prisoner of Cimlye.

Keiree is a 34,000 word novella set on Mars. It will be released on 17 September 2020. The ebook will be free -- as usual -- in the ebook stores of Smashwords, Kobo, B & N and Apple. It will be priced at $.99 on Amazon and the equivalent price on Amazon's worldwide stores. I'll see if Amazon will match the free price of their competitors, but as you  may have noticed with my more recent books, they're not doing that much, or for long, these days. The mobi version of the story is available for free on Smashwords which can be side loaded and read on to a Kindle. 

Origin Stories -- Beneath the Lanterns Part Two

 Lantern Avenue in Lantera

In my last post I talked about how I decided to write a fantasy, even though I don’t like fantasies. And how I worked around that issue by writing a speculative fiction story set in my Nine Star Nebula “universe” (Though not in the Nine Star Nebula) after the collapse of the advanced human civilization that was sending colonist to the stars. Going this route had its pluses and minuses. Let’s start out with the use of language.

One of the ways fantasy often sets itself apart from SF and builds its fantasy world is in its use of language. Fantasies may use antique words or speech patterns, may use ornate, ethereal, or evocative language to create a sense of otherworldness. Consider the two examples below;

Sir George, Prince Daring’s squire, dressed in embroidered silks, gleaming chain mail, with an elegant dueling sword at his side, reined his tall stallion to a hault at Lady May’s bower gate. Leaning down to her, he solemnly offered her the single white rose he had carried like a pendant in his calf-gloved hand.

DeArcg Gyorga, the armsman of the Faror of Dartha, garbed in a flowing Sarafeld fabric tunic and cape, a vest of hammered Majah-steel chain mail,and wore the ancient sword of Taroon, bounding at his thigh, drew the reins of this magnificent silver-maned Darth as he came abreast of the manse gate wherein stood the Faroratha Mathia. He bowed to her from his high saddle, and wordlessly offered her a single Flower of Ashia that he had borne as his standard.

With the first example, you don’t need a glossary at the back of the book to picture the scene. But the use of everyday words may make the “fantasy” seem more mundane. A fantasy should carry one to new, strange, and wonderful world. Using the ordinary language of this world may make it harder to carry a reader away.

In the second example, with many made up names, titles, places, and perhaps new creatures, one gets a clear sense that you’re not in Kansas any more. A door has been opened to a new world. However, each new term must be described to, and remembered by the reader, all of which makes it harder for the reader to be carried away, especially if they are constantly tripping over unfamiliar words.

A Lanterna canal scene from the story

I tried for a middle course by using commonplace words, for the most part, but perhaps not used the same way in Kansas. Fro example, I used "poured stone" instead of "concrete." I was originally going to use different names for what I knew to be Earth animals, to suggest how far we were away from today. However, I realized that this would be cheating. The world I had set the story on was a human settled, terraformed world, inhabited by humans descended from our Earth along with Earth flora and fauna. The characters ride horses, and to call them anything but a horse, would be deceptive. And I needed to use Earth plants as well, though genetically modified so that exact names might not apply. Give this mundane backdrop, I felt that I needed to keep things as concrete as possible and create my new world by imagining a world strange enough that would transcend the mundane language I would use to describe it.

To do that, I chose a world with low gravity so that my characters could do things that could not be done on our world. I chose a world where the dawn to the next dawn “day” was a month long, divided into 16 ordinary “days.” I gave it an opaque sky that hid all the stars and obscured the two major lights in the sky – the Yellow Lantern that lit the day, and moved across the sky over the course of 16 days, and the dimmer, Blue Lantern that remained fixed in the sky and came to its own, after the Yellow Lantern had set. And I tried to make the cities and landscape as exotic,yet as logical, and as their location and historic background would allow.

Another Lanterna scene

Logic is a keyword in this case, for it tied my hands in some respect. For example, I had to keep close track on whether it was a bright day, or a dark day for any given scene, which meant plotting the story time wise much more closely that I usually do. I usually just keep the story plot in my head, committing to paper only the sequence of scenes where I need to consider time and distance traveled. In this story I needed to do that for every scene since I needed to know the exact day of the month to determine whether it was a bright, dark, or twilit day. And if I wanted a scene to occur on a specific type of day, I had to account for the time between scenes to get there. Plus, I had to take into account that travel would alter that timetable. The Yellow Lantern would rise several days earlier in Lanterna in the east than it would in Azera in the west. I had to determine distances and travel times to reflect that fact.

In addition, by making it a terraformed world, I had to assume that it would have a very carefully curated environment, that used a limited collection of plants and animals to create a self-sustaining, balanced, and benign environment. Lions and tigers, cobras, and mosquitoes and a million other plants and animals would not be introduced. This was a very artificial world, which meant that I was rather short of dangers, other than humans, that my heroes would have to face. I had to settle for feral dog packs as their greatest danger on the road, after rogue raiders.

I chose to make the setting is a sort of faux China, because of all the fantasies I like “oriental” ones the best. I threw in the Russian steppes, plus some tea gardens, and the various remnants of the Elder Civilization that they are the descendants of. I modeled the military units after those of the British in mid-19th century India. For the story itself, I have no idea where the inspiration came.

Caravan to Mirra

With those limitations and inspirations, I set out writing The Fourth Daughter, the working title of the story, since it is the story of a fourth daughter of a Queen, borne to please her husband who wanted a son. There were, however, other stories with that title, so I had to find another one.

Anyway, I had this daughter, who was unwanted by her mother, and so she was raised as the son by father in his regiment in the field. For the narrator and male lead, I wanted a mild mannered scholar who gets dragged across the world by the strange, devil may care fourth daughter. As usual, it has an episodic structure, with an anti-epic vibe, anti-quest. Though their fate has important consequences, the story focuses on their concerns. And instead of going on a quest, they’re simply fleeing for their freedom, if not their lives.

One of the things that made this story fun for me to write, was that I set it on a very specific “world” whose characteristics I had to respect to the extent of my understanding. There are hints throughout the story, if a reader had read The Bright Black Sea – but I purposely made no effort to highlight them. The narrator is unaware of their significance when he notes them. I didn’t want them to distract from the story, nor did I want to make the story into a puzzle. I just did it as a personal challenge, for fun of it. Another writer might have made the discovery of those clues central to the story, but I choose to keep my narrator in the dark about the Elder (SF) Civilization, at least in this story. Like all my stories, I left it open ended enough that I can always return to it, after I sell tens of thousands of copies. Don’t hold your breath.

The Reed Bank, second version

Because I like old fashioned stories, and use SF motifs mostly for color and exotic locations, I used a similar motif for my next story, Sailing to Redoubt. Though in that story society and the characters were much more knowledgeable about their origins, even if their technology wasn’t all that much more advanced. But I’ll get to that in the next installment of Origin Stories.

Origin Stories -- Beneath the Lanterns Part One

First, a bit of background. I spent over two year writing The Lost Star’s Sea,and it got to be somewhat of a grind finishing it. I vowed never again to write something that long. And I vowed never again to write a sequel to a book that sold less then several tens of thousands of copies. (I have since broken that vow, but it was a case of “any port in a storm,” I needed to write something...) Sequels appeal only to readers of the previous volumes, and not all of them, while with a new, standalone book, you start fresh, so anything can happen, including lightning striking.

So after The Lost Star’s Sea, I wanted to do something new, to appeal to a different, and wider readership. I felt that a fantasy that might attract new readers. Plus, fantasy had a significantly larger readership than that of SF. However, this plan, faced one significant issue – I don’t like fantasy, much. I do have fantasy books on my shelves that I’ve read and enjoyed, but these days, fantasies have pretty much fallen out of favor with me.

I don’t like many of fantasy’s most common tropes. I don’t like magic, and I’m not sure why. Perhaps because with magic, anything goes. A writer can do anything in a story, it’s “magic” after all. Cause and effect need not apply. And then, there’s Evil, with a capital “E.” That unstoppable force of darkness that threatens the world because that’s what Evil always does. No motive necessary. And it is never defeated, for at least for as long as the publisher buys the stories. Nor am I fond of the other capital “E” fantasy trope, Epics. I like more personal stories. And I don’t like war stories – its a cheap, redi-built conflict, and especially those that glory in gore. And then we have the rivals to the throne trope, which is oh, so very common. And yet, I still wanted to write a fantasy.

But if I left out all the tropes that I didn’t like, did I have anything left to write a fantasy with?

The answer is probably no, but I did it anyway. Sort of.

What I did was write a speculative fiction book instead of a fantasy – in my mind. To make it a fantasy, I set the story in a post-SF world with the remnants of this SF world shrouded in mystery and legends. There is no magic in the story, though some unexplained SF elements pass a magic. There is no over arching Evil, only powerful people who are ruthlessly working to achieve a peaceful future for their kingdoms, despite the objections of their pawns in the game. It is not an epic, but rather one of my typical story about people caught up in the gears of statecraft, whose main concern is personal survival. It doesn’t involve a war. Indeed, indeed, I took delight in writing an adventure story featuring a swashbuckling character who drew her sword only once in the story, and none of the characters dies. In essence I wrote an anti-fantasy fantasy, and had fun doing it.

For the speculative fiction elements, I could’ve started anywhere, but I chose to set it in the same “universe” of the Nine Star Nebula – tens of thousands of years in the future where humankind is sending out slower than light colony fleets to populate planets identified by robotic explores a suitable for human life. I set it on a world that has been terraformed for human life in this universe. If humans exist tens of thousands of years in our future, I doubt that they are much like us, but I didn’t care to explore their differences, nor try to make them relatable, so that we have today’s humans as our heroes. In itself that’s a fantasy. By setting the story in this common universe, I could use all the ideas I developed in the Lost Star Stories, at least for the legends of the Elder Civilization. But since that advanced civilization had mysteriously collapsed, I could set the story in a much more fantasy like setting.

I didn’t want to write a Tolkien-est type of fantasy, so I pictured China at the turn of the last century as my model. This would allow for a mix of the old and new ways with the introduction of industrial inventions like railroad and such to give it a distinct flavor. I then littered this landscape and history with the remnants of the Elders – some of them obvious, others not so much.

Making it part of my existing universe had pluses and minuses, which I’ll explore in part two of the origins of Beneath the Lanterns. What I want to close with, is a sort of a cautionary tale. As I said at the beginning of this post, I knew that fantasy outsold SF, which was one of the reasons I decided to write a fantasy. (Other than just for the hell of it.) But only after I had written the story did I find out that I had completely misunderstood the fantasy market. (Not that it really matters.)

As you can see from the chart below, the fantasy genre is dominated by Paranormal & Urban fantasy, i.e. vampires and werewolves. If you spin that category into its own genre – which is certainly imaginable since it has, I would imagine, a very specific readership – and you’re left with a Fantasy audience that is probably not much bigger than SF. And thus, nullified my initial premise for writing a fantasy. And then, when you consider that epic fantasy came in second, and I wasn’t writing a million word, multi-volume epic, I was probably chasing a smaller market than SF with my book. 

You also have to take into account that Smashwords and Amazon have only so many different sub-genre categories. The only category that I could honestly list Beneath the Lanterns was in “Action and Adventure” and it seems that action and adventure stories are more popular in SF than in fantasy. So instead of chasing a larger market, it seems that I was chasing a smaller one – though in the end, I listed the book in both. Still, the best laid plans…

For some reason Blogger is linking all the captions to the first illustration, and every time I wanted to add a caption, I lost the image. So here are the captions from top to bottom. The First is my  first version of  the Reed Bank Street, Azera in a very impressionistic style that I was playing around with at the time. The second is another version of the scene in the same style. I used part of this one for one of the covers -- I have never much liked my Beneath the Lantern covers. The next one down is Birdsong Square in a similar style. Then there is a scene of the caravan to Treafara that I did as a potential cover. And finally the graph from the Data Guy's 2018 Nebula Award  presentation  http://authorearnings.com/sfwa2018/  And below is another version of a caravan painting

The Hugo Awards 2020

This is another one of those post where I direct some comments at the clouds. In short, an opinion piece.

The Hugo Awards for 2020 have come and gone. Finally. Especially for the participants who discovered, to their dismay, that old men like to talk. And talk.

What made the Hugo Awards infamous this year was its master of ceremonies, George R. R. Martin. It seems that George has a hard time finishing things, including his anecdotes. His long winded rambles kept the contestants sweating as they impatiently awaited their fate – the thrill of victory, for the lucky ones, the agony of defeat for all the losers. I tend to feel sorry for all the losers, but then, well, they’re all volunteers, so I guess they took their chances, and lost.

I tried watching the recorded live stream of the show (https://watch.thefantasy.network/the-2020-hugo-awards-livestream/:) to see what it was all about. That lasted five minutes. Well, maybe it was closer to three before I bailed. Whatever entertainment value George possesses as a toastmaster, is lost when he’s just talking to a camera.

But many participants objected to more than just his tediousness. He apparently talked a lot about John Campbell, the golden haired editor of the best-est ever SF magazine, Astounding – at least according to its loyal band of geriatric SF fans. While it is possible that old George was just reminiscing about his youth, it seems more likely that he came to praise Campbell as a deliberate rebuttal of 2019 Hugo winner, Jannette Ng’s efforts to bury Campbell. Certainly, the anti-SJW faction of the SF fandom took it that way.

Speculative fiction by its very nature stories of today, looking forward. There should be no tradition, no orthodoxy in speculative fiction. Let the dead bury the dead. If you’re going to celebrate new books, it should be with today’s rising stars – not the remnants of stars that have faded from the main sequence. But that said, being no fan of awards for creative work, these award ceremonies can be as tedious, controversial, or as contentious as they’re wont to be. I don’t care.

My Library -- Travels in Time

I thought I'd take a break from talking about musty old speculative fiction books from half a century ago, to talk about my small collection of musty old travel guides, from 80 to over a 100 years ago. Thirty or forty years ago, if I came across an old travel guide like the ones pictured above, and it was cheap enough, I’d pick it up.

I think maps are cool, and these books had tons of them, making them well worth a dollar or two just for all the maps that came with them. The Blue Guide to Switzerland alone had some 78 maps, many of them in full color. Below are just two of the many foldout maps found in these guides. The top one is of London, and the bottom one is of Paris.

In addition to maps, the books offered a wealth of information, including short histories of the country or city that were the subject of the books, guides to all the various monuments, and extensive lists of other books about their subject matter. The later books also include photographs of the sights described in great detail in the text.

Of even more interest to someone interested in life in the past, is all the everyday information they provided to help the tourist navigate a foreign land. This sort of information can be found at the beginning of the books, under the title of “Practical Information.” For example, A Satchel Guide to Europe, offered information on such things as, Planning the Tour, Selecting One’s Steamship, Clothing and Accessories, Money, and the comparative value of US vs European money, Cost of the Tour, luggage, passports… and the list goes on, including motoring, cycling, and travel by air (in 1928). Guides to single countries and cities would include information on railways, steamers, motor-buses, with typical prices, guides to tips, etc. And, as an extra bonus, most of them included ads for hotels, clothing, insurance, and books, that will take you away to a distant land, far, far ago.

And finally there are the notations one fines on old, secondhand books.

Pictured above are the books in my collection. Left to right, top to bottom.

The Blue Guides – Murihead’s (Findlay Murihead, editor) Switzerland With Chamonix and the Italian Lakes Published by Macmillian & Co, LTD London, and Librairie Hachette, Paris. 1923

The Blue Guides – Murihead’s Paris and its Environs Published by Macmillian & Co, LTD London, and Librairie Hachette, Paris. 1921 (Date written in the book in ink, “Aug 19 -1922” and in pencil, “Hotel Meurice Mrs ITH Scort” or something like that. There is some more writing on the back cover, suggesting that the owner went to London as well. (The time is not far off when only a few historians will be able to read cursive text.)

A Pictorial and Descriptive Guide to London Over One Hundred Illustrations Forty-sixth Edition – Revised Published by Ward, Lock & Co. Ltd, London. An ad page has a small notation “London Guide, 1927-28, so I think we can take 1927 as the date of publication.

Guide to London Fifty-ninth Edition (An ad for the Dalbury Hotel, Knyveton Rd Bournemouth says “Please metion Ward Lock’s Guide 1952” so I think we can take that as this edition’s date.) Ward, Lock, & Co. Ltd, London (and Melbourne)

The Blue Guides Scotland (edited by L Russell Muirhead, the son of Findlay?) With a complete Atlas of Sctoland and 34 other Maps and Plans. Third Edition Published by Ernest Been Limited, London 1949 It used to belong to E. L. Wiregert. I carried this book around during my travels in Scotland, in 1973.

A Satchel Guide to Europe A Satchel Guide for the Vacation Tourist in Europe by W. J. Rolfe First Edition for 1913 Published by Houghton Mifflin Company Boston and New York.

The title Page form A Satchel Guide for the Vacation Tourist in Europe, 1913

There is an intriguing little mystery surrounding this book, so I’m going to go into a little more detail on this book. Consider the photographs below, of the left and right leafs of the Memoranda pages in the back of the book.

Right Page

Left PageI’ll save you squinting at the photos. The entry starts on the right hand page and goes backwards to the left hand page. The title reads “Proposed Itinerary (JGE)” and in the corner above it “Aug- Sept 1914”

It then has a proposed itinerary starting with “Aug 19 – Wen – Hamburg” and JGE then spends the next two weeks visiting the various German cities before ending up in Rotterdam on Sept. 3. From there its on to Brussels, and then London on Sept 6th. JGE then proposes to spend the next two and a half weeks exploring England, including Cambridge, the Lake District, Liverpool, Southern England, and back to London, and Southampton, no doubt to catch a steamer home.

World War l started on the Western Front on August 3, 1914. So what happened to poor JGE’s Grand Tour? He or she wouldn’t have been on the steamer when the war broke out, and no doubt the winds of war were already being felt in America weeks before, so it seems unlikely that her or she would ever board a steamer for a Germany at war – if there still was passenger service to Germany (unlikely). And so it seems that the Grand Tour never happened, as there are no other notations in the book to suggest that it was merely postponed six or more years. I can almost feel the frustration and sadness of JGE, as his or her dream of trip of a lifetime goes up in the smoke of a senseless war. Life isn’t fair.

A Satchel Guide to Europe by Wilian J Rolfe The Forty-eighth Annual Edition, revised and enlarged by William D Crockett, Phd (professor of the Latin Language in the Pennsylvania State College Published by Houghton Miffling Company, Boston and New York 1928 (Owned by Charlotte J Dasenbrock, sold by De Forges Books de Luxe Milwaukee)

And finally,

A to Z(Zed) London atlas and index 30p or 6/ (shillings ?) published by Geographer’s Map Company Sevenoaks, Kent.

This one is mine. I picked it up during my Grand Touring of Britain in 1973, making it now 47 years old. Old. In the days before cellphones and GPS a book like this – a street map book of all of London --  in your back pocket was essential to not getting hopelessly lost. Alas, today, the print has gotten too small for it ever to be useful to me again…

Forever Mars

Image Credit: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=pia02653

I see that the stars must be aligned for voyages to Mars, since three of them have been launched in the last week or so. Which makes this blog entry all the more timely.

Have you ever wondered why there are so many Martian stories? Mars, it seems, holds a special fascination for writers of speculative fiction. One reason for this fascination, at least a century or more ago, was that it seemed possible, even likely, that Mars was an earth-like world, with life, and possibly intelligent life. However, that dream was crushed 55 years ago, when Mariner 4 flew past Mars and showed it to be a cratered planet, much like the moon. Still, many of the speculative writers of that time had grown up reading those earlier Martian stories, and had likely written their own Martian story as well. And probably the same thing can be said for every generation of reader and writer since then – they read Martian stories growing up, and just have to keep reading and writing Mars stories of their own as they grow old.

There is, however, another reason for the abundance of Martian stories. You see, there is a certain, club or lodge, for writers of speculative fiction, known as the Fraternal Order of the Aether. While I say “known as,” it is not well known. Hardly known at all, in fact. The Order is not fond of publicity. It doesn’t award prizes, run contest, or actively seek members. Writers of speculative fiction must seek it out. And that takes some doing. Plus, one must meet certain requirements even to be nominated and elected to membership into the Fraternal Order of the Aether. One of those requirements is, believe it or not,that one must have written a Marian story. Why this is, is a rather murky question. It likely dates back to the Order’s funding, over hundred and twenty years ago, when its early members, writers like Percy Greg, Camille Flammarion, Gustave W Pope, and Edwin Lester Arnold, were all writing stories set on Mars. Be that as it may, this requirement for membership persists to this day. And so, if a speculative writer desires to become a member of the Fraternal Order of the Aether, he or she must write and summit his or her Martian story to the committee in order to have even a chance of being elected to membership. No exceptions. So, you see, dear reader, it likely that many of those Martian stories you have read, and will read, owe their existence the Fraternal Order of the Aether, and its membership requirements.

Now, I’m not the most social fellow you’ll ever run across. I don’t believe that I belong to any organization at moment. Indeed, I believe that my last one may well have been the Cub Scouts. But still, I can't help but think that it might be rather cool to be a fraternal member of the Fraternal Order of the Aether, even if I don’t ever see myself ever looking into the Order’s lodge, since it is located in… Well, I don’t think they want that publicized so I’ll not rustle any feathers by mentioning it. But I can still imagine myself pushing through the august, but unmarked doors of the Aether Club, to be greeted by the hall porter, who would politely direct me to the library, the lounge, or the dining room, as I wont. But alas, one needs a Martian story even to dream of this.

So I have written my Martian story – Kere. Or, more precisely, I’ve completed the first draft of it.

Kere’sfirst draft is a story of some 30,700 words. A novella. I tend to add more words in the subsequent drafts since I find writing the first draft to be hard. And because it is, I’ll settle for some rather sketchy writing just to get to the end of it. However, I like to tinker with words, so that once I have some sort of version down to tinker with, I enjoy fleshing out the story in subsequent drafts. However, in this case, the story is not all that complicated, and probably would be better with less words than more. But, as I tell myself, “Good luck with that!”

At this point Kereis a standalone story, though it could easily be the opening episode of a longer, episodic novel. But I’m happy to have just a story, and have no plans, or even ideas, about what sort of novel length story might follow. I will have more to say about the story itself in the coming weeks, but suffice to say that it is set on Mars. A Mars that is in the same “universe” as The Lost Star Stories, the Tales of the Tropic Sea, and even Beneath the Lanterns.But I think the time frame is a bit earlier, by at least 10,000 years, than any of the those stories. (Though they vary among themselves by more than that.) And since it is set on Mars, it touches on the expeditions sent out by the Terran solar system civilization to distant stars like the Tropic Sea’s Dara lll and the Nine Star Nebula.

My target release date is mid to late September 2020.

But enough for now. Stay tuned.

My Library -- The Tom Swifts

I think it is fair to say that the Tom Swift Jr books served as a gateway to speculative fiction for many boys from the mid 1950’s into the “space age” of the 1960’s. I didn’t hang around with girls in my Tom Swift days, so I can’t say that they didn’t also read them for certain. But I can say that my sister didn’t borrow mine. They certainly were my introduction to speculative fiction, beginning sometime when I was doing time in 5th grade, which is when I first got into reading. I think.

I have no recollection of how I discovered “Victor Appleton ll’s” Tom Swift Jr series. Perhaps there were some Tom Swift Jr books in the classroom library, but I don’t recall that being the case. I do recall with certainty that after I became a fan, I bought most of my Tom Swift Jr books from the book department of the Gimbels department store at the South Gate mall. I can remember eagerly heading to the book department whenever we were shopping to see if a new title was available. I also remember buying one second hand at some sort of street market, a “Maxwell Street Sale” type of event. (Probably Tom Swift and His Flying Lab pictured above since it was not a new copy) I’m quite sure that I bought Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung of 1961 (#18 $1) when it was first released – as it’s wrap around the spine cover was unique to the series, which, somehow, struck in my memory. The last book I bought was Tom Swift and His 3-ZD Telejector with a copyright date of 1964 which would make me 14 years old. By that time I was likely starting to read full on speculative fiction – Heinlein, Clarke, Norton et.al.

But as you can see from the photo, I did not confine myself to reading just the then current Tom Swift Jr books by Victor Appleton ll. In 1963 there was a brief craze called “Tom Swifties.” You can read about it in this Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Swifty The short version is that a book, Tom Swifties by Paul Pease and Bill McDonough, made puns out of the way the writers of the original Tom Swift books used discriptive dialog tags. The Wikipedia article has an example of the way the original books were written and then samples of dialog tags turned into puns, for example: “I love hot dogs,” said Tom with relish.”or “Stay away from that turtle!” Tom snapped. or “We just struck oil!” Tom gushed. You get the idea. I recall seeing a newspaper article about this fad, which opened my eyes to the fact that there was an older, Tom Swift series by Victor Appleton before there was the Tom Swift Jr by Victor Appleton ll series that I was familiar with. This sparked my interest, so much that my Dad drove me into downtown Milwaukee to visit the premiere used book store, The Renaissance Book Store, on Wisconsin Ave. There he negotiated a deal to buy one of each of the titles they had in stock – I seem to think, 13 of them all told, for a $1 apiece. I know that one of the books in that bundle was Tom Swift and his Motorcycle. I wrote the date I got it, 1/12/63 on the inside flap, and it still has the book store’s asking price of $2.50, so Dad got a good deal.

Strangely enough, the original Tom Swift books have had a greater impact on me, my tastes in stories, and my writing, than the Tom Swift Jr books ever did. Whereas the Tom Swift Jr book could be imagined to be taking place in the world I knew, the old books, set in upstate New York in 1910's, were a strange, fantasy world to me. While I was familiar with life in the past, as portrayed in TV westerns and old movies, anyway, these stories brought the past much closer to home. I guess the best way to put it is that they were a glimpse of the everyday life of a teenager/young man of the period – with quaint air of “old times.” And perhaps because I’d spent two weeks every summer on the dairy farm of my grandparents, which was far different than my life in the city and suburbs, I think I had just a taste of that way of life just before it faded away in the 1960’s,so the life the books described had a familiar air to it that enhanced its impact on my imagination.

I would go on to read many other books set in different eras – Sherlock Holmes’ Victorian London, Nayland Smith’s Edwardian East End, Philip Marlowe’s 1930’s LA, to name just few of the lost worlds of the past that had the power of a fantasy world in my imagination. However, Tom Swift’s world was the first.

The series started off with Tom making improvements on motorcycle he got cheap from a Mr Wakefield Damon (who blessed everything), and dealing with the obnoxious rich rival/bully, Andy Foger, plus thieves stealing his inventor dad’s plans. Travel distances were still measured in a horse and buggy speed. Like in the Jr books, Tom had a good friend, and a girl he was sweet on (and actually married, in the books, I seem to recall.) Plus some interesting reoccurring characters, like Eradicate Sampson with his mule Boomerang with all the racial stereotypes of the day, but still portrayed sympathetically. As I said, it was a whole new, a different, and a simpler never-never world. A world time had changed to fantasy.

So what do I owe Tom Swift today? Well, let’s see. I like small stories, stories about people in dangerous adventures, but not stories that involve the fate of the world or universe, just like the Tom Swift stories. I like more old-fashioned settings for my stories, even when set in the far distant future. I like the comradely of good friends, and the element of romance. The old Tom Swift books took me out of my everyday life to another semi-familiar, but different world, which is what I try to achieve with my stories. In short, they either appealed to the taste in stories I was born with, or shaped it. I can’t say which. And, well, Tom is shown wearing a snappy hat on the cover. I’ve been a hat guy all my life.

And come to think of it, I owe those old Tom Swift books one more thing – my love of old books. They were my first second hand books, and I found it intriguing to find hints of the previous owners in the books, inscriptions, signatures, etc. I have a lot of old books – books that were actually old before I bought them. I love them.

In the photo above, you can see, on the lower shelf, some more of my early reading. I wasn’t a huge fan of the Hardy Boys, but I did read them. Like Tom Swift, I like the older, original versions better than the updated ones, when I could find them. Though dated, the older versions, seemed to be a little more realistic, and rougher and tougher than the sanitized 1960’s versions.

I was a big fan of the Tom Crobett Space Cadet series as well. I guess it was an early TV series, but I never saw that. I knew Tom Corbett only from the Carey Rockwell (with Willy Ley, Technical Advisor) books. I really liked the illustrations of those books. They had a lot of them, featuring rocketships like rocketships were meant to be! Plus plenty of illustrations of our heroes, the interiors of rocketships, and the planets – also as they were meant to be. They were great. I also have the Dig Allen, Space Explorer Adventures, by Joseph Greene, that I was less fond of. These were published by Golden Press who put out series books, that were sort of wanta-be rivals to those published by Grosset & Dunlap. They never quite measured up. Anyway, these books may also have formed my taste in speculative fiction – rocket ships, planets, and adventure. I never evolved beyond a good rousing adventure/romance. Mind-blowing what ifs and weirdness were never my cup of tea.

A few last thoughts. When I was reading the old Tom Swift books, the world they described at that time was only fifty years or so distant. Now they're more than a hundred years distant. The books I read fifty years ago, now don't seem all that old...

I see on Amazon, that someone has now tried to update the original Tom Swift Jr books. I don't know how well that would work, but I doubt that Tom Jr. keeps his "flat top" hair cut.