Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 195

Active geology can be scary

A post that caught my eye this morning …

There are some impressive lava fields near Reykjavik, but the lava fields of the south are simply vast, and produce hours of the most boring driving imaginable, with nothing but gray moss and distant mountains to look at.  This was all laid down in the eruption of Laki in 1783, in which a 25-kilometer gash opened up in the earth, and poured out lava for five months, and intermittently for the next 11 years.  Most of Iceland was covered by ash and cinders contaminated by fluorine, which killed most crops and maybe half the livestock.  …

The eruption was so vast that it had enormous geopolitical consequences.  A sulphur dioxide fog settled over much of Europe, so thick that ships could not leave port.  As people are not equipped to breathe sulphuric acid, thousands died.  The freezing winter of 1784 caused widespread famine, notably in France, where it probably contributed to the French Revolution.

In America, the Chesapeake froze over.  In Asia the monsoon cycle was disrupted, and the Nile failed to flood, resulting in the starvation deaths of a sixth of the population of Egypt.

Active geology can be pretty damned scary.

Human memory is so short. No one remembers this now. I wonder whether this might be because we prefer to believe that human activity is REALLY IMPORTANT, because that gives us a sense of control, when in fact at any moment we might suddenly find out that active geology is waaaaaay more important than we thought and boom, we’re facing a huge catastrophe we could not really anticipate and cannot affect.

If I wanted to write a post-apocalyptic novel, I would almost certainly start with active geology.

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Book recommendation lists

At tor.com, James Davis Nicholl discusses writing book recommendation lists.

I like the way he starts off:

Surely my lifetime of reading and listing qualifies me to offer timely advice to others contemplating their first lists—lists that I am sure will end up being every bit as apropos as the ones that populate so many discussions of this sort.

The most important rule is do  absolutely no research.   If the titles don’t come to mind at once, then how on Earth can they be significant works? Disregard those croakers who dwell overlong on just how many science fiction and fantasy books have been published over the decades and on the fallibility of unassisted memory. Consider this: if memory were notoriously unreliable, wouldn’t I remember that?

Hah!

The sarcasm gets even more pointed after that.

I actually would be interested in one list that Nicholl proposes in the comments:

I wonder if people would like “James’ Top Ten Books That Are By Any Reasonable Standard Terrible That He Still Rereads.”

Sure, I would. That’s kind of a neat idea for a list. I’m not positive I could personally come up with a top-ten list of objectively terrible books I still re-read. I’m not even positive I can think of any. A top-ten list of “meh” books would be much easier.

Other personal lists that might be neat:

–Top ten most re-read before I turned 20.

–Top ten most re-read in the past decade.

–Top ten seriously flawed books that I really like despite the flaws.

–Top ten books on my shelves that I feel worst about not having read yet.

–Top ten books I got rid of that I now regret I don’t own.

Maybe I should get on those and start trying to do a top ten of some kind every week or so.

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Recent Reading: The Duchess War, by Courtney Milan

Okay, this is not the first Courtney Milan romance I’ve read. It’s just nearly the first.

Also, this may be my new favorite romance novel ever.

When he meets her, Robert Blaisdell, the Duke of Clermont, thinks that Minnie is a plucky, clever woman. That’s what I thought, too.

Shortly thereafter, he realizes she is actually waaaaay more than “plucky” and “clever.” This was a revelation to us both.

You know that post some time ago about really brilliant protagonists, like Azherit in Bradshaw’s Magic’s Poison series and Lord Vetinari and so on. Someone commented that most of these protagonists were men.

Well, not long after they meet, when Minnie and Robert are first sparring and the story is being set up, she says something like, “Yes, of course, you’re a duke and rich and everyone falls over themselves to do what you say, but on the other hand, I have …”

“Yes?” he demands. “What?”

“A sense of tactics,” she murmurs, and leaves him staring after her. I laughed out loud.

Fantastic setup. Great characters. Fundamentally simple, sure, but great. Minnie does not have the scope to show off her tactical brilliance as much as, say, Miles Vorkosigan. But she’s got enough scope to make me happy with the story.

I’ll give you one minor reveal: Minnie was raised as a boy until she was twelve.

Here’s a second reveal: when you think, But HOW could just being raised as a boy have been THIS traumatic, no matter what century this books was set in? you are right to think so. That was not the traumatic part, and the emotional scarring that Minnie carries around with her is not due to that. Associated, yes, but wow, is there more to that story.

It’s tough to design a male lead strong enough to play opposite Minnie, but Robert holds up his end of the story. In fact, in some ways he’s even my favorite character.

Lots of great secondary characters too. This is part of a series (“The Brothers Sinister”), so naturally we’re going to see those characters again.

The Governess Affair is a linked prequel novella, which I note is free on Kindle. I’m reading it now. It contains one of the very few sex scenes I did not skim lightly across. Looks like there are four novels in the series, plus another novella. There’s a boxed set, but since I already bought two novels and a novella separately, I guess I won’t get that, even though the price does make it a good deal.

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Skynet smiles

You’ve seen that video of the “robot” beating up people? It’s right here, if you haven’t, plus information about how the video was faked up.

I was reminded of this by this list at Book Riot: 10 CHILLINGLY POSSIBLE SCI-FI BOOKS ABOUT AIS TAKING OVER

“Possible” is not the word I would use here, by the way. How about “scenarios made to seem plausible by good writers, assisted by this weird but common belief that AI is right around the corner.”

Anyway, interesting list, sure.

ANCILLARY JUSTICE — very neat choice, so far beyond what everyone else has done with the idea of artificial intelligence.

CITY by Clifford Simek, for a non-chilling rendition.

Then a bunch I haven’t read, including THE PREY OF GODS  by Nicky Draden, which I started, but I fear the grim and gritty flavor made me put it down again in short order. Also SEA OF RUST by C Robert Cargill, which I also haven’t read, but actually have on my TBR shelves at this very moment. Here’s the description:

Now that the humans are all dead, robots can get down to what they always wanted to do: figuring out why they’re here and what their lives mean. Most of them find it easier to join one of two Brobdingnagian superintelligences and relinquish their individuality. The others pick through scrap heaps for spare parts and hold onto their freedom with every ounce of strength. This is the story of one of their number, a former nurse whose betrayal of humanity haunts him.

Too much angst for me? Hard to say. We’ll see.

Meanwhile! Obvious AIs that this post missed. I can think of several:

A CLOSED AND COMMON ORBIT by Becky Chambers

The AIs in The Seafort Saga by David Feintuch

THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS, obviously.

The AIs in THE STARFIGHTER INVITATION by Andrea K Host

Murderbot, obviously.

Not sure if I have a penchant for non-chilling AIs, but none of those are scary. I mean, potentially scary, in some cases. But yeah, probably I’m specifically selecting for nice AIs.

I am now having a really tough time trying to decide who my very favorite AI character is. Murderbot? Or Breq? I may have to flip a coin …

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Punctuation is your friend!

A post from Janet Reid: Punctuation is your friend!

Recently, a writer bemoaned “agents hate semicolons”on Twitter. …

The idea that anyone who wrangles words would hate any one member of the punctuation platoon is perplexing to me. …

Deft use of punctuation can give your work power and punch and panache.

To rob yourself of any piece of punctuation is idiotic.

If an agent says s/he hates semi-colons, my guess is s/he’s seen them abused too often, but that’s like blaming the victim for the crime.

I don’t hate ellipses even though some writers fling them about with abandon; as if they’d bought a barrel, suspended it over their computer and dripped them down on the manuscript like faux freckles.

Generally I frown on that … but not always. 

I have, myself, personally, met English teachers who do not permit their students to use semicolons.

I’m with Janet Reid. To rob yourself of any piece of punctuation is idiotic. I’ll go further: to rob your students of any piece of punctuation is malpractice.

I’m guessing you’ve probably noticed I specifically do not hate semicolons. Or ellipses. I bet you didn’t know that after finishing a manuscript, I generally spend about three hours “finding” semicolons and ellipses, and taking out about a third of them. Obviously I leave a lot in, so that gives you an idea of how many I have to start with.

But if anybody tells me I’m overusing semicolons, I will just point them to Jane Austen and let them argue with her. NO ONE today uses as many semicolons as great writers used in that era.

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Pet peeves

Here’s a post by Elaine Viets at Kill Zone Blog, about problems that make a reader pause and perhaps slide into negative review mode.

This reviewer is not some crank who looks for excuses to rip writers. If he has to give a book a bad review, he agonizes over that decision. … But here are some writing wrongs that upset this reviewer.

1) Padded middles. Here’s what this reviewer had to say about this issue:

This is my reviewer’s number one problem – novels that slow down in the middle. “The padding doesn’t advance the narrative,” the reviewer said. “It’s pages and pages of the thoughts and feelings of people who aren’t very interesting. They offer no valuable insights. Sometimes, I wonder if editors make writers add this unnecessary information because big books are so popular. Most books I’ve read recently are 20 to 30 pages too long. …”

And here I paused. While not disputing with the perception that the pace slows down in the middle . . . an extra 20 to 30 pages? Really?

Who even notices a mere twenty extra pages?

I guess if you’re reading a Penric novella and stumble over twenty pages of not-much, you might notice. I’m not sure I would personally really notice twenty pages of static scenes in a novel of extra length.

Also, if the people aren’t very interesting, maybe that’s a bigger problem than the narrative slowing down?

Now I’m tempted to go back and look at the final Harry Potter book. It’s been a long time since I read it, but my possibly unreliable memory suggests there were about fifty pages too many about wandering in the woods feeling depressed. Maybe it was actually twenty. If so, then yes, that was a noticeable chunk of too-much-nothing in the middle of a book. It had nothing to do with the interestingness of the characters and everything to do with being really bored with the problem Harry was facing right then. I thought a paragraph of two would’ve been plenty, followed by getting out of the woods and back into the story.

The next couple of comments seem more reasonable to me:

2) Switching names. “The character is introduced as Joseph Smith. Then the author proceeds to call him Joe, Joey, Joseph, and sometimes just Smith. It’s hard to figure out who the writer is talking about.”

This is actually a real problem in some books. It’s very much connected to the next comment:

3) Who’s talking? “A character is introduced in the first 50 pages, and then shows up 200 pages later with no ID.”

This is the same type of Wait, who? problem. It’s definitely a real annoyance when a character steps on stage and I can’t remember who that person is. I suppose characters with too-similar names would trigger the same annoyed response.

I don’t believe any other pet peeve mentioned in the post bothers me as much as (2) and (3) above. Except seeing wrong words. Parameter instead of perimeter is one I recall. That made me ditch a sample rather than going on to the full book.

I feel like there’s one I’ve seen several times recently, but it’s not quite coming to mind … maybe it was “illicit” when the writer meant “elicit.” Something like that, certainly. That sort of thing is really just annoying, which I am saying even though last night I typed “insure” when I meant “ensure.” (I caught it immediately.)

Oh, and here’s the final pet peeve mentioned in the linked post:

9) TMI in the first chapter. Nearly every one of us at TKZ has written about this problem. Overcrowded first chapters slow the pace of your novel. Our reviewer said, “It stops a good book dead when the first chapter has an overlarge cast of characters and I can’t keep them straight.”

a) Yes, it does. Also, incidentally, not keen on opening in a battle scene involving characters I don’t know fighting for reasons I don’t understand.

b) But cramming the entire cast into the first five pages is NOT as big a problem as delivering a History of the World in the first five pages. Or even worse, the first 25 pages. Wow, is that boring.

Backstory is fine. It really is. Setting the scene is important. But for heaven’s sake, if you’ve got a history textbook you’d like to use as a prologue, just don’t. Work the five coolest details in someplace else, in tiny little bits.

I actually hated that in the Lord of the Rings movies, too. Never a good reason to start a fantasy novel with a history lesson. Never.

Feel free to drop exceptions in the comments.

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A Sword Named Truth

An interesting post about this book, by Sherwood Smith, at Bookview Cafe: All the Worlds and Time: The Long Arc

The initial story arc is divided into three books, called The Rise of the Alliance. The first book is A Sword Named Truth. After this arc comes another arc, when the main characters introduced in this series hit adulthood, and the world shifts into crisis. Then there is another arc about what happens after.

These all have been written—some of them redrafted several times. The toughest to redraft were actually these early ones, which contain story threads written forty, even fifty years ago. To work it together, I—a visual writer—had to learn a lot about narrative strategies. I read a metric butt ton of literary theory, venturing way out into Theory of Mind and Semiotics, which was fun, but taught me little, because visual writer.

So I ended up rereading pretty much all of the nineteenth century classics that developed the novel, focusing on the various levels of omniscient narrator. And that gave me my handle on pulling it all together….

Click through to read the whole thing. I have to say, I’m getting more interested in taking a look at A Sword Named Truth. That great title doesn’t hurt, either.

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Oh, come on

Here’s a post at tor.com: Celebrating great parents in YA SFF.

While I have no problem celebrating great parents in SFF, given the date, I assume this is probably a nod to Father’s Day. With that in mind, the title of this post looks a lot like someone tried to think of great fathers, gave up, and broadened the question.

Well, I’m pretty sure it’s possible to think of ten great fathers in SFF. Let me take a stab at it.

1) Aral Vorkosigan.

2) Miles Vorkosigan. We haven’t had a chance to see him in action as a father, but does anyone doubt that he’ll be a great dad now that he has children? I mean, he’s already done well with his stepson.

3) Adam Haupman, in the Mercy Thompson series, is a great dad.

4) John Aversin from Dragonsbane.

5) Tabini in the Foreigner series.

6) Sam Vimes.

7) Benjamin Sisko

8) Okay, the name reminded me, so moving out of SFF just for a minute, but Benjamin January from Barbara Hambly’s historical series.

9) Now that we’re outside SFF, obviously Keith from Veronica Mars.

10) Back to SFF, a father trying to work through a very difficult situation with his son: Albin Ronay in Growing Up Weightless. The first time I read this book, I was not super impressed by Albin. He grew on me the second time I read it.

11) All right, fine, the tor.com post does offer one good father who I really should have remembered myself: Derk from The Dark Lord of Derkholm.

12) Luke Nix from Dogland by Will Shetterly. I can’t recommend the sequel, but this one is quite impressive for several reasons.

Okay, that’s ten from SFF and a couple from outside the genres. It’s true I had to do some thinking, but really, was that so hard?

Please add your own favorite or noteworthy (in a good way) fathers from SFF in a comment. I’m sure I missed plenty.

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A prequel to The Hunger Games

So, looks like Suzanne Collins is writing a prequel to The Hunger Games.

The book—so far only called “Untitled Panem Novel”—will be set 64 years before The Hunger Games.

Not sure I’m interested. How about you?

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Robin Hood

At tor.com, if you’d care to listen to the first bit of a new Robin Hood retelling in audio, you can do so here.

I don’t plan to listen to it. I hate excerpts unless the full book is available. The book, slated for release in August, is available for preorder at Amazon. I’m mentioning it here because, (A) I have always loved Robin Hood; and (B) the description given at Amazon makes me both interested and wary.

When I say I love Robin Hood, I mean the original, or semi-original. The children’s version I read first set the mold; the Robin Hood presented in Ivanhoe was okay, The Outlaws of Sherwood set the new mold; some gritty version in there did not appeal to me (don’t remember who wrote it or what the title was, sorry); and no doubt there are others.

Now there’s this one: Nottingham, by Nathan Makaryk. Here’s the description:

England, 1191. King Richard is half a world away, fighting for God and his own ambition. Back home, his country languishes, bankrupt and on the verge of anarchy. People with power are running unchecked. People without are growing angry. And in Nottingham, one of the largest shires in England, the sheriff seems intent on doing nothing about it.

As the leaves turn gold in the Sherwood Forest, the lives of six people—Arable, a servant girl with a secret, Robin and William, soldiers running from their pasts, Marion, a noblewoman working for change, Guy of Gisbourne, Nottingham’s beleaguered guard captain, and Elena Gamwell, a brash, ambitious thief—become intertwined.

And a strange story begins to spread . . .

This sounds fine. I don’t necessarily object to the addition of a thief. I like thieves. Robin as a soldier is a little bit of a departure. If Guy of Gisbourne is presented as not quite so terrible, that would be okay.

But there’s also this tagline:

Nathan Makaryk’s epic and daring debut rewrites the Robin Hood legend, giving voice to those history never mentioned and challenging who’s really a hero and a villain.

Now, okay, but … is this meant to indicate that Robin Hood is a bad guy in this version? Because that would not work for me. I’ve also seen, poking around, an assertion that this is a “deconstruction of the Robin Hood Legend.” Hmm. Just how much of a deconstruction is this?

There are a few reviews up on Goodreads already.

Having read those, I’m still not sure. The word “grimdark” floated through one of those reviews. So did a comparison to Game of Thrones, which whatever, everything gets compared to Game of Thrones, but that’s not a recommendation for me. Yet, yet, yet …

From one review:

I’m still processing which characters I love and which I hate and which I both love and hate. Every time I thought I found someone to root for someone on the other side would give me a compelling reason to root for him or her. Because what looks like a necessary survival decision for one looks like irrational misfirings for another. Likewise pragmatic decisions can look cowardly and heroism can look selfish. 

I won’t give any spoilers away but there are tons of amazing twists and turns and the ending is certainly worth it. Especially the last line.

So, not sure. I’m not going to preorder it, but I’m adding it to my wishlist so I don’t entirely forget about it either. I think this is one where I’m going to want to read a sample, and then I still might not know.

Unless of course one of you reads this before I do. In that case, try to remember to let me know what you thought.

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