Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 265

Good News Tuesday

Wow, check this out:

3D printed bionic hands trial begins in Bristol

The world’s first clinical trial of 3D printed bionic hands for child amputees starts this week in Bristol.

They are made by a South Gloucestershire company which only launched four years ago.

If the trial is successful the hands will become available on the NHS, bringing life-changing improvements for patients.

Everything about this is amazing.

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Equinoid aliens

Here’a a fun couple of posts from Judith Tarr:

Horses in Space: Evolving the Equinoid Alien, and

Imagining Space Horse Culture: Stallion Security Forces and Badass Mares

Wow, totally an idea after my own heart! I am mostly interested in culture and sociology, but sure, let’s take a look at the biology first. Tarr looks first at a major sticking point: lack of opposable thumbs:

One obstacle might be the fact that horses are hooved animals, and therefore (humans might think) severely limited in their ability to build and manipulate technology. Even the word “manipulate” implies hands and, more specifically, opposable thumbs. Hooves in contrast are literally blunt instruments.

Elephants get around this problem by having long, supple, extremely manipulable trunks with a “finger” or two on the end. Horses don’t have anything close to this, but their upper lips are amazingly flexible and extensible. They have a surprising degree of shall we say dexterity with their teeth as well. I have one who can untie people’s shoes (and he has proved that he knows exactly where to tug, which means he has a sense of the structure of a knot; he also understands English sentences, but that’s neither here nor there, here), and there are horses who have to be locked in with combination locks or padlocks because their lips and teeth can jigger latches and fasteners.

Impressive, but I’m not too thoroughly persuaded. Still, you could tell me that a species has done more with their mouth and lips and so on than regular horses and I might buy that. Though then you might be pushing from “horse” toward “tapir.” It’s a start, though. Plus Tarr discusses other possibilities, on the grounds that ancestors of modern horses had multiple toes and there’s no reason a horselike alien couldn’t have coopted extra toes into a manipulative role.

Then she goes on into much weirder ideas . . .

Meanwhile, in the post on culture:

Herd animals may be vegetarians—mostly—but they aren’t pacifists. Their social order is built around a fluid hierarchy with the senior mare in charge, her favored seconds keeping order, and the herd stallion serving as security force, sometimes assisted by his own second who will breed the superior’s mother and daughters. Outside stallions will raid the herd and try to draw off mares, plus there’s the need to contend with predators as well as rival bands moving in on the same territory.

There is war, and it can be ferocious. Mares get into raging fights, mostly involving kicking (a horse kick is a powerful thing—just ask my dog who caught a glancing blow and now has a plate and three screws in his elbow). Stallions will wage full-on battles with battering hooves and tearing teeth…

They sure will. Lots of good stuff here. Tarr winds up:

Dang. Now I want to see how this works in a story. The psychology of a horse is not the same as that of a human, though there are some similarities. Herd structure is different from pack structure, and there’s a level of cooperation that isn’t quite so easy or straightforward for humans. Not to mention the subtlety of horse body language and the tropism toward moving in groups.

I second that! I’d love to see someone take a really serious stab at pulling this off. Elements Judith Tarr mentions that I would like to avoid in such a story: I personally have a strong distaste for Fantasy Telepathy in my science fiction, and I am sick to death of biological technology where you “grow your spaceship.” I know writers are just trying to come up with something different from human technology. But I wish everyone would try harder to avoid this total, and totally implausible, cliche.

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Since I’ve been reading Military SF lately —

This post at DIAL H FOR HOUSTON caught my eye:

Today’s offering? Rick Shelley’s Lieutenant Colonel.

If you didn’t figure it out from the title, or the cover, Lieutenant Colonel is Military Sci-Fi (Mil-SF for short), a genre devoted to chronicling how and why people are gonna shoot at each other in the future. And, also unsurprisingly, Lieutenant Colonel is the fifth book in Shelley’s “DMC” series, with each earlier book having sequential titles like Lieutenant, then Major, then Captain, and so on. Not exactly creative, but what can you do.

In any case, this series centers around a dude named Lon Nolan as he works his way up through the ranks in the Dirigent Mercenary Corps (from which we get the “DMC” acronym). Lon is your typical officer– professional, honorable, and … kind of boring. Dude makes Honor Harrington seem like Hamlet. Wait, no, that’s not a good analogy, ’cause Harrington gets shit done. But I digress.

I suppose I might perfectly well like the series in question, but here’s the part I wanted to share with you all:

Hah hah hah!

Let me see, one of my favorite Military SF series is Tonya Huff’s Valor series. Okay: Fake swear words, check. Primitive alien savages, yep, check that box in the first book. Bugs, probably some of the Other species are like bugs. Power armor, check. I would be surprised if there’s never a Sun Tsu quote, but I don’t remember any in particular. On the other hand, the cover features someone with a gun, but it’s not a laser rifle — shoots bullets of some kind, I believe. And the series isn’t published by Baen — it’s DAW (I just checked). No monarchy, whether presented as a good thing or otherwise . . . nope, don’t think you can win at Bingo with this one. I can think of some that come much closer — I wonder if this Bingo board was put together with an eye toward Falkenberg’s Legion?

There are a few boxes missing, though:

At some point we see a reprise of The Battle of Rorke’s Drift. I’ve seen that in at least three novels, probably more. At this point I can recognized Rorke’s Drift a mile away.

At some point someone says something like, “We’ll make a solitude and call it peace.” It’s a good quote. Very effective. I’m sure I’d use it myself if I were writing a MilSF story.

I’m sure there are others, too, but those are the ones that spring to mind.

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We only rate dogs. Please stop sending us pictures of polar bears and toasted marshmallows

Here is a funny collection of photos sent to WeRateDogs on Twitter (@dog_rates)

It’s a cute account to follow if you happen to be on Twitter. If not — and I grant the highly politicized Twitter of 2017 is hard to take — then at least you can enjoy all the pictures in this post. My personal favorite in this set is the “rug without a dog” picture.

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Questions to ask a prospective agent

I had no idea what to ask my agent when she first called me lo these fairly many years ago. Here is Kristen Nelson offering tips for that moment:

5 Qs Authors Don’t Ask but Should When an Agent Offers Rep

I will say, I don’t see and don’t care about the initial version of any contract. The final version shows what changes have been made. Generally there are lots and lots of changes. I don’t need further assurance that my agent is determined and tenacious when negotiating. Especially since she does update me now and then if she is going back and forth with a publisher on one clause or another (generally the noncomplete clause, but there are others).

Anyway, if you should be in the position of deciding whether to sign with one agent or another, here you go, this should help.

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The Mythopoeic Awards Finalists for 2017

I’m always interested in this award, which tends to emphasize works that accord with my personal taste. Here are this year’s finalists in the adult novel category:

Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature

Andrea Hairston, Will Do Magic For Small Change

Mary Robinette Kowal, Ghost Talkers

Patricia A. McKillip, Kingfisher

Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven Cycle: The Raven Boys; The Dream Thieves; Blue Lily, Lily Blue; and The Raven King

Jo Walton, Thessaly Trilogy: The Just City; The Philosopher Kings; Necessity

The Mythopoeic Society handles series, as you can see, by allow a series to be eligible the year it is completed. Or a book within a series can be eligible if it stands alone. I haven’t read Jo Walton’s Thessaly novels, but I agree that none of the Raven Cycle books stand alone, so nominating it as a series seems like the way to go for that one.

Le me see, let me see… I’ve only read two of these finalists: the Raven Cycle and McKillip’s book. I attended a reading for Ghost Talkers and liked what I heard, but haven’t read it yet. I do keep meaning to read The Just City, which I have on my Kindle, I’m pretty sure. My guess is I’ll find it intellectually interesting but not necessarily emotionally engaging. We’ll see.

I do think that Kingfisher was not necessarily one of McKillip’s top ten works. I mean, I enjoyed it, of course. But I’m not sure it seemed cohesive to me. I liked it better the second time I read it, so maybe it will continue growing on me over time.

The Raven Cycle is beautiful and impressive and I loved it. I do think the ending was a bit weak, to be honest. Still, I can definitely understand why it’s on this list and I wouldn’t mind a bit if it won.

Anybody read Hairston’s book? That’s the one I haven’t heard anything about.

For the finalists in the other categories, click through to File 770 and check out the full list.

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Recent Reading: The Black Tide Rising series by John Ringo

So, this quadrilogy was an unexpected pleasure – unexpected because I only picked up the first book as part of the Military SF bundle and I’ve already looked at and deleted about half of the books in that bundle. But I enjoyed Ringo’s book quite a bit and, as you see, went on with the series promptly.

The books are:

Under a Graveyard Sky

To Sail a Darkling Sea

Islands of Rage and Hope

Strands of Sorrow

And the series is complete with those four books.

I started the first one when we lost power during a recent thunderstorm – your phone produces its own light, see, so you can easily read on it when the lights are out. It started just a tinch slowly, but picked up fast. It’s a zombie apocalypse novel, as you may know. Here’s how it starts:

“Alas Babylon Q4E3,” the text read.

“Bloody hell.” And it really hadn’t started out as a bad day. Weather was crappy, but at least it was Friday.

Steven John “Professor” Smith was six foot one, with sandy blond hair and a thin, wiry frame. Most people who hadn’t seen him in combat, and very few living had, considered him almost intensely laid back. Which in general was the case. It came with the background. Once you’d been dropped in the dunny, few things not of equal difficulty were worth getting upset about. Until, possibly, now.

Now, this is not too promising imo. I am not just wild about this kind of direct physical description of the protagonist. I just tend to prefer a closer third person pov rather than this kind of omniscient narrator third person type of pov. That’s probably just me. I would also say that several of the sentences here are clunky and awkward, and I don’t think that’s just me. This sentence:

Most people who hadn’t seen him in combat, and very few living had, considered him almost intensely laid back.

is so awkward it’s actually hard to understand if you read it fast.

There are other instances of clunky writing all through this series, as you’d probably expect based on this beginning. The story has several other problems. Like, long expository passages, sometimes very textbooky, that are inserted basically as voiceovers from the narrator. That didn’t bother me, but when instead inserted into dialogue, these passages don’t necessarily fit the voice of the character who is supposedly speaking or thinking. In one spot in the last book of the series, the author completely breaks the fourth wall, which is especially jarring since that’s the only place it happens. Plus the author’s political views become a little bit over-preachy every now and then, especially toward the end.

Also, what is it with some male authors who seem to really get into writing super-duper ultimate kickass teenage girl characters? I’m thinking of Joss Whedon here, but at least there’s a supernatural explanation for Buffy. Summer is less believable to me, but there you have futuristic SF science. Ringo doesn’t have anything but the whim to create a thirteen-year-old female super-soldier and drop her into a zombie apocalypse, where she smashes her way through all the zombies in the entire world. A girl who is Thirteen! Years! Old! He does mention briefly that Faith has muscle density “almost like a male.” Suuuure she does. Faith is just not a believable character. At all. I will add that a couple of the male characters – well, one – was almost as unbelievable as Faith, so there’s that.

And yet . . . and yet . . . this series was so much fun! I whipped through it super-fast and enjoyed almost every moment. In fact, I totally experienced a book hangover after finishing it, and found myself so unable to read anything else that I gave up on anything new and went back and re-read LMB’s Sharing Knife series instead.

What this series has going for it:

1. Faith isn’t great with words, which makes her more sympathetic than total perfection would allow. Also, her character development is actually pretty good over the course of the series. “Trixie” is a nice touch – both incarnations – but Faith really does have more depth than is apparent at first. Also, it *is* fun watching her smash her way through all the zombies in the entire world, even though it takes a dedicated suspension of disbelief to accept this plot element.

Also, thankfully, Faith is not involved in any romantic subplot. Whew.

There is practically no romance anywhere in this series, incidentally, and not a whoooole lot of character development in general. Even Faith’s sister Sophia is not as well developed or interesting as Faith herself, imo. But I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that character was probably not Ringo’s first priority when writing this story.

2. The clunkiness of the writing almost completely disappears in the forward sweep of the story. For me. YMMV, but the fast pace and ratcheting tension and all those good things made these books just about unputdownable. So, yeah, this is definitely a plot-driven story, and a really fun read on that basis.

3. The worldbuilding and technological details are just great. Ringo obviously put a lot of thought into his zombie apocalypse and its aftermath. I loved it! I didn’t really believe in the complete downfall of civilization and the survival of only about 1% of normal people, but given that scenario, Ringo did a fantastic job working it all out and bringing civilization back from the brink.

If you liked . . .

I’m going to say that readers who really got into Kristoff and Kaufman’s Illuminae / Gemina / Obsidio series might very well enjoy Ringo’s zombie apocalypse. In a lot of ways I’d say the reading experience is similar. The Illuminae series is particularly noteworthy for its crazy-creative use of fonts and text effects, but considered as a story, it is also fast-paced and plot driven, with unbelievably competent teenage protagonists and minimal character development. The writing in the Illuminae series is probably better although it’s hard to compare directly because the structure is unique. There is definitely a lot less exposition in the Illuminae series, but I strongly suspect that readers who enjoyed the fast-paced story will also get into Ringo’s Dark Tide series. Obviously Ringo’s books are not YA, but that distinction doesn’t impress me much since when I was a teen there was no such thing as a YA section in most libraries and bookstores. There’s lots of blood and gore in Dark Tide, but I’ve never noticed younger readers shying away from blood and gore. Besides, there’s far less deliberate torture and so on than you get in The Hunger Games and spinoffs.

For a more impatient reader, I will say, if you try Graveyard Sky, be sure and get past the initial build and wait for the lights go out in New York. That’s the point at which the story really takes off.

I think my dad would really enjoy this series too, so I guess my next step is to pick up paper copies for him.

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The Pleasures(?) of Pessimism

From the New York Review of Books, an article by Tim Parks: The Pleasures of Pessimism

Why do we read writers who are profoundly pessimistic? And what sense are we to make of their work in our ordinary, hopefully not uncheerful lives?

I am not speaking about the sort of pessimism concerned with the consequences of our electing this or that president, or failing to respond to world famine or global warming, but what in Italy came to be called il pessimismo cosmico. The term was coined in response to the work of the nineteenth-century poet and thinker Giacomo Leopardi, who at the ripe old age of twenty-one decided that “all is nothing, solid nothing” and he, in the midst of nothing, “nothing myself.” The only reasoned and lucid response to the human condition, Leopardi decided, was despair: hence all positive action and happiness must always have the quality of illusion.

Speak for yourself, Tim. Some of us definitely do not read writers who feel that the only reasoned and lucid response to the human condition is despair. Some of us think Leopardi was probably suffering from clinical depression, and are not keen on either wallowing in that mindset or implicitly privileging a mindset born of pathology.

Click through and read the whole thing if you are so inclined. Then, for an antidote, I recommend the nonfiction book Against Depression by Peter Kramer, in which Kramer spends quite a lot of time deconstructing the idea that the depressed, despairing perspective is somehow morally superior. It’s especially interesting because Kramer himself feels some sympathy with this viewpoint — far far more than I do, not that that’s hard — but he still knocks the idea of depression equaling artistic depth or moral superiority completely to pieces.

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Public service message: all the rest of the ordinary foods that are toxic to dogs

Because I recently registered my puppies, AKC is sending me a monthly newsletter with chatty, informative articles about this and that. Generally I skim those lightly and move on, but this latest one was kind of convenient.

I mean, they are listing a bunch of foods that are perfectly okay, like turkey — wow, that’s a revelation — but I’m skipping all that and just focusing on the foods that are genuinely dangerous to dogs. There are a few more on the list than I’d been aware of. Here’s the whole list:

Chocolate. Everyone knows this. No need to panic over tiny amounts, but you definitely don’t want the dogs getting into a giant bag of bittersweet chocolate chips.

Onions and all the other aliums. I knew that one, but not everyone does, so just a note: don’t feed your dog his own portion of onion rings or you may be dismayed to find you have induced instant kidney failure.

Uncooked eggs. The idea of feeding raw eggs to my dogs totally grosses me out, but it turns out that raw egg whites can also give dogs biotin deficiency. I only knew that because my vet warned me not to give raw egg whites to a picky eater. Not that I would have. Ewww. Cooked eggs are fine, obviously.

Cinnamon. It says here cinnamon “can lower a dog’s blood sugar too much and can lead to diarrhea, vomiting, increased, or decreased heart rate and even liver disease.” I don’t know how much cinnamon that would take, but mental note: do not drop and spill the huge bag of cinnamon sticks I have in the pantry.

Almonds. Apparently dogs don’t digest almonds very well, though this issue looks pretty minor to me. I don’t think I’d worry about almonds much if the dogs got a few. In fact they did last year, come to think of it, when they managed to get a partial bag of almond m&ms off the kitchen island. I came home and they were playing tug with the empty bag. I figured splitting six ounces of m&ms eight ways probably was not dangerous, but it looks like it’s a good thing these were almonds and not some other kinds of nuts, like:

Pecans, walnuts. Toxic, apparently. They can’t be too super-toxic because my little Papillons used to break open whole pecans and eat the nutmeats. Quite a mess as I’d have to clean up the shell fragments. Well, I see googling around that one of the dangers comes from moldy pecans infected by Aspergillus. I can hardly imagine anybody deliberately eating, or letting their dogs eat, moldy pecans. Yuck. Also this though: “[Pecans can] easily develop mold on the shells which contain tremorgenic mycotoxins which lead to seizures, tremors and/or neurological damage to your dog.” Not good. Okay, well, it’ll probably be another 15 years before the pecan tree in the back yard starts bearing nuts, but it’s something to keep in mind, I suppose.

Macadamias. Totally, dangerously toxic. Macadamias “can cause vomiting, increased body temperature, inability to walk, lethargy, and vomiting. Even worse, they can affect the nervous system.” Did you know that? I didn’t know that. Very serious mental note to avoid letting the dogs eat macadamias. Well, I am not a huge macadamia fan anyway.

Looks like that’s the lot! However I will add that my dogs are SO annoying about wanting to eat acorns, which I KNOW are toxic. I can just point at Dora and give her a stern look and she will drop an acorn, because I am constantly telling her not to eat them. I tasted one myself so I know they are bitter. Yet those dogs will break them open and eat the meats. Dratted creatures. Dogs have no sense sometimes. Of course I am most careful with any girl who might be pregnant.

Of course we all know that peanuts are fine for dogs:

I haven’t ever actually made peanut butter popsicles for my dogs, but hey, I see there are plenty of recipes online. Because of course there are.

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Stories where anyone can fly

I’m updating this post from some time ago because new commenter Daniel recently added a whoooollle bunch more examples of stories where ordinary people can fly. As a post recedes in time, regular visitors are much less likely to see new comments on that post. I’m bringing it back into the present so you can all benefit from Daniel’s additions.

So here’s the original post:

There are two kinds of people who can fly: the kind that are born with wings and the kind that gets a pair of wings and then learns to fly.

Although I like stories about both, isn’t it sort of cool to read a story where basically anyone might in theory learn to fly? You, for example, if you happened to walk through the correct portal.

And I don’t mean like in an airplane, even in a world like the one in the Elemental Blessings series by Sharon Shinn.

No fair if you need to become a test pilot in order to fly.

Wings, not airplanes.

Here are the SFF stories I can think of where people — basically ordinary people — learn to fly.

Windhaven by Lisa Tuttle and George RR Martin. I first read this ages ago, way before GRR Martin was famous, or at least way before I knew his name. I sort of liked it? Or to be more accurate, I liked the part about flying a lot and the part about gritty politics not so much.

Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. I didn’t really care for the first book, Red Mars. I disliked most of the characters and reading about a failed rebellion, well, not really a lot of fun there. I liked Green Mars the best because I liked the main pov characters much better, the terraforming was all very fascinating, and a successful rebellion yields a far more appealing plot arc. But it’s Blue Mars where the technology for flight develops and is used. It’s not a major element of the book, don’t get me wrong, but it is one of my favorite bits. KSR is really good at description and I can close my eyes and visualize flight.

The Green Sky trilogy by Zipha Keatley Snyder. These were so lovely. Not flawless, but I really enjoyed them when I was a kid. Also, the cover on Goodreads is pretty bad, but the original cover no doubt led me to pick this book up in the first place, because it is also lovely.

Such beautiful images . . . giant trees, a gentle pastoral life, gliding . . . of course that isn’t quite flying, but close enough, close enough.

The computer game for the Commodor 64 that was based on this trilogy was also deeply charming. First computer game I ever spent a significant amount of time playing. Still the one I think of wistfully. Too bad there doesn’t seem to be a modern version.

Okay, here’s one I haven’t read that I hear is reminiscent of Snyder’s trilogy:

Updraft by Fran Wilde. From the cover, I guess this is a hang glider rather than wings?

Someday I will read this and enjoy the flight involved, even if people don’t actually have wings.

Okay, and of course one more:

I never really thought about what other stories involving flight might have helped inspire this book. But, yeah, I’m pretty sure Winghaven and The Green Sky trilogy were in there somewhere.

Now, here are the additional stories added by Daniel:

“Human Levitation: A True History and How-To Manual” by Preston Dennett has accounts of people who have really flown !

“Joseph of Copertino” by Paolo Agelli and Christopher Costanzo is a biography about another of the most famous flying humans in history

“Incidents in my Life” by D. D. Home is an autobiography about one of the most famous flying humans in history

“John and Jeanie Fly: Living the Law of Attraction” by John Waddell is a delightful story of a married couple who one morning they discover that they can fly

“The Flying Yorkshireman” by Eric Knight is a short story of a man who believes he can fly – and then he can

“Levitation” by Randy White is a story about a man who mysteriously discovers the ability to fly

“Lift Off” by Terence Tolman is a Short Story About a Girl Who Can Fly

“The People Could Fly” by Virginia Hamilton, African-American folktale about flying to escape slavery

“The Man Who Knew How To Fly” By Karel Čapek, about a man who can fly until others try to tell him how to do it their way, which causes him to lose his ability (also a video on youtube and vimeo)

“Nikki Powergloves” by David Estes, in which a girl can fly if she wears magical blue gloves

“Going Through the Change” by Samantha Bryant, where a woman becomes lighter than air but learns to control her flight

“The Strange Gift of Gwendolyn Golden: The Night Flyer’s Handbook” by Philippa Dowding, in which a teenage girl has recurring dreams of flying then discovers that she can really fly, spending most of the book enjoying her wonderful gift

“Savana’s Secret” by Sandra C. Addis tells of another teenage girl who discovers that she can fly due to being very light

“Fly Girl” series by by Russ Anderson Jr. about a teenage girl whose Native American grandmother gave her a magic feather giving her the power to fly

“He That Hath Wings” by Edmond Hamilton is an animated story of a boy born with wings who learns to fly

“Floating Boy and the Girl Who Couldn’t Fly” by Paul Tremblay and Stephen Graham Jones, a story of a group of teens who have the power to fly, except one, who finds out she has a different ability

“Lisa: Three Girls with Extrordinary ESP Powers” by Ian Berry, about three super-powered teenage girls

“The Man Who Could Fly But Probably Shouldn’t’ve” by H Pattison, about a man who discovers that he can fly, but is often misunderstood

“The Flying Man” by Peter Glassborow, a man who can fly and secretly tries to do good from the air without being seen

“The Flying Boy” by Harrison Parish about a boy who can levitate and do other things, and has mysterious origins

“The Flying Burgowski” by Gretchen Wing in which a teenage girl has recurring dreams of flying then discovers that she can really fly, spending most of the book enjoying her wonderful gift

“The Strange Gift of Gwendolyn Golden: The Night Flyer’s Handbook” by Philippa Dowding, is the story of a teenage girl who wakes up one morning floating on the ceiling, but eventually learns to control her inherited talent of flying

“Flying Girl: Egg and the Hameggattic Sisterhood” by Robert Iannone, where a girl gets a special suit from her grandmother that enables her to fly

“Flying: A Novel” by Carrie Jones, about a cheerleader who discovers that she can fly

“Bizarre New World” by Paul Krutcher, an animated book about a world where everyone has the ability to fly

Also this list at Goodreads: All the winged and flying people your heart desires.

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