Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 331

Are you sure this is the future?

So, if we’re living in the future, where’s all the Cool Stuff? Don’t tell me about smartphones. I’m used to smartphones. What I want is a flying car.

But what I want waaaay more than that is a house where every horizontal surface repels dust.

If you gather from this that I have started dusting a significant number of horizontal surfaces in my house you are right! It is going to take days because I don’t want to do a huge marathon session. Dusting the kitchen island takes 45 minutes (I timed it). Dusting all the other counters and surfaces in and around the kitchen also takes a lot of time, particularly, I admit, when you have to put away accumulated clutter and therefore have to decide where to put everything.

I want the many, many books to repel dust, too. I have about 100 cookbooks displayed on the island, which is why it takes so long to dust; they all have to be picked up and dusted individually before the island itself can be dusted. Then they all have to be put back.

While we’re at it, I want the dogs’ hair to repel mulch bits and damp grass and burrs. I know, I know, I could have Italian Greyhounds and then it wouldn’t be a problem. But do you realize it took 25 minutes to brush the grass bits out of their hair this morning? I knew it was going to be like that because the grass just got mowed a couple of days ago and there’s so much dew. But they really enjoyed their run. Alas, a little too much. I’m sure that bird was dead already or Ish would never have got it. It was totally not his fault. It was a thrush, I think, and it sure seemed old enough to fly. At least he let me have it so I could throw it over the fence. Not sure there’s any imaginable techno-fix for that kind of thing.

However!

If you have a minute, check out this list of Futuristic Stuff via buzzfeed. Me, I particularly admire the wastebasket that moves over to catch the paper you throw at it. I never, ever hit my wastebasket. I always, always have to get up and pick up balled up paper from the floor and put it in there.

The tree removal device is by far the scariest.

The handiest to avoid everyday annoyance is perhaps the zipper. Or the extreme stain resistance of the clothing.

And yes, okay, fine, I do appreciate my smartphone, too.

Top Ten Authors I Most Wish Had Written Lots More Books

Elaine T mentioned Cordwainer Smith in a recent comment, and you know, it made me realize that he belongs to the broad category of Authors Who Unfortunately Wrote Just A Few Books.

It’s a shame how some fine authors write just one or a few books and then vanish from the scene for one reason or another. Here are a handful of authors I wish had a backlist about an order of magnitude greater than actually exists:

1. Cordwainer Smith, actually Dr. Paul Linebarger, wrote peculiar stories set in a peculiar far-future. His stories are simply not like anything else in SFF. At the time he wrote them, they were unique; today, they are still unique. Mostly they were shorter works, though NORSTRILIA was novel-length. It’s a real tragedy that he died young, having written just that handful of stories and single novel.

2. Doris Egan. She wrote the Ivory trilogy, which I love, and CITY OF DIAMOND (as Jane Emerson), which was far from flawless — it has a kitchen-sink clutter to it — but which I also love. There was plenty of room in both worlds to go on and I very much wish she had, but she switched to writing TV shows instead.

3. Janet Kagan wrote the Star Trek tie-in novel UHURA’S SONG, one of my great favorites; also HELLSPARK and MIRABILE, both of which I loved. Unfortunately she did not go on with her writing career and then passed away in 2008.

4. Emma Bull. I know, I know, she participated in the Shadow Unit shared world stories, along with Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette and others. The first book in that series is free, by the way. I really enjoyed that series, but I would love to see Emma Bull go on and write some more actual novels. I really enjoyed WAR FOR THE OAKS, which I see now has a contender for Worst Cover Ever:

Who in the blazes came up with that cover for WAR FOR THE OAKS? Man, that’s bad.

Also, I wonder if Bull will ever actually write the other half of TERRITORY? Cause along with McKinley’s PEGASUS, that is the unfinished duology I would most like to see finished.

4. Barry Hughart. BRIDGE OF BIRDS and it’s two sequels are so charming, but I believe I heard that he simply felt he was done writing after that one trilogy. What a shame.

5. Zenna Henderson. Such charming stories. Alas, she only produced a relative handful of stories. They’re all short work, but mostly linked.

6. Joy Chant. I really enjoyed RED MOON AND BLACK MOUNTAIN, a rather odd but very lyrical portal story. Chant wrote a few other books, too, but this was my favorite.

7. Marta Randall. She wrote half a dozen or so novels. THE SWORD OF WINTER was my favorite of hers.

8. I’m not going to get quite to ten, but the final author I’d just like to mention is . . . Jane Austen. If her life and publishing career had not been cut tragically short, just think how many more books of hers would now be on our shelves.

Recent Listening: Cinder by Marissa Meyer

So, CINDER

Nice cover, nice conceit — a retelling of Cinderella, in a futuristic SF world where Cinderella is a cyborg and cyborgs are terribly discriminated against. The setting is New Beijing and the main obvious source of Cinder’s fear of being judged as a cyborg, the second obvious source of conflict is a terrible plague, and the true main conflict involves a plot by Queen Levana of Luna, who has this clever and complicated plot to take over New Beijing and probably conquer all of Earth.

So, cyborgs, robots, plagues, psionics and mind control, secret plots, mad scientists, the handsome Prince Kai, the evil stepmother . . . it did not really do much for me. In fact, it’s taken me practically half the summer to listen to it all the way through, because a good bit of the time I preferred to just listen to the radio while driving or pulling weeds.

This surprised me. This book was quite a hit, got a lot of buzz when it came out in early 2012, and has gotten plenty of good reviews on Goodreads, including from people whose taste I generally find congruent with mine.

The review on Goodreads that I find myself wanting to quote is Titiana’s from The Readventurer. She echoes my feeling, or I guess I echo her feeling, that the story fails to think much about what it means to be human when you’re half machine, which is set up so that it could be a major Thing but really is not developed.

I must also agree that I felt the story lacked any particular Chinese flavor. A futuristic Beijing? It might almost as well have been a futuristic New York. Is this because cultures all over Earth got smashed so flat in WWIV? Not sure; we don’t find out much about the background of the story.

In fact, we don’t find out a lot of things. How long has a different culture existed on Luna, why are Lunars so very different from normal people, how did they come to have amazing psychic mind control powers, why exactly is Queen Levana so eager to take over Earth? No real clue about any of that.

Worse, the overall depth of the political situation is lacking. So Queen Levana wants to take over New Beijing? Well, why hasn’t she already done so? It doesn’t look like there’s anything anybody can do to stop her. Why do a slow conquest through a formal marriage contract? Why not just bring down troops and conquer the place? Especially since she and at least some of her people have super mind control abilities and could probably make Earth troops fall all over themselves to surrender. The political situation feels utterly glossed over to me.

Worse still, Prince Kai is so ineffectual. Maybe I’ve been spoiled by reading, I don’t know, THE THOUSAND NAMES by Wexler, but what is WRONG with Kai? You know what you do when the evil Queen Levana is actually visiting you in person as part of her campaign to marry you, kill you, take over your country, and enslave your people? YOU DO SOMETHING TO STOP HER. If you can’t think of anything clever, then how about something direct? She may have amazing mind control powers, but I bet a knife between the shoulder blades would seriously cramp her style. Since the evil queen has no heir, it sure looks to me like killing her would sow confusion among the enemy and might just stop the conquest notion right in its tracks. Seriously, no one even thinks of this?

Kai is not the only secondary character who baffles me. His primary political adviser gives such poor advice and seems to have Kai so much under his thumb that right from the beginning, I couldn’t help but wonder whether he was secretly working for Queen Levana. The mad scientist who apparently knows all about Cinder and Lunars and everything, WHY does he keep all that to himself for so long?

Moving on to the actual protagonist, Cinder herself. Lots of people love her, I know. I find her deeply, deeply frustrating. If I were reading a physical book, I would fling it across the room while shouting YOU FOOL, TELL HIM THE TRUTH! !!!! I would sound just like the Genie in “Aladdin.”

And, one more thing bothers me that I have not seen in other reviews, not that I’ve read them exhaustively. But. The writing. It is acceptable, I guess, but it is often awkward. I have said before that clumsy, clunky, awkward prose is highlighted by the audio format. That is the case here.

“She leveled Pearl with her own glance.”

She did what? Do you mean, “She leveled her own glance at Pearl”? Or do you mean, “She flattened Pearl with a contemptuous glance”?

From the context, clearly the author means the former, but got the sentence structure wrong. And one can’t level a glance at anybody, anyway, because a glance is too fleeting. One levels a stare at someone, not a glance.

This is not an isolated incident, btw. It’s just one where I happened to be able to remember the phrase till I got indoors and picked up a pencil. I find this kind of thing enormously off-putting when listening to an audiobook.

So . . . I have two sequels also in audio form. But it may be a good long while before I listen to them, though in the second book, SCARLET, Wolf sounds more like he might be my kind of character.

Ah, this is nice to see: The British Fantasy Award Nominees

Via File 770, I see we have these nominees for best fantasy novel:

Breed, KT Davies (Fox Spirit Books)

City of Stairs, Robert Jackson Bennett (Jo Fletcher Books)

Cuckoo Song, Frances Hardinge (Macmillan Children’s Books)

A Man Lies Dreaming, Lavie Tidhar (Hodder & Stoughton)

The Moon King, Neil Williamson (NewCon Press)

The Relic Guild, Edward Cox (Gollancz)

The one I’m pleased about is Cuckoo Song, of course, but in fact I liked City of Stairs quite a bit, too. I haven’t read the others, but those two form quite a contrast: intimate personal story with a great emphasis on family relationships vs epic fantasy with a large cast and high stakes.

Interestingly, I see that the BFA gives an award for Best Horror Novel. That’s probably a good idea, though the overlap between dark fantasy and horror must make it difficult to assign various works to particular categories. Anyway, here are those nominees:

The End, Gary McMahon (NewCon Press)

The Girl With All the Gifts, M.R. Carey (Orbit)

The Last Plague, Rich Hawkins (Crowded Quarantine Publications)

No One Gets Out Alive, Adam Nevill (Macmillan)

Station Eleven, Emily St John Mandel (Knopf)

The Unquiet House, Alison Littlewood (Jo Fletcher Books)

I’ve read The Girl With All the Gifts, and I thought the writing was very good, but the plot was exceptionally predictable. So it’s a hard one to rate. I did think Station Eleven was SF, not horror. Goodreads says:

An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse, Station Eleven tells the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.

I don’t know, that sounds like postapocalyptic SF to me. But fine, fine, I suppose if they have a Horror category and not an SF category, nominators will tend to shoehorn various darkish SF into the horror category if they want to nominate them.

You can click through if you want to see all the other categories.

Unreliable narrators

Via tor.com, a post by Avery Hastings on five great books with unreliable narrators.

I’ve read three of them — Cuckoo Song by Hardinge, Code Name Verity by Wein, and We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Jackson. I loved the first two; the last one not even slightly and I can’t even remember if I finished it.

I’m not sure I agree that Triss is an unreliable narrator. She is wrong about who she is . . . mostly wrong . . . but I don’t think she is unreliable. She is quite honestly telling us her real story. I really don’t think Child-discovers-some-shocking-truth-about-herself maps all that well onto the unreliable narrator idea. Otherwise we’d have to start considering any character who’s wrong about stuff to be unreliable, and wouldn’t that include practically every book ever written?

Anyway, moving on, several books occur to me that are missing from this post:

The Thief by MWT. I don’t know whether Gen counts as unreliable or as playing his cards VERY close to his chest, but I tend to come down on the he-is-lying-to-us-all side of the fence. In a good way, to be sure.

Chime by Franny Billingsley. Again, Briony is simply wrong — but she is a lot wronger than Triss in Cuckoo’s Song. Briony is wrong not just about herself, she is also wrong about her stepmother, wrong about everything that’s been happening for years, and convinced that all kinds of false things are true. She isn’t deliberately lying about what’s been going on, that’s for sure. Does the narrator need to be lying in order to count as “unreliable,” or does wrong-and-therefore-misleading count?

Also, as a side note, isn’t this a beautiful cover?

Completely different from the above, how about Phaethon in Wright’s The Golden Age trilogy? Over and over, whatever the reader thinks is going on is actually not what’s going on at all. This is a case of various protagonists being unreliable because they have deliberately fiddled with their own memories or perceptions.

However, as far as unreliable narrators go, I have to agree that the single best example ever is seen in Here the narrator is quite deliberately lying about practically everything, yet she’s telling a story that’s true at its heart. Really an amazing story.

Giveaway for PURE MAGIC

In case any of you would like a signed paper copy of PURE MAGIC, I’ve got a giveaway running till this coming Thursday.

Of course, if any of you really want a signed paper copy of PURE MAGIC or any of my other books, you have but to ask! I’ll be happy to send you one. But not generally for free. I should probably run more giveaways, though, and I’ll let you know if I do.

Progress!

So, I’m at 380 pages, more or less, as of this morning. This is for THE WHITE ROAD OF THE MOON, if you’re keeping track. I only just worked out a couple important elements of the plot, incredibly enough. I’m kind of used to that, but it still seems odd to me that I can be at 370 pages or so and only then think: Oh, good, THIS is their plan! And it’s going to fail because of THIS! And then they can do THAT!

I’m thinking I will be able to pull this draft together at less than 450 pp, which isn’t so very terrible. Man, is the first revision pass going to be a pain in the neck. Mostly it’ll be dealing with who knew what when, always a nuisance to sort out, and with deepening characterization, always necessary for me.

But, barring acts of God like the New Madrid choosing this week to let go, I’m thinking this WIP will move out of the “in progress” folder and into the “finished” folder by about . . . oh . . . say, by about this time next week. And the first revision pass, tedious though it will be, should not take more than another week or so. So, looking good.

Stuff that helps me get work done: OMG THIS WEATHER. It is so humid that even when it is under eighty degrees, it feels like a sauna, and when it is above ninety, it is SO MUCH WORSE. I walk the dogs at dawn, literally before the sun is quite up, because that’s the only time of day it’s cool enough for me to stand it. Of course they can go out and run in the yard if they want to, but I would literally go stop Dora if I saw her running in the yard because I’d be afraid of heatstroke.

Can we move straight from here to October? Ugh, so done with summer.

But it does help me stay inside and write instead.

Space Opera vs Military SF

Space Opera: adventure in space! Spaceships and possibly aliens, sure, but the story is a probably a quest story. Someone badly needs something or needs to do something in order to Save The Day. The quest, whatever it is, involves heroism against long odds. The plot zigs and zags and zings, with mounting troubles that must be overcome. At the end, of course, the good guys win. Or at least the good guys don’t lose. If there are bad guys, they get theirs. Cosmic justice is served. The world, or whatever was in peril, is saved, or at least mostly saved.

This is not the kind of story where the ultimate conclusion is that it’s impossible to truly win, so the good guys might as well create their own private bubble universe and hide inside so as not to be disturbed as the rest of humanity goes to hell. I’m thinking of Chalker’s FLUX AND ANCHOR series here. What a downer. Space opera can’t do that. It doesn’t have to be saccharine, bad things can happen, but it must be at least somewhat upbeat.

You do need to be in space for some significant fraction of the story, imo, or the story may be a great adventure story, but it is definitely not space opera, even if it is SF. If the story is primary a mystery, then it’s probably not space opera even if the mystery is set aboard a spaceship. If the story is primarily a romance, then it probably isn’t space opera; space opera is one of the SF subgenres that may be really light on romance. Not that you can’t see a romance subplot, but it’s likely to be decidedly sub.

Even if there are spaceships, they are probably not massive city-sized behemoths like in CITY OF DIAMOND (an excellent book, btw, or at least a complicated book with many excellent features). In space opera, the spaceships are probably smaller, more intimate settings for a smallish crew we’re going to get to know well. We won’t be using Real Physics, but Space Opera Physics, with wormholes and all like that, and weapons so that ships can fight with each other. Those and other aspects of the setting will be fairly familiar, so the reader can enjoy the story without asking too many questions about how the universe is put together.

Golden Age space opera could be pretty gung-ho, with good guys who were practically supermen saving beautiful women along with the world, and with humans always or nearly always way more heroic and cool than any aliens that might be around. Stories were heavy on action and plot twists, light on characterization and sociological development. I’m thinking of EE Doc Smith here, which may not be quite fair because I know EE Doc Smith’s work more by reputation than because I read a whole lot of it myself.

The best of modern space opera is very good indeed, though. In good modern space opera, you can expect the author to pay a good deal more attention to characterization than might have been case fifty years ago. So now we can expect twisty plots, fast action, high stakes, heroism, good guys that win, bad guys that lose, *and* also, with the better writers, we can also expect good characterization, snappy dialogue, and overall solid writing. Plus spaceships. What’s not to love? Space opera is what you give someone who likes adventure stories – thrillers, say – but isn’t too sure about SF. The overlap in the reading experience between a thriller and a space opera is probably high enough to let people who are suspicious of SF trappings enjoy the story.

So, who writes the best modern space opera? No question about it, Lois McMaster Bujold comes so firmly to mind that it’s hard to think of anyone else. Her Vorkosigan series is not purely space opera – I mean, A Civil Campaign is a comedy of manners – but the earlier Miles books surely qualify.

The other writer who comes most easily to mind for me is Elizabeth Moon, who has written a lot of space opera of varying quality and set in varying universes. Hunting Party is a wonderful book, it really is, and if you haven’t read it, what are you waiting for? Especially if you’re keeping an eye out for actually mature female protagonists. Some of the other linked books are also good, but imo the quality in this series is highly variable. In particular you get some books with thoroughly scattered pov and no real protagonist, and those don’t work as well. The series starting with Trading in Danger, which takes place in a different universe, is consistently good, though.

Another space opera series is Busby’s Bran Tregare / Rissa Kerguelan series, which someone mentioned recently in the comments . . . right, it was the post about starting series in the middle. Well, Busby’s is a series where the different books are from different points of view but overlap in the stories they tell, so the order in which you read some of the middle books is really a tossup.

One more is Feintuch’s Midshipman’s Hope and the associated series, though the first book is far and away the best in my opinion. The angsty protagonist works just fine in the first book, but the continuing angst gets decidedly old as we go on. However, the first book is definitely a good one, with a cleverly worked out plot and a compelling story.

Okay, that’s space opera, but I don’t want to linger here, I want to go on to military SF, which is what I actually had in mind when I started writing this post. If you like adventure SF and space opera is right up your alley, then if you haven’t dipped a toe into military SF, you really ought to, because the two subgenres intergrade thoroughly.

The difference is this: in space opera, you may get battles, but the majority of the action takes place in non-battle situations and your characters may or may not be part of an actual military unit. In military SF, your characters will almost certainly be part of a military organization, you WILL get battles, the battles will take up a lot of the book, and the tactical situation of those battles will be realistically drawn and get a lot of detailed attention.

Clever tactics in battle always impresses the heck out of me because I don’t think I could write anything like that. (It impresses me in military fantasy like Wexler’s THE THOUSAND NAMES, too.) Me, when I write a battle, I paint the military situation in broad strokes and more or less fake it. It’s quite a trick, sticking your characters in a believable battle, making the situation fiendishly unwinnable, and then getting the good guys to win in some brilliant way your reader doesn’t see coming.

What you will have in the best military SF, then: twisty plots, fast action, high stakes, heroism, good guys that win, bad guys that get theirs, good characterization, snappy dialogue, and overall solid writing. Plus spaceships, though a lot of the action, even the majority, may take place on the ground, not in space. Plus important characters who belong to military organizations, lots of time spent detailing battles, and an authorial emphasis on the tactics of the battles.

I have recently been working my way very slowly through Harry Turtledove’s immense Worldwar series, which is military SF but definitely not space opera. So plainly the overlap between the two subgenres is not universal, but then that’s always going to be the case, so let’s just agree that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds and move on.

Anyway, in Turtledove’s series, the action opens with an alien invasion during WWII, so you can see immediately a lot about how the plot is going to work. In some ways, this series reminds me of Golden Age SF, because humans are intrinsically very much superior to the aliens and characterization, although the author does a decent job, takes a back seat to plot – Turtledove is showing us practically the whole world, so we have upwards of a dozen pov protagonists and switch around among them. He’s a good enough writer to keep me interested, but this is not the kind of work I find deeply emotionally engaging, which is why I’m reading it now; it doesn’t really interfere with working on my own WIP, and I’m glad I figured that out, too, believe me, because it is nice to have fiction I can read while working on stuff. But this is why I was thinking about military SF recently and about how so much of it overlaps with space opera (even though the Worldwar series doesn’t, really.)

What does overlap with space opera is Weber’s Honor Harrington series, which I dip into rather frequently, reading my favorite bits and skimming the rest. Weber tends to make his most important protagonist a bit over the top, but I actually enjoy that. He also tends to give us more of the pov of the bad guys than I frankly feel is necessary; those are some of the bits I skim or even skip entirely.

Another example is Huff’s really excellent Valor series, a great favorite of mine, which I’ve only read once and look forward to re-reading when her next installment comes out this fall. I love everything about this series. I mean, I don’t find the alien species the least bit believable, but Huff doesn’t try to make the reader take them seriously; she tosses them in the story, gives them the characteristics she wants them to have to make the story work, and moves right along. I think Huff’s writing is really strong and her decision to make her protagonist a sergeant rather than the commander of the unit was simply brilliant. Mike mentioned in the comments that the first and second books is not available on Kindle, but double-checking, I see they are, not as the Confederation of Valor omnibus, but separately, as Valor’s Choice and The Better Part of Valor. Glad I checked so I could let you all know that because this is my favorite military SF series.

Pournelle’s Falkenberg’s Legion series is an older work that has a lot going for it, though I would say it’s lighter on characterization and heavier on military philosophy than some. It’s been a while since I read it, but I did like it and still have the books in my library.

A newer, ongoing military SF series starts with Terms of Enlistment by Marko Kloos. I have the second book here, too, but I haven’t read it yet because, you know, sooooo many books. But I did enjoy the first book, which I found light on character complexity but engaging, well-written, fast-paced, and adequately plotted.

And the final series I want to mention here is Frezza’s trilogy starting with A Small Colonial War – I like this one a lot. When someone borrowed it and neglected to return it, which alas is a risk when you loan books freely, I re-bought the books right away so I could re-read them when I wanted to, which I knew I would want to. And I have, several times since then. Frezza’s trilogy feels oddly slow for military SF, but it appeals to me. He is dealing with military tactics, but also with the political arena and even the cultural backdrop as well; these are surprisingly complicated novels for such short books. A knowledge of Latin is an asset to the reader in this series, plus I enjoy the tidbits of poetry and the literary references Frezza tosses in, too.

This is also the series I am most reminded of by Turtledove’s Worldwar series. The works are very different, but I do think Frezza did a far better job with his aliens than Turtledove did with his, which may be why I find myself comparing the two. Well, Turtledove is primarily paying attention to real-world history, so perhaps it’s not fair to expect him to be particularly clever with his alien species as well. But though I will certainly keep Frezza’s series in my library for the foreseeable future, I’m giving the Worldwar series to my dad as I finish the books. He’ll enjoy them, and I don’t really think I will want to re-read them.

Space Opera or perhaps military SF novels that I have on my TBR pile or wishlist at the moment include:

The Course of Empire by Flint and Wentworth

Faith by John Love

To Honor You Call Us by H Paul Honsinger

and The Devil and Deep Space by Susan Matthews

… but I don’t know who recommended any of them or why they caught my eye or exactly how they’ll sort out into the two subgenres because I haven’t read any of them yet. Comments, if you have?

So, what do you think? Did I get the categories more or less right? What space opera and military SF works did I fail to mention?

The 101 Dalmations

At tor.com, Mari Ness reviews another of the really old, really charming animal stories that a good many people might remember better (or only) as a Disney film.

I read Dodie Smith’s 101 Dalmations a million or so times, in the period before I started reading SFF. But I haven’t read it since I was an adult. It’s so interesting to see a thorough review that sees the subtext, including the subtext I most likely wouldn’t have noticed if I read the book again yesterday.

On the surface, at least, this 1950s novel might seem like a work wrapped in comfort and nostalgia for the good old days of English country homes—a spaniel even hints about this when Pongo and Missis shelter in his grand home. Much of the book is focused on respect for the law—the dogs, for instance, hate to leave the house without their proper collars and tags. Partly, they are afraid of getting caught without them and sent to the pound, but also, they hate the thought of being illegal—even though this particular law is enforced by their pets. Other moments, including pretty much everything in the last few pages, focus on and celebrate upper class families and the Anglican church.

But these messages are frequently subverted: with the unorthodox, near group marriage hinted at for Pongo, Missis, Perdita and a surprise fourth character; the fact that the most intelligent and practical characters are all dogs; the way no one hesitates when Nanny Butler takes over the traditionally male role of house butler; a gloriously happy scene towards the end of the book where all 97 puppies (and one cat) gleefully destroy property worth several million—with the complete approval of the text; and another gloriously happy scene that allows one of those expensive English country houses to go, as they say, completely to the dogs. It all adds to the fun.

I did get that Cruella de Vil was a real devil, though. That is blatant enough I’m sure practically every young reader realizes it. For me, unlike for Mari Ness, Cruella de Vil did not “take over the book,” though. For me the book was primarily about the dogs and everything else was incidental. Everything I read in those days was heavy on the animal pov, so for me the dalmatians were the memorable characters, no matter how flamboyant the villain might have been.

On a side note, dalmatian breeders generally hated the movies. I knew several who quit breeding for a couple years after the live-action 101 Dalmatian movie came out, because they knew the demand for puppies would skyrocket and that most of those homes would not be suitable for dalmatians, which are often great dogs, but not always the easiest dogs to handle.

But! The take home message: if you sorta thought the movies were charming but forgettable, you might still find the original book worth picking up. I didn’t love the sequel as well, though I liked it okay. It’s called The Starlight Barking, if anybody would like to check it out, and it has very definite fantasy elements.

So what is a cryovolcano like on Pluto?

I figured you were all curious, so here:

A cryovolcano is an icy volcano found on icy bodies, especially moons, in the outer solar system. Cryovolcanoes have been observed directly on Neptune’s moon Triton, during a Voyager II fly-by in 1989, and on Saturn’s moon Enceladus, by the Cassini probe on 27 November 2005. Indirect evidence of cryovolcanism has been found on several other moons and bodies, including Europa, Titan, Ganymede, Miranda, and the trans-Neptunian object Quaoar.

Instead of erupting molten rock, as in a conventional volcano, cryovolcanoes erupt volatiles (low boiling point elements or compounds), like water, ammonia, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, or methane, accompanied by gas-driven solid fragments. This is called cryomagma. A cryovolcano produces plumes that may be a hundred or more degrees hotter than the frozen surface matter. Exposed to the cold and vacuum of space, the plumes quickly solidify, becoming airborne dust. As the gravity is weak on many ice moons, the plume may completely escape the moon’s gravity well, go into an orbit, or crash back down on the surface in another area.

The source of energy of a cryovolcano usually comes from tidal friction, heat that builds up in the core of moons as they bend and distort in the gravity field of the massive gas giants they orbit.

Well, we know that isn’t what’s causing any possible cryovolcanoes on Pluto. What else can theoretically create a cryovolcanoes?

It is also suspected that some moons may have translucent layers of ice that permit light in to heat material beneath it, but have an insulating property that seals in heat and creates a greenhouse effect. This creates pressurized gases in the interior that will escape if there is a route to the surface, thus creating a cryovolcano.

Okay, don’t know if that’s what does it on Pluto, but at least it’s plausible.

Did you already know that Pluto is smaller than our moon? I knew it was itty-bitty, I don’t think I knew that it was quite that small.