Adrian Tchaikovsky's Blog, page 28

A Very Merry Mythmas to all our Readers

Not in any way festive, and thereby able to offend all denominations at once, my compliments of the season are to be found here with apologies to all concerned. Be warned, it's somewhat of a large pdf.

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Behold!

Just behold, that's all.

Courtesy of the very talented Mr Sullivan.

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Yahtzee tells it like it is.

Recommended reading today is a column from the Escapist where Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, best known for his acerbic game reviews in Zero Punctuation, has some interesting things to say about drama and action sequences.

I agree wholeheartedly with his take — far more so for films than for games, but then I run into the issue in films on a regular basis. I can think of several movies– several franchises in fact — that were killed stone dead for me by the "bigger is better" school of action set pieces, where the actual plots were tissue-thin because the film design lurched from set piece to apparently mandatory set piece irrespective of whether any of it made sense.

I agree with Mr Y that it's the case that where a supposedly human character — or even a superhuman character like Dr Who whose limits are supposed to be not so far from human — is pulling off essentially superhuman feats of agility, coordination, speed and strength, where does the danger go? Either they're built on a human scale, and their human limits and frailties are what puts them in danger, or they're capable of breaking physics over their knee and changing time and space to suit themselves, in which case if bullet time runs out on them (1), why should we not assume that they can simply shrug off the bullets anyway? Action without limits is action without jeopardy, and any suspense so generated is spurious.

It's a little like contrasting Superman and Batman — we know Superman can do superhuman things (2) and as well as the strength and the laser eyes he can presumably be ridiculously fast and precise. Batman is supposed to be human, even though he's superbly trained and fit. If Batman does bullet time, or confidently executes some physical strategy that could plainly only work through a mad coincidence of a hundred different flying pieces of debris being in exactly the right place at the right time, then we're being cheated (3). Throwing all that money and SFX  at us in such enormous handfuls, without spending the comparatively small amount, surely, that it would take to properly plot out and account for the sequence, is fundamentally lazy, and bad storytelling. The scene where the character triumphs despite his human limits is more difficult to tell properly, more satisfying to experience (Yahtzee's Indiana Jones example) than the scene where the character triumphs through the spontaneous superhuman capability to ignore the laws of physics — it's one step off a deux ex machina (4).

What's particularly galling is that these ponderous, overlong, over-complicated and under-logicked set pieces frequently trample the plot to death, because no sane plot would have led to them. The plot basically gets kicked to touch along with common sense, credulity and any sense of consistencywhile the enormous swordfight/fistfight/absurd escape/vehicle chase happens, and when the dust has settled all we have are the flapping ends of something that might have been a script, given ten minutes to re-establish itself before the next set piece is wheeled into view, inexorable and unsubstantiated.

Sequels seem to be most prone to this — because of the insistence that each book must "top" the next — and here we do hit territory in which books can be just as guilty, especially if the sequels weren't part of the original plan. If your hero saves the kingdom today, then tomorrow he has to save the world, and, er… then the universe, and then all of the universes and then… The question of "How do you top that?" is a dangerous one, because it's the wrong question. Just repeating the trick on a larger scale is not only unimaginative, it suffers from catastrophic diminishing returns — the ice cream sundae analogue Yahtzee draws, and you're only postponing the inevitable collapse of your house of cards under its own body weight, subject to a sort of storytelling square-cube rule. But then, honestly, I'm not the man to be talking about taking the square-cube rule seriously, after all…

(1) The Matrix sequels get more slack because most of the action set pieces are not happening within the real world. However the key to believability here is consistency — as important as it is to fantasy writers who have magic at their command — if your hero can do X ludicrous thing at point A, then you hve to have a good reason why he can't just do it again the next time someone tries to have a go at him — in a more fantastic or non-real setting that's the bar that must be met, in book, game or film. This category also covers set pieces that would be perfectly OK in themselves, but get shoehorned into the plot against all logic because someone thinks it's a must-have image. Next time, if your evil military plan involves bombing a ground target, at least explain why your strategy involves a ground assault on the same location you're about to bomb, hmm?

(2) It's in the name, dude.

(3) I'm not actually slinging mud at any particular Batman vehicle, but Batman and Superman are a useful pair to contrast.

(4) And if you have a giant monster, don't keep changing how objectively giant it is just between different scenes. That's super-lazy storytelling.

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I have a new hero!

John Vandenbrooks of Arizona U, you are the hyperoxygenated wind beneath my enormous wings.

As you all know, way back in the Carboniferous the dragonflies, and various other insects, were enormous, as the fossil record records. The assumption has been for a long time that the atmosphere back then was more highly oxygenated, and therefore that the chief limiter on size for insects is their respiratory system (1).

Vandenbrooks, however, seems to be the first person to actually try and test this by rearing insects in high oxygen conditions. This was actually a bit of a risk, I assume — just because conditions would allow a big bug doesn't mean that existing species would spontaneously grow to outlandish sizes. However, joyfully, it works (2).

Of course, if you're going to do it, you have to do it with dragonflies, because they're the giant Carboniferous insect poster child. However, dragonflies are very difficult to rear, and the adults need live prey, so Vandenbrooks had to hand feed them. The subtext is obvious: he has not only created a race of giant dragonflies, but a race of tame giant dragonflies that will obey his every whim! I am so happy with this news.

He has giant beetles too, apparently, but not giant cockroaches. The cockroach thing sounds like a disappointment, but in actual fact they still give less space over to their breathing apparatus: rather than using the extra O2 to get bigger, they've used it to become more efficient.

Annoyingly, I haven't yet found any pictures to show just how giant these insects have become, as this is presumably just a model. Or possibly fortunately. After all, they've almost certainly just become "a bit bigger" whilst if I haven't seen any pictures, I can imagine that they're big enough to give kiddies rides on.

(1) Insect respiration 101: most insects are kind of passive breathers. They have a series of holes down their sides that let the air into their innards through a series of tubes, so that oxygen exchange can occur. Larger insects need more tubes, and as an insect gets bigger the percentage of its volume taken up by this tube system increases disproportionately, meaning that eventually there'd be nothing but tube and no insect inside the carapace. A higher oxygen content to the air means that you need less air to get the same amount of oxygen, and therefore fewer tubes for the same volume of insect. Some insects, as an addendum, do sort of breath — Wasps (I think I have this right) flex their abdomens, changing the interior volume and therefore drawing air in actively for an extra boost.

(2) And surely this is exactly what Vandenbrooks cried out, witnessing his creations for the first time, possibly adding, "and they called me mad!".

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Dates for the Diary — brief reminder

Don't forget I, witha lot of other remarkable people, am at Derby Quad this Saturday for Other Worlds .

Also the Leeds SFF thing next year that I mentioned has now called itself ConJour, and other guests include Mike Carey, Kate Griffin, Mark Charan Newton, Justina Robson, Adrian Tchaikovsky and Freda Warrington.

Yes, yes, I pasted that in from the event Facebucket page. I am not going along to meet my doppelganger or anything (1)

(1) or, if you're a hardline D&D enthusiast, Doppleganger, for no obvious reason, unless it's that the sound they makes shifts in pitch as they approach you, which would be rubbish for a creature entirely based around disguising itself as something else.

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Dates for the Diary

I appear to have Stuff On already for the next few months, and so:

1. I will be asking pertinent questions of Iain M Banks at the Morley Literature Festival on the 15th October (next week). All a bit short notice and the actual event was fully booked out before I was even signed up, and given Mr B's portfolio, not surprising. If anyone has any pertinent questions they would like me to ask Mr Banks, then by all means stick them up and I'll try to fit them in. An upshot of this was an advance copy of his new Surface Detail which you should all go out and buy as soon as it's on the shelves.

2. As noted before, Other Worlds is on 6th November at Derby Quad, and I will be doing some Things there, I think they told me what, but it slips my mind. Perhaps it says on the link. I should probably check at some point.

3. The 2011 SFX Weekender on 4–5 February 2011 is also something I'm pretty damn sure I was asked to go to again. A brief perusal of emails confirms that, yes I was back in June, which indicates almost preternatural organization on someone's part. It was cracking fun this year, so I have high hopes. This will also be the weekend of the release of The Sea Watch if I have my dates right, so it's a good thing to pitch up at for the very first signed copies.

4. I would hope to be doing some signings in Leeds and also either Reading or maybe Oxford this time, in the following weekends of February, and maybe I should start trying to get that sorted out well ahead, this time round.

5. On the 12th March there will be what I think is the very first Leeds Science Fiction & Fantasy event, certainly new enough that the website's still in development. It will be in Leeds. More than that, not sure yet, further news as I have it.

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Other Worlds, November 6th, Derby

I't s been a while since I last posted, and this is because the final proofs for Sea Watch have turned up, and this last stage of the publication process that I get involved in is intensive, time-consuming and conducted to a strict deadline. The draft I had of book 7 is also back in the shop, propped up on bricks while I take it apart, following a going over by my agent. It's one of those situations: in your heart of hearts you know it isn't running properly, but the pride you have, having...

New Art! Tynisa by Tula Lotay

I am also delighted to give you: Tynisa

Enjoy!

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New Art! Cheerwell Maker by Kekejefferis

It's been a while, but we have some new art.

As posted elsewhere, Kekejefferis has painted Cheerwell Maker on Deviantart here.

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Soundtracks for an Insect Age: Blood of the Mantis

Following on from the previous two, here is my track listing for book 3. As before, you could probably glean some spoilers from this if you really wanted.

Blood of the Mantis (un)original soundtrack

Track 1 — The Wasps come to Tharn (Lento, from Aliens 3 by Eliot Goldenthal)

Track 2 — Teornis Plots (The Shape of Things to Come, from Battlestar Galactica series 1 by Bear McCreary)

Track 3 — The Emperor (Harriet Jones, MP, from Doctor Who series 1 by Murray Gold) (1)

Track 4 — Jerez and Solarno