Jeff Carlson's Blog, page 16

Carlson On Kindle

This is me on the cutting edge of the twenty-first century:

Some of you know my novella "The Frozen Sky," an alien encounter sci fi thriller set on Jupiter's moon Europa. In October, "The Frozen Sky" went live on Kindle, where it sat quietly until the New Year.

Since then, it's rocketed up through the rankings. In fact, of the 1,000,000 ebooks currently for sale on Amazon, "The Frozen Sky" is regularly in the top 750. This is pleasing and surprising. I think it's the best piece of short fiction I've ever written, but I've been gratified by the word-of-mouth that's propelling "Sky."

It seemed crazy not to hit Kindle and Nook with the rest of my best, so here goes. Please tell your friends.

For a whopping 99 cents, you can find "The Frozen Sky" and three more mini-collections of award-nominated short stories on both platforms. I hope to make these stories available on other ereaders next month.

So feast!!! Feast your brains!!!! ;>

[image error] "The Frozen Sky" on Kindle

"The Frozen Sky" on Nook

"Long Eyes" on Kindle

"Long Eyes" on Nook

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"Julie Beauchain" on Kindle

"Julie Beauchain" on Nook

"Monsters" on Kindle

"Monsters" on Nook

NEWS FLASH!!! I have seen "Avatar."

And I have questions.

First, yes, I know you're all agog. I'm certainly on the cutting edge of movie-going. Why the heck did it take me so long to see the biggest sci fi extravaganza in the history of the twenty-first century? Well, remember, Diana and I are in a family way. We have small kids, we both work, and we don't exactly have maids or gardeners to help with our household or the yard. We're really busy, man!

We barely watch TV, barely read, for Pete's sake, and when we do have the chance to sit down and watch something in its entirety, it's usually movies like How To Train Your Dragon (which I highly recommend, btw; it's well written and very well done) or Despicable Me (which is hilarious).

Maybe we get to the theater by ourselves four times a year. When we do, Avatar is exactly the kind of thing we like. We both enjoy stupid romantic comedies, but there's no reason you can't watch those at home for a few bucks instead of $30. [image error]

If we're going to shell out for the theater experience, we want things to BLOW UP! HELICOPTER CHASES! ALIENS!

But Avatar was out of theaters before our schedule lined up. It was out of RedBox before our schedule lined up. The local Blockbuster is dead and we don't subscribe to Netflix because, hey, the monthly subscription just doesn't make sense when you watch less than one movie per month. I know, I know, what a pair of Neanderthals! We should be watching movies on our iPhones while we're texting our friends about what sandwich we're going to order while we're standing in line at Subway with our iPods thumping Justin Beiber's hot new tune.

Next we didn't want to buy the damn DVD set because it stayed at $19.99 forever due to unrelenting demand. Finally Diana grabbed the extended version collector's edition for Christmas — still $20 — and it sat on a shelf for two months.

Good movie. All in all, a solid A-, and I don't say that lightly.

Everyone has heard about the predictable characters, the paint-by-the-numbers plot, the poignant environmental message beneath and the stunning visual effects. Agreed. The main thing to ask yourself is Was I entertained? And the obvious answer is Yes, this was an extremely entertaining film, even groundbreaking in many ways.

Let me just ask a few questions that caused me to irritate my lovely patient wife right in the middle of our viewing experience.

Yes, I can be too analytical. No, I don't expect James Cameron could care less. But he really needs to put me in his back pocket for the next blockbuster because Avatar could have had its butt-whompingly cool shoot 'em up ending without being stupid.

Question 1: Why the heck would a combat veteran like the colonel fly his armada through Pandora's floating mountains instead of over these dense hunks of rock and vegetation when with just another four hundred feet elevation, his fleet would have been clear of any dragon ambushes, much less find itself in close combat among these ship-killing chunks of rock?

Right?

Okay, let's say the air is too thin for their space helicopters to get enough lift for that extra four hundred feet.

Question 2: Why the heck is he risking his entire air force in any case? His goal is mortally wound and demoralize the enemy by destroying the Tree of Life. He has orbital supremacy!!!! How about he kicks back in his ground base and asks the starship to toss down one single kinetic missile. It doesn't even need to contain a warhead. Just send a chunk of metal with a simple guidance system zamming down at re-entry speeds and there will be a very large crater where the tree had been, and there's not a thing the blue monkeys could do about it. Don't tell me our starfaring humans don't have the technology. Worse case scenario, they'd have to cobble it together in engineering. Maybe they need a day.

Meanwhile Jake has used up weeks bringing the tribes together. The colonel's watching them gather via orbital telemetry. Maybe he throws down eight more kinetic missiles and devastates their army. [image error]

Question 3: Okay, the space helicopters can't get enough lift to avoid the floating mountains and the starship crew is a bunch of numb-fingered morons who don't know rocket science. He has to fly his armada to the target. But why the heck are there ground troops in the jungle?!?! Sure, he says they need to soften up the natives. Indeed, it was awesome when all the wildebeests of Pandora joined together in a group mind assault on the nasty humans. But really. You're on a faraway moon that's six years from help. You have limited personnel. I think you keep your troops on the perimeter of your heavily fortified base while you launch your air assault, take down the Tree of Life, then reassess how badly you've weakened the natives. In the meantime, using your eyes in the sky, why not swing a few space helicopters past the largest gatherings of blue monkeys and light them up with some rockets?

Question 4: This goes right to the heart of the entire plot. Here we go. The evil corporate humans want the superconducting rock. Understood. It's awesome. And they know there's a huge deposit right under the Na'vi home tree. But… aren't those floating mountains absolutely loaded with superrock? I mean, why the heck else are they floating? Yeah, there's a bunch of dragons living there, but they're animals. Scare 'em off with some grazing fire, then tow the rocks away one at a time. Problem solved.

What have we learned here today, kids? Don't go to the movies with me!

I Promised You Gerbils

Or was it guinea pigs!? Yes, guinea pigs. Here is my amusing pig anecdote. Recently we agreed to "pig sit" a pair of extremely plump guinea pigs for a friend over the weekend.

These overfed ten-pound furballish monsters came in a plastic pen with a wire top which we were assured would need to be removed at least once a day to clean the cage and lay it with fresh newspaper.

"They poop more than they eat," our friend explained, "so the cage will get ripe in a hurry."

"Nice," I said.

"But you want to be careful where you put them when they're out of their cage," our friend continued. "First, they shed like crazy, so there's going to be hair all over the place. They also like to hide. So you need to make sure they don't get inside your couch or behind the TV cabinet or anything, because I know people who had to cut their couch open to get their guinea pigs back out."

"Poop, hair, total loss of our furniture," I said. "Check."

Now I love a furball as much as the next guy. Or maybe not. Because I have to wonder. Call me a heartless goon, but these animals don't do much of anything except eat, poop, shed hair, and wetly nuzzle your finger if you're lucky. Where exactly is the attraction???

In Other News! Unrelated News!! Without Rodents!!!

[image error]My friend, rival, and Jedi master Steven Savile has gotten ahead of me on the e-curve and is now e-surfing his way across the e-world of e-books. I always get a kick out of Savile's brain-bludgeoning adventures. Now those of you with Kindles and other devices can, too. The E-ssential Savile can be had right here.

Look for me to be chasing Steve's example myself very soon.

From Russia, With Love

Okay, I'm shocked to see it's been a month since I last posted here — and just when I have a funny anecdote about guinea pigs to share. Yes. Guinea pigs and deep insights into the minds and lives of furry rodents. But there's no time! No time, I tell you. I hope to resurface soon.

Meanwhile, good news in Camp Carlson:

CARLSON SELLS FOUR-BOOK DEAL IN RUSSIA



Russian language rights to Jeff Carlson's international bestselling Plague Year trilogy and his next novel, science thriller Interrupt, sold in Moscow this week after a bidding war sparked by Cameron McClure of the Donald Maass Literary Agency. With competing offers from AST and Centrepolygraph, AST came away with the four books in a "solid" deal.

Exciting stuff.

"Damned When You Do"

Man, I think I'm getting LATER with everything.  Life has been nuts, but productive. I can't complain. In the meantime, I have an interesting new short story out in the just released anthology Welcome To The Greenhouse from O/R Books. The line-up is slam-bang, and it's a good-looking book:

Benkoelen • Brian W. Aldiss

Damned When You • Jeff Carlson

The Middle of Somewhere • Judith Moffett

Not a Problem • Matthew Hughes

Eagle • Gregory Benford

Come Again Some Other Day • Michael Alexander

The Master of the Aviary • Bruce Sterling

Turtle Love • Joseph Green

The California Queen Comes A-Calling • Pat MacEwen

That Creeping Sensation • Alan Dean Foster

The Men of Summer • David Prill

The Bridge • George Guthridge

FarmEarth • Paul Di Filippo

Sundown • Chris Lawson

Fish Cakes • Ray Vukcevich

True North • M.J. Locke

You can order the book here in paper or e-book editions.

They've also got a spooky trailer on YouTube right here:

This Still Makes Me Laugh

It's been a quiet week keeping my nose to the grindstone as we settle into the New Year. How 'bout you?

Happy New Year… Let Me Crush Your Head!

Lots of fun news as usual in the Carlson household.  First, although it's December, the February issue of Asimov's is in stores.  Those crazy magazine people.   

In this issue, Aliette and I ride again!  My comrade from Writers of the Future has a new Xuya story from her alternate history where China discovered America before any European explorers.  "Shipbirth" is set in that strange world, but hundreds of years in the future.  Excellent.

My own story is a bit of a departure for me in that it's also full-on science fiction — not present-day — a far future adventure with clones and battle suits called "Planet of the Sealies."  As always, it's a pleasure to be in stores in a top publication, although as fitting for a sci fi magazine, you can also download Asimov's as an ebook of your choice here or here or here.

Meanwhile, for everyone with a taste for the NFL Playoffs or the college bowl games, we have a new highlight film of our nephew Trent Mahler wreaking havoc as a defensive end.  If you're a quarterback and ball carriers, this is not somebody you want to meet in a dark alley.  Still in his junior year of high school, Trent was named Defensive Player of the Year in the NCS Division and to the 1st Team All-League.

Starting for the Concord Minutemen here in northern California, Trent's been an absolute beast on the field.  The 3.5 GPA off the gridiron is pretty impressive, too.  His game stats flash in the video, but let's rack up a few of his best from the Minutemens' 14-game season:

Sacks: 9             Tackles:  140             Tackles for a loss:  35             Interceptions:  1           Forced Fumbles:  5          Won the NCS Div II Championship (which was played in the Oakland Coliseum, home of the NFL Raiders)

Trent also started as a sophomore.

As you'd expect from two years of superior performances, he wants to play college ball and in the NFL.   Help him out and leave some votes and comments directly on his YouTube page.

All-new "Deleted Scene" from the Secret Big New Thriller

As promised, I'm back with an all-new "deleted scene" from the SBNT. These were pages that appeared early in the book as I was introducing our bright heroine, her expertise, and some of the stressors in her life.  In retrospect, though, getting so far into her head was more for my own benefit than the readers'.

Personally I find this kind of perspective fascinating.  Science!  Industry!  Politics!  But a big yaaaaaawn is what it gets from lots of folks.  I mean, it ain't Justin Bieber's spanky new video, right?  Who cares!  Worse, it's TWO PAGES LONG!!!  "Boooooo-ring!"  Aha ha ha ha.  A thriller must thrill, so onto the cutting table it went.  Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy this sneak peek a rough draft that no longer exists:

It had been a time of wild ups and downs in the field.  Emily had been hired not long after after the completion of the Human Genome Project, which had been the largest undertaking in the history of genetics and saw an influx of capital both from the private sector and from several governments around the world.  A complete set of human DNA was comprised of three billion base pairs, each of which repeated the same four basic building blocks thousands of times in unique patterns.  To decode the full genome, it was necessary to work through every possible permutation of those patterns.  That meant a single gene consisted of 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 bits of information even if more than fifty percent of it was repeats and inactive codons, so-called "junk DNA."

The Human Genome Project had taken more man-hours and computing power than any single lab or company could provide, but once the project was done, where were all of those highly trained workers supposed to go?

In the United States, many of them had been absorbed by the DOE, the Department of Energy, where they found themselves working on exotic bioenergy projects.  Other labs became dependent on private investors or collapsed altogether.

[Company name redacted] lost in the rush to become a federally-funded institution.  Years later, they were controlled by a board of venture capitalists who owned a sixty percent stake in the company.  These men wanted short-term returns.  They'd put a freeze on salaries and new hires — and now [company name redacted] was insolvent.  The easy money of the tech boom had dried up before Emily earned her Ph.D.  She'd been lucky to get a job at all, much less a slot near her parents and her sister with what had been one of the premier companies on the West Coast.

By the same token, they were lucky to have next-generation biologists like her.  The Human Genome Project was ancient history as far as Emily was concerned.  The future was geeks like her.  Only her ability to combine thousands of data sets gave [company name redacted] a chance to make a splash before the company was shut down, broken up, and auctioned off to meet their debts.

It was proteomics, the study of the chemistry and behavior of a body's proteins, that truly spoke to life function.  Old guys like Ray didn't understand what she was doing.  He'd actually studied under one of the first pioneers in genetics.  Way back in the seventies, this dinosaur had spent four years decoding a grand spanking total of ten genes with nothing more than gel electrophoresis and a few jugs of enzymes.

Computational biologists like Emily churned through millions of bits of genetic code every hour every day.  The origins of life itself were being laid bare and most researchers sent their results to silos like NCBI, the National Center for Biotechnology Information, a data universe where Emily was free to gather what she needed.

There was nothing top secret in genetics.  Anyone with the  education and the technology could run their own experiments using samples from people right on the street.  Proprietary information came from the interpretation of gene codes, not the  code itself, which was where most scientists got lost.

Emily likened gene codes to music.  Until you could read it and hear the sound yourself, you had no idea if you'd isolated  Beethoven or Green Day.

# # #

Falling Off The Map

I am actually still alive.  Thanksgiving did us in.  We have too many family in the area, so Turkey Day stretched over two and a half days with multiple events, endless prep,  cleaning, and moaning on the couch with too many croissants in my belly… and my experience is that if I lose three days in one week, it takes me two weeks to recover. 

Like I always say, would you rather have me writing or have me blogging?  Writing, I hope.  That's what I've been doing.

Meanwhile, my return to Horror Addicts at the end of November included a short interview and their smoothly disturbing podcast of my  short story "Pattern Masters," which you can find in Episode 51 on HA's fun and freaky web site.

In other awesome news, E-Ninja and super fan John Koziol has stepped up to help maintain my web site, which is wildly appreciated.  Behind the curtains, months ago, John was also a great resource in answering some odd questions for the new book involving things like data packets and ECC circuitry.  Let's all give this guy a hand, please.  I'll be sure to mention his updates to my web site here on Ketchup so everyone can ooh and aah over his mastery when his changes go live.

Continuing on with catching up, I've made my debut in the Netherlands on the cover of SF Terra, whose latest issue includes their translation of "Long Eyes."  Contributor copies showed up in the mail on the second day of Thanksgiving.  Excellent timing!  My in-laws were most impressed, and, hey, if you can't impress the in-laws, why bother to have 'em over.  

Also, O/R Books has added Gordon Van Gelder's latest anthology to their catalogue. Welcome To The Greenhouse: Science Fiction About Climate Change is a sharp-looking book and e-book that includes new stories by the likes of Brian Aldiss, Ray Vukcevic, Bruce Sterling, Greg Benford, Paul Di Filippo, Alan Dean Foster, and some guy named Jeff Carlson.

You can find Greenhouse here but not in stores or on Amazon even after it ships in February.  They're taking pre-orders now.

Maybe best known for their Sarah Palin shred Going Rouge (not Rogue) or the brand new At The Tea Party, O/R Books does things a little differently and sells directly to readers with, to date, gargantuan success.  I'm excited to be included in their ongoing experiment with twenty-first century media.  That's me.  Cutting edge.  I'm a loner, Dottie.  A rebel.

Uh, advance word on my story is that it's "mind-stretching, literary, and wistful."   Shazam!!!

More soon.  Next week I promise I'll post another deleted scene from the Big New Secret Thriller as an advance peek.  Somebody remind me.   

A Call To Arms & RECOMMENDED READING, OLD SCHOOL

First, an open call to friends and fans:   I'm in need of a web mage.  You don't need to be such a Matrix-Hacking E-Ninja that you can rearrange the very fabric of my web site.  Someday I envision a big shiny overhaul.  For now, the basic site is fine, but I have a regular if small flood of updates and additions to sections such as Short Fiction, the Photo Gallery and Art Gallery.

My current Web-God Master is great, but he's expensive and he's busy, and I can hear him roll his eyes every time I ask him to add a new slug like "Translated into Polish" or to post the cover art for an Estonian anthology.

Anybody game?

These updates are never an emergency, just something to get to when you have the time, and I pay in free autographed copies of everything I publish while you're at the helm.  Ping me at jeff@jverse.com if interested.

Back to the real fun:  RECOMMENDED READING, OLD SCHOOL

It's heresy among fen, but I've never thought the Callahan stories and novels were among Spider Robinson's best work.  Yes, they're engaging and cute and loaded with fun twists and ideas, but let's face it  — they're cute.

It's really, really hard to resonate deeply with me with cute.  That's just me.  Look at what I write.   Heck, I tend to hum ominous soundtracks while writing my scenes.

The Imperial March>

I've read all of the Callahan books, but I only read them once.  Meanwhile there are Robinson novels like Night of Power and Mindkiller that I've read fifteen times.  Why?

This seems to be a fairly common trait among the writers I know.  When I'm deep into my own projects, reading a brand new novel by someone else has a way of derailing my subconscious, especially if it's a novel I like.  I can't read Robert Crais without marveling at his technique and style and secretly wishing I was half as cool.  It slows my own progress, which is slow enough.  But I like to read.  That's why I got into this crazy business.  I was always a serious bookworm, and I've learned that I sleep better if I spend at least 15 minutes reading before lights out.

TV doesn't do it, movies don't do it, chit-chat with my lovely wife doesn't do it.  I need words in rows on a page to get my brain into a soothed state. 

What I tend to do re-read books.  Fortunately I have a massive library, so years often pass between revisiting even my greatest favorites — and as I learn and grow as a writer, I constantly find new-to-me narrative or plot tricks that make me marvel as these old masters.

Recently I've been on a Robinson kick.

For my money, Night of Power is his greatest work.  This book is serious but leavened with his trademark humor, complex but easily followed, well-considered but fast-paced, and the plot is only built upon one major coincidence, which I can forgive because the scenario is so awesomely fresh even twenty-five years after Night was first published.

Mindkiller is a close second.  Too many of its passages are tongue-in-cheek for what's ultimately a dark thriller, but it's original, challenging, and compact.   The same must be said for post-apocalyptic Telempath. Go check 'em out.