Michael Pryor's Blog, page 13

Five Top Tips for Top Tips List Makers

Get your tips in the right order. Having your ‘Beginner’ tips coming in at Number 5 is an amateur mistake/ Ease your reader in with some baby tips then graduate to tougher stuff and finish with some tips for Advanced Tip Types. Alternatively, keep your good stuff until last to build up suspense. It can’t hurt.
Aim for relevance. Advice on cleaning camera lenses isn’t helpful if you’re offering suggestions for harpoon maintenance.
Avoid smugness. I know it’s hard when you’re the one with all the knowledge and you’re dispensing it, god-like, to the mortals gathering at your feet waiting to become better human beings thanks to you, but do try, all right?
Specificity is good. ‘Five Tips for …’ is good. ‘Five Top Tips for …’ is even better. ‘Lots of Tips …’ or ‘A Few Tips …’ lacks the necessary punchiness that tip browsers have come to expect. Nail your colours to the mast! Five! Eight! Fifteen! Numbers are good! Numbers count!
Have the courage of your convictions. Tips should never start with ‘It might be good to …’. Be definite, be bold, be confident. ‘Always glue a coin underneath your front door mat to repel anteaters’. ‘Never forget to sprinkle talcum powder in your letterbox to avoid ‘stale mail’ smell’. Or similar.

 

Sour Ears

All right, creative people the world over – it’s time to give up. We, as a species, have reached the pinnacle of inventiveness, the utmost reaches of imagination, the zenith of ingenuity. We can go no further. Writers, artists, musicians, everyone may as well down tools; our work here is done.

I present to you the confectionery known as Sour Ears.

Gaze upon this acme of creativity and weep, creative people, knowing full well that you will never fashion anything as sublime and perfect as this.

What dizzying heights of inspiration produced such a thing? What avant garde genius dared fashion it? What outré cabal of sugar-working dreamers said, ‘Yes! Yes it is we who presume to defy convention, social mores and international dental associations!’

Imagine the cloistered meeting where the notion was first broached. Tentative it would be at first, the proposer barely able to articulate such a potent concept. Argument would ensue in tones of shock and outrage. This could possibly lead to blows and promises of revenge upon families and close associates but, slowly, a tincture of excitement would infect the meeting. Gradually, the naysayers would be won over and become the most fervent advocates of this ground-breaking, paradigm-overturning, universe-redefining advance in softy jelly chews. Later, thousands will claim to have been there and they will speak in hushed tones: ‘This day was the day everything changed.’

And those listening will nod, murmuring small noises of agreement, glad to share the moment but awed by the glory.

They would work in secret, of course, toiling for years to perfect their vision. Nothing less than utter flawlessness would do, so thousands of attempts would be discarded. Good, they would be – but they would not be good enough. They would struggle, they would labour, they would dash tears of blood from their cheeks as they strove to make the ineffable yield and become real.

And lo, this they did achieve.

Sour Ears. They are sour and they are ears. That is all ye know and all ye need know.

Supanova – The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of

Many more pix below the break!

I’m just coming out of a very busy – but delightful – fortnight where I was a guest at Supanova Gold Coast and Melbourne. It’s good to see this popular culture extravaganzas having a healthy reading and writing stream (thanks to Ineke Prochazka) with so many fans flocking to chat with authors and have books signed. For me, it’s a chance to catch up with people I’ve known a long time, like Isobelle Carmody or David Cornish, but also to meet people I’ve known about for ages, like Jim Butcher. We do panels together, we chat between sessions, we share seats on the bus – it’s a very convivial time in a world of books, reading and writing, which is one of the many reasons I have the best job in the world. At least, for me it is.

Even though Supanova (and the other similar festivals/conventions/hootenannys) have their celebrities, guests and megastars, the days really belong to the fans who come along in stonkingly great numbers. Tens of thousands of them roll up in their finery and have a couple of days of sensory overload.

While there, I get to see many, many, many of these fans as they stroll past the author area. I’m always impressed by the effort that many put into their costumes. Many hours of dedication is needed to achieve the perfection that they attain, and their reward is the approbation of their peers.

Ulimately, these festivals are a celebration of enthusiasm. In a world where showing too much passion is considered uncool, Supanova is a haven where is fine to squeal with excitement if you happen to see someone/something/a costume that you’re really keen about. There’s a marvellous air of camaraderie in these vast arenas. Everyone has come along with the express purpose of having good, harmless fun. The people who walk through the doors immediately understand that they are among thousands of like minds, which can be an uplifting experience.

Mainstream media – never a bastion of thoughtful consideration – usually covers these events with the condescending ‘geeks at play’ sort of angle, subtly denigrating the knowing spirit of playfulness that is very much part of these gatherings. Without trumpeting, these days go about celebrating diversity, tolerance and acceptance in practical and generous ways. Everyone is welcome to highlight their enthusiasms – and they’re bound to find someone else who will share it.

I’ve put together a few photos that might give some idea of the joy and fun of Supanova.

The Rise of the Super-reader

Reading has become a more stratified activity than ever.

Imagine a Healthy Food pyramid, but instead populated by readers.

At the bottom, sadly, are people who don’t read at all. I’ll leave analysis of whether this section of the community is growing or not to people with massive research grants.

In the middle is a big grey area comprising people who read occasionally, people who dip in and out of reading, and people who go for long periods without reading much but who don’t mind a read every now and then.

At the top are my people – the ones who love a good story, the ones with a reading pile, the self-confessed readers.

But it’s my belief that a new sort of reader is emerging, the ones at the pointiest part of the pointy end of our Reading Pyramid. Perhaps they’ve always been around, but now they’re growing in numbers and becoming a force to be reckoned with.

I call these people the Super-readers.

A Super-reader is distinguished from an ordinary reader by a number of things:

Their reading pile is potentially life-threatening if it collapses on them.
They know what a TBR list is, and they fret about it.
They’re like chain smokers – when they finish a book they must have a new one to go on with.
They read their favourite books more than once. Many, many times more than once.
Consequently, they might have more than one copy of a favourite book as their first has worn out – and YOU CAN’T THROW OUT A BOOK.
On a train/bus/tram, they’ve become good at reading covers upside down because they’re fascinated by what other people are reading. You never know, someone might be reading what they’re reading and, thus, A CONNECTION IS FORMED!
A persistent nightmare for a Super-reader is being caught without a book to read. Therefore, they often travel with two (or more) books.

Some rarer characteristics of Super-readers:

They dress up as characters from their favourite books.
They write to their favourite authors, praising or questioning about minutiae.
They write fan fiction.

Regardless of all this, the single defining characteristic of Super-readers is their love of books. This often means they love to talk about books. This, of course, has been facilitated by technology. Super-readers congregate, thanks to the internet. They talk about characters, about back stories, about potential sequels, about rumours of film versions and how they’re bound to spoil the book.

Super-readers are extraordinarily affirming for a writer (‘They like my work!’) but they are also extremely demanding – in a good way. They read closely, carefully, and won’t be happy with anything less than a writer’s best.

Super-readers keeps a writer on her or his toes, and that’s a good thing.

 

Buy Books and Save the Planet!

 

I took a break from my latest Work In Progress and started thinking about how I could save the planet. As you do.

I swivelled away from the computer, hands behind my head, tossing up between instituting a utopian regime and formulating a plan to maximise innate human potential without our developing those really huge craniums when my gaze landed on the bookshelf in my study. That’s when I realised that, in many ways, I’m already doing my part in saving the world.

You see, with the accepted science pointing out that we have an unfortunate rise in Carbon Dioxide levels and that these increased levels are responsible for an accelerating Greenhouse Effect which is bumping up global temperatures with some decidedly nasty outcomes waiting for us, it behoves us all to do something about reducing the amount of Carbon Dioxide floating around and doing its best to make us all miserable.

That’s why we have all this talk about Carbon trading and Carbon Offsets and Carbon Sequestration – which is where I see my greatest contribution coming to the fore.

Carbon sequestration is generally thought of as pumping vast volumes of Carbon Dioxide into underground reservoirs, but it can mean locking up carbon in many ways – just so long as it doesn’t break down and become CO2 in the atmosphere.

My answer? Gazing at my bookshelf, there it is. Books. Books are made of paper. Paper is made of trees. Trees are made of carbon (mostly). If we burn trees, that’s bad because it releases carbon. If the trees rot, it releases carbon (bad). But making the paper into books which sit on shelves all neat and protected, well, that’s locking up all that carbon for hundreds of years. It sits there, unspoiled, a handy carbon sink for posterity. Every book is helping, every shelf. Every library is a vast world-saving lock-up, doing its best to keep up from the devastating effects of world-wide Climate Change.

Think about it. Buy books and save the planet. It’s your duty to do so.

YA/Teen Robot Reading List

In the lead-up to the publication of Machine Wars in April, I thought a little pre-reading might be in order. Helped by the intelli-swarm via Facebook and Twitter, here’s a range of books that feature our mechanical friend, the robot.

For Younger/Middle Readers

Norby, the Mixed-Up Robot – Isaac Asimov and Janet Asimov. Fun Asimov robot stories.

Ernest Pickle’s Remarkable Robot – Max Dann. A robot for a best friend?

The Andy Roid series – Felice Arena. Part robot, part boy, these action packed adventures zing along.

The Robot King – Brian Selznick, author of Hugo Cabret

The Monster Republic – Ben Horton. Teen cyborgs in a scary world.

I, Robot – Isaac Asimov. These stories feature Asimov’s famous ‘Three Laws of Robotics’

The Iron Giant – Ted Hughes. Masterly.

 

For older readers (some graphic contents, advanced concepts and themes)

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams. Hilarious fun with the memorable secondary character, Marvin the Paranoid Android.

Infernal Devices trilogy – Cassandra Clare.

Frozen/Shattered/Torn – Robin Wasserman.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Phillip K Dick. The classic SF novel that spawned Blade Runner.

Robocalypse – Daniel H Wilson. The end of the world, robot style?

 

Machine Wars Back Cover Reveal

And we now have a back cover for Machine Wars, due April. In the spirit of all good back cover blurbs, read and be tantalised.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Machine Wars Book Trailer

And here it is, a teaser for Machine Wars – my 34th book, due April from Random House Australia.

 

 

The metal menace emerges.

Top Language Secret Revealed!

Actually, I didn’t discover it because it’s been there all the time and I’ve just learned about it. And I’m sure that no linguistics professors want to keep this rule a secret; I just wanted to have one of those clickbait teasers suggesting a great conspiracy to keep language matters away from us. Because that would be the sort of weird world that would make my day.

This is a fascinating language quirk and if anything is worth a bit of blogging, this is.

This rule is a rule we all know, whether we know it or not. It’s something we all understand at a deep and instinctive level rather than an intellectual one. We know it because we do it all the time – and if the rule is broken we shudder with nameless fear.

It’s called the I A O Rule. Still not ringing any bells? It works like this. Whenever you repeat a word in a phrase, but change the vowel, the order is always I before A before O. Pitter patter. Tip top. Ding dong. Shilly shally. Hip hop. To see how deeply ingrained this understanding is in us, try it the other way around and try to avoid grimacing. Tat for tit. Zag-zig. Raff-riff. Brac-a-bric.

See, you knew this all along. You understood that language worked like this, even though you didn’t know that there was a hard and fast rule at work. Technically, the rule is referring to ablaut reduplication. The ablaut refers to the vowel change, the reduplication the word doubling, but it really doesn’t matter, does it? You knew it anyway.

Language. Where would we be without it? I mean, we’d sort of be in a world of endless mime, so language is probably good thing.

 

The Future According to the BBC

For those who’ve been inspired by 10 Futures and who are constantly thinking about the future, here’s a thought-provoking site from the BBC. Logging on directly from your brain, anyone?