Brenda Cooper's Blog, page 21

Reading Recommendation: Tamora Pierce's Beka Cooper Series

I just finished the last of these books, Mastiff: The Legend of Beka Cooper #3, this morning.

This is a YA series with great voice, a brave and tough heroine, a few fabulous friends, and all set in the very well-developed world of Tortall where other Pierce books have been.  Even as an adult reader, I was fully enthralled with these books which are really better described as in the 9-90 age range.

2012 Predictions

Every year I play a predictions game.  It's not really good futuring since the world is way too strange for prediction except by true experts in a field, and I'm a generalist.  But I still like the game.  So here goes for 2012:

Publishing and Creativity:

I left this section in so I could re-predict the following:

There will be more attempts to make good franchises with rich multimedia (like Greg Bear and Neal Stephenson's Mongolaid, like Al Gore's Our Choice iPad App).  I'm expecting more of this to come out in 2012 than 2011.  One major success could drive this market – Twilight or Harry Potter like sales of something interactive and multimedia but that is not a movie or a mash up of marketing with a book.

In the book biz, the end of 2012 will see:

Most publishers doing better than the end of 2011, with some winners in the big companies and a few rising stars that keep rising in the mid-pack (Nightshade, for example, or Prime).  Which ones succeed at this size depends on individuals rather than corporate culture.
Barnes and Noble will still exist.
Authors will gain a bit more leverage on things like e-royalties because self-publishing will remain viable, and smaller publishers with less overhead will be able to compete better against the big boys.

Technology

I'm not making tech predictions this year.  Better minds than me do that well.  My bet for the most accurate?  Mark Anderson of SNS.  I've watched him for a few years now and attended some of his fabulous conferences (wish I could go every year).  Here are his predictions.

America:

I expect a dismal political year.  So far, as an election year, it's already boring and bad.
The economy is a heck of a wild card, and its global underpants are showing as the Eurozone and China affect us. My prediction, with a whopping barely over 50% feeling of a half-full glass?  Our economy will keep struggling up.  Outliers?  Continued Eurozone problems are at worst a drag, but if China sees big change downward, we could teeter all over again.  This is a time when every single strong economy helps the whole:  We should root for everyone.  This is not a zero-sum game.
We'll keep having climate disasters and for the most part, the America public will keep (illogically) believing it's not caused by us.  Those of us who are NOT skeptics remain frustrated as hell and write brilliant essays that are ignored.

Governance

Regardless of the fact that it won't impact America as much as it should, governance will be a topic for thinkers everywhere.   The Arab Spring and Occupy are all about tearing down existing structures.  The conversation of what to do after that will play out at least in actions (e.g. continued struggle like what is happening in Egypt today).  I am sure this is a conversation happening behind the closed doors of the powerful.  Hopefully it will also play out in the blogosphere and elsewhere is a truly meaningful way. Consider this a prediction of the conversation, but not of conclusions.

Whatever happens, I wish everyone a great 2012.

Review of my 2011 Predictions

Every year I play a predictions game.  It's not really good futuring since the world is way too strange for prediction except by true experts in a field, and I'm a generalist.  But I still like the game.  So here's what I said in brief form  and how I think I did in 2011…

Publishing and Creativity:

Prediction: Ebooks will keep up their relentless march to take over print.  They'll be at or near 20% of the market next year.  25% isn't unreasonable and print book sales will fall by 5 to 7% (to some extent ebook sales will spur regular book sales).  Note that I think this means there will more total book sales than there were in 2010.

And?: I can't find 2011 numbers – I think they'll be out in February.  I'm close, but I don't know how close.  Will update in February.  In the meantime, I've gotten into infographics (finding – not making).  Here's one on e-readers. And here's another one.

Prediction: We are likely to lose Borders as a major outlet.

And?: Yes.  Same as above – a give-me for anyone paying attention.

Prediction: I can't put a number on it, but there will be more attempts to make good franchises with rich multimedia (like Greg Bear and Neal Stephenson's Mongolaid).  I doubt there will be a lot of uptake yet, but I'm not firm on this.  One major success could drive this market.  I just kind of expect the major success will happen after 2011.  What I mean is Twilight or Harry Potter like sales of something interactive and multimedia but that is not a movie or a mash up of marketing with a book.  I'd love to be wrong (to have this happen in 2011) since whenever this happens it will be fun to watch.

And?: I didn't see as much activity as I expected here.  Al Gore's ipad app version of the book "Our Choice" did well.  I'm going to re-prediuct this one though, these books are coming.  I think the application development just isn't cheap enough yet.

America:

Prediction: We're due for some wake up on climate change.  Unless nature itself pushes us even harder than it has been, there are slim chances of the wake-up happening now.  Still, it's more likely that we pay attention to climate and energy in 2011 than in 2012, since 2012 will be full of the theater of the election.  But to be honest, I think as long as climate change is gradual and each individual event could be "normal" this is like being a frog in a pot of water set to boil – we just aren't likely to notice in time.  So my prediction is that we keep making progress, but that our gains are way less than we need them to be.  In other words, we make headway, but the problem gets worse.

And?: Dismally, about right.  And that's WITH nature pushing us extra hard.

Prediction: The economy will get better, but unevenly.  I actually expect the Seattle economy to do pretty well, and in fact most of the technology and entertainment fields to do well.  Well means forward progress, not bubbles or even ecstatic growth.  But I suspect unemployment and a tough housing market to be problems all year, with  minor progress on both.  The middle of the country will not fare as well as the coasts, and a traveler might feel like they are going through different worlds as they go from one side of the country to the other.

And: About right.  We are doing pretty well (comparatively) in the Seattle area, and the country is still dragging itself along it's belly, barely moving forward.

Prediction: I don't see anything to make our politics get better. 2011 will be a year of continued divide, of set-up for next year's elections, of little to no progress on much of anything that matters.  Let's hope I'm wrong.  It's still unclear to me what Wilkileaks will do to politics and governance, but it is probably a major a game-changer. To some extent it increases transparency, which I believe is good.  But it is also theft and disrespect, which are not so good.  It's also bad for order, and we need order to solve the problems we have right now.

And?: 2011 politics sucked.  Wikileaks did turn out to have less of an impact that I thought – at least on the surface.

Technology

Prediction: I think it's a give-me prediction that we'll continue to see e-readers and tablets do well, that the three major ecosystems (Android, Apple, and Microsoft) will continue to grow, and that consumers will align around them.

And?: Yep.  At least Android and Apple.  The 'Soft is still struggling, although Kinect has done them well.  They are also doing OK in the business market – O365 is holding its own against also-successful Google Docs.

Prediction: More cloud computing adoption will war with the major broadband providers desire to charge differentiating fees, and net neutrality will be lost unless the major cloud providers (Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle) somehow get on the bandwagon where they should be.   At the moment, it appears that the major carries like Comcast and Verizon are poised for the win.   The telco's are too big for regulatory bodies to fight alone – they're nasty and richand have a LOT of lawyers. This is really, really important.

And?: On cloud? Lot's of us, including me (in my day-job hat as a CIO), remain hesitant to outsource our security and data stewardship responsibilities for what is still a price premium for mid-sized organizations.  Cloud adoption has continued, but I don't know any other government CIOs of about my shop's size that have gone wholeheartedly or big into the cloud – we're nibbling the edges and watching. On Net Neutrality? Not a lot of change.  I think I'd characterize the year as a slow erosion of net neutrality, but nothing real will happen until after the election.

Prediction: Social media is ready for the growth curve to slow.  I predict more growth, but less than in 2010.

And?: Same problem as book sales – the numbers aren't in yet.  But here's an infographic from September that's pretty good.

What did I miss? I think we almost all miss more than we see.  Most importantly, the impact of social media.  The amount of users grew across all platforms; the rate of growth does appear to have slowed down (except for Twitter).  But the impact – ?  An exponential increase that fueled the Arab Spring and Occupy.  A real impact on the world.  One we still don't know the outcome of….

On a personal note, it was a weird year of recovery after losing my little brother to Cancer in 2010.  I wrote less (but still wrote – I finished a YA novel and a few stories, and managed to get my column at Futurismic out every month). I did a lot of promotion for Mayan December which is about one of my favorite places in the world.  It was published by Prime in August.  I worked hard since it was a year of monumental change and slim resources (once again wearing the day job hat).

Reading Recommendation: The Kingdom of Gods, by N.K. Jemisin

Well, just tonight I finished The Kingdom of Gods, the third book in N.K. Jemisin's debut trilogy that started with The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.  I loved it.  Reasons?

Sieh as narrator was a tough choice, and well-executed.  Yes, he is the only logical narrator (and I won't say much about why lest I leave spoilers behind).  To use the voice of a god and actually pull it off is pretty spectacular.
The writing, as always.  Norah is lyrical and pretty in her prose.
The way that it wrapped the series.  The story as  whole is complete.  The mild sense of disjointedness that came from making the first two books be completely different characters in different timelines was redeemed for me, and the whole experience of the trilogy left me feeling quite satisfied.

This is NOT a perfect book.  Nevertheless, I gave it five stars over on Goodreads, largely because the series is so brave and so different and came together so well for me.  I did have to push through the middle of this book – but if you find yourself in the same predicament, just do it.  At least, I feel like it was well worth it.

Do read the whole series.  The first and second books could perhaps be read in any order, but this one relies on knowledge from the first two.

New work in current Nature magazine

I love really short stories – just under 1,000 words.  Nature Magazine has a great little feature at the end called "Futures from Nature."  It's edited by Henry Gee, and they take stories up to 950 words.  I have a fresh one out in this week's version of the magazine, called "Tea with Jillian."

Are eBooks driving better book design?

eBooks may be changing print books in interesting ways.

eBooks give me a predictable experience.  I know how a book will look on my Nook or my iPad and I know that I'll be able to read it comfortably there.  Think of it like Starbucks, where I know I'll get a decent cup of coffee.  Yes, a Starbucks latte may be a little different store to store or barrista to barrista, and ebooks can be designed better or worse within some pretty restrictive parameters, but the basic experience will be similar from Starbucks to Starbucks and ebook to ebook (although I have even seen two ebooks where the translation from print was criminally bad).

When I read physical books, the experience varies.  A well-designed book remains more fun for me than an ebook.  I love beautiful covers and high quality paper and well-done white space.  These things make a book a pleasure, and even in some cases, a work of physical art.

Bad book design can cause pain: some come with refelctive paper or fonts so cramped up on the page that you suspect the publisher was trying to hit a certain page-count at any cost.  And I no longer even bother to try and read mass market paperbacks.  The font is often so small and the so bad that I can't actually read it for long.

Poorly designed physical books cause me to download the ebook.

I pretty much buy hardbacks, trade papers, and ebooks.  The deciding factor is often how pretty (yes, beauty matters) and how readable the physical book is (or isn't).  I do the same for coffee – I have favorite independent coffeehouses and mall chains that I'll choose over Starbucks every time they're convenient, but often Starbucks is just fine.

Other readers I talk to say the same thing:  boring book design or boring covers takes them to the eBook.  This isn't bad; ebook reading is a great experience.  I think that fact is causing some publishers who want to sell physical books to try a little harder to make them a quality product. What do you think?

Reading Recommendation: SEED, by Rob Zeigler

Sometimes we writers get to do fun things like hang out in big groups in houses together and write and laugh and talk.  And write.  And learn. Write some more,  read either other's work.  You get the idea.

On one such escape to a writerly weekend in Flagstaff, Arizona, I met Rob Zeigler, and got a chance to read the first 50 pages of a draft manuscript of his.  It blew me away.  I had no doubt, even after reading the first fifty pages, that the book would be published.  Thus when Nightshade Books birthed it at World Fantasy I snatched up a copy.  Just finished it.

I highly recommend this book.

Here's why:

It's a lovely piece of ecopunk.  There is some great work being done by people like Paolo Bacigalupi in this field, and Rob is a welcome new voice with a fresh vision.  This is not a future I had glimpsed before reading this book.
Rob's writing is really awesome.  Oh – it's a first book.  It's got a few blemishes here and there from that.  But there are so many flashes of brilliance in the confident writing that I didn't care at all.  I loved it.  Rob doesn't pull punches, nor does he avoid feeling. This is relentless and hard-hitting and a bit bleak, yet from time to time it touched my soul.
SEED's characters are diverse in color and gender, and they're interesting.
The book itself is a pleasure to read.  There are some books I will no longer read in physical form.  But SEED is pretty (the cover is awesome), and Nightshade did the interior book design so well that the book felt good to read. The font and white space and all of that are good choices.  The older I get, the less invisible book design has become; a bad design hurts to read and I run to the electronic copy even though I love physical books.

Oh, and just to show the best part of being writers, other than maybe discovering each other's books, here is a picture of a bunch of the writer's from the workshop I mentioned above (Jenn Reese, Rob Ziegler, Greg Van Eekhout, Sarah Castle, and Deb Coates):

One of our futures is falling victim to the economy…..

My newest column up  Futurismic.com talks about the economy, space, and the future we may be creating (or not) out there.

Yes, I'm excited about the Mars rover.  But I want more.

Drop by Futurismic and take a look at Long Term and Long Distance Thinking.  And just as a reminder of what we can't afford to lose,  I decided to post this lovely picture of Saturn, courtesy of one of the many free NASA image galleries:

Reading Recommendation: The Children of the Sky, by Vernor Vinge

OMG.  I loved this book!  I have reader cookies for big ideas, bright ideas, fabulous world-building, and depth of character.  Vernor is capable of all of that, and he showed his stuff pretty brilliantly in The Children of the Sky. This book is solid science fiction, and as good as A Deepness in the Sky, which I read many times.  I've even gone off an bought a copy of A Fire Upon the Deep to re-read, just so I can start the story over and finish it all.

In some ways, The Children of the Sky is much more simply plotted than Vernor's other work in this series.  But it's not a simple book.  The nuances are pretty fabulously done between humans and tines (and you gotta love an alien series that is essentially packs of dogs).  Vernor does a nice job exploring the interior politics of disbelief and hope, and the lengths to which humans will go to have power.

Congratulations to Daryl Gregory for Unpossible and Other Stories

Unpossible launched two weeks ago at World Fantasy, and has already garnered a "Year's Best" nod from Publisher's Weekly.  This is fabulous news for both Daryl and for Fairwood Press, published by Patrick Swenson.  Rose Fox wrote,  "This is a collection to linger over, or to set aside for as long as you can manage (a day, maybe two) and then compulsively return to," in her blog post on the book.

I had the great pleasure of sitting beside Daryl at a group dinner in San Diego, and was very impressed with him as a person.  I have my copy of Unpossible, but have not yet had time to read it.

Given that Jim Van Pelt (one of our very best literary SF short writers) looks up to Daryl for his writing, I am positive I will enjoy the stories.  But even more, I'm happy to see the book get attention.  Fairwood is a true small press, and this is nice notice.   It's worth noting that ALL of the titles on this year's list came from small to slightly-bigger-than-small presses.  Perhaps this is a reward for them for risking on books that might not be immediate bestsellers (something the big whatever-the-number-is-today publishers in new York are not doing as much of).

In the interest of full disclosure, I am an unpaid board member for Fairwood Press, which means I attend one meeting a year and take notes and occasionally sit at the table during convention so Patrick can catch a meal.  But I don't read or review Fairwood books any more than books form any other press. I'm just tickled to see this nod for Daryl and Patrick.