Brenda Cooper's Blog, page 25

Reading Recommendation: The Winds of Khalakovo, by Bradley P. Beaulieu

I found this debut fantasy novel intense and immersive.  The world is right on that fine balance of being familiar enough that I felt grounded and yet full of enough differences in culture and appearance to be fascinating. Brad thrusts the reader directly and deeply into Khalakovo – I'm not sure I actually saw even a tiny bit of info-dump, and even by the end of the book, there remained mysteries which had been shown to me on the page but which I didn't entirely understand.  Not that I felt bothered by that; this is a very satisfying novel. I'm glad that it's the beginning of a trilogy, and that there will be more in this world.

Reading Recommendation: WWW: Wonder by Robert J. Sawyer

Loved this book.  In fact, I loved the whole series, and happily the ending lived up to the other two books, maybe even exceeded expectations.

Excellent YA SF, which there isn't nearly enough of in my opinion.  Also an excellent read for adults.

By the way, I just found a whole website devoted to these books, and I rather like the trailer. Nice marketing.

New Cover Design for Mayan December

Plain old reading: An antidote to the multi-tasking world?

I'm finding it harder to concentrate on any one task for a long period of time these days.  I'm pretty convinced that's because so much of my time is spent multi-tasking.  Between Twitter and Facebook and the hundred-plus emails I get at work and the thirty or so I get at home every day, I feel like a wave of distractions is always falling on the shore of my focus.  I do something for ten minutes, and then I get bored and want to do something else.   Obviously, I can't afford this.  I'm a writer and a technology exec.  Both jobs require periodic actual focus for long periods of time on a single topic.  In other words, I need to think.

There's plenty of research that backs up this observation of my own behavior.   There is a 2009 article in the Stanford University News that starts out "Attention, multi-taskers (if you can pay attention, that is): Your brain may be in trouble."   From about a year later, there's  a great blog post in the Harvard Business Review by Peter Bregman on "How (and Why) to Stop Multitasking." that claims multi-taskers can be up to 40% less efficient.  And just in case you feel that anything from 20019 and 2010 is too old to be true, another search including the word 211 showed a lot of productivity blogs saying the same thing:  To increase efficiency at work, don't multi-task.

For me, the more I try to multi-task, the less I seem to be able to just sit.  I noticed the changes in myself when I noticed the books I'm picking up are fast page-turners in the urban fantasy world rather than the sweeping and more difficult science fiction and fantasy books I used to love.  I'm actually finding it hard to sit and really spend time falling into any written world that lets me have any time out to wander away. So that's what I'm doing to re-train my brain.  Sitting down and reading for a period of time.  I used to read for hours.  A few weeks ago, I realized that with any books that have thoughtful substance  I read for ten minutes and then got up to do something else.  So I'm sitting down with a timer.  Kind of like meditation or exercise, it takes a while to settle in each session.  But I think it's worth doing, and since reading is something I love, it's easier than forcing myself through calculus.

I'll report back if I can stop multi-tasking long enough to think about this problem.

SFFWRTCHT: Where a Twitter Chat turns into a Blog Post

Bryan Thomas Schmidt hosts a great weekly chat at Twitter hashtag #SFFWRTCHT, which I was lucky enough to be invited to join.  I got to talk about current work, and Mayan December, which is coming out soon, and about kids.  Even nicer, he turned the chat into a very nicely illustrated blog post over at Grasping for the Wind.  By the way, if you don't drop by Grasping for the Wind from time to time, you might add it to your list of blogs to follow.

Mayan Reading: The End of Time, The Maya Mystery of 2012, by Anthony Aveni

This nonfiction book is by the author of one of the books I read when I was researching Mayan December – Skywatchers.   Better yet, the author is very much like one of my main characters, Alice.  Like Alice, Anthony Aveni in an archaeoastronomer, or someone who studies the intersection of culture and astronomy.   Also like Alice (and me!) Dr Aveni assumes that the world is not much more likely to end on December 21st, 2012 than on any other day. You will have to read Mayan December to discover what happens to Alice's belief that all is normal, but I will put out one spoiler:  neither book claims an apocalypse in 2012.  Alice herself does encounter some unexplainable things.

The End of Time is well-written and accessible.  It's also a great showcase for the work of an archaeoastronomer:  Dr. Aveni does a nice job looking both backwards at the Maya culture and forwards at ours.

New Futurismic Column: Interactive Storytelling

My latest column is up at Futurismic. This month I went searching for interactive books for my iPad, and found far fewer than I expected (except for kids, but I'm hungry for  adult interactive content).  I also found a little bit of hope that platforms are being developed which will help us out in the future.  If you want to see one of the books I talk about in the column, watch the short TED video below:

If you have a favorite interactive book that I didn't find, let me know in comments?

Reading Recommendation: Matchmaker, by Erin Hartshorn

I listened to this in the podcast version over at Clarkesworld. It's a lovely tale.  I'm enchanted with it becasue it directly addresses alien race relations through the eyes of a race that has been persecuted here.  I can't say much more without spoilers, but it's a brave story, well-told, and also narrated quite nicely by Kate Baker.  Kate's excellent podcasting is what typically drives me to Clarkesworld first for my podcast fiction.  Anyway – enjoy!

Relay for Life

Warning: Yes, this is a rare personal post and yes, I'm fund-raising. Cancer took my little brother Russy last year. It's assaulting two of my friends right now; a sweet man named Pere who worked with Russy for years, and a writer friend, Jay Lake. It's inside my partner's sister and wreaking havoc on that side of the family. It's caused a dear friend of mine and his family to move across the country in one of those awful dilemmas where cancer and career collide head-on.

So yes, I'm fund raising. I set a modest goal, but I'm hoping to blow it away. I have a lot of FaceBook friends an Twitter followers and if half of them donate the price of a latte, I will exceed the goal easily.

Can I walk? Many of you know I've recently had Achilles tendon surgery. But the Relay for Life is around a High School track and you can do what you can, so it's not like I'll be trying to do the 3-Day by starting with swollen feet.  I can walk in my slippers if I need to.

If you're willing to help out, I have a personal page devoted to the fund-raising effort.

Thanks!

Writers who have created science fiction that could save the world

I'm at Norwescon, and one of the panels I was on posed the question, "Can science fiction save the world?"

Much discussion ensued, most of it excellent. Conclusions: Maybe. It has (think of Orwell, Bradbury, etc). It's often the stories and books that are written with no agenda to save the world that have an affect on it. At any rate, later in the panel, we made a list of authors who's books the panel and audience felt contained either new ideas so fresh they spawned change or warnings or social commentary so important and so well-relayed that they were heard by at least many of the people who read the books. Here is the list.

Octavia Butler

Paolo Bacigalupi

Steven King

Cory Doctorow

NK Jemison

Nnedi Okorafor

Neil Gaiman

P.K. Dick

Tamora Pierce

Scott Westerfield

Ian McDonald

China Mieville

Mary Rosenblum

Mary Russell Doria

Now, in most cases the books were not listed – so think of this as a brainstorm list and add if you'd like. In some cases, you might question the choices, but they all made sense in the room in context to the fan or writer who spoke highly of them. And I promised to post the list, so here it is.