Brenda Cooper's Blog, page 28

Bibliography: The Research Behind Mayan December

I did a lot of research for my novel Mayan December (coming out from Prime Books in August).  This isn't usual for me.  For most of my science fiction stories, I research all the time.  I go on jags where I read science articles from National Geographic to Wired to The Technology Review to various blogs.  I watch for cool links that my futurist friends point out via Twitter or Facebook.  Most months, When I do my Futurismic column, Today's Tomorrow's, I research a bit more. When I have a specific question (like what happens to food plants in low-g situations), I do point research.   But I seldom read a stack of books just to prepare for writing one book.  Heck, if I always did that, I'd only get one book out every few years.

For Mayan December, I read a stack of books, and also many blogs and some research papers.  I've traveled three times in the Yucatan Peninsula (all before writing the book – I wanted another trip after to setting-check, but it didn't happen).  The travel experiences were awe-inspiring.  That's a cliche, but I mean it literally – resonant and deep.  Maybe the linkage of having been there, and having been affected by being there,  made the reserach so fascinating.  Also,  we do not have cut and dried facts about the Maya.  We attempting to peer backward in time and see into a complex culture that held a world-view different enough from ours that it is a mistake to try to map their beautiful artwork and precise architecture onto Anglo cultural beliefs.

Here is a list of at least most of the books I read.  This is just the books – the real physical books in a stack by my computer.

Title
Authors
Notes


Maya Cosmos

The thousand Years of the Shaman's Path
David Freidel

Linda Schele

Joy Parker
This may have been the most useful of all of the books that I read.  My copy is certainly the most tattered


The Code of Kings
Linda Schele

Peter Mathews
Essentially, the language of the Maya, with insights into culture.  I love this book, and the only reason it isn't tattered as much as "Maya Cosmos" is that I didn't get my copy until the first draft of Mayan December was already done.


Water and Ritual

The Rise and Fall of Classic Maya Rulers
Lisa J. Lucero
Like the Code of Kings, I acquired this late.  I intend to use it more in the future.  It is very textbook-like and a tougher read than the Linda Schele books, but has a lot of good information in it


An Illustrated Dictionary of The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya
Mary Miller and Karl Taub
Nicely indexed by subject, easy for short blasts of information.


Popol Vuh

The definitive Edition of the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the Glories of Gods and Kings
Translated by Dennis Tedlock
Lovely, original material from the Mayans themselves.  Like reading the bible if you want to understand Judea-Christians.


Maya Cosmogenesis 2010
John Major Jenkins
Less of a strict study of the Maya, touched with New Age weirdness and hope.  I actually used this more than I thought I would, but then, I've sat at the feet of Mayan shamans and studied Native American shamanic ritual.  So perhaps I was destined to have an affinity for this book.


The Ancient Maya

Sixth Editions
Robert J. Sharer and Loa P. Traxler
Definitely a textbook.  Lots of photography illos, lots of information.


Maya Medicine

Traditional Healing in the Yucatan
Marianna Appel Kunow
Excellent.  Definitely niche knowledge, only sort of useful for the book, but still nicely done.


Incidents of Travel in the Yucatan, Volumes One and Two
John L. Stephens
This was first published in 1843.  It was written before we knew much (maybe we still don't know much, really) and it may have been the most interesting reading


Yucatan

Before and After the Conquest
Friar Diego de Landa

Translated with Notes by William Gates
Really interesting.  This is a translation of a manuscript written in 1566.  Yep, that's right. 1566.  Before the United States of America even existed.


Moon Handbooks

Yucatan Pennisula

Including Yucatan, Campeche, Chiapas, Tabasco, and Quintano Roo
Chicki Mallan
Current travel book, helpful in the parts of Mayan December that happen in 2012


Cancun, Cozumel, Yucatan Penninsula, 2005
Fodor's
Current travel book, helpful in the parts of Mayan December that happen in 2012


Skywatchers
Anthony F. Aveni
Excellent book on Mayan Astronomy

An Excellent Presentation on the Future

I came across as excellent presentation about the future called Future Agenda.  I think it showed up via one of the people I follow in Twitter.  It's gold for an SF writer…very visual, very easy to navigate, very clean, and it fits (in general) with my understanding of likely futures based on my futurist research.  I kind of think the whole world aught to look at it, frankly.  Places to stop and visit for sure:  There is a 10 questions area with ten questions each for governments, organizations, and individuals.  They are good questions.  There is a lovely piece on lighting future cities (where 70% of us will live) using sunlight carried over fiber-optic cables. It's not all Pollyana:  There is a article on  resource constraints.  That said, overall it is hopeful but also appears to largely be pragmatic.

This is a great example of the power of multimedia to organize information that's dense and varied.  Also – of a lot of interest to me as a futurist and a writer – in the introduction they refer to the Future Agenda as a book.  I don't know if it can also be acquired as a physical book, but I think this is an example of content too rich for the less dimensional capabilities of a physical book with pages.  The discussion is about the future and the presentation itself is a glimpse toward the future of content.

Reading Recommendation: Paolo Bacigalupi's "Ship Breaker"

Paolo does really good near-future science fiction.  I particularly liked Ship Breaker since it felt a little lighter than Paolo's other books, and was a much faster and easier read.  That, of course, if probably because his primary audience is YA.  Mind you, I've loved his darker and more difficult work like The Windup Girl as much.  This feels like it's set in the same basic world, although on another part of the planet and in a simpler milieu.  The book has just won the Printz award for a "book that exemplifies literary excellence in young adult literature."

I am always quite happy when people put "literary excellence" titles on genre books.  We have a lot of very good writers in the speculative genres and I think they are often overlooked by people who are searching for "literary excellence."  Go Paolo!

What Does the Future Need?

One of my favorite things to do each month is write my column for Futurismic (which has had a lot of great content lately, by the way).  This month, I decided to talk about what the future needs from us.  Another way to say that is "What should we be doing now to create a good future?"  I'd love to have you read that column at Futurismic and comment.  Thanks!

Reading Recommendation: Seanan McGuire's October Daye novels

Now, these are my candy reads. I follow Devon Monk's series about magic in Portland, and Patricia Brigg's Mercy Thompson series, and even though they write fast, I run out of novels before their next ones show up. These are not for my brain – I read plenty of that kind of stuff, too. These are my replacement for TV. Pure entertainment.

So I met Seanan for the first time when we were both signing at Orycon in Portland last November, and a few people recommended "Rosemary and Rue," which is the first book of the series. I ran through all three of them pretty quick. All three are good to great, and the third one is just plain great. I will be following this series.

Yeah – more excellent entertainment!

See what spec fic writers want to read

John deNardo runs a great sf blog called sfsignal. I got to meet him at last year's World Fantasy, and thoroughly enjoyed chatting with him.  He does posts he calls "mind melds" where are number of us get asked to chatter on about one topic or another.  In this case, he asked what books are on top of our "to be read" piles.  The resulting list is so good that I ordered two books immediately.  Bad me. My to-be-read pile is already rather high!

The Yin and Yang of Futuring

There are  a lot of us being guardians at the gate.  Environmentalists warn about species extinction and loss of the wonderful world we're lucky enough to live on.  Scientists and climatologists wring their hands about global warming.  Governments worry about terrorism.

We need the guardians at the gate, we even need to be the guardians.  Each and every one of us.

But we also need happiness, and if the Yang of futuring is the warnings we give, then the yin is the hope we hold and the recognition of the good, of the growth inherent on the changes we are making as a society.  It's the sustainable developments, the species we do save, the many new ways we can talk to each other and share the beauty of our cultures.  That's the yin.

See my longer essay on this topic over at Futurist.com as a guest blog post.

The Ordinary Futurist: 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 goes:

Publishing and Creativity:

Preface to this section.  I'm playing here, and frankly the book publishing   landscape is shifting so fast it's hard to tell what will happen.  I'm making predictions based on a year of avid reading about this stuff, but the book market is crazy enough I am probably  dead wrong.

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

Altogether, this is not a bad market for writers and creatives – but its a huge change in a short time and the fleet of foot with technology will win as long as they also produce good product.

America:

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.

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.

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 porbably 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.

Technology

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.

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.

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

Okay – I'll stop here lest I end up with even more posts required to look at how I did at the end of the year (it took three this year).

Whatever happens, I wish everyone a good 2011.  Much of the outside news doesn't feel great, but that's no reason not to grow and change in good ways as individuals and communities.

The Ordinary Futurist: A 2010 Review of my own predictions about climate change and related topics

On to the one area which is more important than technology or government…the environment.  Here is my analysis of how I did at predictions related to Climate Change and related topics last year:

Prediction: While we'll probably continue to flail politically, green business will rise out of the recession and start to make it less of a political issue. After all, who needs to mandate things people are making money on? Success stories: conservation, green transportation (smaller and electric cars), and – at least in 2010 – less needless consumption.

How did I do? I'll actually rate this as mostly right.  We have flailed politically.  Cancun resulted in nice but non-binding plans.  There are success stories in the electric car market – the Volt and the Leaf are both to market and have waiting lists (although they are a tiny part of the overall car market). We are seeing conservation successes.  Here is a success story about the Kestrel, one on wild turkeys, and another for a snake – the antiguan racer.  I think those of us who care about the environment tend to talk down success because there is so much left to be done, but it's nice to know it's possible.  Although I haven't looked up figures for it, I'm guessing that the year of continued recession (and that's what it was, for most people and industries) meant less consumption.  I'm sure we're not doing any of this as fast as we need to, but maybe we'll get faster as the effects of climate change get clearer.

Prediction: I'm going to re-make last year's prediction. In some areas at least, things will get worse. I don't know if it will be drought, hurricanes, ocean carbon, or ice melt, but the Earth is reacting faster than we expect it to. More extremes.

How did I do? I got this one right.  The affects of climate change have continued to be chaotic and tough.  Doubt me?  Here are a few links:

2010 set world records for weather extremes By Kate Spinner
2010 Extreme Weather: Deadliest Year In A Generation by SETH BORENSTEIN and JULIE REED BELL

Prediction: Smart grid will be the buzzword of the year, and a big business opportunity. Mostly still in large projects and on corporate campuses, rather than on the national public grid.

How did I do? Mostly a miss. Smart grid talk has fallen off of the national news so it didn't become the buzzword of the year.  I suspect that cloud computing will drive the need for more reliable grid, as well as further implementation of green energy (which is happening – take the eastern route from Seattle to Bend – across the 90 and down the 97 – the landscape is very different now).  I did find a good article while I was doing my homework though.  Yes, progress happened.  But not as much as I thought.  I'm beginning to think smart grid will be a background technology that the public only hears a bit of while it's slowly built out.  That would be okay, as long as it gets done.

Prediction: The percent of people who believe climate change is happening will rise again, approaching 70% again (as of October 2009, it was measured at 57%).

How did I do? Missed.  I guess I keep thinking Americans believe in science or even observation of the world around them.  I guess not.  Here's an article on GRIST that tries to explain, but doesn't really do a much better job than I do.  Maybe we need to put our electronic toys away and look around us.  The part that worries me about this topic is that sometimes when I need to learn something, I need to get hit over the head by something big to actually change.  A progression.  Like from a gentle slap to a two-by-four to a metal baseball bat to a bullet.  As a species, we're onto the two by four and getting close to the metal baseball bat on climate change.

So that's a wrap on my prediction games from 2010.  Yes, I'll play for 2011 too.  Maybe tomorrow.  In the meantime, I always like this exercise, and what matters isn't whether I'm right or not, but that we talk about these kinds of topics lest we entertain ourselves into an early grave as a species.  I still believe we're better than that.

The Ordinary Futurist: 2010 of my own predictions on government and society

Okay – so this is the least interesting of the three "How did I do in my predictions for 2010 posts" unless you find failure interesting.  This what I had to say about society and government, where I went out on a limb into international relations and fell off, landing face-first in the mud:

Prediction: The hard-line Iranian government will fall, and some confusion will follow. This will help in Iran, although it won't solve all of the problems.

How did I do? Missed the mark.  There was a recent (failed) attempt to get him impeached, and he may not make it through 2011, but the general scenario I predicted must have been wishful thinking. The people did not overthrow him, not one little bit.

Prediction: China will see more protests about a variety of things (not sure, though, what they will do about it – I don't see an Iran-like situation but more continued flexibility).

How did I do? Missed again.  Yes, there were some protests in the spring, but there has been more news about the government of China protesting our actions (or other government's actions) than about the Chinese people protesting.

Prediction: The US will have tighter working relationships with Canada, and maybe with Mexico. Changes to NAFTA may be talked about seriously and tied loosely to immigration discussions

How did I do? Three strikes.  We still have a good relationship with Canada, but it hasn't particularly strengthened this year, and of course Wikileaks has weakened it as it has weakened diplomacy everywhere. Not much though, as far as I can tell.  As to Mexico?  It's drifting ever closer to a failed-state status, at least across the whole of its border with us.  There appears to plenty of black-market trade in guns and drugs.  This is nothing new, and not at all what I meant.

Prediction: Once health care is passed (or not), attention will be split between changes in energy use and more anti-terrorism measures. These are, of course, tightly linked. People will begin to see the linkage more clearly.

How did I do? I'm not sure what happens after a fourth strike. The real story was the economy and instead of the logical linkage of alternate energy and jobs (there was some linkage and some stimulus money in this direction, but less than there should have been) we ended up with fights over tax breaks and an agreement that's sure to break the bank further.  If we're already in debt, how about we add more by extending tax breaks that were supposed to go away and extending unemployment and not paying the piper now for either choice?  Wish I'd been right, sorry I wasn't, but I wasn't.

Prediction: Iraq will feel like a memory, but Afghanistan – not so much. The usual war-hungry republicans will try to take Obama down through his position on Afghanistan, but what they'll really do is save him from immolation by the democrats for his position of Afghanistan. In other words, politics as usual. Whatever the party in power is doing will be slammed by the party that's out of power, even if it's their usual MO. We will stay ridiculously divided across senseless lines of red and blue light.

How did I do? Almost right.  Iraq is a memory, Afghanistan is a current focus, and the country is – if anything – more divided.

So not so good on these.  There were wildcards, of course, including wikileaks which may leave a different world in its path.  But that didn't directly affect most of my failures.  International relationships are more of an interest than an area of expertise, so I think I'll just leave out this category on 2011 predictions.  I'm capable of learning my strengths and weaknesses.