Ryk E. Spoor's Blog, page 34

On My Shelves: Dragon Age: Inquisition

As my prior reviews of Dragon Age and Dragon Age II made clear, those were impressively good games with excellent characterization, good gameplay, and a deep and engaging plot. A third game had an incredibly high standard to live up to.

Instead, the first and second games now have a problem of living up to the third.

The game starts with a column of warriors – presumably Templars – marching on one side, a column of mages on the other, heading for a massive keep in the distance. Starting the game… causes the tower to explode.

You begin in media res, your character – not even fully defined – stumbling through a terrifying dream – or is it real? – pursued by hideous creatures. As you flee, a light shines out, a figure of pure illuminance reaching out and sending you past them…

… to awaken in a dungeon. There you are confronted, immediately, by two characters familiar to players of the prior games: Cassandra, the soldier who interrogated Varric in the framing story of Dragon Age II, and Leliana, the bard-assassin who plays a significant part in the original Dragon Age and may show up (depending on circumstances) in Dragon Age II. You are accused of some terrible crime you don't even understand, based on a strange brand or sigil on your hand that spits green light, and then dragged out to see…

A bleeding green wound in the sky. And as you will soon discover, only you can close this Rift… and somewhere in you, is the answer to what has happened, and how you can save, or damn, the world of Thedas.

Dragon Age: Inquisition is one of the best video roleplaying games made. It builds upon the world, and the characters, created in both prior games, takes lessons from both in storytelling and drama, and then – astonishingly – takes lessons from the more open-world games like Skyrim or Fallout and applies them as well.

The latter is perhaps the most startling single change. The prior games had extremely limited player mobility and choice. Sidequests were relatively small in number and took place in a highly constrained set of locations which were not very complex.

In Dragon Age: Inquisition, by contrast, the different sections of the world you are sent to are huge, and often have dozens of sidequests, some of which are germane to your main quest, others utterly irrelevant but fun. Your character is somewhat more constrained in design than prior games, but only in order to fit into the basic part of the plot that you are in.

And what a plot it is. Naturally it's a world-threatening one – few epic games aren't going to do that in one way or another – but the nature of that threat, when you find it out, is both jawdropping and, I found, extremely satisfying, because it fits with the world – and at the same time gives a player of all three games and key DLCs the "oh, CRAP" reaction that you really want when facing something that badass. It seems, at first, that you've got a fairly simple (ha!) job to gather reinforcements, negotiate some kind of peace between the factions that have been sundered by recent events, and then eventually seal the great wound in the sky.

But that is actually only the beginning of your quest, and it will be many, many hours before you start to even see the likely end. Your adversary is extremely smart, terrifyingly powerful, and their goals are not as clear as they might seem at first.

Still, you are not alone in your quest. You will gather a lot of people to assist you on your quest, and each of them will have their own particular interests and sidequests to bring you closer to them in one fashion or another.

 

Warning: Many Spoilers Ahead!!!

 

 

 

Once more, the wisecracking, sharpshooting, pulp-fiction-writing dwarf Varric is one of the major stars. Varric's presence not only provides continuity with the prior games but also leads to various key plot threads because of his knowledge and connections.

Cassandra – previously seen only in framing sequences – becomes one of your first companions, and potentially one of your closest. She, too, has secrets that will help you on your quest, but they come with prices that you'll have to assist her in paying.

Others include Iron Bull, a Qunari mercenary who is far more than he seems; Solas, an apostate mage with deep, deep knowledge of the Fade that is crucial for your quest; Vivienne, a noble mage of Orlais, one of the most fashion and manipulation conscious characters in the game; Sera, an elven rogue with a Cockney accent and terrible manners hiding a hopeful, perhaps even innocent, soul; and several more.

There are also several characters from other games seen at various points in the game, not the least of them being the Champion of Kirkwall – and if you made sure to prepare the background of your campaign correctly, based on your playthroughs of the prior games, it will be YOUR Champion of Kirkwall, the main Player Character from Dragon Age II! Another – again, dependent on exactly how you told the game events played out in the original Dragon Age – is none other than Teyrn Loghain himself, now a Gray Warden. There are more than a few other surprises of this nature in the game.

The presence of these two characters does lead up to the one disappointing, or at least frustrating, part of the game for me. There is a point where you are cornered in the Fade and have to make a choice about how to escape – and in essence you're given the choice to leave the Champion behind, or leave Loghain behind.

Given the way you can, and perhaps likely will, play the main character, this leaves out two obvious OTHER choices which really, really should have been options. The first is "both of you go on, *I* will deal with this Fade monster and keep him off your asses!"; given that at that point your character is the only person with the known capability to rip holes into or out of the Fade physically, that makes considerable sense. They go through the available rift, and you just might be able to escape yourself by opening your own doorway, so to speak. Sure, that's going to set you up for a HELLISH battle on your own, but that's the risk you take, right?

The other obvious option is "We leave no one behind. We have the Chosen of Andraste (the current PC), the Champion of Kirkwall, and one of the greatest of the Gray Wardens here, assembled together. We're going to take this monster on, and make it flee from us!" (or, alternatively, you all charge it and dash past through the rift once you've shoved it back for a moment).

That is, however, the only really sour note in the entire game for me – and even it is not that bad, it's just a couple missed opportunities. The rest of the game is well planned, well paced, and provides the player a LOT of opportunity for sidequests large and small.

There is also an overarching subplot with building alliances and how you choose to perform this subplot will affect various resources made available to you throughout the game.

Oh. And make sure, as with modern movies like the Marvel Cinematic Universe entries, to stay through the credits. Because there is an after-credits scene that will absolutely drop your jaw to the ground if you have understood the history and mythology of Thedas as presented through the games.

This game gets a top ranking from me. If you like computer RPGs at all, this is truly a must-play!

 

False Dichotomies of Publishing

I've touched on this subject in some of my prior posts, but after having yet another discussion on this general topic, I thought it might be worthwhile to visit this particular issue in a separate post.

Often, both those published in the traditional fashion and those who are self-published present their approaches as though they were equal choices which need simply be chosen between (and naturally extol the virtues of their chosen approach while pointing out all the deficiencies of the other method).

But this is, put simply, wrong. The two approaches are, first of all, not mutually exclusive, and there's considerable evidence that many of the most successful authors are those who take both routes. But more importantly there are areas of contrast and separation which are implied – by one side or the other – to be simple dichotomies when they are not.

The most important of these is the often-unspoken implication that you can choose either path. Well, no, you can't, not that simply. "In Soviet Union, publishing choose you!" You can choose to submit your manuscript to a traditional publisher, but that does not in any way obligate the publisher to accept and publish your work, and in fact they reject vastly more manuscripts than they will ever accept.

The acceptance of a manuscript also isn't just a matter of "this is a better story", although naturally that's going to be a large part of it. It's also "does this story fit with the kind of stories we publish". Certain types of stories, therefore, will have a much harder time making it past that kind of evaluation, because they don't fit well into any regular publishing category for one reason or another.

Thus, while there are indeed two divisions of publishing, it's not really a simple matter of choice in deciding which one you want. The only people for whom it is such a choice are those who are so successful that they know that anything they write can be sold to a traditional publisher – people like Stephen King, for example. Such people know that they can even write "niche" books and get them published by a big publishing house because their other, more popular books will pay for these occasional low-profit ventures. Most of us, however, are not and will never be in that category.

Another common false dichotomy is "have no control over your manuscript, or have complete freedom with self-publishing". While there have been, and probably still are, some publishers with really, really bad editors that will take apart manuscripts for their own entertainment, for the most part publishers aren't there to dictate how you should write your stuff; after all, if they dictate it all to you, why not just write it themselves? As I have discussed before, the purpose of having editors is to make your work better but still in essence yours.

This points to the falsity on the flip side as well. Sure, you can have complete control of your work, write it and throw it right up on Amazon without anyone saying a word against it. But that's almost certainly doing your work a terrible disservice. There may, possibly, be a few people who are so very good at separating themselves from their own work that they can honestly and dispassionately examine and edit that work. But I have never met someone like that. You need exterior views, and preferably a viewpoint that doesn't have a vested interest in agreeing with you that your work is perfect. You need people to tell you what needs to be improved, so that you can do so. So "having complete freedom" is not an unalloyed good, any more than giving up that control in traditional publishing is of necessity evil.

The third common dichotomy has to do directly with money. "Keep most of the money" versus "be paid a pittance by the publisher" is a common refrain – and one that's pretty much, not to put too fine a point on it, twaddle.

Yes, on pure percentage basis, it does look like the trad publishers give you a raw deal; on paperbacks, royalties are around 7%, sometimes a bit higher for good sellers, and they can go to 10 or 12%, sometimes a bit higher, for hardcovers, and up to 20-25% for eBooks. But that certainly sounds rather puny compared to Amazon's typical 70% cut.

But.

Every expense of publishing in self-publishing rests squarely on the shoulders of the self-publishing author. Paying for the editors. Paying for the proofreaders. Paying for the cover artist and layout people. Paying for printing, if they're making a physical book. Paying for any advertising/marketing.

Sure, you can choose to publish without doing a lot of that – but your book will, in all likelihood, demonstrate why that's a really bad idea. There are a few polymaths who can do pretty much everything themselves, but even there, that's a cost: time, which is the one thing you'll never get paid back.

Even worse: all those expenses, time and money (and don't forget the effort expended in finding the right people to pay all that money to!) are fronted by the self-publisher. If you want to make a good self-published book, you will be spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars before a single book can be sold.

By contrast, a traditional publisher pays you. Up front, in the form of an advance. You don't pay the editors, the proofers, the artists. You may be encouraged to, but are not required to, do publicity, and whether you do or not, the traditional publisher will do some. (Yes, even for newbies. The marketing/advertising power of simply mentioning you in the trade journals and presenting your book to the buyers of the major chains is publicity you could not buy – and if you could it would cost thousands of dollars). The publisher distributes your book. You are never "out of pocket" with a traditional publisher.

**NOTE: If the above paragraph doesn't apply? You're not dealing with a traditional publisher, and you had better run away, fast. Yog's law: Money flows FROM the publisher TO the author, and NEVER the other way around.**

"But but but that percentage! Okay, yeah, the up-front bit's nice, but in the end that comes out of your earnings, which are low percentage, so it's a wash or a loss in the end for the trad guy, right?"

Not… exactly. In fact, not exactly in two different ways.

First, that advance. If you delivered the basic book you promised in your contract, that advance is yours forever. You got paid, and that's that. (part of what they are paying for is "first publication rights", and since you can't ever do "first" again, it makes sense that at least part of that payment must be non-negotiably yours). This applies even if the publisher fails to sell one single copy of your book. Mr. Self Publisher, by contrast, is utterly dependent on selling books to make up for all the effort and/or money they put into publishing the book in the first place.

In the second place, those percentages are not created equal. We'll consider the ebooks here because the issues with physical books are even more skewed, and not in self-publishing's favor. Assume the trad published guy is getting 20%, while the self-pubbed author gets 70%. We'll also assume that they're both selling their books for the same price, although actually trad publishers tend to sell their books for significantly more than self-publishers.

What that means is that for the traditional publishing guy to make as much as the self-pubber, Mr. Trad has to sell three and a half times as many books. That sounds pretty steep.

Except that it's not.

The average self-published book sells a few hundred copies. The average trad published book with any of the big publishers sells a few (or more than a few) thousand books.

Hundred versus thousand. That's a factor of ten. Which, adjusting for the percentage difference, means that overall Mr. Trad will earn about 2.8 times as much in royalties as Mr. Self Pub.

Naturally, there are exceptions. If you're a really good hustler with good marketing skills and a decent book to sell, you might sell thousands, tens of thousands, even a hundred thousand or more self-published books. These are the success stories that self-publishing likes to point to. But the fact is they're statistically no more common than the same superstars in trad publishing.

If you're betting on being one of those superstars – in either trad or self publishing – you're not really doing anything more than playing the lottery. Most of us will never achieve that. Most of us won't even get to the point that we can live on our writing.

So the real "choices" of publishing are more about what will work for me, personally? than they are about one approach or the other being inherently better.

For me, for example, traditional publishing is generally better. I've done a round of self-publishing, and may well do another, but it's a serious grind of effort, a time-consuming and expensive process that I couldn't even contemplate without the help of Kickstarter. I don't have much time or money to expend outside of my family – not with four kids and a full-time job. Traditional publishing hands me money as long as I produce what I promise, and doesn't expect me to front the costs for producing it – costs of either time or money. That's obviously far better for me.

But if I were single, making the same money I am today? Very different proposition. More time available, more money available, and suddenly self-publishing's advantages start to look a lot more appealing.

So look at the challenge of publishing your work, not from the point of view of "which approach is better", but from the point of view of "which approach is best for me".

 

 

 

On My Shelves: One Piece — the Fourth Piece!

 

I continue my review of the immense and intricate shonen anime One Piece, following the sometimes "Idiot Hero" Monkey D. Luffy and his peculiar crew – swordsman Rorona Zoro, navigator Nami, combat cook Sanji, medic Chopper, sharpshooter Usopp, archaeologist Nico Robin, and musician Brook – in their united yet individual quests across the hazardous sea called the Grand Line.

To recap important points about our heroes and the world of One Piece: Some years back, the so-called Pirate King, Gol D. Roger (usually called Gold Roger) was executed by the World Government, but before he died, revealed that his had left all of his treasure, including the legendary "One Piece", at "that place" – a statement almost everyone believes to mean at the last island at the end of the Grand Line. This ushered in an era of treasure seekers and those preying upon them and others, both groups generally called "pirates" regardless of their actual morals (or lack thereof); such independent operators are generally against the World Government's law.

Besides the utterly bizarre nature of the world itself (with varied species of humans and nonhumans interacting in various ways), another key element of the world of One Piece is the existence of superhuman abilities of various types; the most common source of these abilities (though not the ONLY source) is for the wielder to have eaten a "Devil's Fruit"; these fruits grant the eater various powers ranging from the barely useful (the "Human-Human" fruit, which allows the user to turn into a human; this is sorta-useful for an intelligent animal) to the godlike (Enel or Eneru had the power to control, direct, and even become electricity in all its forms).

In exchange for this power, any eater of the Devil's Fruit also becomes what non-Devil Fruit users call derisively "a hammer" or sometimes "anchor"; they are utterly unable to swim, and in fact lose all their powers and virtually all ability to move when immersed in water over their knees. There is also a stone called kairoseki or seastone which has the same effect; basically Kryptonite to these people.

Luffy's crew has several such: Luffy himself, who ate the Gum-Gum or Rubber Fruit, so he has become a "rubberman" – he can stretch and twist his body like rubber, rather like superheroes Mr. Fantastic and Elastic Man or Elastigirl. Chopper, whose normal form is that of a reindeer, ate the Human-Human fruit. Nico Robin has the power to make duplicates of her body parts grow from any surface in view, which turns out to be a much more frightening power than one might think, and "All Bones" Brook ate the resurrection fruit… which guided his spirit back to his body after all the flesh had decayed, producing a living skeleton.

 

When last we left Our Heroes, they had managed to barely escape Thriller Bark – with Zoro nearly sacrificing his life to protect the others by allowing Bartholomew Kuma to "push" all of Luffy's injuries and pain into Zoro; Zoro's willingness to accept nigh-unimaginable and likely lethal injury for the sake of his Captain impressed Kuma enough to cause him to let them go. Of the Crew, only Sanji and Robin understand what Zoro did.

There is a short interlude of filler featuring the return of Foxy and his sidekicks, which I won't bother with; honestly, I skip most of the filler events.

Still, after the darkness of the arc just past, we're ready for something lighter, and this begins with an encounter with a Mermaid named Caimie and her starfish companion Pappagu. As the Straw Hats have saved Caimie and Pappagu from a sea monster, Caimie agrees to lead them the Sabody Archipelago, where their ship can be prepared to dive deep enough to reach "Fishman Island" – which is not an island at all, but a colony of various fishmen living at a depth of ten thousand feet. This is a necessary part of their journey, because Fishman Island stands before the only passage under the Red Line, a narrow but immensely long island-continent that separates the first and second parts of the Grand Line.

But scarcely are they on their way when Caimie gets a message that her dear friend "Hatchan", another Fishman who makes his living running a restaurant, has been captured by the "Flying Fish Riders", a group of slavers who capture and sell Fishmen to the wealthy. The Straw Hats agree to help rescue Hatchan.

But it turns out there is more to this than meets the eye. First, the Straw Hats discover that "Hatchan" is none other than the Octopus-Fishman of the same name who used to be one of Arlong's crew, and who fought Zoro nearly to a standstill during the Arlong arc. Hatchan, however, is truly reformed, just wanting to live a quiet life.

And when the leader of the Riders, a man named Iron-Mask Duval, sees what ship has come, it is clear he has far more personal business with the Straw Hat crew.

Specifically, he has business with Sanji, who he blames for ruining his life… and when we see Duval's mask come off, we understand why. Because poor Duval's face is a virtual mirror, not of Sanji himself, but of the terrible sketch of Sanji that is on Sanji's Wanted poster. A very minor small-time crook in his hometown, Duval suddenly found himself pursued by top-flight bounty hunters and Marines, for no reason other than that he looked like a bad Wanted poster.

Naturally, Duval tries to kill Sanji, but Sanji's equally furious at the living reminder of that hideous poster that has denied him recognition as the pirate he's become. Sanji proceeds to beat Duval with almost contemptuous ease… but at the same time uses a technique we have seen once before, one that allows him to – literally instead of merely figuratively – "rearrange your face".

Thus, when Duval rises from unconsciousness, he finds that his old, comical face is no more; instead he has a classically handsome face, one that looks nothing like either that abominable poster nor like the real Sanji. He will now be no more a target of the government or bounty hunters than he wants. Now with gratitude towards the Straw Hats and Sanji, he promises to aid them if needed and gives them a Snailphone with which to contact him.

With that short adventure done, the Straw Hats move on to Sabody Archipelago and begin to look for a man that Hatchan says can do the ship coating for them. But he warns them of one terribly important thing: that they may encounter nobles of the World Government on the islands, and that they absolutely must not antagonize them in any way – no matter what the nobles do. For they are called the "Celestial Dragons", and are the descendants of the original founders of the World Government, and are in essence above all law.

He also says that both he and Caimie have to disguise themselves, as Fishmen are considered lesser beings by many of the people in the Archipelago and not allowed on the islands – and especially not near any of the Nobles.

Luffy actually proves capable of restraint, something surprising to any viewer of the series. Though absolutely furious when he sees these people abusing others they have enslaved, he manages to keep from attacking them for the sake of his crew and friends.

After a short journey – during which our friends are attacked several times by bounty hunters (woefully inadequately armed for the targets they're after) – the crew arrive at a bar which is the home of Hatchan's friend and his wife, Shakki. Shakki is there but Hatchan's friend, named Rayleigh, isn't. Shakki gives them some ideas of where to look for Rayleigh, and also mentions why there are so many bounty hunters around: besides Luffy and Zoro, there are no less than nine other "supernovas" – new rookies of the Grand Line with bounties on their heads exceeding one hundred million belli.

Searching for Rayleigh takes several of the crew, including Luffy, to an amusement park which naturally appeals to them on other grounds; unfortunately, during their enjoyment of the park, bounty hunters figure out that their companion Caimie is actually a mermaid, despite a careful disguise, and she is kidnapped while the others are distracted and brought to an auction house for slaves; mermaids being highly prized, she is expected to bring a high price. We see glimpses of other people in the slave pens, including one Giant and a man who looks suspiciously like the outline of "Rayleigh" we were given.

Caimie's kidnapping galvanizes the Straw Hats to action, and they quickly call on Duval's group (now renamed the Rosy Life Riders, reflecting Duval's rather changed outlook on life) to help them search the Archipelago quickly.

Despite having been divided into different groups, the Straw Hats are mostly gathered together (minus Luffy, Chopper, and Brook) and arrive at the auction house. Originally they intend to simply smash in, kick ass, and get Caimie back, but upon learning that World Nobles are involved with the Auction House and likely actually present (after all, who but the nobles and those in their favor could even buy slaves, when slavery is generally prohibited?) they decide on another tactic: they'll buy Caimie. They have about three hundred million belli, and to everyone's surprise it's the usually tight-fisted Nami who suggests this course of action.

But when Caimie finally goes up for auction, Saint Charloss – one of the World Nobles – makes a pre-emptive bid of five hundred million, immediately making this strategy useless. Luffy arrives at this point, and begins to head straight down the aisle to retrieve Caimie (in full view of everyone there, including the Straw Hats, World Nobles, other spectators, and even several of the other Supernovas who have come to observe the events).

Hatchan desperately tries to restrain Luffy, and in the process his disguise comes off. Saint Charloss, seeing a "fishman" in the audience, stands and shoots Hatchan down without a second thought. Seeing Hatchan down, possibly bleeding to death, and the screaming Caimie on the stage, Luffy snaps, and in an utterly dramatic moment of silent fury (done completely in sketched-out black and white), punches Charloss so hard he flies across the room.

Straw-Hat Luffy has now assaulted a Celestial Dragon – one of the highest crimes on the planet.

The assembled guards now try to take out the Straw Hats, while they try to figure out how to get Caimie out of her sealed exhibition tank; the slave collars and bracelets are explosive, and if removed incorrectly will kill the wearer. During the battle, Saint Shalria, sister to Charloss, decides that since Caimie was the point of contention, she'll kill the mermaid in retaliation. And just before she can pull the trigger… something happens. A wave of power stuns not just Shalria, but all the guards, all the remaining people in the building except the Straw Hats, their friends, and the Supernovas.

Rayleigh has arrived. He uses this same strange power (which we will later learn is called Haki) to remove the bonds from Caimie so swiftly that by the time they explode, they are too far from anyone to do damage.

The Marines arrive but find they are terribly outmatched, as they find themselves facing Straw Hat Luffy, Eustass Kid, and Trafalgar Law, all three "Supernovas" wielding extremely powerful Devil's Fruit powers. Luffy's group manages to escape, but as Kid and Law flee (because they know that Luffy's actions will cause a Marine Admiral to be dispatched to the islands), they are suddenly intercepted by something or someone that looks suspiciously like Bartholomew Kuma…

Luffy and company arrive back at Shakki's, where they finally discover that this "coating craftsman" Rayleigh is actually none other than Silvers "Dark King" Rayleigh, once first mate to Gold Roger himself. Given the uproar surrounding Luffy's actions, the Straw Hats are advised to disperse and keep a low profile for the next few days, as Rayleigh puts the dive coating on their ship.

But events have gone much farther than the Straw Hats imagine. Soon they find themselves under attack by what appears to be Bartholomew Kuma, but firing laser energy beams instead of using his signature "pushing" powers. We also see the other "Supernovas" encountering these incredibly powerful duplicates, and then facing Admiral Kizaru – a Logia fruit user with the power of light, something that makes him almost invincible. Kizaru can be considered to be on the same level as God Enel, the lightning man; he cannot be killed by ordinary physical force, he can move at energy-speeds, and he controls and directs his energy at will.

Kizaru nearly kills several of the Supernovas – "The Magician" Basil Hawkins, "Mad Monk" Uroge, "Red Flag" Drake, and Scratchmen Apoo – before being alerted to the location of his actual target, the Straw Hats. At the same time, we learn that these duplicates of Kuma are mechanical beings, called "Pacifistas", and were created by the mysterious "Doctor Vegapunk" that has been mentioned several times previously.

The following battle is one of the most heartrending of the series. Luffy finally realizes that the Pacifistas and Kizaru are a force far, far beyond them and -- in a shockingly terrified tone of voice – orders the crew to flee, run from the battle, something he has never done before. The Straw Hats are utterly shocked by this command but attempt to comply…

… but cannot. The Pacifistas are too powerful, and assisted by their commander Sentomaru (who also is a Haki user) and Kizaru are quickly and completely overwhelming the Straw Hats. Zoro, who wasn't even really healed from his injuries on Thriller Bark, collapses. Just before Kizaru can deliver a killing blow, Silvers Rayleigh appears and engages Kizaru, but this is only enough to take Kizaru out of the immediate combat; the Pacifistas remain, and even Chopper unleashing his rampaging monster form isn't enough to stop Sentomaru.

And then Bartholomew Kuma – the real Warlord – appears, and with a single gesture, seems to erase Zoro from existence.

Luffy's scream at this is heart-piercingly terrible, and his horror is repeated again and again, as Kuma erases first the second Pacifista and then, one after another, every single one of the Straw Hat crew. Finally, he stops before a broken Luffy and says "We will not meet again."

Pop!

And Luffy, too, is gone.

Even the narration underscores the shocking events. "Here the Straw Hat crew was utterly defeated."

This is a powerful lead-in arc for what is coming – the Impel Down and Marineford Arcs. In no prior story have the Straw Hats been so completely and casually destroyed. Even their temporary defeat in Water 7 by CP9 wasn't so devastating, and was quickly and decisively avenged. Here, our heroes are not merely defeated by foes that outmatch them in every possible way; they are then dispatched as though blasted from existence, leaving not a trace they were ever present.

The fact that we, as viewers who get to hear dialogue the Straw Hats cannot, learn that what Kuma is doing is sending the Straw Hats far, far away to destinations only Kuma can know does not in any way lessen the horror felt by the Straw Hats and particularly Luffy, whose loyalty to his comrades is one of his most defining traits. The terror and helplessness are built up, with us watching it breaking Luffy in a way nothing else ever has, culminating with Robin – the usually cool and fearless Robin – screaming his name, eyes wide with fear, reaching towards him and vanishing.

There is also a wealth of background detail revealed through this arc – once more, background that will mean little to us until many, many episodes later. A call by someone we can recognize as Donquixote Doflamingo to the slaver warehouse reveals the moving of forces that may change the face of the world; the rest of the Archipelago discovering that Fire Fist Ace has been captured by the World Government; the mentions of Doctor Vegapunk, the demonstration of Haki, and many other details tantalize us… or merely pass by, unimportant details amid the frenetic, comedic, or dramatic action.

This is both a low and high point of the series – low in its emotional resonance, but high in tension and power. This solidifies the hold the characters have gained on us and prepares us both for some release from this horrific tension… and for a forthcoming arc of even greater power.

Because once Straw Hat Luffy realizes his brother is now in the hands of his enemies, there is no power on Earth that will stop him from trying to rescue Ace – even if he has to challenge Marine Headquarters itself.

 

 

 

On My Shelves (well, Phone): Pokémon Go

I was never a big Pokémon fan. I never played any of the games, and I'd seen just enough episodes of the anime (plus the first movie) to be familiar with the basic concept and main characters. So when Pokémon Go was rolled out, at first I didn't have much interest…

… except there were so many people on my list playing it. I figured I might as well give it a try, the way I had MMORPGs like WoW, just so that I'd know what it was.

To my astonishment, I rather like the game. Collecting various strange (virtual) animals, trying to level them up ("evolve"), and competing for control of the gyms is actually pretty fun.

Certainly part of the appeal is that it is an active game… yet one that doesn't demand the player be able to do more than walk. I'm not very athletic, for several reasons. But I can walk, and the game's controls and options help encourage that – and don't require or encourage running or other really strenuous effort.

One of the really positive design aspects I appreciate is that for the most part it is not a competitive game. Oh, there can be out-of-game competition in the sense of collecting more and rarer Pokémon, or in the friendly competitive spirit between the three Teams, but for the most part it's a game that can be played by oneself or with others without it becoming a chase. If a new Pokémon appears in an area, I don't have to worry that someone else is going to catch it; we can all catch the same Pokémon. Similarly, one of the most common items is a "help everyone" item: a lure module that can be placed on any Pokéstop and which increases the Pokémon appearance rate for everyone who comes to that Stop.

This means that I can go out for a walk with my not-terribly competitive wife and my competitive friends and not feel that this is going to end in tension if someone loses out on getting that fancy new creature. Instead we can compare our successes and losses, get together and see what each of us have caught, without it impacting our own gameplay.

Catching the Pokémon themselves is interesting. At its base, it's a trivial exercise – look at the Pokémon, put your finger on the Pokéball symbol, and try to flick the ball at the Pokémon; if you hit the creature, it's captured by the ball.

But once you get past the earliest levels, the play can gain some depth. The contracting circle you see in front of the Pokémon can earn you more XP if you get the ball to hit inside of it, as well as somewhat improve the chance you actually catch the Pokémon; the color of the circle tells you just how hard it's going to be to catch the creature. The Pokémon can break free, or even flee; but there are items such as Razzberries that can encourage them to stay and give you more of a chance to capture them, and more advanced Pokéballs that are better for capturing powerful creatures.

Moreover, as time goes on there's some strategy/resource management involved. You can only carry so many things – from Pokémon to balls to other items – before you run out of room. Acquiring new balls or items from Pokéstops is somewhat random, and depending on how many Stops are easily accessible you may find it's quite possible to run out of capture balls or other items. It is possible to purchase some of these things with real money (which has an actually pretty reasonable conversion rate), but it's more of a game challenge to avoid spending much money.

One thing Niantic has done to limit the impact of money, however, is to prevent you from being able to buy the two most crucial resources of the game: "Stardust", and the "candies" specific to each Pokémon group. If you could buy these, then those willing to spend money would easily dominate the game because they could power up their creatures to maximum and evolve them whenever they wanted. Instead, even the richest player still has to go out and catch (or hatch from eggs) enough of the right type of Pokémon if they want to evolve it to the next level.

I've actually seen Pokémon Go have quite a salutary effect on socializing and exercising. People (including myself) who normally don't like expending the effort are making explicit plans to go for fairly extended walks… just to capture these imaginary creatures. And while doing so, they may run into other players, and most of those players are pretty friendly; the shared, mostly noncompetitive nature of the game encourages people to talk and share information and experiences. It's been particularly good for my son Gabriel – giving him lots of ways to work off energy and exercise while learning how to interact with people.

There are other things I'd like to see. As a purely aesthetic issue, I'd like to have the individual Pokémon get their more advanced voices. At the moment, the only Pokémon that speaks in something other than an electronic squeal is the game's long-running mascot Pikachu; I can't imagine that getting the rest of the voices would take that much space in a modern phone, and it would individualize them more.

Some mechanism to increase the maximum power of a lower-evolution Pokémon might be nice – that would emulate things like Ash's Pikachu who refuses to evolve to Raichu and yet still becomes stronger as time goes on. More evolutions, too – there's a lot of creatures that have zero or only one evolution. That could also be addressed by adding more Pokémon to catch.

The ability to trade Pokémon might be good, too. This would help encourage more personal interaction, which is one of the game's points. More personalization and personal iteraction in-game might be nice, too; my avatar is pretty much identical to a vast number of other "trainers", and it'd be nice to be able to choose not only a unique name but a unique appearance.

Still, for a relatively simple phone-based game, this is a strikingly fun game, and one I'm likely to continue to play for quite some time!

 

On My Shelves: No Man’s Sky, First Impressions

No Man's Sky is a highly ambitious and unique game, whose particular claim to fame is a titanically huge universe – quintillions of planets to explore, generated procedurally in a manner that ensures that every planet will be different and that individual players will be discovering things unique to their own personal interaction with the game.

I have something of an advantage in approaching the game for review: I heard very little other than this about the game, and so I had relatively little preconception about it. My expectations were that it would be big, that it would be mysterious, and that was pretty much it.

So far, No Man's Sky has delivered and then some on these simple expectations. To an extent, I've still been surprised; given that it was known that you would start on your own world and begin exploring from there, I'd assumed some sort of scenario where you were the first, or one of the first, starship travelers from your own planet, and you would have that homeworld as a base from which to explore.

Instead, No Man's Sky starts you out in media res – you effectively awaken on an alien world with a crashed starship you have to figure out how to repair. There are no other humans (or whatever race you are supposed to be; I assume human because, well, that's what I am) to be seen on your starter world, and in fact there's no guarantee that you can survive without protection on your starter world. Mine was pretty damn cold, ranging from about -40C (or F, -40 being identical in both scales) in the daytime down to -90C at night.

However, all is not utterly bleak. You start with an exosuit capable of protecting you, and of including other capabilities such as a scanning visor, and a multitool that will serve as both a mining and repair device and as a weapon. The combination allows you to search out the materials you need to repair your vessel and refuel it and your various energy-hungry devices.

The first thing that struck me about No Man's Sky – after the fact that it has one of the longest, if very pretty, "wait while I prepare to actually let you play the game" screens – was that it was beautiful. So far all of the planets I have visited, from iceworlds to fiery hells and even tropical paradises, have had various sights that made me just pause and admire them. The fact that I am the first person in the world – even including the game designers – to see these worlds certainly adds a little cherry on top.

The second was "boy, your tutorial's a minimalist bastard". Admittedly, in a game of this nature, you do want to avoid too much handholding, but there were a few times I had to stop and do a quick web search to figure out what I was supposed to do.

As exploration and discovery are the primary theme/focus of No Man's Sky, it's gratifying to find that your discoveries earn you in-game money or "units" to purchase things from various traders; at first I thought the only way to earn money was by selling stuff I mined, and given the restrictions on storage (see later) this was something of a pain in the butt.

When No Man's Sky tells you that each planet is Very Very Big, they are not kidding. You have a spaceship that can operate as an aircraft, with a fairly high top atmospheric speed. Despite this, it is not infrequent that I found there were destinations on the planet that were more easily reached by leaving the planet and taking what amounted to a sub-orbital hop across the planet, cutting transit times of half an hour or more at maximum atmospheric speed to minutes.

Terrain on the worlds varies noticeably even on a given planet, let alone between different planets. Similarly the various creatures and plants come in many varieties – though it's clear that to some extent they are being constructed from a relatively small number of components.

The major limitation a player encounters is that there are only so many slots available on one's ship (about 15), exosuit, and multitool. As the slots on the ship and suit are used both for systems/enhancements and for cargo, this means that there's a lot of competition for those slots – especially as a given slot can only have one thing, or one type of thing (i.e., iron, carbon, etc.) in it and you often need multiple different materials and items to make or repair various systems.

Exploration doesn't just allow you to find and harvest/mine materials you need, however. It also gives you the opportunity to discover new plants and animals and claim them as your personal discoveries, and to find alien installations. Some of these are ancient relics which may give you unique information or tips that I presume help you on your way along the main plot. Others are operating installations for various types of creatures that you can slowly learn to communicate and trade with.

No Man's Sky is not a safe world. Not only can you freeze or boil to death if you don't watch out for your exosuit's condition, but also you can discover lifeforms that are very hostile indeed. Fortunately, death is not permanent. You'll recover at your last save point and, if you go visit your new grave, you'll be able to grab back the stuff you lost when killed.

Nonetheless, death is something you want to avoid. It's a pain in the butt, especially if it happens when you haven't saved in a while! I admit to being not very good in the combat area; I'm not sure I've even managed to kill any of the animals that have come after me, and I'm really leery of the first time that I encounter hostile aliens. I suspect "death" will happen swiftly.

I haven't traveled very far down the plot path; the fact is that you can spend many hours just exploring even one planet, let alone several – and solar systems may have several planets each worth exploring.

I would hope, of course, that more interaction with NPCs, if not with other players, becomes feasible eventually; something like that makes the universe feel more "alive".

If I have one current gripe, it's probably to do with the limited slots. When you need sometimes three or four different materials to repair or manufacture some vital device, and you may have to repair or manufacture several, and you will also have to keep everything charged and running, the limited number of slots really becomes a pain. It is such a pain in the butt, in fact, that I have several times passed up on salvaging another ship because it simply isn't worth the effort unless it had something truly astonishing to offer (such as a new and really effective technology, or three or more extra slots over my current ship).

It would help if one could transfer systems, as well as materials, from ship to ship. Thus, if I find a derelict vessel whose FTL drive is damaged, I could transfer my working FTL drive to that vessel in order to get it running and make it worth salvaging.

Still, at the moment these are minor gripes. It's a beautiful, gigantic game with a lot of fun things to see and do, and we'll see if it can keep my attention for another few months!

On My Shelves: James Bond

Bond. James Bond. Agent of MI6, British spy, with the number of 007 – the 00 prefix meaning that he has a literal License to Kill. The secret agent who set the standard against which all others – even those written better, even those more accurately researched – will be compared. Described in the books as handsome but with a cruel edge, something like Hoagy Carmichael (a well-known songwriter and actor of the 1930s-40s), Bond has of course been played in film by multiple actors ranging from the inimitable Sean Connery to Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, and Pierce Brosnan.

It is, of course, the films that are best-known today, and they have long since acquired their own style and set of memes, leaving the specifics of their originating novels behind. This is not terribly surprising, of course, as there were only twelve Bond novels (and two short story collections) written by Ian Fleming, and there are now considerably more films, spanning seven decades. The original novels, drawing on Fleming's own intelligence experience for background, were written over a 14 year period starting in 1953, and so even the most recent is fifty years old.

(I always am amused to note, as a side point, that Ian Fleming is famous for one other novel, in a completely different genre, which was also turned into a fairly well-known movie: the children's book Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang, about a magical motorcar.)

Recently I have been re-reading the novels and felt they were worth reviewing. One of the first things to strike a modern reader is that these are short novels, somewhere around sixty to seventy thousand words each. To an extent this probably explains one of the reasons they were attractive to movie producers; they're action-adventures that are short enough to require relatively little trimming, as opposed to modern novels which are typically between a hundred and a hundred twenty thousand words. They are very quick reads, written in a straightforward, clean prose style that makes them easy to read.

The character of Bond is very different from his usual movie versions, although a few – such as Dalton and Craig's versions – have come somewhat closer. Bond is a man of tension, of loyalty that binds him to the Service and for which he sacrifices pretty much everything else, and the pain that is generated by these sacrifices. He is a sincere believer in his basic mission, in the justified patriotism of his cause, but is subject to significant trauma, doubts of his capability, and cumulative punishment (both physical and mental) that pushes him to the edge of, and sometimes over the edge, of a breakdown.

He is also often not a very nice man. The film Bond can be charming, sympathetic, and sophisticated; for the novel Bond, these are often mere veneers over a focused, calculated killer, a man who has a nasty job to do and is going to do it. But he does show a softer side, most frequently with regards to women but by no means exclusively so, and is capable of warmth, humor, and even an occasional one-liner that presages the later overuse of such things in the movies.

By far the hardest parts of the novels to deal with is their unabashed bigotry – in the form of casual racism, jingoism/Western Exceptionalism, sexism, and so on. It is unsurprising, of course, to see the Soviet Union and its satellite states portrayed as almost unvaryingly villainous in a novel focused on espionage in the middle of the Cold War. Rather less easy to dismiss is the treatment of minorities – ranging from people of color to gays.

At times, Fleming includes casual evaluations of entire "races" which would have been at home in something written 50 or more years earlier than he was writing. Bond himself is a quite unselfconscious sexist, although he does develop some during the course of the novels (in the first novel he's quite consciously explicit in his thoughts about the "place" that women should occupy in a man's life; this changes to a significant degree as his career wears on).

The novel version of Bond is also far less reliant on high-tech gadgetry than the movie version. While Major Boothroyd and others will help to equip Bond, the number and type of devices he's given are probably an order of magnitude less than seen in most of the movies. Bond relies far more on his native instincts, fast reflexes, and careful pre-planning than he does on some new bizarre gadget.

This does tend to mean that he gets put through severe physical and often psychological torment. Fleming is not graphic about injuries and torture very often, but he's very clear about just how very savage the adversaries of a man like Bond can, and will, be in order to achieve their goals. Bond is formidable – it's explicit that he is in fact the very best shot in the entire Service, and he demonstrates he's quite capable in hand-to-hand – but is far from the strongest or toughest or most skilled combatant he ever encounters. He suffers numerous vicious beatings, to the point that even he occasionally muses on how much longer it will be before his body refuses to recover, and is often in the position of being half-dead while trying to finish his mission.

Overall? These are still fast-reading novels of adventure with excellent pacing. For a modern reader, they are filled with problematic imagery and language, and given their length are relatively sparse in the character development area. The power of the concept of James Bond remains, and it is easy to see why Mr. Bond captured the imagination of filmmakers… and why that realization of the idea has still continued to capture the imagination of filmgoers over many decades.

Still, they are extremely dated, and those unfamiliar with, or made too uncomfortable by, the casually extreme racism present in this and other types of novels of earlier eras may wish to avoid reading them. But for those who find themselves able to get past these flaws, they remain quick and exciting reads and vastly important literary landmarks in the annals of adventure fiction.

 

 

 

The Author and Criticism

One consequence of putting your writing up for sale and public view is that, naturally, people will express opinions about that writing. For most authors, their stories are pretty near and dear to their hearts, and so they always hope that people will say nice things about their writing.

This is, of course, not always the case. More generally, this is always not the case for stories in general. There isn't a novel published that doesn't have someone expressing negative opinions about it. Even a book received with great enthusiasm will still have some one-star reviewers out there saying how this is the worst piece of crap ever used to justify the murder of defenseless trees.

When a review's positive, of course, it's easy to respond to, if you choose to respond at all: you say thanks, maybe particularly mention some key observations the reviewer made that were especially happy-making for you, and everyone's cool with that.

Not quite so simple when the review is… not so positive.

For many authors – and I admit, myself included – the first gut reaction to seeing a negative review is to either be crushed with self-doubt, or erupt in righteous anger at this FOOL who doesn't see my GENIUS! This is often not helped by a reviewer who does, in fact, miss some key point or misinterpret something in a way that feels like it must be deliberate.

Some authors give rather free rein to these impulses; I've seen some that make arguing with reviewers and other critics of them and their works a routine. In some cases, it appears to be at least partially a deliberate "branding" choice. They expect criticism from specific groups, and as they never intended nor expected significant sales to come from those groups, they use this as a sort of loud advertising method, saying "I am not one of those, I'm one of you guys here!"

For some, this may even work. I personally consider it a really risky strategy, and if it's not a strategy, it's really a bad idea to do it.

The more common advice to authors about responding to reviews, especially negative ones, is "don't". This is certainly, in my view, an overall wiser course of action than the confrontational one. One negative review from one reviewer doesn't necessarily mean all reviews of your work by that reviewer will always be negative, but one acrimonious confrontation with the reviewer will go a long way towards assuring nasty reviews or – often worse – no reviews at all. Few people want to waste time on assholes, and a confrontational author can easily get themselves slotted in that category.

I prefer a third approach, when feasible.

You see, as I said above, "no reviews" is often worse than "negative reviews". Even a negative review usually means that someone spent the time and effort to acquire and read your book; often, they've spent money on your book. They've invested in you, and a negative review says that for one reason or another they didn't feel the investment was worth it.

As Heinlein and others have pointed out, fiction writers aren't usually competing for the chance to be recognized as Great Authors, they're competing for "beer money" – the entertainment budget people have for themselves, and a budget that is split between books and all the other entertainment modes, including movies, video games, eating out and going on dates, and so on. If they spend their money on you at all, that is in itself a compliment; for whatever reason, they thought you might offer them a better value than all the others that week.

So I often prefer the approach of thanking the reviewer. I think about how *I* would like an author to address me after a review, and you know what? Yelling at me about how wrong I am isn't one of the images I prefer, and I don't think most other reviewers look forward to that kind of confrontation either.

"You thank them for a bad review?"

Well… yes and no. A negative review, but not a bad one. The difference to me is in the effort and/or attention expended on the book. A bad review is one that doesn't seem to be properly addressing the book, or that showcases that the reviewer actually didn't read the book – or that are effectively contentless. Examples of the first are reviews where the review rants about the author rather than the novel, or – as happened to one of mine – gives a one-star review because at the time there was no Kindle edition. The second were exemplified for years by the work of Harriet Klausner, Amazon's most prolific reviewer, who often posted reviews that revealed that at most she skimmed the back copy and opened the book at a few random spots. The third category can include both positive and negative reviews, most of which will be very short: "this book is awesome", "this book sucks". This has no information on which a reader can evaluate how the book was good or bad, and thus whether this reviewer's opinion is likely to be in line with the reader's own.

**Note: The "contentless" review, and even the other "bad" reviews, do have one area where they still serve an author's purposes: Amazon. As Amazon has an ascending scale of promotion options they employ as the number of reviews rises, the type or length of the review for Amazon doesn't matter nearly so much as whether there's 50 reviews versus 20 reviews.***

For bad reviews, I prefer to simply ignore them. There's nothing to be gained by arguing under those conditions, and many of them are written by people who aren't even likely to see a response.

But a thoughtful negative review? That I will thank someone for. That's a review that shows someone took the time to read my work. Perhaps they didn't see what I wanted them to see, but that means, usually, that my writing failed to do its job for that reader. The same phrases and approaches in writing, for good or bad, don't work the same way for all people. For example, there are people for whom mountains are beautiful, majestic, and shining, and for them descriptions of grim, brooding, gloomy mountains may not work well; someone who's a fan of nature may find a description of a glorious megalopolis to fall utterly flat.

So I will generally thank such a reviewer. I will show that I appreciate the effort they have gone to, let them know if I agree with them on any particular points of interest, and end with a hope that they might one day find one of my other books of interest, and reiterate my thanks for the review. If there are some important factual errors in the review, I may mention them… or I may not, depending on the review tone, on how easily I can contact the person, and so on.

This is, in my view, the polite thing to do. And it has more practical aspects. You cannot know for sure either (A) what significance, or connections, a given reviewer may have, or (B) who else may also read your response to the reviewer. And by being polite, you invite dialogue, if the reviewer is so inclined.

I have, in general, found the result of such responses to be positive. Not infrequently, such a comment has led to an in-depth discussion of the work, and even, on at least a few occasions led to the reviewer revising their opinion of the work. More frequently, the reviewer at least ends with a positive opinion of me, and this doesn't hurt my chances to impress them positively with a book that may suit their interests and preferences more closely.

And yes, while I was planning to write this at some point, its appearance now was triggered by just such a review – a two-page long review blasting my self-published Oz novel Polychrome to ashes, on the very grounds I expected it would be. The fact that I expected such reviews, and even the precise points found within the review, doesn't necessarily make it easier to read them, and when the work is one into which I personally put a lot more direct effort into producing, it stings a lot more.

When I mentioned this, my beta-readers were all very supportive… and some a bit hostile towards the reviewer (who fortunately is not online, or at least not in their professional reviewing capacity as far as I know). That pushed me into not only sending my usual thank-you reply, but also into finally writing this article. I can understand – and am gratified by – the instinct a reader has to defend a work they like, by an author they respect. But that's a personal gratification and not one that I want ever directed outside, especially not at a reviewer.

Admittedly, this is probably hard to make work if you don't actually feel any positive vibes towards a reviewer. I honestly am grateful for any review where the reviewer obviously put in the effort to read and think about my book; some people may not find it easy to get past the negative portions of the review.

Still, I feel – very strongly – that this is overall the best response to critical reviews: not to hate them, nor to debate them, but to accept them for what they are, and thank the reviewers for the fact that they chose your book, out of the literally hundreds of thousands published every year, to review. Because the true enemy of all authors… is obscurity.

Sure, I'd rather all my reviews were glowing peans to my brilliance, and that they were accompanied by choirs of angels writing me checks, but that's not happening even to the best authors on the planet. That being the case, all I *can* ask for is that I be *READ* -- by anyone – and if some of those people decide that they regret the choice and want to air their objections, hey, they still *read my book*… and were sufficiently affected by it to feel it was worth responding to.

And in the end, that's really all any author can hope for.

On My Shelves: A Fire Upon the Deep

On the edge of the Galaxy, an archaeological expedition finds a cache of ancient wonders. But in delving into the secrets of a civilization so advanced they can barely comprehend it, they unleash… something. A Something that bides its time, hidden until it is prepared, and then acts to consume them all, flower into malevolent power. Only a desperate sacrifice by two researchers – themselves also nigh to reaching a superhuman state – allows any of them to escape at all.

At the same time, far towards the center of the Galaxy, a race of strange dog-ratlike beings is in the midst of a civil war. They have no idea that soon their world will be the key to the salvation – or destruction – of a million other worlds and a thousand civilizations.

Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep is one of the grandest-scale epics ever written, a true heir to the space operas of the 1930s and 40s with 50 years of additional technology and perspective added. In this novel, Vinge expanded and fully enunciated the universe of the Zones of Thought, in which all known Galaxies are divided into four Zones: the Unthinking Depths, in which no known intelligence can function; the Slow Zone, where speed of light remains an absolute limit, but intelligence can develop; the Beyond, where superhuman intelligences, including artificial ones, can be developed, faster than light drives function, and other wonders of technology and science are possible that the laws of the Slow Zone forbid; and the Transcend, at the edge and beyond the edge of the Galaxy, where the godlike Powers exist – beings, or perhaps entire civilizations, that have ascended beyond normal physical instrumentality and become capable of feats of cogitation and action that more than border on the supernatural.

Powers can provide devices and concepts that "trick" the Zones themselves, so that they can in effect work miracles even in lower Zones. Thus, researching the traces of Transcendent Powers in the High Beyond or Low Transcend can be a very profitable business… or a terrifyingly dangerous one, if you unleash something that even a Transcend Power feared enough to hide away.

There are two main threads to the story, the first following Ravna Bergnsdot – the only human employee of the High Beyond station called "Relay" – two "Skroderiders" named Blueshell and Greenstalk, and Pham Nuwen, a man out of time who was revived to be an intermediary for the Transcend Power called "Old One". These four learn of the threat awakened at the beginning, now called the Blight or the Straumli Perversion, and it demonstrates its power by destroying Relay itself. Barely escaping, the four flee, with just the bare knowledge that there is a Countermeasure of some sort, a weapon that can be used to destroy the Blight, but that if it still exists, it would be on a ship that fled inward, towards the Slow Zone...

The second follows two children, survivors of the research expedition named Jefri and Johanna, and their encounters with the alien "Tines" – a species that forms flexible group minds out of small numbers of its people, so that an "individual" Tine is actually composed of four to six physical creatures. Jefri is captured by one side – fairly clearly the "bad guys", called the Flenserists, and Johanna is found/captured by the Woodcarvers, a faction resisting the Flenserists. Each of the children, with their advanced world knowledge, represents an incalculable treasure to either side in the civil war, and both sides know how dangerous the other can be.

Unbeknownst to the children or the Tines, of course, is the fact that somewhere aboard their ship – now marooned at the very bottom of the Beyond, the edge of the Slow Zone – is the only weapon that can defeat the fast-growing Perversion…

A complex novel told in multiple parts, A Fire Upon the Deep hit my "sensawunda" button hard. It is one of a very very few novels to have gained the signal honor of an instant re-read – I finished the book, and literally instantly turned back to the first page and started reading again.

Part of this, admittedly, was that some of the story is told through a series of messages/communications on the galaxy-wide Known Net, messages formatted deliberately to echo Usenet, the first really worldwide "social media" platform and one at its peak of popularity when Vinge published A Fire Upon the Deep. As a longtime resident of Usenet myself, I recognized the format, the manner of conversation, and found later that some of the individual posters in Fire were based on real posters on Usenet. There was a certain pleasure in the recognition of this piece of computer history.

A Usenet-like communication format actually makes some sense in the context of the universe of the Zones; not only are the more complex methods of communication going to be bandwidth-intensive (a hellish problem when you're trying to handle traffic from billions of people each on millions of worlds!), but as shown in the novel, too complex communications can carry hostile code – and "hostile code" in the Zones universe can mean "something that rewrites the brains of the people who read it and turns them into servants of the Perversion".

The messages also are not merely "here's what's going on elsewhere". Buried within some of those messages are clues as to what is really happening, and to revelations that later shake the characters to their foundations.

This is a space opera, and as such it has thrilling chases with last-minute escapes; immense fleets of vessels sent in pursuit of the heroes; terrifying enemies; and ultimately a final heroic victory using a superweapon that even Doc Smith would have to appreciate.

I was so inspired by this novel that I proposed – with a very detailed outline – a supplement based on it for the GURPS line of RPGs, and even contacted Vernor Vinge in case it went anywhere. Steve Jackson said he liked the idea, but alas couldn't convince the rest of the board to go along.

I strongly recommend A Fire Upon the Deep, and even more so the later prequel, A Deepness in the Sky – which I will review later!

 

 

On My Shelves: Fallout 4

 

As I had rated both of its predecessors – Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas quite highly, one can imagine that Fallout 4 had a high bar to clear in order to rate as well as the preceding installments of the series.

Fortunately, it clears the bar with room to spare.

Like the rest of the series, Fallout 4 is set in a world where the Retro-Future of the 1940s came true: nuclear-powered cars for everyone, household robots, shining-steel and glowing-tube SUPER SCIENCE inventions brought a true golden age. And it then crosses that with the 1950s Commie Paranoia future, so that ultimately the Final War was fought with nuclear weapons, power armor, and even Giant Robots as well as the more standard battlefield war machines.

And you, the Player Character, find yourself walking the destroyed wastelands after Apocalypse, a 1950s nuclear wasteland After The End. Will you be a monster, or a savior?

Previous installments made the PC – the Lone Wanderer, the Courier, the Vault Dweller, etc. – a resident of the area which had been destroyed two centuries before. In Fallout 3, this was the Washington, DC area, while in Fallout: New Vegas it was the American Southwest centered around the Las Vegas area. In all of them, you're something of a blank slate, given some background and a general "main quest" to follow; Fallout 3 had the Vault Dweller trying to catch up with their father to find out why he'd suddenly left their Vault, and Fallout: New Vegas had the more personal quest of finding why someone had almost killed you for what you were carrying.

Fallout 4 puts a fascinating twist on this concept: your character was a resident of the Boston region before the war; you play through a background section of the game which shows how you end up in suspended animation until emerging two hundred and ten years later, knowing only two things: your spouse (for you were married) is dead, and the people who killed him have taken your son, your only child.

You will find them. And you will decide what price they will pay.

But this central plotline only serves to drag you headlong into the chaotic, dangerous setting of the Commonwealth – the metropolitan area of Boston and environs – where no fewer than four major forces are, or will soon be, vying for control of the Commonwealth and all its secrets: The Minutemen, the Brotherhood of Steel, the Railroad, and the mysterious Institute.

All of the other traditional elements of Fallout are present in profusion: the Zeerust-studded remnants of the Retro-Future, the monstrous mutated creatures, the ability to tinker with and improve weapons and armor, the small bands of raiders or honest citizens who can be foes or allies, and so on. To this, Bethesda added more civilization-oriented components; for example, helping build up the community you start in, and other communities, assists you and others in multiple ways. You're given the ability to help communities get food and water, build better structures, create beds, generate power, and defend themselves, and the communities both reward you and keep giving you more opportunities to assist.

The political tightrope that one ends up having to walk can be quite gripping – although one of my primary complaints is that the storyline makes three of the four factions too inflexible to be reasonably worked with (each in different areas); it is as far as I know impossible to work out a reasonable peace with any two of the three factions other than the Minutemen (who are an exception primarily because you, personally, get to build them back into a significant faction).

For a Fallout game, there's a fair amount of personal interaction – though nowhere near as much as for Dragon Age II or, even more so, Dragon Age Inquisition which I must review later. You can develop relationships with various people throughout the game and these relationships carry different perks with them as well as the personal satisfaction of having achieved this level of connection with the characters.

The controls haven't been changed much from the prior games – a good thing, in my opinion. It does have the same flaw as Skyrim in that while you can go into the water and wander around in it, you can't fight anything in the water, while things can attack you in the water. This could be argued to make some sense if said characters are basically naked but for a knife, but makes much less sense when the character in question is in full, sealed, fully-armed power armor and has melee as well as ranged weapon options.

As with the prior installments, though, some of my favorite pieces of the game have to do with its retro-entertainment features. None of these was more entertaining than the Silver Shroud storyline, where you can – if you so choose – actually take on the identity of the Shadow-like pulp hero in the midst of the Commonwealth!

The DLC (Downloadable Content, or add-ons) for Fallout 4 have also been excellent. Far Harbor is the best – a huge expansion, with its own large, overarching plotline, and multiple sidequests, giving you access to another entire section of the world of Fallout. The others give access to new construction options and usually also include some form of accompanying adventure; the Mechanist plotline was very entertaining.

Overall, this has been one of my favorite videogame purchases. If the chance for heroics (or exploitation) in a Retro-flavored apocalyptic world appeals at all, you can't go wrong with Fallout 4!

On My Shelves: The Dresden Files, by Jim Butcher

When I first published Digital Knight in 2003, there were some people who commented on its being similar in some ways to another relatively recent (2000) entry into the Urban Fantasy genre: Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden series, beginning with Storm Front and continuing up through what is now fifteen books (slightly less than one a year), the most recent being Skin Game.

There is something of a surface similarity between the early Dresden novels and Digital Knight/Paradigms Lost, although I think a great deal of the impression of similarity mostly stems from two stylistic choices that are similar: first, they are both told exclusively from the first-person point of view of the protagonist (Harry Dresden in the one case and Jason Wood in the other), and both Harry and Jason have something of a similar dry humor with respect to the world and situations in which they find themselves. Other than that, I think there's more a set of interesting contrasts between the two, which I'll talk about later.

Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden is a wizard – not the party-prestidigitation type, but the real honest-to-god spellslinging kind, with a particular affinity for fire… and for getting himself into trouble. He works as a magical private eye, solving problems that have their roots in the hidden magical world that is a part of our own.

Even when we first meet Harry, his life is not a simple one; he's technically a member of the White Council (simplistically, the "good guy" wizards who try to prevent the misuse of magic) but is under grave suspicion and constant observation because he once – perfectly justifiably, from any reasonable point of view – used magic to kill someone (his former master and teacher). He's got connections to the various magical beings and civilizations around Chicago and the "Nevernever" – the mystical parallel world that the fae and other magical beings tend to inhabit" – but there are few of these connections that don't come with prices or problems of their own.

In Storm Front, Harry has to try to solve a series of murders that are carried out by powerful dark magic – a magic that very, very few people he can think of would be able to carry off, and in fact he is one of the few. This does not escape the notice of Warden Morgan, the watchdog the Council has assigned to Harry, and Morgan is not at all on Harry's side; Harry knows that if Morgan gets a good idea of what's going on, he'll assume Harry is responsible for the murders – and carry out summary execution then and there!

Harry thus has to walk a tightrope through the investigation, trying to find out who would use magic to kill some rather widely-assorted people, consulting with beings ranging from vampires to mob boss "Gentleman" Jimmy Marcone without either getting himself killed or obligated to these people in ways he can't afford, and finally to confront the real murderer – at the center of his power.

In many ways, Storm Front is a microcosm of the entire series. Harry is always having to make deals with beings he'd rather not, frequently under suspicion by various beings of being the cause of whatever the current problem du jour is, and always having to try to combine his native "blunt instrument" approach with caution and cleverness to maneuver his enemies into doing some of the work for him.

This is, honestly, one of my favorite series of all time, and one I only read recently (I read Storm Front shortly after I met Jim and we traded books, but I didn't get to the rest until much later). Harry is forced to grow, slowly but surely, throughout the series, and so are both his adversaries and his allies, to an extent.

Harry's difficulties, of course, stem to a great extent not just from his very troubled past (raised by a powerful dark wizard that Harry had to personally kill, among other things), but from the nature of magic and the mystical world. As he mentions multiple times, this is a world where names have power, so hiding parts of your name, or knowing names of others, are powerful weapons… and vulnerabilities.

The fae of Harry Dresden's world are as perilous as legend, beings that will hold to the letter of their word… and often use the letter of their agreements to render the agreement worse than useless, if you leave them an opening. From Harry's point of view, what makes this a particularly difficult issue is that he has personal connections to the Fae (he has, in fact, a literal Faerie Godmother, but not one nearly so benevolent and easy to deal with as Disney would like to make it look), and often his cases force him to deal with the Nevernever and the fae and other beings that reside there.

The White Council really isn't much better; while Harry agrees they perform valuable services and their intentions are good, their means of approaching their goals – mainly the protection of humanity from dark magic – are often… hardass, to say the least. Harry killed his master because his master was a monster, in more ways than one, and did so in self-defense; despite this, he's under constant scrutiny and suspicion by the Council, with a literal Doom of Damocles hanging over his head. One misuse of magic, one single act that crosses the line of any of their Laws of Magic, and Harry will be executed – and Morgan, the man assigned to watch him, has the skill, power, and authority to carry out that execution. And he does not like Harry Dresden.

To an extent, these circumstances change as the series progresses (for one thing, Harry ends up a Warden of the White Council, and no longer under direct potential sentence of death); to another, they don't change as much as one might think. The power scale of the series slowly but fairly inexorably ramps upward, and the problems that Harry has to deal with become more and more complex and dangerous, but in some ways, a lot of it doesn't change – Harry makes some desperate deals, does inspired Xanatos Speed Chess against his opponents, and mostly slips the consequences of dealing with the devil… but not quite, and so has another pain in the ass added to those he already has.

What makes the books fun to read is undoubtedly Harry Dresden's voice. The combination of cynic and idealist that ends up often (I am sure deliberately) sounding like a magical Sam Spade is almost irresistible. Harry is almost never lost for a quip or a wisecrack even in dire situations (and this, admittedly, sometimes gets him in more trouble). At the same time, he's a hero. He often denies it, and his flaws loom large in his mind, but Harry Dresden is a Determinator of the highest caliber, and one who is, at heart, one of the best people in the series.

This is saying a lot, as along with the manipulative bastards and out-and-out monsters, there are some true shining knights in the Dresden Files. None are more obvious than the literal Knights of the Sword, bearers of swords reputed to contain the nails of the Crucifixion and, so long as they are true and just wielders of the Swords, provided with incredible supernatural power to withstand evil magics and monsters. Less supernatural, but no less noble, is Karrin Murphy, a policewoman who is one of Harry's closest friends and one of the few he can count on regardless of what happens. What Harry never quite grasps is that he has the loyalty of people like Officer Murphy and Michael Carpenter ONLY because he is, himself, a man whose nobility and trustworthiness is obvious to those who look.

Having read the entire (thus far) series, I can look back on the initial comments with respect to Digital Knight and its later incarnation Paradigms Lost with more perspective, and it's a rather interesting comparison. As I said earlier, there are definite similarities. Both Harry and Jason are first-person narrators; both have an almost noir type of internal dialogue, with internal heckling and occasional wiseassery even in perilous situations. Both of them are men of honor – if they take on a job, they will finish that job one way or another – and also are very, very good at finding loopholes or tricks to allow them to evade the consequences their adversaries intend to visit upon them. Both play the Determinator card fairly often, and the ending of their adventures often involves recuperating in a hospital bed or the equivalent. Both of them even have a very close female friend of diminutive stature who is often their sounding board, and whom they deny any romantic feelings for... and whose denial rings rather hollow.

At the same time… they're awfully different. While their "voices" are superficially similar, Harry's much more Bogart-as-Spade than anything else (though not nearly the dick that Sam Spade tended to be), while Jason's based far more on Archie Goodwin from Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe series. Harry's more cynical and Jason's much lighter, most of the time, in tone. This is reflected in their lives, too. While both Harry and Jason face some pretty horrific adversaries, Jason's life has, overall, gotten measurably better over the course, thus far, of his career, while at least up until the last couple of books Harry was getting at least as much suckitude to go along with his increased power.

The latter – power—is probably the biggest difference. Harry Dresden is a wizard, a real spellslinging mage of the top-drawer power level, while Jason Wood is a perfectly ordinary, if smart and lucky, human being. Jason can't face down most of his opponents one-on-one. He's generally outgunned on every objective level. It's true that Harry's often outpowered too, but he has his own personal powers that put him, at least, in the same general weight-class as his opponents (though sometimes he really is out of his league).

Allies also differ. Harry of course has had a lot more books to play in, but even allowing for this, Harry has a lot more connections and allies… and a much bigger set of obligations. The connections and allies Jason gets tend to be friends, people he can trust and whose powers don't come with some kind of cosmic price tag; Harry often has to trade favor for favor even with beings that in theory like him.

On the other hand, Harry hasn't (yet) been staked out as the personal property and future lunch of the universe's Big Bad, while Jason has. Admittedly, this does come in handy a few times, as this means that damned few beings want to challenge Virigar over, well, pretty much anything. And Harry's certainly got multiple people with claims on his soul in one form or another.

Physically they're also pretty different; Jason's not short, at slightly over six feet, but Harry's a giant, standing about six foot nine, and he's in good shape; he could probably pick Jason up and throw him like a caber.

But in many ways, they are alike. Both are the go-to people for those on the border of the mundane and the weird. Both are the opponents of monsters that would destroy their people, and both of them have a vested interest in finding a way to let humans and the supernatural coexist, when possible.

I like to think that if the two were to meet, they'd rather like each other. And I'm certainly glad that I've gotten to meet Harry Dresden.

If you haven't yet, I think it's time you did!