Jane Lindskold's Blog, page 115

FF: A Change of Plans

Although I love audiobooks, sometimes I can’t stand a reader’s interpretation of the material.  That happened to me this week.

Plans Take Flight!

For those of you new to this post…  The Friday Fragments lists what I’ve read over the past week.  Most of the time I don’t include details of either short fiction (unless part of a book-length collection) or magazine articles.

The Fragments are not meant to be a recommendation list.  If you’re interested in a not-at-all-inclusive recommendation list, you can look on my website under Neat Stuff.

Once again, this is not a book review column.  It’s just a list with, maybe, a bit of descriptions or a few opinions tossed in.

Recently Completed:

Prince of Wolves by Dave Gross.  I enjoyed.  Look for a WW interview with Dave Gross before the end of October!

In Progress:

Roadsouls by Betsy James.  Manuscript of a forthcoming novel.

Tortall and Other Lands by Tamora Pierce.  Audiobook. A short story collection, containing material from between 2005-2012.  I’m about half-way through and enjoying.

An Important Side Note:

Uprooted by Naomi Novik.  Audiobook. This is the one I had to give up on as an audiobook, because the reader was driving me completely nuts.  I’ll be finishing as a “regular” book as soon as I can slot it in!

TT: Our Planet is Full of Aliens!

JANE: For the last couple of weeks, we’ve been chatting about aliens.  So, have we covered all the bases on types of aliens?

ALAN: No, not quite. We actually live on a planet that is full of aliens. Animals are completely alien to us in the same sense that SF aliens are. They think differently; they react differently; they have different priorities.

Flossy, Mephitis, and Harlequin

JANE: I’m the last person who would disagree with you about that.  As I mentioned a while back, my novel Marks of Our Brothers is rooted in my awareness that how humans view animal intelligence is rarely based on judging them on their own terms.  All too often, how “intelligent” an animal is thought to be is based on how human they seem or at least how well they can mimic human behavior.

I’d rather view animal behavior on their own terms and leave the question of “smarter” or “dumber” out of it entirely.

ALAN: Yes, indeed. And if SF teaches us anything about aliens, it teaches us to judge them on their own criteria rather than to try shoehorning them into ours. Though having said that, I think there’s a definite spectrum of intelligence – even animals of the same species can be “smart” or “dumb” in comparison with each other.

JANE: I agree…  We both like animals and share our homes with them.  I’m sure if we were visiting over coffee, we’d have fun telling each other about the interesting things our co-residents have done.  Typing out stories isn’t quite the same, but we can give it a try.

Let me start with the story of how Jim misinterpreted Flossie the guinea pig.  That way we’ll start off with a creature that most humans would consider at the “bottom” of the spectrum.

ALAN: Tell me more! How do you misinterpret a guinea pig? Enquiring minds want to know…

JANE: We have several guinea pigs.  When the weather permits, we put them outside in a hutch.  We always bring them in at night, though.  One day, Jim commented to me that Flossie really didn’t like coming in.  “She’ll run to the side of the hutch, then try to climb the side to get away from me.”

Now, I’d noticed the same behavior but, knowing guinea pigs (Jim had only been living with them for about five years at that point), and knowing they don’t really climb, I had interpreted it differently.

“She’s not running away.  She’s helping you to pick her up.  She’s noticed that you always scoop her around the middle, then lift.  She’s making it easier for you.”

And, after observing, Jim agreed I was right.  Over time, Flossie taught her “trick” to her hutchmates, Mephitis and Shandy.  The habit did not pass on to the next generation.  (Flossie, Shandy, and Mephitis have all gone on.)  However, Usagi, one of our current residents, does not like being held around her middle.  She’s perfectly fine with being picked up – only on her own terms.  If you hold a hand level in front of her, she will let you slide it under her and even walk on.  Again, her roommate, Silver, has picked up the trick, so we have two guinea pigs who behave rather like large, furry parakeets.

ALAN: Do they perch on your shoulder and say “Pieces of eight!” as well?

JANE: No!  They say “pieces of carrot,” though…

ALAN: It’s clear to me that animals can, and do, think about the situations they find themselves in, then work out a plan to achieve their goals. We took our dog Jake to the park where he can run freely off the lead. There’s a small river running through the park which many of the dogs like to swim in. Jake hadn’t learned how to swim yet. He was happy to paddle in the shallows, but he wouldn’t go out of his depth.

However, one day he was playing chase with another dog and he got so involved in the game that he chased the dog through the water, all the way across the river to the other side. Once the excitement died down, Jake realised that he had a problem. He was on one side of the river and we were on the other side! How on earth was he going to get back to us?

He stood there for a moment, and then he looked both right and left, decided which bridge was the closest, and then he raced to that bridge, came across the river and rejoined us. I was very impressed. Naturally, he got a treat for being such a clever boy. I don’t think many dogs could have solved that problem so quickly and so elegantly.

These days he can swim like a fish, so the problem has now completely gone away and he criss-crosses the river willy-nilly.

JANE: And doubtless shakes water all over you when he arrives.  Oh, well, everything can’t be perfect.

One thing that really bothers me about tests meant to judge animal “intelligence” are those that involve running mazes.  Often these tests are used on creatures that wouldn’t perform a task like this in normal life.  Moreover, how well an animal “remembers” a maze is then used to judge length of memory.  By this standard, I’ve read studies that say that most animals have very short memories.

I don’t know about you, but if my memory (which is excellent) was judged on the basis of running mazes, I’d fail abysmally.  Jim, whose memory is rooted in visual associations, would probably score as a moron, since most of those mazes are without features.

ALAN: I’d be the same – I’m hopeless at mazes. Robin, on the other hand, loves them and is quite brilliant at navigating them. We’ve visited several mazes here in NZ and I’m always astonished at how expertly she finds her way through them. I just tag along, hopelessly lost…

Clearly I’m even more moronic than Jim.

JANE: My point is that none of us non-“maze runners’ are dumb, and neither are those animals who fail to live up to this challenge.

ALAN: Yes, that’s quite true. But, nevertheless, I’m sure that maze-running is measuring something significant about the way that the animals fit into their world. My cats Ginger and Milo never saw a maze in their lives, but I’m certain they’d have been really good at solving them. When we moved to a new house, they both used maze-running techniques to explore it. Ginger used a strict left-hand rule. She circled the house (in and out of every cupboard) hugging the wall as closely as she could and taking every left turn that she found until she ran out of them.

Milo had a different, but equally successful, technique. He started from his food bowl from which he took a revivifying snack. Then he set off in a straight line. Once he’d explored as far as he could in that direction (no turns allowed), he came back to the food bowl for another mouthful and then set off again in a new direction.

JANE: That’s really neat! Ginger was motivated by preserving some sense of personal safety, while Milo was motivated by assuring himself he would not lose his source of food!

I’ve seen many incidents that prove that housecats (who are usually judged by these tests as having short memories) have excellent memories.  One of these is what I call the story of Talli and Great Cthulhu.

I actually related the story a few months ago. But it’s so appropriate to what we’re discussing that I’d really like to tell it again.  I’ll give the short version, promise…

ALAN: That’s a good idea – I’d love to hear that story again.

JANE: Okay.  I’ll start with it next time.

Off to the Balloon Fiesta!

I guess there’s some truth to the old saying that people who live in an area are the ones least likely to attend the events that bring tourists to town.

When Pigs — and Other Things — Fly!

I thought about that this past Thursday as Jim and I sat in slowly creeping traffic on the way to the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta.  Although this event has been going on (under various names) for a long time, we’d never been to it together.  It had been about twenty years for me and even longer for Jim.

One reason we hadn’t gone before was that our house is right on the flight path taken by lots of balloons, so we see balloons up close almost every day.  We’ve come to recognize the various patterns used by the companies that give rides, and even notice when they add a new balloon to their fleet.  It hardly seemed worth getting up the early hour required and joining crowds to attend the Fiesta.

So what made us change our minds?  Well, as those of you know who have been reading these Wanderings (or Tangents or Fragments), Jim is a pretty good photographer.  When I came across a listing for a contest with the theme of autumn in New Mexico, I encouraged him to enter.  He did and, while he didn’t win any of the main prizes, his photo was among the “honorable mentions” which came with four tickets to the Balloon Fiesta.

It seemed like an omen.

We decided to drive over, rather than taking the Park and Ride, since the price of the Park and Ride included the tickets we already owned.  Besides, we were going on a Thursday, not a weekend.  The traffic shouldn’t be too bad, especially if we left early.

We left our house before 5:30 a.m., which seemed plenty of time given that the event didn’t start until 7:00 a.m., and we’d normally need only twenty minutes to get to the Balloon Park.  We were wrong.  Traffic slowed to a crawl the closer we came to the park.  As we came within a mile, people walking along the paths that paralleled the road were going faster than the vehicle traffic.  I realize this is usual in some parts of the country, but it isn’t in Albuquerque.

We finally arrived and were parked by 7:30.  Happily, the balloons had only just started launching, so we had plenty to watch.  We’d chosen our day because it fit Jim’s work schedule, but an added bonus was that this was one of the days when “special shapes” were featured.

Special shapes are balloons that aren’t crafted in the usual “balloon shape.” You know what I mean – the one where there’s a wide upper dome that tapers at the bottom, providing a place for the gondola to hang.  There’s a variation on this “usual” shape that’s more like an American football – tapered at top and bottom.  These are more commonly used in racing and agility events.

Special shapes vary considerably.  Some are the usual shape with additions.  A good example of this sort was an elephant we saw: the main balloon was pink, but extensions in the shape of ears and a trunk had been added on.  The effect was very convincing.  Another along this theme had side panels featuring three different clown faces.  On this one, the extensions were used to give dimensions to the clown’s headgear.  Oh!  And I can’t forget the one that looks like Carmen Miranda’s head, complete with her signature crown of various sorts of fruit.

Many special shapes don’t bear any resemblance to a classic balloon shape.  They’re more like the huge inflated figures that you sometimes see suspended over parade floats – the difference being that these are free flying sculptures.  We were treated to an amazing variety.  There were three flying pigs – one with wings, one without, and a third costumed as Spiderman.  There was “High Kitty,” a tribute to the famous “Hello Kitty.”  There was the shoe belonging to the Old Woman who lived therein, complete with a child out on the roof.  There was a wizard, with a black and white cat in his backpack.  Oh!  And the heads of Darth Vader and Yoda rose majestically side by side.

There was a full-body beagle, complete with floppy ears and wagging tail.  An orca, leaping through the sky with an enormous grin on its face.  An enormous alarm clock.  Three bumblebees, two of which – as they rose into the air – “held hands” so convincingly that Jim and I were sure the two envelopes were stitched together.  They weren’t – it was the skill of the pilots that enabled this to be carried out.

And these were only a few…  And for every special shape, there were many, many classic balloons in every color you can imagine and a few patterns – like the two that appeared to have been made from batik fabric – that I would never have anticipated.

Because special shapes aren’t as easy either to inflate or to pilot, it’s a lot less certain whether they’ll be able to go up.  Wind that a “normal” balloon can handle with a little care can ground a special shape.

We were very lucky.  Not only was the wind so light as to be unfelt on the ground, the air currents kept bringing the already launched balloons back over the field, so we were able to see them from various angles and at a wide variety of elevations.  By the time the last balloon launched and some of the earlier risers were coming down, Jim finally stopped taking pictures and I realized that I was both cold and hungry.

From one of the numerous concession stands, we bought pretty good breakfast burritos and ate them, watching the balloons all the while.  Eventually, we joined the crowds, stopping to watch some Indian dancers, to look at the offerings of various vendors, and to amble through the art exhibit.  Then we made our way back to our car and joined the crawling traffic.  This time it didn’t seem nearly as bad because we had balloons to watch as we made our way home.

FF: Mostly YA, Purely By Chance

News Flash!  Curiosities, my forthcoming short story collection, is now available for pre-order on i-Tunes.  Pre-order on other e-book sites will begin next week.  The print-on-demand version will be available soon, for those of you who prefer “real books.”  Look for an official Launch Day announcement before the end of October.

For those of you new to this post…  The Friday Fragments lists what I’ve read over the past week.  Most of the time I don’t include details of either short fiction (unless part of a book-length collection) or magazine articles.

Kel Claims the Shepherd’s Crown

The Fragments are not meant to be a recommendation list.  If you’re interested in a not-at-all-inclusive recommendation list, you can look on my website under Neat Stuff.

Once again, this is not a book review column.  It’s just a list with, maybe, a bit of descriptions or a few opinions tossed in.

Recently Completed:

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.  Audiobook.  Interesting mixture of elements.  I don’t think this one would be for everyone, because of the heavy reliance on 1980’s pop culture elements, but it suited me just fine.

The Shepherd’s Crown by Terry Pratchett.  I really enjoyed.  The end note is of writerly interest.

Naruto, issue 71.  Lots of fight scenes and super attacks can’t hide that interpersonal relationships are really the center of this story.

In Progress:

Uprooted by Naomi Novik.  Audiobook.  Starts like a typical “Beauty and the Beast” story, but that’s just the lauch pad.

Prince of Wolves by David Gross.  Time for another sword and sorcery romp.

And Also:

Back issues of magazines that piled up while we were on the road!

TT: Handling First Contact

JANE: Last week you said that you’d had another thought about aliens and how we react to them.  I’ve been waiting all week to find out what this is!

Toads Talking

ALAN: Yes, I did say that, didn’t I? Well, once you recognise that alien intelligences exist, a whole new set of problems arise. Probably the most important is the question of how you do you communicate with them? In other words, how do you handle the “first contact” problem?

JANE: Oh!  I love first contact stories.  I’ve even written a few…  But you first!

ALAN: It’s easy to see an analogy with the classical age of exploration here on Earth. The European explorers came across many strange societies and faced this problem in real life many times. A brilliant novel that explores this is James Clavell’s Shogun which sees Japanese culture from a European point of view. The two societies are so utterly different from each other that the novel can easily be read as a dramatisation of the science fictional first contact. Several reviewers and critics have remarked on the parallel – I’m by no means alone in suggesting it.

JANE: Shogun is great.  “Maybe a duck…”  Talk about culture clashes!

When I set out to write the first Firekeeper novel, Through Wolf’s Eyes, I realized that in many ways that the Mowgli stories in The Jungle Books and Tarzan are both “first contact” stories because, although human by birth and biology, both Mowgli and Tarzan begin their association with humanity from an alien mindset.

Mowgli thinks of himself as a wolf first and a “citizen” of the larger community called “The Jungle” second.  He clearly adheres to the “social contract” that is itemized in the Laws of the Jungle.

Tarzan never ceases to think of himself as a hairless white ape, even after he has reclaimed his birthright as Lord Greystoke.  He never seems happier than when he can return to his roots.  (Or, maybe we should say “branches”?)

Anyhow, my awareness of this shaped Through Wolf’s Eyes and the sequels, because I didn’t want to do another “first contact,” story – or rather “only” a first contact story.

ALAN: I never thought of those as “first contact” stories before, but now that you’ve pointed it out, I think you’re right – that’s exactly what they are. But, in pure science fiction terms, I think that Murray Leinster’s delightful novellette “First Contact” is probably the archetype. It comes up with a really ingenious answer to the problem.

JANE: If I read that, it was so long ago that I’ve forgotten it.  Can you tell more or would that completely ruin the story?

ALAN: I’ll try.

Two spaceships meet in the void. Communication is established in a rather primitive manner through a kind of universal translator. The problem then becomes one of finding a way to ensure that neither ship can track the other back to their home planet. Neither wants to give any military (or technological) advantage to the other and if one side does get hold of information like that, it would clearly have the upper hand

The problem is solved on two levels.  Formal negotiations come up with an ingenious plan but, perhaps more importantly, behind the scenes it becomes clear that the two groups are likely to work well together in the future. They have a lot in common. The crew members of each ship have been talking informally, and they quickly build a close rapport by telling each other dirty jokes…

JANE: (scribbling)  Okay.  I need to look this one up.  It sounds vaguely familiar but…

My second published novel, Marks of Our Brothers, is an alien first contact story.  However, unlike many such stories where a meeting in space or suchlike makes very clear that the aliens in question must be “people” not “animals,” (after all, they have spaceships or space stations or something), the problem in Marks of Our Brothers is somewhat different.

Here the question is whether or not the aliens in question are “people” at all.  They don’t have hands.  They are not obvious tool users, even on the primitive level of, for example, David Weber’s treecats.  In fact, they look rather like Labrador retrievers.

The book grew out of my fascination with how many tests sociologists and suchlike use to measure “intelligence” are based on human norms.

ALAN: Of course, the stories we’ve both mentioned assume that the humans and the aliens do actually have a communication channel, either face to face or through some sort of communication device. The problem becomes much harder to solve if the alien race is long dead.

JANE: Yeah, “long dead” would make it difficult to have any sort of contact with a race.

ALAN: That’s true in a very literal sense. (Sorry to ruin your joke by taking it seriously.) But it does raise the question of just how could archeologists of the future come to grips with the language and culture of a society that has no living members with whom to talk? There are lots of societies here on Earth that we know very little about, and whose written records we cannot read. How much harder will that be for truly alien societies with which we have nothing in common?

JANE: Since I’m married to an archeologist, I’ve seen firsthand how difficult it is to learn about a past culture – even if that culture has living descendants.  The complexities would grow exponentially with a completely alien culture.

ALAN: H. Beam Piper came up with a beautiful solution to the problem in his short story “Omnilingual.” He assumes that technological societies have more in common with each other than non-technological societies do because scientific truths are universal. The story itself uses the periodic table of the elements as a Rosetta stone to unlock the secrets that an alien society had left behind.

JANE: Okay.  I’m sure I read that one, but it’s been a while…  I need to find a copy and re-read it.  Any other good first contact stories to suggest?

ALAN: I’m very fond of a series of short stories about a team of unorthodox engineers by the British writer Colin Kapp. In each story, the team is presented with an alien technology from a long dead race. They have to deduce what the technology is for, often to a tight deadline. After several semi-catastrophic red-herrings lead them up several garden paths, they eventually find out what the technology is really supposed to do, just in time to prevent a disaster.

The stories are somewhat formulaic, but their humour, and the ingenuity of the alien technologies transcend the formula. The stories have a small cult following in the UK. They were published under the title Unorthodox Engineers by Dobson Books and the stories originally appeared in Dobson’s New Writings in SF series. Probably the best of the stories is “The Railways Up on Cannis”…

JANE: I haven’t read those.  I’ll see if I can find a copy.  So many books, so little time…

An alien first contact short story I’m fond of is Larry Niven’s “The Warriors.”  It’s the tale of the first encounter between humans and the Kzinti.  You get a look from both sides and the each makes assumptions based on their own cultural values that are fascinating.

ALAN: I’ve not read that one. I’ll add it to my list. Hmmm… Infinity plus one… I may have a problem here…

JANE: Another place to sample a bunch of first contact stories is the anthology First Contact edited by Larry Segriff and Martin H. Greenberg.  I contributed a short story called “Small Heroes,” which is reprinted in my new collection Curiosities.

ALAN: I’ve not read that one either. Oh well – at least I’ll get to read your story when I buy my copy of Curiosities.

JANE: I hope you enjoy it when you do…

Gardener With Plants… And With Words

News Flash! Interested in an interview with me about the “Artemis” books and a few other things?  Here’s one with New Books in Science Fiction that just went “live” this week.  Look at the bottom of the text introduction for an audio link.

And now we shall proceed with our regularly scheduled Wander…

Back in April, I began a Wednesday Wandering with the following

Early Autumn Produce, Harvest 2015

words:

“On Saturday, Jim and I planted twenty-one tomato seeds.  Our goal is to have twelve plants bearing tomatoes by the end of the summer.  We’ll be happy with six, especially if five of them are romas, because romas are good both for eating fresh and for cooking.”  (WW 4-15-15)

I thought I’d let you know how our experiment worked out and, while I was at it, touch on my feelings about a jargon term that’s getting increased exposure these days.

But first, the tomatoes!  Jim and I didn’t expect all twenty-one seeds we planted to germinate but, to our surprise, they did.  We ended up with fourteen “Viva Italia” roma seedlings, and seven “Sweet Million” cherry tomato seedlings.

We’d planted the seeds in a covered “seed starter,” so we figured we’d lose some plants when we transferred them to the small yogurt containers we use as our first series of “pots.”  Often the shock of going from the enclosed environment – even though we’d been slowly increasing the amount of outside air the plants received – has lost us plants in the past.

But, to our astonishment, all twenty-one plants lived through not only this first transfer, but also the second to larger containers.  We nursed the plants along indoors until May 17th, when we planted fifteen in our garden beds, keeping the others in reserve.

This time we did lose a few plants.  Two were broken off by the wind.  We replaced these with the same variety.  A third was killed by a virus, probably curly top.  We didn’t replace this one because, by the time we lost it, the two plants on either side were growing large enough that a seedling wouldn’t have had a chance.

Meanwhile, the four remaining plants were beginning to get “pot bound.”  Additionally, they were stressed by the rising summer temperatures heating the soil in their containers.  We searched around and found space to place these remaining plants behind some Oriental lilies that were pretty much done with their summer blossoming.

So, out of twenty-one seeds planted, we ended up with eighteen plants.  The four that went into the ground late are just beginning to produce ripe fruit.  We don’t usually get a killing frost until late October or early November, so – depending on nighttime temperatures – we may be picking tomatoes for several more weeks.

(And, as the picture illustrating this week’s Wandering shows, we have lots of eggplant and peppers, too!)

So, what does any of this have to do with writing?  Well, here in New Mexico – and probably elsewhere given the source – I keep hearing  new terms for the two very general categories into which most writers fall.  These terms are “gardener” and “architect,” and they are generally credited to George R.R. Martin.

A “gardener” is what I learned to call an “intuitive plotter” and have also heard called a “pantser.”  “Pantser” is short for “seat of the pants” and is usually paired with “planner.”   In case you wonder, “intuitive plotter” is usually paired with “outliner.”

I will say, I’ve never personally heard George use these terms, so I don’t know what he bases them on, but I would like to say a bit about how the term “gardener” is easily misinterpreted.

From my experience, the biggest difference between an intuitive plotter and an outliner is that the intuitive plotters don’t know precisely how the story will progress while the outliners believe that they do.

Since another term for “gardener” or “intuitive plotter” is “pantser,” I looked up definitions of “seat of the pants” and found this one in several places: “Based on or using intuition and experience rather than a plan or method, improvised; Performed without using instruments.”

A key word here is experience.  Outliners frequently seem to think that intuitive plotters rely on luck and/or Ouija boards to come up with their stories.  This is far from the case.  Intuitive plotters do a considerable amount of groundwork for their writing.  Sometimes, they do this preparation far in advance of an actual project – or even before the project exists.   In this way, we are very similar to actual gardeners, since preparing the soil is a big part of making sure the garden will be thrive.

I was hanging out with George R.R. Martin when he was working on Game of Thrones and I saw how much work he put into creating the soil that would be able to support the enormous sequoia he was writing.  I inherited much of Roger Zelazny’s research library.  He was another “intuitive plotter,” but that didn’t mean he didn’t read tons of books about the subject that had current caught his fancy, whether that was computer hackers or Navajo culture or kites.

Gardening – whether we’re talking about writing or talking about putting actual plants in the ground – is not a lightweight excuse to not do the “hard work.”  Every year, Jim and I discuss the microclimates in our yard and decide what needs to be shifted where.  This year we discovered that the catalpa trees now cast too much shade for squash to thrive at the southern edge of one bed, where they’ve always done great before.  Next year we’re going to switch them to the western end of a different bed, where the beans never do very well.

Writing intuitively requires the same awareness of the story, of the shifting environments created by new elements.  You learn to trust that something is important, even when you can’t see where it fits in right away.  Writing intuitively requires an awareness of the pulses and tides of the story.  It involves writing little notes to yourself about the things you suspect may become important.

Writing intuitively involves listening to the Muse.  Your subconscious.  Your inner demon.  It involves coming in for a landing without using instruments.  But whatever it is, it isn’t easy.  It isn’t slapdash.  And neither is gardening… whether you’re growing plants or writing stories.

FF: Reading Is Really Important

Being home for a bit over a week hasn’t meant a lot more time to read, because catching up after travel takes a lot of time.  Even so, I made time because reading is really important to me.  Without it, I’m less of a writer.

Ogapoge Meditates on Raising Steam

The Friday Fragments lists what I’ve read over the past week.  Most of the time I don’t include details of either short fiction (unless part of a book-length collection) or magazine articles.

The Fragments are not meant to be a recommendation list.  If you’re interested in a not-at-all-inclusive recommendation list, you can look on my website under Neat Stuff.

Once again, this is not a book review column.  It’s just a list with, maybe, a bit of descriptions or a few opinions tossed in.

Recently Completed:

Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett.  The formerly “medieval” into “Renaissance” Discworld enters the time of steam aka, the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution.

Wizard of the Pigeons by Megan Lindholm.  Before she became famous as Robin Hobb, Megan Lindholm had a very solid critical reputation, much of which was based on this urban fantasy (old flavor) novel.  I’d wanted to read it forever, but never found a copy.  Jim found me one for my birthday.  I agree with the praise.

In Progress:

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.  Audiobook.  Interesting mixture of elements.  I don’t think this one would be for everyone, because of the heavy reliance on 1980’s pop culture elements, but it suits me just fine.

The Shepherd’s Crown by Terry Pratchett.  Just started.

And Also:

Continuing to read short essays about old SF movies.  I found a listing for Stalker, 1979, German, that sounds like a template for the recent award-winning Annihilation and sequels.  Inspiration or coincidence?

Companion Aliens

JANE: Last time we ended up talking about cute aliens, which – at least in my taxonomy – leads logically to companion aliens, which are often, although not always, cute.

Kel Contemplates a Companion Alien

The obvious species for me to mention are the treecats in David Weber’s “Honorverse” novels, since I have written about them in both novellas in the “Honor” timeline and in the “Stephanie Harrington” prequel novels, Fire Season and Treecat Wars.

Do you mind?

ALAN: Go for it. I actually know very little about the treecats. I’ve never read much of the “Honorverse.”

JANE: I was already friends with Weber when the first Honor Harrington novel (On Basilisk Station) was published and I’ll be honest.  I really did have doubts about a starship commander and her kitty.

As I read, I liked how Weber dealt with the difficulties of taking a “pet” into space.  He doesn’t ignore realities like the risk of death from explosive decompression or severe injury in battle.  As the novels advance, it become clear that while Nimitz is a hidden asset to Honor in some situations, there are others where he is a vulnerability.

So, by the time I was invited to write the Stephanie Harrington novels, I’d moved away from the “girl and her kitty” mindset to the more compelling one of two very different minds meeting.

ALAN: Isn’t it odd how many aliens are feline? Tigerishka in Fritz Leiber’s novel The Wanderer  (which won a Hugo Award in 1965). C. J. Cheryh’s Hani in her Chanur novels. Larry Niven’s Kzinti… And Cat from Red Dwarf, of course.

JANE: Absolutely!  It’s something I’d like to discuss later, actually.

Going back to the treecats…  The thing is, despite the name and how they’re depicted in a lot of the earlier cover art, treecats are not housecats with extra legs and hands.  When Stephanie named them, she was only eleven, and following in the long human tradition of naming things not for what they are, but for what they most closely resemble at a quick glance.

She could have as easily called them “hexaweasels,” or “lemur-ferrets,” based on their build, which, in the official Honorverse material (which I have access to, tah-dah!)  is described as: “…built long and lean, on the lines of a Terran ferret or weasel crossed with a lemur monkey, and average about 60 centimeters in body length (130-135 centimeters, counting their tails).”

However, since Stephanie was from Meyerdahl, not Earth, it’s really more likely that she would have been more familiar with cats (which treecats resemble facially) than with either ferrets or weasels.

ALAN: I like hexaweasel. I don’t think much of lemur-ferret though. It’s a bit too much of a mouthful.

JANE: Treecats are also quite intelligent, are tool users (although on a very basic level), and have some very interesting biological elements that I won’t go into here.  The point is, the more you learn about treecats, the more it becomes apparent that in their associations with humans they are truly companions, not pets.  I’ll admit, these days I actually prefer writing from the treecat point of view, and have come to see the humans as the companion aliens!

Okay…  Your turn…

ALAN: I’m rather fond of Alan Dean Foster’s novels about Flinx and his minidrag Pip who is a flying empathic snake capable of spitting a corrosive, neurotoxic venom. Minidrags are non-sapient, nevertheless they will often bond strongly with sapients with whom they feel an emotional attachment and Flinx and Pip are extremely close.

JANE: You would probably be interested in knowing that Weber realized years after he’d created them, that Pip (and minidrags in general) were an influence on the treecats.  I had the pleasure of being present at a World Fantasy Convention where Weber sought out Alan Dean Foster to thank him for the inspiration.  He gives Flinx and Pip credit now, and recommends the Pip and Flinx books.

ALAN: Good for him! Can I add that I met Alan Dean Foster once when he was a guest at a New Zealand convention and he was a lovely man, very modest, very pleasant to talk with. I’m sure he was thrilled by what Weber had to say.

This kind of bonding with vaguely reptilian creatures seems to be relatively common in the genre. I’m thinking here of McCaffrey’s fire lizards and Steven Brust’s jheregs.

The fire lizards are aliens, native to the planet Pern. McCaffrey’s dragons were genetically engineered from the original Pernese fire lizards. The fire lizards themselves are about the size of a large bird, and they can have a very intense relationship with the humans to which they bond.

JANE: Good point.  It’s been years since I read Jhereg.  Can you remind me about them?

ALAN: The jheregs are also dragon-like creatures one of whom, called Loiosh, bonds closely with Vlad Taltos, the hero of many of Brust’s Dragaera novels. I’m never sure how to define jheregs because I’m never sure exactly what Brust’s novels are. You can argue that they are SF (in which case Loiosh is an alien companion). But it would be equally valid to consider them to be fantasy stories (in which case Loiosh is perhaps best described as a familiar).

Personally, I don’t care, because mainly they are just very good books, which is all I really care about…

JANE: The issue of what to call well-realized imaginary world fiction is perennial, isn’t it?  I think that’s why when Terri Windling was doing the “Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror” anthology series, she made a point of differentiating.

So, let’s see, in addition to catlike and lizard-like alien companions, what else are there?

I asked that question aloud as I was typing, and Jim reminded me of my own “Gittchy,” who appeared first in my short story “Winner Takes Trouble” in the anthology Alien Pets in 1998.  This was the first of my Captain “Allie” Ah-Lee stories, which I collected in the e-book Star Messenger.  I don’t want to say too much about “Gittchy” because what Gittchy can do and where she came from are central to her stories.

For those who are interested, the Alien Pets collection did provide a wide variety of “takes” on the idea of alien pets.  A couple of the weaker authors did go for the quick humor element, but many took it quite seriously.

ALAN: And don’t forget Sand Shadow, the puma in your Artemis novels. You seem quite fond of the idea. Perhaps that’s because there are so many animals in your real life?

JANE: Actually, I think fiction made me want companion animals…  My parents were adverse to us having pets because they felt four children were enough chaos for any household.  They finally broke down when I was ten and let me have a guinea pig.  I have had guinea pigs pretty much ever since…  We currently have four.

See what books can be blamed for?

Anime/manga frequently features companion aliens.  One of my favorites is the recurring CLAMP character, Mokona.  Mokona’s right up there with the Fuzzies on the diabetically cute scale.  He looks like a rounded white rabbit with huge eyes and a gem in the middle of his forehead.  However, in the second part of Magic Knights Rayearth, the question of just why Mokona is involved with the protagonists and their difficulties becomes very interesting indeed.

In fact, more often than not, the companion aliens in anime/manga serve a role far beyond the obvious one of making fans say “I want one!”

To me, companion aliens who turn out to be allies in some ways, not just egoboosters or status items (as the firelizards of Pern seemed to become) for their “owners” are definitely the best.

ALAN: Yes – the stories always work best when that sense of mutual support is emphasised.

But I’ve had another thought about aliens and how we react to them. What are you doing next Thursday?

JANE: Talking to you about your thought!  I can’t wait!

Off to Arizona

This past week, Jim and I completed the last scheduled trip in this fast-moving September.  On Sunday, we drove to the Phoenix, Arizona area so that I could take part in the premier event in the SFAZ Author Reading and Signing series.  Nearly two years had passed since we had made the drive to Arizona, and we quite enjoyed the trip.  It’s a fairly long drive – nearly five hundred miles each way – but if you like stark scenery, it’s quite lovely.

Blood Moon Omens

Leaving west from Albuquerque, we drove along I-40 through what Jim said archeologists (and probably other people) call the Red Mesa Valley.  Words don’t quite capture the setting, because “valley” to most people implies a dip in the landscape.  The Red Mesa Valley isn’t so much a “dip” as a wide, flat area bordered on either side by huge sandstone mesas (and probably some buttes) which tower up to frame the landscape in various shades of red and orange.

The lack of vegetation any taller than piñon or juniper (and the occasional line of cottonwoods, huddling along the rare watercourse) adds to the impact of these mesas.  This is a landscape so devoid of trees that many times I saw a cow taking advantage of the small amount of shade cast by a telephone pole.

Sadly, the Red Mesa country does not stretch all the way to Phoenix, or even all the way to Flagstaff.  (More about Flagstaff in a minute.)  Eventually, the mesas vanish or are, at best, distant outlines on the distant horizon.  You’re driving through the middle of nothing.

Remember Eagles’ song with the bit about Winslow, Arizona?  I bet the reason the girl in the flatbed Ford slowed down when she saw a man standing on a corner was because she was so astonished to see anything at all.  Winslow and its neighboring (as in about forty miles away) town of Holbrook are set in some of the most hypnotically repetitious landscape I’ve had the pleasure to travel through.

You find yourself commenting on freight trains, cows, or the occasional hawk because scrubby grass and shrubs aren’t exactly notable.  Happily, near Holbrook, someone has constructed a bunch of the worst dinosaur sculptures you could ever hope to see.  But their lack of realism doesn’t matter.  They’re painted in bright colors and break up the monotony.  I love them.

Sometime after we left the Red Mesa country, Jim and I turned on a recorded book.  We’d brought along The First Eagle by Tony Hillerman.  Hillerman’s mysteries are set in the same general area through which we were driving.  His protagonists drive hundreds of miles just to question a suspect.  I first encountered these novels when I still lived in Virginia.  There – among the crowded woodland, where a field can become a forest within a couple of years (if someone doesn’t take care to grub out the saplings) – the landscape Hillerman described seemed almost alien.  Now that I live among it, it still has the power to evoke awe and wonder.

Jim hadn’t read any of Hillerman’s novels, so now these are among our first choices when we know we’ll be driving in through the West.  One bonus is that sometimes we pass a setting featured in the novel.  This time it was the Hopi Travel Plaza and the town of Flagstaff, Arizona.

Flagstaff, Arizona, is everything that Arizona is not supposed to be.  Set among the San Francisco Peaks, the piñon and juniper give way to towering Ponderosa pines, the area is green and lovely, if not exactly lush.  It’s cooler, too, a welcome break from the heat of the lowlands.  While I can’t quite figure out why anyone would settle in Holbrook or Winslow, I have no problem understanding why travelers heading west decided to break their journey in Flagstaff and then decided to stay.

Leaving Flagstaff, we dropped down into hot, dry reaches again.  Soon the saguaro cactus began to make their presence known, standing out even among a landscape full of weird-looking plants with twisting limbs and an ample array of not just thorns, but spikes.

Phoenix is a vast, sprawling metropolis about which, I feel, the less said the better.  Many towns, including Scottsdale, where the SFAZ book event was being held, have been swallowed up and now exist as little more than enclaves within the greater creature.  Our drive there on Tuesday was accented by a quick, violent rainstorm, which is how rain tends to fall in the desert, when it bothers to fall at all.  Jim had to pay attention to the incredibly complex traffic patterns, but I got to enjoy a magnificent double rainbow.

The SFAZ event was held at the quirky SIP Coffee and Beer House.  Victor Milan, Melinda Snodgrass, and myself were seated at a long table of highly polished dark wood set at one end of the long room.  Attendees sat at tables for two or four arrayed around the room.  It was a nice setting in many ways, evoking the classic literary coffeehouse.

However, no matter how great for mood, low light isn’t wonderful when trying to give a reading…  I mentioned this as I was struggling both to read from the opening of Artemis Invaded and keep an eye on the clock. To my surprise, one of the patrons slipped his portable reading light into my hand!  It definitely helped.

After we gave our readings, we took questions.  These were many and quite varied, which made for a fun time for the panelists.  After, we had a chance to chat in a much more relaxed fashion than is usual at a book event.  I was particularly happy to meet reader Emily Newman, a winner of this summer’s “Help Make Artemis This Summer’s Hot Destination” contest.  It was also nice to catch up with writer Mike (Michael A.) Stackpole, who I hadn’t seen forever.

Now we’re home…  An inch plus of rain fell while we were away, so much of the garden is still going strong.  The lunar eclipse was eerie and strange.  But now I’m ready for normal.  I look forward to getting back to my various projects, including an idea I have for a story…

FF: To Arizona and Back

Another busy week.  Last Sunday, Jim and drove over to the Phoenix, Arizona area so we could visit with my mom and a few other friends and family members.  Then, on Tuesday I took part in the inaugural SFAZ Premier Author Reading and Signing series along with Victor Milan and Melinda Snodgrass.

Arizona’s Signature Saguaro Cactus

During parts of the drive, we listened to audiobooks.  We also spent oohed and ahhed over the scenery.  This is spectacular, except between Windslow and Holbrook where – if it wasn’t for the fake dinosaurs –  it would be mind-numbing.

Even so, reading time has definitely been stretched thin.

The Friday Fragments lists what I’ve read over the past week.  Most of the time I don’t include details of either short fiction (unless part of a book-length collection) or magazine articles.

The Fragments are not meant to be a recommendation list.  If you’re interested in a not-at-all-inclusive recommendation list, you can look on my website under Neat Stuff.

Once again, this is not a book review column.  It’s just a list with, maybe, a bit of descriptions or a few opinions tossed in.

Recently Completed:

Queen of Thorns by David Gross.  Sword and sorcery in the Pathfinder gaming universe.  Two highly diverse point of view characters give the story more depth than it might otherwise have.  I enjoyed.

The First Eagle by Tony Hillerman.  Audiobook.  We picked this one because we were driving through some of the areas in which the story is set.  When we drove by the Hopi Travel Plaza, I bounced up and down and pointed, because a character a chapter back had stopped there for coffee.

In Progress:

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.  Audiobook.  Interesting start.  However, left at home, so haven’t gotten too far in.

Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett.  The formerly “medieval” into “Renaissance” Discworld seems to be entering the Industrial Revolution.

Also:

Some interesting articles, toward a potential future project.