S. Evan Townsend's Blog, page 12

Bad Published Writing

Sometimes bad writing gets published. I'm not talking self-published or even small-press published, but New York, big name publisher published.
Back in January of 2005, I was in Reagan International Airport getting ready to fly home. (Well, close to home. No airline service where I live.)

I must have run out of things to read because I bought a book in one of those airport shops. It was a Dale Brown book. Don't ask me which one, he's written hundreds, it appears.

I was reading the book on the airplane, and a couple of times at least I wanted to throw it across the aisles. The writing was that poor (I can't now think of any specific passages that were so bad). At one point I didn't know if he was talking about a person, or a pair of boots. And here Dale Brown has hundreds of New York published books. He's probably made millions of dollars. And his writing is... mediocre. I can't think of any more specific examples anymore (hell, it's been 18 years). I just remember getting angry because I knew I could write better than he and I wasn't (and still am not) New York published.

It wasn't typos. Those are getting more common as the New York publishers lay off their editors to save money. For example, I was reading one of Tom Clancy's last books before he died and there was a "Fort Taurus" in it (should be "Ford"). Or, I've been told, that in the first Twilight book, there are "dust moats in the air." I'm the typo king so I'm a bit more forgiving about those.

But bad writing shouldn't make it past what editors are left. 

Have you experience bad writing in books you've read? How did it make you feel? Let me know in the comments below.

Science Fiction and Fantasy Books

I write mostly science fiction. I currently have fifteen published books. Of those, five are fantasy novels. I consider myself primarily a science fiction writer. I just had an idea for a fantasy universe and I loved exploring it in those five books (and one short story). I'm thinking about going back to that universe. But I'm also thinking of some stand-alone science fiction novels.

As a writer, I am, of course, a reader. If you're not a science fiction or fantasy reader, here are some books (besides mine) to jump into the genres with:

Science Fiction

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. It hasn't aged completely well (it was written in the 1960s), but it's still one of the best science fiction novels out there.

A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows by Poul Anderson. I love all of Anderson's books and stories about Dominic Flandry.

Ringworld by Larry Niven. The first (and best) of the Ringworld books. Apparently, this concept was ripped off for the Halo video games. Was also used in a recent Bobba Fett episode on Disney+

Niven's "Tales of Known Space" is a great collection of short stories.

Fantasy

I don't read a lot of fantasy, but here are a couple of my favorites (that I didn't write):

Three Hearts and Three Lions by Poul Anderson. This is one of my favorite fantasy novels (you can hardly go wrong with books by Poul Anderson).

Glory Road by Robert Heinlein. A fun book and written in Heinlein's style. 

The Princess Bride by William Goldman. Yes, the book is better than the movie. Be sure to read the foreword and other "interruptions" to the story. It's a funny fantasy novel.

There's six books to get you started. Let me know what you think of my list or you have books to add in the comments below.

Sports Teams Support

Seattle Kraken

As you probably know if you read this blog, I love my University of Washington Huskies football team. That's mostly because I went to UW for a lot of years (about eight) to get two degrees. And I like football, especially college football. The Husky basketball team isn't very good but I hardly care.

Of course, a lot of people base their team support on geography. I remember when my cousin's family (who lived in New Mexico) supported the Denver Broncos football team. I asked why and they said that the Broncos were the closest team. 

But it's not always geography. Another cousin who grew up in Alaska, supported (and still may support) the Green Bay Packers. He said he decided they were his favorite team in the '60s when the Packers were going to the Super Bowl a lot.

One, interesting thing I noticed was what happened when Seattle got a NHL team, the Kraken. I almost immediately saw people wearing Kraken gear: hats, shirts, etc. And I wondered how many of those people cared about hockey until Seattle got a professional team. Or, was their support solely based on geography? People who never said anything about liking hockey suddenly were Kraken fans. When the Kraken went to the playoffs this year, even I kept an eye on their progress (they were eliminated in the second round).

My brother once said (and I paraphrase), "What good does it do me if the team I support wins?" He has a point. Other than feeling good for maybe a couple of days, what good does it do? And Seattle isn't known for having winning teams. The Mariners went a couple of decades before getting in the playoffs. The Seahawks made it to the Super Bowl three times and won once. And who cares about the Seattle soccer team (I think they are called the "Sounders")? 

How do you choose which teams to support? Is it geography or some other reason. Let me know in the comments below.

The above photo is being used under Section 107 of the Copyright Act: fair usage.

Music Storage

If you're old enough to remember cassette tapes (at left), you know you could buy them in various lengths. One of the more popular lengths was 60 minutes. That meant you could record 60 minutes of sound on the tape, usually music. Usually.

I was curious how much music is currently on my iPhone and what that would mean in 60-minute cassettes. According to my phone, I have 7.66 Gbytes of music on it. About two-thirds is classical, I would guess. I have 1,662 "songs" on my iPhone. Although not all are songs because a song technically has someone singing and most of my classical music is instrumental.

So I did some research and found that a 60-minute cassette tape could hold 4.5 Mbytes of data. That's 0.004395 Gbytes.

Simple math shows it would take 1,743 60-minutes cassettes to hold all the music on my iPhone.

What about CDs? A CD holds 650 Mbytes. So that means it would take 12 CDs full of data to hold what's on my iPhone. To be honest, that doesn't seem to be enough. 

But that is still amazing. Rather than carry 1,743 cassettes or 12 CDs, I carry one iPhone that has other functions and data (lots of pictures of our cat). 

Another way to calculate it: According to iTunes, I have enough music on my phone to last 4.9 days. That's 117.6 hours so I'd need that many 60-minutes cassettes. (I'm a little concerned that that number is approximately 10% of the 1,746 number I got above. Did I make a magnitude error?)

What about vinyl records. A 12-inch vinyl record (LP size) can hold 46 minutes of music using both sides. So that's 153.4 LPs to hold the music on my iPhone!

I know some people say vinyl sounds better, especially with tubes and not transistors in the stereo equipment. But I never heard the difference and LPs are fragile. Look at them wrong and you get a pop or scratch. 

Since CDs hold 74 minutes of music, I'd need 95 CDs. That seems like too many. Way too many. Maybe it's because of compression.

What do you think about this older technology? Let me know in the comments below.

Different Kind of Smart

I saw the meme to the right on social media (probably Facebook) and thought that I never assumed my grandparents weren't smart. They just knew different things than we do today. For example, I couldn't can food if I had to. But I'm sure my grandparents would have trouble figuring out a smartphone. They were a different kind of smart.

One hundred years ago there were things you had to know to survive that we, in the 21st century, have forgotten. We're going to be in trouble if civilization collapses. Another thing I've seen on Facebook: "I can't hunt for food, I don't even know where tacos live."

My grandfather had to deal with complicated farm equipment. I know how to change the oil on my car (I don't do it anymore) and I have done brake work on cars. But growing my own food would be beyond me. I'd have to learn quick, and without Google, if an EMP took out our electrical grid.

And that's the magic of books. I'd head for the library and look for books on planting and harvesting food. Unfortunately, all of the library's book catalogs have been computerized, so I'd be searching blindly. But I'd still be searching. 

(One problem is the library is about five miles from my house and I assume I couldn't drive there.)

Other things my grandparents knew that I don't include animal husbandry. Taking care of cows, horses, etc. Yes, there are people who do that today. If the EMP goes off, I think I'll try to make friends with some.

So never assume people weren't as smart in the past. It was just a different kind of smart.

How do you think you'll do if civilization collapses?  Let me know in the comments below.

Clean Desktop, Cluttered Desk

 I have a strange duality to my willingness to put up with clutter. My physical desk has a six-inch-high pile of papers that need to be filed or thrown out. And it doesn't bother me... much. Mostly because I'm too lazy to do anything about it.

But when it comes to my computer desktop, I want it clean and neat. I currently have nine icons on it, most of them in one column on the right hand side. The rest of my desktop is blessedly clean. Some of those icons I don't need, I'm just used to them being there.

I don't know how people stand it to have their computer desktop cluttered like this:

That would drive me nuts. Put those files in a folder on your hard drive (organized, of course) and get them off your desktop.

At least that's what I do. 

I'm not sure why I want my computer all neat and organized, but my real life a cluttered mess doesn't bother me.

How do you keep your computer desktop? Is it clean or is it cluttered? And why? Let me know in the comments below.

Ten Months Out of Every Year

When I was in high school, I had a bit part in a local production of Damn Yankees. If you're not aware of that musical, it is about baseball. The most famous song from it is probably "Whatever Lola Wants, Lola Gets." 
The first song, though, has the line (sung by women playing wives) "Six months out of every year..." talking about the baseball season.Six months? More like ten! Spring training starts in February and the World Series is held in November. 
I really don't like baseball, either, especially on television. It is boring and the games are too long, and the season is way too long. The college football season (which I love) is only 5 months long and there's only one game per week, not five or six like in baseball. There's something like 162 games played by every team in baseball. Plus, for some reason, there is a lot of spitting in baseball, and that just grosses me out.
Now, the 2020 season was pretty good. It was cut short due to Covid. I thought it was about long enough.How do you feel about the long baseball season and the boring games? Let me know in the comments below.

Every Four Years

[image error] Back when I was a kid growing up in Idaho, we didn't have a lot of technology. Our black and white television picked up two channels, a CBS affiliate and an NBC affiliate. If there was a popular show on ABC, one of them would air it (this is why I missed the first season of The Six-Million-Dollar Man).

Yes, we eventually got a color TV and two more channels (PBS and ABC). But that's it. Now I have a 250-channel package from Dish. But I've only put about 50 in my guide favorites. A lot of those 250 channels are shopping channels and pay-per-view movies. And still, there will be nothing worth watching on those fifty or so channels.

When I was a kid, I hated presidential election years. Why? A lot of my favorite shows got preempted for political news (the primaries), the party conventions, and of course election night coverage. All of that was on all four channels. (And I was pretty politically aware for a 12-year-old kid since my parents were active in politics.) And, on top of all that, one network would preempt my favorite shows for the winter and summer Olympics (this was years before they split them). And even if they weren't on a channel I wanted to watch, the rest of my family wanted to watch the Olympics. 

So I learned to hate presidential election years. Now I have 50ish channels to watch. But still, if there's something going on such as a presidential speech or a party convention, a lot of the channels will show it, leaving me with maybe 30 channels to watch. And they'll preempt Jeopardy! all the time.

How do you feel about your favorite shows being preempted? Let me know in the comments below.

AFI 100 Years: 100 movies

As of a week ago, I have watched every movie on the American Film Institute's "100 years: 100 movies" list.  

There are a lot of great movies on that list. Some I love and have seen multiple times (e.g.: Star Wars, Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Blade Runner).

Some I know I've seen but I barely remember them (e.g.: Taxi Driver, Easy Rider, A Clockwork Orange).

 Some I didn't like much at all (e.g.: Nashville, Do the Right Thing, Sophie's Choice). 

Probably the best movies on the list are the two Godfather movies (and the only sequel listed).

The oldest movie on the list is Intolerance directed by D. W. Griffith. It was made in 1916. It was silent and two hours long. And some of the title cards were impossible to read. I didn't hate it but I didn't enjoy it, either. (You might recognize D. W. Griffith as the director of Birth of a Nation which, as I understand it, glorified the Ku Klux Klan and racism.)

Speaking of racism, I was shocked that two of the movies on the list, Yankee Doodle Dandy and Swing Time, had blackface performances in them. In Yankee Doodle Dandy, it was in historical context in a flashback to the late 1800s. But in Swing Time, Fred Astaire puts it on and performs in blackface. And that movie was made in 1936.

The most recent movie on the list is Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (2001). Which I love and have seen multiple times, mostly in the expanded edition.

I'm glad I did this. I saw a lot of interesting old movies (and some movies I really didn't want to see). But it was an education. When I started this journey, I'd seen all but 14 of the movies. Most were available on DVD.com, but one (Yankee Doodle Dandy) I watched on Amazon Prime.

Have you seen all or most of these movies? What do you think of the list? Are there movies missing or shouldn't be on there? Let me know in the comments below.

Annihilation from Above Releases Today

My fifteenth novel,  Annihilation from Above , comes out next today on Kindle, paperback, and hardcover.

It's an exciting science fiction adventure:

"Mining asteroids with robots is common and sometimes the orbit of the rock is changed to facilitate extracting the valuable metals. 

"One Monday morning, a car bomb detonates in Manhattan. As law enforcement officials scramble to find who's responsible, it becomes clear that it was a distraction. Terrorists have hijacked an asteroid and put in an orbit to hit the Earth. Suddenly the race is on to stop it. 

"While FBI agent Juanita Flores pursues the bombers, astronauts Howard Drayden and Johnny Park put their lives on the line to save millions. Can Flores find who is responsible while Drayden and Park endeavor to avert the disaster in time?"

Enjoy this fast-paced thriller, available on Amazon today.  

Or go to my website to see all the versions available and read an excerpt.

World Castle Publishing – ebook (PDF)

Smashwords – ebook (epub)

Barnes & Noble – paperback and Nook

Kobo – ebook

iTunes – iBook

Google Play – audiobook