Christopher L. Bennett's Blog, page 60
March 15, 2015
JUSTICE LEAGUE: THRONE OF ATLANTIS review (spoilers)
Justice League: Throne of Atlantis is the third movie in the New 52-based continuity that the DC Universe Animated Original Movie line has adopted in the past couple of years. As I remarked before, I really disliked the first one, Justice League: War, and found the second, Son of Batman, to be better but still deeply flawed and excessively violent. So I wasn’t expecting much from ToA, and wasn’t even sure I wanted to see it at all. Fortunately, it’s a great improvement on the previous JL installment, even while being a direct continuation of it.
As the title indicates, it’s mainly the story of how Arthur Curry discovers his birthright as Aquaman and battles with his half-brother, the evil Orm (Ocean Master), for the rule of Atlantis, with Orm trying to engineer a war with the surface world as a means to gain power. But it’s also a continuation of the story of the Justice League coming together, its disparate members learning to work together and commit more to the team. The character work is thus rather better this time out. The action still tends to be bloodier than I like, but at least there’s more character exploration going on between and during the action. There are some pretty good moments in the script by Heath Corson.
Although there are a couple of bits that don’t make much sense at all — spoiler alert. One, when Queen Atlanna (Aquaman’s mother) realizes that Orm and Black Manta are attempting to overthrow her, she stands with her back to Orm while speechifying, leaving herself totally open to being stabbed. Now, maybe I misread the scene and she thought that only Manta was involved, still trusting her son, but I don’t think that was the case. The other, more serious logic problem is toward the climax, when Orm is sending a tsunami to wipe out Metropolis and Gotham and the heroes fear there’s nothing they can do to stop it. Now, first off, between them, Superman, Shazam, Green Lantern, and the Flash should be able to stop a tsunami in its tracks. But that’s not the real problem. The real problem is that, just as the tidal wave is cresting and about to smash into Metropolis, Orm stops it in its tracks, then parts it Moses-style to reveal… a bunch of infantry soldiers who invade the city on foot. I’m sorry? That tidal wave could’ve done a hundred times as much damage to the city as that entire army, a hundred times faster, without a single Atlantean life being at risk. Orm had a weapon of mass destruction at his disposal. But he didn’t use it, and instead launched a far smaller, conventional attack that was much easier for the heroes to fight back against. The whole tidal-wave thing was a total fakeout. That’s just lame.
Although it’s in continuity with War, a number of the voices have been recast. Returning are Jason O’Mara as Batman, Sean Astin as Shazam, Christopher Gorham as the Flash, Shemar Moore as Cyborg, and George Newbern (Superman from the Justice League/JL Unlimited TV series) in a small role as Steve Trevor. But Alan Tudyk has been replaced as Superman by Jerry O’Connell (who was Captain Marvel/Shazam in JLU), Justin Kirk has been replaced by Nathan Fillion in his fourth DC Universe iteration of Hal Jordan (fifth if you count Robot Chicken), and best of all, Wonder Woman is now Rosario Dawson (who was Artemis in the DCU Wonder Woman movie), taking over from Michelle Monaghan, who was simply awful in the role in JL: War. Fillion and Dawson are improvements, but I’m not sure about O’Connell. I wasn’t too impressed with Tudyk as Superman in JLW, but that’s probably because he had so little to work with. I wouldn’t have minded hearing him get another shot with better material. (And honestly, Dawson is kind of mediocre as Wonder Woman, but better mediocre than dreadful.)
The new characters are pretty well-cast. Arthur/Aquaman is Matt Lanter, Anakin Skywalker from Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Roman from The CW’s Star-Crossed. His ally and future queen Mera is Sumalee Montano, who was Katana in Beware the Batman. And Orm is Sam Witwer — aka Crashdown from Battlestar Galactica, Davis/Doomsday from��Smallville, Darth Maul from The Clone Wars, and soon to be Emperor Palpatine in Star Wars: Rebels. This is a great choice, because Witwer is a fantastic voice actor, bringing a lot of operatic menace to his villain roles. Harry Lennix is Black Manta, Sirena Irwin (Mera from Batman: The Brave and the Bold) is Atlanna, and Juliet Landau has a minor role as Lois Lane, who’s quite marginalized due to the decision to pair Superman up with Wonder Woman in this continuity.
This is the first time the DC Universe movies have reached three installments in a single continuity — unless you count Batman: Year One and their 2-part The Dark Knight Returns as a common reality, but I’m not sure that flies in either the comics or the movies. (Maybe this even counts as a fourth installment, since The Flashpoint Paradox was based on the comics storyline that created the New 52. But there’s been nothing in the movies themselves to link that one to this new series, and not even any voices in common until now, with Fillion reprising GL and Steve Blum reprising Lex Luthor in the post-credits teaser.) Anyway, using continuity has given the DCU filmmakers opportunities they didn’t have in the previous standalone films, the chance to develop the characters and relationships over time and establish arcs and running gags. I appreciated the sense of continuity and growth that the links to JLW provided, even though I hated JLW itself. I’m hopeful that as the line continues, the chance to develop the world and the characters more fully will continue to enrich it, making sure we never get anything as superficial and dumb as JLW ever again.
March 14, 2015
UNCERTAIN LOGIC is here!
Look what came to my door a while ago:
It’s still about ten days from the on-sale date, but I’m the writer, so I get it first, ha-ha-ha!
But for the rest of you, here are some ordering links:
Simon & Schuster:��http://books.simonandschuster.com/Star-Trek-Enterprise-Rise-of-the-Federation/Christopher-L-Bennett/Star-Trek-Enterprise/9781476779119
Amazon:��http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1476779112?tag=simonsayscom
Books-A-Million:��http://www.booksamillion.com/p/9781476779119
IndieBound:��http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781476779119
iBookstore:��https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/star-trek-enterprise-rise/id894620181?mt=11
Feel free to buy it from the retailer of your choice. Heck, buy copies from all of them, I don’t mind!
March 11, 2015
Bifocals, take two
Over the past few weeks, I’ve had some trouble adjusting to my new progressive bifocals, which I thought were just issues with getting used to something new. The in-focus reading area seemed too narrow, and if I tilted my head back at all while watching TV, it went out of focus and I had to push the glasses lower down on my nose, which changed the focus a little and made my eyes sore. I kept meaning to go in to the store and ask about these issues, but the terrible winter weather kept me indoors most of the time.
And being indoors so long meant that it took me a while to realize that the new glasses just weren’t focusing that well on anything more than about 6 feet away. I could watch TV okay from my couch, but when I tried watching a show on my computer monitor while doing the dishes in the kitchen (I can see the monitor from there if I open the doors on the double-sided cabinet in between), it was out of focus. Finally, this past Sunday, I went out to my car (where I was keeping my old glasses as a backup) and did a one-to-one comparison, and there was no doubt: I had better distance vision with my old glasses than the new ones. Something had gone wrong.
So I went back in to the store on Monday and had them double-check my prescription, since I’m still under warranty. They got me in for a second session with the optometrist, and she found that the distance prescription she calculated this time was different from what it had been before, about halfway between the old glasses and the first bifocals. I’m not sure why it was different, but I had been wondering if the problem with my sleep mask being too tight — which I only realized the morning of my initial visit to the optometrist — had caused some lingering aftereffect on my vision, throwing off the prescription.
Also, the clerk in the glasses store (to which the optometrist’s office is attached) helped me figure out that the bridge supports had been in too far, so the glasses were sitting too high on my nose and so I wasn’t getting the best use of the focal areas. Adjusting that seemed to help with my reading, and once I got the new distance prescription, it seemed to work for that as well.
Although I still had to wait a lot more than an hour for my new lenses. Last time, it was because they broke the frames and had to send out for a replacement. This time, it was because they happened to have just begun doing a lengthy process of maintenance on their lens-grinding gizmo. So once more, I had to go home and then come back the next day, and that’s a pretty long drive. (I started going to this optometrist/store back when I lived closer to the area.) But once I got them at last, they seemed to be a definite improvement. I could no longer discern any significant difference between my new and old (pre-bifocal) glasses where distance vision was concerned, and the reading part still seemed better now that the glasses were a bit lower on my face. And I had no trouble driving with them or grocery-shopping with them. I may still have some adjustment issues, but so far they seem to be working better than before. I still need to be careful not to tilt my head back too much when watching TV (and I should probably just raise my screens higher), but it’s better than it was. Hopefully this will be the last time I’ll need to go back there for a good while.
March 6, 2015
Dawn probe reaches Ceres orbit!
Or as I like to call it, a Ceres circuit. Ba-dum-bum!
But Ceres-ly, folks…
This morning, at about 1239 GMT (or 7:39 AM where I am), the Dawn space probe successfully entered orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres. The NASA press release is here:
Nasa Spacecraft Becomes First to Orbit a Dwarf Planet
Unfortunately, Dawn is currently on the dark side of Ceres, and is orbiting slowly enough that it won’t come around to the light side until mid-April. So the best we get for a photo at the moment is this one from March 1:
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
This is historic as the first orbit of a dwarf planet (the New Horizons probe later this year will only fly by Pluto, I believe) and the first time a probe has orbited two different bodies. And it’s significant to me since it means Dawn has now visited both of the Main Belt protoplanets featured in Only Superhuman, first Vesta back in 2011 and now Ceres. With Vesta, the timing was right to let me incorporate a bit of what Dawn discovered into the novel during the revision process — but with Ceres I just have to hope nothing contradicts what I wrote. My main description of Ceres in the book was as follows:
The sunlit side of the dwarf planet was a dusty gray, except for the bright glints where craters or mining operations had exposed fresh ice beneath.
So far, so good, I’d say, given the other photo we got recently:
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
Scientists are speculating that those bright spots might be exposed ice, or maybe salt. Although you know what they kinda look like to me?
The on switch.
More news as it develops…
February 27, 2015
I grieve with thee
The New York Times has reported that Leonard Nimoy has died at the age of 83.
I was afraid of this when I heard the news about his hospitalization the other day, but I’d hoped it was a false alarm. Still, it’s not surprising, given his health in recent years. But it is entirely logical to be saddened, and to shed tears for a man who left such a profound mark on the world.
Spock was one of my first childhood role models, and certainly the most influential, for better or worse. When I was seven — about two years after discovering Star Trek — I lost my mother, and in response to that grief, I tried to become like Spock and suppress my emotions. It backfired; without a healthy release valve, my emotions erupted vehemently and often, and I felt more like Dr. Banner from The Incredible Hulk than like Mr. Spock. But in 1979, when Star Trek: The Motion Picture came out and Spock had the epiphany that emotion was valuable and necessary as an integrated part of the psyche, I came to much the same realization — perhaps as a result of Spock’s — and learned to be more at peace with my own emotions.
I also tried to emulate Spock’s intelligence, the way he contributed and was appreciated for being a source of knowledge. (The Professor on Gilligan’s Island also influenced me in this way.) But real life didn’t turn out like fiction; rather than being appreciated for my efforts to inform and contribute, I was seen as a showoff or a know-it-all. Some people appreciated my contributions in the helpful spirit in which I intended them, but to this day, there are others who mistake it for condescension.
So one could argue that modeling myself on Spock hasn’t always worked out so great for me. But that doesn’t matter — his influence is simply part of who I am, and part of his example was learning to accept who you are even when you don’t fit in or are misunderstood. His example of logical, educated thought and scientific curiosity has guided me throughout my life, enriching my understanding of the world and helping me keep learning, questioning, and thinking. The principles of peace and diversity he embodied have shaped my values and helped me feel more empathy and connection to others.
This is the legacy that Leonard Nimoy has left us. He took a character that another actor might have treated as a joke or a caricature and brought immense sincerity, thoughtfulness, and sensitivity to his performance, giving Star Trek a weight and meaning it might not have had without him. He always treated his role and his audience with respect, and we were drawn to him in turn, and this was key to making Star Trek such an enduring phenomenon, a universe that felt real and solid and inspired us to believe in a better, smarter future even when the show was at its silliest. And as Star Trek matured and Spock aged, Nimoy made him evolve. After his (and my) epiphany in TMP, he let Spock grow more balanced, more self-assured, more at peace with his logic and his emotion, showing us that there was no real conflict between the two. He showed us that synthesis between opposing views is a better, more rewarding response than opposition — a lesson that we are in desperate need of today. And when Star Trek was reinvented with a new cast, continuity, and attitude, he stayed true to that principle, coming out of retirement to give the new incarnation his blessing, befriend his successor and protege in the role of Spock, and show once again that it’s better to unite than divide.
And to think there was a time when Nimoy almost gave up playing Spock. Hard to imagine now, when he’s been such an integral thread tying the whole franchise together. He was there from the very beginning, he was there for the animated series and the films, he crossed over to The Next Generation, and he carried his character through to the new incarnation and into a new universe. The story of Spock is the story of Star Trek. And for all that his character prized logic over passion, Nimoy has always been its heart.
I’m sad that Nimoy didn’t make it to see the 50th anniversary next year. But I suppose he’s already had his own 50th, since the anniversary of “The Cage” was last year. Still, it won’t be the same without him.
I’m glad, though, that next month will see the release of my new book Rise of the Federation: Uncertain Logic, a novel that focuses heavily on Vulcan civilization and Spock’s grandparents. Spock himself is decades away from being born in the timeframe of the novel, but no one can write about Vulcans without being heavily influenced by Nimoy’s work. I feel it will be a fitting tribute.
I’m crying now. It’s the only logical thing to do.
February 20, 2015
A Cracking good DTI shoutout!
This is neat: The comedy website Cracked routinely does “Photoplasty” contests, challenging their readers to concoct photoshopped sight gags on various themes, and today’s contest was on the theme of TV spinoffs that need to happen. And coming in at #19 was this one, by a contributor going by “annorax”:
http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_1338_35-tv-spinoffs-that-need-to-happen_p35/#19
I couldn’t find any way to embed the image, and I wasn’t sure if I should just copy it, but it’s for a Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations series based on my books, using the first names I came up with for Lucsly and Dulmur, and giving me a “Created by” credit (although I think it would probably be more like “Developed for Television by,” since Ronald D. Moore and Rene Echevarria would probably get the creator credit for the two leads). My thanks to “annorax” for the tribute!
(Of the hypothetical spinoffs in the overall piece, though, the ones I’d most like to see are Turanga Leela, Private Eye and September, followed by The War Doctor and The Black Widow Diaries.)
February 13, 2015
Making a spectacle of myself
It’s finally happened — my vision has deteriorated to the point that I can no longer read easily without glasses. So here’s a “selfie” of me with my new progressive bifocals:
And yes, I need a haircut. Shut up.
I’d been a little concerned about how rapidly my vision was blurring, so I went to the eye doctor associated with the store both to get a new prescription and to make sure there wasn’t anything serious causing the change. The doctor didn’t find any problems beyond normal aging and eye fatigue. Part of the problem was that I’d had my sleep mask too tight, which affected my eye pressure and made it temporarily hard to focus. Which may have contributed to eye fatigue later in the day, I suppose. And maybe it’s not so much that my vision was rapidly getting blurrier as that I was noticing it more and worrying about it more. But apparently all I needed was new glasses, and more care to avoid eye fatigue and dryness.
The progressive lenses cost a lot, but they give me three levels of focus — up close for reading, medium for my computer screen, and distant — and given how much I use my computer, I needed that. Evidently a lot of people who wear normal bifocals need a second pair of glasses just for the computer, and that would’ve been even more expensive. (At the moment, I’m managing well enough seeing the screen without glasses, but it comes and goes, depending on how tired my eyes are, I guess, as well as how fine the print is.)
You know how that one glasses place used to have a slogan promising glasses in an hour? Well, they don’t play that up anymore. I was told my glasses would be ready in an hour, so I went off to have lunch and pick up a few groceries, and when I got back 75 minutes later, they kept me waiting — then told me that they’d stripped a screw trying to remove it from the frames I’d picked out, thus ruining the frames, so they had to get a duplicate from another store, adding another 24 hours to the preparation time. So I had to go home and come back the next day — a pretty long drive, too. I asked if there was a discount or refund for the delay, but apparently the one-hour thing is no longer a guarantee, if it ever was; the best they could manage was to give me a free lens-cleaning kit.
Honestly, I don’t even like these frames that much — I prefer something rounder, but apparently angular is fashionable this year, so this was about the closest I could find. But they look okay in the above picture, I guess. The last time I got new lenses, I was able to save money by reusing my old frames. That wouldn’t have worked this time, since I needed to wear my old glasses to drive home — both times, since the store clerk told me I shouldn’t drive in my bifocals until I’d had time to get used to the shifting focus and distortions they create. (The drawback of no-line, progressive-focus lenses is that there are out-of-focus wedges on the sides of the lower half, a consequence of the construction process, evidently.) So he advised me to wait until the next morning before starting to wear them.
So that’s what I did, although I wore them a bit that night to read in bed. It was kind of weird having different areas of focus in my field of view, but over the day, I learned how to direct my gaze/tilt my head to bring things into focus. But it didn’t really come together until I braved the cold to walk to the local drugstore for a new watch battery. Bad timing that my watch happened to die just when I wasn’t supposed to go driving. I suppose I could’ve driven in my old glasses, but it might confuse my brain to go back and forth, I guess. But I think going for a walk helped me adjust; before long, I seemed to be perceiving the world around me pretty normally and not noticing the distortions, as if my brain were learning to compensate. And the glasses definitely helped me see the tiny screws on the back of my watch; I don’t know if I could’ve changed the battery successfully without them.
The biggest problem I experienced yesterday was that the temples weren’t quite adjusted right; the ends of them were digging into the sides of my head, and the nose pieces were uncomfortable too. But this morning I carefully, delicately bent the temples to a configuration closer to those on my old glasses, and so far they seem more comfortable, with the weight/pressure distributed across more of my head rather than just digging into those two points — and I think it’s shifted some of the weight away from the nose pieces, so hopefully those will be more comfortable too.
Which is good, since it seems I’m going to need to wear glasses most of the time now. I wish there were a better way to restore vision, like some kind of eye drops that would reverse the age-related stiffening of the lenses, make them pliable again and easier to refocus. I know there’s lasik surgery, but that’s probably a lot more expensive than glasses, and it would probably just give you one particular focal length rather than letting you shift focus as needed.
Although the real problem, ultimately, is all this “getting older” nonsense. I still think of myself as 20-something, but my body persists in seeing it differently. I wish I could win it over to my way of thinking.
February 6, 2015
HUB SPACE coming soon!
I’ve now finished up the manuscript for Hub Space, the revised and expanded collection of my Hub stories from Analog, and turned it in to the publisher. In addition to correcting the errors in the original stories, there’s new material within the stories and some bonus items in between, adding about 10 percent to the total length of the work.
Since this is a novella-length e-book exclusive from a small press, apparently the publication process is going to be much faster than I expected. Depending on how long the proofreading takes, it will probably be on sale before the end of February. I’ll be sure to post the ordering info as soon as I have it.
January 27, 2015
You’d think an odometer would be easy to fix…
Last month, I posted about my discovery that my car’s odometer had broken down, and my decision to leave it unrepaired for the nonce rather than go through the hassle of leaving my car in the shop for a few days. In the interim, though, I realized that accurate odometer readings are important for things like insurance and resale value, so I decided to go ahead and see about getting the repair done. The dealer told me they’d have to send the part out to a specialist, meaning I’d have to leave my car with them for at least a couple of days, meaning I’d have to take a long bus ride home. So I checked with my local garage to find out if they could do it, then called the dealer to compare price estimates. Turns out the local place would’ve charged considerably more — but in the process of talking to both places, I learned they had both consulted with the same speedometer specialty shop, the one the dealer would’ve sent the part to. So I decided to talk to the specialists directly and see what they could tell me. It sounded like they had the best handle on the problem, and they offered me the lowest estimate, but the problem was transportation. The shop is about a mile from the nearest bus stop, mostly without sidewalks, and then I’d have to ride the entire length of the bus route just to get downtown and transfer to a bus back home — and then reverse it when the car was ready.
So I’d just about decided to go to the dealer, which is much closer to several bus routes, and let them send the part out to the specialty shop. But they suggested that if I got the shop to order in the part, then I could bring my car in when it was ready and save a few days. Which gave me time to rethink my plan, because it turned out the dealer would’ve charged an extra 90 bucks in labor for the part removal, and I realized that it wasn’t worth 90 bucks just to avoid a mile of walking either way. So I decided I’d take the car directly to the specialists and hopefully get it back within a few days. Once I learned they had the part in, I dropped the car off in the morning, got to the bus stop with plenty of time to spare, and actually rather enjoyed the bus ride because it went places I’ve never been before, including a fair stretch right alongside the Ohio River. I returned home with the hope that I’d be making the reverse trip a day or two later.
But it turned out the bus only went out there a few times a day, so if I got the call later than about 2:45 in the afternoon, I’d have to wait until the next day. And then I discovered it didn’t go out there at all on weekends, so I was disappointed when they were still working on the problem come Friday afternoon. It ended up taking until Monday, five days in all. It turns out that the part they needed to replace was the body control module, the actual computer “brain” of the car. Yup, that’s modern technology — one little function breaks down and the entire computer needs to be replaced. And apparently the car wasn’t designed to permit that kind of replacement, so they had to do some kind of workarounds to get the car and the new brain to recognize each other. They actually had to e-mail the part’s manufacturer over in Europe somewhere to get instructions. (They told me that cars are designed that way since the dealers want you to rely on them for repairs and replacements — but it was the dealer who sent me to these guys!)
Now, as I said in the earlier post, the dealer told me that the car’s onboard computer would still be registering the actual mileage even if it didn’t show on the display — but that was a misdiagnosis, since the problem was with the central module rather than just a sensor. With a whole new control module, the mileage would have to be programmed in from scratch. Fortunately, I don’t drive that often, and I keep pretty good records. So I was able to reconstruct all my driving since the odometer broke down. As I said last time, I knew that had occurred exactly 49 miles after the last time I filled the tank, and I knew the date of that fill-up. So I went through my financial records and receipts to remind myself where I’d spent money since that date, checked my calendar to fill in anywhere else I’d gone, used Google Maps to calculate travel distances, then subtracted 49 miles. That gave me my approximate mileage since the breakdown, to within a few miles’ margin of error. But as it turned out, the reprogramming could only get it within 30 or 40 miles anyway. But that’s like a twentieth of a percent of the car’s total mileage, so I guess it doesn’t matter much, statistically.
So anyway, I finally got the call on Monday afternoon, in time for me to catch the last available bus of the day. I’d told them not to rush it, since I wouldn’t want to come out there and find that it still didn’t work. But the repairman assured me it was ready. What’s more, he even volunteered to pick me up at the bus stop and drive me back to the shop, which I really appreciated given the frigid weather. I wasn’t quite sure what to watch for when I got off the bus, but he soon showed up in my own car; the pickup served two functions, since it was proof that the car was working and the odometer registering again.
So I drove us back to the shop and paid my bill, which was exactly equal to his estimate (well, plus tax). It seemed we were all done — but then I found that the car wouldn’t respond to my key-fob remote anymore. So the repairman had me follow his car over to a nearby GM dealership whose repair guy had helped him with some of the programming, and got the guy to do some sort of handshake or reset to fix the problem in a couple of minutes, for no extra charge. Then I went and got some much-needed groceries (I’d picked up a few essentials on foot over the weekend, but I needed more), filled the tank again, and drove home, with the car performing fine. I wanted to fill up right after so I could reset the trip odometer and resume my gas-mileage calculations fresh.
I had been wondering why the shop had such a remote, pedestrian-unfriendly location, given that people would occasionally need to drop their cars off and find alternate transport home. But now that I’ve gotten a sense of the collaboration among different mechanics, the way they consult with each other and help each other out, I guess it makes sense that you’d want to locate an auto-repair business close to other auto specialists and dealers.
All in all, I spent a fair amount of money on this, but I’m confident that I chose both the least expensive and the best option available (two things that don’t often go together). If I’d taken it anywhere else, I would’ve spent more and might’ve been without my car even longer, given the evident trickiness of the repair. And really, if the problem was with the central computer, maybe it’s a good thing I went ahead and did this. If that function of the control chip had broken down, who knows what else might’ve failed soon?
January 16, 2015
Announcing HUB SPACE: The Hub meets the Crossroad
I’m pleased to announce that I’ve just signed with Crossroad Press to release an e-book compilation of my three “Hub” stories to date, “The Hub of the Matter,” “Home is Where the Hub Is,” and “Make Hub, Not War.” Things are still preliminary, but unless I come up with something better, the title of the collection will be Hub Space: Tales from the Greater Galaxy.
It’s always been my hope to do enough Hub stories to collect into a novel-length fixup. But the rise of e-publishing gives me another option that doesn’t require waiting so long, since it’s opened a market for novella-length publications, a market that didn’t really exist in print. The first three stories form a loose arc of their own, so it makes sense to collect them and get them back into print, so that if I sell more stories in the future, it’ll be easier for new readers to track down the first three.
Also, this gives me a chance to revise the stories. The first two were published with errors — somehow the final corrections for the first story got lost in the mail, and somehow I got the name of a major character’s species wrong in the second. So this is my chance to finally get the corrected versions of the stories into print — another reason I decided to act now rather than waiting years more to accumulate a novel’s worth of stories. Not only that, but I’m expanding the stories a bit, adding new material here and there to flesh out the characters and their environment. I went for brevity in the original novelettes, but here I have room to breathe a little more. So readers who own the original Analog issues will still get something extra if they buy the collection.
I don’t yet have information on the publication date or the price, but I’ll report that as it becomes available. No cover art yet either, but here’s the illustration from the Russian reprint of “The Hub of the Matter” again, just because it’s cool:
Art by Vladimir Bondar
