Chelsea Gaither's Blog, page 74

Book Bitch: Mission Earth 1 and Prophesy

Alright, first up:




Both Starbleached and Silver Bullet are free until tomorrow. The code for Silver Bullet is EE66Z and the code for Starbleached is ST83W . Make me feel happy today and pick up a copy. (Also Blue Ghosts, the lil' book for next month, picks up where Silver Bullet left off. So you just might wanna, ya know?)





NEXT! We are mixing things up today. Because I am doing my first indie book review! AND! I'm going to continue going through Mission Earth, because the sooner I am done the sooner I can do something else. So the next point on our itinerary today is INDIE BOOK REVIEW!!! YAY! Some poor brave soul offered up their book to my bitchery. And it was a pretty decent book too:


Book: Prophesy (Ghost Wars Saga)
Author: Justin Wilkerson

The good: Think Honor Harrington with the Belgariad thrown in for spice. All the space-war porn you can stomach, the story follows the newly crowned king Cuzak and his traitor brother while they battle it out for the crown of Specter.

Also? They're ghosts. No, like literally. Ghosts. The premise is intriguing, the plot is fast paced (with the exception of an info-dumping Princess Bride style prologue that could easily go bye-bye) and there's a couple concepts (such as the ghosts getting two consecutive lives. They totally get a Mulligan, guys) that are pretty damn cool.

The bad: Okay, I'm not going to go ape on spelling and grammar. It's an indie book. Most of us are on our own because, guys? Freelance Editors cost a lot of money and (more importantly) most of 'em are full of shit. There's a few good ones that I know of, but the first (and last) time I ever paid for editing, he made my book read like it was written by William Shatner. Suffice to say the book has a few issues and leave it at that.

More problematic are the names of people, locations and fauna. It is established early on that 1. this is an alien race that live for thousands of years. They have ducks. They have a King Rembrandt. They call Mars "Mars". I think the issue is with the prologue. It goes so far out of its way to establish the alien nature of this race that having names I recognize gives me whiplash. I have the biggest issue with the Scottish surname of a VERY major character. I just don't buy that the Scottish naming rules would evolve in a culture that 1. doesn't share the language, the culture, or the baggage and 2. is implied by that oh-so-problematic prologue to be at least several hundred, if not a thousand, years in the past.

The bitch: My reaction to this book was a little on the meh side. You know how I said it was like Honor Harrington? It is VERY like Honor Harrington. Like I had the thought process hey, I understand this because it has appeared in every Honorverse book ever, I wonder if the author knows this? pretty frequently. And sadly, the constant reminders of Honorverse did not exactly come off well for this book. Unlike Honor, though, we're not given a lot of time early in the book to get to like the characters. We don't get to see the brothers interact before they split off, we don't get to see what frustrates the King(s) or Queen(s). We're thrown straight into war-porn, which is alright if that's your thing, but it ain't quite mine.

All that said, I LOVE the concept of ghost-world. When Mars was thrown into the mix I literally thought OMG WE WILL HAVE THE GHOSTS OF MARS. I don't think I can in all honesty say CHECK THIS BOOK OUT IT IS AWESOME, but I can say that if Honorverse and hard-core sf warfare is your thing, Prophesy might be one hell of a fun time-sink.

It sure as fucking hell is better than Mission Earth.

Oh fuck, that means I have to go back into Mission Earth, doesn't it? FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUK!!!!

(PS. if you have an indie book you want me to review, or you are an indie writer, post suggestions over here and I will get to it eventually.)

BOOK BITCH MISSION EARTH JESUS CHRIST THIS BOOK SUCKS.

I'm not even going to fucking bother numbering the chapters anymore. Between the "parts" and the fact that the chapters are often two or three pages long (NOT NEARLY ENOUGH, RON) I don't think you or I or anyone cares enough to give a fuck.

Next chapter:

Lombar Hisst and Soltan Gris are watching "the freak parade" through one way glass. Ajustable one way glass. I guess this was high SF back in 1984. Apparently the CIA (Coordinated Intelligance Apparatus. Remember, kids, this is SATIRE) takes criminals and turns them into circus freaks. Either figuratively--via implied torture training to make them fancy juggliers (crusty jugglers /Hot Fuzz flashback) or literally, through cellular manipulation. Selling these is one way they get money. God, Voltan must SUCK for grants. Haven't they heard of crowd funding? Anyway...

Dr. Crobe does the cellular manipulation. He is a greasy cardboard cutout Hubbardesque villian and He Will Get His. The trainer, however, is the Countess Krak. She carries a whip, and we are all going to pretend that her name is a reference to that, and not her ass, k? The Countess Krak is a terrible human being, Soltan Gris assures us. She trained children to rob banks via unknown methods that Soltan Gris knows involves torture. He does everything except accuse her of tormenting puppies. And then he points out that she is fucking gorgeous, but if you approach her, you lose a hand.

Also? She's nude except for a coat and a pair of shoes.

Nude female=evil. Evil female=sexualized. Good female=virginal LADY of perfection. L. Ron Hubbard, ladies and gentlemen: paragon of progressive thought.

Lombar wants both Crobe and Krak to train Jettero. However, because Mission Earth must fail, they're to do a shitty job of it. And then this happens:

Lombar turned to the Countess Krak. "And as for you, you perverted whore," he snapped her within an inch of him, "off the high tower you go if you teach this agent one single word, one single trick of espionage!"

1. I totally thought Lombar had broken the Countess in half the first time I read that
2. Again: Ron the progressive feminist I do not think so. And I don't give a fuck that this was written in 1984.
3. Jet seems to be doing a pretty good job at this espionage thing on his own. He's already got Soltan underestimating him, and that's 90% of the job right there.

NEXT. CHAPTER.

Soltan Gris goes back to Spiteos and discovers Jettero and the evil murder evil evil guards sitting together drinking Perrier and eating junk food. Jett, ladies and gents, has tamed his guards. JET HAS TAMED THE EVIL CRIMINAL GUARDS TO BRING HIM PERRIER AND SWEET ROLLS.

SPACE ELVIS TRIUMPHS AGAIN!

Also, Soltan got a promotion, so he has to buy drinks for everyone in the nearest night club. Remember this. It is an important plot point in the next several chapters.

NEXT CHAPTER

Soltan reminds us that the Countess Krak, that statuesque but evil evil beauty, is evil murder evil evil and they have to introduce Jettero Heller, Space Elvis to her so she can fail at teaching him how to be a spy.

Do you really need me to spell out what happens between these two?

NEXT CHAPTER (yes. Hubbard devoted an entire chapter to WALKING TO AN APPOINTMENT. This truly "bristles with excitement on every page!")

The Countess Krak is whipping her staff. Remember: Nude save for leather coat and shoes, and she is whipping people.
...

Way to let your bondage out, Ron.

HOWEVER, She is abusing her staff because she was sent a...sigh...Lepertige (LEOPARD. TIGER.) to train, and it had been declawed. And she is pissed as hell because DECLAWING CATS IS WRONG (actually, I agree with her on this. How would you like YOUR fingers amputated or paralyzed just because somebody can't keep you off the drapes?) She tells the staff if they ever give her another wounded animal, she will have it kill them. Then they leave and we go from this:

 Straight to this:
 She gets this deadly, wounded wild animal--newly shipped to her, so that it has no reason to trust her whatsoever--to put its maimed and bleeding paw in her hand so she can examine it. Then she orders its claws regrown and tells the scumbags who work for her to leave it the fuck alone.

Oh, my God, guys. We are so very, very, very fucked.

TOMORROW: SPACE ELVIS MEETS THE COUNTESS KRAK!

Book Bitch: Mission Earth 1 part 2 chapter 3-5

Okay, gang, not to be FRUSTRAITINGLY annoying (too late, I know) we interrupt this bitch-fest with a blatantly self-serving plug:



Starbleached my own adventures in sci-fi, is still free. It STOPS being free on Monday. So today and Sunday you guys are going to see this plug. Because I'm a bitch. Coupon for free book is ST83W.

(P.S. You guys gave me the most AWESOME BLOG DAY EVER yesterday. And because you did, and because you are TOTALLY COOL, I'm going to bump things up to awesome today. Silver Bullet is ALSO going to be free until the tenth. Yes, I know some of you already have it, and paid for it, and I am kind of sorry that I don't know how to make it more awesome for you. I'll think of something between now and the tenth. Silver Bullet coupon code is EE66Z. It is also good only until the tenth. CELEBRATE WITH ME YOU GUYS ARE SO COOL!)

Okay, back to El-Ron. When we last left our villians...

Earth Doesn't exist, Robots can't (bleeping) swear, Jettero Heller is Space Elvis, Lombar Hisst needs to die, Soltan Gris is an unreliable omnescient narrator, Earth is in trouble! And SPACE ELVIS must do his terrible duty and help us be Rescued From Ourselves.

And we've finally hit the part of the book where FUCK ALL happens for three hundred fucking pages.

First, Jettero politely asks to have his things back. Naturally the guards in Hell Prison have gambled off Jesus's Jettero's clothes, and the guard Soltan bribes has to fight to get them back. He gets irritated at the amount of money he's paid, however, and tries to kill Soltan. Hubbard brings out his patented paragraph butchery...

I raised my blastick to kill him.

Abrubtly my blastick was spinning!

Yeah. Jettero beats the guard up after about five more of these, gets his stuff back, and we go on to chapter four.

After Hubbard's attempts at in character whaffling (Remember: they are letting Jettero out of Hell Prison if he agrees to do this. This is like what happens when someone asks if you're a god. You say yes. You always say yes.) Jett agrees to return to Earth and preform the mission. They leave the cell, and the guard Jett beat up salutes him on the way out. Because Jett is SPACE ELVIS and can redeem dangerous criminals in leaps and bounds.

Then he proves he's a freaking genious by 1. discerning his location by the time on his watch, and 2. discerning how deep he is by visually identifying minor geological variations. 

Soltan bemoans his fate. God, the man is just too honest to be a good spy. And like Bella Swan wanting to be a vampire, this moaning will just fucking continue through the rest of the fucking book.

Next chapter.


Soltan goes to Fleet Administration Complex, which looks like a bunch of space ships, because the guys who work in them spend all the rest of their time in space ships, I guess, and he goes to get Jett transfered to the CIA. But they can't do it, because apparently you need form B12 and the princess is in another castle. I am seriously expecting Soltan to have to treck through half the complex to get Jet on his team, but even Hubbard thought that'd be asking too much of his audience. In the end, he gets the orders and goes to pick up Jettero's baggage, and something beautiful happens. Something that makes this whole ordeal so much worth it:

Jettero's friends beat the crap out of the narrator. 

Trust me, at this point you are so fucking sick of Soltan's self-abasing, I-am-such-an-asshole and JETTERO HELLER IS SPACE ELVIS routine that this is the best fucking scene in the entire book. It is like when Bella DIES in Breaking Dawn. You know the author is going to fuck this up somehow, like by bringing them back to life, but it doesn't matter. It is happening right now. I am like, totally happy at this point. My life is filled with sunshine and rainbows, and I want nothing more than for this to continue for three hundred pages.

Sadly, it does not. Instead, we go to Jettero's room, and then...

Hey, you ever watched a man kiss his own ass before? Because that's kind of what happens next. Remember, Soltan is totally Hubbard's subconsious. Unintentional, but if you know ANYTHING about the man, anything at all? This is him. Jet is his Mary Sue (and I don't mean his wife). This is who he wants to be. So we enter Jet's room and Soltan starts looking for some character flaw. He doesn't find one. Instead he finds...

-An exquistely expensive room done up as a gift by people Jet rescued from certain death, thus letting him live in luxury without the stain of actually having material wealth

-A uniform so covered in decorations you can barely find a damn square of fabric, all of them life-threatening. Only he has more and never wears them. He's not a glory hound, people

-A photo of a beautiful woman who is, wait for it...seriously, it gets better....Jettero's famous movie star sister (and not the sex kitten Soltan was hoping) (The concept of incest is, of course, never mentioned) (Because, you know, no WAY a military guy has a SMOKING HOT GIRL on his wall and he isn't fapping to her) (Just sayin')

And it just. fucking. goes. on. Jet is perfect. Do you get it? JET IS PERFECT. This whole chapter could have been accomplished by the flashing words "JETTERO HELLER IS A SAINT AND YOU WILL NEVER BE HIM" over and over and over again.


And then the chapter is over. Oh, thank bleeding God. It's over.

But it gets better, guys and girls! Come back tomorrow, and watch fuck-all happen again!

Book Bitch: Mission Earth 1 chapters 9-

So when we last left Hubbard's self inserts our villians:

The censors told us Earth doesn't exist, the robots told us we can't swear, Hubbard told us this is SATIRE, ladies and gents, Soltan Gris works for the C.I.A., Lombar Gris kidnapped Space Elvis and Earth is of critical importance to Voltan, the place that just told us it doesn't exist!

And without further ado, we get to read a fucking eternity of pages before we get to find out what this all is about!

Technically this is not chapter 9. No. This is chapter 1 of part two. Because this book needs to have parts. Shoot me,God. (my own pointless excercise in Tables of Content notwithstanding)

So in Chapter One the Second, Soltan Gris gets called to Lombar's office. And--oh noes!--Lombar is being nice to people. This, my dear friends, is always bad. But first something happens. Something not very important in terms of story, but something very, very important to the book. As in it swivels around and shoots the book in the face:

"Have a chank-pop," he said...he shoved the box towards me urgently and I managed to reach out and take a chank-pop and somehow get the top off. The lovely scent made a gentle explosion across my face, cooling it, waking me up. 

It's not important now, but remember that sequence of events. Also, that Lombar, Soltan, Jettero and EVERY OTHER FUCKING CHARACTER becomes drunk frequently. You're going to scream at this book once the payoff hits home.

So Lombar gives the whole operation to insert an agent into Earth (Remember, we must be Rescued From Ourselves) over to Soltan. Who wisely shits himself and says its a bad idea. Lombar listens to his every protest, then says:

"Have another chank-pop."

And after Soltan has been drugged into joy, Lombar reveals two things:

1. The special agent will be none other than Space Elvis himself, Jettero Heller, AND

2. Mission Earth must fail.

So basically, we've got the dumbest set of morons in the fucking universe set against the Do Gooder of all Do-Gooders, and you know they're going to fail harder than a stoned skateboarder grinding his first rail. At this point, I am wishing to God that Jettero was our narrator. And in reality, that would totally have fixed this book. Instead...

*sigh*

So chapter ten. They go down into Spiteos, the prison so bad even the guards will rob 'ya, to try to convince the guy they kidnapped to work for them. Let me tell you what I would say under these circumstances:

"Sure."

Would I mean it? No. Would I book for the hills the second their back was turned? Yes. Do you think someone as good and honorable and Space Elvis-y as Jettero is going to manipulate these bozos like a magnet with iron fillings? You bet your ass he will.

Jettero is being kept in a cell with no furnishings or food, with handcuffs that give him continual electrical shocks.

It is implied there are more than one set of these.

The electric bills must be through the fucking roof is all I'll say.

Soltan sees the inhumanity of this--after all, he's got to get the guy on his side--and Lombar pulls the old, "This was a test to see if you are worthy to join us" routine out of the hat, which would work if it weren't already established that 1. only the wash-outs join the Voltarian CIA and 2. mayonnase is overqualified for the job by means of its intelligance. Soltan goes back inside and...

*sigh*

Jettero Heller starts trying to save Soltan. From himself. Using methods that would make a Jehova's Wittness go "Dude, it's called subtlty" And Soltan can't resist laying it on thick:

He really wasn't thinking about himself. He wasn't thinking about the pain of electric cuffs or hunger or thirst. He actually felt sad that another being could sink as low as I. His question had nothing to do with himself at all. Only me!

And this would have worked if we were in Jettero's fucking head to begin with. Or if Hubbard had shown us this rather than forcing it down our throats with a pallate knife.

Moving on.

Soltan asks a bunch of questions to pretend they're actively recruiting Jettero--for a job mayonnaise could do, remind--and then asks one real one:

"Why did you let the other player win?"

Jett replies that the other player's sweetheart was in the stand, and he would have been shamed if he'd lost, Annnnnnd this is when Jettero's selfless hero persona goes out the fucking window. I was going to rant on it before and I am damn well going to bring it up now.  The other player lost. Obviously lost. As in he had no ammo left and had literally fallen to his knees in surrender. Jettero deliberately disqualified himself in a way that made it obvious he was disqualifying himself so the other player, who had stopped playing, would win by default.

That's fucking humilation no matter how you square it. If Jettero were truely the character Hubbard's trying to force down our throats, he would have thrown the game in a way that would make it look like he'd lost legitimately, rather than this "Oh, look how good I am at sports, how sportsman-like I am at letting this other player win. Look at me! Look at me!" shit that he pulled in the ring.

Soltan bemoans this fatal character flaw of compassion. Jettero will never be a good spy! But Lombar wants him. He's DOOMED!

And we're done. Tomorrow: fuck-all happens. Also, Hubbard kisses his own ass!

(Remember kids, Starbleached is free until the 10th, so go pick up your copy while you've got a chance. Coupon code is ST83W . Go get it.)

Book Bitch: Mission Earth chapter 6-8

Have I mentioned how much I hate the names in this book? I hate them. Passion and fire of ten thousand suns, I hate them. This is purely my own taste this time, as the names in Hitchhiker's Guide also made me want to pummel something. Lombar Hisst, Soltan Gris, Jettero Heller. It's like he named things by reaching into a bag of scrabble tiles.

Anyway...So far we've heard from the Author, a Censor, a translator that also censors, Soltan Gris is an unreliable narrator, his boss should be removed from office for the good of Voltan, a space ship was kidnapped, Jettero Heller is Space-Elvis, and there is a crisis involving Earth. Moving on...


Chapter Six opens with Lombar Hisst repeatedly shitting himself while he talks to a member of their council who is both old and gay.

Hubbard, being the upstanding paragon of virtue we all know him to be, does not say that Endow is both old and gay. No. Endow is short, fat, and so very very old he has drool running down his chin. As for the gay part...

Endow's appetite for pretty young men was notorious and he was generally regarded with disgust and contempt. 

We aren't exactly being progressive here, is what I'm saying. And it's entirely possible that "young" here means "under the age of consent" but given that Endow is ancient, young to him would be about forty.

Lombar bullies Endow into taking them to the next council meeting, which is in the imaginatively named Palace City, which is constructed on top of a black hole.

Constructed. On top. Of a Black. Hole.

Apparently the time dilation effect of being so close to a black hole means that the city is thirteen minutes into the future, which I thought was cool until I remembered that time dilation probably doesn't work that way (Re: that Stargate episode where they gate in while a star is going supernova and wind up strapped up to a black hole and wind up several months out of synch with the rest of the world) Also, somehow this thing that is so dense light cannot escape, let alone anything else, provides the city with a ton of thermonuclear energy and will, someday, go "boom". Which is why the city is so far from any other city.

Dude? If I were on a planet with a black hole in it, I would want to be anywhere other than that planet.

Also, the black hole is small. Um...how do you measure something that will suck your tools in like an industrial vacuum's fantasy?

Moving on...Soltan almost dies in a car accident shifting through time, and we were almost spared the rest of this book (at least with this narrator) and then they get to the council.

And then Chapter Seven happens.

So the source of this crisis is, the Voltarian Empire has an invasion timetable. Not only are they invading and conquering other planets, they have to do it on schedule. As in their ancestors from time unimaginable drew up a list of planets to defeat and gave it to their kids with the warning, "Don't skip around." And this is damn near worshiped by the Voltarian Council because...it is a thing, I guess. And Earth is a few planets down the list, and nobody's been there  for a few generations because Soltan Gris has been editing everything and making it look like somebody's been there. But like everything else, he's not very good at editing planet reports, and somebody's figured it out and sent Jettero Heller, Space Elvis, to investigate. And Jettero Heller made his observations without coming to any conclusions, because Space Elvis never jumps the gun and makes his own conclusions, thus allowing the Council itself to come to a decision reguarding that report, which is this:

Earth is wrecking its own ecosystem and will destroy its usefulness to the Voltarians, and so we puny humans must be Rescued From Ourselves.

Yes, boys and girls. This whole book series will be about us being Rescued From Ourselves by Space Elvis, as observed by his manager.

Also there is much bitching because we burn petrolium and also have thermonuclear weapons, which makes no sense to the people on the council. Because it much be established that We Are That Primitive and must be Rescued From Ourselves.

Now, it's being hinted at, heavily, that Lombar and Soltan have their own plans for Earth, therefore us being Rescued From Ourselves is a bad thing, for them, because it would upset their plans. So Lombar proposes via Endow that they infiltrate an agent into Earth society who will slowly and carefully tune us back to the One Right Path...thus making it safe for the aliens to invade us in another couple centuries. The council agrees, and Soltan spends a few minutes doing Hubbard's brand of Happy Happy, Joy Joy, before this happens:

I didn't at all anticipate, when we left that glittering hall, that within twenty four hours I would be in a pit of blackest dispair.

Yeah. And here's hoping Lombar manages to lose the key. 

Indie Book Review Suggestion Page

So I've decided to do independant and/or Self Published book reviews. Why? Well, one, that's the kind of house I live in, and two...because reviewing books is what I do.

So if you have a book you'd like me to review, let me know here. And please include information on how I can get my hands on a copy of it to read. I actually prefer e-books, as those are easier (and cheaper) to get than good old-fashioned paper books.

Yeah, not a big, earth-shattering post. Yet. We'll see in the future how things go.

Book Bitch: Mission Earth 1 chapter 4-5

The problem with reading a book this old, with this history (namely, being written by a man whose publisher worshiped him as an oracle of Universal Truth) means I can't tell if my issues are differing writing styles, lack of an editor, or just Hubbard himself. Example? Example:

The officer's club was a brilliant blare of light and sound. It was a high roofed series of buildings--dining rooms, bars, accomodations for single officers and an enclosed sports arena. It was built to house around forty thousand. It stood in an inset valley, backed by towering mountain peaks. 

In other words, pronoun abuse abounds in this book. And it gets annoying. Fast. Now, I am far from perfect, ( far, far from perfect) but I kind of like to think that "It, It, It" and "He, He, He" are kind of obviously annoying. It ain't poetry, is what I'm saying.

So to recap, LRH is like, totally writing SATIRE you guys, Soltan Gris is an agent of the Cooperative Intelligance Apparatus, which is totally the CIA, Lombar Hisst belongs six billion miles away from any kind of secret agency, there is a crisis involving Earth, which totally doesn't exist, a bunch of Fleet Officers get kidnapped for some reason, and robot censors bleep out words because you couldn't say "fuck" back in 1985.  Moving on.

Anyway, we're in Chapter three. Now, when we last left our heroes LRH's Self Inserts cardboard villian cut outs  bad guys, they were going to kidnap that (bleep) (bleep) (bleep) Jettero Heller! Whom we haven't met yet. But we are about to, and OH MY GOD, kids, you are not ready for this. You are so far from being ready for this.

Lombar Hisst and the Death Battalion (Dibs on the band name) sneak into a sports arena, where a game of bullet ball is in progress. It's dodge ball with painted, hard and painful balls. Soltan Gris waxes eloquent about something that is, well, not exactly worth eloquence, and then finishes with this:

I never cared for bullet ball myself, even if they would ever let me play.

There's three players on the field, and the nearest impresses the shit out of the crowd and Soltan Gris. So naturally, this is Jettero Heller. And in his introduction he:

-Proves to be majestically handsome in every imaginable way
-Proves to be the best at sports, or at least at Spaceballs.
-Proves to be honorable in every possible way by first providing a nearly-defeated opponant with ammo, then by throwing the game obviously and on purpose when it's REALLY obvious he just won the game. As in, if this were a battlefield his opponant just knelt for a beheading and Jettero just fell on his own sword instead.
-Is INSANELY popular with the ladies
 -Proves his utter goodness by having both Soltan and Lombar hate him immediately.

In short, he is Better Than You.  Yes, my loving blog-readers, having accidentally given us his subconsious as a narrator, Hubbard has just presented us with a true, honest-to-god, newly minted Gary Stu of his own beautiful creation.

Soltan realizes that he is shit out of luck, because he's basically kidnapping the military version of Elvis, but it's too late now. Lombar rushes on into Chapter Five.

One of their spies brings Jettero into the room, and naturally this top notch spy fucks up both his walk and his uniform, and Jettero correctly interpretes this as a kidnapping attempt and explodes into action. And we come to my biggest pet peeve with Hubbard's writing style: his fucking one-sentence action paragraphs.

 Heller gave no advance warning. He didn't stop and stare or look down at the envelope he held...he didn't even change his smile.

He exploded!

So quick I couldn't follow it, both of Heller's feet were in the air and striking!

The bogus orderly hit the pavement like a shot down plane.

Heller leaped at him, ready to seize the imposter.

I swear to fucking God I can forgive an awful lot from the guy, including the misogyny and Plot-That-Will-Not-Move, but I get to these "paragraphs and I want to fucking kill something. That is ONE perfectly servicible paragraph butchered to pad the page-count of something that is already a fucking brick. The Third Little Pig could build his house out of the Mission Earth series, and the Big Bad Wolf would be repelled out of utter boredom.

So Jettero puts up the good fight, sentence by paragraph-less fucking sentence, and Lombar finally knocks him out cold. He is whisked off to Spiteos, their uber-ugly dark dungeon where no one will ever find him, and Lombar, berating his underling for not taking care of something said underling still has no fucking clue about, they go off to find "the original report". Unfortunately Operation Snow White their search for the report turns up nothing. And finally Soltan asks, very meekly, what the bleeding bloody fuck all this was about. And Lombar explains:

"They'll read that report!...Two years ago I told you to be alert and to block and change every report the Patrol Service turned in on Blito-P3. Earth, you idiot, Earth!  ...you let one get through! You have threatened our timetable! To hell with theirs!"

And Soltan realizes that his boss is right, and promptly shits himself. Our hero, the narrator is not. 

Tomorrow: We find out WTF all this is about. Sort of.

(And Starbleached is still free until 9/9. Coupon Code is ST83W . /obligatory self promotion)

Book Bitch: CW reads Mission Earth

Okay, I decided: Mission Earth it is.

I decided this for two reasons: One, Hubbard can write. (But he can't edit /Regina Spektor) so this isn't going to be intensely painful. And two...did you really think I was gonna pass up a chance to tear into something tangientlly related to the worst movie ever made?

Mission Earth is an "issue" book. Like all of Ayn Rand's fiction, Goodkind's "Sword of Truth" series, the Left Behind series, and the one Harlan Ellison story I ever read ("Repent, Harliquen, said the Tick-Tock Man", my GOD I will never look at Jellybeans the same way again) Mission Earth was written to address A Dreadful Thing. Problem is, Hubbard's issue is A Dreadful Thing only if you follow L. Ron Hubbard's philosophy and religion. And if you do, more power to you, it's a free country.

If you don't think LRH was space-God, though, Mission Earth is page after page of beautiful, beautiful WTF.

Another, bigger problem with the book is it's publisher, Bridge Publications. They exist to do one thing and one thing only: keep L. Ron Hubbard's books in print. They do not publish anything that does not have his name on it.  Now, I'm not saying that Hubbard was a god-awful writer. Quite the opposite, actually. He did a pretty good job from what I've read. But he needed an Editor. And if your version of a Prophet hands you a book to print, are you going to edit it properly? I do not think so. The beginning? Is good (ish). The ending? Good. The middle? You could hang chapters on a dart board to pick which ones you keep.

(Also I have it on really good authority that 1. Hubbard wrote all ten books in one go, and then told BP to break this big chunk of writing into more book-looking things, and 2. He died before they got further than printing book two)

I plan on doing the rest of this book chapter by chapter, but this first time, I'm going until I hit the actual part of the book.

We start with a long authors note about satire. Did I say satire? I meant SATIRE:

However, there is another aspect to science fiction: by its nature most of it has an element of satire. It has been used by such notables as Mark Twain, Johannes Kepler, Samuel Butler, Jules Vern and Sir Thomas More. This becomes more obvious when the history of satire is examined and compared with science fiction. 

So when he starts criticizing actual elements of the actual world, kids, don't worry. It's Satire.  Just in case we don't get this, he gives us the entire history of the world (And remember, this book is, according to Dow Jones, "bristling with excitement on every page") for the next four pages. So just in case we missed it, guys and girls, THIS BOOK IS SATIRE.

The next chapter is...a foreward from the Voltarian Censor. This assures us that Earth doesn't exist, the book we are reading is fictional, and yes, sure, some of the characters are real but that doesn't mean anything. Okay, I get it. Moving on.

...no, we're still going with this? Emperor this did this, psychiatry and psychology are bad (thanks Ron) "Drugs" don't exist, and THERE IS NO PLANET EARTH.

Thank you! Moving. On.

And the next chapter is from the Voltarian translator. Oh for fuck's sake, Ron. I came here to read a freaking book. Not to have your translataphone explain how words and phrases in Voltarian have different meanings in English. Especially not when your Censor just went apeshit telling us THERE IS NO EARTH.

Also, the translataphone is censoring the cuss words.

Censoring the cuss words in a book published in 1985.

1985, people. For the sake of argument, I looked up Stephen King’s bibliography, and I discovered that Carrie was published in ’74, and IT, in 86. Between these years we have, in reverse chronological order, Thinner, Pet Cematary (the book KING didn’t want published because it was too vile) Christine, The Stand, Rage (The book that KING decided should never be printed ever again) and The Shining. All of which, if I remember correctly, contained the word “fuck”. And in this book? Where “fuck” is very very obviously the word used? “Bleep” is employed. There are sentences like “That bleeping bleep,” and “They bleeped all night”. Ron, I got over the urge to black out offensive words with a sharpie when I was thirteen. Would it kill you to grow up a little?

MOVING! ON!

CHAPTER ONE! YES! FINALLY! WE MADE IT TO CHAPTER ONE!

And ...it's a letter from our main character, L Ron Hubbard Soltan Gris, explaining why he's about to write the book we're about to read.

Yes, people. We have to wade through an Author's Note, a Censor's Note, a Robot Translator's Note (OMG RANDOM THOUGHT? Would this book not be awesome if someone ran it through Babelfish a few times?)  and a note from the goddamned main character before we get to anything remotely resembling  a story. 

Now some stuff is explained, but it will all get explained again later on in the book. So I'm skipping chapter one and going straight on into chapter two.

Soltan Gris gets summoned by his boss, Lombar Hisst, thus canceling a vacation. Soltan Gris is an agent  for the (cough) Coordinated Information Apparatus. The C.I.A. See it. Touch it. Kiss it. Kiss it. (/Producers) SATIRE!  It's fucking SATIRE, ladies and gents! And he is the agent in charge of Earth. See, the Voltarians are a conquering empire that Alexander the Great would have wet dreams about. They've got a freaking schedule for when they invade a planet or not. Earth is on this list, apparently, but very very very far down. Soltan's job is to...uh...study us? 

Anyway, Soltan gets to Lombar's office and is physically assaulted by his boss. Because his boss is the bad guy. He has A Paper. Do we get to find out what this paper is? No. Because Lombar's hissyfit is more important than actually making sure his underlings know what's going on with their fucking jobs. They head out, Soltan not knowing what the hell is going on, and drive to...

(Chapter three)

...a space port! Where they track down "the ship that made the Earth run!" Where he tells his men to do something with the ship involving hiding, and then asks Soltan why he can't take care of these things, "You (bleep)!"

One: It's either shit or bitch. I can't figure out which one. Two: because he still doesn't have the first clue what's going on, and neither do we.

Then they take a few steps back, grab an assassin (Oh, I'm sorry. Knife Section) in a stolen Fleet uniform, hand him fake orders for the ship they're hijacking, and then sit back to watch the show. The ship takes off, and Lombar chortles:

 "Soon they'll all be safe in Spiteos, and (the ship) will be found in a day or two, burned to a crisp in the Great Desert...now we're going over to the officer's club and pick up that (bleep), (bleep), (bleep) Jettero Heller!"

Yeah, I think he's just shoving "Bleeps" into a shot gun and pointing them at his word processor at this point. 

And that's all I can take for the day. Tomorrow! We get to watch the most naive war hero in HISTORY get kidnapped by the dumbest fucking people on Earth Voltar! Stay tuned!

(PS: Starbleached is still free until the 9th. Coupon is ST83W . Go get it while you can)

HELP ME PICK A BOOK TO BITCH AT!!!

So I am bored (Okay maybe not so much, but I need a break now and then from writing-writing and I have no better ideas for my blog) and I would like to start bitching about wonderfully terrible books again. Given that I have some time on my hands, and nothing better to do other than write until my fingers fall off, we're going to make the best of the time between new story updates.

I am going to read stuff. A chapter a day, and blog about it. It's not a new idea, and it won't be exclusively terrible stuff, but it is an idea and it gives me something to do. And I get the idea that me bitching about books is, like, the bestest thing ever to you guys.

You can buy a copy of whatever I'm reading at the time, but you don't have to. And probably won't want to.

And to give you an idea how bad this is going to be? I have three choices.

-The first Mission Earth Book
-A Gor novel (not the first one.)
-Eternal Prey, the most batshit insane Paranormal Romance book I've ever read. Worse than the book about sex with a lake.

You guys will get to help me pick one. If no one replies, I will pick one at random. You have until tomorrow afternoon to help me decide.

Oh yeah, and Starbleached is live and it's free until 9/9. Coupon code is ST83W. Sign up for a Smashwords account and go get the book. /obligatory self pimping.

WHICH BOOK WILL IT BE???

Starbleached is live on Smashwords! AND FREE!!

It is now official! Starbleached is now live!

Most of you will know I've been promising this book for free for the last couple weeks or so, and that I wanted to offer it for free for the weekend of 9/8-9. Well, that plan has changed a bit.

It's free now. Via coupon, of course. And it will be free (via coupon) through the 10th.

Coupon code is ST83W

Go and get it, boys and girls! 

 

To clarify a bit on yesterday's post...

I don't think that educating people about crime will prevent ALL  CRIME. Just as educating people about drunk driving won't prevent idiots from getting behind the wheel three sheets to the wind, telling somebody "stealing is wrong" won't prevent ALL episodes of theft. Telling a potential rapist "rape is wrong" might not keep them from hunting victims.

What I think it would do, however, is shift focus in society--and social responsibility--onto the people who actually have the power to change. If you have power of any sort--be it the power to commit a crime or the power to decide the schedule for your workplace--and you abuse that power, you should face the concequences. A wallet left on a bus station, a woman encountered in a dark alley, these are not invitations. They are temptations to make a big mistake, and the temptation is not, I repeat, not the object's responsibility. It is yours. Your reaction. Your internal drives. Your choice.



And also? Nasty as it might sound, I suspect a lot of crime is the result of entitled ignorance. They want it, and they were never told, firmly, that taking advantage of the opportunity to have it is wrong. It is wrong. It will always be wrong. But as long as culture says taking it is okay under certain circumstances, people will continue to take advantage of those circumstances.

I also don't think that this...whatever it is I'm advocating (look, I don't even know, okay?) would happen right away. It'd be a generational thing, if it worked at all. Not us, maybe not our kids, but our grandkids.

At any rate...I survived the weekend. Hopefully I will not get called in to work tonight, and I will be done with this whole "work" thing for the duration.

Also...as per yesterday's great posting, Starbleached will be released TOMORROW, and the free coupon thing will go into play this weekend. Next Saturday. Next Sunday. FREE BOOKS! Remember this. It is the plan.