Michael Tinker Pearce's Blog, page 3

A Fresh Start– In more ways Than One.

So on July 9th of this year my workshop burned down, and the house sustained severe damage to the two bedrooms. Bit of a monkey wrench in our lives, but we were well-insured, got a rental for the 6 months or so it will take to repair our home and moved on.

Moving on meant several weeks of nearly constant meetings with insurance people, contractors, recovery specialists etc. Writing was pretty much not going to happen.  Now that things have settled down a bit it was time to get back to the sequel to ‘Diaries of a Dwarven Rifleman.’ The problem, I found, was that I didn’t want to.  Not because I didn’t want to finish the sequel, but because I wasn’t happy with the story and couldn’t see how to fix it. I felt that i was getting behind the story and pushing it along, when our best writing occurs when the story flows, drawing us along in it’s wake. After much discussion Linda and I decided that we were trying to tell the wrong story and that, fortunately, is fixable.

That’s a good-news/bad news thing though.  The good news is we identified the problem. The bad news is that the solution involves setting aside sixty-five thousand words of novel and starting over. Yes, we may be able to ‘mine’ some of the material and adapt it to the new story, but the bulk of it will be written ‘from scratch.’   As proof that we are on the right track I have had no problems whatsoever with the reboot. The story is flowing nicely and we’re making rapid progress. Yay!

Basically this reboot starts almost immediately after the events that ended ‘Diaries of a Dwarven Rifleman’ and goes from there. All of your friends from the first book will be making an appearance, and a lot of things that were occurring in the background of the original version of the second novel will be moved to the forefront. Our excitement over the new sequel outweighs our dismay at giving up on over a year of hard work.

Some of the events from the discarded manuscript are going to be broken off to form a new novella; they are important to Engvyr’s story and add to our understanding of Our Hero.

So, we’re very excited with the fresh start and it is going great. The bad part is that this means the sequel will be delayed several more months. The good news is we get to write a story that we- and I believe you- will be pleased with.

I’m Not Saying it’s Aliens… But it’s F***ing Aliens, Man!

Are we alone in the universe? Big question. A very clever fellow named Drake once calculated the odds of intelligent life arising in the universe, and this figure is often quoted as ‘proof’ that alien life exists.  The problem is that the Drake equation is based on assumptions that he (meaning no disrespect) basically pulled out of his ass. In other words he’s totally guessing- that hardly constitutes ‘proof.’

Time and science march on however. We’ve now identified thousands of exoplanets (planets in other solar systems) and we have a much better basis to guess. On the average there appears to be about one planet per solar system that is theoretically capable of supporting life- hugely more than anyone would ever have believed previously, but it is what it is.  This means that there are around two-hundred billion other places in our galaxy alone where life might have emerged. And what is outside of our galaxy? Billions of other galaxies. Even if the odds are vanishingly small that life will emerge that’s still a lot of chances- it would be bound to happen somewhere.

So what are the odds that life would emerge in these environments? We cannot even guess; our sample size is simply too small. Currently it’s a sample of one. That will inevitably expand as time marches on- there are some indications that there may have been life on Mars. A couple of moons here in our own solar system have potential for liquid water- which as far as we know is essential for life. Certainly for life as we know it. But for now we have no rational basis for guessing.

Or do we?

So far we have found life virtually everywhere on earth that we’ve looked. Poisonous, ridiculously hot volcanic sea-floor vents? Life. Solid rock kilometers deep in the ground? Life. In fact there are almost no environments we have encountered on earth where life does not exist in some form. Life is stunningly robust and adaptable, and at a guess if there ever was life on Mars we will eventually find that there still is… but it might be far underground and likely microbial.  I guess we’ll know someday. The problem is that all of this life on earth may have adapted from a common source, so for life to adapt to all of these unlikely environments it had to have existed to begin with– and we’re back to guessing.

I’m guessing that as we expand into space we will find life, of some sort, everywhere that it can theoretically exist, but that guess and a couple of bucks will get you cuppa Joe.

What about intelligent life? Again, we have no way of estimating the odds. Sample size: One. Sure, it seems likely that with the ridiculously large number of potentially life-bearing planets that intelligence would arise elsewhere in the universe, but we don’t know and cannot even make a reasonable guess.

Enrico Fermi said no to intelligent aliens, his argument being that if the galaxy is about ten billion years old, surely in that time someone would have spread out across the cosmos. Shouldn’t we see evidence of them, or at least their stuff? With all that time wouldn’t they have left some observable trace of themselves? After all even with our technology we have already launched two ‘ambassadors’ into interstellar space. If we keep doing this we, even with no more technology than we have already used, could have junk spread across the entire galaxy in about twenty million years. So surely alien races would have left some traces of their presence, right? The fact that we haven’t seen any of this stuff seems to Fermi to be persuasive evidence that there isn’t intelligent life elsewhere in the galaxy. Enrico Fermi- very smart guy. Very accomplished scientist. Totally talking out his ass.

‘But Tinker, how can you- who are after all just some schmuck- say that about a great scientist?’ I hear you cry. To which I respond, “You don’t have to be an expert to know a train-crash when you see one.”  First of all we have made a lot of stuff. I mean, we covered a planet with our stuff, right? So say you took all of our stuff and scattered it randomly across the solar system.  We, with our current technology, would be unlikely to notice it. Because space is BIG. Seriously big. Bigger than you can imagine. Big on a scale that even out biggest stuff is infinitesimally tiny by comparison. Grand Coulee Dam is sub-microscopically tiny on that scale. We could be literally surrounded by evidence of intelligent aliens and never know it.  Then there’s that time thing- humanity has only been around in a state of technology where it would even be possible for us to spot alien junk for less than a hundred years-  with billions of years to play with we could have been visited thousands of times before humanity even existed, and our own natural environmental processes would have done for the evidence before the first proto-human wondered if he could walk upright.

Even really, really big stuff is small on the scale of space. Our galaxy is tens of thousands of light-years across, and it’s only one galaxy among billions spanning an unimaginably large and continuously expanding universe.

Much of science is predicated on things not being ‘special.’ Things in one place work pretty much like things in another place. So far this seems to be true, therefore if life can happen here it can, and almost certainly has, happened elsewhere.  If intelligent life can arise here it can, and almost certainly has, arisen elsewhere. It seems inevitable from that perspective, but we don’t really know and until ET lands and says hello we still won’t know.  Even when ET does do this a lot of people will be convinced it’s a hoax and part of some elaborate conspiracy. Because internet.

So are we alone? We can only guess, but I am guessing we aren’t– and that someday we’ll find out.

Weinerschnitzel? No, Why do you Ask?

How about because your name is ‘Weinerschnitzel?’  The fact is the Weinerschnitzel fast-food restaurant chain has, as far as I can tell, never served weinerschnitzel. We’ll forgive them that. This fast-food chain is common in many parts of the country and people there are likely to find it strange that Linda and I would take a sixty mile odyssey to visit one. The fact is that there are only two of these restaurants remaining in the state, and this is one of the original restaurants, built in and largely unchanged since 1961.  The original banner declaring this to be ‘Der Weinerschnitzel’ has been replaced by the modern chain’s sign, but that’s the biggest cosmetic difference.

Linda grew up eating at the chain, and my family stopped in a time or two over the years, so when she suggested a trip down memory lane– or at least up to Everett, WA.– to visit for lunch I was on board. After a thirty mile freeway journey we found the restaurant quite busy, with a line at the drive-through.  They don’t appear to be in danger of going out of business anytime soon.

Inside the A-Frame building (sheathed in genuine big-bird yellow fiberglass faux shingles) only the extent of the menu and the drive-through attendant’s radio headset tip you off that you haven’t somehow been transported back in time. Well, that and the prices– which in fairness are fairly good by 2015 standards. Chili-cheese dogs cost us $1.99 each, and Chili-cheese fries added another $2.99 to the total.  I found it interesting that the ‘medium’ soft drinks were 50% larger than a ‘Large’ would have been in 1961.

Seating is period- which is to say practically nonexistent.  Three chrome-and red vinyl stools flanked counters on either side and that was it.  So how was the food? Well, that’s a little different than 1961; not unrecognizable but different. For one thing signs advertised that the hot dogs were ‘100% Beef from Black Angus cattle.’ They didn’t specify about the ‘Chili.’ I put chili in quotes because this is not what the modern world means when it says Chili. This is more of a meat sauce than a stew. Tasty, but a whole bowl of it would be kind of weird.

After 54 years they have the proportions down pat; not quite enough chili that you can’t eat it by hand with a single slice of American cheese. I was originally disappointed by the quantity of chili and shredded cheddar provided with the fries, but I should have had faith; in the end it was just enough to get some in every bite without rendering the fries a soggy mess.

There were more exotic offerings on the menu- ‘The Junkyard Dog,’ a hot dog topped with chili-cheese fries and five varieties of fries embellished with bacon, hotter chili or ‘buffalo-style’ but we stuck with the childhood classics.

So how was it? Exactly what you’d expect. I mean we aren’t exactly talking about Haute Cuisine here. Simple, good quality old-fashioned fast food, unpretentious but satisfying. It was successful for us as a bit of nostalgia, but the brisk pace of business during our visit seems a solid indicator that time has not diminished its charms.  I won’t at all mind a thirty-mile drive to repeat the experience… in a year or so. I think it’s charms would rapidly pale if indulged in too often but as an occasional treat? Totally worth it.

If you fancy trying it out yourself you can find them at  5905 Evergreen Way, Everett, WA 98203

Open 9:00 AM – 9:00 PM Daily

Virtual Reality is Virtually Here…

Increasingly we are seeing VR emerging out of Scifi and into the real world. Successful prototypes are being released and new companies are popping up to meet the inevitable demand. But what about Hollywood? Well it seems that they are paying attention as well.

Could we be now looking at the new world from the comforts of our own homes or will this be offered in the theatres where you are given your headset and get to be “in” the movie? Only time will tell where it will all go from here.

New technology is always exciting and Virtual Reality is one more addition to the rapidly expanding experience of being ‘plugged in’. But how will this affect the real world? Will there be unintended consequences from being even more ‘plugged in’ when say we “visit” our friends and relatives online? Will VR keep us so busy that we don’t have time for human contact, will it replace it or will it expand it?

For businesses it could be the next big thing, as brick and mortar offices might no longer be necessary. Why have an address when you can meet in a virtual office and discuss everything you will need?

What about social media? For people like me it would be wonderful as so many of my family and friends are out of state. Phone calls and emails are not really satisfying;. I want to be there!Virtual Reality could give me that opportunity. Of course there probably is a downside, like maybe not getting out of the house much. But I think of all the places I may able to visit because of finances, like Ireland and England and think, “Maybe, just maybe it will be worth it.”

Worth it or not, bane or benefit the only thing that is sure is that we’ll be finding out… and sooner rather than later!

~Linda Pearce

‘Outlawed’ Ammunition

Let me preface this by saying that I am not a fan of our current president. I don’t think he’s doing a great job. But I don’t think he’s the AntiChrist, and I respect the office. I also respect intellectual honesty and accurate information, and am sick of the President getting blamed for everything up to and including the weather.

Currently the internet gun community is all a’buzz because ‘Obama outlawed M855 ammunition!’ I’ve even seen the claim that he did so by Executive Order. He didn’t. The BATF (Bureau of Alchohol, Tobacco and Firearms) did. But don’t believe me- you can read their decision, and their reasoning, here: http://www.atf.gov/sites/default/files/assets/Library/Notices/atf_framework_for_determining_whether_certain_projectiles_are_primarily_intended_for_sporting_purposes.pdf

It is based on the Gun Control Act of 1968 and the 1986 ammendments to that act, and is consistent with previous rulings. Also the BATF is a continuing Bureaucracy, not tied to or necessarily responsive to the sitting administration. As they explain the intent of the original law was to prevent criminals from carrying pistols with ammunition that would penetrate a standard police bullet-proof vest.

What is M855 ammunition? It is a 5.56mm bullet with a steel penetrator section, loaded into a 5.56mm NATO round as commonly used in AR15/M16 series rifles.  Is it really an armor piercing round? Well, that depends on the armor.  AR500/Level III body armor plates- as worn by SWAT Teams and some military persons, will stop it dead. I watched a video where it took somewhere between 60-90 rounds of M855 to weaken the plate enough to achieve two penetrations. You can see that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2TBoP9Aoow

Clearly it is not armor piercing in the sense that it will penetrate this type of body armor.

But that isn’t what most police officers wear.  They wear a ballistic fabric vest which may or may not have a metal plate over their sternum, called a ‘Trauma Plate.’  Being shot while wearing a standard police bullet-proof vest is like getting hit with a ball-peen hammer. The purpose of this plate is not to stop armor-piercing bullets, it is to spread the impact of a hit over a larger area, so that the blunt-trauma wounds from being shot in this critical area will be less severe.

Some Trauma Plates might stop M855, but the rest of the vest, where it is just ballistic fabric? They’ll zip right through it- but then nearly any high-velocity rifle bullet will too.  Most common calibers used in hunting rifles, in fact.  So why single out M855?  Because of gun owners.

Uh… what?

In recent years pistol versions of military style rifles have become popular, based on the AR-15 or AKS platforms. The AR-based weapons will fire M855 ball, and can be concealed.  Mind you these weapons are not small, and many question their utility, but they can be concealed under an overcoat or in a parcel in a way that full-sized rifles or carbines can not.  They are capable of being fitted with high-capacity magazines, and fired rapidly with reasonable accuracy at close range.  In most states they require no special permit to own.

The reason that these weapons exist is because gun owners wanted that compact, legal firepower.  Previously they could only get it by paying a transfer fee to purchase a Short-Barrelled Rifle, adding about $200 to the cost of the weapon. By manufacturing the weapon as a pistol without a conventional shoulder-stock these weapons were legal. So they successfully circumvented the intent of the law, and now it has bitten them on the ass.  They successfully turned a legal rifle cartridge into an illegal pistol cartridge. Well done.

Will the law against this ammunition help prevent criminals from using this ammunition to commit crimes and kill police officers? Probably not. Most criminals don’t carry $1000 legally purchased weapons when they hold up a bank or store. They want something smaller and more concealable, and don’t care if their bullets will pierce armor; they don’t intend to get in a shoot-out with police.  If they want to spend that much money and carry that large a weapon they will probably purchase an illegal fully-automatic weapon.  Much more dramatic, and it is perceived as being more effective.

Then there is the issue of the ammunition itself- there are millions of rounds of this ammunition in circulation, and it is not illegal to possess it, just to sell it commercially. Criminals will have zero trouble laying their hands on it.  Since the sale of this ammunition was never controlled there is no record of who does or doesn’t have it; confiscation would be impossible.

So why is this happening?

One recent trend in AR-based pistols has been to mount an ‘arm brace.’  Theoretically these allow the user to brace the weapon against the users forearm to stabilize it. In reality these are used as a shoulder-stock, and were made as a way of obtaining a short-barrelled rifle without having to pay extra to follow the legal process for buying one.  I suspect the BATF got sick of people getting around the law on technicalities. These ‘arm braces’ have also been delegalized, by the way.

So what’s the point? Gun owners have been circumventing the intent of the law, effectively slapping BATF in the face. Slap someone enough and they’ll slap back.

To reiterate- Obama didn’t do this.  The BATF did, and to some extent we did it to ourselves. I doubt that President Obama even knows what M855 ammunition is. Someone probably had to tell him about this ruling by the BATF. So place the blame where it belongs and go pedal your propaganda somewhere else.

Sure you are Smart- But Science is Smarter

Odds are if you are reading this you are smarter than average. I’m not buttering you up, that’s just the demographic that reads my blog. Likely you are as smart as most scientists. You are an adult human being, perfectly capable of observing the facts and drawing conclusions based on those observations.  So your opinion is just as valuable as a scientist’s opinion, right? Well, no it isn’t, and I’m going to tell you why.

The first reason is called ‘Confirmation Bias.’ What this simply means is that you are more inclined to look for reasons why you are right than you are to try and find out what is true.  Now now, that’s not an insult– it’s just the way we’re wired.  So when an issue comes up you look for information that supports your opinion. You seek the reasons that you are right.  In todays world of the internet you’ll find reasons to believe that you are right, and can bask in the self-satisfied glow of confirmation. Even when you are absolutely, totally wrong.

When when an issue or idea comes up for a scientist they also look for reasons why they are right, just like you. But it’s not enough for them to simply believe that they are right, they need to prove that they are right. So they design an experiment to prove that their idea is correct, carefully trying to eliminate any bias and meticulously document their procedures so that others can repeat their work. They don’t simply look for information that agrees with them. This is qualitatively different than what you, me and the bulk of humanity do.

If in our search for confirmation of our particular biases we encounter data that contradicts our supposition we can simply tell ourselves that it is a bunch of crap, disregard it and continue to believe as we choose. But if a scientist’s experiment contradicts their idea the scientist has two choices. They can either look for a flaw in their experiment that caused an improper result or admit that their idea was incorrect. If the experiment was flawed they can design a new, better experiment and try that. If it wasn’t they shrug and move on. Well OK, maybe they gnash their teeth, tear their hair and rage at an intractable universe before they move on, but they move on.  But scientists are human too; they make mistakes and are just as subject to Confirmation Bias as you are.

So when their idea is confirmed they rush out and crow that they were right, yes? Sometimes, but ideally no. Because scientists know about Confirmation Bias too. So they write a paper and submit it for ‘Peer Review.’  Basically they invite other scientists to prove or disprove their idea.  If you look around on the internet you’ll see the idea floated about ‘scientific conspiracies.’  Obviously the people proclaiming these have never met scientists. Scientists are fiercely competitive, and they like nothing better than proving that they are smarter than other scientists.  One of the ways to do that is to prove them wrong, so when they read another scientist’s paper their Confirmation Bias is to prove  that it is wrong. Particularly if the paper in question disagrees with their own theories.

So when a scientist gets an idea they test it, and if it appears they are right they invite their fiercest critics to nit-pick their work to death. Only after that do the announce their conclusions to the world. Often tentatively.  Last fall Dr.White from NASA reported on his efforts to create and measure small warps in space-time. He said that they had achieved, and I quote, ‘Significant non-negative results.’  Translated into layman-ese that means, “Gosh, it sure looks like we did it, but we’re not ready to throw it to the wolves just yet.’

Why so bashful? Simply put their career is on the line. Pons and Fleischmann thought that they had discovered a new type of nuclear reaction, a form of fusion at room temperature. The University of Utah, eager to claim credit on their behalf announced their results before they could be submitted for peer review.  It turned out that they were wrong and to this day they are still the butt of jokes and the idea of ‘Cold Fusion’ has become so toxic that researchers trying to follow up had to rename the concept ‘Low-Energy Nuclear Reaction.’

There is a site in Turkey where they are digging up the remains of a ten-thousand year old complex of buildings that might be the oldest known city on earth.  I’m a layman; I can look at the data available and say, “Huh. That looks like a city to me- this will change our view of history forever!”  If subsequent discoveries prove that I am wrong I shrug and get on with my life, no harm, no foul. But if the scientists working on that dig announced “We have discovered the oldest city yet found- this will change our view of the history of civilization forever,” and subsequent data proves that they are mistaken their career will be as dead as the residents of that ancient site. Scientists are harsh and unforgiving; they have to be to maintain the integrity of their disciplines.

Scientists are sometimes wrong.  Even when there is an overwhelming consensus in the scientific community there are always dissenting voices– how are we mere laymen to know which is right? By keeping an open mind and practicing our own due diligence.  When we see a dissenting scientific opinion that agrees with our own bias we tend to believe it. Don’t- you may not be able to understand the science, but you can find out if the work was subjected to peer-review and what the results of that review were.  If the work was peer-reviewed you know that it was subjected to minute scrutiny by people that do understand the science and are highly motivated to disprove it.  If it passed muster with them, then chances are they may be on to something. If the work was not peer reviewed you are looking at an opinion that contradicts the best information available and nothing more.

If the work was not peer-reviewed you should also take the classic step of following the money. Was it funded by an individual or industry with a vested interest in the scientific consensus being wrong? If so you are looking at an unreliable source and should view it skeptically. Why should we bother? Because it matters, in real life in the real world.

A lot of people are leery of vaccines, fearing a link to autism. This is mostly based on the opinion of a celebrity that is not qualified to make that connection. Her opinion is likely based on an article published in the Lancet a few years back.  Neither she or whomever she heard about this from practiced due diligence. The study was proven to be incorrect and later retracted by the magazine, and to date there is still no scientific evidence supporting a link between vaccines and autism. If that celebrity had checked her information she would have discovered this. Children have died because of her uninformed opinion.

Essentially you may be smarter than a scientist- but you aren’t smarter than science.  Be as smart as you can, be open minded and practice due diligence. Don’t let Confirmation Bias lead you down the primrose path to disaster.  The world really will be a better place.

 

The War on Knowledge and Reason

This month’s National Geographic arrived yesterday. The feature article? ‘The War on Science.’

This is something that I have increasingly noticed in recent years. The attitude that ‘My ignorance is as good as your education.’  Articles demeaning the value of a college, especially in light of the ridiculously inflating cost of it. Anti-science ‘experts’ whose chief arguments can be defeated without so much as breaking a sweat by anyone with a sixth-grade education.  News organizations inciting acts of terrorism by preying on the willful ignorance and prejudices of their audience.  Arguments agains basic science that boil down to ‘Nuh-uh!’

Everyone is entitled to their opinion. But when that opinion is dictated by narrow-minded denial of the scientific consensus and starts costing lives there’s a problem. People are dying because a celebrity that is barely qualified to manage their own bank account contradicted seventy years of research, performed by people who studied for most of a decade before they were even allowed to do that research.

Mind you I am not saying that experience is inherently inferior to ‘book learning.’ I don’t believe it is, and in fact formal education is often less than useful until it is seasoned by experience in the real world.  But people seem to be convinced that an opinion that is not based on experience is as valid as the opinion of people that have done research that applies rigorous scientific methodology and is backed by years of education– because they are ‘entitled to their opinion.’  They genuinely believe that the thoughts that they pulled out of their ass as valid as science ‘because I think so.’

Science and medicine are no more perfect than any human endeavor. But they are at least based on reason, experiment and observation. The people involved are generally at least trying to discover or verify facts instead of denying them because they just don’t want to believe it.  Evolution deniers claim that “there is no concrete evidence for Evolution’ and people that don’t want to believe in it agree without seeing for themselves if the statement is true. Even a brief internet search will uncover reams of solid evidence for evolution, as well as reports of experimental and observational proof of evolutionary processes at work in the real world in real time, all meticulously documented. “But Evolution is just a theory!” Well I’ve got news for you princess- gravity is ‘just a theory’ but that doesn’t mean you can levitate at will. It is the explanation that fits the observed facts, and most ‘creationist scientists’ can be shot down by anyone that remembers Middle-School Biology.

But what about God? A third-generation translation of a book written in the Iron Age and assembled by a committee in the Migration Era says God created the world and all the creatures in it. No one can ‘prove’ that God didn’t create the world, but they can and have proven that if he did he also created and set evolution in motion.  Because it demonstrably has and continues to operate in the real world.  Do an hour worth of research in a library or on the internet, and if you aren’t convinced it will be because you are determined not to be.

Why do I care about the denial of science and the preference for personal opinion over evidence? Because I am a student of history, and history tells me it is easier to oppress and manipulate a population if they are uneducated. Maybe there is some sort of massive conspiracy to reduce us to ignorance, or maybe we are just doing it to ourselves out of intellectual laziness.  But there is a term for a nation where the population at large is uneducated and are ruled over by a ruthless, wealthy elite. We call them ‘Third World Countries.’  That’s the fate that awaits the US if we don’t pull our heads out of the sand and stop buying into the anti-science/anti education bullshit. It can happen here, and it will if this trend continues.

Book Review- ‘The Paladin’ by C.J.Cherryh

‘The Paladin’ by C.J.Cherryh  http://www.amazon.com/Paladin-C-J-Cherryh/dp/0671318373

Looking for a night in shining armor, a paragon of virtue and flawless character? An untarnished hero who is a beacon of light standing against the darkness? Look somewhere else.

In a nutshell we have the main character, and exiled sword master from a china-like fantasy kingdom. A peasant girl whose family have been casualties of the political strife in his former kingdom comes to him and demands that he train her so that she can revenge herself on the Lord responsible. I don’t think that it’s really a spoiler to tell you that he does so, and that they embark on a quest to get her revenge. All fairly standard stuff.

The entire story is told as a stream of consciousness narrative from the perspective of the aging sword-master, Shoka. He is not always a lovely person, or easy to like. He is impatient, irritable and very much a product of his culture, which is patriarchal and oppressive of women. Several times in the narrative he half-seriously considers raping his student to ‘end her foolishness.’ He never does of course; regardless of his thoughts he is at his core an honorable and practical man, or at least tries to be. Whether you ever come to like him or not, he is complex, interesting, human and completely believable in context.

In the course of the book we meet Taizu, the peasant girl hell-bent on revenge. We come to know her entirely through Shoka’s eyes. It’s fascinating to watch her become, not just a nuisance, not just a student and source of sexual frustration, but a complex and interesting person in her own right. One that he comes to value and even love.

Which of these two is the paladin referred to in the title? I’ve reread this book many times over the years and I still can’t decide. Perhaps it is both. Regardless of how many times I read this book I always find it a rich and satisfying experience.

Near misses…

I just read a book that kept me on the edge of my seat… and had me gnashing my teeth in fury and frustration because of the huge, gaping, ridiculously obvious plot holes.  I’m sorry, but when I read a techno-thriller I shouldn’t be smarter than everyone in the book.  In fact according to the book I’m smarter than everyone in the world.

The author had an excellent grasp of pacing, and the characters were well developed and believable, and behaved consistently throughout. It was genuinely gripping.  The first part of the book was very well done and frighteningly plausible… but after the first part I kept coming up against the wall of stupidity.

I’m a novice writer, and not a literary giant even in my own fevered imagination. but if I didn’t care enough to craft something more carefully than this I can’t imagine caring enough to finish writing it. When I read a techno-thriller I shouldn’t be smarter than everyone in the entire world the story takes place in. Of all the super-competant, super-capable characters in the book not one of them saw the painfully obvious solutions that occurred to me immediately?  I’m no genius but at least I know how to unplug a freaking computer!

What really gets me is the lack of craftsmanship.  The author is a good writer and obviously an intelligent person.  But they seem to have simply disregarded any information that did not advance the plot, no matter how obvious it would be to the reader. No one, from their agent, editors on down cared enough to point these flaws out to them. It disrespectful to their audience and demeaning to other writers that DO care enough to bother crafting their stories well.

I expect this from television and make allowances. In a recent episode of Scorpion hackers took control of a cluster of nuclear missile silos.  Heavens, what shall we do? Despite the fact that the main characters are geniuses it didn’t occur to anyone to unplug the computers?  To cut the power, physically if necessary, to the missiles? Seriously?!

I get that you sometimes need to take a liberty here or there to advance the plot. But if the solution is obvious within seconds of revealing the problem, and everyone in the story simply overlooks it so that there can be a story? That’s just sloppy, lazy and disrespectful to your audience. But most of the audience tolerates it, because hey, it’s just TV, right? I suppose that we deserve what we get because we won’t demand better. I’m sad to see this trend extending further and further into literature, as well. Hey, it’s just a book. Right?

 

“An Inconvenient Encounter”

A couple years ago we wrote a very short story about the main character of our then-upcoming novel ‘Diaries of a Dwarven Rifleman.’ We made it available for free through a variety of sources to get people interested in the novel, and when we published it we put the story up on Amazon.com for 99 cents, because that was the lowest price they allowed.  The story was only 1500 words long and the writing was pretty stripped down, but it was meant to be free and just to introduce the character and the world. Recently a reviewer named Frank said that while he liked the character and the story he felt a little cheated because it was so short.

Well Frank, we agree.  It’s too short, even for only 99 cents.

So we’ve done two things- we have found venues where we can once again offer it for free, and we have rewritten it so that it better reflects the content of ‘Diaries of a dwarves Rifleman’ and the upcoming sequel ‘Lord of the North.’  It’s still short at just over 3000 words, but we think that it’s a lot better and a more complete story. Yes, it’s still 99 cents on Amazon, because the only way that they will let it be free is if people point out to them that it is free elsewhere.

The good news is that if you spent money to buy this short story you ought to be able to download the new version without additional charge.  Oh, and there is a new cover based on the novel’s new cover, so that it is more obviously part of the series.

Here is the link to Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AUODAAS

Here are the sources where you can download or view the story for free:

ITunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id960038956
ScribD will allow you to read the story online or download: https://www.scribd.com/book/253215783/Diaries-of-a-Dwarven-Rifleman-An-Inconvenient-Encounter
Inktera: http://www.inktera.com/store/title/acbb023e-eecd-43ee-ab56-e84610994dbd

Versions on Nook and Kobo are still processing at this time, but ought to be available very soon.

 

We hope that you will enjoy this ‘taste’ of the series,aand as always reviews help things along should you feel inclined to post one.