Martha Wells's Blog, page 40

Five Things You Don't Know About the Murderbot Diaries

I have the concentration of a small woodland animal today, so here's a post. I've talked about these in a couple of interviews, so I thought I'd collect them here.


* Murderbot refers to humans by only one name because it uses their feed IDs.


* Murderbot was sentient before it hacked its governor module. All SecUnits, ComfortUnits, other constructs are sentient.


* The Company has a name which is written in the logos Murderbot has on its body, but Murderbot will never use it.


* ART has a human name given to it by its crew, but its real name is a numerical feed address. All bots have one and that's what they use when they communicate with each other, and not the names that humans might give them. Murderbot has one too and that's what ART uses when they talk to each other.


* The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon and all the other shows that Murderbot mentions are based on real TV shows.


Bonus not about Murderbot: Ratthi is super hot. We're talking Sendhil Ramamurthy levels of hot.

comments

PopCon etc

* San Antonio PopCon is this Saturday, February 29th: https://guides.mysapl.org/sapopcon

This is a free event, at the San Antonio Central Public Library on Soledad. There will be costumes, lots of stuff for kids, anime, funko pop, books for sale, panels and gaming, etc. If you've never been to a library comic con event, they're a lot of fun.

I'll be there, along with Charlaine Harris, Christopher Golden, Ilona Andrews, Grace Draven,
David Liss and artists Jeffrey Alan Love, Justin Chase Black, Chris "Coop" Cooper, Kiri Ostegaard Leonard, John Picacio, and Babs Webb. Most of us will be at tables and you can wander around and talk to use and get books signed.


* False Value, the new Ben Aaronovitch Rivers of London book is out and I have already read it. This is one of my favorite series ever. Also reading Jade War by Fonda Lee. I need to get started back with my book rec posts again.


* Next week will be my chapter of Machina, yay! https://www.serialbox.com/serials/machina ETA: No, it's the week after next. I forgot the original first chapter was too long and got split in two.


* Joanne Harris has a great thread here about writers and anxiety: https://twitter.com/Joannechocolat/status/1232998538180808705


* https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/27/a-dirty-secret-you-can-only-be-a-writer-if-you-can-afford-it A dirty secret: you can only be a writer if you can afford it

According to a 2018 Author’s Guild Study the median income of all published authors for all writing related activity was $6,080 in 2017, down from $10,500 in 2009; while the median income for all published authors based solely on book-related activities went from $3,900 to $3,100, down 21%. Roughly 25% of authors earned $0 in income in 2017.

I would argue that there is nothing more sustaining to long-term creative work than time and space – these things cost money – and the fact that some people have access to it for reasons that are often outside of their control continues to create an ecosystem in which the tenor of the voices that we hear from most often remains similar. It is no wonder, I say often to students, that so much of the canon is about rich white people. Who else, after all, has the time and space to finish a book. Who else, after all, as the book is coming out, has the time and space and money to promote and publicize that book?

I'm not sure this is that much of a secret in genre writing as opposed to mainstream. The writers I knew when I first started out were open about having other jobs. Some of the first advice I read for starting a writing career was to buy a lot of canned food so you'd have something to eat between advances. And that was back when the economy was better, and before piracy was such a huge problem.

comments

Couple of Links

* 10 Recent Novels to Read Based On Your Favorite Sci-Fi Classics

https://www.bookbub.com/blog/new-sci-fi-books-to-read-based-on-your-favorite-sci-fi-classics

If You Love Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Read All Systems Red by Martha Wells

That premise launches an absorbing sci-fi mystery-adventure that deals with many of the same themes as Dick’s classic — the thin line between incredibly advanced technology and a new form of existence, and the question of when we lose the right to simply reprogram or terminate a sophisticated intelligence. It’s also a fantastically entertaining read that pivots on Murderbot’s growing sense of self-determination.


* This one is a lot of fun: Celebrating Valentines with our Favorite SFF Ships

https://www.torforgeblog.com/2020/02/13/our-favorite-sff-ships/

The term “shipping” has a lot of different meanings: riding a boat, getting a package from Point A to Point B, to name a few. But in the world of fandoms, shipping has an entirely different context—the wanting/support of two people in a romantic relationship, be is canonly blessed by the creator or subtext brought to full fruition through the wonders of Ao3.

With all the love we’re feeling in the air (or something like that…), we decided on a mission around the office―to discover the Tor staff’s favorite science fiction and fantasy pairings and SHARE THEM WITH THE ENTIRE WORLD! From Delilah Bard and her knives, to Drarry and beyond, things got…wild.

Some are a bit spoilery, but I really liked the one editor Ruoxi Chen wrote for Murderbot.

comments

Nebulas

Congrats to all the Nebula Award Nominees!


https://www.tor.com/2020/02/20/announcing-the-2019-nebula-awards-finalists/


Novel

Marque of Caine, Charles E. Gannon (Baen)
The Ten Thousand Doors of January, Alix E. Harrow (Redhook; Orbit UK)
A Memory Called Empire, Arkady Martine (Tor)
Gods of Jade and Shadow, Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey; Jo Fletcher)
Gideon the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir (Tor.com Publishing)
A Song for a New Day, Sarah Pinsker (Berkley)


Novella

“Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom”, Ted Chiang (Exhalation)
The Haunting of Tram Car 015, P. Djèlí Clark (Tor.com Publishing)
This Is How You Lose the Time War, Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone (Saga)
Her Silhouette, Drawn in Water, Vylar Kaftan (Tor.com Publishing)
The Deep, Rivers Solomon, with Daveed Diggs, William Hutson & Jonathan Snipes (Saga)
Catfish Lullaby, A.C. Wise (Broken Eye)


Novelette

“A Strange Uncertain Light”, G.V. Anderson (F&SF 7-8/19)
“For He Can Creep”, Siobhan Carroll (Tor.com 7/10/19)
“His Footsteps, Through Darkness and Light”, Mimi Mondal (Tor.com 1/23/19)
“The Blur in the Corner of Your Eye”, Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny 7-8/19)
Carpe Glitter, Cat Rambo (Meerkat)
“The Archronology of Love”, Caroline M. Yoachim (Lightspeed 4/19)


Short Story

“Give the Family My Love”, A.T. Greenblatt (Clarkesworld 2/19)
“The Dead, In Their Uncontrollable Power”, Karen Osborne (Uncanny 3-4/19)
“And Now His Lordship Is Laughing”, Shiv Ramdas (Strange Horizons 9/9/29)
“Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island”, Nibedita Sen (Nightmare 5/19)
“A Catalog of Storms”, Fran Wilde (Uncanny 1-2/19)
“How the Trick Is Done”, A.C. Wise (Uncanny 7-8/19)


The Andre Norton Award for Outstanding Young Adult Science Fiction or Fantasy Book

Sal and Gabi Break the Universe, Carlos Hernandez (Disney Hyperion)
Catfishing on CatNet, Naomi Kritzer (Tor Teen)
Dragon Pearl, Yoon Ha Lee (Disney Hyperion)
Peasprout Chen: Battle of Champions, Henry Lien (Holt)
Cog, Greg van Eekhout (Harper)
Riverland, Fran Wilde (Amulet)


Game Writing

Outer Wilds, Kelsey Beachum (Mobius Digital)
The Outer Worlds, Leonard Boyarsky, Megan Starks, Kate Dollarhyde, Chris L’Etoile (Obsidian Entertainment)
The Magician’s Workshop, Kate Heartfield (Choice of Games)
Disco Elysium, Robert Kurvitz (ZA/UM)
Fate Accessibility Toolkit, Elsa Sjunneson-Henry (Evil Hat Productions)


The Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation

Avengers: Endgame, Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely (Marvel Studios)
Captain Marvel, Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck & Geneva Robertson-Dworet (Marvel Studios)
Good Omens: “Hard Times”, Neil Gaiman (Amazon Studios/BBC Studios)
The Mandalorian: “The Child”, Jon Favreau (Disney+)
Russian Doll: “The Way Out”, Allison Silverman and Leslye Headland (Netflix)
Watchmen: “A God Walks into Abar”, Jeff Jensen & Damon Lindelof (HBO)

comments

Audiobooks

Two pieces of news on audiobooks:

The audiobook for Network Effect is up for preorder, narrated by Kevin R. Free, yay! It will be released on May 5, 2020, the same day as the ebook and hardcover.

I just saw that the audiobook for The Harbors of the Sun is up for preorder, but for some reason, they have picked a different narrator instead of Christopher Kipiniak who did the rest of the series. I don't know why they made that decision, and I'm really pissed off and disappointed by it.

comments

Boskone

We are back from Boston, and had an awesome time at Boskone. (https://www.boskone.org/)

It's fairly large, around a 1000 attendees, on three levels of the hotel's programming area, so I didn't run into half the people I wanted to see but met a bunch of cool new people and got to see some old friends. I signed a bunch of books and did a reading from Network Effect, and was on five panels.

It was also really freaking cold, including being around 17-10F on Friday, the day we went out and saw both the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum https://www.gardnermuseum.org/ and part of the Boston MFA https://www.mfa.org/ which is so large it exists in its own dimension in time and the interior shifts around like a Tardis, especially when you're trying to find a bathroom.

On Saturday, which wasn't much warmer, someone accidentally broke a sprinkler pipe in the parking garage and the heat went off in the hotel for a while, then at 6:00 am on Monday we had no hot water in our room. But other than that, it was a great hotel.

It was a long day to get home, getting to the airport around 7am and arriving home after 6 pm. Today I have a dentist appointment for me and a vet visit for one of the cats.

comments

Short Story Sale!

* So a good thing happened the other day: I sold a short story to Uncanny Magazine! It's fantasy and should be out sometime later this year.

If you haven't read Uncanny before, you can check out the current and past issues here: https://uncannymagazine.com/

A 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 Hugo Award winner, 2016 Parsec Award winner, 2019 British Fantasy Award winner, and numerous-time Locus Award finalist, Uncanny Magazine is an online Science Fiction and Fantasy magazine featuring passionate SF/F fiction and poetry, gorgeous prose, provocative nonfiction, and a deep investment in the diverse SF/F culture. Each issue contains intricate, experimental stories and poems with verve and imagination that elicit strong emotions and challenge beliefs, from writers of every conceivable background. Uncanny believes there’s still plenty of room in the genre for tales that make you feel.


* Another note, something's wrong with the retail listings for the new mass market paperback of The Siren Depths, especially on Amazon. If you're having trouble finding it, try looking it up by the ISBN 9781949102307.

You can also order it at an independent bookstore near you here: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781949102307

comments

The Siren Depths mass market paperback

The Siren Depths, the third book in the Books of the Raksura series, is available today in mass market paperback.

It's also available in ebook and audiobook, narrated by Christopher Kipiniak. Cover art is by Steve Argyle.

You can read the first chapter here: https://www.marthawells.com/compendium/sirendepths.htm

The entire series is now currently available in trade paper, ebook, and auidobook. The last book, The Harbors of the Sun is out in trade paper and ebook, and it supposed to be released in audiobook, but I'm not sure when.

The series was on the ballot for the Best Series Hugo in 2018.

Some reviews:

"The venerated pulp spirit in science fiction and fantasy has dwindled since the golden age of the 1920s to '50s. Yet an atavistic craving for adventure remains, and it is this need that Wells's books in general and the Raksura books in particular satisfy. The stories are straightforward adventure, but what makes Wells's "new pulp" feel fresh is its refusal to take the easier storytelling routes of its forebears. Rather than thinly veil an existing human society as alien others, for example, Wells - a master world builder - creates a multicultural world of humanized monsters...The result is breathtakingly surprising and fun. So for readers who missed earlier entry points to this delightful series, now is the time to get on board."
- New York Times

It's quite unlike anything else in the genre - with a core cast of non-human characters, it creates an entirely fresh, matriarchal fantasy world with its own biology, ecology, technology, and magic.
- Barnes & Noble's New Book Round-up

Martha Wells' books always make me remember why I love to read. In The Cloud Roads, she invents yet another rich and astonishingly detailed setting, where many races and cultures uneasily co-exist in a world constantly threatened by soulless predators. But the vivid world-building and nonstop action really serve as a backdrop for the heart of the novel--the universal human themes of loneliness, loss, and the powerful drive to find somewhere to belong.
- Sharon Shinn

I loved The Cloud Roads so much that I begged Ms. Wells and Nightshade Books to let me tell you--Yes! You! You, the one who is looking for a new book to start!--to read this marvelous science fantasy series. With excellent, inventive world building and wonderful characters I adored spending time with, it is completely fabulous.
- Kate Elliott

The Cloud Roads has wildly original worldbuilding, diverse and engaging characters, and a thrilling adventure plot. It's that rarest of fantasies: fresh and surprising, with a story that doesn't go where ten thousand others have gone before. I can't wait for my next chance to visit the Three Worlds!
- N.K. Jemisin



Available at:

An independent bookstore in the US through Indiebound: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781949102307 (enter your zip code to find a store near you)

Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-siren-depths-martha-wells/1132405448?ean=9781949102307#/

https://www.amazon.com/Siren-Depths-Three-Books-Raksura/dp/1949102300/

comments

Book Riot Quiz

So this is really cool and I didn't see it when it was first posted. It's a Which ALL SYSTEMS RED Character Are You? quiz.

https://bookriot.com/2019/12/09/all-systems-red-character-quiz/


I got Ratthi!

comments

Reading

Here's my 2019 GoodReads list of all the books I read last year. I wish I could squeeze more in, but anxiety makes it hard for me to concentrate:

https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2019/3386681

comments