The Crucible of Empire by Eric Flint and K.D. Wentworth

The Crucible of Empire by Eric Flint and K.D. Wentworth

This is the sequel to The Course of Empire. During The Course of Empire, the Jao conquered earth. Partly this was because of human disunity. Now, the Jao have drafted humanity into fighting their ancient enemies the Ekhat. They have adapted both human and Jao technology to create a massive new spaceship the size of an aircraft carrier, the Lexington.

This story is partially about how technology changes when two cultures meet to make something far more deadly than the single culture can produce by itself. The Lexington with its combined kinetic and energy weapon technology, energy shielding and heavy armored plate easily destroys the Ekhat ships.

In The Crucible of Empire, the new human Jao alliance have to rescue a third alien race, the Lleix from the Ekhat. I liked how the different aliens were described with their strengths and weaknesses. The Lleix had a very interesting artistic flair to them. The Jao and the Lleix were described as being very different.

This book does an excellent job of worldbuilding and describing how alien worlds interact. It also does not assume human superiority which is refreshing. Humans are not the center of the universe. I am looking forward to the next book in the series. I hope they add a few more alien cultures to the mix.

Daily Thoughts 12/27/2009

Portrait of Emily Bronte by her brother Branwell Bronte

Daily Thoughts 12/27/2009

I was at Barnes and Nobles near my house. I bought a copy of the childrens book, Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See by Eric Carle. Eric Carle is a wonderful childrens author. His illustrations are full of color and his message is very simple.

I looked at the science fiction and fantasy section, but did not see anything which I wanted to get this time. A lot of the books are about demons and vampires with a touch of noire. Occassionally I don't mind fantasy noire, but most of the time I like my fantasy to be a little more lighthearted with princes and elves and such. I also like original military science fiction. Most of the stuff I am seeing coming out is long winded series. The Charlaine Harris section in the fantasy area is huge. She is very much a writer about vampires.

I took a look at the sample section of Baen Books yesterday and read the first few chapters of Live Free or Die by John Ringo. It reads a little bit like Heinlein, more so than his other military science fiction novels. http://www.webscription.net/chapters/1439133328/1439133328.htm?blurb There is more of a plot line with intrigue and trickery than his other books. The book is coming out in February of 2010. If they have an Electronic ARC, I will probably get it.

I had a chance to briefly look at the graphic novels section as well. Something I saw which looked really excellent was an oversize book called The Art of Osama Tezuka by Helen McCarthy. It is a big, beautifully illustrated book.

I read some more of Think Again while having a quiet day. I like to read on the couch. The book has a lot on how we make mistakes based on our past experience, prejudgements, self- interest, and in general how we tend to confirm our own biases at our own expense. It demonstrates lots of examples of this kind of behavior. I can easily see it in all kinds of situations.

I just learned that Year of the Flood is a sequel to the novel Oryx and Crake which means that I must read it. This surprises me a little bit, maybe Margaret Atwood will write a science fiction trilogy.

Her writing is literary enough that some people don't consider it science fiction. They like to call it "speculative fiction". This is the nice term for fiction that plays with reality. You can throw in William S. Burroughs, Doris Lessing, George Orwell, Lewis Carroll, Jorge Luis Borges, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez in speculative fiction. It speculates about reality. Magical realism speculates about reality. Of course Robert Heinlein and Neil Gaiman are here as well. The joy and semantics of fantasy literature.

Daily Thoughts 9/7/2009

Sherlock Holmes in "The Adventure of the Dying Detective"

Better to Beg Forgiveness by Michael Z. Williamson

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This is a military science fiction novel. An executive protection service has to protect an interim president during a planetary civil war. This is an action novel with lots of explosions, shooting, and narrow escapes. The point of the novel is the action.

Every other page, the mercenary bodyguards have to stop the president of Celadon from being killed. The locals attempt to shoot, blowup, ram, or dismember acting president Bishwanath. It eventually deteriorates to the point where the mercenaries have to get the president off planet.

Thus follows a series of daring escapes, hijackings, and intrigue. The good guys do not win in the end, but they do save their man.

The setting is the near future where earth has just begun colonizing the outer planets. The weapons are recognizable as things which we have today, machine guns, mortars, bombs, and explosives. The locals are decidedly low tech, coming from a back water world. The United Nations is still in existence and has sent peacekeepers and bureaucrats to keep things under control.

Plenty of action and lots of things get blown up. Plus, if you have a libertarian bent and don't like bureaucracy, you might like the politics in the novel. I read it for the action.

I have started reading a book called Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane. It is a thriller featuring two U.S. Marshalls who are visiting a prison for the criminally insane on an island. One of the inmates has escaped. The book is being turned into a movie starring Leonardo Di Caprio coming out in 2010.

Slow Train To Arcturus-- Eric Flint and Dave Freer (Science Fiction)

Slow Train To Arcturus-- Eric Flint and Dave Freer (Science Fiction)

Slow Train To Arcturus by Eric Flint and Dave Freer is a novel of a generation ship.

Earth Sysgov decides they no longer want various malcontents and the best way to get them to go away is to build a generation ship and send them on their way. Each utopian group is sealed into its own habitat ball. The ship is accelerated on its way on a permanent journey to the stars. The ship looks like a string of attached balls.

The alien Miran spot the ship and they send explorers. What ensues is a comedy of social mores and errors. The best and worst characteristics of humanity are commented on. The Miran are portrayed as a relatively rational group of bipedal aliens. They start as males and slowly change into sessile females as they age.

As expected, the first thing that happens when the aliens visit the ship is that the humans in one of the habitats attempt to kill them. The habitat they first enter is full of violent extremists. Several of the aliens die, but one of them escapes.

The story of the book is told from an alien named Kretz who is struggling to survive. He makes a journey through the ship and encounters various human groups, biblical luddites, a tribe from the amazon, extreme sports enthusiasts who have learned how to fly, a matriarchal society where men are genetically engineered to be smaller and weaker than women, and a utopian workers paradise with a "great leader" that is having population problems.

Kretz acquires various human helpers on his journey get back to his ship. I don't want to give away too much about the story so I will just say they are misfits which don't quite fit in their respective societies. The story has an ending that is different than expected.

The story is hard science fiction. Dave Freer is a biologist, and Eric Flint is a historian. This makes for an interesting style of writing. I really liked Dave Freer's earlier series, Rats, Bats, and Vats and The Rats, Bats, and the Ugly. It was fun to read. Slow Train to Arcturus has a quirky kind of humor to it. The ship is falling to pieces in many places and the humans because they are isolated in their own little utopias don't quite know how to fix things. Because Kretz and the people who travel with him combine different kinds of knowledge, they can outsmart the people in each habitat.

There is some fighting, but nothing gratuitously violent. The characters use their brains. I liked the story. It makes for an excellent adventure yarn. It is also a new take on the generation ship story.

Readings In General, A Free Life

I wanted to try putting an author reading into my blog. This is my first time doing this. Neil Gaiman is a fantastic author. You should enjoy this quite a bit. At least one person who has visited has expressed an interest in Neil Gaiman.

Neil Gaiman is a prolific author. He has written for Comics-- The Sandman and Swamp Thing, Movies: Beowulf and Stardust, the english language script for Princess Mononoke, numerous adult novels: American Gods, Neverwhere, Anansi Boys, and many others, young adult novels: Coraline, The Wolves in the Walls, as well as many short story collections.

I see a lot of people using youtube in their blogs. This is my first attempt at this.

Author readings are a really fantastic experience. I used to go to quite a lot of them. One of the things which I would do is go to the Strand bookstore and buy a few reviewer copies to get them signed. Or, I would try and find copies at a discount. A rule of thumb is that a book usually retains at least the value of its cover price if it is signed by an author or editor.

When you get a book signed, it is also a good idea to keep the ephemera that went with the book signing. Try and keep the flyer, or calendar that went with the signing. This shows that you saw the author and makes the signed book appear more authentic. Very few booksellers do this. If you are selling a book on one of the online services, scanning the flyer can make a lot of difference.

Hearing and seeing an author speak is very different from reading their book. You get a better feeling of how the characters are with their different voices. Plus, quite often the authors will surprise you by reading from a forthcoming piece not yet printed.

If you are a bookstore or library and doing regular signings, get an autograph book so you can have all the authors that visited sign the book as a permanent record of who visited. This can be both very valuable and very entertaining. It is fun to look at the different signatures. Sometimes authors will doodle in the book if it is large enough.

Quite often readings are not at bookstores, cultural centers often have readings. I used to go to Dixon Place in Manhattan where they had a regular science fiction series. Also, the 92nd Street Y hosts readings. I saw Octavia Butler speak there.

Libraries quite often host readings as well. It takes a decent amount of preparation to do them. You generally have to call at least three months in advance. Then you have to prepare flyers and press releases for the local papers. Most authors require an honorarium and travel expenses to get to the library. Because, we are in New York, we don't usually have to pay for hotels. Generally, it is not that hard to do a reading event. You just need a microphone, a large well lighted space to read, plenty of seating, and some light refreshments. Most of the time the author requests a bottle or glass of water. Reading is thirsty work.

It is often quite interesting to host an editor and author talk combined. This allows one person to talk about the process of writing, while the other talks about the process of correcting, selecting, and providing the finished product in writing. Usually multi-author and editor talks happen at conventions. Baen Books had a talk about science fiction in libraries at the last Book Expo America in New York City. Toni Weisskopf, the chief editor of Baen, and David Weber a major science fiction writer were both on the panel which made it quite interesting.

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The ending of A Free Life by Ha Jin is truly wonderful. The epilogue consists of several poems by Nan the main character, as well as a few poetry journal entries. I especially like the poems, The Drake, and Groundhog Hour. The book continues in an interesting manner. Nan runs his restaurant with his wife PingPing and his sun TaoTao until his wife collapses and they have to sell the restaurant. Oddly enough getting rid of the restaurant makes the families life much more fulfilling, going back to work at a motel allows Nan to focus on his poetry. It is a wonderful statement about how chasing the American Dream can submerge your personal dreams. During the novel, Nan spends time with his American Friend Dick focusing on poetry and art when he is not at the restaurant. There is a lot of insight about the meaning of art and writing in this book.

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I put in three videos from Youtube to see how they would work. One is of Neil Gaimn, the other two are of Cory Doctorow. Both of these people are excellent writers. People seem to appreciate the videos. I think it is interesting to watch writers read or talk about their material on the internet.