If you don’t f*@% with the Culture, then what?

Well, it’s a weekend for finishing off books, apparently – I just listened to the last little bit of Surface Detail, a Culture Novel, and one that I first began reading via Audible.com nearly a year ago, in July 2011, shortly after getting back from the CSSF workshop and determined to familiarize myself with some of the masters of science fiction that I hadn’t been exposed to yet. I also got, at close to the same time:

• “More than Human”, by Theodore Sturgeon.
• “Gateway”, by Frederik Pohl.
• “Timescape”, by Gregory Benford.
• “Darwin’s Radio”, by Greg Bear.
• and, a bit later, “Childhood’s End”, by Arthur C. Clarke.

I wanted to get something by Sturgeon and Pohl because they were both selected as theme authors for the 2011 Campbell Conference in Lawrence, and all of the other titles or authors were taken from the reading list of the CSSF Intensive Institute for novels. I didn’t really finish any of them off that quickly, with the possible exception of ‘Gateway’, which I enjoyed considerably, and only got to the end of “Timescape” in February.

Overall, I enjoyed “Surface Detail”, and had fun listening to it, but I’m still not quite sure what to make of it as more than a crazy adventure among the stars. I really wasn’t sure what was going on for the first few hours’ worth of narration, and then some of the plot threads began to gather enough for me to find my bearings. I quickly felt sympathy for Lededje, was intrigued by some of Vateuil’s military derring-do, and loved to hate Veppers. At first, I despised Demeisen/’Falling Outside the Normal Moral Constraints’, (the former is an avatar, the latter a spaceship, but both names essentially represent a single character,) but by the end, I thoroughly enjoyed him as the sadistic asshole that he usually is.

And one of the best parts of the book were the alien civilizations that Iain M. Banks brings to life – the all-too-human Sichultia, the polite and diminutive GFCF, the herdlike conservative Pavuleans, and, of course, The Culture themselves.

Even despite tentative attempts to research the Culture online, (tentatively because I don’t really want to stumble across spoilers for other books,) I don’t really understand them. I know that they’re spacegoing, idealistic, practical, fiercely protective of their own but not generally antagonistic, and have some rather peculiar political and social structures. They have a frankly mind-boggling technological level, and some of the greatest influences from within the Culture are not the organic, mostly ‘pan-Human’ citizens, but the incredibly capable artificial intelligence ‘Minds’ which generally oversee spaceships or other artificial habitats.

Have you read any of the stories of the Culture? What did you think? If not, what’s your favorite science fiction high-tech society?

When you play this game, you win or you die

So – after nearly two months of reading off and on, I finally reached the end of George R.R. Martin’s big fat fantasy novel, “Game of Thrones.” I enjoyed it, though it probably won’t make any best-books lists I may write, and I do plan to read on in the ‘Song of Ice and Fire’ series… but not until I’ve caught up with a few other series, like Harry Potter, Harry Dresden, (huh, how about that!) and Discworld.

A few of the things I particularly liked:

• The characters are well portrayed and engaging, though, because I was warned about the author’s propensity for gut-wrenching twists, I found that I was avoiding attaching too closely with any one character, for fear of being put through the wringer as they’re tortured or grieving when they’re killed – or both.
• There’s something very refreshing and fun about a fantasy world where the majority of the characters are – uncooth, vulgar, earthy, and carnal. A lot of the high fantasy I’ve read takes the opposite tack, and it somehow seems more realistic to be in a gritty world where the characters swear freely, at least based on the situation: Lord Ned Stark will go profanity for profanity with his good friend the King, but is always more delicate with his lady wife, Catelyn, and she is lady-like in most situations… unless she really gets pissed off.
• Some of the surprise twists are pulled off really well, especially when the author takes a situation in a way that is fairly natural based on the characters, but violates the usual tropes of storytelling and good triumphing in the end, so that you’re left reeling and trying to figure out how this defeat will affect the wider-canvas story being told.

Have you read any of ‘Song of Ice and Fire’ or watched the ‘Game of Thrones’ series on television? What do you think? Please, no spoilers!

Look at me, I’m Kreativ!

Thanks muchly to Elizabeth Twist, for passing the ‘Kreative Blogger’ award on to me!

KREATIV RULZ:

1. Thank and link back to the awarding blog.
2. Answer the seven questions (or alternates, as provided by Elizabeth).
3. Provide ten random factoids about yourself.
4. Last but not at all least, hand this on to seven deserving others.

DHE QWESTIONS:

1. What’s your favorite song?

Varies with the day, but I’ll send some love out to ‘You can Always Reach Me”, sung by Amanda Stott, especially because I forgot about it when I did the Top Ten Song Blogfest. It doesn’t appear to be on Youtube, but it’s a very sweet love song full of great imagery about staying connected. I ended up working it into a Roswell fanfic I wrote, “Love will Last Forever”, because it summed up Isabel and Alex’s relationship in that story so perfectly.
Alternative Question:Name one song you listened to over and over as a teenager.

2. What’s your favorite dessert?

Just about anything ice cream – possibly a soft serve vanilla cone. Ahh, so delicious, but so fattening.
Alternative Question:What are you having for lunch today?

3. What do you do when you’re upset?

It depends. Often, sulk for a while and do things that aren’t good for me to try to cheer myself up – unhealthy food, watch some television or whatever. 🙂
Alternative Question:Describe the last time you were bored.

I’m looking for a few good ninjas…

I went to a casual write-in at the home of a good friend last night, and for the fun of it I wore one of my favorite novelty T-shirts, the ‘Sneaky like ninja’ from Sick on Sin. Fantasy Writer Guy spotted the design as I came into the room, and we had an interchange that to me, perfectly sums up the fun of that design:

FWG: Are those cupcakes?
Me: Yes – except for the one that’s a ninja.

It’s been a while since I’ve done a full series of Spotlight interviews – not counting the few that I included in the A-Z challenge when I had absolutely nothing else to use on a tough letter of the alphabet, and the ‘Spotlight on Chris’ that I half-completed in late March. So, it’s time again.

From now through July 10th, I want to spotlight writing ninjas, from the Writer’s Dojo. The Dojo does run it’s own ‘Novel Ninja’ feature, but hopefully my spotlights will have more unexpected questions than those articles. 🙂

So – if you’re a Dojo ninja and want to step into my spotlight, just leave a comment to this post or contact me via email at chrisken zero at gmail dot com . I’ll be trying to visit a lot of fellow ninjas and dropping links to invite them to participate over the coming weeks.

Here’s what to expect for the spotlight – I’ll send you some offbeat questions to answer, and maybe one ordinary one that I’ll ask every ninja. You’ll also be able to tell us all about your blog or your latest book, and share a pretty picture if you like.

I’m looking forward to seeing a lot more ninjas around here. Or maybe not seeing them, if their ninja mojo is strong enough…

Happy Belated Mother’s Day!

This one’s particularly going out to any blogging mothers out there, or any mothers who might be among my regular readership. 🙂

I had a good Mother’s Day Sunday – went out to lunch at Swiss Chalet with my mother and brother, and then we headed up Mississauga-way to visit the cemetery where my maternal grandmother and grandfather are buried. It took us a little while to find the stone, but I’m glad we went.

Did you do anything great for Mother’s Day? And what are your favorite books featuring awesome mothers?

Six Sentence Sunday – The Shuttle 2

First six.

I just set the scene so far – Dara is a somewhat bored space pilot on a shuttle run up to Astris station…

Ever since they’d discovered hyperspace travel, there was more and more shuttle travel from the surface up to Astris, the main way-station for travellers that would be going even further. But Dara had never even been to the moon…

Suddenly the cockpit shook, and several status panels on her screen went bright red. She pushed a few commands to find out more details about the problem, and ended up staring at an exterior view of the main fuel tank.

There was metallic debris floating away, wreckage from a large crater that had blasted out from inside the ship, and also milky translucent faceted rocks – her remaining fuel supply. Fracture was the most efficient propellant ever invented, but it was also unstable.

Again, thank you very much for any comments and feedback!

May goals update

Well, after doing National Novel Editing Month in March, and Script Frenzy + A-Z challenge in April, I went back to picking my own stretch goals in May, and I think that they’re going pretty well so far…

Back to ‘How to Revise your Novel.’ It’s taken me a little while to get back up to speed with where I left off in this Holly Lisle course, but I’ve finished off lesson 14 and done the reading for lesson 15 now. They’re both relating to timeline stuff: 14 talks about the ‘simple’ chronological timeline and the importance of getting that straight, and then 15 suggests different exercises with complex timelines to see what they can add to your book – flashforward openings, flashbacks to the beginning, backward scene-by-scene chronologies, and parallel structures where you go through each character’s timeline one by one. I’m not sure that any of those are the ticket for ‘Children’, but I want to go through the exercises and see if I can make any of them tell me something new about my story.

Drafting short stories. I’m still not quite crazy or confident enough to try ‘Story a Day in May’, but I’ve committed to writing three new shorts in May, and as of tonight I’ve finished two, including one that I submitted to the SDMB short fiction contest! 🙂

Cleaning my apartment. I need to keep on with this too, but I’ve gotten a good start – my kitchen is pretty much in good enough shape that the air conditioner guy can get some work done in there, which is very important at this time of year.

Reading and critiquing stuff. Doing fairly well. I’m all done with my slush pile responsibilities for James Gunn’s Ad Astra, until a new batch of submissions comes through. I’m keeping up with ‘two stories a week’ for Elizabeth Twist’s short story reading challenge, and – well, I’m not sure I’m going to get anything in for critters.org this week, but I’m going to do some critting before May is over!

Preparing for Kansas workshop. Some progress – I have my new passport, which was important as the old one would expire before I had to fly. I’ve sent in my registration form for the workshop session and the dorm room. Still need to – book flights, send in payment to the University, and revise the stories that I want to get workshopped. 🙂

How much have you accomplished so far this month?

Minor driving woe

I got some bad news – a call from my car insurance company – today. Sigh.

I didn’t blog about this because it happened in April and didn’t really fit with the Script Frenzy A-Z-ness, but I managed to back into the side of a company van after getting a new stereo installed in my car. Gave them my insurance info and my phone number, and they said they’d call me after having the van looked at.

They didn’t call, apparently. They just reported it to their insurance, so my rates are probably going to go up at some point. I still don’t really know when or how much, I didn’t even get a chance to really talk to my insurance guy.

I’d hoped to do some critiquing or ‘How to revise your novel’ revising work on the bus home from work today, but getting that call just sucked any creative energy out of me for a while. Ended up watching ‘Community on my iphone until I got home, then having a little DVR marathon. I did get out driving in Ghost again – down to Rosedale, to do some shopping and collect my new passport – whoohoo! And I got a new scene started for a short story I’ve been working on this week, ‘A Prayer for Healing.’

Life goes on, one way or another.

Some random Ebook musings.

I was a fairly early adopter when it came to the idea of ebooks. In the winter of 2003 I ordered a Palm PDA off the Dell Canada website, and it came pre-loaded with Palm Reader and a link to their website. I checked it out, and ordered my first few books – copies of fantasy novels that I’d read from the library but didn’t have print copies of, and installments of spinoff paperbacks like Roswell and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

That site, and other digital gadgets that I added to my collection, led me to other ebook vendor sites – the Simon & Schuster online webstore, Fictionwise.com, and ebooks.com . I heard about the Kindle and other dedicated ebook readers with lots of great features and bigger selections of books, but for a while those didn’t appear to be available in Canada. Finally, I got my Kindle delivered once Amazon started offering some kind of international sales and service for Kindle ebooks, and I haven’t regretted it.

Over the past few years, readers like Kindle, Nook, and Kobo, and smartphones and tablets have changed the ebook marketplace a lot. Some vendors have kept up reasonably well. Ebooks.com has their own iphone app that lets me download and read books that I originally ordered in mobipocket or Microsoft reader format, and read them anywhere I have the phone.

Palm reader is now Ereader.com, and they didn’t have much trouble adding iPhone, Android, Blackberry and others to the list of devices supporting their own proprietary format. Though I wasn’t impressed by their attempt to make a native linux version, probably because it was badly back-ported from the iphone version to devices that need a very different user interface. Fictionwise is still making a priority of selling books and stories DRM-free and offering as many different formats as humanly possible, which is a great approach.

But some formats have failed, and some vendors have had issues in keeping up with the technology. The Simon and Schuster e-store, unfortunately, seems to be in this category. I bought a lot of ebooks from them, mostly ‘Pocket Books’ paperbacks from franchises like Star Trek, Charmed, Angel, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and some of them were bought in Adobe PDF or Microsoft Reader format – with digital rights management technology to prevent piracy.

Yes, some will say, I should have known better.

The Adobe PDF DRM authentication servers appear to have been offlined years ago, as they moved on towards ‘Adobe Digital Editions’ and their ePub standard – though I still have a few devices that have kept their authentication codes and can read the books. Microsoft has said that it will discontinue support of Microsoft Reader in August of this year – but when I had to hard-reset my HP pocket PC a month and a half ago, I found no way to re-authenticate it again.

Simon and Schuster still has my account active, and apparently tried to migrate my books to Adobe Digital Editions, but apparently couldn’t get them all in that format for whatever reasons, and some of the books that they say they have are still stuck in technical difficulties – a few won’t download at all, and more than a dozen of the ones that I downloaded can’t be transferred to another device with the same Adobe ID – which means I can’t read them on the iPhone through Bluefire, (which is a nifty little ADE-compliant ePub reader program.)

I don’t have a problem with DRM in the concept. But when a failure in the system means that I’m not able to read the books that I bought, then the theory isn’t working out in practice. It makes me want to go out and crack the DRM files just out of spite.

What I’ve been reading – early May edition

Well, it’s been nearly four months since I checked in on my ’52 books in a year’ and other reader details, so guess what I’m blogging about today? My 52-books count currently stands at 19 since I finished ‘Equal Rites’, by Terry Pratchett, which sounds pretty good to me… though now that I’m doing the math it looks like I’m not ahead of the game like I thought I was. But the important thing is, I’m loving every word of it! A few highlights:

• Trading in Danger, by Elizabeth Moon. A nice little science fiction piece, alternately fun and gritty. I’ve never read anything written by Moon alone, though I loved ‘Sassinak’ which she co-wrote with Anne McCaffrey – apparently a lot of the detail in Sassinak about space ships and what it was like to fight in one, and live in one while the environmental systems are limping along, were Elizabeth’s, because she visits the same kind of territory to great effect with this book. Soon after I wrote it, I found some of the themes popping up in the next short story I wrote – ‘The Shuttle.’
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Another great installment in the series, with things going from bad to worse for Harry and his friends at Hogwarts. The school is taken over by a noxious Inquisitor from the Ministry of Magic, and Harry finds out the secret that connects him to the Dark Wizard Voldemort!
• Mort, by Terry Pratchett. This is one of the first Discworld books that I’ve read, but I really loved the humor and the sense of detail that Pratchett gives to his characters and the wacky world they find themselves in. This book did remind me a lot of Piers Anthony’s ‘On a Pale Horse’, as they both look at the Grim Reaper as a character with an uncomfortable job, and examine the possibilities of the job passing from one Death to another, but Terry Pratchett makes the premise his own as he takes it to the Discworld. (Disclaimer, I have no idea if Pratchett knew about ‘On a Pale Horse’ when he was writing this book – since Piers’ book was published four years earlier, it seems just about possible.)
• Power of Three, by Diana Wynne Jones. A great little stand-alone fantasy tale, with a fun twist that comes in just about half-way through. I won’t say anything more for fear of spoilers.

I also read a few of the ‘Star Trek: New Frontier” series, and enjoyed “Inheritance” and “The Puppet Masters” as audiobooks. Right now, I’m a little over three quarters of the way through “A Game of Thrones”, right in the middle of the war of the heirs, and hoping that Ned Stark will be free by the end!

What have you enjoyed reading lately?