Well, this is so old that I don't know if it even qualifies as news anymore. But someone recently pointed out to me that Marc Andreessen (Mosaic co-author and Web God) named me as one of his picks for top ten SF writers of the '00s. That's cool. Seriously. No, really. Can I explain how cool it is? Okay, you're right. Too Much Information. I should stop now before I lapse into hopelessly pathetic geekery.
Also cool (though perhaps not surprising) is how much I agree with him about the other people on the list:
Charles Stross
Richard Morgan
Ken McLeod
Peter Hamilton
John Scalzi
Neal Asher
Peter Watts
David Marusek
I haven't read David Marusek, and I plan to rectify that in short order. As for the remaining names on the list, these guys are all fantastic writers, tending towards exactly the kind of hard-driving hard SF I love best. If you haven't read any new hard SF in a few years, this is a pretty damn good jumping off point. I can't argue with a single name on there, And my only gripe is the absence of the following names: Elizabeth Bear, M.M. Buckner, Ian MacDonald, Adam Roberts, Justina Robson, and Sean Williams. (You'll note that I discreetly listed them in alphabetic order!) But of course this is why I can never compile lists like these. I'd be constantly tortured by 3 am revelations of all the great writers I'd left out....
Finally, I have to confess that especially near and dear to my heart is Andreessen's bonus pick on this list, Vernor Vinge. True Names really is everything it's cracked up to be. And thankfully we no longer have to hunt through used bookstores or cadge borrowed copies in order to read it!
Danger!! Flesh-Eating Pig Zombies!!
As William Gibson once pointed out, "the future is here, it's just distributed unevenly." And every now and then I read something in the blogosphere that makes me realize I've just bumped up against a lovely little piece of it. Today's piece of future shock comes from Michael Pollan.
Pollan, traditional foods guru extraordinaire, has long been one of my favorite bloggers, if only for spreading two of my favorite food rules ("Don't eat anything you're not willing to kill" -- a rule that works equally well for hunters and vegans -- and "If you're not hungry enough to eat an apple, you're not hungry"). However, his recent post about the death of honey bees and the rise of skin-eating bacteria on hog farms really is worth reading even if you're not a foodie.
I can't think of much to say about this, beyond the points Pollan himself makes so forcefully. Such as that high density factory pig farming and intercontinental shipping of bee colonies are both Really Bad Ideas from a public health perspective. For those among us who either require food to live and/or do not wish to become food for penicillin-resistant flesh-eating bacteria it's all rather depressing. But for SF writers .... well ... this stuff is pure gold! We spend so much time reading and writing about high-tech disaster that it's easy to forget that the Next Big Bad Thing could just as easily come from pig farms as supercolliders.
I keep thinking of Greg Bear's wonderful book, Blood Music, with its vision of futuristic high-tech pandemic. That was the primary vision of our science fictional future in the 1980s. And for the most part, high-tech mahem (well, and zombies and vampires) still seem to dominate people's SFnal imagination today. Still, I sense the tide is turning. I see humbler and grittier dangers on our fictional horizon.
Forget Armageddon! Start worrying about Farmageddon! And while we're waiting for the future to get here, can I offer anyone a nice plate of Honey Bee Flu with a side order of Flesh-eating Pig Zombies?
Pollan, traditional foods guru extraordinaire, has long been one of my favorite bloggers, if only for spreading two of my favorite food rules ("Don't eat anything you're not willing to kill" -- a rule that works equally well for hunters and vegans -- and "If you're not hungry enough to eat an apple, you're not hungry"). However, his recent post about the death of honey bees and the rise of skin-eating bacteria on hog farms really is worth reading even if you're not a foodie.
I can't think of much to say about this, beyond the points Pollan himself makes so forcefully. Such as that high density factory pig farming and intercontinental shipping of bee colonies are both Really Bad Ideas from a public health perspective. For those among us who either require food to live and/or do not wish to become food for penicillin-resistant flesh-eating bacteria it's all rather depressing. But for SF writers .... well ... this stuff is pure gold! We spend so much time reading and writing about high-tech disaster that it's easy to forget that the Next Big Bad Thing could just as easily come from pig farms as supercolliders.
I keep thinking of Greg Bear's wonderful book, Blood Music, with its vision of futuristic high-tech pandemic. That was the primary vision of our science fictional future in the 1980s. And for the most part, high-tech mahem (well, and zombies and vampires) still seem to dominate people's SFnal imagination today. Still, I sense the tide is turning. I see humbler and grittier dangers on our fictional horizon.
Forget Armageddon! Start worrying about Farmageddon! And while we're waiting for the future to get here, can I offer anyone a nice plate of Honey Bee Flu with a side order of Flesh-eating Pig Zombies?
Jack Aubrey ... with dragons!
I don't get football. Or, actually, I DO get football. Especially the good old-fashioned smashmouth kind. It's just the ads that confuse the hell out of me. Does 'get back in the game' mean something? And are all those ads selling hair dye, or, you know, something else? And why would people spend gazillions on a pill that might require them to report to the hospital four hours later for ... well, Jeez, I can't even think about it without cringing!
On the other hand, there is a pill I would spend gazillions on: a pill that magically extracted all traces of Patrick O'Brian's Jack Aubrey books from my neurons so that I could read them again for the first time.
I don't think Pfeizer is working on very hard on this pill at the moment. But in the meantime, I have found something almost as good: Naomi Novik's Temeraire books.
I can't remember when I've been so swept up in a new series. I feel like a kid again. I know, I know, I sound like one of those Superbowl ads. But really. These books are the perfect prescription for kids of all ages.
The first book in the series, His Majesty's Dragon, begins when a a British Navy captain in the Napoleonic Wars captures a French ship and discovers a dragon's egg hidden in the hold. His crew is ecstatic over the anticipated prize money ... until they realize that the egg is about to hatch and one of them is going to have to harness the newborn dragon and be consigned to a pariah's life in the despised Aerial Corps. Of course, the captain turns out to be the unlucky man. And so it begins ....
Novik's writing is surefooted and accessible. Like O'Brian, she manages to evoke early 19th century prose style (largely by the artful use of semicolons) without getting tangled up in it. And, again like O'Brian, she has penned a pair of comrades-in-arms whose evolving friendship has enough emotional depth to carry readers through any number of naval (or in this case aerial) adventures.
I'm now deep into the fourth book, and I see no signs of the pace or quality level slacking off. These books are good, clean, fast-paced fun with all the joys of science fantasy and naval adventure combined. If you're feeling world-weary and jaded then take my advice and have a go at them.
SPIN STATE Featured in 25 Years of Spectra
Bantam is celebrating the 25th anniversary of its SF/Fantasy imprint, Spectra, and I got a nice surprise when they made SPIN STATE one of the featured titles for 2003. They asked me to write something about the experience of writing the book, or writing in general, or SF in general. So being the indecisive type I picked all of the above....
Here's a link to the page on SPIN STATE. And here's a link to the main list, which makes for fun reading. Surprising how many of my favorite books these guys turn out to have published....
Another thing you'll notice is how many of the writers talk about working with Anne Groell, the senior editor at Spectra. Anne is one of the great unsung heroes of SF. She has worked with many of the top writers in the business, from Kim Stanley Robinson and David Brin to George R. R. Martin and Robin Hobb. In fact, Anne is the person who believed in Robin Hobb enough to give her a second chance when a string of badly handled books had ruined her sales numbers and most publishers had decided she was washed up as a writer. We all know how that turned out. And it was characteristic of Anne's steadfast belief that if you just keep putting really good books out there readers will find them.
One of the funny and endearing things about working with Anne is that, as Lynn Flewelling mentioned, she draws smiley faces on her manuscripts every time she likes something. So even if you get back a manuscript covered with red ink, there somehow seems to be at least one smiley face for every question, comment or correction. You wouldn't think it would matter. I mean we're all grownups and professionals, right? We ought to be able to take our medicine. Can you imagine the members of your average writing group drawing smiley faces all over each others' drafts? Heavens, no! And yet ... somehow Anne's smiley faces are like Mary Poppin's spoonful of sugar. They really do help the medicine go down. Though the slog from manuscript to publication can be long, when you are working with Anne it never gets discouraging. This ability to critique without crushing is part of her great talent as an editor -- and one reason why she has inspired so many writers to deliver of their best work for her.
Here's a link to the page on SPIN STATE. And here's a link to the main list, which makes for fun reading. Surprising how many of my favorite books these guys turn out to have published....
Another thing you'll notice is how many of the writers talk about working with Anne Groell, the senior editor at Spectra. Anne is one of the great unsung heroes of SF. She has worked with many of the top writers in the business, from Kim Stanley Robinson and David Brin to George R. R. Martin and Robin Hobb. In fact, Anne is the person who believed in Robin Hobb enough to give her a second chance when a string of badly handled books had ruined her sales numbers and most publishers had decided she was washed up as a writer. We all know how that turned out. And it was characteristic of Anne's steadfast belief that if you just keep putting really good books out there readers will find them.
One of the funny and endearing things about working with Anne is that, as Lynn Flewelling mentioned, she draws smiley faces on her manuscripts every time she likes something. So even if you get back a manuscript covered with red ink, there somehow seems to be at least one smiley face for every question, comment or correction. You wouldn't think it would matter. I mean we're all grownups and professionals, right? We ought to be able to take our medicine. Can you imagine the members of your average writing group drawing smiley faces all over each others' drafts? Heavens, no! And yet ... somehow Anne's smiley faces are like Mary Poppin's spoonful of sugar. They really do help the medicine go down. Though the slog from manuscript to publication can be long, when you are working with Anne it never gets discouraging. This ability to critique without crushing is part of her great talent as an editor -- and one reason why she has inspired so many writers to deliver of their best work for her.
Blueprints for Life
I recently learned that Dianna Wynne Jones is terminally ill. I'm sure this news is as sad for many of you as it is for me. She is one of the most cherished writers of my childhood and is largely responsible for my surviving middle school without loosing my sanity. If you want to send an email of appreciation to Dianna that her friends will read to her you can do so here.
Here's a link to an essay of hers about all the odd questions people ask her about writing children's fantasy. I've read and reread this essay many times with great enjoyment, and my favorite passage is the one where she explains that every good children's book is "a blueprint for dealing with life." I'd go further and say that every good novel is a blueprint for dealing with life. If it isn't that's only because grownup readers have gotten too ossified to learn from novels -- or because grownup writers have gotten too wrapped up in their own cleverness to remember why they started writing in the first place.
Thank you, Dianna, for some of the best Blueprints for Life I've ever read. I am so grateful that I got to read your books. And I so look forward to sharing them with my children and my grandchildren.
Here's a link to an essay of hers about all the odd questions people ask her about writing children's fantasy. I've read and reread this essay many times with great enjoyment, and my favorite passage is the one where she explains that every good children's book is "a blueprint for dealing with life." I'd go further and say that every good novel is a blueprint for dealing with life. If it isn't that's only because grownup readers have gotten too ossified to learn from novels -- or because grownup writers have gotten too wrapped up in their own cleverness to remember why they started writing in the first place.
Thank you, Dianna, for some of the best Blueprints for Life I've ever read. I am so grateful that I got to read your books. And I so look forward to sharing them with my children and my grandchildren.
F&SF REVIEWS
Well, I have been remiss. Again. I should probably stop apologizing for it. And I should certainly stop sounding surprised about it, as I think we are all coming to realize that I am remiss by nature.
Here is a link to my review column in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. I have reviewing books there for just shy of two years now, with a special brief to focus on Hard SF. I truly enjoy this work. Actually, I can hardly call it work with a straight face. Large boxes of free books arrive on my doorstep on a regular basis. An amazing number of them are really good. And an amazing number of the really good ones are first novels, which are especially fun. I get to read and think and write about whichever ones I want. The hardest part of the job is deciding which two or three books I can actually give review space to out of the great multitude of books that deserve it.
Here's a list of what I've reviewed so far (and promise I'll try to be better about posting links to current columns in the future...):
August 2008:
Pebble in the Sky, Isaac Asimov.
The Null-A Continuum, by John C. Wright.
Lorelei of the Red Mist, by Leigh Brackett..
The Secret of Sinharat and People of the Talisman, by Leigh Brackett.
The Martian General's Daughter, by Theodore Judson.
January 2009:
Saturn's Children, by Charles Stross.
Singularity's Ring, by Paul Melko.
Earth Ascendant, by Sean Williams.
June/July 2009:
Ink and Steel: A Novel of the Promethean Age, by Elizabeth Bear.
Hell and Earth: A Novel of the Promethean Age, by Elizabeth Bear.
Watermind, by M. M. Buckner.
January 2010:
Shambling Towards Hiroshima, by James Morrow.
How to Make Friends with Demons, by Graham Joyce.
The Last Theorem, by Arthur C. Clarke and Frederik Pohl.
City at the End of Time, by Greg Bear.
Implied Spaces, by Walter Jon Williams, Night Shade Books.
June/July 2010:
Regenesis. C. J. Cheryhh
Up Jim River, Michael Flynn.
The Hengis Hapthorn Chronicles, Matthew Hughes.
Otlet's Other Web
An intriguing article in the New York Times today about Otlet's Mundaneum, a 19th century steampunk version of the world wide web. Does this make up for failing to feed and water my blog for the last month? No, I thought not. Oh well. Still a fun article.
MARTHA LEWIS ON BOARD FOR MAPS FROM THE FLOATING WORLD
Well, after mumbling for years about doing an online comic, I've finally arrived at the moment where it's time to put my money where my mouth is. I've been doodling around for quite a while now on a far future storyline about human-AI hybrids set in a post-biosphere civilization called the Floating World.
The name "Maps From the Floating World" is meant to evoke the famous Ukiyo-e woodcuts of 18th Century Japan. Ukiyo-e (usually translated into English as "Pictures of the Floating World") were the ancestral art form of modern Japanese manga: mass-produced illustrations for glamorous stories about the geisha, samurai, intellectuals and rich merchants who populated Japan's great 17th century cities. The original "Pictures of the Floating World" depicted a profoundly new environment in Japanese (and human) history: an urban universe on the cusp of industrialization, full of people uprooted from their rural past and looking for new stories and new ways of living.
In the large scope of human cultural evolution, it's only a few short steps from 17th century Japan's "nightless cities" to the overwhelming, disorienting, chaotic cityscapes of cyberpunk ... or from the floating world's geishas and ronin to cyberpunk's razor girls and keyboard cowboys. I've tried to draw a line between these two points -- iconic images of proto-industrial urbanism on the one hand and post-industrial science fiction on the other hand -- and project it into a distant future. The inhabitants of my imagined Floating World are also people uprooted from their past and trying to chart their course through a new reality. In this case, however, it is the post-biosphere reality of Life After Earth. The central figures in the story are the human-AI hybrids who map, maintain and repair the informational threads of the Floating World. In essence, they are cosmic systems administrators. But the system they administer is humanity itself, and it is so vast and so old that no one even remembers whether it's the real world or just a virtual echo of a world long-dead. I guess you could call these AIs gods ... if gods were fallible and mortal. The surviving human inhabitants of the Floating World just call them Tinkers.
Okay. So much for idle daydreams. What pushed this project beyond the realm of idle daydreams was meeting artist Martha Lewis.
Martha's work is truly amazing. It explores technological and scientific images in a way that explodes all the stale old assumptions and stereotypes we've come to associate with scientific (and science fictional) illustration.
Her paintings have the hypnotic, iconic, otherworldly quality of ancient maps. You can get lost in them. You can imagine futuristic monks meditating in front of them. You could even meditate in front of them yourself. The first time I saw one of her paintings, I had that kick-in-the-gut feeling of having Thus, I am very, very excited to be able announce that Martha has tentatively agreed to collaborate on the Floating World project.
At this stage we're still just throwing ideas at the walls and seeing which ones stick. But the eventual goal is to construct an online graphic novel that will be truly a creature of the web, written, drawn, and designed as fragments of linked hypertext. Eventually, we hope to weave a number of interconnected stories together so that readers will be free to navigate the links between various storylines in any order they choose, be it following the adventures of a favorite character or constructing a large scale history of the system as a whole. In essence, we would like the comic itself to function as a virtual Floating World ... one where each reader will be free to construct his or her own personal map of the territory.
All these grand plans are still a long way off, of course. But we
Of Futures that Were or Might Have Been or Never Will Be....
This is another low-news-content post, for which I apologize. I should have more concrete news soon ... or at least enough tie to write something substantive for your reading pleasure.
Meanwhile, in the course of researching another project I stumbled on a truly great SF-related website called PaleoFuture. This guy has had the brilliant idea of collecting futuristic images and posting them by decade to create a kind of archeology of futures past. It's great stuff, full of ideas to tickle your imagination, whether you're an SF writer or an SF reader.
Enjoy!
Book Crossing
Sorry for my prolonged absence. Actually I've been working like a banshee (though why banshees should be considered hard workers, except at screaming, is entirely beyond me). I have a number of projects in the seeding stage, and I should have more concrete news to post about them in the mid-term future.
Meanwhile, allow me to commend to you a magnificent site called BOOKCROSSING. I stumbled on it recently while ... well, I don't remember how I stumbled on it. But bookcrossing is basically a kind of pay-it-forward karmic bookswap club. It provides an online registry of "travelling books" that people have tagged and released into the wild to find new readers. If you find a travelling book lying around your local coffeeshop or laundromat, you are supposed to read it, make a journal entry at the website, and release it back into the wild to find its next reader. A number of books have travelled the world so far, showing up in truly amazing places.
I find the idea fetchingly kooky. And though I'm too much of a book miser to give away books under normal circumstances, I am using it to help find new readers for some of my truly favorite books and writers. So far I've released one science fiction book: TIL HUMAN VOICES WAKE US by Mark Budz. Wonderful book, wonderful writer. I am hoping that the copy I tagged and released yesterday wins him new readers (and new sales too ... ahhhhem ... please note the amazon link above).
Meanwhile, allow me to commend to you a magnificent site called BOOKCROSSING. I stumbled on it recently while ... well, I don't remember how I stumbled on it. But bookcrossing is basically a kind of pay-it-forward karmic bookswap club. It provides an online registry of "travelling books" that people have tagged and released into the wild to find new readers. If you find a travelling book lying around your local coffeeshop or laundromat, you are supposed to read it, make a journal entry at the website, and release it back into the wild to find its next reader. A number of books have travelled the world so far, showing up in truly amazing places.
I find the idea fetchingly kooky. And though I'm too much of a book miser to give away books under normal circumstances, I am using it to help find new readers for some of my truly favorite books and writers. So far I've released one science fiction book: TIL HUMAN VOICES WAKE US by Mark Budz. Wonderful book, wonderful writer. I am hoping that the copy I tagged and released yesterday wins him new readers (and new sales too ... ahhhhem ... please note the amazon link above).
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