April 2, 2014 · 1:03 pm

My Favorite Aliens

A Fire Upon the Deep won Vernor Vinge the first of his six Hugo Awards when his novel shared the award in 1993 with Connie Willis’ Doomsday Book. Vinge’s imagination is apparent throughout his book, but what for sets the book apart are his unique aliens, the Tines. Avid sci fi readers become alien jaded. There are the fearsome bug aliens, the hive brain aliens, the humanoid aliens, and so on. A handful of aliens stick in my mind. One is Nessus, the neurotic Pierson’s Puppeteer in Larry Niven’s Ringworld. Ringworld won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards in 1970.

With their three legs and two heads, Pierson’s Puppeteers look like a committee constructed them. Tines don’t even look alien. You could see one at the neighborhood park without realizing it. So, what is a Time? I don’t want to spoil the experience of discovery for you. Check out Chapter Two in A Fire Upon the Deep. For me it was like “did I read that right?” I reread the passage. “Yes, I read that right. What’s happening here?” I read the remainder of the chapter very carefully. Like with Nessus, I grew rather fond of my favorite Tines.

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March 27, 2014 · 11:27 am

A Time Traveler and the Black Plague Meet in Doomsday Book

Doomsday Book is a time travel book…or is it a historical novel? The year is 2048 (well maybe as I will explain later) and Kivrin, an earnest undergraduate female historian, is sent back to the Oxford, England of 1320. She doesn’t arrive there, but instead somewhere else, sometime else in Old England. Meanwhile a deadly influenza epidemic sweeps across present day England. The nasty virus hits Kivrin soon after she arrives. Things get worse. She doesn’t arrive in merry Oxford, but in a tiny hamlet where a minor noble family has taken refuge from the Black Plague raging across England. Willis weaves parallel stories of present with that of Kivrin in 1348. Kivrin’s tale mesmerized me. Will she survive the flu? Will she and her new friends survive the plague? Will she be able to find the drop site for her retrieval back to the present? Willis’ depiction of small village in Medieval England rang true and made a perfect backdrop for her nail biting drama.

In the present day, the flu ravages the ranks of the time travel scientists. Will they be able to organize Kivrin’s retrieval? A sprinkling of farce leavens this story. A strict sci-fi fan may have some issues with the 2048 story as cell phones, voice mail, and even answering machines don’t exist. Maybe Willis originally wrote the story in the 1970’s. A speaker at the PNWA Summer Conference a few years ago, who knows Willis, said the book’s technology reflected Willis’ own level of technological savviness. I decided to ignore the issue and enjoy the story. Don’t expect a quick read. This is a long book. Instead, get cozy in your favorite chair, pour yourself a good glass of port, and discover Kivrin’s fate.

I put books into three categories: the fun reads, the reads I don’t finish, and the books that make a mark on my memory. Doomsday Book is one of the last. It was a rare joint winner in 1993 of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. It shared the Hugo Award with Vernor Vinge’s A Fire Upon the Deep. The two winners couldn’t be more different. Vernor’s book takes place in deep space and features some of the most imaginative aliens I’ve encountered in sci-fi. I’ll review A Fire Upon the Deep next week.

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March 14, 2014 · 8:57 am

My Science Fiction Reading Quest

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When I started writing science fiction, I realized how dated my reading in the genre was. It was time to get reading. I started with the Hugo Award winners and nominees. I didn’t read all of them. I didn’t even like some, which emphasizes how reading is such a personal thing and a book one person loves, another might hate. For me, I’ll take a good plot and straightforward writing.

 

This reading quest led me to John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War, Vernor Vinge’s A Fire Upon the Deep, and Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game among others. I also read some classics that somehow I missed, like Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. Currently I’m the fantasy/science fiction world of Roger Zelazny’s Lord of Light, which I first read years ago.

 

Over the next weeks, author by author I’ll explore my experiences on this reader’s quest.

 

 

 

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March 11, 2014 · 8:47 am

Happy Birthday Krin!

No, it’s not the birthday of Krin Bishop, the empath heroine of Truth-Teller Rebellion.

There is a real Krin. She’s a spunky ninety-one years old today. Happy Birthday, Krin. I’ll have a full profile of her soon.

I had a problem three years ago when I started Truth-Teller Rebellion. I wanted a strong name for Cary’s remarkable sister, and I didn’t have one. My wife Teresa remembered Krin. It was the perfect name: both different and strong. We met Krin and her daughter two years earlier while on a cruise, and had kept in touch. Krin graciously gave me permission to use her name.

Thank again, Krin, and happy birthday.

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March 8, 2014 · 4:26 pm

Tying Flies. A perfect activity for a rainy day.

I eliminated all except two passive sentences in Truth-Teller Revenge. One last read and it goes on to my editor. Roasted garlic and homemade spaghetti for dinner. Now some fly tying. There are few things more satisfying than catching a trout on a fly I created. Otherwise it’s a wet, dreary day in Poulsbo.IMG_2244

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March 7, 2014 · 9:43 am

Truth-Teller Rebellion gets a great review

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A few highlights of the review are:

 

The world building in this book first becomes evident by the sometimes odd ways in which the characters speak. Archaic words are effortlessly mixed in with futuristic slang and references to cutting-edge technology. Strictly speaking this isn’t steampunk, but I do see some influence from that genre in the ways in which the characters communicate about certain ideas. It took me a few chapters to adjust to some of their odder uses of syntax, but once I did I really enjoyed learning about how Cary and Krin think in particular based on the types of words they choose to use and how they string them together.…

 

Mr. Schultz’s scenery descriptions are not to be missed. The earth has changed a great deal over the past few thousand years, and the best passages in this story describe how humanity has adapted to some pretty extreme climate shifts in North America. Enough time has passed that none of these dangers are particularly newsworthy to characters who have never known any other way of life, but as a reader I really enjoyed quietly comparing their world to my own.…

 

What I liked most about this book was how intelligently the characters respond to the dangerous situations they find themselves trapped in. I may not have always understood why they made certain choices, but Cary and Krin were written in such a way that they honestly act and sound like two teenagers who grew up herding cattle on the steppes. They know how to react quickly in a crisis and are clearly used to thinking creatively and making the best of their resources.

 

The complete review is at http://www.longandshortreviews.com. Go to the review tab and then pick sci-fi/fantasy.

 

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March 4, 2014 · 11:35 am

Truth-Teller Revenge to be released in November

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Truth-Teller Rebellion is once again available for purchase as an e-book on Amazon, from my publisher at www.champagnebooks.com, Barnes & Noble, and other e-book sellers.

More great news! I’ve signed a contract with Champagne Book Group for Rebellion’s sequel. Truth-Teller Revenge will be released in November.

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December 29, 2013 · 4:20 pm

The Book Thief is a must see

Just saw The Book Thief . I give it five stars.

Don’t expect car chases or GCI graphics. Expect a simple story well told.

Ten-year-old Liesel tries to make sense of the world in Nazi Germany. She sees her young brother die and her mother, a communist, surrenders Liesel to the state. Her new foster father Hans charms the reclusive Liesel and teaches the illiterate girl to read. The midnight arrival of a young Jewish man then changes her world forever. The brave humanity of Liesel’s family stands starkly against the Nazi’s inhumanity. I wept for the last ten minutes, although it doesn’t take much in a movie or book to get me crying. Death narrates and proves himself more human than many of those whose souls he takes.

Sophie Nélisse plays Liesel to perfection. I nominate her for an Oscar. Geoffrey Rush does a great job as Hans.

I saw a preview of The Book Thief over a month ago, but decided to first read the book. I found the first third of the book rather slow going, but ultimately I think the book better captures the essence of Liesel’s bewilderment and pain. Also, it better addressed the insidiousness of the Nazi disease. So, see the movie and read the book. Image

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December 12, 2013 · 10:03 pm

Nature’s Fury: the GLOF

Glofs, glacial lake outburst floods, play a prominent role in my book Truth-Teller Rebellion. Glofs occur each year and are every bit as horrific as in Truth-Teller Rebellion. Over five thousand people died last June when Chaurabari Lake, a lake spawned from the Chaurabari glacier in the Indian Himalayas, burst its banks after unusually hot weather. Global warming means there will be more glofs in the future, at least while there still are glaciers.

Fortunately, most glaciers are in the Arctic and Antarctica where they pose no threat, but many of the over forty Himalayan glaciers are potential man killers. Monitoring of glacial lakes can give an early warning of any threats. In fact, Chaurabari Lake was a known problem, although somehow this was not communicated to those in danger.

Present glofs are small beans compared to the Missoula Floods that carved the coulees of eastern Washington fifteen thousand years ago at the end of the last Ice Age. Three thousand square mile Lake Missoula in Montana went through a fifty-odd year cycle of filling and bursting. When the ice dam blocking it gave way, Lake Missoula would hurl towards the Pacific Ocean hundreds of miles away at speeds up to eighty miles per hour and with a volume many times all the present rivers of the world. Dry Falls in eastern Washington’s Grand Coulee was formed by the Missoula Floods. At three and a half miles wide it’s believed to have been the largest waterfall ever seen on Earth. Today it’s still impressive even without water going over it. I’ve caught trout in the lake below the falls while watching deer feed along the precipice’s face.

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December 6, 2013 · 12:03 pm

Is Mankind Too Dumb to Use Nuclear Power?

Fusion power could take us to the science fiction nirvana of unlimited power, if we’re smart enough to figure it out. Once fossil fuels are gone fission power could provide the energy bridge until fusion power plants are in place. We need to build more nuke plants soon, but can we do that without poisoning the Earth? Our track record on fission plants isn’t very good. Think Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima.

Fusion and fission are the ying and yang of the atomic world. The Earth’s core is a huge fission reactor. Fission breaks large atoms, like uranium, into smaller atoms. Downside? Fission reactors can run amok and they produce nasty radioactive byproducts that last for thousands of years. Fusion is the way the sun works. Fusion combines two light atoms, like hydrogen, into a heavier atom. A fusion reactor can’t do a Chernobyl. It something goes wrong it just stops working. And fusion doesn’t produce anything that will kill you.

When I was a kid they predicted we’d have fusion power by 2000. Didn’t happen. So why don’t we have a fusion reactor? We’ve spent over fifty years and tens of billions of dollars trying. Scientists are using lasers to replicate the sun. They have been able to fuse atoms, but it’s taken more energy to power the lasers than what has been produced by the fusion. Once they get fusion working it will take more billions of dollars, maybe hundreds of billions dollars, to build the first commercial fusion reactor. Expensive but affordable in the context the seven hundred billion dollars the U.S. spends each year on defense.

It took the best and brightest from across the globe to build the first fission nuclear reactor in 1942. These same people went on to build the first atom bomb in three years. Why can’t we do the same with fusion? For the sake of our great-grandchildren we must fund an innovative organization of our best and brightest to realize the promise of fusion power. Otherwise the energy deficient world of Truth-Teller Rebellion will be mankind’s dead-end.

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