Wednesday, 18 December 2024

And now for a break in the routine....

 By reading some straight SF, not space opera!  Mal Goes to War by Edward Ashton takes place in the United States of America in 2065, as a genocidal war breaks out between Humanists and the Federals.  

Humanists are ordinary people who are violently opposed to the existence of cyborgs:  humans with  neurological implants, embedded enhancements to their musculature, live contact with infospace, nanobots running through their bloodstreams to repair physical damage, etc. etc.  The Federals are the same-old, same-old folks who may or may not be enhanced (depending on their personal financial circumstances or their military enlistment status), who live in or run everyday society of 2065.  

Our hero Mal is an independent AI who inadvertently wanders into the conflict between the two types of monkey when he downloads himself into the neurological implant of a recently deceased Federal soldier to see what it's like to live in meatspace -- and gets trapped when his link to infospace goes down.

The cover calls this book "darkly comic", which pretty much covers Mal's adventures incompetently pretending to be human as he first collects a posse of misfits, and then tries to escape with them across Humanist lines back to Federal infospace while Bad Things happen all around.  Well-written, funny, gripping and thought-provoking, even if I refuse to believe that a game of Guess the Cube Root of the Square of the Output of the Random Number Generator would be any more fun than the base game of Guess the Output of the Random Number Generator for a bored AI trapped in the head of a sleeping host human.




Wednesday, 11 December 2024

What I've been reading: Space Opera Edition II

As I continue to read modern space operas, I'm noticing (perhaps belatedly) some strong general themes:

  • Written by women
  • Usually include banter/smartasses/clever dialog
  • Strong female leads
  • Lots of queer characters and queer relationships
  • Romance is common, as are found families, scrappy space rebels (think Harrison Ford), and AIs
Now on to more detail about my most two latest reads: Full Speed to a Crash Landing and The Floating Hotel.  Firstly, I'd have to say that these two are among the best of my most recent batch (which includes CalamityCascade FailureBarbary StationFinder, and Under Fortunate Stars from Space Opera I).  

Neither of these two books has any obvious "writerly" flaw, both were engaging, and neither was too long.  

Quick competent fun = +++

Full Speed to a Crash Landing by Beth Revis (published 2024)

This one had intrigue, banter/smart ass comments, and a hint of romance (or at least passing lust).  So, in some ways it's a mirror of Calamity by Constance Fey.  But Calamity is a romance and Full Speed is a sexy space heist.  Full Speed is told in the first person, by an unreliable narrator, and is about a galactic salvager/scavenger who is rescued as she's running out of air by an official government salvage crew who's come to investigate the wreck that she's plundering.  

Parallels with my work:  banter, spaceships


The Floating Hotel by Grace Curtis (published 2024)

Can I complain that a book isn't what I expected if it delivers exactly what's on the tin?  I ordered this after reading its Amazon preview pages, and thought that it was going to be about Carl, the abused orphan from a terrible mining planet who is kindly taken in by the staff of a luxury hotel spaceship (the Grand Abeona). Instead, the book is fundamentally about....drumrollllll....the hotel itself.  

Each chapter follows a different character (although Carl, who becomes manager, does get a few), and together the characters' stories tell us about the Galactic Empire that the hotel traverses and gradually, all about the hotel itself.   At the heart of the book is a mystery, which creates an overarching plot that emerges from the individual character's stories.

I thought the book was very well done.  It was engaging, had well-developed and believable characters, and the overall conceit was well-executed in that the many threads came together to build to a "surprising but inevitable" conclusion (which is the goal of a mystery plot!)

This is advertised as a cozy and I can see why:  Carl (and the culture of the ship) is kind, you can describe the collection of characters as a found family, and the premise of a luxury interstellar floating hotel staffed by waifs who love their work is fundamentally sweet.   But there is a dark heart here: an oppressive Galactic Empire with a sadistic agent who uses torture as a tool.  I find it hard to categorize any book that includes torture as cozy, even if the perpetrator eventually faces consequences (albeit for murdering a colleague, not for the torture itself).

Parallels with my work: oppressive Galactic Empire, spaceships, most characters are decent and doing their best


Tuesday, 19 November 2024

What I've been reading: Space opera edition

 As I've been preparing to seek an agent to represent my cozy space opera, I've been reading recent books in the genre both to understand the current marketplace and to find "comp titles" that I can use for my query.  Here are some of the books I've read recently:

Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee  (published 2016)

Rebellion. Heresy. Interplanetary War.  A brilliant undead general released from storage/captivity and assigned to help our protagonist triumph in an otherwise hopeless battle.   Lots of intricate world-building and factional strife. Military SF with calendrical magic. 

Parallels with my book:  honestly?  spaceships.  

Barbary Station by R. E. Stearns (published 2017)

Lesbian space pirates.  That's probably enough to entice most potential readers of this book to open its covers.  When you discover that the lesbian couple in question are seeking to join the space pirates because of their overwhelming student debt...well, slam dunk for reader identification for most Gen Zs. Add in corporate bad guys and a struggle to prove yourself to the pirates while simultaneously trying to save innocents in a battle against a malevolent AI -- all the adventure boxes have been ticked.  The book does have its flaws, though.  From a writerly perspective, I found that the writing has weak POV. Weak POV weakens a reader's engagement with the characters, which I believe is what's behind statements like "I started losing interest" and "For some reason I just never connected" in the top Goodreads reviews.

Parallels with my work:  relationship between the two main characters is critical to the story, as is a powerful AI.

Cascade Failure by L.M. Sagas (published 2024)

Banter.  Smart ass perspectives.  Clever observations.  All things that should really have enhanced this adventure story about a Guild deserter who hitches a ride on a spaceship and ends up working with its crew to save the universe from a planet-killing conspiracy.  The book has a lot of action, plot twists, a found family, and fun characters, but the author is a bit too much in love with the clever things her characters say, think, or do -- sometimes to the point where it interferes with the story.  The voices of the various character are also not always distinct, which can be confusing.

Parallels to my book: space opera, intelligent spaceship as a major character, banter.

Calamity by Constance Fey (published 2023)

Constance Fay does a better job with the banter: it amuses the reader and enlivens the book without ever slowing down the action or getting in the way of the story.  Calamity is a romance about a down-on-her-luck spaceship captain forced to take a dubious commission from an influential Family, along with accepting that Family's handsome son as her security chief.  Deception and adventure follow, along with lots of steamy scenes, most of which have nothing to do with the secret villain volcano lair that they uncover.

Parallels to my book: space opera, romantic themes, banter.

The Terraformers by AnnaLee Newitz (published 2023)

AnnaLee Newitz does not write space opera.  Or at least her previous two novels (Future of Another Timeline and Autonomous) each take place on a future Earth and are "time travel" and "AI" books respectively.  This one is not space opera either: it takes place in a far future on a single distant planet being terraformed by an all-powerful corporation for human use. It draws a bit from the Kim Stanley Robinson school of SFF, in that the book is not really a narrative about one set of characters that has a beginning middle and an end.  Instead it is the story of a civilization (or interlocking civilizations) developing on a planet over the long centuries that it takes for the planet to be altered into the form desired by its "owners".   I have trouble with this kind of book.  It's a great forum for exploring ideas, but no matter how skilled the author I tend to lose engagement when one set of characters vanish and the next appear

Parallels to my book:  unusual romantic relationship (intelligent cat and an intelligent train).  

Under Fortunate Stars by Ren Hutchings (published 2022)

Very interesting premise: a spaceship unexpectedly and disastrously trapped in a space rift discovers that they are not alone.  Trapped alongside them is the Jonah, the ship whose heroic crew legendarily rescued humans and Felen from a permawar 152 years ago.  How can this possibly be?  The novel explores issues of history and heroism as it unravels the future (and maybe the past) of the unexpectedly mundane and frustrating real people who need to work together to address the current crisis.  Flaws?  Maybe I'm spoiled by Connie Willis's Blackout / All Clear, but Under Fortunate Stars never addresses the possibility/fear that actions taken in the present could alter actions recorded in history or talk about what that could mean.

Parallels to my book: not very many.  spaceships?

Finder by Suzanne Palmer (published 2019)

Intergalactic fixer turned repo man Fergus Ferguson is looking for a stolen spaceship so that he can return it to its rightful owners.  Instead, from page 1 he's thrown into a civil war as competing factions within this remote (and somewhat bizaare) human habitat struggle for power within their fractured society, all while being watched over by enigmatic aliens who might just intervene.

Parallels to my book: space opera. spaceships. enigmatic aliens. Characters with alliterative names.  Characters who mean well and try to do the right thing through a facade of toughness. 

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh (published 2023)

A thoroughly brainwashed teenager on an isolated space station does her impressively accomplished best to forward the aims of the awful leader of her awful society -- until her beloved brother cracks and flees.  Or did he?  

This book skillfully immerses you in the mind of a fanatic teen, doing the difficult work of drawing a sympathetic portrait of an unsympathetic character.  It does so to help you truly understand the depth of the trauma that formed her, and to show you her character arc of learning and growth.   2024 Hugo Award winner for best novel. 

Sadly, when I mentioned this as a "good book that I've read recently" to the agent most interested in my novel, her response was "brave choice".  Sigh.  I like writing hopeful books about basically good people, but that's not the only way to help create a better future.

Parallels to my book:  MC who likes to follow the rules, but who learns and grows. Repressive society.  Redemptive arc.

A Prayer for the Crown Shy by Becky Chambers (published 2022)

The most recent novella by the top current author for "found family", "hopecore", and "cozy SFF" books.  Follows the wanderings of an itinerant "tea monk" and their robot companion as the two of them search for answers to the question "what do people need?" .  Set in a distant future that is long past the fossil fuel era.

Parallels to my book:  positive message, fundamentally good characters,  optimistic.






Wednesday, 19 June 2024

Sexton Blake: The World-Shakers (by Desmond Reid aka Rex Dolphin)

 Sexton Blake starred in thousands of pulp stories published (or produced) in the UK between 1893 and 1978.  The World-Shakers dates to 1960, when Blake's main competitor for readers was James Bond.  

What did I think?  

Sexton Blake is to James Bond as James Bond is to War and Peace.  

Recommended for manly men with square jaws and for those whose sense of irony is stronger than their feelings for literature.  10/10 for having a villain who resides in a secret volcano lair.

Friday, 14 June 2024

Story Genius: how to use brain science to go beyond outlining and write a riveting novel by Lisa Cron

Why do folks who write "how to" books insist that they have "the one true way" and feel compelled to dismiss every other technique?  Do they really think this makes what they have to say more convincing? And are there folks for whom this kind of dismissal makes an argument more compelling?

Also, why do "plotters" hate "pantsers" so much?  

For those of you who know something about the writing world, the oversimplified generalization about writers is that they come in two varieties.  "Plotters" plan out an entire story scene by scene before they start writing.  "Pantsers" fly by the seat of their pants: that is, they start writing and see where the story takes them.  

Which technique is better?  Well, plotters tend to view 'pansters' as time-wasters, but Stephen King, Margaret Atwood, and Diana Galbadon (author of the Outlander series) have written and sold an awful lot of books.  To be fair, plotters J.K. Rowling and John Grisham have too, so I personally think that the only fair conclusion to draw is that whichever technique works for you works for you.  (To those in the know, me saying 'what works for you works for you' outs me as a pantser, because no plotter seems capable of admitting that pantsing is a valid way of writing.)

All of this is prelude to saying that Story Genius is a book about how to write a novel, and there are things about it that really really annoy me.

But I'm here to write a book review, so I'll leave behind my irritation. What does Story Genius have to say?  Unlike most books about planning a novel that talk about the three act story structure for plotStory Genius puts character, character arc, and story theme at the heart of writing.  

How does that work?  Basically Cron argues that it is far more effective to begin planning a novel by asking 'what is my novel going to be about?' rather than 'what's going to happen?'  In other words, no matter what genre of novel you write, your book will fundamentally illustrate some universal theme like 'you can't have love without pain' or 'kindness matters most' or 'failure is the best teacher'.  So you should start planning your novel by deciding what you want to say about life.  Of course, novels are about people, so the next step after that is to decide who your protagonist will be.  How will their life will illustrate your theme through their story arc?  (Perhaps your protagonist will be someone who is a jerk to everyone because it means that they get what they want?). Once you have those two elements in place, your job as a writer is to think of a backstory for the character that makes their current attitude make sense and be relatable (for example, as a child they were crushed for being too nice).  Finally you need to imagine a sequence of emotional events that will force them to confront their misbelief about the world (only jerks get ahead) and change.  Only after all of that character work is done do you start to think about the specific events (the plot) that will force your protaganist through this emotional arc.  

Why does Lisa Cron suggest this approach to novel development?  This is where the 'brain science' part comes in.  Recent fMRI studies of the brain show that when we experience fiction, our brain waves mirror those that the protagonist of a story would be going through. In other words, in some sense we experience what a protagonist is experiencing.  Why is this important?  Cron quotes Keith Oatley, a cognitive psychologist and author "Fiction is a simulation that runs on the software of our minds. And it is a particularly useful simulation because navigating the social world effectively is extremely tricky."

Story is how humans make sense of the world, especially the social world, where story can educate us about how to act and react to situations we have not yet encountered.

That means story is important.  What humans relate to in story is humans.  Therefore, all types of novel need to centre character and character arc.  The most effective way to do that is to plan your entire novel around  character arc.

What do I think of the thesis? Well, I'm only half-way through, but I see a lot of value here.  It reinforces my growing understanding that my writing needs more interiority -- that is, I need to share more about how my characters experience the events that happen. What do they think and feel?  Interiority makes characters real to readers, and helps readers engage with your story and your writing. There are a lot of other gems thrown in here and there too.  For example, at the heart of your story, your character must face a situation where they they face great personal loss if they choose not to act.  In other words, there should be compelling reasons for your characters actions, and your readers need to feel those reasons. 

But overall? Well, as you might guess, I reject the overall thesis that there is only one 'correct' way to write a novel, let alone plan a novel.  Her book also has a couple of big flaws.  The first is that the example novel that she plans step-by-step as she explains her technique is as dull as ditchwater.  The second is that she keeps claiming that her technique is valid for all types of fiction, but she doesn't include concrete examples of how a character focus for planning would work for plot-driven fiction like mysteries, thrillers, SF, fantasy, or horror (or for more abstract and intellectual genres like literary fiction). 

So, is this a useful 'craft' book for writers?  Well, I suppose I should have waited to finish reading it before writing this review.  I'm only halfway through.  :-)  But yes, I think it is.  I'm never going to create a scene-by-scene breakdown of my entire novel before I start writing, and it makes my heart shrivel when Cron brightly directs me to keep myself in check as I write to keep myself from deviating from that plan.  But character truly is at the heart of story -- just as plot is essential to many types of fiction.  So I can learn from a craft book that focuses on character even if I'm probably not going to finish reading it.  

Saturday, 1 June 2024

The Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard (with a few thoughts on Becky Chambers and The Goblin Emperor)

After finishing the first 100 pages or so of The Hands of the Emperor I mentioned to my partner that I'd just started a book where the private secretary to the God-Mage Emperor convinces the emperor to go on his very first vacation to a beautiful remote location with only his closest staff on hand.  "Then everything goes wrong!" my partner said, with a smile, to complete my sentence.

Well, no.  Not in this extraordinary book.  That's not what happens at all.  In fact, you could say that nothing much actually happens in the next 638 pages.  And yet I was grabbed by this book in a way that I haven't been grabbed by the three most recent SFF novels that I've read  (The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson, The Terraformers by AnnaLee Newitz, The Angel of the Crows by Katherine Addison). I read for hours every day, stayed up late to finish chapters, kept reading when I should have been doing something else.

What gives?  How on earth does that even work?

As a writer, you're told about the three act structure -- the bones of storytelling that apply to screenplays, novels, short stories.  It's the basic structure of story that makes a narrative feel satisfying: Act 1 introduces us to our hero and the challenge that launches them into action. Act 2 exposes the true nature of the threat, forces the hero to make choices, and ends at a dark point.  Act 3 is where the hero takes charge, makes sacrifices, and then triumphs (or fails).  Formulaic?  Yes and no.  There are lots of templates, analyses, and formulas out there, but the best of them acknowledge that there are many ways to meet these milestones, and many ways to tell a story.  Their point is that this basic structure is engrained into how stories are told in Western societies, and that by paying attention to this structure you can make your story better in the same way that getting the balance of salt, sweet, acid, and unami right in a recipe can make the food you cook more appealing.

However, The Hands of the Emperor does not follow three act structure.  Neither do Becky Chambers' books.  The Goblin Emperor (by Katherine Addison) doesn't so clearly set aside the three act structure, but definitely falls into the category of 'A book where nothing bad happens'.

What on earth gives?  

Well, spoiler, it's Character.  It comes down to character.  Becky Chambers writes characters that people love in a society that people love, and despite the fact that her people live in a complicated ever-changing interstellar space opera universe, the challenges her people face are fundamentally personal. For example, in The Galaxy and the Ground Within, a group of travellers is temporarily stranded at what amounts to an interstellar truck stop, and the book is about discovering what personal challenges these odd assortment of characters are facing (and how they resolve them).  The Goblin Emperor has a clearer narrative arc -- our exiled hero is called back to the palace to become emperor when his father and all four of his elder brothers are killed in an airship accident.  But that's only the first chapter!  The bulk of the book is about Maia overcoming the trauma of his isolated upbringing to become a good emperor by being true to himself (transforming his society in the process).  

The Hands of the Emperor is about Cliofer (Kip) Mdang, who begins the novel as private secretary to the all-powerful, magical, and semi-divine emperor and ends as Viceroy to that emperor, just before the emperor leaves on his magical quest to find his successor.  This isn't a startling transformation: Cliofer is the emperor's most trusted advisor and head of the imperial bureaucracy at the beginning of the novel, and takes on (vaguely defined) additional responsibilities as the book progresses. The actual events of the book simply explain how Kip has become who he is, explores his relationship with his emperor and with his family, and shows how Kip transforms his society through his steadfast adherence to the fundamentals of the culture of his isolated provincial home province.

Why is the book gripping-ish?  Despite being too long, and despite some tedious repetition?  In the end, because you care about Kip.  He's both immensely competent and immensely modest, so modest that it takes you a long time to see how improbably much he's accomplished. Much like the Goblin Emperor, Kip is decent in every way, always does the right thing, and triumphs over his not-very-threatening adversaries.  

I've heard books like this called "competence porn", and "hopecore".  I believe they're popular because in this broken world of ours, who can resist a fantasy world where someone decent put things right?  

 Victoria Goddard is self-published (successfully!).  Becky Chambers started self-published, and was so successful that she was picked up by a major and has since won a Hugo.   Addison is traditionally published, at perhaps the cost of including more plot in her books.  

I think the distinction is important.  I don't think that any traditional publisher would take a book without (much) plot, particularly one as long as The Hands of the Emperor (738 pages in paperback, in case you aren't clear on the math).  But I wonder if at some point that might change: Becky Chambers has sold a lot of books, and it seems that Victoria Goddard is doing well.  If they do, in 10 or 15 years, will all those internet pages on novel structure look different than they do today?

Tuesday, 19 March 2024

A healthy future: Lessons from the frontlines of a crisis by Ryan Meili

It's been just over 4 years since the WHO declared COVID-19 to be a global heath emergency, but in many ways we seem to have forgotten that the pandemic ever happened.  The only people who mention COVID-19 these days are anti-vax crazies and conspiracy theorists who rewrite the history of those years to be a story of unjustified government over-reaction and oppression.

But more than 1,000,000 people are confirmed to have died of COVID-19 in the United States. More than 50,000 Canadians died.  More than 1900 died in Saskatchewan.

A healthy future is the story of the COVID-19 pandemic in Saskatchewan, as told by the leader of its official opposition, family doctor and health activist Ryan Meili.  The book is an effort to un-erase the history of COVID-19 by following events from beginning to 'end', from month to month, through COVID wave after COVID wave. It serves as a much-needed reminder of those long months and years: I spent the first 4.5 months of the pandemic in Saskatchewan and even I was shocked at what I'd forgotten.  Restrictions began with a 250 person gathering limit??? WTF?  Oh yeah,  that's right -- I remember now.  The right-wing Saskatchewan Party's COVID response began with that weird under-reaction of a restriction on March 13, 2020, the day after the province's first confirmed case of COVID.

I left Saskatchewan near the end of July 2020, so I didn't follow events in that province as closely afterwards.  But the overall story that Meili tells is familiar -- COVID waves, deaths, restrictions, vaccinations. Government responses that ranged from frustrating (why NOT tell us where in the province cases are happening?  It's human nature to feel that something is 'somebody else's problem' without concrete data that tells you otherwise) to well-thought out (drive-in vaccination lineups made perfect sense in Saskatchewan) to heart-breakingly stupid (most of the rest of the Saskatchewan Party's policy decisions).  

My one criticism of the book is also one of its strengths:  A healthy future keeps the focus squarely on events and policy decisions in a single Canadian province.  Readers from other places might not feel as engaged with the book when the specifics of their COVID experience will have been different.  But at the same time, sometimes being specific is the best way of approaching the universal.  By limiting himself to telling the story of his own province, Meili is not only rescuing Saskatchewan's COVID story from oblivion, he is rooting his observations and recommendations in a very particular set of facts.

I'll close with a quote that Meili includes in his concluding chapter "Lessons for the next wave":

 "Among countries with available GDP data, we do not see any evidence of a trade-off between protecting people's health and protecting the economy. The relationship between the health and economic impact of the pandemic go in the opposite direction. As well as saving lives, countries controlling the outbreak effectively may have adopted the best economic strategy too" [1]