onyxhawke

For those of you craving a dose of short fiction, another edition of Darwin's Evolutions has been released for your enjoyment..

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=c39b7a1a97a1cfa0ab1eab3e9fa335ca749e188c72fa9a4c

Having read several thousand novels over the course of my life, I can't say there are as many characters I'd like to meet. Not all of the characters are ones that I liked, but all had their own personal gravity that inescapably draws the minds eye to them. It goes without saying that most of the people who form the emotional topography of Lois Bujold's books are high on the list of people I'd like to meet, and while Miles and Cordelia have appeal that can't be understated in any way, and Ivan, Piotr, Mark and Cavilo are all signifigant, i think in all that universe the person their I'd like to meet most is Aral. Why, perhaps its because we see him almost exclusively from the worshipful eyes of people who see all his warts and wounds and still bloom in his warm regard.

In epic fantasy there are so many larger than life characters that it has become nearly as much of a cliche to create smaller, weaker heros with pluck and luck to counter what they don't have in brash and brawn. Still, there are a couple of the world beater class I'd enjoy meeting, Marcos the Black from Ray Feist's Midkimea
has such a twisted mind I don't think I could resist the urge to try and burrow into it. He'd probably turn me into a goat or something, but I'd adore the opportunity anyway.

What I refer to as middle fantasy is even richer with fascinating people. Mercedes Lackey created Valdermar, and it and it neighbors are home to quite a few people worth the time to enjoy a few drinks with, Kerowyn was always a fun person to follow the life of. Vanyel despite needing the occasional slap certainly qualifies as well. I think if i could pick only one person from the world I'd want to meet the adept Ma'ar (who's name I've probably butchered). Dianne Wynne Jones made me love fantasy again when I read Deep Secret, I probably hadn't read a single fantasy in over a year before that book and with it the balance of what I read took another of those periodic tacks that have less to do with what's popular than with what is good. Deep Secret introduces one after another of Simon's brothers, in-laws and coworkers and each of them has that genuine it that makes you take notice. Robin Hobb writes probably the darkest fantasy I read for fun and makes the bloody minded perseverance of her characters an unspoken but palpable motive force of her works.

Urban fantasy has its own fun, and quirky characters which I adore. C.E. Murphy wrote about the first cabbie who was drawn as a real person and not a cardboard cutout since Taxi, and I can never wait to see what he'll do or say next. Laura Resnick's Disappearing Nightly stars a prima donna cast of an off Broadway play that has you gobbling pages half hoping something unpleasant will eat them, and half hoping they'll live to be a wiser head some, distant, day. Dave Freer and Eric Flint have one of the most effective social satires of the genre with Pyramid Scheme and the follow on Pyramid Power and while cheerfully assassinating the character of government agencies and agents, mangling mythology with a thoroughness rivaled only by the cartoon Fractured Fairytales, and setting a breakneck pace put characters in front of you that are fully drawn and deftly executed. Cal and Nik Leandros are brothers with the type of relationship that will instantly click with anyone lucky enough to have a relationship that close. Rob Thurman takes this foundation and uses it to build the two separately and together and a world that is nearly intense enough to rival them. Richard Kadrey's regard for the conventions of fantasy are best described as scant, but Butcher Bird  takes us on a hell ride with the gritty and gripping Spyder Lee. Spyder's probably not the guy most of us would pick to perform emergency surgery on us, but he's not boring.

All in all, for me it doesn't matter if the character is a good guy, a bad girl, or somewhere in between, they just have to feel like someone who is genuine and if I couldn't imagine meeting them here in our world, they need to be a real product of the universe they life in, and not someone from the here and now shoved into a world that just makes them look absurd.

I've been reading a lot lately. I've blazed through months of slush. Some of which got rejected in the first three or four pages, some which held me until the end but didn't quite tip the scale to being something I'd pick up. Some of the common problems have been; redundancy, black and white universes, and sloppy language use. Fortunately for me there are these wonderful things called books. Some, much like the slush is decent, some has a very bad case of meh, and some is anti-slush. Some of the latter category that I've been reading is detailed below. Mild Spoilers, i don't expect that anything in the commentary takes place after the first 1/4 of the book.

First up was a YA novel that I'm pretty certain was in my WFC gift bag. Magic or Madness . Justine Larbalestier's is an entertaining yarn about a young girl who had been raised by her slightly loopy mother and moved all over Australia never staying in one place for long. Reason, our young heroine finds herself in the clutches of the person her mother feared most. Reason's Grandmother. All of Reason's young life has been spent avoiding the woman she has been raised to believe is evil incarnate. There are one or two very minor things in this I could live with having been buffed down a bit, but then I'm not the intended audience. All in all this was an excellent read and held up better to a critical adult reader than most of the YA on the market.

Butcher Bird by Richard Kadrey was something i wanted to read since the first time i saw the cover. While the main characters aren't the sort of people some would ever give anything except a nervous glare, they are the right characters for the story and the setting. If you're looking for a typical formulaic fantasy novel, go elsewhere. Butcher Bird is anything but another cookie cutter fantasy novel. Kadrey smoothly take your expectation and slaps you in the head with them in this twisted tale. Fun.

I got the immense pleasure of reading my first Elizabeth Bear book recently. Undertow is really a top notch novel. It has that dim, smoky aura thats right out of a prohibition era speakeasy that has all but gone by the wayside in todays science fiction. Undertow is set on a corporate colony. The levels of tech in the book are a very interesting mix, the culture is very solidly drawn and despite never drawing a single parallel to our world today has relevant things to say and better still relevant questions to ask. One of the things I like best about this book is that Elizabeth wastes not even a single sentence. Undertow, like the dangerous pull under the surface of the water will suck you in so smoothly you won't know it's even happened until its too late.

The last of todays books was C.E. Murphy's Heart of Stone. I was almost afraid to read this book, and its certainly the one I had the highest expectations and hence the largest worries about. Having read all three of the books in Catie's The Walking Papers series, and having read the first three chapters before interviewing her at Pi-Con last August, I knew this was going to be very different. I knew Margrit was unlike Joanne, and that she wasn't gifted with a octogenarian cab driver to remind her to either look before she leaped or sprout wings. The differences between the two ladies were stark, as was the tone. To me, the Walker Papers all have a lighter tone.Heart of Stone is by no means dark, but for those of you who haven't yet read it (go do so) expecting a carbon copy of the other series will lead straight to disappointment. On the other hand this book clearly demonstrates the breadth of Murphy's story telling ability. Magrit is fun in a completely different way than Jo is. The internal monologues are different, the women have no physical resemblance, and lead different types of lives. But the important thing isn't what separates them, its what binds the two together. That tie is simply the exquisite way they are written. This is an excellent read in and of itself and will make Murphy many new fans.

I ran into J.V. Jones, who i hadn't know was coming, and must have publisher her first novel at twelve. Sean Wallace of Prime Books and I exchanged quips about slush and rejection letters we wished we could write, I hope no listening took either of us too seriously.

Alan Dean Foster was quietly conversing with someone who's name i didn't catch when we got on the elevator. He doesn't look like your typical fan/author or editor.

Tempest accosted me and insisted i buy and read a book by a lovely lady at the con, i accomplished the first and am working on the second.

Jay Lake is dressed in his usual subtle hues and reserved finery.

Oh yes, and my body dislikes being this far from the ocean, the air here is way to dry.

The mass autograph session last night was chaos incarnate. While nearly everything else here has been well organized, one or two people reported that it would have been a might easier on those not signing if things were alphabetized. As it was, David Hartwell was sitting next to Lois Bujold, George R. R. Martin was sitting next to David Anthony Durham, J.V. Jones and David Coe were rubbing elbows, and David Duncan was sharing air with Sarah Hoyt, Dan Hoyt and Kate Paulk.

More news when (and if) i wake up.

What are some your favorite books? Children's books? (first readers to teen), "classic literature", fantasy, urban fantasy, science fiction?

I don't think, for various reasons I'll comment to much on the last couple of categories, but I'll say that the books I've recommended to others don't always fall into the field of favorite, although I obviously don't hate them.

And what books do you think are good for introducing people to the SF/F spectrum? Some people are of the opinion that its the "classics" like Tolkien and Heinlein, I'm not so sure. The world view of some of the writers of their era is entirely alien to many today. And for the science fiction of the day some of the science was, well let's just say i hold it in the same esteem I do the pop psychology of the last decade or two.

A couple great kids books: Tony's Hardwork Day, The Boxcar Kids series, The Dark is Rising series, Madeline L'Engle's books, and of course My side of the Mountain. There's also a couple wonderful books that I can't recall that featured a kid (probably a girl) and a flying crocodile. My rather deplorable memory suggests the first book (iirc there were two) starts with the kid arriving at a summer cabin with their family.

(odd note, apparently the spell checker knows how to spell both Heinlein and Tolkien)

I happen to like them. Sometimes. When done right they are able to give the reader a far more complete view of the universe the writer has taken them too than any single character could do. When done wrong, they are just as deplorable as single character narratives that fail to make the grade. Some of the best fiction SF/F has produced in the last few decades has had an ensemble cast. The balance between a single character dominated, but still multiple point of view character book like Magician by Raymond Feist, or something with something nearer a plurality of viewpoints like Shadow of Saganami David Weber. Personally, I'd like to see a lot more of ensemble casts in the future.* Unfortunately, not all writers can pull off the admittedly difficult trick of having four or five characters that are each well developed enough to hold your attention, different enough for their to be an excuse to have that many co-leads, and keep all the plot lines relevant and entwined enough to make a coherent story in a well paced, book of some publishable length.


Anyone got a good writer of ensemble casts they'd like to recommend? Well, other than Dave Freer, although y'all can recommend him too.











*Note, this does not mean send me everything you've written with seventy nine viewpoint characters, it means (as always) send me the best you've written.

I shall post three links.

These links are not safe for work.

I repeat NSFW!

The first is a link to something every  writer, editor, and agent should be required to read yearly.
http://ww3.telerama.com/~joseph/cooper/cooper.html
The second is a review and critical analysis of a history on American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War.
http://iwt.blogspot.com/2007/09/gigo.html
The third is a video that is just plain funny.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3xuZeFABdI

So, who makes your "must buy" list? Who makes your "will probably buy list"?  Why? What book(s) put them there? What genre or genres do they write? Is this something your normally read?


Talk!

...the green sashed servants....
...the green sashed servants....
...the green sashed servants....
...the green sashed servants....

...the green sashed servants....
...the green sashed servants....
...the green sashed servants....


Annoyed?

Ya me too. Why in the hell do some otherwise enjoyable authors feel the need to to repeat the same information dozens of times in a relatively short span of time? I was reading a reasonable first novel put out by one of the major houses that had a character describe the group of people who did the manual labor in the building he was in, in the exact same way at least a dozen times in three or four chapters. I'm pretty certain that this was done every time they were mentioned. Why? Your guess is as good as mine. I'm not done with the book, or even sure I'll finish it but I didn't pick up any of the authors under-subtle hints that these people would be important to the story.

What a waste of verbiage, time and glaringly jarring.