(1) “It appears there’s a Northwesteros football team,” reports Tom Galloway. “Personally, I find this amusing given that when he was at Northwestern, George R.R. Martin was a mainstay of, not the football team, but the chess team (he’s written a story where the starting point is a real life match against the arch-rival UChicago team).”
(Photo posted by Northwestern Athletics.)
(2) The decision to stop using Lovecraft’s image on the World Fantasy Award was, needless to say, unpopular with many commenters on H.P. Lovecraft’s Facebook page.
(3) Nick Mamatas is running a poll asking “What should the New World Fantasy Award be?” – where participants get to choose among his own satirical answers.
(4) Sam Kriss explains, in “The Englishman and the Octopus”, why Spectre is really a Lovecraft story, not a Bond movie.
This film doesn’t exactly hide its place within Lovecraftian mythology. You really think that creature on the ring is just an octopus? Uniquely for a Bond film, it starts with an epigraph of sorts, the words ‘the dead are alive’ printed over a black screen – a not particularly subtle allusion to the famous lines from the Necronomicon: ‘That is not dead which can eternal lie/ And with strange aeons even death may die.’
(5) Houghton Mifflin Harcourt will launch a new SF/F book line edited by John Joseph Adams reports Locus Online.
The new list, called John Joseph Adams Books, will begin in February 2016 with print editions of three backlist Hugh Howey titles. Adams will serve as editor at large for the line. He began his association with HMH when he became series editor for the Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy series, launched this year.
(6) Buddy’s Antique Auction in Arab, Alabama might not be the first place you’d look to buy a genuine Lunar Rover — but it should be! That salvaged LRV recently in the news will be there for sale to the highest bidder on November 21 at Noon.
We are proud to announce that we have been commissioned to sell at public auction this very special piece of historical value. This Lunar Rover or “Moon Buggy” as it is comonly called is a prototype from the mid 1960s. NASA engineers were studying ways for the astronauts to be mobile while on the moon. This buggy never went to the moon but has been authenticated by a retired NASA scientist and he believes Wernher Von Braun was photographed on this buggy. “Moon Buggies” were used on the moon and three are still there. This is definitely a piece of history some space enthusiast could lovingly bring back to its original glory….
This is a special auction and will be for the Moon Buggy. This will be the only item in this auction and will be held at 12:00 Noon at the Worley Brothers Antiques building.
More photos here.
(7) Sarah Chorn writes frequently about accessibility, and her latest post at Bookworm Blues is a status report in general about conventions’ support for special needs.
I saw a lot of praise this year about conventions that had sign language interpreters in attendance, and I thought, “Good. I’m glad that conventions are finally getting this accommodation, but what does it say about us that this is something to be praised rather than part of our normal convention going experience?”
That’s the thing that really irks me about this issue. Accommodation is still something to be praised rather than a normal thing. It’s an event rather than an occurrence. Furthermore, there are still times when there are problems and people get excluded or edged out due to these problems. The dialogue about this is still minimal in the genre. There is still almost no discussion about these problems until something happens and there is a small outcry.
(8) Roger Tener gave permission to reprint his account of Nancy Nutt’s memorial service from Chronicles of the Dawn Patrol.
Saturday [November 7] was the Memorial Service for Nancy Nutt.
David and Sherrie Moreno, Cathy, and I drove up to Kansas City It was an opportunity to spend time with friends to comfort each other and remember Nancy.
There was a couple of tables set up in a small room with pictures that Nancy had taken over the years. Nancy’s family told us to take any of the pictures we wanted. There were several pictures of Fans and airplanes. More specifically airplanes that I had flown Fan gatherings.
During the service many us fans told various stories of Nancy that brought a smile. (Like Mickey Mouse committing suicide in the back 52 Tango while flying over Walt Disney World.)
After the service many of us gathered at Genghis Kahn for supper. After we ate we stood outside the restaurant and talked and talked and talked in the finest Fannish tradition.
We will miss you Nancy.
(9) Kameron Hurley, asked “Do Goodreads Ratings Correlate to Sales?”, answered affirmatively. (Her post is inspired by Mark Lawrence’s earlier “What do Goodreads ratings say about sales?”)
(10) Misty Massey says there are reasons for not “Breaking the Rules” at Magical Words.
And one more that’s happened recently (and been done by more than one person) “If you’re new to us, send us a writing sample of the first five pages of your published work.” And instead, you send us a link to your website. Sure, that website may have oodles of your work on it, but you just showed us that you can’t follow simple instructions. Why would I believe I should work with you?
The point of all this is to make sure you guys who DO follow the rules and who DO read the guidelines carefully know that we on the other end of those guidelines appreciate the effort you take. We may not open our next letter to you with the words “I see that you followed our guidelines” but you can just bet that you’re even hearing from us because you did. And one other thing to remember…publishing is a tightly-knit business. If you behave in a jerkish manner, breaking rules and skipping guidelines for one editor, don’t be surprised when another editor seems uninterested in working with you. Word gets around.
(11) Rachael Acks’ contribution to SF Signal’s MIND MELD: Must hear audio fiction, accidentally left out of the main article, appeared today.
I listen to a lot of audio books, because I’ll have them playing while I’m describing core, processing data, or driving. (And I tend to listen to them over and over again, since I will miss things sometimes.) The two authors whose audiobooks I own the most of are Lois McMaster Bujold and NK Jemisin. I’m not sure if that’s because their work lends itself particularly well to the format, or just because I love everything they write anyway. I actually didn’t own a written copy of any of Bujold’s books until this year, and reading it normally felt weird—so many things weren’t spelled the way I thought they would be. This also made reading The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms after I’d listened to it first a slightly odd experience.
(12) Jim C. Hines says it’s time for a “NaNoWriMo Pep Talk” about hitting the wall.
This is the time in Jim’s writing process where, like Charlie Brown kicking at that elusive football, I lose my footing and end up flat on my back, staring into the sky and wondering what the heck just happened.
My shiny new idea isn’t quite so shiny anymore. I’ve gotten lots of words down, but they don’t exactly match what I was imagining. And this next part of the outline doesn’t make any sense at all, now that I think about it more closely. Good grief, the Jim who was outlining this thing last month is an idiot. And now I have to fix his mess….
(13) Today’s Birthday Boy
- Born November 9, 1934 – Carl Sagan
(14) Today In History
- November 9, 1984 – Silent Night, Deadly Night premieres. To protest the film, critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel read the credits out loud on their television show saying, “Shame, shame, shame” after each name.
(15) Contrary to what some people may believe, John Scalzi’s cat Zeus does not require any more attention from the internet than he’s already getting.
One, he’s perfectly fine, merely not at the center of my public discussion of cats in the last week as he neither a) a kitten, b) a newly-passed on senior cat. You should be aware that Zeus has been perfectly fine not being the center of media attention in the last several days, as he is a cat and has not the slightest idea either that I write about my cats here, or that any of you have any idea who he is. But he is alive and well and doing what he does.
(16) “A Death Star Filled With Plastic Stormtroopers Is a Better Bucket of Army Men” opines Andrew Lizsewski at Toyland.
If there’s one toy that defines cheap and mass-produced, it’s those buckets full of tiny green plastic army men. They really stop being desirable once you turn six, except when those plastic soldiers are replaced with tiny white stormtroopers led by an equally tiny Darth Vader.
(17) Alastair Reynolds tells what it was like to be a huge fan of the original Star Wars at Approaching Pavonis Mons by balloon.
Through that summer, I collected complete sets of both the blue and red-bordered bubble-gum cards. In that autumn, as I started at The Big School (Pencoed Comprehensive, where I still help out with creative writing workshops) I got hold of George Lucas’s novel of the film. Yes, it was amazing, wasn’t it, that George Lucas had not only found time to make this film, but also scribble down a novelisation of it? It was only later that Alan Dean Foster was credited, but not on my edition. It was a shiny paperback with a yellow cover and a set of colour photos stitched into the middle. It was a holy relic, as far as I was concerned, and when I accidentally dented one of the corners, I felt as if my world had ended. I also got the 7″ disco-funk version of the Star Wars music:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meco
Which was only the third record I’d ever bought, after the Jaws theme and Queen’s We Are The Champions.
(18) If Reynolds doesn’t know these 12 facts about Yoda already, he soon will.
When Stuart Freeborn, the make-up artist who was tasked with creating Yoda, looked into a mirror, he saw Yoda. No, it wasn’t a Disney magic mirror, but rather it was Freeborn’s own reflection that inspired Yoda’s final look.
When Freeborn modeled himself and started sculpting Yoda, he emphasized his bald scalp, wrinkles, and pointed chin in order to bring Yoda into the world. According to Freeborn, the only part of Yoda that wasn’t based on himself was the upper lip, in which he removed the famous mustache of Albert Einstein and ported it onto Yoda’s face. This move was meant by Freeborn to trigger a subconscious association in the audience with Einstein’s intelligence and wisdom, thus making Yoda appear intelligent before he even spoke a word of advice in his lovable, fractured English.
(19) Even before the internet you couldn’t believe everything you read as Matt Staggs proves in “Four Times Science Almost Flew Off The Rails: Bat Men On The Moon, Phantom Planets, Ghosts, and The Hollow Earth” at Suvudu.
2) When We Thought Bat People Lived On The Moon Ah, 19th century New York City: a place where the lanterns burned all night, Bill the Butcher and his gang of Know-Nothings spattered the streets with blood, and four-foot tall bat people looked down upon it all from their home on the moon. What, you don’t know about the flying lunar bat people? That’s because they were the invention of a master troll named Matthew Goodman, editor of the Sun newspaper.
(20) “Mariah Carey To Run LEGO Gotham City” says SciFi4Me:
Singer and actress Mariah Carey has joined the cast of The LEGO Batman Movie.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, she’ll voice the mayor of Gotham City. This report is contrary to a Deadline report that she would be playing Commissioner Gordon — which only works if she’s playing Commissioner Barbara Gordon from the animated Batman Beyond. Of course, that’s completely possible, too, given how the first LEGO Movie mashed up characters from all over the story multiverse….
The LEGO Batman Movie is scheduled for release on February 10, 2017,
(21) This just in – eight years ago.
Alrugo Entertainment, bring you: ITALIAN SPIDERMAN Unearthed for the first time in 40 years and lovingly restored at Alrugo Studios Milan, this rare theatrical trailer for the 1968 Italian classic ‘Italian Spiderman’ is a real treat. Featuring Franco Franchetti of ‘Mondo Sexo’ fame in his last ever role before being killed in a spear fishing accident in 1969. Alrugo entertainment will be releasing the FULL, remastered ITALIAN SPIDERMAN film on the web starting MAY 22. STAY TUNED
Italian Spiderman has its own Wikipedia article!
Italian Spiderman is an Australian film parody of Italian action–adventure films of the 60s and 70s, first released on YouTube in 2007. The parody purports to be a “lost Italian film” by Alrugo Entertainment, an Australian film-making collective formed by Dario Russo, Tait Wilson, David Ashby, Will Spartalis and Boris Repasky.
Ostensibly an Italian take on the comic book superhero Spider-Man, the film is a reference to foreign movies that misappropriate popular American superheroes such as the Turkish film “3 Dev Adam”, and licensed series such as the Japanese TV series “Spider-Man”, both of which alter the character of Spider-Man for foreign audiences. Other notable entries include the Indian version of Superman (1987), I fantastici tre supermen (3 Fantastic Supermen) (1967) and La Mujer Murcielago (The Batwoman) (1968).
(22) A Robot Chicken video, “The Nerd on The CW,” parodies Arrow and The Flash.
[Thanks to Mark-kitteh, DMS, Tom Galloway, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Peter J.]
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@Lorcan Nargle
Kill Hitler, you say?
Camestros, that is either the most brilliant or the most awful award design ever. Also a gorgeous piece of creative writing!
@iphinome
If I try to outline or pre-tell the story in any kind of detail, the story is told and dies on me. But I have signposts or milestones in my head that I can kind of see in the distance. (The general structure of the chapter where the guy in disguise gets discovered had been in my head since last winter, but I didn’t find out he was an octopus until I wrote it.)
One thing that has been working for me is to put the actual signposts into the manuscript a little way ahead of where I am currently working. Usually something like the titles of the next couple of chapters, with a paragraph or two of scene setting in the ‘closer’ ones. That helps me write the stuff needed to get to the signpost. Sometimes it helps me figure out what is important to include in the sections leading up to the signpost.
Camestros Felapton:
Needs more italics.
Nominations now accepted for the Fantasy Movie Bracket. Nominations are done in this thread.
Also, be aware of those tell tell signs which show the author hasn’t a clue: a book’s title is the book’s title. Any book which purports to include a flattering description of said book in the title can safely be ignored from now to Doomsday; Amazon is knee deep in them.
This concludes my Amazon rant of the day.
I think the H. P. Lovecraft busts are cute. I want to buy one. Who will sell and at what price?
If the concom has several leftovers, I might consider a batch price.
Yay to all the NaNoWriMo writers! I’m not participating–I’m doing a short story a week for my Patreon subscribers and blogging four times a week, I don’t have the energy to write more on top of that. 🙂
@Mark
First thing I noticed when opening the Goodreads SF section was Aftermath 🙂
I was tempted to vote for it just because, but haven’t read it yet (it’s on my TBRL , the list of things I’m considering for my TBR pile).
Also based on the preview I’ll probably enjoy it, but it’s not in Ancillary Mercy territory 😉
I am terribly sorry. I seem to have not had enough tea yet.
To what does this refer?
Mark –
Ugh, really? That was one of the more disappointing things I’ve read all year.
The fan with the terminal illness who was able to see Star Wars early has passed away
…as he moved the cursor toward the menus of his aging WordStar word-processing software, he saw a new formatting option, an option that would bend the angle of his lettering beyond that which humanity in its arrogance had limited to the form known as ‘italic’ (a form that the cabalist and necromancers of post-renaissance Tuscany had devised as the means to set in type their dark meanderings into forbidden knowledge, as if mere lead and ink could hold back the forces they set to capture within) , an option that twisted his letters into a new geometry that spoke across the vast gulfs of space to beings of such ancient magnitude that their voices echoed across the stars to be heard as tiny scratchings in his mind -the formatting option known as the necronomifont. To even see text formatted this way was to court madness. The curves of the letters now twisted in unseemly ways, ways that were not sexual and yet hinted at dark forbidden bodily deeds, acts too repulsive to describe, acts intended to summon up beasts that could consume your very soul. He marveled at the horrific effect on his words and a plan came to his mind unbidden a if placed their by an intelligence of greater vastness that the gulf between galaxies.
“Necronomifont – so you have been named by the cult worshipers of the distant seas. To look upon your form is to see into the eternity of despair but I shall name you anew. For I shall spread your eldritch majesty across the world and lo! The mighty will despair at your form. For I shall name you COMIC SANS!”
re: Strange, but useful coping mechanisms. My first year teaching I was such a nervous wreck: shakes, couldn’t eat, yuck all around. I was asked to come help team teach a summer course that year and the Director just started saying, “You’re fired,” every time I made even the smallest of mistakes. Strangely enough, it calmed me right down.
I am only 2000 words behind, as I write this.
Secondary questions: WHYYYY do I keep coming up with “Oh hey! This is GENIUS!” ideas for short stories right now? Not helpful brain.
CKCharles — Can you work in a situation in which characters have to tell stories, thereby revealing insights into their thought processes?
CKCharles, what you need to do is set your long project aside, and start to work on your short story ideas ASAP. That way, you’ll get ideas for finishing the long project immediately.
(This is how I get caught up at work every year when my taxes are due.)
I never do NaNoWriMo. I did post myself a goal of 30k words of new material this month, which probably isn’t going to happen since my subconscious dropped a story on me that’s going to take significant revision to make publishable. At least I’ll have another story or two for the slush-piles by the time I’m done.
@iphinome, other Nanowrimers, and writers everywhere.
You have to be an SJW (Someone who Just Writes) and a CHORF (Committed to Having One Revision Finished). Otherwise you’ll be a sad puppy when the month is over. 🙂
(4) was very interesting, and kind of makes a whole lot of sense. A book I read recently, Crooked, kind of had me primed to see Lovecraft as a sort of fear of the other, fear of the not-from-here, and really, there’s more than a little of that in James Bond. Looking at you, Roger Moore-era Bond.
Crooked, which may not be all that good, but is quite fun. It’s the memoir of Richard M. Nixon. Written after he faked his own death. And went into exiles using the training he had from his Soviet handlers. Oh, and he was one in a long line of sorcerer-President’s of the United States, keeping the great pact made by Washington. Yes, it’s quite mad. But very funny. But it reminded me of the Kriss piece because it takes the visceral fear of the other that fueled and still fuels much of the post Civil Rights Act Republican party and has it due to an actual other, i.e. vaguely Lovecraftian menaces from other dimensions.
Crooked. Like Rick Perlstein’s Conservative Trilogy, only with Cthulu in place of rage against modernity and encroaching not-white people. Not for everyone, but funny it is your thing.
Peace
I have been running various searches on Amazon looking for books, as one does, and it is obvious that a fair number of those self publishing do not know what a book title is.
Thus
is bad enough, but it gets even worse when it runs up against Amazon’s title word count, like this
This is not a real example; the names of authors and their offerings have been omitted to protect the guilty, but it gets deeply frustrating when you are looking for something that seems interesting.
I have no doubt that there are lots of interesting books, but finding them amongst the sea of slush is, to mix my metaphors, uphill work.
Has anyone checked to see what the greatest writer alive today things about the Howies business?
I would, but it’s 1d3 sanity even if I make the roll, so after you.
That might be less “don’t know what a title is” and more “looking at titles as just another way to hustle your books”, I think.
@nickpheas
If we’re referring to Mr. Wright, there’s nothing on that – most recent post would appear to be his whole-hearted support for Ben Carson. Because the media is corrupt.
Also, apparently there “rape-happy hoards (sic) of young Muslim enemies.” He is indifferent to who built the Pyramids.
I still joke about the time I was procrastinating so hard from the piece I had to write for the APA I belong to that I actually went out and mowed the lawn rather than write.
I tried NaNoWriMo once. It didn’t work for me: I’m too much of a compulsive editor and fiddler. The idea of just writing straight out without going back to touch things up or go through five different iterations about how to phrase a sentence just doesn’t mesh with my psyche. Well, that and given that most of my writing time has involved my Asus Transformer tablet+keyboard on the bus going to and from work has meant I haven’t had a lot of straight writing time.
I do need to get back to that story at some point. It was something I’d been serializing in the previously-mentioned APA, before I decided it just wasn’t working. The problem seemed to be that I was doing something within spitting distance of an SF version of ‘survival horror’ (team dropped on a remote planet that killed the last team, any reinforcements are months away, and the reinforcements of the first team that you’re claim-jumping on are likely to arrive first). And, honestly, something like survival horror requires a gradual ratcheting up of tension that’s just really difficult to manage with a story that’s being serialized over quarterly issues. So I threw it all out, kept the basic outline, and tried doing that for NaNoWriMo before falling over a third of the way in. Need to get back to that at some point.
In amongst all the other half-written stories I’ve got… too many ideas, not enough time to write.
Good lord.
It’s yeoman work you’re doing, of benefit to us all.
TheYoungPretender –
I didn’t have a lot of fun with that one. I kept waiting for the plot to show up and it felt like a large waste of an interesting idea.
Mike: I don’t know if it’s with your remit, but Joel Hodgson has a Kickstarter going for a new season of Mystery Science Theatre 3000.
@ Kyra et al.
Fifthed. I loved the Tamir triad, too. Fabulous to find books where dealing with ghosts, etc. is less frightening than the personal and social costs of doing the right thing.
Mini one today (for reasons). Amazon UK ebook sales:
The Reburialists, by J. C. Nelson
Hugo-eligible. Perhaps not a likely candidate though – book 4, you see. For Agent Brynner Carson, driving a stake through a rampaging corpse is par for the course, but this one is different; it has a message about his father from an ancient god who isn’t too happy.
Midnight Days Deluxe Edition, by Neil Gaiman
A collection of some of Gaiman’s early work. (Also, lowest price to date.)
Recent reading:
I read “The Fold” by Peter Clines, and found it to be a action/thriller/sf-sorta screenplay in the form of a novel. With action screenplay-level logic and characterization. Mr Dr grabbed it before I could warn him off. We agree it stinks as a novel, but might make an ok movie — the kind you don’t think about.
Mr Dr read “Magonia” by Maria Dahvana Headley. He says: you gotta read at least the first part, which is *astoundingly* well-written. After that it’s a bit too magic-realism (= logic?!? pfui!) for him to be completely happy with it.
I’m almost done with Gene Wolfe’s “A Borrowed Man”. As usual with Wolfe, a) I’m not sure I completely get it, b) I’ll have to think about it.
I looked at “Armada” and said “meh. I am not a teenaged gamer boy”.
In the library basket to be read next: “The house of shattered wings” by de Bodard; “Luna : new moon” by Ian McDonald; “Slow bullets” by Alastair Reynolds; and “Lightless” by C. A. Higgins.
Doctor Science: Sorry to hear about The Fold, since I really enjoyed 14.
Haven’t seen this mentioned here yet. Apologies if it’s old. SFnal-adjacent subject matter.
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/plane
@Dr Science
Magonia sounds interesting. Vasha persuaded me to try some of her short works, and they definitely have that dream-logic element to them, you more have to roll with them. I really like them when they work for me, but it’s about a 50/50 strike rate.
@Kathodus
The Oatmeal hits it out of the park again.
Perhaps the World Fantasy Award should be an award in the shape of one of the best-known fantasy worlds – such as Terry Pratchett’s Discworld? Disc on top of Elephants standing on Great A’Tuin …
Oh my goodness. Haffner Press’s Leigh Brackett Centennial collection has a “previously unpublished” story by Brackett. The book itself appears to be mostly non-fiction, though. Possibly worth checking out as a Related Work? Anyone know anything? Here’s a link to the publisher’s website, if I can get it to work right . . . and if I can’t, google “Brackett” and “Haffner Press,” and you should be able to find your way.
Kathodus: It was news to me! Great one.
@Jenora Feuer: “Well, that and given that most of my writing time has involved my Asus Transformer tablet+keyboard on the bus going to and from work has meant I haven’t had a lot of straight writing time.”
I’ve got the original model of that. Between no OS updates since 4.0 and not finding an office package I was happy with, it’s pretty much been gathering dust along with my Kindle Touch. What app do you use, or do you have one of the non-Android models?
I’ve been chewing off the occasional Mieville from “Three Moments of an Explosion.” Oddly enough, the creepiest one so far has been in the form of a script for a movie trailer. Nothing that’s hit me as hard as some of the stuff in “Looking for Jake” but I’m also not that far into it yet–I can only take so many before I have to go sink into somewhere with a happy ending.
@ Jenora Feuer:
Same here. I edit as I go – it’s a habit I learned in legal writing, where there often isn’t time for multiple drafts – and I also don’t like to start writing until an idea is fully developed. Writing stream-of-consciousness the way you’re supposed to do for NaNoWriMo doesn’t work for me.
There’s advice out there telling self-published writers to stuff their titles with keywords people are likely to search for, so their books will come up in searches and be ranked more highly. Hence you get these totally ridiculous book titles like Claimed by the Were-Hedgehog (BBW Interracial MMF new adult were-hedgehog billionaire biker menage romance) (not a real title – I hope).
One of the worst I’ve ever seen was a romance that had “Medieval Victorian Regency romance” as the subtitle. Not unless it’s also time travel.
Like Matt Y, I didn’t find Crooked particularly fun. It felt very . . . thin. The plot and characters felt superficial, and the overall story just felt amateurish and underdeveloped. I stopped reading at the end of Part 1—does it get better after that?
I adored 14, but was also somewhat meh on The Fold. V thrffrq gur gjvfg va gur svefg puncgre, ohg V’z abg fher vs gung’f whfg orpnhfr V erpragyl fnj n zbivr jvgu rffragvnyyl gur fnzr gjvfg, be vs gur gjvfg ernyyl jnf gung boivbhf. I was entertained, but it definitely didn’t blow me away.
My recent reads:
Planetfall by Emma Newman: Ooh, I loved this. Basically, it’s about a group (part scientific expedition, part . . . well, cult) who are guided by a woman (ex-roommate and BFF of the narrator) to a distant planet, with tragedy ensuing; the book starts 20-ish years after arrival, as the past comes back to haunt the narrator. (A very inadequate plot summary, but spoilers are hard to avoid here.) I read this book in a single sitting. I was kind of surprised at how . . . intimate? the story turned out to be. It takes place on an alien planet, in the shadow of a bizarre alien city, but it’s very much a story about the effects of trauma and grief on the individual and the community. Well-written, engaging, and highly recommended.
The Red: First Light by Linda Nagata: Very entertaining. The story centers on a soldier (on Earth—this story takes place in the slightly more technologically advanced future) who repeatedly finds himself hijacked and directed by an unknown and seemingly-omniscient entity nicknamed “The Red”. Despite the description, I wouldn’t really term this “competence porn”, because the narrator has no choice about being controlled by The Red, and the goals of the Red don’t always align with the goals of the narrator. There’s no gun porn to be found here, which I really appreciated. If you’re expecting an ode to the glories of conservative America, you’ll be disappointed. (Which is not to say that it’s exactly a liberal manifesto, either; this is more about showing how “both sides are problematic” than it is about espousing any one political ideology.) MilSF usually isn’t my thing, but I’ll definitely pick up the sequels.
Slade House by David Mitchell: Deliciously creepy. Apparently it’s set in the same universe as The Bone Clocks, which I haven’t read; you can definitely read and enjoy this without first reading The Bone Clocks, though . . . I did kind of feel like I was missing the full thrust of the ending by not having read the previous book. It’s relatively short, and be aware that it is very much a horror novel. If you enjoy atmospheric horror, you’ll probably enjoy this.
Carter & Lovecraft by Jonathan L. Howard: Pretty underwhelming. I’m a big fan of the author’s “Johannes Cabal” books, but this book didn’t exactly blow me away. It’s about an ex-cop-turned-PI named Daniel Carter who encounters (you guessed it) Lovecraftian weirdness in Providence. (We also have Emily Lovecraft, a biracial relative of HP, who’s . . . present quite often, and takes part in the plot, but feels very much like a supporting character/sidekick to Carter. ) Clearly meant to be the first installment of a series, and the ending is probably the best part of the book, but I don’t know that I’d bother picking up a sequel.
Kathodus
Absolutely amazing! Thank you.
@Camestros
Loved it. Eagerly awaiting the next installment.
Well, I finished “A Borrowed Man”, by Wolfe.
hmm.
The thing about Gene Wolfe is, he’s smarter than you, for pretty much all values of “you”. So when things happen that make no friggin’ sense, the chances are that he’s got a Plan that went over your head, or under your vision, or something.
Has anyone else read it yet?
BTW, I eagerly await the first Puppy review of this new book by the greatest living conservative SFF writer. *Eagerly*.
I would be the first to agree the NaNoWriMo outpouring of words isn’t for every writer. There are dozens of alternate ways to draft.
I used to say that I didn’t do NaNoWriMo because I didn’t have to; I wrote anyhow. And it was true.
Then I had kids.
And really, that’s not the whole story at all, it’s not as much their fault as it sounds. After the first few months, I had more time or could have made more time. I excused myself by saying I still wrote, just a lot less. A part of me, though, recognized that writing less by necessity can turn into writing less by habit in a fairly short order. And it was.
My first NaNoWriMo was intended to kick me back into gear as to that habit (among other things). And it worked enough that I did it again the next year. I’ve also done some more personal challenges (my favourite was ‘one coffee-flavoured drink per 5k of words in a new draft of something’).
I am alive. That seems worth noting.
I finally saw The Martian, loved it, and have posted a review.
I’ve been enjoying having just my own dogs in the days since the most recent foster was adopted, but that ends tomorrow, because there’s a little poodle mix sitting in Animal Control from a cruelty case, and Animal Control isn’t heated, so the ACO has asked if we have a foster available…
Small, scared dog. Mine to foster.
Listening to the audiobook of Dragon in Exile, by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. Lots of fun!
Making note of the fact that I have both a new Gene Wolfe and a new Ursula LeGuin to get hold of.
@Lis Carey
I also saw The Martian and enjoyed it a lot! Apart from some casting choices (all women in the future are white or in China), and part of the ending (the space bit). Good adaptation.
(I’m betting that it will be something anti-slate types will be accused of hating throughout SP4. Ad nauseum.)
Sure, anti-slate types will be accused of hating it. 🙂
The women were all white or in China, but they were also all intelligent and capable. And at no point did they chat together about men. They were all just as smart, capable, and professional as they were in the book. It’s a small thing, but for Hollywood, it’s an achievement.
re: The Martian’s women
I really liked Jessica Chastain’s Commander Lewis (disco music notwithstanding). Intelligent, competent, courageous. No one questioned her.
@Kyra: Lynn Flewelling is one of my favorite authors, though I liked the Nightrunner series better. It’s been a while, and I (blush) never read the sequels, so thanks for reminding me; I should move this up my audiobook queue (if I ever finish Kiln People…so not as good as I remembered!) so I can refresh my memory and read the sequels. (I think the timing of it all just was bad – I was interested in continuing the triad, honest!)
But I admit: I wanted to throw that book across the room when it ended mid-scene. I was really, really ticked off at the author – later, at the publisher, when I realized it was probably their idea.
Anyway, if you haven’t read the Nightrunner series, I highly recommend it! 😀 Some of them were written after the Tamir Triad, despite what @Joe H. says, BTW. There’s some pretty grim stuff in some of the Nightrunner books (especially some of the last few).
@Camestros: Um, great idea (shudder) . . . maybe the goblin thing instead. . . .
@Mark: LOL at that comic, thanks.
I’ll toss in my (usually lurking) voice as a fan of Lynn Flewelling. I love both the Tamir Triad and the Nightrunner series for entirely different reasons. While Nightrunner can get pretty dark at times, it’s heavily fun adventure and intrigue and costumes and snark. It’s been a while since I read any of the Tamir Triad(probably since the final book), so my brain is a little fuzzy on the details but I remember the dark and epic feel and loving it, but feeling hesitant to return it. It’s been long enough that I think I could, now.