Reading Recommendation: WWW: Watch
I have been getting in more reading lately due to long drives (and audiobooks), the coming Hugo vote, and the fact that it’s a bit easier to read than write at the moment. Yes, I’m doing both, but in different proportions than usual.
Anyway, I loved Robert Sawyer’s WWW: Wake, which I recommended long before it got noticed for awards. Well, the sequel came out this year, and I loved it, too. It pretty much hits all of the things I read SF for. Sawyer has taken a geeky topic (Emergent AI) and explored a lot of the relevant details and conundrums. While he is a tiny bit heavy-handed on the conversations, I didn’t mind – they’re conversations I love to engage in.
So…if you like geeky, techie books with a good message, you’ll love WWW:Watch. I, for one, am sick of reading about the apocalypse – zombies, disasters, 2012, and climate change with no win. I ended up happy, smiling, and well-entertained by this book, which portrayed a future with more good choices and possibilities in it.
More Happiness with The Girl….
I finished The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest in audiobook on my way down here to Bend, Oregon (a seven hour drive). Its the third book in Stieg Larsson’s wonderful trilogy. They are titled correctly — every one begins with the “The Girl Who…” and that is exactly who the books are about. The girl. Lisbeth Salander is without doubt the most unique and interesting character I’ve come across in fiction on years. Yes, there are also strong supporting characters. But I’d be willing to bet that if Lisbeth had n0ot been drawn onto the page so clearly, the trilogy would have done well but fallen short of blockbuster status. I highly recommend this whole series to any writer studying the creation and maintenance of a compelling character.
Almost anything else I’d say would be a spoiler…so just go listen to or read these….
Reading Recommendation: The Windup Girl
I realize I’m late to the party for this award-winning book. The Windup Girl is one of my favorite kind of books: complex, plausible, a little scary, brilliantly written, and satisfying.
Paolo gets a lot of points from me on world-building. I believed this place and time. Of particular interest, I believe that we have come to a world where the balance of power is affected by corporations at least as much as by governments. This book captures that, although it isn’t “about” that. I think the core of The Windup Girl is an appreciation for the plenty and abundance we have now, and a warning. But then, most good science fiction books are warnings.
Small warnings for the reader: Not for the faint of heart, and prepare to spend some time with this one – it is a bit of work to read, but the work pays off. Well.
Starry Heaven: Last Full Day
Wow. All done now except the closing party. I’d call this a rousing success. Highlights of the last two days:
We attended a great wine social event complete with excellently interesting science people at The Wine Loft last night. I could have kept talking to them for hours. Everyone was interesting and erudite.
I’m quite ready to jump back into The Creative Fire now, and I’m certain the book will be better for the workshopping. I’ve workshopped three out of four of my published novels in this type of setting, and I think they are stronger for it. There’s nothing like getting expert readers to brainstorm with you about your novel! It was particularly important for this book because I’m taking on a pretty big challenge with the Creative Fire – I’m writing a hard science fiction book based partly on a musical. More later -watch this spot.
Thanks to Sarah Castle for organizing and Charles Coleman Finlay for laying out the groundwork with Blue Heaven and Paul Melko for giving me a recommendation to Blue Heaven years ago.
As a reward for hard work, many of us went to see The Karate Kid this afternoon. AWESOME!
Oh — and for those who are curious about the fire, it’s still burning. But I believe the Kachinas were doing a rain dance in the Arizona Mountains. Thunder just shook the house and the sky has been slowly spitting out its tears onto the fire.
The Oceans
The oil spill isn’t on the front page any more. But it hasn’t slowed down. Even though I have been paying some attention, I was surprised to see that BP has collected over one million gallons of oil so far. Yipes! We know they haven’t collected most of what’s gushing out. The live camera down at the bottom of the sea is hard to watch. But it’s clearly becoming yesterday’s news for many people who aren’t directly affected.
This month, in my Today’s Tomorrow’s column at Futurismic, I chose the ocean to write about. Almost all of the research scared me. We can’t afford to destroy our oceans. I think we do it because they look so big. But even all that water can’t hide our sins against it. There are too many sins now, too many bottlecaps and grocery bags and inflows of raw sewage. Maybe that will be one small good to come from the horror caused by the spill. The oil slicks are visible.
Starry Heaven Day 3: The Phase Shift
Workshops have rhythm. The rhythm for Starry Heaven starts with critiquing the beginnings of each others’ books. Beginnings matter – they are what sells manuscripts to agents and publishers, and what initiates readers into the world of the book. So we have been sitting in a large group sharing impressions of each others beginnings.
Today, we move to a new phase where a few people will have read each completed manuscript; the same dance only smaller and deeper.
If you want to follow some of the pictures and bits of info, the twitter hashtag for us this week is #SH2010.
On a more personal note, I have been drunk on sunshine. Coming here from a dreary Seattle spring and being in woods with bright blue sky and the kind of forest that allows humans to walk easily anywhere without a machete is like falling into happiness. In Seattle, this time of year means that an hour of sun makes us smile and a day makes us so giddy we start proposing to strangers on the street. Four whole days of sun and warmth is something so close to heaven I have been sneaking outside at every opportunity. Now that we’re switching gears to what amounts to a slower pace, I’m hopeful I will drift into working on a story I need to finish and doing some more futurist research.
For those following this post series, the fire is still burning in the ridges above the city, but there was less smoke yesterday and there is some containment.
Starry Heaven Day 2: Fire, a Walk, and the Night Sky
A great morning of critiques. Excellent food. We followed that by spending the day hiking. Good thing we went today since they are going to close the forest tomorrow or the next day. The fire is still burning, and has gotten bigger. It is still not too near us, and has burned no structures, although it is doing no favors for the dry forest.
It is really wonderful to be in the company of writers for so long. It is like tribe. It feeds the soul.
The top picture is Bill Shunn by sitting near where we ended our hike and dipped our toes into the water.
And the second picture is Sarah Castle (Kelly), who was our hike leader today. She is also the fearless leader of the workshop.
For the evening, a few of us wandered up to the Lowell Observatory and observed M-5 and also the bright sparks of the fire against the night sky.
Starry Heaven Post 1: Fire over Flagstaff
I am in Flagstaff. Arizona, at the Starry Heaven writer’s workshop. That means there are 11 of us critiquing each other’s novel manuscripts. We’ve spend months prepping, and it’s quite fun to meet in person. I knew two of the people from before, and had met a few of the others in passing. Some are new to me. It’s a great group so far.
With so much other stuff going on in my family right now, and a new boss starting at work next Monday, I’m glad I committed to this months ago. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here.
Flagstaff is very beautiful. The town nestles inside a forest, snuggling up against ridges and mountains. To a rain-soaked seattleite, the blue sky is an amazing color. Except it’s stained. One ridge over from us, the Schultz Fire is throwing up steam and smoke, the fire-clouds golden and bright white on the top and dark and threatening below. I don’t recall the last time I saw so many shades of gray. Because this is an iphone photo, it looks far away, but my eyes tell me it’s filling a lot of sky.
By the way, on my way out the door for this workshop I was careful to pack my camera charger and USB cord. I wasn’t careful enough to pack the camera. Sigh.
Oddly, the book I brought here to be critiqued is The Creative Fire.
Reading Recommendation: The Specific Gravity of Grief, by Jay Lake
I’ll start out by quoting myself twice – the following blurb is on the back cover of the book:
“We tend to clothe cancer in pretty words, to hide its savage nature from our innermost frightened hearts. In The Specific Gravity of Grief, Jay Lake used pretty words to clothe cancer in the rags of fear that it deserves.”
That was based on reading it in manuscript. The book arrived yesterday in my mailbox, and I said this about it on Twitter:
“Pretty book to hide such knives of words.”
There are reasons I said those things. Cancer is not describable, not really. This was not something I knew intimately until recently. I had seen people I knew fight cancer and win, or win for a while, or die suddenly. But not family or close friends. People I knew who were there and then weren’t there, but who were the age when death takes us somehow anyway. When hearts give out or cancer comes or organs fail or we experience the odd injuries of the very old. I knew enough about cancer at that point to know I didn’t like it. But I didn’t hate it.
Then a friend I work with got it. She’s young, with two young girls. She seems to be winning at the moment. Then another friend got it and died pretty fast. My partner Toni’s sister did a round with cancer, but I haven’t met her so I saw her fight only through it’s affect on Toni.
Cancer came to Jay Lake. He is a friend, even though we live in different states and see each other mostly at the world-wide ongoing party that is science fiction conventions. His cancert hit closer emotionally, maybe since Jay and I are in somewhat similar places in our somewhat similar writing careers, and we used to laugh because people couldn’t tell us apart from the back – we both had the same length and color of hair and are not tiny people. He writes more than I do, and knows a few more people than I do, and is very good with words.
At this point, cancer was scary and there was just too much of it around. I could still ignore it on most days.
Jay won round one with cancer, and kept going, still writing, still joking, still being Jay.
My partner’s sister’s cancer had also slunk away for a while. It returned, harder and more dangerous and scarier.
Jay started round two, unexpectedly.
Now I was feeling my mortality.
Cancer wasn’t done circling yet. It wanted to be in closer.
It showed up in my kid brother in a nasty virulent way. He is younger than me, he is very beloved, and he is living almost confined to his house with two or three hours of energy a day and on his second round of chemo.
That’s when I hated cancer. After seeing my brother with it – the way it hollowed his cheeks and stripped him closer to bone and stole his energy. The way it took all the air out of the room and became the center of all of us.
So when I got this news about my brother and was raging at the universe in disbelief and pissed off at it as well, Jay sent me this manuscript.
It helped. It made me cry. Jay is good with words. In The Specific Gravity of Grief, he almost describes the indescribable. He gets close enough to make you taste it.
Cancer isn’t in me, just around me. Better than living it fully, but I can smell its breath and hear its feet. This story about the cancer wolves circling isn’t so much to tell my story, but to explain why I know just how good Jay’s book is.
Yes, there are other stages to all this. Books full to the brim with optimism and hope and support and all of that (those exist here but as seasoning). This is a bit more about exactly what it says it is – the grief. Don’t be afraid to read it.
For more about Jay, see www.jlake.com.
The Specific Gravity of Grief can be ordered from Fairwood Press in a limited signed edition.
Full disclosure caveat: I am a very small investor in Fairwood Press and I am the secretary. I don’t get any monetary gain by recommending Fairwood Press books.
Coming Events
I’ve missed mentioning multiple appearences of me and/or my work:
The story, “My Father’s Singularity” is up at Clarkesworld in issue #45. Note that I share this issue with delightful Nina Kiriki Hoffman and her story is excellent. Two science fiction stories written by women in one issue, and in what is becoming the premiere sf and f online mag. Quirky fact: My Father’s Singularity is the first story I wrote entirely on my ipad (I did force it onto my PC to edit).
I had the chance to talk about the future with the fantastic Mr. Nick Price on one of the best podcasts out there – Seattle Geekly. We’re in issues #63. The particular topic is The Future of Seattle, but we range a bit (like all the way into world politics, but hey, we’re all connected, right?). Seattle geekly covers games, cons, books, other entertainment, and occaisionally what they call a “more cerebral topic” which was me and Nick this time. Fun whether you live in Seattle or not, but even better if you’re a local.
I’ll be appearing in person in Flagstaff Arizona at the WineLoft from 5:30 to 6:30, on June 24th. Panel members include Greg Van Eekhout , William Shunn, Bradley P. Beaulieu, and – perhaps more exciting than us writers – scientists. This should be some free fun. The event is associated with the Starry Heaven writer’s workshop.
