Books read recently:

• Tim Powers, On Stranger Tides: In the last days of piracy, Jack Shandy is forced to join the crew of pirate Phil Davies–never suspecting that this will lead him on an adventure on the high seas in search of the fabled Fountain of Youth, nor that his path will cross that of Blackbeard, voodoo sorcerers, and a nefarious Oxford professor. As always with Powers, tremendous fun underpinned by a tremendous sense of history and myth. The use of voodoo magic and of the Spanish myths of the Fountain of Youth is particularly effective, and it all comes to an awesome ending. (my favourite character died about halfway through the book, but that didn’t prevent me from enjoying the rest of the story)
  This is the one that was officially optioned by Disney for Pirates of the Carribbean IV. At the very least, it should have cool plot elements, if they don’t make too much of a mess out of it.
• Alastair Reynolds, Revelation Space. Humanity has taken to the stars, and seeded faraway worlds such as Yellowstone and Sky’s Edge. On the isolated planet of Resurgam, archeologist Dan Sylveste conducts research into the extinct race of the Amarantin, extinguished by a freak sun flare before their civilisation could achieve spaceflight. But, unbeknown to him, plans are already afoot to dispatch him–for the truth that lies on Resurgam is far too dangerous to come into the light of the day…
  Written before, but set after the events of Chasm City (and having a cameo by Chasm City‘s main character), it essentially follows the same progression of unravelling a central mystery–this time much bigger-scale than Chasm City. Who or what is moving the various factions around Sylveste? Why did the Amarantin die? And who is Sun Stealer, the shipbound entity that drives people mad? The end did feel like it dragged on for slightly too long, but the worldbuilding is masterful, and the plot is impressively constructed and orchestrated. And it was Reynolds’ first novel, too. I am in awe. (and will go look for subsequent volumes in the series).
• Valerio Evangelisti, Cherudek (French translated from Italian): a really oddball novel, part fantasy, part historical, part SF. The main part is set in 14th-century France, and features pitiless main character Nicolas Eymerich, Grand Inquisitor of Aragon, who has to investigate the odd massacre of English troops by what seems like resurrected zombies. Another thread follows three Jesuits investigating a 20th-Century sleepy Italian city, where bleeding insects and burning men seem to be common hallucinations. And the final one is the narrator, stuck outside of space in some kind of eternal torment. It all comes together in the end, rather efficiently.
  It’s the sort of thing you tend to read in horrified fascination more than out of any real empathy: Eymerich seems to have few emotions except anger, which makes it hard to care for him, and the real tension is figuring out how the threads of the narrative fit together. Much less efficient than the Reynolds in this matter, though: Reynolds’s characters are not his strongest suit, but they are at least sympathetic; here, Eymerich is really a cool, efficient and intolerant bastard. The book, however, is full of neat if dark ideas, which form a strong part of its appeal; and Eymerich’s foil Father Corona ended up drawing most of this reader’s sympathy (I suspect part of the reason the other threads exist at all, other than for structural reasons, is because they feature other characters, far more sympathetic than Eymerich; he’s the kind of character you don’t really want to be with for long). Part of a very successful series in Europe, but I’m not really sure I can stomach another one of those.

(via Cat Rambo and Vonda McIntyre)

Today, October 21st, is the 80th birthday of Ursula Le Guin, and the 40th anniversary of The Left Hand of Darkness. I hope she has a great birthday. I don’t know her personally, but she’s one of my absolute favourite writers, and she changes my outlook on things on a regular basis (starting with A Wizard of Earthsea and The Language of the Night).

Over at the World SF blog, Lavie Tidhar has posted an awesome (and explosive) interview of Ashok Banker, courtesy of Charles Tan.

Exclusive Interview with Ashok Banker

there’s a huge amount of interest in “India” as an exotic foreign formerly imperial domain by western authors and publishers, and this is being milked for maximum profit, often at the expense of an entire culture, with little or no regard for our sentiments or values, and with utter insensitivity and sheer blockheaded ignorance and arrogance.

Brutally honest, but he does make quite a few points I agree with (notably that one above about exoticism, though it’s a tad forceful–I’m not in favour of exoticism, as it’s all too often a pretext to hide a lack of research and a lack of respect for the culture you’re picking from, but I don’t think every SF writer out there choosing India as a setting does it purely for nefarious motives).

So, this weekend, I have been a good little trooper: in spite of a busy schedule (errands to run, plus Sunday spent celebrating the BF’s PhD), I managed to finish the edits on Servant of the Underworld and to send off a synopsis to my agent for Foreign Ghosts. Now I get to angst on my cover (not that I need to worry overmuch, judging from the awesome one AR unveiled for fellow author Lavie Tidhar). Also working on Author’s Notes to go into the book–still waiting to hear on how long those are allowed to run…

I have also been reading Alastair Reynolds’ Revelation Space (very good so far), and it’s set me thinking a bit about what keeps me reading. Both the Reynolds novels I have read so far rely on the same way of maintaining suspense: you don’t know exactly what’s going on, through a combination of characters not revealing the secrets of their past, of characters having forgotten them (something that happens pretty easily in a universe where you can reconfigure memory at the snap of a finger), and of characters being plain ignorant of the implications of what they’re running into.

Some readers might find this dishonest (especially the bit where you’re not told about things characters know), but for me, it works pretty darn well. It keeps me turning the pages, and at a much faster clip than usual–I’m already halfway through the book, having started it yesterday.

It’s a very peculiar way of maintaining suspense: not through the characters or through the conflicts of the plot, but rather through gradually working out what’s at the story’s core.

It’s also a very SFnal one. This is just an extension of what we do when we ease ourselves into a new universe: we read the story, soaking up information as we go and figuring out the rules of the world on our own, rather than have everything handed to us in an exposition-glut. Except that here, the rules don’t stop at the quarter mark, but go on to encompass the whole story: the story effectively ends when you’ve seen all that underpins the universe in question, explained all the niggling details that didn’t seem to make sense in the beginning.

It’s also an extension of mysteries. When you think about it, the plot of a mystery (I’m thinking old-fashioned ones, not the thrillers that rely on knowing whether the serial killer is going to get the detective before he can be unmaked) also follows that same kind of logic: the story events only make sense once the detective (and by extension, the reader for whom the detective is a proxy) figures out exactly what was going on: who killed the victim, why so-and-so is lying, why extra murders are being committed, why so-and-so has been acting weirdly in the days before the murder… In cases like Revelation Space, you’re effectively removing the proxy: you, as the reader, are the one gradually piecing the bits and pieces of disparate information and working out what the heck is going on.

And, finally, and that’s probably the reason why it works so well: it’s an extension of scientific reasoning. You notice such-and-such a weird phenomenon, and you have very little idea of why you’re seeing it. As your research goes on and you gather more knowledge, though, you gain a better understanding of why it’s acting that way–until you finally reach the point where you can amend the existing laws or apply them to include your new phenomenon. (at least, that’s the ideal. I wish things would work out that way in real life. They do tend to be messier, at least in applied computer science). It’s a typical scientist/engineer paradigm: you want to get at the heart of why things are working that way–in the case of the story, you want to know why everyone is reacting that way, and why things turned out this way.

As I said: not for everyone. But as far as I’m concerned, it’s a far more effective way of driving the narration than just conflicts (I’ve never been a big fan of conflicts, unless they’re between two sets of characters I care equally about).

So, a quick Villa Diodati report…

The house

This one was a Dutch co-production, courtesy of Floris Kleijne and Rochita Loenen-Ruiz. Floris sadly had to bow out for personal reasons, but he kindly stayed around to ferry us around, and we enjoyed his company for Friday evening and Sunday morning.

The crit room, filled with food

The weekend was, as usual, filled with good food, cooked by Jeff Spock, Benevolent Dictator Ruth Nestvold, and Stephen Gaskell.

Incidents included: a plugged sink (fixed by the heroic Jeff), a rallye outside the house which boxed us for Saturday afternoon (watching cars zoom past the house was somewhat disturbing), and a fall of several tiles following a rather strong storm. Otherwise, though, it was made of awesome. As Ruth remarked, it’s funny how you can throw several writers together and have them get along like a house on fire.

The Surrealist Oracle (random questions, random answers). Highlight: Stephen: “What was your worst pick-up line?” Ruth: “I am the master of the universe!”

The writers present were Floris Kleijne (partially), Ruth Nestvold, Jeff Spock, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, Sara Genge (who is steadily taking over the world), Deanna Carlyle, and Stephen Gaskell. We workshopped stories, ate good food, and discussed novel processes. Also, we made a second attempt at producing collaborative fiction, this time with more success (the key, I think, is that the more people there are, the shorter the piece you should try to produce. In this case, a 350-word piece looked about right for 7 of us).

See, the crits aren’t so painful after all…

Overall, tremendous fun, and as usual, looking forward to the next one.

So, now that I’ve got some decent sleep…

Spent the afternoon of yesterday at the BF’s PhD defence: he was working on quantum physics (entangled-photon sources, to be precise). I knew just enough quantum physics that the defence was somewhat familiar, but sadly not enough to actually understand most of what was going on. The question session lasted one hour (at which point they lost me completely), but in the end they awared him his PhD, with a Very Honorable Mention–which was pretty much the highest grade they could give him, so much happiness.

Then there was the cocktail, and the evening with drinks at Matthieu’s place–and I went to bed completely knackered. Slowly emerging now 🙂

-Sent revised version of Foreign Ghosts (the Xuya novel) to agent, and am now working on an appealing blurb they can use for marketing (and struggling a bit since this is multi-character in a weird setting).
-Updated the Servant of the Underworld page. I can haz blurbs!
-Got my synopsis for Book 2 of Servant of the Underworld approved by Angry Robot towers: it will tentatively be called Harbinger of the Storm. After much brainstorming, it looks like the series title has settled onto Obsidian and Blood.
Looks like book 2 of Obsidian and Blood is going to be the next project on my plate (right after I tackle the revisions for Servant of the Underworld).

Have I mentioned the bit where I feel perpetually swamped? I had some inkling that might be the lot of the novelist, but I didn’t think it would come quite that fast…

Dario Ciriello (friend, Clarionite, and founder of my writing group Written in Blood), has also founded Panverse, a small speculative fiction publisher. Their main project right now is Panverse, a series of anthologies of novellas–for which there are very few good markets available.

I’m pleased to announce that you can now order the first fruit of Dario’s efforts: Panverse One, featuring novellas by Andrew Tisbert, Uncle River, Alan Smale, Reggie Lutz, and Jason K. Chapman. Cover design is due to another Written in Blood buddy, Janice Hardy (whose MG book The Shifter has just been released)

If you want to read quality longer fiction, why don’t you give it a try?

Two novels by friends have recently come out:

• the first is Ken Scholes‘s Canticle, sequel to his awesome Lamentation. It’s already received rave reviews in many places, and I’m not surprised (I was lucky enough to read a draft of this, and it was already amazing at this early stage). Ken merges political and religious intrigues in a setting reminiscent of a Canticle for Leibowitz, where the order of the Androfrancines painstakingly gathers the knowledge that was lost during the Age of Laughing Madness…

  

  Come back to the Named Lands in this compelling sequel to Ken Scholes amazing novel Lamentation.

  It is nine months after the end of the previous book. Many noble allies have come to the Ninefold Forest for a Feast in honor of General Rudolfo’s first-born child. Jin Li Tam, his wife and mother of his heir, lies in childbed.

  As the feast begins, the doors of the hall fly open and invisible assassins begin attacking. All of Rudolfo’s noble guests are slain, including Hanric, the Marsh Queen’s Shadow. And on the Keeper’s Gate, which guards the Named Lands from the Churning Waste, a strange figure appears, with a message for Petronus, the Hidden Pope.

  Thus begins the second movement of The Psalms of Isaak, Canticle.

• Second up is John Brown‘s Servant of a Dark God, which boasts splendid cover art. The book has a fascinating concept: what if the days of your life could be harvested, and used by someone else?

  

  Young Talen lives in a world where the days of a person’s life can be harvested, bought, and stolen. Only the great Divines, who rule every land, and the human soul-eaters, dark ones who steal from man and beast and become twisted by their polluted draws, know the secrets of this power. This land’s Divine has gone missing and soul-eaters are found among Talen’s people.

  The Clans muster a massive hunt, and Talen finds himself a target. Thinking his struggle is against both soul-eaters and their hunters, Talen actually has far larger problems. A being of awesome power has arisen, one whose diet consists of the days of man. Her Mothers once ranched human subjects like cattle. She has emerged to take back what is rightfully hers. Trapped in a web of lies and ancient secrets, Talen must struggle to identify his true enemy before the Mother finds the one whom she will transform into the lord of the human harvest.

Now go forth and read. I know I will 🙂

I’ll be attending my first ever Utopiales in Nantes: the BF and I need a break (he defends his thesis tomorrow, and we both could use a bit of rest after the wringing the PhD has put us through). No programming, though: just enjoying the con, and seeing some friends.

(I’m attempting to get a professional pass by virtue of being an author; we’ll see how it goes 🙂 )

Er, yes, there will be a Villa Diodati report. That, however, would require full use of my brain, which is still lost somewhere in the boonies…

Instead, I’ll leave you with Lavie Tidhar’s editorial for the World SF blog, which does a tremendous job of articulating how I feel about the quality of stories, and in a much better way than anything I could write.