The Next Big Thing: Martin's War

(X-Posted at delagar)

I was tagged for this by Shay Darrach, my co-editor on Menial: Skillled Labor in SF.

I'm tagging Polenth Blake, over at Polenth's Nothing.

The deal is, I answer ten questions about a work in progress.  I'm going to talk about Triple Junction, which   is the first book proper in the series Martin's War.  Those of you who have read Broken Slate know that's a prequel to this series.

1.What is the working title of your next book?

Triple Junction – it’s a geological term, traditionally meaning a place where three divergent boundaries meet (like an ocean, a ridge, and a continental plate); but more loosely now means any three boundaries. Generally they’re unstable and lead to change. Here – obviously – I’m being all metaphorical.

2.Where did the idea come from for the book?

I’ve been working on this idea awhile. It’s my successful slave revolt/successful revolution story.  The main impetus was C. L. R. James’ The Black Jacobins, which details (wonderfully) the Haitian revolution. I’m writing a five-book far-future SF series, which follows the events of a successful rebellion and revolution about the contract labor on the planet Julian.

3.What genre does your book fall under?

Definitely space opera. 

4.What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

I’m terrible at this.  Not only do I watch almost no TV and very few movies, but I can’t remember faces or names. Someone talented, I guess.  And since my main characters are mostly POC, I’d want them not to be white-washed.

5.What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

On a far-future settlement planet, Martin Eduardo battles an abusive contract labor system as he works toward revolution.

6.Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I'm working on this as we speak.

7.How long did/will it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

The first draft, about two months.  I write the first draft fast (always) and then I revise extensively.

8.What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

That’s a tough one.  I’m heavily influenced by Cherryh, and Tepper, by Eleanor Arnason, by Joanna Russ, by Suzy McKee Charnas, by Kage Baker, by Octavia Butler, by Cecelia Holland; but I wouldn’t say this book is exactly like any of theirs.  I certainly owe all of them plenty.

9.Who or what inspired you to write this book?

As I said above, reading C. L. R. James, and then about fifty other books I read because I had read that one – about slavery, and about other sorts of forced labor.  Douglas Blackmon’s Slavery By Another Name was also a big influence.  It’s why I have contract labor and not slaves on Julian.

10.What else about the book might pique the reader's interest?

Well, I’m also interested in cultures.  I started out as an anthropologist, not an English professor, and one of the reasons I write SF is so that I can write about different cultures. I was interested in writing about the revolution on Julian, but I was also interested in creating a workable, believable far-future culture, one that is not 1970s suburban America culture (as so many SF cultures, it seems to me, are).  I’m having a lot of fun with that.

Crossed Genres: May Issue

The May 2013 issue of Crossed Genres magazine is out.

Stories by Andrew Fuller, Sylvia Spruck Wrigley, and Chad Williamson.

Hemlock Grove: A Review

So, werewolves.

One of my students recommended this series, Hemlock Grove, which is a Netflix original series (who knew?), and then another did, and then another, and finally one night when I couldn't sleep (I am having the worst insomnia lately) I gave in and began watching it.

Two nights later I have watched the entire thing and am here with a review.

It's compelling.  Very watchable.  Kind of cool.  I'm not a werewolf fan myself, so if you like werewolves and fantasy and scary (which I usually don't), you'll probably like it even more than I did.

What's really good about it:

(1) Hot guys, especially our lead werewolf, Peter Rumancek, played by Landon Liboiron

(2) Generally interesting writing -- almost none of it bored me, which is rare in TV shows

(3) A nice mix of classes: we get working class life here, not just the rich and famous. A really nice scene toward the end of the first season has the town's rich heir coming down to the working class bar in a noblesse oblige attempt to comfort the police chief, who he thinks he's buddies with.  "Come home with me," he says. "You shouldn't be alone," he says, and the police chief's (real) friends are (rightly) outraged.  "Hey," they snarl at the rich guy.  "Look around.  Does he look like he's alone?"

(4) Cool CGI.  The werewolf transformation scenes.  Yeah baby.

(5) Fairly good plotting.  It kept me interested.

(6) Some interesting women characters.  And it passes the Bechdel test.

(7) Lots of actors from Battlestar Galatica here. I like seeing them.

(8) An ending I seriously did not see coming.

(9) Beautiful landscape.  I love the shots of the town and the woods.  Even Peter's trailer was kind of cool.


Less good points:

(1) Yeah, kind of racist.  Episode one, our werewolf hero is a gypsy and his gypsy mom show up and hey look at this -- they make their living by stealing!  And their cousin the gypsy is a fortune teller and a whore! I gotta say (we're ten minutes into the series at this point) I almost turned the fucking thing off at that point.  because, really?  To be fair, a tiny bit of pushback later: we see the town acting racist toward Peter and his mom; and there's a scene where Peter's uncle and his great-grandmother are persecuted by Nazis in a flashback; and we only see Peter and his mom stealing once more in the entire first season; but still. When your series is built on a racist premise, it's a lot to overcome.

(2) Lots of the women are kind of stock -- evil powerful woman.  Sweet virgin.  Gypsy whore. Again, to be fair, the show does what it can to pushback against the stereotypes.  Still.

(3) Also, to be fair, some of the male characters are kind of stock: Mad scientist, befuddled rich dad, buddies in a love/hate relationship fighting over the same (sweet innocent virginal blond) girl.

(4) Only one season is out.  WAAAH.

Final judgment: Worth watching, with some caveats.

Giveaway: Spring-Heeled Jack and The Clockwork Man by Mark Hodder

So....

A few forevers ago, I won these two books in a different online giveaway.

I've tried a few times to read them, and it has been a struggle. I love the imagery of Steampunk. I love the idea of Steampunk. I've finally decided that they're just not my style. Except for Gail Carriger's Soulless series -- which I loved -- I haven't enjoyed a single steampunk novel yet.

I mean, I'm not entirely giving up. I do have The Doomsday Vault and The Hum Bug on my TBR shelf and I'm not going to give them up before I start, but I am not going to keep going back to them and forcing myself through another page while crying, "Why am I not enjoying this more!"

Hmmm....

That got a little melodramatic, didn't it?

It's been that kind of week. I actually slammed a screwdriver bit (on the drill) all the way through my palm, under my thumb this week. My piercing aficionado friend wanted me to put a barbell through it -- and technically it would have worked. There was one incident and two distinct holes. It was a through and through. But what's more melodramatic than using a screwdriver bit to pierce one's hand?

Apparently, for me, it's finding I don't enjoy Steampunk as much as I want to. Yes, I tried Cherie Priest. I even made it to the end of her (first) book, but it took work.

Effort.

Wahhhhhh.

Anyway, I have two books. I gave up on page 68. Tell me why you think you'll get further.

Tell me you loved book one and really just want to win book two.

Tell me you have a thing for time travel and have been desperate to read it since it came out but your evil spouse won't let you BUY any more books until you get rid of a few hundred of the thousands that you already have, but WINNING is okay. Everyone knows WON books fit easily on overflowing bookshelves.

Tell me why I should have loved Cherie Priest and how I will burn in hell forever for even suggesting someone might not be infatuated with that series.

Tell me Mark Hodder is the best author since sliced bread -- annnd that one doesn't quite work here, does it?

Tell me whatever you'd like. Winners will be chosen randomly from the comments next Friday. Because the other writers on FanSci often have different tastes in stories than I do, and I'd love to see one of them cover it, I'll even include them in the drawing. But, as of next Friday, reading these books will be someone else's responsibility and I will no longer see them on my shelf taunting me with my failure.

Remember, comment below to win!

Hot Gay Robot Sex: A Review of Madeline Ashby's vN

Unlike some, I like to buy those Year's Best anthologies (along with other sorts of anthologies), mostly because I've found any number of my now-favorite authors that way.  I found Kage Baker that way, and Lois McMaster Bujold.

A few days ago, I came across this story, "The Education of Junior Number 12," by Madeline Ashby, in The Year's Best SF 17.

It was one of the best stories I had read in some time -- grabbed me from the first line, strongly written, excellent characters, real surprises, a strong ending -- so I immediately went to find the novel which the headnote referenced. (To wit: "About this story, Ashby says 'Javier is a character who appears in vN.  He's one of my favorite characters, and this is one of his more sombre stories.'")

I found vN, the novel, available on Kindle, published by Angry Robots, a good sign, and bought it at once, read it straight through, staying up late to do so.











A lot to like about this novel, and I'm giving it tentative recommendation -- it is absolutely worth reading, though it's not nearly as strong as the short story.

The novel is the story of Amy, a robot living in a world where robots have no real rights to existence -- they're objects, kind of like toasters (and yes, we get in-jokes like this, referencing other pop culture robot movies and TV shows about movies, which is fun).  A normal robot is self-replicating, or iterating: it reproduces itself, given sufficient food (robots eat metals and plastics), and the baby robot grows up very quickly, over a matter of days and weeks.

However: if a robot is kept on a special diet (starved) you can retard its growth, keep it young for a longer period.

Why would you want to do this?

Well, the main reason people (human people) have robots, apparently, is because they're sex toys.

And some people (you see where this is going) like their sex toys very young.

Robots have been built (programmed) to want humans: specifically, to want to do whatever humans say, to want to please humans, to need to please humans.  They've also been built with a failsafe, which means not only can they never harm humans, they can't even watch humans harm one another, or be harmed.

Now all this means robots have limited utility -- they're very delicate and can be destroyed by almost anything.  Watching a fistfight or a violent movie will fry their circuits and send them into bluescreen.

Plus they need to eat a lot, apparently -- getting too hungry will also bluescreen them.

Amy's story has to do with her father (a human) and her mother (a robot) and their attempt to give her a nice happy childhood (they're starving her into remaining a child for five years, which, as it develops, is actually a form of torture, though her father has deluded himself into thinking it's ethical behavior).

When her grandmother Portia shows up and turns out not to have a failsafe, the plot gets cracking.

As I said, mostly the story works.  Where it doesn't, it's because Ashby has, occasionally, clearly not spent enough time on her worldbuilding -- I mean, we've got a world with robots who are desperate to please humans, who will do anything for humans, who have been programmed to please humans, and who will work for food; and yet these robots are reduced to wandering the parks and eating from dumpsters?

Why haven't they been put to work in Wal-Mart?  Why aren't they working the fields picking strawberries?  Why aren't they nannies for, well, everyone?  I mean, that's some free fucking childcare, free housekeepers, free gardeners, free dishwashers, whatever.  I don't care how much prejudice you're got against the robots, I bet everybody on the block would be keeping two or three in their basements.

And Javier has been built for reforesting -- I bet there would be dozens, if not hundreds, of models like that. Sex is one thing, but road crews, and litter, and mining, and oil spills, and cleaning sewers, and bomb squad, and working oil rigs, and I bet I'm missing tons of others, those are jobs we'd give to robots.  Not being homeless. Not being a waitress or a Revolutionary.

Nevertheless!

Mostly it's a cracking good read.  So have at it!

"The Wooden Man" by Harry Connolly Pout

I have a long post all handwritten out because I've been avoiding typing -- because the ache in my forearms reminds me of carpal tunnel, despite having started during exercise rather than anywhere near a computer, and the idea of being permanently unable to type is one of my scariest things. So, I never got around to typing it. In fact, I've barely seen a computer screen since Wednesday. That's a weird week for me. It's all about where I, once again, gave up watching Lost Girl despite loving Contemporary Fantasy and really, really wanting to like that show.

Anyway, as a holdover, I wanted to say how very sad I am that I only discovered Harry Connolly's Wooden Man series after it had been ... not renewed? There will be no more. And I am sad.

I read book two a year or more ago. I don't remember where I discovered it, but my local library didn't carry it and I have so many TBR (to be read) books that it seemed silly to hunt down more to add to the pile, so it was put on my 'remember this name' list so if I happened across it.... Then finally, I did. And even more finally I've started once again on the read-the-TBR-pile effort and made it to the c's.

Then I went on Goodreads to rate it, because that's how I remember which books I like, and the very first review speaks of sadness that the series isn't going to continue. And it seems the book that caught my attention, that made me want to read more, was everyone's least favorite. Book number two, that is. And I can sort of understand that because it was the third that starts to make significant changes in the world, where the character finally begins to stride boldly forward and I was ready to move on to the take-my-money-already phase of new series collecting.

The others were good, but I prefer the let's-fix-this-shit attitude to the holy-fuck-scary-new-world issues. Now there is a plan.

And I don't get to see it.

Pout.

...

I read The Wooden Man, which is a collection of all three, and I read all three in a row including rereading two, so I could get the occurrences in the right order. Otherwise, they are Child of Fire, Game of Cages, and Circle of Enemies.

Every Day: Book Review

I forget where I first heard about David Levithan's new novel, Every Day.



Of course I knew who Levithan was -- he was the other half of the team that wrote Will Grayson, Will Grayson, the book that introduced me to John Green.

(That's also an excellent book, btw.)

Anyway, for a couple weeks or it might be months now buzzing around in the back of my mind has been this notion that I ought to get around to reading Every Day. Then I read on someone's blog (and I forget whose, and a quick google search is helping me not at all) that they were recommending it for a Hugo nom, so I went over to Amazon and downloaded the free sample to my Kindle.

Then I downloaded the rest.

Then I stayed up until two in the morning reading it.

Because wow.  It's just that good.

For those of you who haven't heard anything about it, the premise is this person (we'll go with person jumps, every night at midnight, into a new body.  So they (we'll go with the pronoun they, since A. as they call themself has no real gender) spend each 24 hour period in a new body.  A can "access," as A calls it, the memories of their new body, to a certain degree (for instance, A can remember what the new person did in fifth grade, but if the new person speaks Portuguese, A can't understand it; A can remember what A has learned from body to body -- A's own freshman physics lessons -- but can't play tennis even if the person they're jumped into can).

The person A jumps into is always, more or less, the same age as A -- five when A is five, sixteen now that A is sixteen -- but otherwise it varies: gender, race, religion, physical types, all these vary.  This is one of the most interesting parts of the book, A's view from the inside of all these lives.  The other big plot, though, A falling in love with Rhiannon, a girl they meet in the first jump -- that's the big strength of the book.

A tells Rhiannon the truth, but that -- of course -- doesn't lead to instant bliss.

What do you do when you love someone, and every day you're someone else -- or at least your body is?

On one of the jumps, A jumps into the life of a girl who is in a deeply lovely relationship with another girl.

"If I woke up in a different body every day -- if you never knew what I was going to look like tomorrow -- would you still love me?" A asks.

"Even if you were green and had a beard and a horrible male appendage between your legs.  Even if your eyebrows were orange and you had a mole covering your entire cheek and a nose that poked me in your eye every time I kissed you.  Even if you weighed seven hundred pounds and had hair the size of a Doberman under your arms.  Even then, I would love you."

"Likewise," I tell her.

It's so easy to say, because it never has to be true.

The book is full of great moments like that -- moments that just punch you in the heart.

This one is highly recommended.

Here's a short story from the world of the book.