Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like when things are going wrong—your wife is ready to leave you, all your notions about yourself and the world are getting turned around, everything you trusted is becoming questionable—there’s nothing like having someone try to kill you to take your mind off your problems.
Phoenix (1990) completes the story begun in Teckla and starts a whole new phase of Vlad Taltos’s life. It’s the story of how Vlad Taltos the Jhereg assassin is sent on a mission by a god, and everything changes. It’s written in the general form of a “how to assassinate” manual, and yet it’s the furthest from that pattern of story of any of the books so far. I don’t know if it would be a good introduction to the series—I suspect not, I suspect that it works best if you already know the characters. For the first time, we meet Zerika, the Empress. For the first time we get to see somewhere outside the Empire. It’s a different kind of book. Did anyone start here? Did it work? I really can’t tell.
I was born in the mid-1970s, and came up watching movies in what quickly became an amazing time to be a sci-fi fan. Viewers were treated to an ever-marching parade of awesome SF flicks: Alien, Aliens, Close Encounters, E.T., the original Star Wars trilogy, Blade Runner, Star Trek II . . . it goes on and on. These movies had great stories and characters. They also had great eye candy—visual effects.
Man, do I loves me some eye candy.
Of course, much of these groundbreaking VFX hailed from breakthroughs in technology: a combination of model-making artistry and computer-fueled motion control camera work, and crazy-convincing mashups of matte paintings and rotoscoping. It was tedious, expensive work; nearly all of it was meticulously crafted by hand, using real-world cameras, sets, paint, explosives and glued-together models.
This stuff was also strapped by real-world compromises and technological limitations. Those glory years were filled with real “bubblegum and chickenwire” stories; the “M” in ILM should’ve stood for MacGuyver. And yet, a hearty chunk of me still finds these effects far more convincing than the superior VFX technologies filmmakers now have at their disposal.
No matter what else Baum wrote, his readers constantly demanded more Oz books. So, just three years after swearing off the series forever, when he found himself short of money again, he broke down and wrote a new Oz book. (Conan Doyle would have sympathized.) However brief, the break invigorated him: The Patchwork Girl of Oz is one of Baum’s best Oz books, an assured and fast-moving fairy tale raising questions of fairness and comparative morality.
Despite the title, the story centers around the quest of young Ojo the Munchkin to find six strange ingredients needed for a potion that can restore his uncle and a neighbor to life. (A magician accidentally turned them into stone.) In the first half of the book, Ojo and his companions, new characters the Glass Cat and the Patchwork Girl, travel to the Emerald City, meeting the Shaggy Man, the Scarecrow and the Woozy (whose tail is one of the needed ingredients) along the way.
In which Charlie the First and Binx are told to wait.
Taltos (1988) is set before all the other books in the series, or at least all the books written so far. It’s a great place to start, especially for people who like reading by internal chronology. It’s also a very good book, one of the best. It’s surprising that Brust preferred to circle back and tell this story instead of finishing the story he’d started in Teckla, but I’m sure he had his reasons.
Taltos is the story of how the young Jhereg assassin Vlad Taltos grew up, met some of the friends and colleagues he relies on in the earlier-written later-set books, and how they get him embroiled in larger events and have an adventure.
In my previous post I talked about the interesting people or places I encountered while traveling. After writing that essay, I heard a piece on the radio about the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street and suddenly remembered…“the song.” The one I’m sure you heard over and over as a child if you likewise grew up with Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch. That catchy tune sung by Bob McGrath known as, “Who Are The People in Your Neighborhood.” As I immediately regretted looking that particular Sesame Street segment up on You tube, it’s stuck in my head now, and I realized that one never has to travel far to encounter the interesting or unexplained.
So, with apologies to Jeff Moss, I give you my version of “The People in My Neighborhood(s).”
The folks at Bloomsbury USA have generously donated to Tor.com ten copies of the New York Times bestselling graphic novel Logicomix, by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos Papadimitriou. Logicomix also appeared on Publishers Weekly’s list of 2009’s best books. Here’s the scoop:
An innovative, dramatic graphic novel about the treacherous pursuit of the foundations of mathematics.
This exceptional graphic novel recounts the spiritual odyssey of philosopher Bertrand Russell. In his agonized search for absolute truth, Russell crosses paths with legendary thinkers like Gottlob Frege, David Hilbert, and Kurt Gödel, and finds a passionate student in the great Ludwig Wittgenstein. But his most ambitious goal—to establish unshakable logical foundations of mathematics—continues to loom before him. Through love and hate, peace and war, Russell persists in the dogged mission that threatens to claim both his career and his personal happiness, finally driving him to the brink of insanity.
This story is at the same time a historical novel and an accessible explication of some of the biggest ideas of mathematics and modern philosophy. With rich characterizations and expressive, atmospheric artwork, the book spins the pursuit of these ideas into a highly satisfying tale.
Probing and ingeniously layered, the book throws light on Russell's inner struggles while setting them in the context of the timeless questions he spent his life trying to answer. At its heart, Logicomix is a story about the conflict between an ideal rationality and the unchanging, flawed fabric of reality.
Sound intriguing? The Logicomix website has even more information on the authors, behind-the-scenes details, and news on upcoming events.
The Rules: To get this giveaway, all you need to do is comment (once—duplicates won’t count) on this post. The winner will be selected at random. You have until noon EST on Wednesday, December 2nd, to comment here. Please check your e-mail on this day—you have 24 hours to respond before we select a new winner.
Illustration by Idiots’Books
Something had changed between Kettlewell and Eva since they’d left Florida with the kids. It wasn’t just the legal hassles, though there were plenty of those. They’d gone to Florida with a second chance—a chance for him to be a mover again, a chance for her to have a husband who was happy with his life again.
Now he found himself sneaking past her when she was in the living room and they slept back to back in bed with as much room between them as possible.
Ada missed Lyenitchka and spent all her time in her bedroom IMing her friend or going questing with her in their favorite game, which involved Barbies, balrogs, and buying outfits. Pascal missed all the attention he had received as the designated mascot of the two little girls.
[It was not a high point in the history of the Kettlewell clan.]
A few months ago, for his short novel, The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman won the Newbery Medal, presented each year to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children by the Association for Library Service to Children . This wasn’t the first time one of Neil’s books for young readers took home an award. Coraline, later to become a motion picture, copped the Hugo and Nebula Awards in 2003 for Best Novella.
The previous year Gaiman took home the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel for his American Gods, a lengthy adult tome that celebrates his fascination with Norse mythology. This fall the versatile and prolific Gaiman combines his talent for storytelling to young audiences and his preoccupation with Scandinavian legends in Odd and the Frost Giants, a dandy little book with terrific illustrations by Brett Helquist.
Welcome to the sixth serialized installment of J.C. Hutchins’ human cloning thriller 7th Son: Descent. If this is your first exposure to our free serialization of 7th Son, you can easily catch up by experiencing part one, part two, part three, part four and part five. You can also dive in right away, thanks to...
I got batch of cover designs in today and immediately regretted that the one I liked the best, visually speaking, would never fly for the cover. In this case, with good reason—it looks great but isn’t quite suited for the audience. Luckily, there are others in the batch that also also very good and more appropriate for the book.
Also today, I got sketches in for another book. Here we are clearly making the less interesting choice because it more closely resembles familiar territory. The artist is no dummy and will likely reuse the pose on someone else’s very successful book cover. (And I will be jealous!)
This happens a lot in the job. Many times I agree with the final outcome, in some cases I don’t. Below are two older examples of each.
Fix the health care system? Why?
After Universal Studios failed to copyright their 1925 Phantom of the Opera, they realized that the horror films were cinematic gold, and they swiftly proceeded to capitalize on Frankenstein, Dracula, The Wolfman and other denizens of the Laemmle ranch. Those images were merchandised as model kits, Halloween costumes, and lunch boxes. And, of course, as perpetual remakes.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the trend was to reference the stories’ literary sources: Bram Stoker’s Dracula; Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. There was an Arthur Conan Doyle’s Mummy, but it was a bit of a weasel job—rather than the immortal Karloff classic we all know and love, it merely referred to a Conan Doyle short story about a mummy that happened to reside in a university dorm room. When The Mummy was eventually remade, it was full of so much special effects flash and period costuming that most people didn’t notice or mind how little it resembled the original film. Appropriately enough, there is no Ur-text for The Mummy.
No real effort was made to do a full-out werewolf remake. Curt Siodmak, who wrote the screenplay for 1945’s Wolfman, supposedly based it on one of his own short stories, after all. It bore little resemblance to 1939’s Werewolf of London, and even less to the granddaddy of all werewolf films: 1929’s Wolf Blood.
Somebody in a position of metaphysical authority apparently emailed my subconscious and asked it what it would like for the holidays this year, because for me, this book was the quintessential perfect gift: the thing you didn't know you wanted until you hold it in your hand and realize, This is just what I have always wanted.
What I have always wanted, it turns out, is a historical mystery featuring Abigail Adams as an intrepid detective attempting to catch a serial killer in colonial Massachusetts on the eve of the Boston Tea Party, written by Barbara Hamilton. (Debut author Hamilton turns out to be not such a neophyte after all—it’s a pseudonym for fantasy and mystery veteran Barbara Hambly, author of several of my favorite books: Dragonsbane, A Free Man of Color, The Time of the Dark, and Bride of the Rat God. SCORE!)
Did I mention, SCORE!?
The first time I read Teckla (1987) I hated it. Hated it. I like it now, but it took quite a lot of time for me to come around to it.
Teckla is set in the same fun fantasy world of Dragaera as the first two books of the series, but unlike the romps that are Jhereg and Yendi it’s a real downer. The animals the House of the Teckla are named after are mice, and the Teckla are the peasants and proletarians of the Empire. The book takes places chronologically immediately after Jhereg and it is about a proletarian uprising among the Teckla and Easterners (humans) of South Adrilankha. It’s about ordinary people getting caught up with the Jhereg and the nasty side of assassins—it’s no fun at all when it’s killing ordinary men and women who are threatening the profits of organized crime. It’s also about the messy end of a relationship. It’s about passing and being proud or ashamed of what you are.
What I hated about it was that it was grim and depressing and realistic in a way that turned the first two volumes inside out. That’s what I now appreciate about it. Teckla provides some necessary grounding, some chiaroscuro to the palette of Dragaera.
So assume (see my last nanotech post, Nanotech IS distinguishable from magic) that we’ll find a way to build and power nanobots.
The medical nanobots in my novel Small Miracles tap the energy sources that the patient’s own body provides. That is, they can metabolize glycerol and glucose, just as the cells in our bodies do.
Now what?
The good news is that being cell-sized, such bots can navigate the circulatory system, foraging for glucose as they go. But being cell-sized, we’ll also need a lot of such devices to accomplish anything useful in less than geological time. How will we control them all?
Kris Kuksi, Beast Anthology
548 West 28th Street, 3rd Floor, NYC
Nov 21 — Dec 19, 2009
I attended Kris Kuksi’s “Beast Anthology” opening at the Joshua Liner gallery last Saturday night. I had seen pictures of his work over the past year and was anxious to view them in person.
Kuksi takes bits and pieces of action figures, toy soldiers, tank models, and a seemingly endless selection of other figurative found objects and creates scenes that, seen as a whole, are reminiscent of Eastern temple wall sculptures. They are chaotic on the micro level but ultimately form organized symmetrical shapes. The soldiers’ poses and tanks create a kind of steampunk-inspired monstrous momentum—evoking elements of imperialism and industry. The religious and/or post-apocalyptic effect is often enhanced by an “underworld” side to the work.
One of my favourite fantasy writers, Barbara Hambly, has written some stories set in universes that the publishers cancelled and is placing them on her webpage as downloadable PDFs for $5 each. There are a couple of Benjamin January stories and a 15,000 word Antryg novella.
She says:
This is an experiment. As pretty much everybody knows, fantasy serieses get dumped by publishers—and as pretty much every author knows, other publishers generally do not fall over themselves to pick up these abandoned serieses.
That doesn’t mean the author doesn’t want to write about those people anymore, or that fans of the series are not longer interested.
These people are very real to me. I like them.
I also like being able to pay my medical insurance.
Thus—at the urging of those who’ve loved my old Del Rey fantasy serieses—I will continue to write original short stories about the people and places in those serieses: Antryg and Joanna, Sun Wolf and Starhawk, the gang at the Keep of Dare, John and Jenny, the Sisters of the Raven… anyone whom I’ve written about in previous books.
I love the Antryg books, The Silent Tower, The Silicon Mage and Dog Wizard in which an evil wizard is trying to make a copy of his brain run in CP/M. The world is on the cusp of an industrial revolution, with connections to our world (in the eighties) and very interesting magic. I’m also very fond of the Benjamin January mysteries and most especially the Sun Wolf and Starhawk books—The Ladies of Mandrigyn and sequels. If you are also interested, you may well want to check this out.
Garth Nix is a New York Times bestselling author of the immensely popular Abhorsen trilogy, The Keys to the Kingdom series (Australian site here, Scholastic Books site here), and The Seventh Tower books among other short stories and novels.
Nix was recently Guest of Honor at the World Fantasy Convention in San Jose, CA. I sat down to ask him a few questions. Unfortunately, as we suffered through technical difficulties, the live interview did not happen. Nix was gracious enough to take my questions via e-mail and send me his responses.
Following herewith is the interview.
Did you set out to write material for younger readers, or did it happen naturally?
I deliberately wrote my first (finished) novel, The Ragwitch, for children. But I also wrote it for myself, both as I was at say ten years old, and as I was at the time of writing. Since then, I guess I’ve continued to write for a younger version of myself and for the current version. I tend to think of stories and books as being for everyone, just with an “entry reading age”, rather than an age range. What I mean by this is that a book may have an entry level of say 10 or 11, when the book first becomes accessible, but that hopefully it will have additional layers of meaning, story and context that makes it enjoyable and interesting for older readers of any age.
Generally speaking, I find that stories find their own entry level. Sometimes when I am thinking up a story I think it will have a younger entry level, but when I write it, the “top layer” of story that is most accessible is older and it ends up being for young adults, which means essentially for adults as well, but not for children.
Brokedown Palace was the first Brust I read. I’d heard him well spoken of online, and I couldn’t quite bring myself to pick up the extremely ugly British edition of the first three Vlad books, and this was in the library. It was an unusual place to start with Dragaera, but not a terrible one. It’s a very odd book, and it was very odd of Brust to write it after Yendi and before Teckla. It’s set in the East, in Fenario, and you wouldn’t know it was Dragaera at all except that it clearly is. It’s written like a fairytale—and it’s punctuated with things written even more like fairytales. It draws on Brust’s Hungarian background, and it’s connected to the Grateful Dead song “Brokedown Palace.”
I really like this book and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, but it’s so dreamlike and odd that I find it very difficult to talk about coherently. It’s like trying to pick up fragments of mist. Brilliant book. Very weird.
I’m a believer that we are all storytellers—many of us are good ones. We spin tales whenever we tell a joke, or recount the day’s events at the dinner table, or roll a D20, or recap the most recent episode of V to our buddies. I’m also a SF thriller novelist and, unlike some literary snobs I read about (and give the mental middle finger to), I believe we all have at least one great story inside us, taking up space, rattling at the cage bars, hungry to be let loose. That fictional story may very well be a good one, too.
You’re a SFF fan, which means you’re extremely imaginative. That’s good. Imagination is the key ingredient to being a tale-teller. If you’ve got a novel, short story or screenplay prowling inside your guts—but have never made the attempt to set it free—I, as Ambassador For All Writers Who Claim Ridiculous Ambassadorships For These Occasions, proclaim it’s high time you stopped listening to that fretful voice in your noggin (It won’t be any good . . . You don’t have time to write . . . It’s all been said before), plant your bootie in a chair, and get typing. You’re not getting any younger, ya know—and you’ll never learn to fly if you don’t flap those wings.
