As I've been watching news coverage on the flu outbreak, I immediately started thinking of John Ringo's recent biothriller, The Last Centurion. Of course the situation isn't exactly the same, since in our world the flu outbreak is following a major economic dislocation caused by the mortgage meltdown, but it still is enough to give me chills.
However, some people on Baen's Bar have been suggesting that the quick response by public health agencies indicates this isn't going to be the Big One, but that will come from some unexpected quarter while we're distracted with something else. Or worse, if this outbreak is successfully contained, we could get a "cry wolf" effect that will actually impair people's readiness to respond properly when it really comes.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Thursday, April 16, 2009
1632-verse News
It looks like there's going to be at least two more novels in the 1632 universe coming out this year or early next year. One, 1635: Sympathy for the Devil is a collaboration with David Carrico, and may either be a compilation or a continuation of the stories of Franz Sylwester and Marla Linder which have been appearing in various issues of Grantville Gazette, as well as in Ring of Fire II. The other, tentatively entitled 1635: The Tangled Web, is listed in a pre-release list as being by Virginia DeMarce alone, which would be a departure from previous procedures, and may represent Eric Flint's decision to hand off some of the side stories altogether. However, this could also be a misprint, so we should not read too much into it.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
The Second Book Blues
It's said that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Similarly, a series is only as strong as its weakest book. And unfortunately a number of series have started out with a strong first book, only to be followed by a second volume which is at best uninspiring.
This problem seems to be particularly bad with "trilogies" that are in fact not a series of three interconnected books, but in fact three volumes of a single large novel. As a result, the middle volume is all middle, with no beginning or end of its own.
I think this is the problem with C. S. Friedman's latest, Wings of Wrath
. I originally read the first volume, A Feast of Souls, in a single afternoon, stopping only for bodily necessities. As a result, I was really looking forward to the second volume, but now that I finally have it in my hands, I'm finding it a lot slower and less interesting a read than the first. I've been able to casually put it aside and do other things, and pick it up only haphazardly from time to time.
A lot of what I'm reading right now feels like "housekeeping," necessary information to get us moved toward the final climax in the third volume, but not really of that much interest of itself. So I'm impatient to get through it and to some more real action, or even just some interesting hints of fascinating secrets of the past -- but not so impatient to keep me reading obsessively.
This problem seems to be particularly bad with "trilogies" that are in fact not a series of three interconnected books, but in fact three volumes of a single large novel. As a result, the middle volume is all middle, with no beginning or end of its own.
I think this is the problem with C. S. Friedman's latest, Wings of Wrath
. I originally read the first volume, A Feast of Souls, in a single afternoon, stopping only for bodily necessities. As a result, I was really looking forward to the second volume, but now that I finally have it in my hands, I'm finding it a lot slower and less interesting a read than the first. I've been able to casually put it aside and do other things, and pick it up only haphazardly from time to time.A lot of what I'm reading right now feels like "housekeeping," necessary information to get us moved toward the final climax in the third volume, but not really of that much interest of itself. So I'm impatient to get through it and to some more real action, or even just some interesting hints of fascinating secrets of the past -- but not so impatient to keep me reading obsessively.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Sequel to Crown of Slaves
Amazon.com has just posted the pre-order link for Torch of Freedom
, the sequel to David Weber and Eric Flint's Crown of Slaves
.
Of course Mesa wasn't going to take such a blow lying down. Particularly not when it was a publicity embarrassment as well as a major economic loss.
Still, I'm wondering if this is going to go a lot deeper than just Mesa's attitude that it's above the law, and draw in some politicians at very high levels in several other star nations. Especially if it were to expose some hypocrites in the process.
, the sequel to David Weber and Eric Flint's Crown of Slaves.Of course Mesa wasn't going to take such a blow lying down. Particularly not when it was a publicity embarrassment as well as a major economic loss.
Still, I'm wondering if this is going to go a lot deeper than just Mesa's attitude that it's above the law, and draw in some politicians at very high levels in several other star nations. Especially if it were to expose some hypocrites in the process.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
New Directions for the Legacy of the Aldenata?
The e-ARC of Eye of the Storm
, John Ringo's latest addition to his Legacy of the Aldenata series. From some of the things the Barflies have been saying on Baen's Bar, it looks like he's taking the series in a completely unexpected direction.
The original books all focused on the war against the Posleen, a race of ravenous centaroids who stripped whole planets the way locusts do a field. The side trilogy he wrote with Julie Cochrane dealt with the covert war against the sinister manipulations of the Darhel, a race of thwarted warriors who instead focused their aggression into legal shenanigans, with the intent of enslaving every other race in the galaxy. The novel The Hero
, which he wrote with Michael Z. Williamson and was set about a thousand years after the Posleen attack on Earth, implied that the intervening years were filled with battles against old-style Posleen, along with a new race known as the Tselk who might or might not be allies of the Posleen.
But from what I'm hearing on Baen's Bar, it looks like Ringo's tossed out the continuity he's created in The Hero and gone in a completely unexpected direction to introduce a completely new enemy from another dimension. We'd gotten one surprise at the end of Honor of the Clan
when the Himmit rescuers of the O'Neal Bane Sidhe referred to their rescue craft as being a battleship of the Himmit Empire. Of course the Himmit were always mysterious, right from the very first book when we were told that they were not among the original races of the Galactic Federation, but had come later, after the Aldenata had vanished. There had been some speculation when Honor of the Clan came out about the nature of the Himmit Empire -- whether it was hidden beyond the boundaries of the Galactic Federation, or somehow within it. But now I'm wondering if the Himmit are from this other universe from which the new, bigger, badder, Bad Guys are coming from.
I'm going to be very interested in seeing exactly how Ringo's handling this. I've seen far too many authors of long-running series getting into the trap of feeling they have to top themselves with bigger new ideas in every successive novel, until it feels like they're just dialing the volume up louder and louder. Other times an author's efforts to add new things into an established series instead end up losing track of the elements that brought readers to it in the first place.
, John Ringo's latest addition to his Legacy of the Aldenata series. From some of the things the Barflies have been saying on Baen's Bar, it looks like he's taking the series in a completely unexpected direction.The original books all focused on the war against the Posleen, a race of ravenous centaroids who stripped whole planets the way locusts do a field. The side trilogy he wrote with Julie Cochrane dealt with the covert war against the sinister manipulations of the Darhel, a race of thwarted warriors who instead focused their aggression into legal shenanigans, with the intent of enslaving every other race in the galaxy. The novel The Hero
, which he wrote with Michael Z. Williamson and was set about a thousand years after the Posleen attack on Earth, implied that the intervening years were filled with battles against old-style Posleen, along with a new race known as the Tselk who might or might not be allies of the Posleen.But from what I'm hearing on Baen's Bar, it looks like Ringo's tossed out the continuity he's created in The Hero and gone in a completely unexpected direction to introduce a completely new enemy from another dimension. We'd gotten one surprise at the end of Honor of the Clan
when the Himmit rescuers of the O'Neal Bane Sidhe referred to their rescue craft as being a battleship of the Himmit Empire. Of course the Himmit were always mysterious, right from the very first book when we were told that they were not among the original races of the Galactic Federation, but had come later, after the Aldenata had vanished. There had been some speculation when Honor of the Clan came out about the nature of the Himmit Empire -- whether it was hidden beyond the boundaries of the Galactic Federation, or somehow within it. But now I'm wondering if the Himmit are from this other universe from which the new, bigger, badder, Bad Guys are coming from.
I'm going to be very interested in seeing exactly how Ringo's handling this. I've seen far too many authors of long-running series getting into the trap of feeling they have to top themselves with bigger new ideas in every successive novel, until it feels like they're just dialing the volume up louder and louder. Other times an author's efforts to add new things into an established series instead end up losing track of the elements that brought readers to it in the first place.
Friday, January 30, 2009
The Very Image of the Modern Vampire Protagonist
In my reading I've noticed how different authors handle the vampire in a present-day or near-modern setting, and in particular what portions of vampire lore they choose to keep as accurate and what they decide to reject as mere superstitious fancy or ignore altogether. Furthermore, it is interesting to note what rationales they use for those choices, and for the operation of the vampire powers and weaknesses that they are accepting in their version of the vampire.
For instance, Anne Rice's vampires are turned to dust by the touch of sunlight, while Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's can endure sunlight but are strongest at night, and Stephanie Meyer's are undisturbed by sunlight but prefer to avoid direct sun because their more dense body tissue reflects light differently than human flesh, making them sparkle.
And speaking of reflections, there's the old vampire tradition that a vampire shows no reflection in a mirror. This is based on the pre-scientific notion that a mirror contained some kind of spirit or essence that formed an image, and refused to respond to a vampire's undead nature. But for a modern reader who has become acquainted with the actual physics of reflectivity, the notion of a corporeal being who is visible but creates no reflection in a mirror may strain the ability to maintain suspension of disbelief.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg explained it away as an aspect of the Influence, the telepathic power her vampires, the luren, possessed to better enable them to hunt. A luren who was stalking intelligent prey could simply tell their victim's subconscious to edit their image out of what was being seen in the mirror -- and could just as easily send a similar telepathic command to edit their image out of what they were seeing directly, rendering the luren effectively invisible at will (rather like Douglas Adams' "somebody else's business field).
As I'm reading Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's A Dangerous Climate
in which she sends her vampire Count Saint-Germain to St. Petersburg at its beginnings, I hit upon that brief mention of the difficulty of casting no reflection while his manservant is shaving him, and it caused me just such a momentary bobble. This is not a fantasy world in which I can allow that light might work utterly differently, but rather a part of the past that I've studied relatively intensely, having a bachelor's degree in Russian language and literature. It wasn't quite enough for me to drop the book like a stone, but now I'm going to be watching to see how she reconciles it with the facts of physics, and hopefully relates it to the fact that her vampires are able to go out in daylight.
For instance, Anne Rice's vampires are turned to dust by the touch of sunlight, while Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's can endure sunlight but are strongest at night, and Stephanie Meyer's are undisturbed by sunlight but prefer to avoid direct sun because their more dense body tissue reflects light differently than human flesh, making them sparkle.
And speaking of reflections, there's the old vampire tradition that a vampire shows no reflection in a mirror. This is based on the pre-scientific notion that a mirror contained some kind of spirit or essence that formed an image, and refused to respond to a vampire's undead nature. But for a modern reader who has become acquainted with the actual physics of reflectivity, the notion of a corporeal being who is visible but creates no reflection in a mirror may strain the ability to maintain suspension of disbelief.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg explained it away as an aspect of the Influence, the telepathic power her vampires, the luren, possessed to better enable them to hunt. A luren who was stalking intelligent prey could simply tell their victim's subconscious to edit their image out of what was being seen in the mirror -- and could just as easily send a similar telepathic command to edit their image out of what they were seeing directly, rendering the luren effectively invisible at will (rather like Douglas Adams' "somebody else's business field).
As I'm reading Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's A Dangerous Climate
in which she sends her vampire Count Saint-Germain to St. Petersburg at its beginnings, I hit upon that brief mention of the difficulty of casting no reflection while his manservant is shaving him, and it caused me just such a momentary bobble. This is not a fantasy world in which I can allow that light might work utterly differently, but rather a part of the past that I've studied relatively intensely, having a bachelor's degree in Russian language and literature. It wasn't quite enough for me to drop the book like a stone, but now I'm going to be watching to see how she reconciles it with the facts of physics, and hopefully relates it to the fact that her vampires are able to go out in daylight.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Honorverse News
It looks like it shouldn't be too long before the newest Honor Harrington novel will be coming out. The title is Mission of Honor, and apparently some hardcopy ARCs were auctioned for charity at Chattacon this past weekend.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
