June 15, 2010
June 9, 2010
Book written in 1944 tops Amazon bestseller list
Admittedly, this is an updated and supplemented version of the original text, but it’s still impressive to see it selling so well.
Update: American Digest has pages from the picture book version:
May 25, 2010
The dangers of writing near-future SF
Charles Stross gets sandbagged by the unforeseen:
Back in mid-2008 I mentioned that what I thought was a futuristic-circa-2023 technology for the next novel was too damn close. Slightly more recently, in Living through interesting times, I mentioned that it was becoming near-as-dammit impossible to write near-future SF; I was sore because Bernie Madoff had stolen the plot of my next novel.
Well, I picked myself up, dusted myself down, re-framed the novel in question, and I’m currently about 80% of the way through writing it when it all happened again. First of all, Lothian and Borders Police actually established a recognizable-as-the-embryonic-form version of the unit that one of my protagonists, circa 2023, manages. (Only I got the staffing level and departmental mission statement slightly off-whack …) Next, there’s just been another revolution in Kyrgyzstan (a country which, for reasons I’m not going to discuss here, plays a significant role in “Rule 34”).
But the worst thing? I’ve been sandbagged by an unanticipated event.
Of course, it’s quite understandable — after all these years, who knew there even was a “libertarian arm of the Conservative party” to mess up Charlie’s plot of the near-future?
May 23, 2010
It’s been 100 years . . . time to publish
According to The Independent, Mark Twain didn’t want his memoirs published until at least 100 years after his death:
Scholars are divided as to why Twain wanted the first-hand account of his life kept under wraps for so long. Some believe it was because he wanted to talk freely about issues such as religion and politics. Others argue that the time lag prevented him from having to worry about offending friends.
One thing’s for sure: by delaying publication, the author, who was fond of his celebrity status, has ensured that he’ll be gossiped about during the 21st century. A section of the memoir will detail his little-known but scandalous relationship with Isabel Van Kleek Lyon, who became his secretary after the death of his wife Olivia in 1904. Twain was so close to Lyon that she once bought him an electric vibrating sex toy. But she was abruptly sacked in 1909, after the author claimed she had “hypnotised” him into giving her power of attorney over his estate.
Their ill-fated relationship will be recounted in full in a 400-page addendum, which Twain wrote during the last year of his life. It provides a remarkable account of how the dying novelist’s final months were overshadowed by personal upheavals.
“Most people think Mark Twain was a sort of genteel Victorian. Well, in this document he calls her a slut and says she tried to seduce him. It’s completely at odds with the impression most people have of him,” says the historian Laura Trombley, who this year published a book about Lyon called Mark Twain’s Other Woman.
May 18, 2010
Brontë Sisters Power Dolls
H/T to Lois McMaster Bujold, who “especially liked the fire extinguisher among the accessories included.”
April 1, 2010
Charles Stross announces new book series
It’s a busy day for Mr. Stross. In addition to his work with Cory Doctorow in the Atlas Shrugged sequel, he’s announced a new book series:
My agent issued a proposal package and deadline for auction among the most likely-to-be-interested New York publishing houses. One thing led to another, by way of one of those whirlwind romances for which the publishing industry is famous, and we’re now engaged: I’m pleased to announce my new five book deal, for a very strong six-digit sum, with one of the largest publishers in the United States!
Harlequin Romance will publish my first paranormal romance, “Unicorn School™: The Sparkling”, in Q1/2012. US:TS is the first book of the projected series, and introduces Avril Poisson, who moves with her family from Phoenix, Arizona, to Forks, Washington with her divorced father, and finds her life in danger when she falls in love with a Sparkly Unicorn™ called Bob. Stalked by and in fear of a mysterious horse-mutilator, Avril must practice her dressage skills with Bob and qualify her steed for a scholarship to the elite Unicorn School™, where he will be safe to grow (and sparkle) without fear of the vampires who infest the senior’s common room. In the second book, “Unicorn School™: The Exsanguination” Bob and Avril must stalk a Vampire Unicorn™ who is draining her fellow pupils of the will to live back to the rocky outcrop where he lives. In book three, “Unicorn School™: The Deflowering”, Bob and Avril confront their most ghastly foe yet, a moustache-twirling villain who is intent on seducing all the pupils (as we all know, unicorn/human relationships are only possible if the human party is a virgin) in order to sell their heart-broken steeds to evil French multinational meat conglomerate Hachette. In book four, “Unicorn School™: The Big Chill” the swindle that is global warming is exposed and, as glaciers pounce on the Louisiana Bayou, Avril and Bob are hunted by monstrous black-and-white swimming birds. And in book five, “Unicorn School™ Forever”, our young lovers are going to get married — but not if the evil, bigoted anti-unicorn Sheriff Osama gets his anti-unicorn-marriage by-law passed first!
March 17, 2010
His agent shot it down as being “too weird”
Charles Stross is celebrating the release of the final novel in the “Family Trade” series of fantasy novels by going over the genesis of the series. Before he hit on the concept that eventually became six novels, he worked through a few alternatives with his agent. I dunno about you, but I think I’d buy this one:
Idea number two: I’ve been interested in alternate history as a sub-field of SF for a while. There are a couple of ways of writing alternate history; you can do it straight (as an historical novel set in a history that never happened) or if you bend the rules enough to allow for a visitor from our own world to get a tourist visa to the universe next door, you can use it as a tool to poke at our conceptions of how our own world operates.
First I took a stab at designing a straight alt-hist novel. (Elevator pitch: “I’m going to cross the streams of The IPCRESS File and Heart of Darkness in a universe where the first world war ended in 1919 with allied tanks sitting in the wreckage of Berlin, and the decaying British empire went on to invent fascism in the 1940s. It’s 1962, and two OSS agents are injected into British-dominated Europe to trace the underground railroad that is funneling abducted/brainwashed American scientists east. Our two spooks, “Wild” Bill Burroughs and his swivel-eyed Californian sidekick Philip K., follow the trail — by way of a sleazy S&M nightclub in Hamburg presided over by ageing queen Adolf and his boyfriend Rudi Hess — to Ceylon, where in the guts of a hollowed-out mountain they confront the jackbooted, monocle-wearing Air Commodore Arthur Clarke and his program to build an atom-bomb powered space dreadnought.) My agent shot it down as “too weird”. With 20/20 hindsight, I think she may have had a point.
Actually, the fact that I think it’d be a fascinating read probably proves that his agent was quite correct.
Update: Well, to be pedantic, the latest book isn’t the final book, although it concludes the second (of four) story arc. Charles doesn’t intend to write the other two arcs for a few years yet.
March 16, 2010
Prepare for fireworks
. . . or actual fire, as Qur’an researchers prepare what is carefully referred to as a “critical edition”:
A team of researchers at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences is preparing to bring out the first installment of Corpus Coranicum — which purports to be nothing less than the first critically evaluated text of the Qur’an ever to be produced.
What this means is that the research team is in the process of analysing and transcribing some 12,000 slides of Qur’an mansucripts from the first six centuries of the text’s existence. Once that is complete, the way is open to producing a text that annotates and, presumably, provides some sort of exegesis on the differences found in the early manuscripts.
The impact of such a project can hardly be underestimated.
Delicately put.
Update: It is an inherently dangerous act to discuss certain works, never mind to apply academic analysis tools and provide readers with context and interpretation. This project is intended to be complete by 2025 (they’re concentrating on small sections to start with). The debate — of which I suspect I really should say the uproar — will likely consume a lot of bandwidth. If the Berlin scholars are unlucky, it may consume significant chunks of their city.
On this news, Ghost of a Flea finds an interesting parallel.
March 10, 2010
California launches yet another attempt to tax out-of-state corporations
California is getting desperate to scrape up every penny it can, so a renewed proposal for a tax grab vetoed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger last year is back in play:
The online retail giant [Amazon.com] has enjoyed an edge over many competitors in the state because it is not required to collect sales tax from residents who buy books, top-of-the-line plasma televisions, cases of diapers and thousands of other products from its website. The Seattle corporation has no store, warehouse, office building or other physical presence in California, and the state cannot tax such businesses under a 1992 Supreme Court decision.
Consumers here are required to pay sales tax on the goods they purchase at Amazon but almost never do, because the state has no mechanism for tracking Amazon purchases and collecting the money.
No story is complete without a nasty accusation:
The Democrats who control California’s Legislature plan to put their own bid on the governor’s desk this month in hopes of reaping up to $150 million annually for state and local coffers. The revenue would make only a tiny dent in the state’s $20-billion deficit, but supporters say every dollar counts in tight times, and there’s a principle at stake.
Amazon has “built an entire business model based on tax avoidance,” said Assembly tax committee Chairman Charles Calderon (D-Montebello).
Of course, tax avoidance is perfectly legal . . . he’s trying to smear Amazon (and every other business selling to customers in California) as being tax evaders. Avoidance is not only legal, it’s a sensible strategy to minimize costs and gain a competitive advantage. Tax evasion, on the other hand, is illegal.
So who is going to get hurt if the measure passes — other than Californians who have been remiss in declaring and remitting their sales taxes?
The California proposal seizes on the thousands of online sales affiliates that Amazon contracts with to get customers to its site. Those companies advertise Amazon products, provide links to the company’s website and get a percentage of the resulting sales.
Many of the affiliates are in California. Supporters of the Democrats’ bill, ABX8 8, say that the connections amount to a presence for Amazon as well and that California should be able to force the firm to collect sales tax.
H/T to Clive, who became aware of this through a website he visits regularly which may have to close down due to the proposed law.
February 5, 2010
Objectivists should not read this
Theodore Dalrymple, in his mundane disguise, looks at the founding deity of Objectivism:
Rand’s virtues were as follows: she was highly intelligent; she was brave and uncompromising in defense of her ideas; she had a kind of iron integrity; and, though a fierce defender of capitalism, she was by no means avid for money herself. The propagation of truth as she saw it was far more important to her than her own material ease. Her vices, of course, were the mirror-image of her virtues, but, in my opinion, the mirror was a magnifying one. Her intelligence was narrow rather than broad. Though in theory a defender of freedom of thought and action, she was dogmatic, inflexible, and intolerant, not only in opinion but in behavior, and it led her to personal cruelty. In the name of her ideas, she was prepared to be deeply unpleasant. She hardened her ideas into ideology. Her integrity led to a lack of self-criticism; she frequently wrote twenty thousand words where one would do.
Rand believed all people to be possessed of equal rights, but she found relations of equality with others insupportable. Though she could be charming, it was not something she could keep up for long. She was deeply ungrateful to those who had helped her and many of her friendships ended in acrimony. Her biographer tells us that she sometimes told jokes, but, in the absence of any supportive evidence, I treat reports of her sense of humor much as I treat reports of sightings of the Loch Ness monster: apocryphal at best.
A passionate hater of religion, Rand founded a cult around her own person, complete with rituals of excommunication; a passionate believer in rationality and logic, she was incapable of seeing the contradictions in her own work. She was a rationalist who was not entirely rational; she could not distinguish between rationalism and rationality. Of narrow aesthetic sympathies, she laid down the law in matters of artistic judgment like a panjandrum; a believer in honesty, she was adept at self-deception and special pleading. I have rarely read a biography of a writer I should have cared so little to meet.
I’ve read a fair bit of Ayn Rand’s non-fiction, but I’ve always found her fiction to be a tough slog: as Daniels says, “[h]er work properly belongs to the history of Russian, not American, literature — and nineteenth-century Russian literature at that.”
Update, 8 February: Publius always found that Frédéric Bastiat’s dictum “The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended” really was correct for Objectivism:
Having met a very large number [of Objectivists], my own anecdotal assessment is that about three-quarters are high-functioning neurotics. Highly intelligent, quite disciplined, but utter social misfits with low self-confidence. They are walking, and sadly talking, liabilities to the philosophy. Now this will seem like an admission of guilt. Wacky people adhere to wacky ideas. Hardly. Some of the most wacky ideas in history were adhered to by perfectly ordinary and decent people. Take socialism as a modern example. Some very important ideas, like representative government, were early on advocated by people who were certifiable flakes. I don’t think the wall between personal philosophy and personal psychology is an iron one. There is some overlap. Jean Jacques Rousseau, for example, was the embodiment of his beliefs. An emotional mess of a man advocating an emotional mess of a philosophy.
But new and radical philosophies tend to attract marginal people, those somehow discontented with life as it is.
January 25, 2010
Top SF/Fantasy works
Tyler Cowen linked to Alex Carnevale’s top 100 SF&F works, which has some odd choices (Jack Vance and Ursula K. LeGuin appear to have been the compiler’s favourite authors). In the comments to Tyler’s post, an alternate (unannotated) list by David Pringle was recommended. Pringle’s list doesn’t include Fantasy books, so there’s less overlap between the two than you might expect.
No list of this kind is, or can be, truly authoritative, but there are some common items on each list I can’t criticize as being in the top of the field:
- The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert Heinlein. Carnevale has this at #2. Pringle doesn’t list it, but has several other (in my opinion, lesser) Heinlein works on his list. This is one of the best libertarian SF novels ever. Even if you’re not over-fond of his work, this short novel is well worth reading.
- Frankenstein Mary Shelley. This book made #6 for Carnevale, but didn’t make Pringle’s list. I read this when I was 12, and it made quite an impression on me, although I have to admit I like it much more now than I did on first reading it.
- Dune, Frank Herbert. Carnevale likes it much more than Pringle (#11 versus #48). I liked the original book, but lost interest sometime later in the series.
- The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien. Not the original fantasy work, but probably the most common source for inspiration (and verging-on-outright-plagiarism) for an entire sub-field of Fantasy.
- Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein. One of the most subversive books ever published, at least as far as the middle class of the 1960’s was concerned. On the surface, it’s the story of a Martian named Smith. It seems to be one of those books you either love or hate — not much middle ground here.
- Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll. Pair this with Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass for the full effect. Another author whose work has been strip-mined for ideas by later writers.
- 1984 by George Orwell. Pringle’s #1 pick and Carnevale’s #26. I’d certainly put it in my top ten.
- Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury. This book made both lists (#8 for Pringle,#27 for Carnevale), but I’m afraid I’ve never read it (I tried a couple of Bradbury books when I was in my early teens, but never warmed to him as an author).
- The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick. Another book that made both lists, but which I haven’t read, and for similar reasons. Early experiences with an author’s work can have long-lasting effects.
- A Fire upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge. A book that appeals to both fans of the huge stage of deep space and aficionados of the early Internet.
- Citizen of the Galaxy, Robert Heinlein. One of the very best “young adult” SF novels from before they called them that. Both a coming of age novel and a condemnation of slavery and hypocrisy. Powerful stuff for young minds.
- Starship Troopers, Robert Heinlein. Another great polarizer: it’s either the best military SF novel ever written or the worst piece of hyper-Fascist propaganda ever written. It’s interesting that Heinlein wrote this book at about the same time as he was working on Stranger. Readers who only knew about the one work might have suffered severe mental whiplash to find he’d written the other one, too. Either way, pretend that the film never happened (aside from the names, it doesn’t have much to do with the novel).
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams. You want whimsical? HHG took whimsy to a whole different level. What Terry Pratchett did with Fantasy, Adams did with SF.
- Animal Farm, George Orwell. A book that suffers from being pushed on high school students as mandatory reading. The revolution on the farm, and the aftermath.
- The Baroque Cycle, Neal Stephenson. A huge four-volume work that repays the effort to work through. Some authors work best at a certain length (short story, novella, novel, etc.). Stephenson seems to work best at the library-shelf level.
- Ringworld, Larry Niven. I wouldn’t call this a top-ten, but the series of books in this series certainly belong in the top 100.
- A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller. Post-apocalyptic done well.
- Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson. Certainly one of the most entertaining books I’ve ever read (it helped that I was working in the computer industry at the time). From Stephenson’s earlier less-than-library-shelf-length period.
- The Day of the Triffids, John Wyndham. A book I had to read in middle school, yet one I still recall with great affection. Few books can survive being forced down kids’ throats. This one can.
- Memory, Mirror Dance, and A Civil Campaign, Lois McMaster Bujold. I had trouble stopping at just three of Bujold’s “Vorkosigan” series, as they’re all highly entertaining and deeply engaging. Some call it space opera, but it’s far more involved and well-executed than that easy label would indicate. One of the very best SF authors ever. Her more recent work is predominantly Fantasy, and while they’re very good, I’m more interested in her SF writing.
- The Atrocity Archive and The Jennifer Morgue, Charles Stross. Imagine if the British secret service had an even more eldritch secret service component. But run strictly according to civil service rules.
- Pyramids, Men at Arms, Interesting Times, and The Wee Free Men, Terry Pratchett. Another author for whom it is difficult to select even a few examples (they’re all so good). His Discworld series started as a simple pastiche of typical swords-and-sorcery novels, but which quickly outgrew the confines of the first few books. The Wee Free Men is the first of a series of Young Adult novels for the Discworld (including A Hat Full of Sky, Wintersmith and the forthcoming I Shall Wear Midnight).
- Old Man’s War, John Scalzi. Another military SF story, but so well thought-out and executed as to transcend the ordinary levels of the sub-genre. Follow-on works are equally good (The Ghost Brigades, The Last Colony, and Zoe’s Tale).
- Island in the Sea of Time, S.M. Stirling. Another time-travel story, but avoiding the usual pitfalls of time travel story lines (the secret was to go back before written history…). This was the first book of a trilogy. Stirling is currently completing a related series of stories hinging on what happened to the world left behind in the original trilogy (starting with Dies the Fire).
- The Probability Broach, L. Neil Smith. More interesting (and amusing) ideas per page than any other novel of its era. Another libertarian book, but don’t let the label scare you off: great reading.
What’s that? No Clarke? No Asimov? No Sturgeon? No Card? No Zelazny? No Brunner? Not in the top whatever-number-I-stopped-at. Each has strong fans, and some good work, but not top-rank in my view.
December 14, 2009
Shock! Horror! Children’s book series from 1940’s has “conservative values”!
I guess it must have been a slow news week, if this makes the news:
Thomas the Tank Engine attacked for ‘conservative political ideology’
Children’s favourite Thomas the Tank Engine has been attacked by a Canadian academic for its “conservative political ideology” and failure to adequately represent women.The show’s right-wing politics shows the colourful steam engines punished if they show initiative or oppose change, the researcher found.
She also highlighted the class divide which sees the downtrodden workers in the form of Thomas and his friends at the bottom of the social ladder and the wealthy Fat Controller, Sir Topham Hatt, at the top.
[. . .]
She was critical of the fact the show only has eight female characters out of the 49 who feature.
“The female characters weren’t necessarily portrayed any more negatively than the male characters or the male trains, but they did tend to play more secondary roles and they’re often portrayed as being bossy or know-it-alls,” she said.
Let’s see, a series of stories, written for children starting in the 1940’s. Conformist? Check. Sexist? Check. Reinforces class-based stereotypes? Check. By God, she’s right! Call out the Human Rights pitbulls!
File this one under “Obvious”.
December 9, 2009
Tim Cavanaugh: would-be terrorist
Tim Cavanaugh recently had to travel within listening range of some conversationalists:
Readers will say I’m making the following story up to further Reason‘s anti-Palin agenda, but it’s true: On a recent airplane flight, I sat behind two women who were not traveling together but broke the ice by discussing the late Ted Kennedy’s memoir, which one was reading. The other lady had never heard of Ted Kennedy, and needed the first to describe who he was. From the exchange it seemed to me that the second woman didn’t even know that there had ever been a president named John Kennedy, though I’m hoping I just misheard. The first woman patiently went through the storied careers of the Kennedys, and when she’d finished the other one said, “Well I want to get that Sarah Palin’s book. I’m a big fan of hers.”
Yet the two of them — separated by about 100 years in age, an apparently great distance in awareness of political matters, and sharply distinct attitudes toward politicians who are said to be among the most polarizing in recent history — got along famously, gabbing amiably through a four-hour journey. It was an encouraging show of our open and gregarious national character — unless you had to listen to it, in which case you were wishing you could crash the plane into a tall building.
I have to admit it’s hard to believe that any American adult hadn’t heard of the Kennedy clan . . .
December 8, 2009
Casting The Hobbit
In what I’m sure was meant to stir the fans, The Guardian headlines this story with “Tom Waits to star in The Hobbit?”:
Will Tom Waits battle Bilbo Baggins? A “trusted” source working on Guillermo del Toro’s production of The Hobbit claims that the singer-songwriter is up for a part.
Waits has acted before, in films such as Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Robert Altman’s Short Cuts and Jim Jarmusch’s Down By Law. But he has never played the kind of character you would expect to find in a JRR Tolkien’s novel. Though the role under consideration isn’t clear, an anonymous source told Ain’t It Cool News that Waits is near the top of del Toro’s list. “As much as I’d like to say he’s a lock, I’m told he’s simply someone the production is talking about,” claims the source, “but they seem to be talking about him pretty seriously.”
For all his charms, Waits seems an unlikely pick for Bilbo, the titular hobbit played by Ian Holm in The Lord of the Rings films. He is, above all, too grumpy. Besides, a cornucopia of much more avuncular, nerdy actors, including The Office‘s Martin Freeman, Harry Potter’s Daniel Radcliffe and Doctor Who‘s David Tennant are reportedly under consideration for the part. The film-makers are reportedly auditioning unknown actors too.
