The Secret Lair

I did not attend Renovation (Worldcon) this year. In fact, I’ve never been to a Worldcon, despite Dr. Cmar telling me what a wonderful event it is. Money, blah, family commitments, blah, work, blah blah blah; all the usual excuses surface and I sit watching the tweetstream with all the other folks who wished they’d gone.

(Does anyone else think that nothing fosters deep-seated envy like watching your friends Tweet their delight while you sit in your home, nursing a Jameson’s and folding laundry? Not that I’d know, of course. Nope. Nuh-uh.)

One of the things I have always wanted to see is the presentation of the Hugo Awards. For years, the Hugos have informed the to-be-read pile of books on my nightstand. Even as I have become bitter and jaded, utterly disappointed in the vast majority of what publishers are churning out of their sausage factories, the Hugos have been a beacon of quality. For that, I am eternally grateful.

This year, the Hugos were streamed live on UStream and I finally had the chance to watch as the awards were presented. I was excited, tuning in on my laptop, watching the geek and adorably lame banter between the hosts, sharing in the delight of the award winners. Watching Chris Garcia cry with joy as he received the Hugo for Best Fanzine alone was worth it. To a person, you could see the love all of the award winners have for this community, the tight-knit bonds of friendship between authors and artists. 

Delight. Wonder. Joy. Love. It was amazing to see. 

As I watched…I had one unsettling realization, one that is not uncommon when a person hits their fortieth birthday, as I had this past year. In my mind, the winners of Hugos were always substantially older than I was. When I see “Hugo,” I am instantly transported back to when I was twelve years old, when the winners were all masters, far outpacing me in age, wisdom, and skill. This year, watching, I realized that some of these folks were my age or younger. Seeing them, my blood ran a bit cold. 

There is an old joke/maxim that says that one of the major turning points in a man’s life is when he realizes that he is older than the current  Playboy centerfold. I felt shades of that watching these folks who had, somehow, amdist having real lives and careers somehow managed to string words together in ways that other people appreciated enough to givie them an award for it. Two thoughts occurred to me; 1) When did that star-struck twelve year old wannabe writer become a forty-year-old stick in the mud? and 2) What am I waiting for?

Those thoughts made me realize my problem; the fear of starting. The fear of being crap, the fear of not knowing how to begin, how to persevere, how to finish, how to market the finished work. To invoke a bit of Joseph Campbell, I fear setting off the well-worn road of suburban life and career ennui to forge my own path that would be more fulfilling but economically less stable. How stupid. How cowardly. How utterly practical, and how utterly disappointing.

All too often, I believe we fail to achieve goals because of “Real Life.” We “grow up” and put our dreams on a shelf, and it takes a shock to remind us  of that wonder we felt, that delight a well-formed story can give us, the joy of sharing that wonder and delight others, and the love we have for big ideas that transport us elsewhere. The realization that “Real Life” is what we make of it is one that opens doors, not one that places your livelihood or your family in jeaopardy. 

I’m grateful for the wake up call. I can feel that twelve-year-old’s wonder and delight starting to stir in my chest. I can set the “mature” jaded thoughts aside and embrace the joy and love of the genre, the people, the ideas, the words.

I have work to do. How about you?

Image by henry… via Flickr

NPR published their results of their Top 100 SF/F Books poll today. The list is below. We would like to know what you think of the rankings. What would you add to the list?  What would you remove?  What should be moved up or down the rankings?  How many of them have you read?

NPR’s Top 100 SF/F Books

1. The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy, by J.R.R. Tolkien

2. The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, by Douglas Adams

3. Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card

4. The Dune Chronicles, by Frank Herbert

5. A Song Of Ice And Fire Series, by George R. R. Martin

6. 1984, by George Orwell

7. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury

8. The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov

9. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley

10. American Gods, by Neil Gaiman

11. The Princess Bride, by William Goldman

12. The Wheel Of Time Series, by Robert Jordan

13. Animal Farm, by George Orwell

14. Neuromancer, by William Gibson

15. Watchmen, by Alan Moore

16. I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov

17. Stranger In A Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein

18. The Kingkiller Chronicles, by Patrick Rothfuss

19. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut

20. Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley

22. Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick

23. The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood

24. The Dark Tower Series, by Stephen King

25. 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke

26. The Stand, by Stephen King

27. Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson

28. The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury

29. Cat’s Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut

30. The Sandman Series, by Neil Gaiman

31. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess

32. Starship Troopers, by Robert Heinlein

32. Watership Down, by Richard Adams

33. Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey

34. The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein

35. A Canticle For Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller

36. The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells

37. 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, by Jules Verne

38. Flowers For Algernon, by Daniel Keys

39. The War Of The Worlds, by H.G. Wells

40. The Chronicles Of Amber, by Roger Zelazny

41. The Belgariad, by David Eddings

42. The Mists Of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley

43. The Mistborn Series, by Brandon Sanderson

44. Ringworld, by Larry Niven

45. The Left Hand Of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuin

46. The Silmarillion, by J.R.R. Tolkien

47. The Once And Future King, by T.H. White

48. Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman

49. Childhood’s End, by Arthur C. Clarke

50. Contact, by Carl Sagan

51. The Hyperion Cantos, by Dan Simmons

52. Stardust, by Neil Gaiman

53. Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson

54. World War Z, by Max Brooks

55. The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle

56. The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman

57. Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett

58. The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever, by Stephen R. Donaldson

59. The Vorkosigan Saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold

60. Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett

61. The Mote In God’s Eye, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle

62. The Sword Of Truth, by Terry Goodkind

63. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy

64. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke

65. I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson

66. The Riftwar Saga, by Raymond E. Feist

67. The Shannara Trilogy, by Terry Brooks

68. The Conan The Barbarian Series, by R.E. Howard

69. The Farseer Trilogy, by Robin Hobb

70. The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger

71. The Way Of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson

72. A Journey To The Center Of The Earth, by Jules Verne

73. The Legend Of Drizzt Series, by R.A. Salvatore

74. Old Man’s War, by John Scalzi

75. The Diamond Age, by Neil Stephenson

76. Rendezvous With Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke

77. The Kushiel’s Legacy Series, by Jacqueline Carey

78. The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. LeGuin

79. Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury

80. Wicked, by Gregory Maguire

81. The Malazan Book Of The Fallen Series, by Steven Erikson

82. The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde

83. The Culture Series, by Iain M. Banks

84. The Crystal Cave, by Mary Stewart

85. Anathem, by Neal Stephenson

86. The Codex Alera Series, by Jim Butcher

87. The Book Of The New Sun, by Gene Wolfe

88. The Thrawn Trilogy, by Timothy Zahn

89. The Outlander Series, by Diana Gabaldan

90. The Elric Saga, by Michael Moorcock

91. The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury

92. Sunshine, by Robin McKinley

93. A Fire Upon The Deep, by Vernor Vinge

94. The Caves Of Steel, by Isaac Asimov

95. The Mars Trilogy, by Kim Stanley Robinson

96. Lucifer’s Hammer, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle

97. Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis

98. Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville

99. The Xanth Series, by Piers Anthony

100. The Space Trilogy, by C.S. Lewis

For an interesting look at how they parsed the results, be sure to read Glen Weldon’s article.

I’ve found that, while trying to write this review, that keeping things spoiler-free when you’re covering a series well into its lifespan is not so much easy. Nonetheless, I want to share my thoughts of A Dance With Dragons, which I managed to finish last Wednesday. I think I can sum up the experience of reading this book in a word representing the one thing of which this tome seemed to have a decided lack:

Editing.

I don’t mean typos, or bad grammar. There may have been some scant amount of either or both of those, but my shaky brain tends to translate past them, unless they’re glaring and/or idiotic. What I do mean is structure; cohesiveness; succinctness. Those, and the inability to hide the fact that the author seems to be chewing on a rich morsel that’s much, much too large for him.¹

Lemme ‘splain. As you may or may not know at this point, Dragons and A Feast for Crows were supposed to be all one book, but the story got so big that he needed to cleave it in twain. So he did, and he clove it so well that he put six years in between them.² But so be it: I’d rather wait for a great book than have a hurried so-so book. And since, though it certainly wasn’t the best of the series so far, Crows still had a lot going for it, surely a six-year wait would bring us a tremendous parallel to consume with relish.³

Too bad that didn’t happen.

What we got instead was a book that felt as though it were being held together by literary duct tape and prayer. The first half of the book seemed to catch us up with the characters that went untouched in Crows, so as to get them back in sync with the time line – which was fine, as that was pretty much what Martin said the book would be. But as I got to the halfway point, the realignment concluded, and then the book began to… sort of… wander… somewhere. We were thrust back and forth across the face of the globe, from continent to continent, with no cohesive rhyme or reason. Gone was the interlacing of story that we’d known so well in the first four tomes, where characters nearly – and sometimes did – cross paths, and actions in one place had ramifications in another.

Dragons was merely a set of vignettes – novellas, if you will – that were chopped indiscriminately into chunks and shuffled together like a deck of cards. I think the book may have actually been more enjoyable if the main character’s stories were left whole and read all at once. Martin seemed to make an attempt to thread a couple of the stories together, in the form of a faux Northern princess and a wimpy Dornish prince, but they were both forgetful and trivial, and could have easily been left out altogether.

As well, large chunks of storyline proved to be useless, in the form of characters regurgitating plot with infuriating redundancy. “Words are wind.” YES, WE KNOW ALREADY BECAUSE YOU HAVE BEEN MAKING LOTS OF WIND. And don’t get me started on Martin’s growing tendency to get Jordan-like in his descriptions of environment, especially his castles and manses. I feel like I’ve been to Lord Manderly’s receiving room myself.

All this is a shame, too, because his characters are still so compelling. Jon hones his leadership skills on the wall; Tyrion flees his troubles in King’s Landing; Daenerys deals with her dragons and a cesspool of slave culture. And some important characters only pop up for a chapter, or even merely a page or two. I sometimes felt like I was looking at a grand tapestry, but through one of those faceted insect-eye lenses you see on the $1 shelf at the toy store.

Another thing that I’ve noticed is that Martin seems to be starting to write with the potential for presentation on TV in mind. There are no grand battles depicted in this book; the ones that take place are all mentioned second-hand or recalled first-hand in past tense. Scenes take place mainly in very localized spots. And the language has become fouler, along with the environment. The gore is up (even without the battles), and the word ‘whore’ is uttered I know not how many times, along with a ramping up of toilet humor. HBO is showing itself to have a negative effect on the storyline.

Now I sum up: Dragons, while it doesn’t completely suck, is certainly Martin’s worst showing so far for A Song of Ice and Fire. If it weren’t for the compelling characters he’s created riding the wave of his previous books, this volume would be hard pressed to aspire to mediocre. Certainly, it does not make up for the six-year break between books.

Let’s hope he makes a full recovery for The Winds of Winter, the tentative title of book six.

1. Which is saying something, if you’ve ever seen a picture of the man [↩]
2. He hit it so hard, he knocked it into next decade! [↩]
3. I hate pickles, though. Consume with mayo? [↩]

At last, we’re back with a new podcast episode. In this bundle of joy:

• We hold a board meeting to reveal just what that bacon smell was in the Lair, and discuss the fate of Overlord Johnson…
• We relate what we’re currently reading…
• Natalie is reading [amazon_link id="0765328542" target="_blank" container="" container_class="" ]Fuzzy Nation[/amazon_link] by John Scalzi
• Dr. Cmar is reading [amazon_link id="0972595961" target="_blank" container="" container_class="" ]Warlords of Utopia [/amazon_link]by Lance Parkin
• Chris just finished [amazon_link id="344254193X" target="_blank" container="" container_class="" ]Cryptonomicon[/amazon_link] by Neal Stephenson and is currently reading [amazon_link id="0470395354" target="_blank" container="" container_class="" ]Schneier on Security[/amazon_link] by Bruce Schneier
• David has read a Great Many Things, but saw Cars 2 recently.
• We discuss Medical Studies for Non-Medical Personnel with Dr. John Cmar, mainly, how do you tell a Good Medical Study from a Bad Medical Study (hint…the Good Medical Study does not necessarily appear in a bubble of light wearing sequins. That would be too easy.)

We welcome your adulation, your tribute, and your comments below.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 52:02 — 47.6MB)

During a recent conversation with our Secretary of Artistic Propaganda, it occurred to me that vampires have been cropping up in an awful lot of the books I’m reading lately. I haven’t been making any kind of conscious effort to read vampire stories, but a quick glance through my reading list from the past year puts me at just shy of one bloodsucking tale per month. Granted, vampirism isn’t always front and center in these novels, but here’s a list of books I’ve read in the past twelve months that feature vampires in major and minor roles:

1. Fool Moon by Jim Butcher. The second Dresden Files novel is really about werewolves (as if you couldn’t guess from the title), but it’s Dresden and I’m sure he must have had dealings with vampires at some point.
2. Soulless by Gail Carriger. I really enjoyed the first outing of Alexia Tarabotti in Victorian England, which features both vampires and werewolves. I only wish the cover model bore more of a resemblance to the main character.
3. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith. Vampires abound in this secret history of the 16th President of These Here United States.
4. Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story by Christopher Moore. The first of Christopher Moore’s San Francisco Vampire Trilogy, which tells the tale of Jody, the newly-befanged Countess of the City by the Bay, and her boyfriend, Tommy. I listened to the excellent audio edition, narrated by Susan Bennett.
5. Grave Peril by Jim Butcher. The third Dresden Files novel is likely the last one I’ll read for the foreseeable future. But there are vampires. Yup.
6. You Suck: A Love Story by Christopher Moore. Yes, it’s the continuing adventures of Countess Jody and her boyfriend, Tommy. This time out, they’re joined by goth chick and nosferatu-wannabe, Abbie Normal.
7. The Buntline Special: A Weird West Tale by Mike Resnick. The vampire in this steampunk/fantasy retelling of the showdown at the O.K. Corral isn’t really a major character, but…he’s still a vampire.
8. Bite Me: A Love Story by Christopher Moore. The third and final (for now) installment of Moore’s San Francisco Vampire trilogy has most of the bloodsuckers from the first two novels, plus vampire cats. Meow!
9. Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovitch. Usually, urban fantasy takes place in These Here United States, and fantasy in Jolly Olde England tends to be set in the Victorian Era. The adventures of Probationary Constable Peter Grant take place in an era of smart phones and high-definition television. Vampires play only a minor role…for now.
10. Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris. Overlord Miller’s better half tore through the entire Sookie Stackhouse series in a matter of days. I’m about halfway through the audio edition of the first in Harris’ Southern vampire novels.
11. Changeless by Gail Carriger. I’m just over a third of the way through the second volume of The Parasol Protectorate. Vampires, werewolves…and dirigibles. That’s what it says on the cover, and so far Alexia has encountered all three.

Honorable Mention: Zombies

• The Affinity Bridge by George Mann.
• Feed by Mira Grant.
• Patient Zero by Jonathan Maberry.
• Boneshaker by Cherie Priest.

What sort of common threads are running through your recent literary choices?

Let us pretend for a moment that I’m not an Evil Overlord living in a Secret Lair based on an uncharted island somewhere in Lake Erie. Let us further pretend that, instead of plundering secret gold caches and skimming funds from electronic transactions a la Gus Gorman in Superman III, I must hold down a day job. In this day job, hypothetically, I could have a coworker…let’s call him by a name that is charmingly common yet holds the promise of great depth of thought.

The Entirely Hypothetical "Mike"

Let us call this coworker “Mike.”

Now, this Mike is probably a geek of some fashion, else we would not be speaking of him. More, he is probably cultured, but somewhat younger than I am, having come of age just as console gaming was becoming popular and supplanting the Library as a source of mainstream entertainment. Mike knows there are gaps in his Book Geek pedigree, and one day, while having lunch in the hypothetical cafeteria in the hypothetical office, Mike asks me to recommend five good books.

I answer with these:

• [amazon_link id="0553382578" target="_blank" container="" container_class="" ]Foundation [/amazon_link] by Issac Asimov: We start with Asimov, as all good science fiction should. Asimov was a singular mind, and reading these short stories about his psychohistorical Foundation, set to safeguard mankind’s knowledge against the ravages of the Galactic Empire’s fall still rings with that genius. It is fresh, relevant, and still fun to read after 60 years in print.
• [amazon_link id="1585867985" target="_blank" container="" container_class="" ]Deathbird Stories[/amazon_link] by Harlan Ellison: This is Ellison’s collection of short stories about the New Gods, the rough beasts and harrowing creatures that spring to life in the modern age to replace the more archaic gods of thunder and the sea. These stories range from “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs,” a tale inspired by the murder of Kitty Genovese, to “Shattered Like a Glass Goblin” where a young army private learns about transformation the hard way, to “The Deathbird;” a rewrite of Genesis. This is a book that counsels the reader not to read all the stories in one sitting…then lives up to that danger.
• [amazon_link id="0451062833" target="_blank" container="" container_class="" ]Jack of Shadows[/amazon_link] by Roger Zelazny: On a world that is tidally locked so that one side of the planet is always light, and the other is always dark, science rules day, while magic rules the night. Jack, sometimes called Jack Shade, sometimes Shadowjack, is unique in that he draws his power not from the light or the dark but from the shadows themselves. This is an interesting tale of how those who walk between extremes can influence the course of a world. He searches for a lost Key, and finds the Power is not what he thought it was.
• [amazon_link id="0062059882" target="_blank" container="" container_class="" ]American Gods[/amazon_link] by Neil Gaiman: One of the major touchstones of modern fantastic fiction and some (myself included) would argue Gaiman’s finest work to date. Gaiman, like Ellison, explores the birth of new gods, but Gaiman’s touch is subtle and light where Ellison’s is blunt. Gaiman’s tale of what has become of the old gods in the new world pulls you along as Shadow travels with the odd Mr. Wednesday across the heartland of the United States. There is deep magic here; a tale of wonder, delight, and horror — much like the old mythologies themselves.
• [amazon_link id="0756405890" target="_blank" container="" container_class="" ]The Name of the Wind[/amazon_link] by Patrick Rothfuss: Rothfuss is one of a handful of authors bringing significant writing talent to fantasy fiction, breathing new life into a stale and moldering genre. His writing is simply so very good, his characters so engaging and realistic that is hard to stop reading once you’ve started. The tale of the sometimes hero, sometimes villain Kvothe as told by the man himself is nothing less than one of the best novels in the last decade.

• 1970: Liquid crystal watches go on market
• 1971: CAT scan
• 1972: Pocket calculator
• 1973: Car airbags
• 1974: Barcodes on supermarket products
• 1975: Birth of the home computer (various now-extinct manufacturers)
• 1976: VHS and Betamax
• 1977: First complete genetic structure of an organism found (Great Britain)
• 1977: First flight of the Space Shuttle
• 1977: First commercial flight of supersonic Concorde between New York, Paris, London
• 1977: USA admits testing Neutron Bomb
• 1977: Trans-Alaska Pipeline starts oil flowing Prudhoe Bay to Valdez
• 1978: Louise Brown born (first In Vitro Fertilization “Test Tube” baby)
• 1979: Graphical User Interface developed at XEROX PARC (led to Macintosh, Windows)

At the Drive-In:

• 1970: Colossus, the Forbin Project
• 1971: A Clockwork Orange
• 1972: Silent Running
• 1973: Soylent Green, West World
• 1974: Young Frnakenstein, Zardoz
• 1975: A Boy and His Dog, Rollberball, The Stepford Wives
• 1976: Logan’s Run, King Kong
• 1977: Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Wizards
• 1978: Superman: The Movie, The Lord of the Rings
• 1979: Alien, Mad Max, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Time After Time

On Television:

• 1970: Jon Pertwee becomes the Fourth Third Doctor
• 1971: All in the Family and The Electric Company debut
• 1972: Sanford and Son, Emergency!, M*A*S*H*, and Are You Being Served? debut
• 1973: The Six Million Dollar Man debuts
• 1974: Happy Days, Shazam!, Little House on the Prarie, Chico and the Man, and Nova debut
• 1975: Barney Miller, Welcome Back Kotter, Space: 1999, Fawlty Towers, Wonder Woman, and Saturday Night Live debut
• 1976: The Olympics draw one billion viewers
• 1977: Eight is Enough, The Amazing Spider Man, Soap, CHiPs, and The Love Boat debut
• 1978: Blake’s 7, The Incredible Hulk, Dallas, Battle of the Planets, Taxi, WKRP, Mork & Mindy, and Battlestar Galactica debut
• 1979: The Dukes of Hazzard, You Can’t Do That On Television, The Facts of Life, Benson, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Scooby and Scrappy Doo, Spider-Woman, and This Old House debut

Nebula Award Novels for the 1970s:

• 1970: Ringworld by Larry Niven
• 1971: A Time of Changes by Robert Silverberg
• 1972: The Gods Themselves by Issac Asimov
• 1973: Rendezvous with Rama by Arther C. Clarke
• 1974: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin
• 1975: The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
• 1976: Man Plus by Frederick Pohl
• 1977: Gateway by Frederick Pohl
• 1978: Dreamsnake by Vonda K. McIntrye
• 1979: The Foundations of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke

1. The type of perspective made infamous by the Total Perspective Vortex [↩]

Quick! Name three Russian science-fiction writers. Yes, you can count the Strugatsky brothers as two, if you absolutely must, but you shouldn’t have to. You’ve got Lukyanenko (Night Watch, Day Watch), of course, and Gluhkovsky (Metro 2033, basis for the video game of the same name) and Tolstoy (the other one, who wrote The Garin Death Ray instead of Anna Karenina)…the list goes on and on.

Now name three Finnish science-fiction writers.

Go ahead, I’ll wait.

No names leaping to mind?

Here’s a little help for you—in the category “Finnish science fiction writers,” Wikipedia lists seven names:

1. Aarne Haapakoski
2. Risto Isomäki
3. Leena Krohn
4. Kimmo Lehtonen
5. Martti Löfberg
6. Hannu Rajaniemi
7. Johanna Sinisalo

Compare that to the category “Russian science fiction writers,” which yields forty-eight names (forty-nine, if you count Arkady and Boris Strugatsky as two people).

It never occurred to me to search for Finnish science fiction writers until the latest in a series of literary conversations with a Russian-American colleague at work. When the topic wandered (as it does) into the realm of science fiction recently, we spoke of Stalker, a 1979 film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky (who also directed Polish science fiction author¹ Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris in 1972) and based on the Strugatsky brothers’ novel, Roadside Picnic.

Wait a minute, I thought, after our conversation had come to a close. What about Finnish science fiction?

The Finns are my people; the music that sings in my blood is a kantele, strummed by the eternal bard, Väinämöinen. In nearly thirty-eight years on the planet, it never once occurred to me to seek out Finnish sci-fi. When it did occur to me, I wondered if I might learn that in the great Venn diagram of science-fiction, the circle representing Lapland was empty.

It’s not, of course, but nor is it bursting at the seams;² compared to the rest of what we consider Scandinavia,³ Finland is the most science-fictional (at least according to Wikipedia). The tally for the remainder of Scandinavia is as follows: Denmark, 2; Norway, 4; Sweden, 5.

Finnish science fiction does exist, but there’s slight hurdle that must be overcome before I can actually read any of it: Suomalainen, the Finnish language. Apart from a handful of terms related to misbehaving, sawing lumber and cursing at farm animals, I can neither speak nor read Finnish. In order to experience Finnish science fiction, I’ll either need to learn the language or find English translations.

If you’re expecting me to announce that I plan to learn to speak (or read) Finnish in the short term, don’t hold your breath. It’s something I’d like to do, but it’s not exactly on my short range radar. On the other hand, I’m very well aware that one of the Finnish science fiction writers listed above, Hannu Rajaniemi, has a new novel—The Quantum Thief—that will soon be available in these here United States; in English, no less.⁴ And so my journey into the realm of Finnish science fiction will begin later this year.

Who are the science fiction writers of your nationality? Have you read any of their works? How do they compare with American sci-fi?

1. Poland: 30 science fiction writers. [↩]
2. American science fiction writers: 1,058 [↩]
3. Geography Trivia: Finland is not a part of what is classically considered Scandinavia. [↩]
4. Alas, no Kindle version has been announced. [↩]

It wasn’t until I got my Kindle that I appreciated how screwed the brick-and-mortar bookstores are.

I bought my Kindle a week ago. Since then, I’ve already finished two books on it and have started a third. What Overlord Johnson said in his review holds: the overall convenience and comfort of using the Kindle as a reading device cannot be overstated. Even though this is not my first eReader, this is the first I’ve possessed with WiFi and the ability to purchase directly on the device. That, combined with the pure delight I feel when reading on it has changed the way I shop for books.

I didn’t realize how deeply this affected me until I visited my local Borders store. In the wake of Borders’ bankruptcy, it is closing. Books are thirty percent off or more. I browsed through the store, looking at books that, up until a week ago, I would have purchased. Now I was reluctant.

Why?  Three reasons:

1. Space. At present, I have no bookshelves, hence, books I buy wind up being piled in corners of rooms. They get in the way, and I never read them.
2. Cost. Even at 30% off, I can get some of them  for less online in digital format.
3. Bulk. I like to travel light. While I love to have things to read with me most of the time, carrying them around can be a pain the butt. Buying more things that I need to carry, in an age where I can read either on my Kindle or on my phone, seems silly.

Once I realized these three things, I understood I would never shop for books the same way. In the past, I would go to a bookstore to browse, have a cup of coffee, chill out. Eventually, I’d purchase something. Now I can use my Kindle to browse, even sample chapters before buying. I’m more likely to simply hit a coffeeshop than I am to walk into a physical bookstore. There’s no reason to see the books anymore.

No one is more surprised by this than me. I used to think that I loved books. I don’t. I love reading.  The distinction is surprising to me; it’s one I’ve never made.  I will admit that there is nothing like the smell of a book, a library, an old volume. And yet…this is not why I read. I read for the story.  The medium is unimportant. As it stands, now that I have this device, I always have a book with me. I have the Kindle app on my phone. My Kindle device syncs to the web, meaning that, if I read to page 45 on my Kindle, when I open the book on my phone, I will be on page 45. No paperback to stuff into a pocket or leave in the car or potentially lose.

I’ll be curious to see how bookstores change and adapt with the times. Libraries are facing the same challenges. As it the publishing industry. As we shift from valuing the medium to valuing the idea, the work, and the execution, I wonder what other changes we will see. What do you think?

As anyone who has been paying attention (and cares) has noticed, the publishing date is official for George R. R. Martin‘s latest installment of his Song of Ice and Fire series, A Dance with Dragons. The date is July 12th, 2011, which, rather conspicuously,¹ correlates with the approximate end of the first season (hopefully one of many) of HBO’s adaptation of the first book in the series, A Game of Thrones.

It hurts me to think that those of us who have been continually complaining of the Jets² getting in the way of Martin’s completion of Dragons, have actually had the formation of the series to blame all this time. Sure, as a marketing ploy, it’s genius– those who have been taken in by the series will go to the local bookst— oh, um, that is, go online to Amazon or some such,³ and see a bright and shiny new aSoIaF book on the (shelf) screen, tempting them to not only get the ‘novelization’ of that cool TV series they just watched, but get the whole series thus far up to and including Dragons.

It makes me wonder just how long, though, the book has been completed and lingering in wait for the TV series to arrive. Considering A Feast for Crows was first published in 2005, and was purportedly half of a work that was too large to publish in one volume – thus being split into that and a forthcoming Dragons - five and a half years is a long time to wait for something that was already supposedly well underway.

On the flip side, it’s entirely possible that book 6, with a working title of The Winds of Winter, might just come out sooner than we’d expect. One has to assume that Martin had been keeping himself busy with something other than supervising/consulting the TV series. Seriously, dude, you HAVE still been writing, right? I’m just letting you know that I’m not above buying one of your replica Valyrian weapons and putting it to purpose.⁴

I predict I’ll be getting a well-earned fix come mid April, though. Having watched the latest full trailer for the series, one of the marks of the fact that they ‘got it right’ is that I could clearly spot various characters on sight. So at the very least, the casting is spot on. It saddens me that Jennifer Ehle had to drop out of the project,⁵ because I kinda fell for her in Pride and Prejudice.⁶

The series starts on April 17th. If you have no skills with a search engine, or are just feeling lazy, here’s ‘Inside Game of Thrones’ ala HBO:

Inside ‘Game of Thrones’

1. that was a lot of commas – sorry, Mr. Thurber [↩]
2. the football team, not the band – though now I can’t help but picture Martin getting jiggy to Crush On You [↩]
3. RIP, Borders [↩]
4. ok, not really – replicas don’t hold much of an edge [↩]
5. I’m still fuzzy on exactly why that happened [↩]
6. though not as hard as my wife did for Colin Firth, who is on her List of Five [↩]