MentatJack

I finally watched Avatar last night. I saw it in IMAX 3D. It’s really pretty easy to convince people to go see this movie, whether they’re science fiction fans or not. It’s an intensely beautiful and immersive movie going experience. It’s what I’ve wanted from CGI for as long as it’s been a going concern in cinema. It’s what I’ve wanted in a 3D experience ever since I first saw the Muppets in 3D at Disney World.

I lost count of how many science fiction tropes were woven into the plot and the visuals. I’m sure someone has made a list. I’m sure that’s annoyed many of my fellow science fiction fans. I choose to be excited by the prospect of being able to pepper the occasional “If you liked Avatar, you’ll love this” into my reviews. I’d be overjoyed if there were twice as many science fiction fans next year as there are this year. Just for fun think about how you’d describe the dragon riding in Pern to your “mundane” friend that loved Avatar. Think about how many other visuals science fiction and fantasy novels you’ll be able to explain by referencing the floating mountains, phosphorescent fauna and gas giant dominating the sky. For now, I’ll share 3 examples.

Harry the Crow by John Kratman

I listened to Harry the Crow on escape pod a few days ago. It’s a tale of tradition in the face of progress, as a “young” robot earns his place amongst a tribe of Native Americans. As I listened to it, it felt like a cross between Pinocchio and Dances with Wolves, which of course means I can evoke: “If you liked Avatar, you’ll love this story.” Harry the Crow is more tightly focused on a man and his son. A man torn between his role in a future society as an engineer and his place amongst his people. In any setting, a theme of acceptance and a theme of becoming real offer insight into both what we consider real and who we want to accept us.

Forever Bound by Joe Haldeman

Forever Bound is the second story in the forthcoming anthology Warriors edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois. Much like in Forever War Haldeman uses military service to explore interpersonal relationships and larger social themes. In this case we follow a fresh physics phd graduate that’s drafted to serve in a platoon that remotely controls giant mechanical soldiers. If you were fascinated by the titular concept of Avatar, you’ll love this deeper exploration of the theme. In Forever Bound the human warriors aren’t just jacked into the machines they’re controlling but also into the other minds in their platoon. The implications to the human psyche leave me thinking just as much about codependency as warfare. I highly recommend.

Lethe by Tricia Sullivan

I read Tricia Sullivan’s first novel Lethe (1995) in late November. That whole uploading memories to the trees bit in Avatar, was a central theme in Lethe. The scene with the glowing seeds covering Jake mirrored a scene in Lethe. Where Avatar uses the whole “connection to the earth mother” thing to explore a simple science vs religion debate, Lethe uses it as a chance to play with cyberpunk tropes in an alien environment apart from technology. At the time it was an important exploration as the cyberpunk ideas were shifting from fiction to reality. I’ll consider this a reminder to post my review.

I’ve had Prime on my shelf for awhile, and I must confess that I gave up on it twice. The drastic difference between the prologue and the first chapter jostled me out of the narrative. Turns out I gave up about a page too soon. I had a novella length wait yesterday, so I brought Prime along to fill the time.

After the first chapter the narrative settles into a tight 3rd person point of view following William Bellow, bug hunter extraordinaire. Think of your traditional cyberpunk hacker mixing the roles of bounty hunter and quality control. He’s been hired by a corporation to solve a series of murders that seem to have been committed in virtual reality. Quite the engrossing read.

A lot of great concepts are dealt with. A growing religious movement wants to live in virtual reality. Corporations are tweaking people’s minds in an incredibly invasive extrapolation of current marketing trends. There is exploration of cloning both for medical and entertainment purposes. All of these and more are woven into a tight little story. I’d label this combination of noir and science fiction “Richard Morgan Lite” as it has elements I enjoyed in both Altered Carbon and Woken Furies. “Lite” mainly because of the length. It’s hard to get as much depth and detail in a novella as in a multiple book series.

This may me the first novella I’ve read as a standalone book. I enjoyed the experience and if the rest of Apex Publications’ books live up to the quality of this one, They’ll definitely be getting my business again.

When discussing short fiction, I’m less wary of spoilers if the text is available to read for free online. Go read White Swan before reading my thoughts.

After reading Border Guards the other day, I’m struck by how well the work as companion pieces. Border Guards, because of its far future post humanity artificial universe setting would never have been touched by Futurismic, in which you can read White Swan as I just did. However, in many ways they deal with the exact same issue. What happens when we, as a race, put the whole death issue behind us.

Border Guards looks back on the transition that led to 10^16 immortal humans in a utopic far future, where as White Swan tosses us directly into the middle of the transition. (Interestingly that’s something Chris suggests when talking about submitting fiction to futurismic) Both stories weigh out optimistic, but White Swan gets there with a trip through quite a bit more darkness.

This isn’t all that in depth of an analysis, but it was pretty awesome to see two stories that basically diverged because of different mathematical models. What do you get when you plug immortality both into a function with exponential growth and a function with logarithmic decay. I guess a lot depends on the initial conditions.

I reread Border Guards by Greg Egan last night, because I’m writing a story about quantum mechanics. I always enjoyed it’s description of quantum soccer and wanted to revisit the descriptions. I’d forgotten that it was such an intense story after the game ends.

The paragraph about Lie Groups hit me with nostalgia like a ton of bricks. One of the last classes I took in college was a math seminar called Complex Semi-Simple Lie Algebras. I took the class for two reasons. It was an intro to some of the math involved in string theory and that was just cool. Also, a tight circle of friends that I’d never actually had classes with were all taking it. I took it pass/fail, and mainly remember the people. I’m not sure I understood that paragraph in Border Guards any more this reading then I did when I could only pick out the meaning of Lie Group in context, but it definitely brought to mind that group of friends.

The story then shows an existence where the understanding and dissemination of knowledge is infinitely more important than discovery. That’s something I need to hear more often, sometimes many times a day. I’m a knowledge seeker and I often regret not continuing my physics studies further to the point that I might be in the position of discovery. It’s important to remember how powerful acquiring and sharing knowledge is in its own right. Keeping that in mind is what will drive me to keep writing.

The second to last big issue the story deals with is death. I had a rather surreal brush with death over the holidays when my apartment’s onsite manager passed away New Year’s Eve. I’ve lost other people in my life, but no one that was “important yet tangential” like Barbara was. I first read this story 2 years before my baby brother passed away and it definitely hit me harder this time now that I have both his memory and the recent loss of Barbara.

Last there is the titular border. Not a physical border, but a philosophical border between paradigms. It’s the border between labeling wars good and bad vs living with the constant threat of terrorism. It’s the border between economic systems twisted to the breaking point and whatever comes next. It’s the border between the industrial revolution and the end of fossil fuels. It’s the border where great science fiction exists. It’s the border that can describe both the post-human singularity and countless more mundane yet equally interesting science fictional transitions.

I’ll have to read the story again for the writing inspiration I was seeking. This read it ended up offering me much more to think about. It’s online, go read it:
http://www.gregegan.net/BORDER/Complete/Border.html

The current header is part of a painting called The Freedom of Color by María Andrea Facundo Palacios, a Peruvian artist. It’s a joy to work for a company that supports such art.

In February I get married. I start this year in the middle of writing a short story I’m really excited about. I’m close to launching a fully functional book recommendation website, TagShadow. And work will continue to be a rewarding challenge. No resolutions as such, but plenty to look forward to.

10) 1000 True Fans in Action

The economy hit writers just like it did everyone else. Many reached out directly to their fans for support, but didn’t just ask for handouts. I supported Tim Pratt’s Bone Shop (now available in print and for kindle) and read one of my favorite stories of the year in Catherine M. Valente’s Omikuji, Reading Borjes in Buenos Aires.

9) The First One is Free

This year publishers started using the growing popularity of ebooks to promote novel series by giving the first book away for free (or in the case of orbit, $1). I read my first Sean Williams and Karl Schroder due to these promotions and they will both definitely get my patronage in the future.

8) Noir and Speculative Fiction

I wrote this post in July. Here’s a list of all the speculative fiction books with noir elements I read this year:

• Woken Furies by Richard K Morgan
• Necropath by Eric Brown
• Quarantine by Greg Egan
• The City and The City by China Miéville
• Sweet Silver Blues by Glen Cook
• Finch by Jeff VanderMeer
• Child of Fire by Harry Connolly

7) Ontology: Google vs Yahoo

This article by Clay Shirky solidified some of my ideas for TagShadow. Relax and learn to trust the crowd.

6) The Semiprozine Hugo

Learning about the history of this Hugo Category and it’s possible demise opened my eyes to many new sources of speculative fiction. It also gave a neat look at the inner workings of this Award and Awards in general.

5) Book Websites

I was approached by flashlight worthy books to write some lists and I ran into Merecal interacting on the Amazon Associates forum while I was working on the TagShadow Prototype. Both recreate and distill functionality that already exists on Amazon, but they do it with style and I highly recommend them.

4) Sofanauts

Sofanauts has become my new favorite science fiction news podcast. As a round table it voices a wide set of views on the topics discussed.

3) Assaulting All my Senses

I have a long commute and thus the web and print zines that have an audio component drew my attention more than others this year. I’ve enjoyed the audio versions of Clarkesworld stories and Transmissions from Beyond the podcast associated with Interzone, Black Static and CrimeWave (not to be confused with CrimeWav, another favorite podcast of mine). An episode of Sofanauts also clued me in that all stories on Tor.com have an associated audio production, which I need to delve into.

2) Zing

This post on Magic District by John Brown, author of Servant of a Dark God led me to write this series of posts:

• Zing: Unexpected Fear
• Zing: Getting Lost
• Zing: Indigenous Species

1) Erin

Every moment of every day I grew closer and more in love with her and I know I can accomplish ANYTHING with her by my side. That’s important, but she’s on this list, because she inspires me with her elegant blog posts, whether she’s posting about religion, food or language. She read the Twilight Series so I didn’t have to. More than anything, she makes me think, asking the questions and offering the insights that both keep my mind active and focus it.

When I was in the first grade, I travelled with my parents from the mountains of Highland County Virginia to Montevideo, Uruguay. We were there to visit my mom’s sister and family. I have many memories that have been reinforced over the years by slide shows, but one that sticks out distinctly involved a simple trip to the park.

At the park I remember a tree very much like the one pictured above (thank you google images). It’s a tree that’s come to mind whenever I encountered alien trees in my reading, such as in Speaker for the Dead or what I’m currently reading, Lethe. It’s a tree that I compare other trees to. It’s shown up in my dreams and nightmares.

However, it wasn’t the tree or the foreign city that scared me that day. It was an automatic garage door. We’d made it back to the apartment from the park, but instead of heading for the door, we headed for the garage. I’d never experienced an automatic garage door at that point, so when my cousin ran under the closing door I froze. That stands out in my mind as one of the single most frightening moments of my life. It all came rushing back to me as I calmly walked under the closing garage door from my apartment’s parking lot today. I thought about how the most intense scene in a movie or book, for me, is when someone slides under a descending door. It always freaks me out and gets my heart racing.

Keep in mind when you write that ANYTHING that you describe well could spark such a reaction with at least one person. I have no real idea how to USE this, but it struck me as worth noting.

This post by John Brown inspired me to write this post and this post. I just finished reading the teaser chapters and I’m hooked. I’ve grown attached to the characters. Half way through the teaser chapters Brown goes all Rashomon on the story, which I just love. Sibling bickering, racial tensions, zombie slaves, witch hunts, magical giants and intricately described weaponry. I promise a full review when I get my hands on a copy.

Thanks to @johnjosephadams for bringing this to my attention. Looks like I’ve got some reading to do. You can see the list and a bit of commentary over at LibraryJournal.com.

• The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi. Published by Night Shade Books.
• Flood by Stephen Baxter. Published by ROC: Penguin
• Flesh and Fire by Laura Anne Gilman. Published by Pocket: S. & S.
• Galileo’s Dream by Kim Stanley Robinson. Published by Spectra: Bantam.
• Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson. Published by Tor and available for free on the author’s website.