2 Feb 2010

Has Chuck Jumped the Shark?

posted in: science fiction | 0

Chuck is one of my favorite TV shows, and one that Allysen and I most eagerly awaited the return of. But…but…what have they done with our show?

In the first five episodes, the writing has taken a seriously wrong turn, for my tastes. Much of the charm and wit are missing, or at best labored. The plotting makes Chuck seem stupid, rather than endearingly innocent. They brought back Morgan and Big Mike in a ham-handed fashion—and rather nastily, with the summary execution of the Tony Hale character with a bullet through the head. They’ve fallen in love with the famous guest star gimmick (two from the Superman world). They seem to feel that Yvonne Strahovski has to be shown semi-naked even more often than in the past, as if any hotblooded male needs that gimmick to maintain an interest in Yvonne Strahovski. (I enjoy attractive, semi-clad women as much as the next guy, but here it just seems blatantly exploitative.) Chuck summons impossible skills at the drop of a script-writer’s pen. In short…bah! I’m waiting for the show I love to return. But I’m not sure if it’s going to.

To be fair, they pretty well painted themselves into a corner at the end of last season. It was clear things had to change; they couldn’t continue with the same-old same-old. He had the new Intersect, the plot arc with his father was finished, and things with Sarah were at a make-or-break point. They clearly didn’t want Chuck and Sarah to get together, because there would go all of the sexual tension. And yet…how did they deal with this? By having Chuck throw away a chance for a life with Sarah, so that he could become a real (bumbling) spy? Ssssss…

We haven’t given up yet. Maybe they just need time to shake things out. But we’re well into the season now, and we’re very afraid that it’s going to go the way of Andromeda after its chief writer left the show. Which is to say, down the tubes.

But I surely hope not.

1 Feb 2010

Amazon Blinks First

posted in: Amazon, ebooks, personal news, publishing, Sunborn | 0

The war, or at least the battle, between Amazon.com and Macmillan publishers (corporate parent of my publisher, Tor Books) ended Sunday night when Amazon conceded that it would have to accept the new terms for selling ebooks.  Last I checked, my own book still wasn’t back up for direct sale, but I trust it will be soon.

One of the best (short) commentaries on the matter is on E-reads.com, by Richard Curtis, literary agent and ebook publisher.  (He happens to be my agent and ebook publisher, but that’s not why I’m recommending his column.)  He’s been in this business for a long time, and has a pretty reliable nose for what’s happening.

Author Tobias Buckell outlines the situation pretty well from the author’s point of view. That’s a long post, but if you’re interested in learning more about how this crazy business works, it’s a good one.

And another excellent author’s view from Scott Westerfeld.

Me, I’m still annoyed at Amazon for using bombs as a negotiating ploy, especially when I’m close to one of the targets.  Actually, I’m annoyed with Amazon on several counts, including their continued failure to get my books into the Kindle store.  The hell of it is, though–I actually agree with them that cheaper ebooks will make more money for everyone, or at least for most of us.

It’ll be interesting to watch what happens when Apple truly enters the ebook business, and then there will be two gorillas in the ring. 

30 Jan 2010

Victoria Bolles: Godspeed

posted in: farewells, personal news, tributes | 0

Now for the difficult post.  My friend Victoria passed away yesterday.  The cancer won in the end—at least as far as her life on earth is concerned.  Most of you don’t know Victoria, but she was a founding member of the writing group that I’ve been part of for about thirty years now.  She could tell you exactly how many years; that’s the sort of thing she remembered.  I joined the group a couple of years after it got started.  It was bigger then.  But for a very long time now, it’s been five of us: Victoria, Craig, Richard, Mary, and me.  I hesitate to say that it’s now just four.  She’s going to be with us for a long time, even if she can’t physically be there.  (We never named the group formally, but always just called it the Writing Group, as though that were a perfectly good proper name, and maybe it is.)  We have been not just workshop partners, but dear friends. We’ve been with each other through marriages, divorces, kids born, kids gone to college, careers won and lost, and family members and other friends lost to the reaper.  We’ve been mad at each other, and we’ve cheered for each other, and pursued both life and the written word together.  We’ve also bitched about getting old together. 

Here’s a picture of the Group taken on the day she married George. I’m not sure what year that was, somewhere around 1990. (Craig, Rich, Victoria, me, Mary.  We’ve all greyed a bit since then.)

I’m sad to lose her to something as dreadful as colon cancer, but I’m glad she was able to find so much joy in her last year.  Her husband George hardly ever left her side, and friends literally from all over the world prayed for her and sang for her and sent her thoughts of healing and love. She and George, some years ago, became intensely active in the world of shape-note singing, and they traveled far and wide to join with others in their love of this particular form of music.  (There’s another name for it, but it escapes me at this moment.)

Allysen and I saw her a few weeks ago, and she knew then that she didn’t have too much longer.  But what struck us more than anything was the amount of life she still had in her.  We talked and laughed, and even discussed having the Group meet gathered around her bed some weekend afternoon.  That never happened; she got too weak soon after. 

I suspect a lot of her friends are singing for her right now, and for George whom she left, and I hope she’s at peace.  I’m sure she is.  Bye, Victoria.  Peace, always.

30 Jan 2010

Amazon Pulls Sunborn…

posted in: Amazon, ebooks, personal news, public affairs, publishing, Sunborn | 0

…and a few thousand other books that happen to be published by Macmillan (of which Tor is an imprint). That’s right, if you click one of my many links to Sunborn’s page at Amazon.com, you now will see it for sale only from Amazon partners, not from Amazon itself.

According to this article from the New York Times online, Amazon has pulled Macmillan titles as the next escalation in their dispute with publishers over ebook prices and timing. (Ironically, I am more or less on Amazon’s side in that argument. But for them to do this, which they have to know is hurting authors at least as much as it hurts the publisher, seems like an act of callous arrogance.)

I’d been bugging my editor to find out when the Sunborn ebook was going to become a reality (you can still download my own ebook edition from my website), but it’s looking like the Kindle store isn’t going to be a place to buy my books anytime soon. (A side note: Amazon has been apparently unable or unwilling to process my E-reads ebooks into the Kindle store, the better part of a year after their release.)

All of which just makes me, for the moment, throw up my hands.

I do hope you’ll all encourage your friends to buy Sunborn from outlets that actually carry it on their shelves. For which I thank you.

20 Jan 2010

Massachusetts Voted What?

posted in: public affairs | 0

There was a time when I expected this after every election: a deep feeling of depression.  But more recent events had lulled me into thinking that, at least once in a while, the majority of the electorate (at least in my area) would share a few of my political views. Oh, the naiveté! Once again I’ve learned my lesson.  Yesterday Massachusetts did the previously unthinkable—voted in Scott Brown, a conservative Republican, to fill the seat left by Ted Kennedy.  A man who thinks waterboarding is just one more okay form of torture, and who will…ah, never mind the details, I’m sure you’ve read them by now. 

[Deep breath.]

Well, if you can’t win, the next best thing is to laugh.  So, if you’d like a good laugh—and I’m pretty sure people of all parties can laugh at this one—take a look at Jon Stewart on The Daily Show.  If it doesn’t display correctly for you on this page, you can watch it here. 

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
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www.thedailyshow.com
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18 Jan 2010

Avatar Rocks

posted in: personal news, science fiction, writing | 0

Allysen and I finally got to see Avatar in 3D today.  We both loved it.  The 3D effects were wonderful—but it wasn’t just a matter of great special effects.  It was a good story well told (familiar, to be sure), with believable characters and—above all—fabulous world building.  The landscape and the creatures were mesmerizing.  The banshees (read: dragons) were terrific, and who could not love the hammerhead rhinos?  To some extent, it was even scientifically plausible; the world-wide nervous system, although it sounded a lot like the Force when first introduced, actually made some sense.  The floating mountains were more in the Miyazaki fantasy realm, which I suspect was not a coincidence. 

It was fun to run a mental tally of all the sources that the movie clearly owes a debt to.  Native American (and probably African) tradition, of course.  Dune.  Anne McCaffrey’s dragon books—and for that matter, a whole tradition of dragons in fantasy and SF.  Dances with Wolves.  Pocahontas, the animation?  I won’t call it a debt, because I doubt Cameron has ever read my books, but the avatar couches reminded me of my own rigger stations, and the Tree of Souls brought to mind the Tree of Ice in my second Chaos book, Strange Attractors.  Call it a resonance.  And now there surface contentions that Cameron borrowed liberally from the books of Russian SF novelists Boris and Arkady Strugatsky.  Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t.  He clearly borrowed liberally from many worlds of literature and film.  He even borrowed from himself: I think I recognized that corporate exploitation type from Aliens, as well as the hotshot lady pilot. And of course the mechanical walkers. 

Did these connections detract from my enjoyment?  Not at all.  I felt that they were part of a great tradition of art building on art, as well as on life.  Some critics have accused the film of following the less admirable tradition of allowing big budget special effects to overwhelm any concern about good storytelling.  That’s often true—but not so much this time, I think.  The story, if not terribly deep or original, was nevertheless honest and moving. 

One of my favorite SF movies prior to this is also a Cameron film: The Abyss. It wasn’t altogether successful, but one thing it did beautifully was to create a sense of working and living beneath the sea.  It overlooked a few things for the sake of dramatic license, but it got a lot of it dead on.  (I’ve spent time underwater as a scuba diver.)  It’s that world building thing.  Some people demand scientific accuracy in world building.  I demand believability.  I want to be convinced.  And in Avatar, I was convinced. 

6 Jan 2010

Sunborn in Paperback

posted in: personal news, publishing, science fiction, Sunborn, writing | 0

Sunborn is now available in mass market paperback, from Tor Books—everywhere fine, cosmic, headbanging, epic, sensawunda, character-driven hard-SF is sold.  (And if you don’t find it in your local emporium, please ask for it!  You’ll be helping enormously.) 

For the first time in my life, I was so preoccupied by other things that I totally failed to mark the day my new book went on sale.  How bad is that?  It’s been officially available since December 29, and it only just hit me last night that it was actually out.  I did receive my author copies a few days before the publication date—in itself a first, I think.  Then I went on with life and blanked on the whole thing.  Don’t do what I did!  It’s not too late to give it as a gift!

Now, I must hit the web to see if I can find a good image of the cover.  Ah, here we go, from the Tor-Forge store:

Wouldn’t you like to own a copy today?

1 Jan 2010

Podcast: “Story Structure”

posted in: science fiction, teaching, writing | 0

Last summer I appeared as a guest lecturer at the Odyssey writing workshop.  What I talked most about was story structure, what it is, and why it’s important.  The folks at Odyssey have just posted an excerpt from my lecture as a podcast that you can listen to online, or right-click on to download as an MP3 file.  They have a number of similar excerpts online, and if you’re interested in hearing writers talk about the craft of writing, here’s the list of lectures.  If writing is one of your interests, check them out. 

1 Jan 2010

2010!

posted in: personal news | 0

It’s hard to believe it’s really 2010 already.  Back when Arthur C. Clarke was writing some of his seminal work, we thought there’d be Moon bases by now, and exploration ships to Jupiter!  Not to mention alien contact.  I guess we’ll have to wait a little longer. 

I hope you all had good holidays, and are hitting the ground running for the new year.  It was a  stressful season for the Carver household, with both daughters going through difficult times and my father-in-law hospitalized after a heart attack.  On the positive side, things are moving in the right direction for everyone here in the immediate family, and with my brother and his girlfriend visiting for Christmas, we still had a good week in other ways.  My older daughter is leaving in a couple of days for several weeks in Nicaragua (college service project), so that’s certainly going to be interesting to hear about. 

Right now, I’m in catch-up mode.  Haven’t gotten much done outside of family business for the last couple of weeks, so it’s time to reacquaint myself with my work!  And yeah, that book I’m writing!  What was it?  Science fiction, I think.  Something chaotic, anyway.  Appropriate. 

“I…have to constantly balance “being a writer” with being a wife and mother. It’s a matter of putting two different things first, simultaneously.” —Madeleine L’Engle

20 Dec 2009

Happy Snowstorm!

posted in: personal news, teaching | 0

We just got our first big one, here in New England. (Or at least, here in Boston.) It made me sort of happy, as I’ve been itching to try out the snowblower that a neighbor across town gave me, which I spent some time putting back into running condition back in June. It worked! (Actually, it worked temperamentally at first. Turns out that a carburetor setting that works well in June doesn’t work so well in December. I fiddled, though, and got it running better.) I’d never used one of these things before, and it was a little like maneuvering a large animal with a mind of its own. Also, if you don’t aim it right, you get a big faceful of snow right in the kisser. That happened a number of times. But it was fun, and I wandered up the sidewalk, clearing a walk here, a driveway apron there, and generally trying to share the fun a little. (I found a box of cookies outside my door the next time I went out. With a thank-you card. That was fun, too.)

My other new toy is a replacement PDA for my ancient Cassiopeia that went wonky right about the same time my laptop died. I bought a used Dell Axim X50v on ebay, and I love it as a book reader! Its high-res screen makes book text very clear, and it’s ideal for reading in bed in the dark, with red text on a black background. They don’t make them anymore, and I like it so much I looked for a bargain on a second one, just to have in reserve.

My teaching gig at MIT ended a couple of weeks ago. I enjoyed it hugely, and I hope the students did, as well. I kept up Joe’s tradition of ending with a pizza party, which perhaps was a bit of a relief to the students, who were just gearing up for finals. I expect they must be done now, and on their way home, or to wherever they go for the holidays. (If any of you read this, drop me a line!)

Anne pointed out that I forgot to provide an update on Joe Haldeman’s condition. Sorry about that. He’s back home in Florida now, at last, and is recovering slowly but steadily from his surgery and pancreatitis. Here’s wishing him and Gay a fabulous Christmas and New Year!

For that matter, here’s wishing you all a fabulous Chanukkah, Solstice, Christmas, and New Year!

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