Snuff by Terry Pratchett – review

I have a great affection for the Discworld series so I’m afraid you’re not going to get any impartial comments from me. If you’re looking for that, move along – nothing to see here.

I started reading the Discworld series when I was in school through the 80s, and in some ways I feel like I’ve grown up with them. I enjoyed the first books mainly for the gags – The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic had my younger self laughing out loud on virtually every page. Later on the books became much richer, with better and deeper stories being told without sacrificing the humour. Pratchett’s Discworld is one of the few series that I will buy every book for as soon as it comes out, and usually drop whatever else I am reading to look through it. I am seldom disappointed.

Snuff is based around Commander Vimes (now a reluctant member of the aristocracy and enthusiastic family man) and the City Watch. I’ve really grown to enjoy the Watch “sub-series” of books and Vimes is one of my favourite Discworld characters.

I won’t spoil the plot, just to say that it revolves around Vimes’ attempts to take a holiday (admittedly not by his own choice) and the hijinks that ensue. I really enjoy Pratchett’s writing and Snuff was no exception.

Knowing about Pratchett’s illness (early onset Alzheimers), there was one minor downside to reading the book. I found myself acutely aware that the pipeline of his future work is finite, and that did create some sadness when reading. Of course I know intellectually that, barring startling advances in modern medicine, no author will write for ever. Still, for me having a much more concrete sense that there is an end date to the Discworld saga did overlay the book with a sense of melancholy.

If you are a follower of Pratchett’s work then it doesn’t really matter what I say here, you’re going to read the book. If you haven’t read any of his work, then for goodness sake don’t start at book 39! I hope you can feel waves of jealousy pulsing in your direction as I say start from the beginning and read them all!

I also reviewed this book on Goodreads. View all my reviews

My reading complacency zone

One of the best things about starting to write speculative fiction is that I’ve started to read much more widely than I have in years. When I started to look around to see where speculative fiction was being published, I realised that there was a whole world that I’d been missing – especially Australian authors and the shorter forms of fiction (novellas, short stories, flash fiction etc).

It is funny how life creeps around you, slowly shifting you away from the things you used to love. As my career obligations and desire for family time have grown over the years I’ve had less and less time for reading. What I realised this year was that I’d got to the point where I was pretty much only reading new books by a shrinking pool of authors that I was already familiar with and who weren’t dead yet. So yes, I was keeping up with my Terry Pratchett, William Gibson and Neal Stephenson but I was not reading anything by anyone new.

(My one exception to this rule is pulp fiction based around universes created in TV series. I’m not too proud to say that I do go through quite a few Star Trek and Star Wars books each year. Always easy reading, sometimes good and worthwhile for the times where they are both. I come across new authors a fair bit through those books. However, I don’t think I could claim that I’m stretching my understanding of the speculative fiction genre by that particular reading trend – I’m mostly retreading already well trodden ground. Don’t get me wrong, I love ’em – but they are “I’ve had a crappy week and I just want to lose myself in a familiar but different universe” territory, not “I want a new, interesting and thought provoking perspective on the human condition with a twist that will have me thinking for weeks afterwards”. That characterisation is probably best supported by the fact that I almost never go on to read any of those author’s other work – more a sad commentary on me than any reflection on their work).

It’s been very interesting coming to grips with a new set of stories over the last twelve months. It’s also been interesting to actively consider where my fiction is coming from and whether I’m reading from a diverse enough range of authors. I’ve never really given a lot of thought to things like gender of authors, country of origin etc. But listening to some podcasts (see the podcasts page for my favourites) and you get a sense of the value of seeking out stories beyond your reading complacency zone. One of the things I most love about speculative fiction is its ability to show people and issues from different perspectives. Reading more broadly has certainly helped me recapture some of that.

So I’m still very time poor but I am reading more widely now and will continue to do so. I’m also paying more attention to issues in the speculative fiction community, like representation of gender and cultural groups in the field. It makes for more interesting reading and having a better idea of what is out there is definitely good for my writing as well.

If you are reading this and like me you’ve been stuck on the big name merry-go-round but you want to start reading more Australian content, I found Australian SF magazinespodcasts and publishers are a good place to start looking.

Asimov’s Science Fiction September 2011 – review

The Observation Post by Allen M. Steele – Cuban Missile Crisis with a twist. Interesting description of the military grade blimps used by the US air force post WWII.

Shadow Angel by Erick Melton – one of those stories where you are thrust into the confusing middle. Careful reading to work out what is going on. Some interesting ideas on space travel and manipulation of the future.

Burning Bibles by Alan Wall – interesting protagonist Tom – deaf and dumb but with an interesting version of telepathy. Only the powers of Tom are speculative, the rest is a a fairly straight forward mystery.

Grandma Said by R. Neube – describes the world of an apprentice plague cleaner on a frontier world in the future. I enjoyed reading this one, I tend to like reading about the kind of challenges humanity might face while colonising other worlds. Nicely self contained short story.

I liked the concept behind Stalker by Robert Reed and thought it was told from an interesting perspective. If only Dexter had lived in this future…

Robert Silverberg’s Reflections column contains a very interesting article discussing the practice of retired Emperors in Japan in the time period 1000 – 1200 AD. The ceremonial burden of being Emperor had got so over the top, that Emperors retired but maintained political power, leaving the ceremonial duties to their young successor (often under 5 years old at the time of transfer!). Very interesting comparisons with his own stories based in the world of Majipoor – although he didn’t know anything about the Japanese practice when he first started writing the stories.

Also included:

  • D.O.C.S. by Neal Barrett Jr (short)
  • Danilo by Carol Emshwiller (short)
  • The Odor of Sanctity by Ian Creasey (short)
  • Harold Gets Off on the Doppler Effect by James Kamlet (poem)
  • I Have a Remote in Each Hand by Jessy Randall (poem)
  • Elven Alvin by P M F Johnson (poem)
  • Stone Roach by Fiona Moore (poem)
  • The Music of Robots by Bruce Boston (poem)
  • Science Fiction Haiku by Kendall Evans and David C. Kopaska-Merkel (poem)

The Mistborn Trilogy by Brandon Sanderson – review

Like a lot of people I suspect, I first came across Brandon Sanderson because sheer bloody mindedness is driving me to finish Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series (14 books is ridiculous but I started reading them in my university days and feel an irrational need to get through to the end).

Sanderson was the author chosen to complete the series after Jordan’s passing. After reading The Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight I decided to give his newest novel, The Way of Kings a go and really liked it. So I decided to go back and read some of his earlier work.

That is a long way to explain the reason why I’ve been reading the Mistborn trilogy of late – an epic fantasy series. I read The Final Empire earlier in the year and I’ve just finished The Well of Ascension and The Hero of Ages. The first thing I’ll get out of the way is the magic. Every review/article I’ve ever read about Sanderson’s books talks about the excellence and innovativeness of his magic systems. And they are right. I loved the description of the magic in The Way of Kings. I love it in the Mistborn books. It is consistent, well realised and lends itself to excellent action sequences.

I found the books to be very readable as well. I liked the characters, they had enough flaws to be relatable and I thought the stories were interesting. While it is in a lot of ways a “typical” fantasy series, all three books contained a bit of a twist at the end. I don’t really try to guess twists – I’m more of a “see where the story takes you” kind of guy – but I don’t like it when the kink in the road is so obvious that even I see it coming. Fortunately each of these books had a genuinely surprising element for me.

Look, it is probably very “bowing to the gods of the commercial author of the moment” of me but I’ve really liked all of Sanderson’s stuff so far. I’d recommend the Mistborn trilogy. I see on Amazon that he has a new Mistborn novel – The Alloy of Law – coming out later in the year. I’ll probably get that too.

I also reviewed this book on Goodreads. View all my reviews.

First acceptance for publication!

Well, it is all excitement here at Webb HQ. A little while ago I submitted a flash fiction piece to Antipodean SF, a long running website devoted to the publication of short form (flash) science/speculative fiction. I’ve been following the Anti-SF site for a while now, in particular through their weekly podcast which keeps me entertained on my walk into work.

(Flash fiction refers to very short stories that are usually in the 500 – 1000 word range. Antipodean SF focuses on the shorter end of that range, around 500 words. It is very interesting to write, because you can generally only explore one idea and you have to make every word count – it instills a real discipline in your work).

Last night Ion Newcombe (the editor of the site and presenter of the podcast) wrote back to me to say that my story (Shipwrecked) had been accepted. My very first publication! As well as the story getting published on the website, it will also be broadcast on the radio/podcast. I’m in the process of trying to work out how to use GarageBand on my Mac to record myself reading the story for that purpose. And I thought recording a voicemail message was stressful!

Ion made some very sensible editorial suggestions – it was interesting to go through an editorial process for the first time. The changes were small but did help the story track better. I can see why authors often talk about how invaluable an editor is – it was excellent to have someone read the story from a completely independent viewpoint, where the only criterion is making the story better.

So, Shipwrecked will be included in issue 164 of Antipodean Speculative Fiction due out in February 2012. And I’ve had to create a bibliography page on the website! And I’m having a day off work!! It doesn’t get much better than this.

(For more about Antipodean SF, have a look at the Magazines and Podcasts pages under the Links menu item on this website).

Kindle magazine subscriptions

I recently subscribed to Asimov’s Science Fiction on the Kindle – the first time I have tried such a thing. It’s interesting to read a set of shorter stories put together into a single package on the actual Kindle device.

Let me start by saying I’m a fan of the Kindle/e-Readers in general. It has had a big impact on my reading (although my “to be read” pile has never been bigger which is a bit of a pain – it gangs up with the massive pile of unwatched DVDs in my lounge room to provide a constant reminder of my poor purchasing habits). However I’m not sure it works as well for this style of publication as it does for a novel. They have tried to make it easier to read – the ability to quickly skip through stories using the five way controller for instance is quite handy. But it doesn’t replicate the layout of the magazines well and the lack of the pictures etc detract from the experience. And to be frank my physical copies of Analog, Aurealis and Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine tend to drift towards the bathroom, where individual stories are consumed when M dismisses my active involvement in giving her a bath so she can play with the bath toys without adult interference. I’m not 100% sure about the compatibility of that much water and an electronic reading device. All in all I find myself gravitating towards the physical collections in the house rather than the virtual.

(I should say that the Kindle application on the iPad works better, if only M would stop stealing it to watch Peppa Pig. I should also say that I am using a second generation Kindle and as of last week the fourth generation Kindle/Kindle Touch/Kindle Fire were announced. Perhaps magazines are dealt with better in the more recent devices, especially the Kindle Fire)

Still, for international subscriptions the Kindle has at least one major advantage – the vagaries of international post makes getting physical magazines sent over to Australia an interesting exercise in anticipation and disappointed expectations. The Kindle version turns up promptly over the ether without a single missing issue.

Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #51 – review

This is the first issue of Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine (ASIM) that I’ve read, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I think I’m going to have to stop saying things like “it was a bit of a mixed bag” in these discussions on magazines – that is true of every one of them.

In this particular issue, I quite liked Basil Hawthorne and the Cliff Tomb by E Catherine Tobler, which describes an old fashioned adventurer and his brush with the spirit of Hatshepsut in one of her tombs. I liked the style of the writing it was a short piece but well rendered. I liked that almost Indiana Jones feel to a bit of swashbuckling adventure.

A Mirror, Darkly by Keith Stevenson struck a chord for different reasons. It is set around where I live, so the references to places I’m familiar with was both cool and a bit distracting. It is a horror story and well written. This kind of story isn’t my usual cup of tea, but I found myself intrigued right through to the (somewhat grisly) end.

I also enjoyed Children of War by Rachel Zakuta. This story, describing some of the aftermath of humanities rebellion against alien overlords, was interesting. I didn’t feel a strong connection with any of the characters, but I thought it described the detail of the universe well in a very short period of time. The end was a little unsatisfying, but did fit in with the rest of the story.

Now you won’t hear me say this often about poetry, but I actually liked Lacking an Adequate Metaphor for the Human Brain by Darrell Schweitzer. The layout of the poem was cool, the content was witty and the subject matter interesting. I like the thought of hyper intelligent but zen like goldfish.

Merchant’s Run by Calie Voorhis was a fun story to read, describing the adventures of Merchant and her ship Old Maid’s Mercy in the far future, and in particular the perils of dealing with bubbles in the pirate trade economy. I liked the style of the writing and it was consistently amusing all the way through.

Nessa 1944 by Ellen C Glass was an enjoyable tale about the evolution of an AI told from the point of view of a high tech cleaner she befriends. The character of Robbie was well realised.

This is a quarterly magazine and there were a boatload of other stories/poems/articles, including:

  • Bonsai by Robin Shortt
  • Aberrant Artifacts Found in Two Owl Indian Mound by Lee Clark Zumpe
  • The Household Debt by Chris Miles
  • The Story of the Ship that Brought Us Here by Stephan Case
  • The Birds, the Bees, and Thylacine by Thoraiya Dyer
  • Following in Harlan’s Footsteps by Sandra M Odell
  • A Cup of Smoke by Rachel Manija Brown
  • The Tectonics of the Misty Mountains by Chris Large
  • Review of the film Limitless by Jacob Edwards

I believe issue # 52 has just come out, looking forward to getting my copy.

Writing process – getting started

A lot of people seem to ask writers about the process they use to write. My first piece of advice about the writing process would be to seek out the advice of people that have been published and are generally successful. For instance, Richard Harland has published a whole website on writing tips, any page of which is going to be more useful than anything I can tell you.

If you’re still reading, the one thing I thought might be useful is a brief discussion about getting started. Most authors who write about writing have a certain level of success already. They have a writing process that has been proven, that works for them. They reflect on the end result of their writing evolution. But all of that isn’t necessarily helpful when you’re attempting to get started. Especially if you’re also working full time in an unrelated career.

After I decided I wanted to do some writing, I faffed about for a long time doing not very much writing at all. I thought about stories. I did a bit of planning, trying to outline structures. I read some books on writing. In short, I danced around the writing process without actually putting finger to keyboard. At the time of penning this post I’m about 55,000 words into the first draft of a novel and have written a few short stories. Nothing I hasten to add that is good enough quality for publishing. And that I guess is part of my point. This post isn’t about producing good quality writing or publishable material. It is about producing anything at all! You can’t even start the journey to publication if you haven’t written a word.

So what changed? How did I go from virtually no output to at least making progress. There were a few key points that made the difference for me.

  • Realising that any writing was good writing

I’ve heard others say this as well so it is not a particularly unique insight, but one major revelation for me was realising that what I wrote in the first instance didn’t have to be encumbered by little things like talent or quality. Any time I would start writing I’d get a couple of paragraphs in and I’d start to worry about whether it was any good. I’d wordsmith, rework, craft and shape trying to turn those couple of paragraphs into something “worthy”. And weeks would slip by. When you’re working full time and are balancing the other aspects of having a life, you don’t actually have much time to write. The loss of momentum created by that kind of fiddling creates huge problems with actually feeling like you are getting anything done (this is very related to the design vs build section below).

So, giving myself permission to write a piece of crap first draft was a big turning point for me. Suddenly I didn’t have to worry about using too many cliched phrases or whether my plot was too derivative. I didn’t have to worry about whether my dialog was too stilted or I was doing too much telling instead of showing. I just had to worry about writing and actually getting things down on page. And that was incredibly freeing.

  • Do it your way

After a career spent typing on a keyboard I’m not a great freehand writer. I find I can’t keep up with my thought processes when I write with a pen and paper. Also while I carried around a notebook and pen with me as much as possible, I found that at times when I might have found 1/2 hour or an hour to write I often didn’t have writing materials to hand. And then when I used scraps of paper etc, I found myself not really collating them or putting them together into anything coherent. All that is a long way of saying that I wasn’t comfortable with the way I was writing and that put road blocks up for me actually producing output.

For me a big change has come with the recent significant increase in the portability of computers. I’ve always like the concept of the laptop but never found the reality lived up to the promise. When the laptop weights a few kilograms and you have to carry it plus a bulky power cord, mouse etc around, it is not realistic to assume you’ll take your computer with you most of the time.

Enter the recent “ultrabook” trend that started with the Macbook Air. I bought an Air a little over a year ago and it has made a massive difference to my writing productivity. With 7 hours worth of battery and weighing not much more than a kilogram, it is entirely feasible for me to take the Air with me to work every day. On those days when I have time to take a lunch break, I take the Air down with me to a cafe and get 1/2 hour writing in. I can’t always predict which days I’ll get to write but now I don’t have to. It has made a huge difference.

(I got a Macbook Air partly because it was the only ultra light laptop around at the time and partly because I really like the Scrivener writing program which is only available on the Mac – although I believe a Windows version is close to coming out. Most manufacturers have been playing catchup and there are a series of ultrabooks with similar weight/size characteristics coming out now if you prefer Windows)

Of course computers aren’t everyones preferred method of writing first drafts. I guess my general point is that you need to find a way of making writing time available to you more often in a form that works for you. Like the “any writing is good writing” point above, it is about creating momentum in your work.

  • What a difference a week makes

Most of the podcasts that I listen to and articles/books that I’ve read by successful published authors talk about having daily word targets. I tried that for a little while, but I found it incredibly frustrating. Life doesn’t always let you sit down and write every day. It would be nice if it could. Perhaps if I was single or at least didn’t have kids it would be different, but I found that even setting a very modest daily target (say 200 words) just wouldn’t happen. And then I’d get discouraged and feel that I wasn’t living up to my goals.

I wish I could remember which podcast I was listening to (it was one of the Sydney Writer’s Centre podcasts on writers and writing), but it was one of the rare ones where the author in question was discussing juggling full time work and writing. And they said “set a weekly word count target”. A simple adjustment but it made all the difference in the world. I set a 2,000 words target per week, to be achieved by Sunday night each week. I started keeping a little log each week listing my word target and the actual word count I achieved. I reviewed the targets each month and if I was ahead of schedule I’d reset my targets to prevent coasting.

It made a huge difference. Sure, some weeks I don’t get there and I have to do some catchup work the next week. I’ve had to do some creative things to find time to work, sometimes working a lunchtime, sometimes locking myself in the study for a few hours on the weekend to make up for lost time. But generally I’ve stuck to the 2,000 word target and it has created some real momentum in my work. Having a week as my basic unit of time rather than a day has created some much needed flexibility in my schedule, and now I feel good about my progress as opposed to always feeling guilty about not measuring up.

  • Design vs build

In my early career I wrote a lot of software. I’d see fellow programmers get stuck in what we’d call “analysis paralysis” where they would rehash the design of their software system over and over again trying to get it perfect. And like any plan, it wouldn’t survive 5 seconds of actually being used. No matter how much time was spent on the design, once you tried to build the software you would have to go back and revise.

In the software world I gravitated towards design methodologies which essentially had you do an 80% design in a very short period of time and get started writing code as soon as possible. This worked as long as you scheduled in time to put your head up and revisit that design during the course of your work to make sure everything was still hanging together.

I have found myself taking a similar approach to writing. I do my “80% structure” up front, but get writing as quickly as possible then rework the structure as I go. I make sure I take time on a regular basis to take a step back and revisit the overall structure. Applying this approach helped me break out of some initial “analysis paralysis” and actually get writing.

And even if your first draft has structure holes, well that is what a second draft is for.

Conclusion

Look, this was just a few of the hurdles I had to getting started writing and how I overcame them. Your issues will probably be different. I’ll add to this post as I think of more things and try to keep it up to date. Leave comments below about your own experiences – I’d love to hear about them. And don’t forget, this isn’t about getting published or writing award winning work. This is just about writing anything at all!

Aurealis #44 – review

I subscribed to the magazine in mid-2011 and they recently sent out a copy of issue #44. This edition was published in 2010 and afterwards the magazine went into an extended hiatus (I believe the editor, Stuart Mayne, retired). According to the Aurealis website the next edition should be out in late 2011/early 2012. I hope so, this was a good read.

I really enjoyed gunning for a tinker man by Jason Fischer, a story based in a post-apocalyptic world where the main character, Lanyard, is a fallen “jesusman” (a caste of warrior priest types who can kill the ‘witches’ that prey on the remnants of the human race). I also enjoyed for the want of a jesusman that I heard on the Terra Incognita Speculative Fiction podcast (number 18) set in the same world. The characters are not clean cut hero types and I enjoyed the way the world was described and realised. Fairly gritty and violent in places – not for the faint of heart or those that like a neat happy ending. I understand from Mr Fischer’s website that he is working on a full novel set in the same world, which I am now very much looking forward to reading.

I also particularly enjoyed Storm in a T-Suit by Simon Petrie (a good rescue story based in an interesting depiction of the frontiers of colonisation of the solar system), The Death of Skandar Taranisaii by K J Taylor (love a bit of swords and sandals action) and A Billion Tiny Lights by Adam Ford (I am quite fond of the flash fiction format at the moment).

The other stories in the edition were fine stories, overall I liked the magazine a lot.

  • Runners by Christopher Snape
  • We All Fall Down by Kirstyn McDermott
  • Jumbuck by Christopher Green

Analog – September 2011 – review

This month’s Analog is a bit of a mixed bag. I’ve been enjoying the serialised novella  Energized by Edward M. Lerner. It is part III of IV this month and the race by Russian sponsored terrorists to use a prototype microwave power transferring satellite as a weapon of mass destruction gathers pace. There is some interesting exploration of potential alternative energy sources when the world runs short of usable oil. The action in space is more interesting than on the ground, but this story has kept me engaged all the way through and I’m looking forward to the finale in next month’s issue.

I also enjoyed Asteroid Monte by Craig DeLancey – a short space detective story (but then I’ve always been a sucker for a space detective story). It’s a pretty straight forward and quickly resolved mystery with perhaps slightly too much time on the setup given the length of the overall story, but still I enjoyed it.

The other stories in the issue were OK, but none of them stood out for me. I don’t know that I would strongly recommend them but none of them were offensively bad or anything.

  • Therapeutic Mathematics and the Physics of Curve Balls by Gray Rineheart
  • Helix of Friends by Carl Frederick
  • Hostile Environment by Emily Mah
  • The Chaplain’s Assistant by Brad R. Torgersen