Friday Flash: Fourth Birthday Parade

This fridayflash is for the fourth anniversary bloghop at the friday flash website. The idea is to write a story 400 words long about the 4th anniversary/birthday of something. After several false starts, I finally managed. I was inspired by this picture:

A few excerpts from the Annals of Dead or Lost Colonies:

Dear Julie,

The colony has just gotten the order for the hyperspace module. It’s taken a year, but we finally have it. This will be the first of many letters until you can come here.

I have a house. It’s small, but it has a garden. It’s ours, free and clear.

The hypo gardens are not doing well. Except for the lantern cherries. I don’t understand it. There is a group studying the problem.

Yours always,

Ben

 

Dear Julie,

I miss you. Will you come soon? I’ve added two bedrooms to the house for the children. There is plenty of space. Hyperspace travel is very safe, don’t worry.

The colony celebrated our third birthday with a grand parade. I was in the lead float, as the directory of horticulture. It was quite wonderful.

The lantern cherry have become our biggest – our only! – export. They are in demand and tasty. I suppose it’s good they grow bigger here than anywhere else. They look more like giant melons than cherries. But I don’t quite understand why nothing else growing.

Yours always,

Ben

 

Dear Julie,

I’ve been promoted, dear. I am now president of the horticulture department. The last president died quite unexpectedly in the Greenhouse A. Poor Jerry. At least he died at work. Greenhouse A is where we first started the lantern cherries. We have ten, now.

The colony’s fourth birthday is in a month and we are providing cherries for the decoration. The last of the flowers died months ago and we haven’t been successful in growing any others. Not even marigolds. It’s baffling.

I do wish you would come. I know the ships scare you, but hyperspace travel is so fast these days. You wouldn’t have to spend months on a ship in normal space. I dearly want to see the children, dear.

Love yours,

Ben

 

Dear Julie,

Don’t come! Stay away! God, I am glad you never came.

The cherries destroyed the parade. It was mad. They exploded and attacked and will take over the planet shortly.

This will be the last message I send.

I am going to blow up the greenhouses and take as many of the cherries as I can.

This is why nothing else grew. They’ve been devouring them, the murderous, subtle lantern cherries.

I bet they killed poor Jerry.

Yours forever,

Ben

Share this:

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Yes, I chose to start Necessity’s Child yesterday exactly because the title starts with N and I needed an N post. Also, this book has been on my TBR list for a couple of weeks now and I figure it’s time to move the book to the top of the pile. It’s Liaden Universe book, which are usually fun.

The first two lines are:

Inside the duct, it was hot and wet – nothing new there, thought Kezzi, shifting her weight carefully. The metal snapped in complaint, and she made herself be still.

-  Necessity’s Child by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller

This is a Baen book and the first nine chapters are available on Baen’s website.

H is for Hard Fantasy

I may be behind the times, but I never heard of hard fantasy before. In fact, I only discovered this sub-genre on a Goodreads discussion forum. (One of those where people try to figure out what the difference is between science fiction and fantasy.)

The person provided quite a few links, including a wiki article. Wikipedia says the Recluce Saga, a Song of Ice and Fire and Magic, Inc. are examples of hard fantasy. Looking through Goodreads and LibraryThing shelves, people have also tagged Lord of the Rings, the Farseer trilogy and The Family Trade as hard fantasy.

There is an article that was posted in 2008, but I’ve never heard of hard fantasy until now. Well, shows what I know, huh?

From what I understand, hard fantasy is the fantasy where magic has rules. Truthfully, I am stunned there is even a sub-genre for this.

Though, yeah, the magical rules of most fantasy don’t have scientific rigor. Some books do treat magic just like it was a science, have schools and everything. Though truthfully, of the books I’ve listed here, only the Recluce Saga comes close to doing that. The others? I don’t know.

I haven’t read a lot of hard science fiction. Maybe that’s where my own disconnect is coming from. But most science fiction don’t have a lot of a scientific rigor, either.

But since people have tagged them as hard fantasy, I don’t think I understand what makes a book hard fantasy at all.

Bestseller for 54 Weeks So Far: Fifty Shades of Grey

I scroll down the New York Times combined print & e-book fiction bestseller list and I see:

Fifty Shades of Grey has been on the list for 54 weeks. I have never read this book and I knew it had been around for a long time, but I didn’t imagine 1.03 years.

I didn’t know it was possible to stay on the bestseller lists for years on end. Being 11 on the countdown in a year seems pretty good to me.

Maybe I should read it. Clearly, there is something about innocent college student falling in love with a man with particular taste for sexual torture that I am missing.

Edited to add: yes, yes, I was thinking months for some reason. Not weeks. It’s a little over a year. Still surprised.

Prayer to the Computer Gods

I am reading a science fiction book where the prayers go something like this:

Computer Angel

Code not our sins; let them be erased and not ROMed in Thy disks.

As we believe and act in righteousness, so shall we be boosted into the Orbit of fulfillment.

Deliver us from the Crash; from the Hard Rads; spare us.

As we believe, so let us Thy Holy Federation be restored in our time, O Spirit of the of the Stars; and if the burden of a faithless generation’s sin be to great, may our souls be received into the Net. Endfile.

It is hilarious. Instructive, too, because this is an author who has turned prayer into exposition. Clearly, at some point in past there was a serious computer Crash that caused the people to turn computers into gods and the internet into heaven.

But so funny! Not to the characters, because religion is a serious business. But I am just cracking up at the mental picture of my computer as an angel. LOL

Also, the Endfile at the end of the file. Funny! LOL

Craft of Writing Science Fiction That Sells: You Are A Writer

I was reading The Craft of Writing Science Fiction That Sells by Ben Bova and this quote from Ernest Hemingway jumped out at me:

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that it all happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.

I think this is the best idea of what makes a writer that I have ever seen. That it comes from a writer whose works I don’t usually enjoy strikes me as odd.

I think this is the ideal. You want all that, you want the reader to feel the story so deeply that they don’t forgot, so deeply that they come back to the story over and over again.You want the reader to get lost in the story and never want to leave. You want the reader to care deeply about the character’s sorrow and joy.

I also think it’s incredibly rare and that stories that do this won’t be the same from everyone. It’s too subjective.

Even so. I think to feel that way, you need a character you really connect to. I mean, as a reader I know I do. If a book doesn’t have a character I like, it’s very hard for me to read it. (This is why Game of Thrones remains unread on my kindle.)

And by connecting, I don’t mean the reader has to see themselves in the character. I really, really don’t see myself in Eve Dallas, Jaenelle Angelline or Miles Vorkosigan – three characters I love most and series I reread frequently. But I still connect, I still sympathize with them and I still like spending time with them.

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• “Write One True Sentence” – Ernest Hemmingway (garyware.me)
• Ernest Hemingway wrote 47 endings to A Farewell To Arms (telegraph.co.uk)

Teaser Tuesday: Clockwork Heart

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

* Grab your current read
* Open to a random page
* Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
* BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
* Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

My Teasers:

He walked up, the dress draped over one arm. “You don’t have a choice. Cassi, I’m going to sew her into this. You’ll have to cut her out of it tonight. Use the back seam.”

- Clockwork Heart by Dru Pagliassotti

H is for Hugo

The Hugo nominees were announced on April 7. I am ashamed to say I haven’t read any of them. I’ve heard of them, of course, but I haven’t actually read them.

Best Novel

2011 Hugo Award Trophy

1. Among Others by Jo Walton (Tor)
2. A Dance With Dragons by George R. R. Martin (Bantam Spectra)
3. Deadline by Mira Grant (Orbit)
4. Embassytown by China Miéville (Macmillan / Del Rey)
5. Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey (Orbit)

Except for Embassytown and Leviathan Wakes, none of these are on my mental TBR list. So I can’t exactly decide which book should win.

I was better last year; I’d actually read most of the nominees. (Or made an attempt to read them. Before they were nominated even.)

I suppose I am not surprised Leviathan Wakes made this list; it has shown up over and over again on all my various online activities: twitter, G+, my Google reader, random browsing. It sounds like a good science fiction adventure, but I’ve not managed to get it yet. Later.

Deadline is a zombie novel, and I don’t know, but the blurb I read a while back (second or third in a zombie series?) did not inspire me. Can’t remember what it was actually about, though.

A Dance With Dragons, well, I haven’t managed to finish the first book in this series and I haven’t been keeping up with the show. So, no go.

I understand this story was highly anticipated and all that. But I doubt it could stand-alone and for some reason I had the impression the nominees were books that could stand by themselves, if they had to. Maybe Deadline can’t, I don’t know, but it sounds like urban fantasy and books early in urban fantasy series usually can stand alone. So I don’t think it breaks the pattern like A Dance With Dragons.

Among Others seems to be about a girl who opposes her evil witch mother, causes damage in said opposition and is than sent to boarding school by her father for her cheek and there she experiments with magic, promptly attracting her evil mother’s attention. Or so I surmise from the description.

Short Stories

1. “The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees”, E. Lily Yu (Clarkesworld)
2. “The Homecoming”, Mike Resnick (Asimov’s)
3. “Movement”, Nancy Fulda (Asimov’s)
4. “The Paper Menagerie”, Ken Liu (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction)
5. “Shadow War of the Night Dragons: Book One: The Dead City: Prologue”, John Scalzi (Tor.com)

Ha! I have actually managed to read most of these. All except The Homecoming. I am not sure how I missed it. Personally, I want the Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees to win. Though The Paper Menagerie is good, too. Take note; two of these short stories are from Asimov. Last year Asimov had three short stories nominated.

There are other categories: Best Novella, Best Novelette, Best Related Work, Best Graphic Story, Best Dramatic Presentation: Long Form, Best Dramatic Presentation: Short Form, Best Semiprozine, Best Fanzine, Best Fancast, Best Editor: Long Form, Best Editor: Short Form, Best Professional Artist, Best Fan Artist, Best Fan Writer, The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.

I am not sure what the difference between a novella and novelette, except length. But I don’t read a lot of them so I have no opinion on them. Or the other categories. The novel and short story are the ones I pay attention to. But I did see Dr. Who has three nominations.

Dreaming About Your Favorite Characters

You know you are a fan when you find yourself dreaming about your favorite characters. I dreamed about Miles Vorkosigan, bombs and secrets yesterday.

Miles Vorkosigan is the lead character in space opera series by Lois McMaster Bujold. His father died in the last book and Miles became Count in his place. Lois McMaster Bujold is one of my favorite authors and I love love this series.

In my dream, someone was throwing bombs at Miles and chasing him down a shiny silver hallway. Than he was with the Council of Counts, defending himself against some charge.

The charge came about because the King (Gregor) declassified some of his earlier escapades. There was a resulting public outcry and some of his fellow Counts (the dream didn’t tell me who! Bad dream!) was using his blackops assignments to discredit him. This part I knew the way you know stuff in dreams.

I have dreamed about my own characters before, but I’ve never dreamed about other people’s characters. Has anyone else? It is strange. All I have to say if I am dreaming up Miles Vorkosigan stories on my own, I really really want a new one to read.

Are you listening, Lois McMaster Bujold? Could you please write a new Miles book? I like your fantasy stuff, but they really don’t compare to the Miles Vor series!

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Book Review: 1984

From Bookreads:
Written in 1948, 1984 was George Orwell’s chilling prophecy about the future. And while 1984 has come and gone, Orwell’s narrative is timelier than ever. 1984 presents a startling and haunting vision of the world, so powerful that it is completely convincing from start to finish. No one can deny the power of this novel, its hold on the imaginations of multiple generations of readers, or the resiliency of its admonitions a legacy that seems only to grow with the passage of time.:

I read 1984 for Banned Book Week. It is a pretty horrifying dystopia.

1984 is so well detailed, it’s easy to believe in. But at the same time, it’s hard to believe anyone swallows the Party’s lies. In fact, the love interest doesn’t believe half of what the Party says. But she doesn’t care, either, and that is very hard for me to credit.

The main character, Winston Smith, works as a clerk in the Records Department of the Ministry of Truth. His job is to revise historical documents to reflect the current Party line.  If (when?) newspapers go completely digital, this would be scarier, because someone could come along behind you and change an article. You would never know.  The idea is pretty damn scary.

Julia, the love interest, is a practical and live-in-now sort of young woman. The Party approves of sex only for reproductive purposes, but she indulges in it for pleasure. She’s better at getting around the Party than Winston, but that’s because she grew up with its restrictions.

The world is shown through Julia and Winston’s love affair. The constant threat, the constant surveillance and the necessary secrecy of their trysts.  The TVs have microphones; if they had personal computers, it would be monitored, too.  Even the décor is bugged.

The characters are who they are. You could call them cardboard characters. Their whole purpose is to show the horror of their world. If the characters were more real, better rounded, I think 1984 would be a lot scarier. Maybe scary enough to tip the book into horror.
The last line stands out in my mind:

He loved Big Brother.

After being caught and tortured, after knowing the Party is lying to him, he learns to love Big Brother. But that’s the point of torture and re-education: to love Big Brother. I think that’s Stockholm syndrome at its finest.

Winston gets out, but he only goes to work a couple of days a week. He drinks morning, noon and night. He’ll probably drink himself to death.