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A recent study showed English is the hardest language to read.  I can believe it.  Have you looked at my words of the year list?  Those things are crazy…

Favorite Living Author George RR Martin has been announcing the new casting in the HBO series A Game of Thrones.  This week has had some great casting.  Instead of trying to hijack his words, let me just point you to the relevant posts on his blog:

Ian Glen as Ser Jorah Mormont

Tamzin Merchant as  Daenerys Targaryen (Great Great Casting!)

Richard Maddenas Robb Stark

Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner as Ayra and Sansa Stark

Alfie Allen as Theon Greyjoy

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Jaime Lannister

This new folks join Sean Bean as Eddard Stark, Jennifer Ehle as Catelyn Stark, and Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister.

Good Stuff!

IO9 made a list of favorite last lines from science fiction stories.  It came out about a month ago, but, as always, I’m running on a back log.  I’m still trying to hammer out the last line on my own story and my current inspiration du jour probably comes from Gibson’s Neuromancer.

” So what’s the score?  How are things different?  You running the world now?  You God?”

“Things aren’t different.  Things are things.”

Somewhere, very close, the laughter that wasn’t laughter.

He never saw Molly again.

I like how the ending wraps together very nicely and completely but with enough amibiguity to keep it interesting.  It’s more than just a ‘leave room for a sequel ambiguity’ but an actual confusion on the part of the world of what might come next.  I find it very realistic and intriguing.

The lines Io9 chose are pretty good too…

Adieu!

Seven Pillars of Wisdom

Seven Pillars of Wisdom is T.W Lawrence’s (Lawrence of Arabia) notes and autobiographical memoir of his time served as a liason officer during the Arab Revolt.  Way way back in the day I reviewed a book called Eastern Approaches, the story of Fitzroy MacLean, one of the first SAS officers and an english member of diplomatic core that explored Soviet Central Asia.  I mention both of these books because they’re similar: heroic individuals who explored the harshest parts of the world during war time and then wrote about their story with singular humility and deference.

Seven Pillars of Wisdom is not a general history of world war 2 or even specifically the Arab Revolt that ended Turkish dominance in the middle east.  There are enough blanks in the narrative to greatly encourage further study.  Presumably Lawrence was writing for his contemporaries who already knew the political details of the causes and aftermath, but after almost a hundred years there’s a lot lacking.

What it lacks from the air, it makes up for on the ground.  Lawrence nearly maps the entire desert for the benefit of his readers, remarking on the snakes, the various wells visited, the character of the various people and towns.  He follows the revolt from the Arab position and in that capacity is near flawless.

As a story, the best part is Lawrence’s own transition.  He begins as a rather reluctant staff officer who nevertheless is eager to help the Arab cause.  As the revolt progresses he becomes increasingly disillusioned by his own place in what is likely a fraud.  England’s support for the Arab revolt is hardly an act of generosity with Turkey a German ally.  As the tolls of war grow Lawrence finds himself the near leader of a revolt he’s lost his own position in.

It’s a rather terrible story, but it’s phenomenal reading.  The writing is rather archaic and Lawrence does spend a great deal on details, the texture of the land for example, that most readers would probably rather do without, but as a complete work it’s a rousing adventure story of the finest calibre.

A note worth mentioning, there are a handful of different versions of the tale.  Lawrence himself repeatedly revised his work, mostly to edit down it’s original length.  I read a version stored for free here.  (The book is out of copyright.)

Final note:  I’m still editing.  It’s going tolerably well, if only very slowly.  I’m hopeful that I get it all together this year.

I finished Michael Stackpole’s Age of Discovery series about a month ago.  Predictably enough it got lost in the shuffle.  I’ve started to edit my novel (le sigh!) so I haven’t had much time to skim my notes.

I’ve been fairly liberal in my mentions and praise of Mr. Stackpole of the last few months.  His series on writing. “The Secrets” has been interesting, helpful, and inspiring.  I felt a near obligation to read a few of his books since I was tossing his name around so cavalierly without having read anything of his since the Rogue Squadron Star Wars series a decade ago.

I do not have much of a review prepared and I’m working off of memories that are already starting to fade.  Age of Discovery is trilogy.  (A Secret Atlas, Cartomancy, A New World)  The series was entertaining by most reasonable measures, but for whatever reason I did not find them as compelling as others I have read in the last few months.  As the last books on the list, I may have suffered from book fatigue, or perhaps I’ve grown out of his writing, or maybe I’ve simply moved away from fantasy in my interests.  I still read George RR Martin and await his next book eagerly, so I haven’t left it completely behind, but in this series the spark of magic held less of an interest for me than in the past.

I found many of the characters a bit too ‘in the know’.  Their indecisiveness and hesitation when faced with titanic revelations came across as overly quick and flippant.  They managed to adjust themselves to the consequences of the world within a chapter or two.  I admit there were long stretches of the book that were pretty fascinating, but the catharsis of seeing the character’s resolve their struggles was just too quick for tastes.

I’d be remiss if I gave a bad review.  They do not deserve that, per se, certainly not for me.  Age of Discovery is nothing if not a creative adventure.  Had the books been shorter I’d call it an amusing jaunt, but at 600 pages each in my edition they started to become a slog.  Again, 1800 pages does tend to bring on a bit of fatigue.

Unfortunately I don’t have any books new books on the horizon for a bit.  Editing is my highest priority.  I do, however, have an upcoming review of T.E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom on the list.  I’ll probably manage to get that down later in the week.

A bit of blog spam today.

50 Free Resources That Will Improve Your Writing Skills

Call me nit-picky, but part being an effective writer is cutting out the wasted words. ‘50 Free Resources for Better Writing’, ‘50 Free Writing Resources’, ‘Improve Your Writing: 50 Free Resources’…

These have probably been around for ages, but I just found them.

Medieval Demographics

Medieval Demographics Calculator

Sometimes, you just want to know how many furriers the average medieval big city had. (Answer: 160 for a population of 40,000.)

Does anyone know of any similar ‘culture’ demographic calculators? These things are pretty invaluable for setting up worlds that make sense.

Enjoy!

Read and enjoy!

Io9 published (about a month ago, what can I say, I’m working on a backlog), an article on the novels that originated their own science fiction sub genres.  A few are obvious ones (Neuromancer and Cyberpunk, Frankenstein and Gothic Science Fiction.)   Others are a bit more obscure, at least as far as my experience.

As expected the comments are filled with suggestions on alternate books to fill the various categories.  Interesting stuff!

Worth reading is the link to the ‘cranky essay’ looking further in cyberpunk.  (Relinked here.)

I’m a bit behind on my articles.  I finished the Graveyard book five or six days ago, but only got it out as an article two days ago.  I started reading The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, by Michael Chabon, almost immediately after and I finished it two days ago.  I’m currently reading a book on interstellar propulsion technologies.  I’ll probably finish that in a few days and won’t get an article out for weeks.  Oh, and I also read a book about terraforming.  I have no idea when I’ll finally write about that one.

The cover is gorgeous.  It’s probably the most aethesthetically interesting and appropriate cover I’ve ever seen.  Michael Chabon is an established author so they seem to have given him the royal treatment.

Admittedly, I have no read any of his previous works.  I picked this one up predominately on the fact that it won the 2007 Nebula Award for  Best Novel.

It’s a truly strange book.

Set in an alternate timeline where only the Bomb stopped Germany and Israel collapsed, the Jewish diaspora is given a temporary home in Sitka, Alaska.  Forty years later the territory is set to revert to Alaskan control.  Meyer Landsman, a Sitka cop, has a crime on his hands and a world crumbling around him.

That’s the short synopsis, but it leaves a lot in the air.  It’s around 600 pages, my copy, and half of them are Yiddish.  That’s an exageration, but enough of the the names,the places and, most frustratingly, the words are in Yiddish that reading the thing requires either a working knowledge of that language, enough dedication to look them up, or enough flexibility to simply fly over them and hope the meaning becomes obvious.

As a science fiction story and an alternate timeline one at that, there is the expectation that I’ll be tossed into a world where things are somewhat confusing.  That’s just part of what science fiction is about.  Skimming over the Amazon reviews, a lot of the readers are people that have followed Michael Chabon, instead of science fiction, and they haven’t much cared for what they’ve found.  They consider the book and jumbled mess and have pretty much left it at that.

I wouldn’t consider that a particular fair appraisal.  The book does get confusing, but it’s not because of the alternate timeline aspects or Jewish culture or even the base plot.  The book is confusing because it’s written in what I can only describe as the most peculiar style I’ve come across in a modern book.  Third person present tense writing just happens to be somewhat obscure.  ’Meyer Landsmen looks across the room and sees Beronshtyn.’  For the first two hundred pages that tense and tone alone kept me thoroughly offguard.

I finished the book and as I got deeper I managed to absorb the writing.  It’s an odd style, but it works.  In some places it seems terribly awkward.  You have the intimacy of the first person tense, but with too many names being thrown around.

Further along the plot seems to take larger and larger leeps.  By the end, I admit that, not very much of it seemed plausible.  It kept along a nice, though slow, pace for most of the book, but the last third hung by a few tenuous strings until it ended with something of a thud.  I wouldn’t say I disliked the book, but I would hardly call it fulfilling.  It was like the first book in a trilogy ending cliffhanging that’s too final and too uninspiring.  By the end I was pretty much tired with the characters.  They’d gone through their change at snail’s past and what they really needed was a long nap.

From this book and from the reviews I’ve read Mr. Chabon seems to be a very talented writer and rather adventurous as far as his style and topics.  This particular novel might have fallen a bit flat, bit I’ll have to keep an eye out for another book of his.