Tag: books

The Sad Puppy Hugo Slate

Larry Correia recommends the following slate to the registered Hugo voters:

Best Novel

Warbound, the Grimnoir Chronicles – Larry Correia – Baen

A Few Good Men – Sarah Hoyt – Baen

Novella

“The Butcher of Khardov” – Dan Wells – Skull Island Expeditions

“The Chaplain’s Legacy” – Brad Torgersen – Analog

Novellete

“The Exchange Officers” – Brad Torgersen – Analog

“Opera Vita Aeterna” – Vox Day – The Last Witchking

Best Fanzine

Elitist Book Reviews – Steve Diamond

Best Editor Long Form

Toni Weisskopf

Best Editor Short Form

Bryan Thomas Schmidt

Campbell Award

Marko Kloos

Frank Chadwick

It should be interesting to see how this all turns out. But after John Scalzi – how entirely unsurprising – laid the groundwork for the open politicization of the Hugo Award, it was inevitable that what had always been done quietly behind closed doors would come out in the open.

In addition to the Sad Puppy slate I am adding the following works:

Best Short Story
Port Call – Michael Z. Williamson – Baen
The Krumhorn and Misericorde – Dave Freer – Baen
Dog’s Body – Sarah A. Hoyt – Baen
Failsafe – Karen Bovenmyer – Iron Dragon Books

Best Related Work
Writing Down the Dragon – Tom Simon – Bondwine Books
On Training for War – Tom Kratman – Baen
A Terrible Thing to Lose:Zombie Science and Science Fiction in John Ringo’s
Under a Graveyard Sky – Tedd Roberts – Baen

Best Professional Artist
Kirk DouPonce

Too religious, too difficult

This article on Gene Wolfe summarizes the current problem of traditional SF/F publishing. If the man who is widely considered to be among the greatest living SF writers could not get published today, then it should be entirely apparent that there is a serious problem in the industry:

Lots of novel readers—from the highest brow to the lowest—nod politely when the science-fiction writer Gene Wolfe is mentioned. But even among science-fiction fans, one gets the sense that they’re saying, “Yes, yes, we know how good he is, but we’d rather talk about such bestselling authors as Neil Gaiman or Robert Jordan, Laurel Hamilton or Neal Stephenson.” As Glenn Reynolds, the inveterate science-fiction enthusiast and popular blogger of Instapundit.com, recently wrote, “Gene Wolfe is a superb writer, but I’m not crazy about his storytelling.” I recently asked a veteran New York editor whether Wolfe could find a publisher today if he were just coming along as a young writer. “Probably not,” she admitted. His writing is too religious, too difficult, and too strange.

I think one could quite reasonably question if JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, or HP Lovecraft could get published today. Tolkien might well be accounted too difficult, Lovecraft too strange, and Lewis is more openly religious than Wolfe. It’s fascinating, too, to note that Wolfe appears to have anticipated my own argument that the philosophical problem of evil and suffering is not a problem for Christianity.

It is a familiar charge of modern atheism that the existence of pain argues against the existence of God. “For some time it has seemed to me,” Wolfe insists, “that it would be even easier to maintain the position that pain proves or tends to prove God’s reality.”

Pain necessarily implies pleasure just as shadow implies light and evil implies good. The opposite of pain is not pleasure, but rather insensate nothingness, the gray, unfeeling goo of the no-believers.

THE ALTAR OF HATE

Today Castalia House published my collection of short stories entitled THE ALTAR OF HATE. It consists of one novella, one poem, and eight short stories. Some of the stories will be familiar to longtime Dread Ilk, having been originally available on my old Eternal Warriors web site back in the day or published in Stupefying Stories. As the collection is dedicated to Bane, who would have enjoyed its dark and occasionally sinister bent, it contains the poem that is here on this site, “Bane Walks On”. And there is a new story, one with which I am particularly pleased, that involves the application of a particular Maupassant mechanism to the futuristic world of Quantum Mortis.

The cover illustration was created by our newest artist, Jeremiah, who did an excellent job working under the direction of JartStar. The title story was inspired by a visit to Venice some years ago; I very much doubt any writer can visit that eerie, decaying city without feeling the proddings of a brooding, water-logged muse. I very much like the cover art, as in addition to the Venetian theme it reminds me a little of the paperback edition of Mona Lisa Overdrive, an image that Psykosonik once used as the cover of our demo tape.

From the initial reviews:

“Each story has its appeal across multiple genres, although to me the
story from which the title is derived was particularly moving.”

“From an eldritch tale blended with computer insider humor, an ode to a
fallen friend, to science fiction with a twist, this is a good
collection of Vox’s shorter writings to date.”

“The stories move along, but one feels the uneasy eyes of the abyss
staring back as you progress, as it were, through a darkened ancient
forest. Only an author of the first rank could achieve this.”

In other Castalia news, fans of Tom’s Rathaverse will be pleased to note this comment to a reviewer hoping for a sequel: “Look for The Court-Martial of Ratha Flower Wood, maybe before Christmas.”

I RAGAZZI NON PIANGONO

Speaking of matters Italian, this seems a good time to mention that thanks to the collaboration between Castalia House’s bestselling author and Signore Bonello, the Rathaverse has been unleashed upon an unsuspecting Italian market. I RAGAZZI NON PIANGONO by Tom Kratman is now available on Amazon. I can personally attest that the translation does justice to the original text even if the translation of the title is not quite literal. A more accurate translation would have been I GRANDI RAGAZZI NON PIANGONO or perhaps QUESTI RAGAZZONI NON PIANGERANNO, but in the interest of actually fitting the title on the cover, we modified that to the Italian equivalent of “The Boys Don’t Cry”.

Descrizione: I RAGAZZI NON PIANGONO è un romanzo breve dell’autore di fantascienza
militare Tom Kratman, famoso per Un deserto chiamato pace e per la sua
serie Carrera. La trama segue il ciclo di vita di un Ratha, un super
carro armato senziente del futuro, che combatte con senso del dovere le
battaglie dell’Uomo in decine di mondi alieni. La creatura saprà però
ancora grata ai suoi creatori una volta che scoprirà di avere una
coscienza? E per quanto tempo una macchina da guerra intelligente con
potenza di fuoco sufficiente per radere al suolo una città sarà
soddisfatta di rimanere uno schiavo obbediente?

One mildly amusing translation note: because Italians don’t have the letters “J” or “H” in their names, I took the liberty of changing the names of the Ratha developers to Italian names like “Giovanni” and “Loredana”. The translator objected to this on the basis of Italians being familiar with English names in their science fiction, and more importantly, because he felt the behavior of the characters was much more English than properly Italian.

I resisted the urge to ask if this was because the characters concerned were actually doing their jobs rather than sitting around drinking espresso, smoking cigarettes and reading La Gazzetta dello Sport and Chi; it turned out that he felt the problem was that no Italian superior would ever refer to a female employee by her first name unless he was romantically involved with her. And while there was a mild suggestion of this in the English text, he felt that it was the wrong way to go. So, we stuck with the English names.

Anche, stiamo cercando per ancora cinque lettori italiani per rivedere questo libro nuovo, quindi, se parle italiano e vuole leggerlo, spedirmi un email, per favore.

The German translation, GROßE JUNGS WEINEN NICHT will follow within a week or so. And on Monday, Castalia will announce a new release.

UPDATE: Apparently Italians are massive Tom Kratman fans. He’s already number one in fantascienza: #1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Foreign Languages > Italian > Fantasy, Horror & Science Fiction

Holding their breath and turning blue

It should be obvious that women cannot and will never be as effective as men if they are going to come right out and openly declare that they will not do their jobs because they find doing so to be offensive:

Rebecca Davies, who writes the children’s books blog at Independent.co.uk, tells me that she is equally sick of receiving “books which have been commissioned solely for the purpose of ‘getting boys reading’ [and which have] all-male characters and thin, action-based plots.” What we are doing by pigeon-holing children is badly letting them down. And books, above all things, should be available to any child who is interested in them.

Happily, as the literary editor of The Independent on Sunday, there is something that I can do about this. So I promise now that the newspaper and this website will not be reviewing any book which is explicitly aimed at just girls, or just boys. Nor will The Independent’s books section. And nor will the children’s books blog at Independent.co.uk. Any Girls’ Book of Boring Princesses that crosses my desk will go straight into the recycling pile along with every Great Big Book of Snot for Boys. If you are a publisher with enough faith in your new book that you think it will appeal to all children, we’ll be very happy to hear from you. But the next Harry Potter or Katniss Everdeen will not come in glittery pink covers. So we’d thank you not to send us such books at all.

Duly noted. I wonder how long this policy will last before it quietly goes by the wayside? Probably right around the time that a massively successful book explicitly aimed at just girls, or just boys, is published. If I were managing The Independent, I would immediately fire both women for their open refusal to simply do their jobs and review the books that are submitted for review.

This is a particularly egregious case of the gatekeepers attempting to decide what is permissible to read and what is not. The ironic thing is that they probably think the Spanish Inquisition’s list of proscribed books is one of the great crimes of human history. Would you trust these people’s opinions on any book now?

The ridiculous thing is that there is nothing to prevent a boy from reading a pink sparkly book, or to prevent a girl from reading a book with a Frazetta-style painting of a young man holding a severed orc’s head on the cover.

Of course, they’re already walking back their idiotic public posturing: We’re not planning to judge books by their cover….

Sure you’re not. And if sex-specific books demean all children, don’t sex-specific changing rooms and bathrooms demean all adults?

THE STARS CAME BACK

Castalia House has been receiving an increasing number of submissions, so I didn’t think anything of it when Rolf Nelson sent me a copy of The Stars Came Back. He said that it had been self-published for several months, which wasn’t necessarily a problem, (although we tend to favor unpublished submissions), and provided a link to the Amazon site as well. I had a quick look at the book, as is my custom before deciding to which of our ten crack Readers I would send it; the First Line of Defense is fairly ruthless in their rejections of anything they believe does not fit the model. And my first thought was “what the hell is this?” This was apparently not the first time such a thought had been inspired by the book, for as it turned out, as all three Readers immediately came back to me expressing precisely the same sentiment before they’d really even started it.

One Reader threw up his hands and said he simply couldn’t deal with the script-style format. Another one read it and said that he loved the story and would recommend acceptance if it was rewritten in conventional format. The third, and I quote, said: “this story is like gold” and urged immediate acceptance as is.

Well, that’s tremendously helpful…. But it did indicate a closer look into the matter. So I went to Amazon to read through the… 55+ customer reviews? Tom Kratman’s Big Boys Don’t Cry has been selling very well and has only 31 reviews to date. Then I had the chance to read a bit more myself and the reason for the number of reviews began to make sense. Let’s just say that if Firefly still holds a warm place in your heart, you will very much enjoy Mr. Nelson’s work. Not that it is an imitation; it is not. But it hits a similar set of chords, only in a more intelligent manner.

Then it struck me: if so many people were enthusiastically reading this book despite its unusual format and a cover that tended to suggest “this book is self-published”, then we were obviously looking at a considerable story-telling talent. And at the end of the day, that is exactly what Castalia House wants in its novelists. So, I promptly called Mr. Nelson and offered him a contract, which he signed after consultation with his lawyer. As I mentioned in a previous post on Brad Torgersen’s paean to Baen, we look at Baen as an admirable model to follow and we are as interested in helping talented new authors like Mr. Nelson develop their talent as we are in publishing established authors like Mr. John C. Wright, who are already at the top of both their game and the SF genre.

Consider some of the reviews from those who have read The Stars Came Back:

  • Wow. It took about 5 pages to get used to the screenplay format. After
    that, the format really added to the mental images that the dialogue
    creates. The story is fast paced and physics used are consistent. By
    that I mean the physical laws the author imagines work the same way each
    time. That consistency definitely helps the storyline. Several of the
    other raters compare this to works by John Ringo, I would agree and
    probably add Larry Correia as well. Not only is The Stars Came Back
    enjoyable it is also thought provoking. 
  •  Without a doubt, the best read I have had in many a month – and I
    average four novels per week. I was deeply engrossed in this novel and
    was presently surprised by the content, the plot, and the editing. 
  •  The plot in this tale doesn’t just thicken, it twists through about
    seven different dimensions, but maintains a most compelling theme. In
    this imagined world, the attributes of humans that lead to the most
    success are exactly as one would hope would work in OUR world – honesty,
    independence, perseverance, reliability, morality. The protagonist
    isn’t a perfect person, and knows it, but strives to do right by those
    whose lives he touches, and to avoid having wrong done to him.
  •  I can’t say enough good things about this story. Excellent plot;
    interesting, plausible characters; great pacing and storyline
    development; and just fistfuls of nods to Star Wars, Star Trek,
    Firefly/Serenity, the Bolo series (and Hammer’s Slammers), Lovecraft
    mythos (kind of tangentially, but still there), The Forever War, and
    probably several other fictional sci-fi universes as well.
  •  The Stars Came Back is a good foray into the literary world. Lots of
    shades of Heinlein and Weber, and a dose of Firefly mixed with
    McCaffrey’s The Ship That Sang.

So, I would encourage you to pick up a copy and see for yourself why we were so enthusiastic about Mr. Nelson’s first book. It is only $3.99 for 589 pages of pure science fiction entertainment.

POLL: Who is the Greatest Living SF Writer?

  1. Larry Niven, 222 votes, 21 percent
  2. Neal Stephenson, 193 votes, 18 percent
  3. Jerry Pournelle, 172 votes, 16 percent
  4. Orson Scott Card, 167 votes, 16 percent
  5. Gene Wolfe, 92 votes, 9 percent
  6. John C. Wright, 63 votes, 6 percent
  7. Robert Silverberg, 61 votes, 6 percent
  8. Lois McMaster Bujold, 60 votes, 6 percent
  9. China Mieville, 32 votes, 3 percent
  10. Michael Flynn, 12 votes, 1 percent

1,075 votes total. Larry Niven is the winner.

Congratulations to Larry Niven, who was voted the Greatest Living SF Writer by more than half as many people who vote for the Hugo awards and more than vote for the Nebulas. I’m a little shocked that China Mieville garnered so few votes, as I thought he was a fairly serious candidate; in retrospect, William Gibson should have been on the list rather than Michael Flynn.

I was somewhat bewildered by some of the writers suggested by people who missed out on the original discussion. David Weber? He is certainly a best-selling author and his books are indubitably entertaining but greatness is not measured in Mary Sues. Connie Willis? Well, she’s won a lot of awards, but literally zero people even brought her up in the nominations. Kim Stanley Robinson? A one-trick pony and the trick grew old several books ago, to say nothing of the fact that no one even mentioned him.

It was a surprising credible showing by Lois McMaster Bujold and somewhat disappointing by Robert Silverberg. I think Silverberg and Wolfe are probably not read as much by my generation and the following one. Card and Wright were about where I expected them to be; I wouldn’t be surprised if they switched places in another ten years. And it showed that Neal Stephenson is the best of the coming generation of SF elders.

The Greatest Living SF Author

Philip K. Dick is dead, alas. As are Frank Herbert and Isaac Asimov. (And, apparently, Arthur C. Clarke.) So, who would you nominate for a poll on this subject? Here are my nominees, in no particular order:

Neal Stephenson
China Mieville
John C. Wright

Orson Scott Card looked like a contender early on, but he did his best work first, in my opinion. Good, to be sure, but not great. Charles Stross has declined from his breathtaking Accelerando days; I enjoy his Laundry novels but while they are fun, they are not the stuff from which greatness is made. Lois Bujold is very good, but not on the level of the three men listed above. Once the Fourth of the original Big Three, Arthur C. Clarke is overrated and hasn’t written anything worth reading in years, presumably because he is still dead. William Gibson isn’t so much in the limelight these days, but he continues to write interesting books. Tanith Lee is a fabulous stylist, but she has faded from the Secret Books of Paradys days and she wrote fantasy, not science fiction, anyhow.

Perhaps the New Heinlein, Mr. John Scalzi? A mere jest, in more ways than one. Anyhow, if we can narrow the list to 10, then I will post a poll tomorrow and we can sort out everyone’s opinion on the matter. If you have a potential nominee, please make the case here.

Three possible nominees from three recognizable authors who shall remain nameless unless they wish to identify themselves: Gene Wolfe, Larry Niven, and Jerry Pournelle. A fourth author seconds the nominations for Niven and Pournelle, and, (rather dubiously in my opinion), throws David Weber’s name into the hat. I say this as one who has recently revisited the Honorverse.

Signed and Limited Edition: Freehold

In honor of the tenth anniversary of its first publication, Mike Z. Williamson and Baen Books are offering a signed hardcover limited edition of Freehold, the first in his Freehold Universe series. It is now available for preorder, so if you are a fan of my mortal enemy and occasional bete noire, M-Zed, this would be the time to act before they run out.

To sign or not to sign

This new petition of Amazon is interesting and relates to some problems to which I’ve pointed before:

Protect Amazon.com Users and Indie Publishing Authors from Bullying and Harassment by Removing Anonymity and Requiring Identity Verification for Reviewing and Forum Participation

For the consideration of Mr. Jeff Bezos and Mr. Jon P. Fine:

The purpose of this petition is to bring to the attention of Mr. Bezos, Mr. Fine, and anyone else employed by Amazon or its subsidiaries, the lack of oversight and or control in the Amazon system regarding product reviewing—in particular book reviewing—and in the participation of the many forums on Amazon.

It is known the world over that Amazon changed the face of self publishing by implementing their Kindle Direct Publishing platform as well as their CreateSpace platform. Anyone can now quickly and easily publish a book using the tools freely provided by Amazon. Whether or not everyone who publishes through KPD and CreateSpace should is not at issue here. What is at issue is the fact that there is an incredible amount of bullying and harassment of some of these self publishing authors taking place on the Amazon platform/system.

I believe, as do countless others—many who will have signed this petition—that the reason this bullying and harassment is able to take place is because of the allowance of anonymity on Amazon. People have found ways to exploit this flaw in the system and are using it to bully, harass, and generally make life miserable for certain authors on Amazon. These people are able to create multiple accounts and then use those accounts to viciously attack and go after any author or person that they feel doesn’t belong on Amazon or who shouldn’t have published a book, made a comment on a forum post, etc. With the current system, if one anonymous account gets deactivated because it was reported for these things, it is easy for the bully or harasser to simply create another anonymous account and continue on with their shenanigans.

What I—we—would like to see happen is for Amazon to revise their policies regarding anonymity when it comes to writing product/book reviews and for participation in the forums. Reviewers and forum participants should not be anonymous. By removing their anonymity and forcing them to display their real, verified identities, I believe that much of the harassment and bullying will cease. It may continue elsewhere on the web, but not on Amazon, the largest online retail marketplace in the world, where it really counts. Buyers of products on Amazon must have their identities verified, so it should be an easy transition to implement a policy whereby reviewers and forum participants must also have their identities verified.

While I could do without the appeals to bullying and so forth, the problem of fake reviews is definitely a real one. And while I am completely opposed to the law mandating real identities, this is simply one private corporation’s policy. So, my inclination is towards signing the petition, but I’m curious to know what the other authors and readers here have to say about it.

I think I’d sign it without question if it was limited to reviews. As much as I dislike restricted forums, I dislike even more the idea that the self-published authors, who are much less accustomed to trolls and socio-sadists working out their psychological issues online than I am, are forced to put up with this sort of nonsense from the very start, especially since they can’t control the forum comments the way I can here. Here it’s no trouble to ban the likes of the usual suspects, or put the short-term kibosh on someone getting out of line, but that’s simply not possible on Amazon.

I think the author of the petition’s assumption that sunlight will deter the trolls is generally correct. I noticed that the number of fake reviews of my books on Amazon declined considerably after I tracked down the woman from Minnesota and posted her address on this blog. Even the Greatest Pensman in All Karatonitus significantly reduced his activities here after I called his place of volunteer work and made it evident that I was in possession of the email addresses of his friends and extended family members. There are few trolls so shameless that they are willing to have those around them know what they are doing and how they are behaving.

UPDATE: Upon reading the discussion and engaging in further reflection, I have decided not to sign the petition. There are more effective ways to deal with the problem and anonymity can be a vital and necessary state for people in certain circumstances.