Just The Caffeine Talking

The Arkad Machine Rolls On

Marshal Zeringue has a fun 'blog with a neat premise: he asks writers what they're reading. To celebrate the launch of Arkad's World, he asked me to contribute an entry. You can see what I'm reading here.

And if you're in Amherst, Massachusetts, tomorrow evening, please stop by Amherst Books for the Arkad's World launch party! There will be reading, signing . . . and cake!*

I'll be doing a lot of bookstore appearances this week, so blogging may be a bit spotty. Please bear with me.

 

*No lie.

 

Appropriating the Past

I got my degree in history, and when I got to historical movies, I'm the one indignantly whispering to my seatmate about errors. Though actually I'm pretty charitable: I understand that movies do have budgets and physical limitations. If you're making a World War II movie and can't scrounge up enough M-1 Garand rifles for all the extras playing American soldiers, I won't be upset if some guy in the background is carrying a British or even a German rifle of the period. (But I will be ticked off if he's got an M-16.)

In fact, the thing that moviemakers get wrong which bugs me the most isn't the physical details, it's the attitudes. One of my perennial complaints about historical fiction is how often the main characters have modern opinions and mindsets. In C.S. Forester's wonderful Captain Hornblower series, it does occasionally strain belief how frequently Captain Hornblower displays mid-20th century ideas about early-19th century issues. One reason I utterly love Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey and Maturin series is precisely because his characters have unashamedly Regency-era views. Captain Aubrey in particular is very much a man of his time, even something of a reactionary, but he's still obviously a good man and a great character.

Why is this a problem? Why can't I just enjoy the costumes and quit nitpicking?

I think my objection to Getting History Wrong has the same root as the objections some others express about writers or moviemakers "appropriating" non-American cultures: the past, like other countries, is not just a stage set or a collection of costumes to play with. The past — again, like other countries — was inhabited by real people, as smart and as moral as ourselves (if not more so).

Making fun of our ancestors for not being clever enough to be born after 1980, or not being enlightened enough to read BuzzFeed, is more than just disrespectful. It's stupid. Having an iPhone doesn't change your essential humanity, so you can learn a lot from Marcus Aurelius, Gautama Buddha, or Hernan Cortez. Understand them on their own terms, just as you should try to understand people from other cultures in the present.

After all, you'll be history yourself, someday.     

        

What's the Big Idea?

This is the Big Idea. Now you know.

Welcome to Arkad's World!

Today's the official publication date for my new book Arkad's World! Copies should be hitting the brick-and-mortar stores this week, and are already available for ordering online, so if you're wondering what to do with those gift cards or bundles of cash Santa left in your stocking, wonder no longer.

If you want a signed copy, or would like to hear me reading from the book, here's the plan for my promotional blitzkrieg. At each stop, the first person to compliment my necktie will get a free bonus copy of either A Darkling Sea or Corsair. 

The schedule, as it currently stands:

January 14: Reading and Book Launch party at Amherst Books, 7:00 p.m.

January 15: Reading and autographing at Flights of Fantasy, Albany NY, 7:00 p.m.

January 17: Reading and signing at Pandemonium Books & Games, Cambridge MA, 7:00 p.m.

January 18: Reading and signing at Annie's Book Stop, Worcester MA, 4:00 p.m.

January 18-20: Panels, autographing, and reading at Arisia 2019, Boston Park Plaza Hotel.

February 1: Reading and signing at Northshire Bookstore, Saratoga Springs NY, 6:00 p.m.

Start the New Year with a rip-roaring old-fashioned science fiction adventure!

Countdown to Arkad

Five days to go before Arkad's World hits the shelves! If you're wondering what to do with that Amazon or Barnes & Noble gift card Santa put in your stocking, try the novel that Booklist calls ". . . a feat of world-building: an expansive, believable setting with fascinating aliens, compelling mysteries, and a rich sense of history."

Pop Culture: Hold On to Your Hats!

As cultures develop a large and relatively affluent middle class, they develop what we call "pop culture." The upper class have "high culture" more or less by definition, and the lower class don't have the leisure time or spare wealth to create culture at all.

Tom Wolfe chronicled this in post-WWII America, as people got rich enough to indulge subcultures like custom cars, surfing, and stock car racing. It's a damned shame Mr. Wolfe never got around to examining some other products of that boom: science fiction, comics, and (a bit later) roleplaying games.

It happened elsewhere, too. As Japan became the world's second-biggest economy, Japanese pop culture items like anime, manga, J-pop girl groups, and giant monsters became global phenomena rivaling America's. The same happened for Korea in the 1990s.

Well, in the past twenty years China has acquired a middle class of 340 million people. Three hundred million in Africa are now urban and middle class. A quarter of a billion in India. So the number of pop-culture "consumers" — and the number of pop-culture creators — has more than tripled worldwide.

This means that American pop culture and European pop culture and Japanese pop culture will soon be joined by equally huge and influential Chinese, Indian, and African creations. Not just new comic books and movies, but new genres. The as-yet-uncreated equivalents of roleplaying games or custom vans.

And not a moment too soon. As anyone paying attention to Hollywood will attest, American media are in a creative slump right now. There are a heck of a lot of remakes, reboots, sequels, and "reimaginings" going on. Not to mention an increasingly frenetic mining of older "properties" for material. A 69-page picture book by Dr. Seuss has spawned two feature-length films, when it originally required some creative padding by Chuck Jones just to make it into a half-hour cartoon.

I can't predict when, but I'm willing to bet that in the next few years an Indian "Bollywood" or Nigerian "Nollywood" film will be a global breakout hit, as big as Star Wars or Harry Potter. Some Latin American or Chinese children's entertainment will be picked up as cheap filler content by global media companies and turn into a huge fad to rival Pokemon.  

For a writer, this is an . . . interesting time. On one hand, translation rights on books now bring in almost as much as the English-language royalties. The downside is that I'm already competing with Cixin Liu for readers in both America and China, and I'm certain he will be followed by a bigger cohort of new talent. And that's just within written science fiction. I'm also competing with other media.

I think one reason science fiction magazines have been having a rocky time in the past few decades is partly due to the sheer amount and variety of other options. Even if you only like science fiction, you still can choose among Japanese anime, Japanese and European comics, Anglophone novels, American films, and European computer games to satisfy your scientifictional craving. That landscape is only going to expand.

It's going to be quite a ride. Let's see what the new Global Nerds can do.

Arkad's World Review From Booklist

One of the most anxious times for a writer is just before the book hits the stores, at the moment when the first reviews appear. You may like what you've written, your editor may like it, your wife and the people in your writing workshop may like it . . . but none of that matters unless the reviewers like it.

Here's what Booklist has to say about Arkad's World, in a notice penned by the extremely wise and perceptive John Keogh:

Arkad is the only human on a world populated by aliens, his past a mystery. When other humans arrive, he seeks them out, determined to find a way off the planet to rejoin his own kind. Cambias (A Darkling Sea, 2014) has achieved a feat of world-building: an expansive, believable setting with fascinating aliens, compelling mysteries, and a rich sense of history. The novel is a classic quest story, a well-paced series of encounters with different folk along the way, building momentum toward a final confrontation with Arkad's past. Though the book is not without flaws, it does boast a rare instance of a deus ex machina that actually works, adding a delicious twist to the end.

(Note that this is from an uncorrected proof — the published review may have some differences.)

Sure, I'd like them to call it the greatest creative work in human history, but I'll take this review. Importantly, Mr. Keogh reviewed the book I wrote, rather than complaining that I didn't write a different one. That matters.

Now I'm looking forward to seeing what the other reviewers think!

Look What Arrived!

Christmas came about a week early this year! Look what arrived: freshly-printed copies of Arkad's World! If these volumes have reached my house, there's at least a sporting chance copies are getting to Amazon's warehouses or your local bookstore. Get your copy now!

I honestly believe this is the best thing I've written. Getting it finished and published took four years, but I think readers will find it worth the wait.

Things I Want Other People to Write

I've never written fan fiction. When I was young, it felt like cheating or plagiarism to write a story set in someone else's fictional setting, or using their characters. (This was before the whole concept of "shared worlds" or "expanded universes" arose, and all works actually had a single identifiable creator.)

And when I was older, getting my own work published, I wanted to see my own creations in print. In my game writing career I've done a lot in established settings, but that always felt like a collaborative effort.

But at the same time, there are some fiction series I enjoy very much, and I've thought of some cool ideas which would make for interesting stories. Since they aren't my "properties" I don't think it would be proper to write these up, so all I can do is publish them here. Maybe the authors in question will stumble across this humble 'blog. If so: please, use these ideas if they appeal to you! I'm not the type to bring some stupid lawsuit because someone "stole my idea."

         Here's my fictional wish-list.

Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series: I've actually got three here. The first is that she should actually put her protagonist Miles Vorkosigan in opposition to his friend, foster-brother, and feudal overlord Emperor Gregor. What does Miles do when he thinks Gregor is wrong? What if Gregor is wrong — or what if he's right and it's Miles who's wrong about something?

The second is more of a background or subplot. I want to see Miles's cousins, the non-aristocratic just plain Kosigans. It would be highly entertaining if they're just as clever as the line of Counts, but in a less law-abiding way. Or, conversely, if Miles is related to a pack of entertaining numbskulls from the Dendarii back woods.

The third is an elephant in every room of the series which the characters resolutely ignore: what happens when Barrayar and its interstellar empire no longer want to put up with being ruled by a bunch of feudal gangsters? How will Miles — and Gregor — manage the transition, especially since history is seldom kind to ex-aristocrats and unemployed monarchs.

George R.R. Martin's "Thousand Worlds" series: Oh, you don't know about this one? You've only heard of that endless giant fantasy novel/TV series? Well, guess what: before he started A Song of Ice and Fire, George R.R. Martin wrote some fantastic science fiction short stories set in a very distant future with humans spread across the Galaxy. (His "Tuf Voyaging" sequence is part of it.) I don't have a specific idea for this setting other than that I want to see more of it.

J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series: I want the Potterverse novel for grownups. Specifically, I want one that actually tackles the issue of what it means to have a secretive hereditary caste of people with supernatural powers, who apparently consider themselves immune to ordinary laws and governments. I want to see how that plays out. (Note: I'm kind of writing this one myself anyway.)

Star Trek: I want an anthology series set in the Star Trek universe. Call it "Tales of the Federation" or something. Pretty much everyone on Earth has at least a passing familiarity with the setting, so one could use it to tell stand-alone science fiction stories without having to involve a continuing cast — thereby avoiding both the soap opera of interactions among "series regulars" and hitting the "reset" button at the end of each show. People could change, fail, die, get comeuppance, and then leave.

If anybody has me on their fictional wish-list, let me know in the comments.

        

Arkad eARC Available!

If you can't stand to wait for a printed copy of my new novel Arkad's World (and aren't picky about things like copy-editing), the electronic Advance Reading Copy is now available. Read a free sample or buy the whole thing here at the Baen Web site.

I honestly think this is my best book yet. It was delayed by a couple of false starts, and then by the loss of my editor David Hartwell at Tor, but now it's finally on the way. I'm tremendously excited that other people can finally visit the world I lived in for two years while writing it.