Just The Caffeine Talking

Publishers Weekly Reviews Godel Operation

The first reviews of The Godel Operation are starting to trickle in as the release date approaches. Here's what Publishers Weekly had to say. Sounds like their reviewer enjoyed it. I hope everyone else does, too. 

The Godel Operation 

James L. Cambias. Baen, $16 trade paper (288p) ISBN 978-1-982125-56-1 

With this freewheeling story of an ancient, cunning artificial intelligence and its naïve human companion, Cambias (The Initiate) mashes humor, mystery, and looming apocalypse into a roundly satisfying space epic. In the Tenth Millennium, AI Daslakh’s effort to help human Zee feel that life has purpose lands the duo amid a maelstrom of treasure hunters, among them a woman Zee erroneously believes to be his long-lost girlfriend, a disaffected young lady of wealth, the “Greatest Thief in History,” and a cat with human intelligence. They’re all on the trail of a legendary weapon rumored to be capable of destroying the quintillions of AIs on which civilization depends. It’s a legend Daslakh has millennia of experience with, and its knowledge of the weapon’s true nature is teased out through flashbacks to its past. Cambias positions eminently likable characters—particularly the cynical Daslakh, who is constantly frustrated in its role as Zee’s guardian—on the edge of a very old abyss. With plenty of fun moments along the way, this raucous adventure through the solar system’s distant future will appeal to any fan of lighter science fiction. (May) 

Godel Operation Minus 10

Ten days from now is the official publication date of The Godel Operation. The clocks are running, the pumps are powering up, and the gantry has been rolled back. Be sure to get a copy because this launch is going to be spectacular.

If you want to read more about The Godel Operation, see my recent guest post at Sarah Hoyt's 'blog According to Hoyt. In that post I talk about the problems I've had in writing an optimistic far-future science fiction series at a time when it's hard to be optimistic about anything. Read it here.

There are many other Godel-related events in the works. Watch this space for more announcements!

In the Right Ballpark

Last year I wrote a nine-part series of 'blog posts about the Drake Equation, the Fermi Paradox, the Great Filter, and how many civilizations are likely to exist in the Milky Way Galaxy. If you want to re-read it, start here. To give away the ending, after a lot of discussion I would up estimating about 50 space-exploring civilizations in our Galaxy.

Apparently I wasn't the only one who's been thinking about this topic last summer. I just saw an article in Popular Mechanics, dated July 2020, reporting in turn on a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal. The authors, Tom Westby and Christopher Conselice, analyzed the likelihood of space-exploring civilizations arising in the Milky Way and came up with a figure of . . . 36.

That sound you hear is me, preening. 

Let's Build a World

This Saturday, April 17, I'll be teaching "It Used to Take a Week," an online workshop on worldbuilding in science fiction for the Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop. This is a new step for me — I've never taught a class before. Except that I've done hundreds of convention panels and presentations over the years, and run game sessions online and in person, and basically done all the things that go into teaching a class.

My main problem is squeezing everything into the time slot. I've got three hours to teach students how to build a planet and its inhabitants, based on science as hard as I can make it. In short, I've got to teach courses in astronomy, planetary astronomy, geology, climatology, biochemistry, biomechanics, astrobiology, psychology, anthropology, comparative civilizations, and writing, all in 90 minutes.

After that we'll do a "worked example," creating a world and civilization using what we've learned, which students can then use for their own fiction or game projects.

If nothing else, there's no danger of anyone being bored . . .

 

Inception Et Cetera

I recently saw the film Inception for the first time — I'm not sure why I didn't watch it when it came out, but I didn't. It's a great movie, and it helped me to understand a key difference between science fiction films and novels.

A perennial gripe about SF in movies is that films sacrifice science and plausibility for spectacle. That's true, and I think that's kind of the point. A film is, after all, a visual experience. Showing an amazing shot (like Inception's tilting and zero-gravity hotel, or a fight between people moving in different directions in time in Tenet) is the goal, and the script and storyboard are created to allow that.

Of course a novel can have amazing spectacles, too. Larry Niven's classic book Ringworld is full of marvels — a stellar flare turned into a weapon, teleport sidewalks, flying cities, a giant mountain with a secret at the top, moving planets, and of course the titular ring itself.

But Christopher Nolan, the director of Inception, has one huge advantage that Larry Niven doesn't. He can show you his amazing spectacles, right up there on the screen with Hans Zimmer music playing. Your brain accepts it as real, simply because your brain is accustomed to accept what you see as real.

Larry Niven can't do that. He has to use other methods to fool your brain into accepting his marvels. For a novelist one very effective tool of trickery is plausibility. In a novel you fool the reader's brain by making everything seem so real and scientifically possible that their disbelief gets suspended.

However, these tools work on different aspects of belief. Visuals get accepted right away ("seeing is believing"), but when the viewer leaves the theater there will be some discussion and nitpicking. "Why didn't they . . . ?" Getting the audience to accept written marvels may take more persuading, but the result is more permanent.

So I'm going to stick to my own conviction: that there's no reason to put these things in opposition. Good writing or good visuals are not antithetical to sound science and plausibility. You can have both, and you should. Imagine if Christopher Nolan's movies didn't have to include a character telling the protagonist (and the audience) "Don't think about it too much." 

Look What's Here!

I was sitting at home minding my own business on Thursday when the dog started barking because a delivery truck was coming up our driveway. They're common enough nowadays, but this truck had come to deliver something I wasn't expecting for a couple of weeks yet: the first copies of my new novel The Godel Operation. Here it is, 275 pages in trade paperback format. The official publication date isn't until May 4, but if I'm getting copies now they may be trickling into bookstores. Or you can order from Amazon. A billion worlds await . . .

Note: I got the books Thursday and wanted to post this immediately— but then I decided that people might take it more seriously if I didn't make my big announcement on April 1.

(Photo by Diane Kelly)

 

Appendix JLC

Everyone who owned a copy of the old Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide knows about the legendary "Appendix N," in which Gary Gygax listed all the fictional influences on D&D. In recent years some younger gamers have rediscovered that list, leading to works like Jeffro Johnson's book Appendix N: The Literary History of Dungeons & Dragons, and a number of alternate lists.

The pioneering science fiction roleplaying game Traveller never had an "Appendix N," but in 2016 the writer and game designer Shannon Appelcline wrote The Science Fiction in Traveller, an ambitious attempt to study both the fictional roots of Traveller and its licensed fiction spinoffs. Appelcline spoke with Traveller's creator Marc Miller about the science fiction works which influenced him the most.

The list includes some well-known SF like David Drake's "Hammer's Slammers" series and H. Beam Piper's Space Viking and other novels. It also has some books which modern readers probably aren't familiar with, like the "Dumarest of Terra" series by E.C. Tubb. (I certainly wasn't familiar with those back in 1979, even though they were still being published and I haunted the science fiction section of every bookstore in Greater New Orleans.)

A bit more than a year ago I started running a Traveller campaign of my own, which has continued as an online campaign during the virus lockdown. At one point I put together a little "Appendix JLC" of inspirational works for my players. In addition to the seminal works cited by Appelcline, I wanted to include more recent titles and series.

So, here's a list of Travelleresque books not mentioned by Marc Miller. It's roughly in chronological order. Some of the titles I list are modern compilations of short stories which didn't originally appear together. The ones marked with an asterisk were probably influenced by Traveller, but all of them have the right feel.

The Coming of the Terrans, the "Eric John Stark" stories, and the "Skaith" series by Leigh Brackett (and basically everything else she wrote)

Northwest of Earth, by C.L. Moore

The "Captain Grimes" and "Rimworlds" series by A. Bertram Chandler

Santiago and the "Widowmaker" series by Mike Resnick

Princes of the Air and Web of Angels, by John M. Ford*

The Shattered Stars, by Richard S. McEnroe*

Nightflyers, and other "Thousand Worlds" stories by George R.R. Martin

The "Expanse" series by "James S.A. Corey"

The January Dancer, by Michael Flynn

Of my own work, the only one I'd put on this list is the short story "Object Three," in the ebook Outlaws and Aliens.

I would love to see others' ideas about recent Travelleresque books. Feel free to list them in the comments.

Planetary Events Comes to Earth!

Most of what I've been writing lately has been fiction — The Godel Operation, some short stories in the Billion Worlds setting, and the followup novel (still in progress). But I call myself a "writer and game designer" for a reason: I haven't given up on writing game stuff. Recently I decided to take the plunge and try releasing some short self-published roleplaying products. The first of what I hope to be a long series is finally available.

Planetary Events is a supplement for any and all spacefaring science fiction roleplaying games, designed to help add some depth and realism to your star-spanning campaign. Too often planets in a space RPG are like rooms in a dungeon: you show up, do some stuff, and leave. When you come back, nothing much has changed. Planetary Events gives gamemasters a quick way to come up with events that change the situation on a world. Some are relatively small-scale, others can have effects which ripple through the entire campaign universe. It's "system-agnostic," which means it isn't tied to any one particular set of game rules. You can use it for Traveller (all editions), Starfinder, Star HERO, Stars Without Number, or whatever game you like.

I've put it up for sale at both DriveThruRPG and Itch.io, as a "pay what you want" product.

There will be other products in the future — although given my own broad interests and short attention span, you can assume the subject matter will vary widely. 

The Songs of Distant Earth and the Roots of Inspiration

For a long time I've enjoyed the music of Mike Oldfield — especially his longer, more complex works. Until a few years ago his stuff wasn't easy for me to get my hands on. Back when record shops existed, they didn't often carry his records. But with the rise of online music he's a lot more available.

Recently I've been listening to Oldfield's 1994 album The Songs of Distant Earth. It's a "concept album" based on Arthur C. Clarke's 1986 novel The Songs of Distant Earth, which in turn was expanded from Clarke's 1958 short story "The Songs of Distant Earth." (When you know you've got a good title, you might as well keep using it.) Inevitably, I dug out my copy of the book in order to re-read it. It's better than I remember, actually. I think I've aged into it.

According to Wikipedia, quoting Mike Oldfield's autobiography, the project was suggested by a record executive at Warner Music . . . but after re-reading the novel I have some suspicions.

Chapter 52 of The Songs of Distant Earth is called "The Songs of Distant Earth," and comes near the end of the novel. The mighty starship Magellan is preparing to leave the planet Thalassa and the locals have arranged a farewell ceremony. The high point is the performance of a work called Lamentation for Atlantis. That's one of the tracks on Oldfield's album, but the description of the fictional composition is a pretty good match for the whole album The Songs of Distant Earth by Mike Oldfield. In effect, he wrote the work Clarke described.

But right before Clarke's description of Lamentation for Atlantis, there's this:

It still seemed a miracle that after their art had reached technological perfection, composers of music could find anything new to say. For two thousand years, electronics had given them complete command over every sound audible to the human ear, and it might have been thought that all the possibilities of the medium had been exhausted.

There had, indeed, been about a century of beepings and twitterings and electroeructations before composers had mastered their now infinite powers and had once again successfully married technology and art.

I can't shake the suspicion that Mike Oldfield came across that passage — perhaps while reading the novel after the Warner Music exec suggested it — and read that little dig about "beepings and twitterings and electroeructations." And I suspect that noted electronic composer Mike Oldfield may have been a little miffed. I suspect that's when he decided to write the album, and show Sir Arthur that it wouldn't take a century for a composer to "marry technology and art" and produce an electronic work worthy of Clarke's own fictional musical masterpiece.

That's the best way to respond to something: show you can equal or surpass it. 

This is all supposition, and if Mr. Oldfield happens to read this and wants to refute me, he's welcome to do so. Meanwhile I think I know the real story.

Everything But The Quack

For some reason the local discount club store had ducks for $2.99 a pound. That's cheaper than I've seen duck in a long time, so I got one last time I was there. Diane wanted to try making duck confit, so we thawed the bird and began taking it apart today.

She cut up and partly deboned the duck, and popped the meat into a bag to cook sous vide for about thirty hours. (Confiture is long cooking at low temperature, covered by fat to keep the meat from drying out. Sound familiar? It's sous vide with duck fat instead of a plastic bag. We're just combining the techniques.)

But that's not all. As she finished with the carcass, I took the bits she left. I roasted the bones and skin — which browned them nicely and rendered out about a pint of duck fat. Then most of the roasted bits went into the stock pot, so I can make duck stock, which means duck soup ramen later this week. Some pieces of skin stayed in the oven until brown and crispy, because if you're going to cook a duck, you simply must get some duck cracklings out of it.

Our house certainly does smell good this weekend.