BRIEF SYNOPSIS: The Vineart War series continues as Vineart apprentice Jerzy and his companions search for the tainted threat to the Lands Vin.

MY RATING:

MY REVIEW:

PROS: A successful changeup to a quest and travelogue based plot from ook One; continues strong worldbuilding of the Lands Vin and beyond.

CONS: A few mid-series book flaws detract from the reading.

VERDICT: A deepening of the characters and the world of the Lands Vin.

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Welcome back to Roll Perception Plus Awareness, my column here on SF Signal about roleplaying games and their place in a genre reader and writer’s world. This time out, I would like to tackle another of the ur-games of the genre.

If the ur-game for fantasy roleplaying games is Dungeons and Dragons, then the ur-game for science fiction, specifically space opera games, is Traveller. While probably near every reader of genre, and many who don’t read genre has heard of Dungeons and Dragons, I bet that Traveller, even though it was a formative a game in its way, is far less known to you. There are reasons for that, but let’s table that for the moment and just correct that imbalance, shall we?

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November is National Writing Month, the month of Nanowrimo. In celebration, this week’s question involves Nanowrimo and other writing exercises:

Here are the answers from this week’s panelists:

NaNoWriMo makes you stop thinking about writing and start writing. The act of writing regularly and under every kind of condition (inspired, bored, happy, cranky) is what produces good writing in the end. Practise, practise, practise. Trial and error. Imitate the classics, then deviate from the norm. Every kind of cliché comes down to the same thing: keep writing until it stops being awful.

Then, when you’re comfortable with how and what you write, push yourself in another area so it goes back to being awful and work your way out of it once more. And don’t forget to learn to edit.

Find your own challenge. The same one might not work every time. Try a new one. Less letting people tell you how to write and more getting people to tell you how you have written.

The end.

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BRIEF SYNOPSIS: In a world where magic comes from the making and use of wine, a vineyard slave is discovered to have the talent for winemaking and cultivated to be a Vineart.

MY RATING:

MY REVIEW:

PROS: An original idea for a magic system with incredible detail and mise en scene on the process of winemaking; worldbuilding in spades.

CONS: The ending is a little too disjointed and loose; pacing might turn off some readers.

VERDICT: Justifiably nominated for a Nebula Award in 2009, a traditional fantasy novel that is an exemplar of the genre.

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Science Fiction is better known for technology, sense of wonder, and alien landscapes than fully recognized characters. Some SF that emphasizes character does so without engaging in those core elements of SF.

Here’s what our participants had to say:

Human nature is fairly unchanging and relatively easy to predict. For instance, people were acting like idiots several thousand years ago, and will no doubt continue to do so into the unforeseeable future. This is a good thing, because people doing stupid things is the essence of conflict and drama. Conflict and drama make for good stories.

Technology, on the other hand, is a fickle mistress. Video did not kill the radio star. We have no flying cars or personal jet packs. The space race (for Americans, at least) died.

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BRIEF SYNOPSIS: Cat’s efforts and struggles bring her from Adurnam to this alternate world’s West Indies, where plots, plans and secrets continue to bedevil her.

MY RATING:

MY REVIEW:

PROS: The strengths of Cold Magic are kept, and we get good character development and even more worldbuilding with the change in venue.

CONS: Maybe a couple of coincidences too many to bring the characters to the same locale; plotting feels slightly off compared to the previous novel.

VERDICT: Elliott, no stranger to writing series, avoids most of the mid series book pitfalls and continues to develop her characters and world.

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On October 17, 2011, Greg announced to the Dreamhaven mailing list that, after 35 years in the retail book business, he was going to close the physical store and solely sell books via mail-order and conventions. Herein lies my thoughts and a thumbnail sketch of reading and buying genre books in Minnesota.

Genre readers in Minnesota have been extraordinarily blessed in terms of bookstores. Sure, Mysterious Galaxy bookstore is a legend in the community, as is Forbidden Planet (both in Manhattan and in London, England). Borderlands Books in San Francisco has its stalwart defenders.

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Lately, a number of mainstream authors have dipped their toes into the seas of genre. From Lev Grossman to Justin Cronin, mainstream authors are learning the rewards and challenges of writing SF, Fantasy and Horror. But many more authors could, and there are many favorite mainstream authors who haven’t tread into genre that would do well to try their hand in our corner of the reading and writing world.

Genres are marketing categories defined by publishers. Fiction writers have never sat comfortably within them, particularly not the best and most talented writers, who are always keen to try their hand at new kinds of story. Lev Grossman, Justin Cronin, Margaret Atwood, Michael Chabon, Cormac McCarthy, Will Self, Iain Banks, David Mitchell and many more are not mainstream writers dipping their toes in genre. They are writers, writing stories, and sometimes using genre as a tool along the way. The best writers use genre, but don’t allow themselves to be trapped by it.

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BRIEF SYNOPSIS: A WWII veteran’s search for a missing record label promoter leads him into the backwaters of Arkansas and straight into the darkness spreading from a mysterious bluesman and his pirate radio station. Meanwhile, a woman’s return to her ancestral estate reveals long buried secrets that man was not meant to know.

MY RATING:

MY REVIEW:

PROS: A fresh locale and take on the Lovecraftian Mythos; spot-on and evocative sense of time and place for early 50′s Arkansas; genuinely forceful moments of horror and dark fantasy.

CONS: Problems in Act III (including deus ex machina and a misfired Chekov’s gun) weaken the last portion of the novel.

VERDICT: The elements of Southern Gothic in Southern Gods brings a new setting and sensibility to the Lovecraftian Mythos.

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Authors do a lot of reading for their profession, and often are the best ambassadors for books of all stripes. In this world of fragmented media, book recommendations via word of mouth from authors are worth their weight in gold.

Here are their answers:

The last book I read that converted me to an advocate for the author and all his works was Raising Stony Mayhall by Daryl Gregory. Despite being a “zombie” novel, this book is by turns touching, hilarious, thoughtful, exciting, philosophical, silly. All of it borders on genius. Set in an alternate reality where the occurrences in Night Of The Living Dead were real and that film was actually a documentary, we trace the growth of a foundling baby who, it turns out, is a zombie, but unlike any undead came before. His story takes us through his childhood and adolescence with a sensitive yet deft hand, toward adulthood and rebellion and finally a kind of martyrdom. Truly an amazing and wonderful book. It takes all the conventions of the zombie genre and turns them on their head, breaks them down and shuffles them about, allowing us to see the subject matter and tropes of the genre in a whole new way.

Like he did with demonic possession before in Pandemonium, Daryl Gregory has crafted in Raising Stony Mayhall a novel that transcends genre and approaches universal themes and questions about the human condition with a mastery of storyform that leaves this author breathless and a little – okay, a lot – jealous.

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BRIEF SYNOPSIS: Six years after the events of God’s War, former Bel Dame Nyx gets a chance at restoring her status at last. If she can stop a coup d’etat led by Bel Dames armed with a superweapon.

MY RATING:

MY REVIEW:

PROS: Strong female characters; we get to see more and new areas of the unique world of Umayma.

CONS: Understanding the returning characters properly is highly dependent on reading the first novel; a weak and disappointing denouement.

VERDICT: A good-but-not-great return to the Blood, Bugs and Brutal Women of Kameron Hurley’s world.

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BRIEF SYNOPSIS: In a world where deities walk the earth, a young avatar of a mountain lake Goddess (with a mysterious, ancient, man-possessing spirit bound to her service as her ally) is on the run from an avaricious wizard who is more than he appears.

MY RATING:

MY REVIEW:

PROS: Vivid worldbuilding; the cultures and societies feel fresh; an interesting and complex set of protagonists and antagonists.

CONS: The temporally episodic nature of the narrative leads to some characters frustratingly being abruptly dropped and only later being picked up again; some of these plotlines seem sadly undernourished.

VERDICT: A coming of age story about a young goddess in a rich fantasy world.

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Sidekicks. No heroine or hero is complete without Hero Support, the sidekick. So we asked this week’s panelists:

Here are their answers…

In comic books: Robin.

In detective stories: Watson.

In science fiction: R. Daneel Olivaw.

In fantasy: Samwise Gamgee.

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BRIEF SYNOPSIS: In an alternate 19th century world, a young woman’s forced marriage to a Cold Mage slowly reveals the secrets, lies and plots swirling around her, her family and the world.

MY RATING:

MY REVIEW:

PROS: Entertaining mix of adventure, fantastic elements and even elements of romance; strong, clear writing; interesting world building.

CONS: The world building; some of the borrowings from our own history just did not ring true.

VERDICT: The world may end in ice, but this series has only begun and Elliott is just warming up showing us these characters and this world.

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It’s difficult for writers to get their hands around the idea of the Singularity, be it the Vernor Vinge version or just what happens to society once limitations on scarcity are removed. So the question for the panelists this week is:

Here are their answers…

(Note: This is Part Two of our discussion of our question. Don’t forget to read Part One…)

I don’t think this is an issue confined solely to Post Scarcity or Post Singularity novels. It’s not even confined to SF. There are plenty of unfeasibly rich characters in realist or historical novels, say, just as there are characters who don’t fear death. What motivates them?

The answer to that question speaks to the very meat of our existence, something much more interesting than just following the money.

I pondered this issue (as many writers have) while developing my Geodesica series. It’s set in a deep-space post-human future, one in which humanity has speciated into several quite distinct forms, each of them still regarding themselves as “human”. Given the vast expense of interstellar travel, the highly diffuse nature of interstellar empires and other significant barriers to cultural overlap (and given also that this was intended to be a space opera, with all the splodey goodness that implies) what were my characters going to fight over?

The only thing I could think of was the very idea of being human. None of my characters were so removed from the reader that they felt truly alien, not quite, so it stood to reason that they might regard their common origins as a matter of some importance–that they, specifically, were properly human and therefore best qualified to decide what was best for all humanity.

This ownership of racial identity, warranted or otherwise, seems to me to be the one thing that we might fight over when we (in theory) have everything else at our fingertips. It’s certainly something we’ll fight over in the real world with distressing frequency.

When the characters of Geodesica aren’t squabbling over such lofty stuff, though, they’re worried about interpersonal relationships. Love in other words. Money can’t buy it, and it’s stronger than death (we’re told), so it’s been a prime story generator for about as long as we’ve been telling stories. I don’t think that’s going to change any time soon. We’ll know we’re heading into truly post-human territory when we stop worrying about all the other humans, or even just one of them, and what they think of us in return.

That’s the time, I think, when all stories will end.

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It’s difficult for writers to get their hands around the idea of the Singularity, be it the Vernor Vinge version or just what happens to society once limitations on scarcity are removed. So the question for the panelists this week is:

Here are their answers…

For me, science fiction was always, in one way or other, a literature of immortality. Since Frankenstein, SF authors seem to be concerned with life extension and/or recreation (cloning is ok, since you you able to download your mind to a younger version of yourself and thus extend your lifetime). Of course not all SF masterworks have this theme as its main focal point (but take Dune, for instance, and the war for the *geriatric* spice – in an universe running scarce of many resources, people are more than willing to kill each other for a drug that grants longevity to its users).

In a Post-Scarcity and a Post-Singularity scenario, the search for immortality is the next step. If humankind didn’t attain it yet, it surely will, and it’s doing all it can to reach eternal life or the next best thing. Accelerando, by Charles Stross, is one of the best examples of this century.

What can you give to a man/woman/transgender who has everything? More lifetime so that he/she/everyone can do more of whatever they want to do.

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Fantasy Maps have been showing up in novels since the days of Tolkien. They are so omnipresent that the late Diana Wynne Jones excoriated the inclusion of maps in her classic deconstruction of fantasy, The Tough Guide to Fantasyland. And yet, there is a power that cannot be denied by the presence of a map in a work of fantasy. Just ask Dora the explorer.

So the question for the panelists this week is:

Here’s what they said…

I can’t say I have a favorite map. That would be like choosing a favorite pet, or a favorite tea, or a favorite hill. Maps are as indulgent and delicious as the stories themselves, if done right.

Going for a straight-forward map, Michael Stackpole’s map for The DragonCrown Cycle is perfect: it gives me a quick reference for the dozens of warring territories and political alliances. Maps can be ubiquitous in fantasy, but it’s nice to see them actually be useful.

But I have to be honest: the maps for Tolkien’s works are my favorites, ever. Enough detail to follow the characters, enough blanks for a young, bored mind to populate with all sorts of wonders and evils. Their style is also beautiful, and I wish more maps would be made with an eye for mood and aesthetic. The map commissioned by Peter Orullian is absolutely lovely. More, please!

The maps I want to see? Meta-maps. M. John Harrison’s Viriconium lends itself to the idea of maps as artifacts and voices in the story, not just static additions. In Hal Duncan’s Vellum, the map is never shown, but it takes such center stage that he might as well have drawn it. Even in Harry Potter, the Marauder’s Map was a fun, brilliant little thing.

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MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: A mountaineer guide/smuggler gets caught in the intrigue of magicians when desperation leads him to transport a sorcerer on the run into a country restrictive of magic.

MY REVIEW

PROS: Spot-on scenes set in the mountains written by someone comfortable and familiar with such a milieu; a vividly described secondary fantasy world; well done “reluctant companions” social dynamic between the two main characters.

CONS: The switch between 1st- and 3rd-person not always effective; an important plot element is left frustratingly unresolved.

BOTTOM LINE: Top-rope yourself up into Schafer’s world of mountains and magic.

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Welcome back to Roll Perception Plus Awareness, a column meant to introduce SF Signal readers to the world of roleplaying games. Today, I want to bring to your attention a game system I have only played as a game, once, but, like me, many gamers have taken inspiration and ideas from: GURPS.

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Reboots of old material are all the rage. There is something primal in bringing something beloved in the past back to life. It’s certainly common enough in movies, but what if books were given the same treatment? Are there book series that might flourish if they were rebooted?

Our question for this week’s fearless panelists:

Here’s what they said…

By and large, I don’t wish so much for reboots or resurrections–I have lovely memories of many series (and not-so-fond memories of others which started off well, and dragged on for far too long), and I’m always happy to revisit familiar haunts; but my personal preference is geared more towards new ideas and new series.

That said… I confess I’ve always wanted some tinkering to happen with Zelazny’s Amber series, which is a particular favorite of mine. I love the idea of Earth as a shadow cast by the true worlds, and the weaving of Celtic and Arthurian myths that Zelazny pulled off–but as someone who doesn’t live in America, I’ve always been slightly put off by the very American focus of the Earth scenes, and the generally Western bent of the series. Those are still great books; but I do find myself wondering if the same base idea couldn’t be re-used in a non-Western setting: specifically, if we had Amber and the Courts of Chaos as expressions of Yin and Yang, and the Amberite royal family incarnating a collection of archetypes from Asian mythology and folklore: for instance, Kongming, China’s finest strategist, could most certainly hold his own against Benedict; and Houyi, the Divine Archer, known for slaughtering various beasts (including nine sun-gods!) would make a fitting counterpart to Julian and his great hunting hounds. Also, an Asian family would come with very different dynamic than the original Amber (a lot of which was focused on a Western family with an absent father).

I’m pretty sure it would all be lots of fun.

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