Intelligent Science Fiction

Warning: This post contains spoilers about the books Who Goes There? I Am Legend and The Hunger Games.

What is it about science fiction that gives this particular genre such a broad appeal? If you look at Hollywood you’d be tempted to think it was the visual sensation of blockbusting special effects, but nothing could be further from the truth. If anything, the reliance of movies on mind-bending special effects has diluted rather than enhanced great science fiction stories.

Science fiction has such a strong appeal because it is intelligent, it stimulates our thinking. And, often times, this distinction is lost when books morph into movies.

In Who Goes There? John Campbell introduces us to a creature Hollywood immortalized as The Thing. Although the movie is a vivid and faithful rendition of this novella, it misses a significant amount of the reasoning the scientists go through as both they and the readers struggle to comprehend what they’re dealing with. And that is where the brilliance of the story lies, in the exploratory, inquisitive, reasoning nature of man. The essence of the story is, how can reason triumph over a mindless monster, one than can perfectly mimic its target? Don’t get me wrong, I love the movie, but the way the scientists reason through the nature of this alien beast in the novella is brilliant, and it is lost in the screen adaptation. They consider the biological nature of what they’ve run into, they think about how the infection spreads at a cellular level, realizing that the infected cow would have laced their milk with parasitic spores. They discuss why the alien won’t engage in open combat with them, realizing that it has evolved a unique strategy to avoid such confrontations, and they come to the chilling realization that it would sweep unopposed throughout the world if even the smallest biological trace remains. As a reader, you feel like an unnamed member of the ice station, traveling with them on this doomed voyage.

In the same way, I Am Legend, takes an absurd, mythological notion and says, what of it were true? How could vampires exist in a modern world? The protagonist, Neville, talks us through the logic of vampires fearing the cross, but not because of any inherent supernatural power in that shape, it turns out that the shape is a vivid reminder for vampires, causing a physiological revulsion of what they’ve become. In the same way, mirrors allow them to see themselves for what they really are, and they are repulsed by the realization that they are monsters. Neville even notes that vampires of Jewish origin would suffer the same aversion to the Star of David as former Christians would of the cross. Garlic, rather than an old wives’ fable, becomes a biological agent that causes anaphylactic shock. Sunlight, it seems, breaks down the vampiric bacteria, just as UV is known to destroy other types of bacteria. In the course of the story, the question is raised, why do stakes kill vampires and not bullets? Neville, our rational hero, applying science over superstition, learns that the hemorrhaging caused by a stake cannot be contained as easily as the smaller holes caused by a bullet. And the reader finds themselves inhabiting a world where the absurd has suddenly become plausible and rational, at least in a fictitious sense in which disbelief can be suspended for the enjoyment of the adventure.

The Hunger Games is another recent example. The movie is breathtaking, but action and adventure win out over the awe of reason. In the movie, we see Katness attack the supplies of the upper crust contestants, but without the audience really understanding why. In the book, however, we get a sense of the hunger and desperation Katness suffers in the wilderness. Rather than a mindless attack on the stores of the wealthy tributes, we see Katness attack the stores to level the playing field, to square up the fight and ensure that the rich kids also need to scavenge and forage for basic necessities. In this way, they can no longer ruthlessly hunt down the other tributes with such ease. And so the book allows us to explore this fictional world with Katness, and to understand its means and motives in a way that is glossed over in the movie.

As a science fiction author, I appreciate what these authors have done, they’ve started with a simple premise and explored the possibilities latent therein, seeking to build fictional worlds for our enjoyment. It is said that the plot is the character in action. When it comes to science fiction, the plot is the character interacting with science in a way that influences both their actions and the actions of their opponents.

 

Movies & Books

I just finished watching Cowboys & Aliens with the kids. Apart from the numerous plot holes, absurd bravado and testosterone-fuelled ego-fest, it’s not bad as far as mindless entertainment goes on a Saturday night. Watching the movie, though, I couldn’t help but see the shortcoming of movies in general. Visually, this movie is astounding. It has mind-bending special effects, with molten gold being sucked up in thin strands, in defiance of gravity. The aliens are like ugly on an ape, and look particularly barbaric/primitive for a race that has achieved interstellar travel, but the blue laser-like blasts and flying scout ships were a visual feast. And yet, there in lies the problem, movies excite with their action, but they fail to achieve the depth of a book because the imagination is never engaged. Read a book, and your imagination is guided, but ultimately the view you have is your own, any imagery or special effects are entirely yours. Reading is active, engaging, whereas watching a movie is passive, directed.

Reading is a remarkably versatile act. Get the right book, and you can be lost in orbit around a star light years from Earth for days on end.

Although the bulk of our communication is in words, there are subtleties that reach beyond language. We speak volumes with our gestures, facial expressions & posture. In life, touch and smell also come into play when you shake hands, or meet someone wearing perfume, or talk to someone having just finished up at the gym. Movies, at least, capture some of this non-verbal communication, but books don’t, not unless the author deliberately brings these elements into the text. Novels, it seems, are far more limited than movies, or are they?

Ultimately, fiction is about the suspension of disbelief, the willingness of a reader/viewer to ignore reality and inhabit an alternate world, one sculptured by another. The strength of novels comes from their limitation. Being restricted to just words, they can evoke every sense, even taste. Whereas a movie is dependent on camera angles and an actor’s versatility, a novel needs only the imagination of the reader.

Have you ever read a book and been excited about the release of the movie version, only to be disappointed when it finally comes out? Inevitably, you watch the movie and, regardless of the acting, regardless of the cinematography and special effects, you come away with the feeling something was missing. Why? There are three reasons.

Lack of imagination

Movies are passive, they replace rather than stimulate our imagination. The arts department and screenwriters have plenty of imagination. Their imagination arouses our thinking, but fails to stimulate our intellect as much as a book. We are astoundingly intelligent creatures. We need to have our minds exercised, excited. Movies do that to a degree, but no where near as well as a good novel.

Inability to internalise the character

The best movies, like Forrest Gump, allow you to internalise the main character, to identify with them, but this is extremely rare when it comes to science fiction movies. To be fair, science fiction novels generally fall short in this regard as well, but novels are written from a personal point of view. Novels allow you to see through another’s eyes, to hear their thoughts, to experience this pseudo-life in a way a movie cannot duplicate.

Lack of immersion

Ultimately, both of these lead to a lack of immersion. As engrossing as movies are they fail to sustain any depth beyond more than a few hours. A good novel, however, will capture the imagination for an extended period of time, over days or even weeks, allowing you escape to another world.

Growing up in New Zealand, I remember listening to the radio as a child. For several years, there was only one TV on our block, and it wasn’t in our living room, but we had a wall-mounted radio. I remember my mother and I sitting up to listen to War of the Worlds serialised for radio. Sitting there, my imagination was set alight by what was essentially an audio-book. To this day, when writing, I use a program called SpeakPad to listen to what I’ve written, to hear sections read back to me so as to engage my imagination. And so I’ve made sure Text-To-Speech is enabled on each of my novels because it is a variation I enjoy. Sitting there as an eight year old, the thought of an alien creature emerging from a strange, shiny cylinder, its tentacles snaking over the edge of a muddy crater, thrilled my imagination. As enjoyable as the Tom Cruise rendition was, it pales in comparison to the imagery built up in my mind all those years ago. Orson Wells, it seems, had a 70 year jump on the likes of The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield for realism in entertainment, scaring thousands in the pre-World War II 1930s.

Will I go and watch Prometheus when it comes out at the movies? Absolutely. Will it have me on the edge of my seat? Undoubtedly. Will I find the effects and storyline dazzling? Sure. But it will be formulaic, it has to be, that’s just the nature of movies. It will be bound and limited, with stilted dialogue, limited character build up and probably no character immersion at all, but I’m sure the action will be heart-stopping. In writing the sequel to Trixie & Me my goal is to engage readers in a manner that will thrill them every bit as much as Prometheus, with some depth of characterisation you just can’t find in the movies (ambitious goal, I know, but you’ve got to shoot for the moon). Keep your eyes peeled for War coming in May/June 2012.

PS. The Orson Wells broadcast of War of the Worlds is well worth listening to. The second half, in particular, is absolutely brilliant.

 

Inside the Mind of Charles Darwin

At the moment, I’m undertaking the final revision of a non-fiction book I’ve been working on for well over a year called I Think: Inside the Mind of Charles Darwin. It’s less than a month away from publication, so I thought I’d put the introduction up as a blog post. I hope you enjoy it.

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INTRODUCTION

This is not a biography in the traditional sense of the word. In this book, you will not learn anything of substance about Darwin’s personal life. If you’d like to know where he was born, what school he went to, or what his favorite toy was as a child, you should put this book back on the shelf and look for another. If you are considering this book wanting to learn more about Darwin’s voyage around the world on the HMS Beagle, or his time in the Galapagos islands, or his marriage to Emma Wedgwood, you should look for a more general biography, as you won’t find that in these pages. This book is concerned with the thinking and reasoning processes of Charles Darwin, and looks at his life through the prism of his personal correspondence. It is primarily focused on the background behind his landmark work, On the Origin of Species.

In 1859, Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species and, for the first time, the world had a coherent, comprehensive theory explaining the rich diversity of life we see around us. The recognition of Natural Selection has opened up over a hundred and fifty years of public debate on the origin of diverse species as religious institutions have struggled to reconcile evolution with their traditional creation stories.

During his lifetime, Darwin remained largely on the sidelines of this heated debate, refusing to be drawn into endless, and often meaningless discussions, leaving others, like Thomas Huxley, to champion the scientific cause. But Darwin was not silent. He wrote profusely, writing hundreds of letters to his close friends and supporters, and it is these unguarded moments, captured in private correspondence, never intended to see public light, that provide us with a unique insight into the mind of Charles Darwin. They reveal his personal thinking, his reasoning, his intentions, his doubts, his triumphs and his personal struggles in a candid and honest manner.

All great men are, inevitably, both canonized and demonized after death, treated as both saints and sinners. In the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, “to be great is to be misunderstood,” but the letters of Charles Darwin allow us to avoid any misunderstanding, they allow the man to speak for himself. These private letters show us the real Darwin, the man stripped bare of any scientific adulation on one hand, and without the lies and half-truths spread by his detractors on the other.

Why is this book important?

There is a growing divide between religious fundamentalists and evolutionary science. Whether we consider Christians, Jews, Hindus or Muslims, the issue is the same: literal interpretations of ancient literature grossly contradict modern science, they contradict our modern values, our modern thinking, our modern reasoning. Science has transformed far more than just such areas as medicine, astronomy, biology and engineering. Science has transformed our perspective on life itself. Over the past five hundred years there has been a seismic shift in our point of view. We have learned that decisions in life should be based on clear evidence, not vague ideals, be they religious or otherwise.

For Darwin, science provided answers. In those areas where science was yet to mature, it provided a framework for finding answers.

The undulatory [wave] theory of light has thus been arrived at [by scientific investigation]; and the belief in the revolution of the earth on its own axis was until lately supported by hardly any direct evidence. It is no valid objection that science as yet throws no light on the far higher problem of the essence or origin of life.

In Darwin’s day, the awareness that light moved in waves had only just become apparent. The concept of the Earth revolving on its axis was accepted, but had little in the way of direct evidence. Darwin realized science was a process of exploration and discovery. Although there is no clear understanding of how life originated on Earth, Darwin understood that this presented an opportunity for science, not an impediment.

Do you believe the Earth spins on its axis, rotating around the pole? Do you believe the Earth turns to face the sun each day? If so, then it is fair to say you didn’t learned this from your own personal experience, or from any religious scripture, or any philosophical ideal, you learned this from science.

Sit out on the porch one morning and watch the path of the sun over the course of a day and think about how extraordinary and revolutionary this concept actually is. Both common sense and the scriptures will tell you that you never moved, that you sat still in your chair as the sun rose high above you over during the day, and yet nothing could be further from the truth.

The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose – Ecclesiastes 1:5

As persistent and convincing as this experience is, we know it is an illusion. The trees in the distance, the table on the patio, the picket fence around your home, they all appeared to stay perfectly still as the sun rose high in the sky before slowly descending into the distance, just as King Solomon described in Ecclesiastes. And yet, in reality, both you, your home and your garden, have spun around in a circle, like a child on a playground ride. You have moved in defiance of both your personal experience and the testimony of the Bible.
Why do we accept the scientific notion of the Earth spinning at thousands of kilometers an hour over the biblical notion that the Earth “cannot be moved?” We accept this counterintuitive view of reality not because of our experience, not because of any holy writ or the uttering of an ancient prophet, we accept this because of the evidence.

In our day, no one would seriously consider teaching Ecclesiastes in our public schools as an alternative to the heliocentric theory of the solar system. Not even the Kansas Board of Education would take these sections of scripture literally, and yet, against reason, when it comes to the topic of evolution, they actively promote a literal interpretation of the book of Genesis.

Think about what science is for a moment. Science is a collection of theories, or ideas about life.
A scientific theory has two components, it is based on evidence and it draws conclusions. And these conclusions give us the ability to test or validate an idea. If the results don’t match expectations, something needs to change. If they’re do, we can use these ideas for leverage, we can use them to build cars, trains, computers, antibiotics, planes, skyscrapers, bridges, mobile phones, traffic lights. In fact, it’s hard to think of anything in modern life that isn’t dependent on science. Even age-old practices like horticulture or making kiln-fired bricks to build a home have been enhanced and refined and taken to new heights by the advent of modern science.

And we trust science, we trust these evidence-based conclusions every time we step on a bus, every time we ride in an airplane, every time we switch on a light, or open a packet of cereal, or swallow a tablet of medicine.
Evidenced-based science is at the very heart of modern life. But when it comes to biology, the notion of evolution offends our religious convictions and for that reason, and that reason alone, it is called into doubt, regardless of the evidence.

Science represents a quandary for those who follow a literal interpretation of the Bible. There’s no doubt science is beneficial, but should it be trusted? After all, as the US dollar states, In God we trust, not man. And so the seeds of doubt are planted. Genesis is God’s Word. Natural Selection is the theory of man. How can it be trusted? And with this one, broad and gross over-simplification, the evidence is simply ignored and swept aside.

Some religious groups will go so far as to promote a semblance of pseudo-science in its place, accepting scientific findings where these agree with their theology, while substituting radical alternatives like Intelligent Design where the evidence does not. Such an approach is flawed from the start as it approaches science backwards. It seeks a means to justify its end, it starts with conclusions and manipulates the evidence to fit with its preconceptions. Intelligent Design is, in a word, dishonest, which is quite ironic given the supposedly high and lofty morals of its proponents.

In the beginning

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth – Genesis 1:1

Genesis uses clear, decisive terms. The language is forceful, with the Almighty commanding creation. On the first day, “God said, Let there be light and there was light.” With such grand, sweeping statements and regal declarations it is no wonder this section of the Bible has been taken literally even though theologians have documented more figures of speech in the first chapter of Genesis than there are verses of scripture!
With the best of intentions, Christian ministers and lay-preachers alike have advanced a literal interpretation of Genesis in defiance of science.

It is not uncommon to hear ministers depicting this conflict as a battle between science and faith, between natural knowledge and spiritual. They portray themselves as protecting “the integrity of the Word.” The reality is, it is not science that has attacked the Bible, it is biblical literalists who have attacked science.
Science is impartial, it does not take sides.

Science nether attacks nor defends, it simply presents the evidence and draws conclusions. In its rawest form, science is the recognition of natural laws. It is the categorization of observations and, based on these observations, science forms a series of rational, logical, consistent conclusions about the natural world. Whether these observations, and their subsequent conclusions, offend someone’s preconceived religious notions or not is irrelevant.

The great book of nature can be read only by those who know the language in which it was written. And this language is mathematics. – Galileo.

Science is an expression, a formula. Whether we like it or not, two plus two equals four. Whether we like it or not, science has something relevant to say about the origin of our world. To rage against that simply highlights our own personal immaturity.

Like Galileo and Copernicus, Darwin sought to understand the scientific laws that govern our world. And like Galileo and Copernicus, Darwin has been vilified by religious leaders, by those ignorant souls who value blind loyalty over honesty and truth. Hopefully, this book goes a little way toward correcting that injustice.

Darwin’s Time Machine

While reviewing the material for this book, I considered two other possible themes to explore in this work, the first being Darwin’s Time Machine.

As you will see throughout the writings of Charles Darwin, from his casual correspondence with friends through to his publication of On the Origin of Species, Darwin makes a series of remarkable insights that belie the times in which he lived.

Darwin’s genius was in seeing beyond the moment and realizing the possibilities that lay hidden in the vast array of seemingly contradictory facts surrounding the natural world. From these, Darwin distilled an astoundingly accurate picture of how life has flourished on Earth. His insights into the past, from thousands to millions of years ago, along with his conjecture about future discoveries, makes one wonder if he had a time machine hidden away in his garden shed, perhaps a DeLorean powered by Mr Fusion. Throughout this book, we will journey with Darwin in his Tardis as he elaborates on the progression of life on Earth over hundreds of millions of years.

Darwin the Creationist

Darwin was a creationist. This may surprise some, but it is undeniably true. Darwin was raised in a Christian family, studied divinity at university in preparation to become a clergyman with the Church of England, and, during his epic voyage on the Beagle, searched for what he thought of as “centres of creation,” those places where the Creator must have first breathed life into animals before they spread across the face of the Earth.
In writing On the Origin of Species, Darwin reveals numerous turning points on his decade-long journey from creationist to scientist, outlining in methodical detail the steps he traveled in his own personal journey as his scientific awareness slowly awakened.

Darwin understood how controversial Natural Selection would be and took pains to carefully and methodically confirm his theory before publication. And yet, for all his efforts to the contrary, he has been misrepresented and ridiculed.

My views have often been grossly misrepresented, bitterly opposed and ridiculed, but this has been generally done, as I believe, in good faith.

Darwin, ever the gentleman, understood the opposition his theory received from creationists because he’d personally struggled with the very same issues. He understood the genuine sincerity of his opponents because he’d been there and had once held the same doubts and concerns. And that is something I deeply appreciate when reading his works, as I too once struggled under the weight of the same concerns.

Great is the power of steady misrepresentation; but the history of science shows that fortunately this power does not long endure.

Darwin has been unjustly maligned and his works condemned, and yet few, if any of his detractors have ever read anything he wrote. I know I certainly hadn’t. In some sincere Christian circles, the very mention of his name invokes indignation and comparisons with Adolph Hitler, Karl Marx and even Satan himself. As you will see firsthand in this book, nothing could be further from the truth.

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Update: Since posting this, I’ve had feedback from some beta-readers and decided to expand the content. Given my current writing projects, it will be a while before I get back to this, but I will post an update when this book launches.

 

Diverting the Amazon

The Amazon is the largest, but not the longest, river in the world, with an average water-flow greater than the next seven rivers combined. Its width varies from a mile across to six miles. During the wet season, it expands to roughly thirty miles in width, with its estuary emptying into the Atlantic across a broad front a hundred and fifty miles wide. How appropriate, then, that Jeff Bezos named his e-commerce company, with it’s various tributaries and its sheer volume, Amazon.

As an independent author, Amazon has given me, and countless others, a unique opportunity to explore the deep, dark forests of the publishing world in a way that couldn’t be dreamt of a few years ago. In the midst of this, the 99c e-book market has arisen as a niche category, a bargain bin in the basement, something from which readers can take a punt on new/emerging authors (like myself) with dubious literary ability (again, like myself). This is, quite serendipitously, a mirror of the cheap pulp fiction of the 1930-1960s that spawned the science fiction genre.

Most, if not all, of the great science fiction authors like Clarke, Heinlein, Dick and Asimov had their origins in the cheap paperbacks of this era, so there’s hope for me yet. I can’t help but wonder if, with the advent of electronic self-publishing, we are on the cusp of another era of great science fiction. Maybe, maybe not, as the ease of publishing has also led to a lot of electronic pulp, making it hard to separate the chaff from the wheat.

Enter Hugh Howey, the man who diverted the course of the Amazon. The 99c price bracket continues to be a launching point for budding authors, like myself, but it is saturated by trash pulp, some would say my trash pulp, but it is hard to find the gold nuggets. For example, consider these comments selected at random from some of the more questionable entries in the Top 10 Hard Science Fiction e-Books.

…the book quickly descends into moronic drudgery…
…Five star reviews? Amazing. Did they read the same book?
…I wish I’d read something else.
…reads like a massively annoying list of trite sayings strung together with pronouns and adverbs

So how do you distinguish the good from the bad, the great read from the grammatical nightmare? Reviews, themselves, are quite subjective and, it seems, easily distorted if you have 25 friends with Amazon accounts willing to lend you five stars a piece.*

The 99c e-Book pulp fiction represents an interesting dilemma for an author. Amazon pays lousy commissions in this bracket to encourage higher prices, but moving a new book to 2.99 or 3.99 takes it outside of the bargain bin and into obscurity. So the question facing budding authors is, sell your book for peanuts and enter competition with pulp that, in some cases, is a poor substitute for spam in your inbox, or price your unknown work out of the market?

And this is where Hugh Howey had a stroke of genius. He has effectively redefined the 99c price point, reinventing it as the region of high-quality short stories/novellas. His Wool series is essentially a series of related short stories, longer than chapters, but not full books in their own right. They are a return to the spirit of pulp fiction in the 1950s, engaging stories that can be read in a single setting and continued if the reader chooses to buy the next one in the series. Howey has been criticised for short-changing readers, as he doesn’t describe these books as novellas with roughly 20-25,000 words a piece, but he points out that if someone purchases all five novellas they will have spent 4.95 on 100,000 words, a fair price by anyone’s estimate. How much would you pay for a cup of coffee? How much would you pay to rent a Blu-ray for the night? Or to go to the movies to see a new release? (You need a second mortgage to finance a family outing to the cinemas in Australia) Yeah, it puts a 99c e-book in a very favourable light.

What Mr Howey doesn’t point out is that this approach is not advantageous to him, it is something that is advantageous to the readers. The reader starts with a low-cost appetiser. If they don’t like the amuse-bouche, they’ve reached a natural end to the story without wading through 100,000 words, and saved themselves four dollars. I’d be interested to know Mr Howey’s stats on Wool purchases as it would be fascinating to know how many people go on to buy successive editions.

In both scenarios, selling Wool in a series or compiled into a book, the cost to the reader is 4.95. But for Mr Howey, there is a significant difference in commission, 35% or 70%, so he is clearly putting the reader’s interests before his own.

And he’s given himself the time and space to grow as a writer. The stories improved in quality, characterisation and plot as the series progresses. Take a look at the reader ratings for the Wool series.

• Wool 1 Avg 4.6 stars over 90 reviews, only 2 one star reviews
• Wool 2 Avg 4.8 stars over 27 reviews, no one star reviews
• Wool 3 Avg 4.9 stars over 18 reviews, nothing below four stars
• Wool 4 Avg 5.0 stars over 18 reviews (some duplicated reviewers from Wool 4 but not all of them)
• Wool 5 Yet to be released

Now, this is not to say Wool is perfect, far from it. I picked up a minor blemish today in Wool 3. Will Wool get more one star reviews over time, without a doubt, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but, damn, these are dream stats.

As a writer that’s been harshly criticised for lacking depth, I find the focus on a series of high-quality short stories intriguing. And so, in the spirit of exploration and experimentation that has underpinned my writing with Amazon, I’ve come up with Serengeti using the same concept. Serengeti is the first of five stand-alone short stories in which I’ve focused on the quality of writing, the quality of characterisation and dramatisation over simply trying to pump out 100,000 words to compete with the deadheads in the trash pulp section.

My prediction for the future? The great science fiction writers of this century will come from the high-quality shorts in the 99c bargain bin on Amazon.

Thank you, Mr Howey, for carving out a niche for a series of high-quality novellas and changing the course of the river.

*  In the interests of transparency, two of my friends offered initial reviews of Anomaly, one of whom rated the book with four stars. This review continues to be a popular, judged relevant by a decent number of unknown readers. Both reviews are clearly labelled as being from friends. Also, in the interests of fairness, one of the negative comments above is from one of my one star reviews (ouch).

* Update: Hugh contacted me and let me know that the follow-through rate of readers purchasing Wool 1 – 5 appears to be around 95-98% so there’s a lot of satisfied Wool readers out there.

 

One Star

Every writer wants five stars reviews of their novel, and understandably so, but those one stars can be quite insightful and are well worth playing close attention to as a novelist.

I recently finished reading Max Brooks World War Z and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Sure, it’s not Shakespeare, it’s not Hemingway, but it’s a bloody good read (if you’ll pardon the pun). Max has an astounding 971 reviews, 597 of which are five stars, and then there’s the 46 one star reviews.

The one stars are quite varied. Some people were clearly hoping for more blood and guts, others felt the characters were one dimensional, while others felt it was a good idea, poorly executed (did they read the same book I did?). One astute reviewer labelled it “Yawn of the Dead,” which I think would have brought a smile to Max’s face, whether he agreed with it or not. But the common theme through all these reviews is that he needed a more convincing change of narrative when switching between characters. I’ve been criticised for a similar lack of depth in characterisation so there’s something in that both Max and I can learn from.

Another classic example of this is Ender’s Game, a science fiction novel I thoroughly enjoyed, and the twist got me hook, line and sinker. With well over 2900 reviews and a phenomenal 2300 five star reviews, you’d wonder how anyone could find fault with the book, and yet there are 79 one star reviews. And there’s a lot Orson Scott Card and I and anyone else who’d cares to look can learn from these reviews. Particularly, the review by Arteminism.

Very disturbed by central themes
I find it hard to understand how people cannot notice the deep themes of child abuse that run through this novel. From the struggle within Ender (the abused) to avoid becoming Peter (his first abuser), to “Uncle Graf” isolating Ender by removing him first from the protection of his family and then from friendships with his peers…

Graff… plans to convince Ender that no matter what, no adult will ever come to his rescue. Interestingly, Graff is later prosecuted for his treatment of these boys; he is fully acquitted and offered a promotion.

There are a bunch of comments associated with this review that suggest the reviewer “doesn’t get it.” Oh, he/she gets it all right, better than we do, as he/she is able to clearly separate the appeal of fiction and the suspension of disbelief from reality.

Graf’s comment, that no adult will ever come to Ender’s aid, is chillingly similar to the ploy invoked by paedophiles to control and contain their victims in a state of helplessness. And as for fully acquitted and promoted, well, that too is (unfortunately) all too true of child abusers in our world. I don’t think the author realised quite what he was unveiling.

The reviewer finds it hard to understand how people cannot notice the deep themes of abuse in this novel. And that is a valid point. I find it hard to understand how I could overlook something so obvious until it was pointed out to me in this particular review. In hindsight, I was aware of a sense of distaste at what unfolded, but I suspended that for the sake of the story.

The term for this is selective attention (or it’s counterpoint, selective blindness). We tend to become so engrossed in something we enjoy that we drop our guard mentally and morally, and so we’ll watch the movie Die Hard or Saving Private Ryan or Lord of the Rings without batting an eyelid at the horrific waste of life that occurs in these appalling battles, so long as the heroes are safe.

In Ender’s case, we see all that he endures as his rite of passage and we lose sight of the reality of how brutal and abusive the novel actually is, making this review an astute observation.

So far, my novel Anomaly has dodged one star reviews, although you wouldn’t know it from the tone of some of the comments.

Not just juvenile: actually puerile
…paper-thin and sickeningly sweet… it was so mercifully short

Science fiction or political, moral and religious lecture
…the story line as a science fiction work is weak, unfulfilled, and lacking depth… The writing was a bit too simplistic also; it felt pedestrian. Relationships were rushed and unnatural… I would rate it “Pleasurable-not memorable”

Ouch!

But, as a writer, these comments help to temper the natural enthusiasm and excitement there is in receiving positive reviews. They give me some direction, areas to work upon and address in future novels.

One star reviews… they’re not all that bad as there’s always more to learn

Update 15/11 – Opps.., there it is… one star to lighten my day. BTW, I’ve update the book with US English and US terminology.

Update 21/11 – And the floodgates have opened with ones and twos coming in droves. I once read an autobiography of a special forces soldier who, on parachuting into a combat zone in the dark, crashed into a tree. He noted that the sting of a branch, lashing against his face, gave him a sense of being alive. I know what he means.

 

Proud as Peaches

My novel, Anomaly, has held #3 position on the Amazon Hot New Releases in High Tech Science Fiction for a couple of days now, and I’m as proud as peaches.

Anomaly briefly sat at #2 for a couple of hours at its high water mark, but by the time you read this it will probably have dropped out of the new releases altogether. For an independent author, though, with no agent and no publisher, it’s quite something to make Amazon’s top ten (in a very narrow field), although it speaks more for the mechanism of Amazon than it does for my writing.

Amazon is more than a commercial enterprise, it is a disruptive and revolutionary democratic/economic force. I love the way those that rate a story are themselves rated by those that have also read that particular story. The reviews are often blunt, which is never easy to take, but is generally balanced and good natured. I’m yet to have any real depth of comments against either Anomaly or Out of Time, but criticism, though never easy to take, is always good, always something that can be learnt from.

Looking back, I’m critical of both stories. I probably shouldn’t say this aloud, but I suspect I’m guilty of preaching from a soap box. I need to relax a little more with dialogue and let it be more natural. So, there, that’s my critical Amazon review.

Anyway, if you’re up for a roller-coaster ride in science fiction, give these novels a whirl. Hopefully, you won’t be disappointed. If you are, though, I’m sure I’ll hear about it through your review

 

World War Z

Although, strictly speaking, zombie books and movies are in the category of horror, not science fiction, World War Z is the exception to the rule.

The title, World War Z, is an allusion to World War 2, and the parallels are obvious. The novel is written in the style of a historical review after the fact, in much the same way as overviews of WWII were the rage in the 1950s, explaining to a population that saw the war locally how things actually transpired globally. In the same way, World War Z provides answers once the fight is over.

Rather than the classic fight-or-flight survival concepts explored by most zombie flicks, WWZ looks at the social, political, military and medical implications of a world wide outbreak of zombies. And, in that regard, it offers some plausible, believable aspects of political science and social norms for consideration, each of them familiar to us but slightly altered by the flesh-eating horde.

Corporal punishment, as an example, is reintroduced by the United States of America. Although putting someone in stocks and conducting a publicflogging sounds medieval and highly unlikely, as the political leaders in this story point out, “What else were we supposed to do? Throw them in jail? Who would guard them? Who would feed them? With 200 million zombies swarming over the Continental US, we needed every able bodied man, woman and child in the fight. And, besides, public humiliation is a powerful deterrent.“ And with compelling insights like this, WWZ takes us on a global tour of the post-war world, interviewing key survivors and looking at the escalating stages of the war.

As tempting as it is, I won’t steal the thunder of Max Brooks and the military solution he contrives to stem the horde of the living dead, but I will add that such a heartless, unethical proposition is entirely plausible given the threat of human extinction.

This is not a book about zombies eating brains with guts flying everywhere, this book is about the social, political and military response. There’s a little blood and guts, but gore is not the dominate theme of the book. And it captures the different cultural attitudes of the German’s, the American’s, the Pakistani’s, the African’s, the Chinese’s, etc with surprising clarity and realism. There’s the big man African dictator syndrome, the war weary Europeans, the isolationist Israeli’s, those in denial, those profiteering from the misery and those that are bureaucratically incompetent and inert in front of the tsunami of the undead.

Oh, and the audio book version is compelling listening, reminiscent of the old radio broadcasts for War of the Worlds. You can get 10 free samples from various chapters as podcasts from the Apple store.

World War Z is a must read and when the movie with Brad Pitt comes out in 2012, I’ll be lining up to see it.

 

Conversations with an Alien Hunter

OK, the book is actually called Confessions of an Alien Hunter: A Scientist’s Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence by Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI institute, but it could have equally been called Conversations with an Alien Hunter…  because of its relaxed, informative, conversational style.

And this raises an interesting point about the 21st Century. Never before have so many had such direct access to the relatively few pioneering minds of our time. Today, you can follow scientists like Seth on Twitter or like them on Facebook.

Seth is one of the brave few that still has his direct contact details on the Internet and gets flooded with emails and phone calls. With hundreds of new emails every day, he’s gone from senior astronomer to chief correspondent as he juggles public demand against his professional inquiry in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. I’m sure there are some days where he’d be glad to find terrestrial intelligence, while anything beyond that would be a bonus. And this brings us back to Confessions, as it is, in a nutshell, the opportunity to sit one-on-one with Seth and listen to what he has to say on the subject of intelligent alien life. Its soft, easy-going, conversational style makes it enjoyable to read.

In an age where communication moves at close to the speed of light, zipping around the planet through copper wires and fibre optics, bouncing off tin cans in the sky and through cables running along the sea floor there’s rarely the chance to have a sustained, in-depth conversation any more, but, ironically, books are filling that niche. Rather than superseding and replacing the written word, the advent of the Internet has ensured books have a place of even greater prominence in that they are the sole repositories of comprehensive knowledge. Catch something interesting in a tweet? Read some titbit in a news article and want to know more? Head for the books.

And Confessions delivers in style. It’s everything you wanted to ask after seeing the movie Contact, but didn’t know who to approach.

It is fascinating to have the search for extraterrestrial intelligence put in context. Yes, it’s been going for decades and they haven’t found anything, but do you realise how big space is? I mean, we all know space is big. But do you know how big it really is when you start searching for ET? Seth points out that if you were sitting in orbit around Alpha Centauri, the closest of over two hundred billion stars to our sun, looking for mankind, then spotting the Earth would be like noticing a mosquito circling a light-bulb from 10,000 miles away. The clincher, though, is the mosquito circles some 25 feet away from the light-bulb and never gets any closer. And that’s the view from our closest neighbour!

Searching for extraterrestrial intelligence is, then, perhaps the most adventurous undertaking in the history of science.

The Arecibo telescope, made famous by the movie Contact, is located in Puerto Rico with a dish measuring 1,000 feet across. It’s capable of holding 373 tennis courts and is so sensitive that the dish can detect signals one-trillionth the energy of an ant taking a single step. These guys may not have found ET yet, but it’s not for lack of trying. The reality is, our galaxy is astonishingly big. Shostak points out that if the largest, most comprehensive SETI search to date had been conducted on a haystack, we would have made a particularly thorough search through roughly a tablespoon’s worth of hay and determined there were no needles…yet…

So patience is the order of the day, but, as Shostak points out, Moore’s Law not only ensures ever faster computers for our home office/study, it means our ability to trawl through millions of frequencies is growing exponentially. Within the next couple of decades we’ll have gone through a sizeable portion of our haystack and, as we suspect there are thousands of needles buried within it, we should end up pricking our finger.

There’s a whole bunch of extraordinary insights throughout the book, but I won’t spoil it for you, suffice to say, Hollywood gets it all spectacularly wrong. If you enjoyed Contact, you’ll love Confessions.