Yearly Archives: 2014

Historical Context Matters: Strange Bedfellows

Posted on by Henry

I’ve been reading quite a bit about Ukraine recently, and marveling at how important historical context is to understanding the present.  Given that our experience of the present is interpreted through the lens of our past, if we lack the appropriate local context for a situation any outsider is likely to be confused.  Here’s a concrete example: in addition to all of the other (traumatic, disgusting, screwed-up) baggage that comes along with Nazi ideology and symbolism, for some in Ukraine those things also represent independence from the Soviet state.  Knowing that, I’m less surprised to see that those particularly toxic things are experiencing a resurgence among some subsections of the population of Ukraine.  Given the local historical context I find it frightening (but not, on reflection, surprising) to see these things coming to the fore once more.  What will come of having the bigotry, fascist tendencies, and virulent hatreds espoused by neo-nazis and their sympathizers in some way legitimated by their connection with the forces that helped to organize the Maidan, and the forces that now do Kiev’s fighting in the east?  I don’t know, but all I can say is “Ick.”

Reading up on all of that has left me thinking about the conflicts and strange bedfellows of my own fictional settings, and particularly the one that I’ve been calling Elven Progenitors (EP).  It’s not a very catchy title for a setting, I know, but it’s the only name I’ve got at the moment.  At least it’s distinct?  I don’t want to explain all of the background of the setting in one go, but I thought I should talk about some of the ways in which it differs from our own history, and some of the background politics that I may have vaguely hinted at without ever explaining.  If you’ve read any of these various stories (Paying the Tab, Jerome Goes North, Jerome’s Tropical Vacation, A Simple Misunderstanding, Rum Luck), you’ve already read something in this setting.  Exposition follows below.

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Story Backgrounds Take Time

Posted on by Henry

I seriously underestimated the amount of time it would take me to post a piece of world background for some of my stories.  It’s not like I don’t already know it, I just didn’t realize how much of it I actually wanted to share in one post, or how long it would take to write it.  I plan to have that out for you tomorrow, but for now please accept my apologies for the delay.

Arctic Rising, by Tobias Buckell

Posted on by Henry

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Tobias Buckell has made me very happy indeed.  I can’t decide whether I prefer Arctic Rising to Hurricane Fever, and I really liked Hurricane Fever (seriously, read my review).  It’s rare that I have the pleasure of reading a fast paced high-tension thriller set in a brilliantly developed near-future, let alone reading two of them back to back.  Buckell’s world-building is a tremendous draw for me.  It’s quality shines through in the ease with which he introduces the near-future to the reader; he keeps his obvious enthusiasm for the world he’s created tightly leashed, only revealing it in dribs and drabs, more often than not as an in-character rumination or observation that feels entirely appropriate.  Better yet, I didn’t find any gaping implausibilities.  I’ll admit that I didn’t take a fine-toothed comb to the books and their established background, but they hold together well enough to offer a compelling (and somewhat distressing) view of an imminent future.  If you want to treat yourself to a jaunt down “doesn’t this seem likely…” lane, and you want some hair-raising hijinks in the bargain, try either of these books.  If you don’t want to be spoiled for either book before you read it, be sure to read Arctic Rising first, though I did it in the opposite order and still enjoyed myself immensely.

Why did I enjoy it so much?  Well…

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Hurricane Fever, By Tobias S. Buckell

Posted on by Henry

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I first heard about this book through Scalzi’s Big Idea feature on his blog.  I was captivated by Buckell‘s premise, a spy novel set in the Caribbean with a protagonist who actually lived and grew up there instead of simply going there to vacation, infiltrate, or establish a villainous lair.  It pays special attention to what it’s like to have your home relegated to the status of a playground for the wealthy, and how a pan-Caribbean federation might look in the near future.  Hurricane Fever is a fast paced delight that delivers on its premise and offers the best Bond movie I’ve read in years.  It’s a violent and active spy-thriller, and one in which the main character is more often mistaken for a member of the waitstaff than a tourist.  I found it both engaging and refreshing, and now I want to read Buckell’s other work.

Read on for more detail.  Don’t worry, I’ll protect you from undue spoilers.

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Short Story: Rum Luck

Posted on by Henry

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Rum Luck: Bad luck, esp. in a certain circumstance or series of events

This one came about through an odd (actually, pretty typical) series of circumstances: I was starting another story and realized partway through that I really needed to know what came before it.  Like its predecessors, this takes place in a fantastical alternate history setting, with geography (and some place-names) much like our world’s.  And again, this is a fairly rough draft.  Other stories in the same setting can be found here, here, here, and here.  Enjoy responsibly.

*     *     *

The night air was fresh and clean, carrying the scents of salt and the sweet tropical grasses that grew along the beaches here.  It wafted up from the shore, dancing across the slopes of the hills and tickling the back of Jerome’s neck as he and Andre drove their wagon along the well-traveled path.  Stars dotted the sky above them, and a rising moon left a glimmering trail on the water to their right.  Andre’s lantern cast enough light on the trail ahead for the horses, both of whom had traversed this path many times before.  The hefty dwarf smiled up at Jerome, his teeth gleaming as they caught the moonlight.

“You know, Jerome, sometimes,” Andre gave a happy sigh, “sometimes this really isn’t so bad at all.”  His free hand swept to encompass the hillsides around them, the trail, the sea, and the rising moon.  He glanced behind them at the bed of the wagon, eyeing the casks which he’d so carefully secured.  They sloshed as the wagon creaked and rattled.  From where Andre sat, Jerome’s answering grin was silhouetted against the rising moon.

“I told you this would be a good job.”  Jerome risked a glance at Andre, looking away from the team for a moment.  Andre snorted in response, and Jerome chuckled.  Trying to keep a straight face, he continued, “And have I ever led you astray before?”  The two of them burst out laughing.  They laughed so long and so hard that Andre was soon wiping tears from the corners of his eyes.

“Never!”  Andre lied with a guffaw.  The two of them burst into a new round of laughter.

Jerome took the reins in one hand for long enough to wipe his now wet cheeks.  “Well!  I’m glad we’re in agreement then!”  He chuckled some more for the next few minutes, watching the bends in the path as it took them down the shoreside route.  It was several miles from the sugar mill and distillery where they’d picked up their load to the town where they’d been hired to deliver it, and in weather such as they had tonight it was a true pleasure to travel.

“I still don’t see why that man wanted you to do the delivery instead of whatever drivers he normally uses.”  Andre returned to their earlier debate, though he sounded far more goodnatured than he had while they were arguing over it in the bar.

“He said his usual drivers were sick or something.”  Jerome peered ahead at the dimly lit path.  He slowed the horses a little further, glancing to either side.  “Play that light across those rocks, will you?  I don’t like the looks of them.”  Jerome nodded as Andre complied, then added with a grin, “And besides, he said it was a pleasure to be doing business with me again!”

“Pffffft.”  Andre made his opinion of that idea clear.  He shook his head, running his free hand through his beard as the wagon rattled slowly towards the rocks that he’d illuminated.  “He just said that so he could screw us with lower pay than he’d usually give, and all of it at the end of the job too.”

Jerome winced a little.  He allowed as to how that might be true, though he wasn’t likely to agree with Andre out loud.  Certainly not just now.  He looked over the rocks again, largish things that lay to either side of the trail, and had a sudden flash of memory that helped him place why he felt so uncomfortable.  “You know,” he began, “I’ve been ambushed near stones like these before—,” and then he saw the figures rising from either side of the road, guns in hand, while a small log was heaved into place across the path from the lower slope to his right.  Jerome gently brought the wagon to a stop.

“Have you now,” Andre muttered darkly as he raised his hands.  “I never would have guessed.”

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Maelstrom, by Taylor Anderson

Posted on by Henry

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Having just finished reading Maelstrom, I’m officially downgrading this series from “potentially profoundly interesting” to “some variety of popcorn lit.”  You know, the stuff that you’ll compulsively eat without thinking too hard about it: sometimes it’s exactly what you’re looking for, but more often it’s just there and you don’t bother to stop yourself.  This series is alt-history tech-bootstrapping military fiction with a very particular set of idealized social dynamics, and as of now it doesn’t look like it will stretch beyond that.  I’m not saying that it’s bad; popcorn lit is definitionally good enough that I’ll pick it up and breeze through it simply for the pleasure of reading it, provided I’m in the right mood.  But it also hasn’t lived up to my hopes of offering more introspection on any of its various conflicts, or breaking further from its genre precedents in an interesting fashion.

I should note that it’s hard for most novels to make it past my popcorn lit category, and the category itself encompasses an almost unhelpfully wide spread of books; furthermore, I can’t pretend to be better than that myself, as I doubt any of my own short stories would qualify as anything but popcorn lit.

I won’t say that the series can’t ever be anything but popcorn lit.  Some of the future books may deliver answers to the niggling contentions I’m sharing with you here.  But thus far my hopes for what I’ll call “deeper” material have not been met.  Specifically, I want Anderson to go deeper into examining the cultural conflicts inherent between the Americans and their various allies, and I especially want him to include the perspective of Lemurians who truly don’t have specified gender roles or gender/sex expectations.  It seems like he’s introduced the Lemurians (the cat-/lemur-like creatures with whom the Americans allied in the first book) as being without specific gender roles, but when we’re treated to the perspective of a Lemurian there are a number of basic social operating assumptions that appear to be based in a society more similar to our own, one which certainly embraces a number of implicitly gender- or sex-based values.  If Anderson wants to write the human perspectives in his book with those value assumptions in place, that’s ok by me, even if I don’t like it.  But much like my love for and disappointment with the use of Drax in Guardians of the Galaxy, I find it frustrating that Anderson should introduce an ostensibly gender- and sex- blind culture and then not do them the justice of writing from a gender- and sex-blind perspective.  I have to give Taylor Anderson credit for trying, and it seems like he might not be aware of how he’s failing to deliver here, but that doesn’t make it un-frustrating.

More after the break.

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Ice Bath Challenge

Posted on by Henry

Just because he’s writing on a different site doesn’t mean this shouldn’t be cross-posted here. This is worth reading, and you’ll probably want to watch the video as well.

Short Story: A Simple Misunderstanding

Posted on by Henry

Here’s the return of Andre and Jerome, the pair of accidentally-adventurous miscreants.  If you want to read other stories about them, try Paying the Tab, Jerome Goes North, or Jerome’s Tropical Vacation.  There should be another short story coming along soon!

*     *     *

“Does everyone understand their part?”  The man’s voice was nagging and whiny.

Belly down on the hay-strewn dirt, Andre felt a sneeze coming on.  There was the unmistakable sensation of rising, building pressure, and that odd tingling feeling that came along with it.  He knew it would feel so good to sneeze that the anticipation was almost pleasant in and of itself.  Despite this, he thrust his hand up underneath his nose, trying to press against the bone just above his teeth in an effort to stop the sneeze before it could come out.  Through his desperately squinted eyes he could make out the feet of five people standing less than a yard from where he hid underneath a small wagon, and he knew that sneezing would be a very bad life choice at this moment.  None of the people whose conversation he’d been eavesdropping on would appreciate unexpected company.

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Crusade, by Taylor Anderson

Posted on by Henry

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I just finished reading Crusade last night, the second book in Taylor Anderson’s Destroyermen series.  It still hits that oddly specific sweet spot I mentioned before, with alt-history technological bootstrapping and idealized social dynamics being the name of the game.  I believe I referred to Into the Storm as a strange mix of Stirling and Flint, but I’ve come to a better understanding of these books’ oddly specific conflux of flavors.  To envision Anderson’s style, strip away most of Stirling‘s semi-religious influences and replace what remains with faith in Honor and Doing What’s Right, convert Flint‘s cheerfully proletariat bonhomie into something just a bit more hierarchical, and toss in Weber or Ringo‘s blood-spattered military adventurism.  Now you’ve got a good approximation of Anderson.  (Just to be clear, I don’t expect any Oh John Ringo No! moments).

This second book in the series sticks with the same characters we met in the first one, and expands the cast slightly to give us a better perspective of the foes our protagonists face.  The setting remains the same, and the various characters on the ship are still wonderful to follow around.  I still sometimes felt like I was reading about a Chopper’s gang from Apocalypse World, and the sometimes aggressive, sometimes malicious pranking and posturing of the crew is reminiscent of my own experiences of living with a large group of other young men.  People are convincingly selfish and obsessive about their various areas of responsibility, and I’ve really enjoyed seeing the gradual induction of non-human characters into the ship’s crew and watching how they adapt to their duties and adopt the mannerisms of the other characters around them.

Ok, speaking of adapting, I need to mention something that I brought up last time as a concern; Anderson very carefully carries through on representing stereotypical 1940s gender roles, and I found that a bit off-putting (not the accuracy, but the roles and expectations themselves).  Fortunately, since the American humans aren’t the only culture in the book, there are groups of characters who aren’t bound by those gender-strictures.  But Crusade doesn’t look much deeper into the disconnect between the human conceptions of propriety and the conceptions of their new Lemurian allies.  I said that I’d be dissatisfied if that didn’t change… and it didn’t really change, and I am dissatisfied.  At the same time, the topic has certainly been discussed (briefly, or as a source of disconcertion) by the characters even if not much has come of it thus far, and it looks like there may be more change coming down the line.  My guess would be that such change will inevitably be lower priority for the story than the themes of military and honor, but I’ll keep reading and keep hoping that the change will come some point soon.  At a guess, the alteration of gender expectations will come about as a fait accompli as more of the humans die and are replaced by Lemurians.  Go figure.

Those quibbles aside, I’m still enjoying the series.  If you liked the sound of the style amalgamation I described above, you’ll probably enjoy it too.

Deep Wizardry, by Diane Duane

Posted on by Henry

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Yes, that is a truly massive shark.  The cover of the version that I read had something to do with a whale, but I like this one better.  I thought I’d already reviewed this book, and it was only as I was sitting down to write my review of the next one in the series that I checked back through my previous posts and found that I was wrong.  So before I tell you my thoughts on High Wizardry, let me tell you how I felt about Deep Wizardry.

The quick and dirty version is as follows: Diane Duane is good at her job, and she knows how to write books about young children taking on incredible responsibilities and facing overwhelming decisions… Which is a decent description of growing up, when I think about it.  Of course, most of us aren’t given access to powerful magical forces except in a metaphorical sense.  Deep Wizardry, like So You Want To Be A Wizard, is quality children’s literature; I’ll even go further and say that it’s good enough to merit your attention and reflection too, child or not.

With the exception of the “I think I read most of this before” section, my review of Deep Wizardry really is very similar to my review of So You Want To Be A Wizard.  I’m still more than a little bit in awe of Duane, she still writes excellent YA adventure with exceptionally mature themes, and she still does an incredibly good job of not talking down to her audience.  What I hadn’t really appreciated before is just how well her chosen storyline and protagonists map onto the experience of going through puberty and becoming an adult.  Call me stupid, call me slow, but though I noticed it in the first book I took another book or two to finally decide that it was more than just a fortuitous construction of the moment.  This, of course, has simply left me more appreciative of Duane’s writing chops, and her choice of subject material.

As per usual, there’s more after the break.

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