Three cheers for another Nancy Kress tale. I was immediately swept into this (semi-)quiet meditation on the dangers that a sudden technological leveler of economic disparity could bring. People quit their jobs because there’s no reason to work now that all needs are provided for–food, clothing, shelter, and the unnecessaries of prettier curtains and hot rods. Of course, when no one wants to work, some things get left behind, like children’s education. Our protagonist does what she can eke out a safe harbor as the brave new technological society descends into social chaos.
The story stands fairly well on its own. But I did think that a few issues would not occur as she plotted them. Since I’ve explained the problems elsewhere and plan to write a more Mundane treatment of the matter, I may be a little vague. 1) The technology is a bit too easy and would not be implemented this way, economically. 2) The society would not wholly dissolve in this manner. While the first impulse of men and women may begin as Kress illustrated, at least one secondary reaction would ensue to compensate for the drastic change in economics. Finally, 3) the narrator, while incredibly “empathizable,” does not address what seems to me to be her central issue: being unnecessarily isolationist and a bit too leery of the technology. A deeper issue underlies this psychological problem, but it may be that this kind of pragmatic narrator would not look too deeply within to see it as a personal problem as opposed to logical responses in dealing with a problem society.
Unfortunately, these problems may make it appear that the story is not enjoyable. Quite the contrary. If I’m thrown out of a story, I tend to gauge periodically how many pages are left. Not here. It is quite aesthetically pleasing–the matters mentioned being peripheral to the overall arc. In fact, I reread parts to see how I’d been helplessly drawn in to the narrative when it opens with such an inherently non-dramatic character scene:
I was weeding the garden when nanotech came to my town. The city got it a month earlier, but I haven’t been to the city since last year. Some of my neighbors went–Angie Myers and Emma Karlson and that widow, Mrs. Blaston, from church. They brought back souvenirs, things made in the nanomachine, and the scarf Angie showed me was really cute. But with three kids, I don’t get out much.
The title’s “Clifford” might signal the rural kind of SF that Clifford Simak wrote. The first line may play off the BB King song, “When Love Comes to Town,” thereby foreshadowing the lack of love and the abundance of “Nano” technology and all that comes with it (but maybe not. The comparison is rather loose). The strength, to me, was the banality of the names, the ease with which they’re rattled off, as if the narrator has known them all her life. The comment that the scarf is cute sharpens her desire for girliness, yet the hook was the narrator’s inability to get out of the house much because of the hecticness of raising kids. The narrator sublimates said girliness for the more pragmatic child-rearing.
Kress captures the small-town mentality well, and one longs to see more writers look toward stronger characterization.
Suzette Haden Elgin is one of the pioneers of the term science fiction poetry and a founder of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. She’s got a new book coming out in March, The Science Fiction Poetry Handbook and has been writing a bit at her weblog recently about SF poetry and the SFWA’s refusal to allow poems as qualifiers for membership (the posts start here and continue here, here, and here, with more, I expect, to come.)
As will probably surprise no-one, I disagree almost completely with Elgin (except about the SFWA), but she’s stirring up some great conversations, and that’s important. In some ways, actually, I do think she’s right — if SF poetry is going to truly be a genre (rather than a style, mode, or something else), then it should have hard and fast rules, ultimately putting it one step away from being a poetic form. If there are going to be rules, they might as well be Elgin’s. The only excuse I can think of for poetic rules, though, is to provide new writers with exercises and all other writers with something to break (for instance, what Ted Berrigan did to sonnets).
The winner of last week’s Great Wednesday Compare (Walt Whitman Vs. Emily Dickinson), with a final score of 12-2, was Emily Dickinson.
2 votes for Whitman?! Had I voted, I certainly would have been on the losing team this week. While I’d not classify either as a favourite, I think Whitman more than Dickinson helped change the face of poetry. Certainly both were unconventional, but to me Whitman was more experimental and didn’t seem as preoccupied with death.
Anyway, while I’m surprised at Whitman’s crushing defeat, I’ll move on. This week’s contender is one that I haven’t even read.
Remember, vote simply by adding your comment below, base it on whatever merit you choose, voting does not end until Tuesday at 11:59 p.m. (May 6, 2008), and please spread the word!
Who’s better?
by Brock Dethier
We feed him money and patriots,
teach him how to disrupt and dismember,
spread rumors about his enemies,
ignore his habit of dining
on kittens and babies,
the times he addresses us
as fuckface.
When he turns mean we threaten
to cut off his allowance.
When he slits our throat
everyone’s surprised,
and we send the good herr doctor back
to his lab to make a better one.
Brock Dethier teaches English at Utah State University and has published poems in more than twenty journals. His most recent books are From Dylan to Donne: Bridging English and Music and First Time Up: An Insider’s Guide for New Composition Teachers.
Hey sci-fi fans — this week’s author is Syne Mitchell. Mitchell’s latest book is The Last Mortal Man.
For more about her, check out her website.
WN: Why should a reader pick up one of your books?
MITCHELL: For a thought-provoking and fun read. I write what I call “firm SF” in that I work hard to get the science details right, but my real goal as a writer is to tell a great story.
WN: On your blog, you mention that Last Mortal Man will be the one and only volume in the Deathless series… as a writer, is it hard to let go of one idea and move on to the next project?
MITCHELL: I had the next two novels outlined, with the expectation that the series would continue, so yes, it was a disappointment when they weren’t picked up. But I’ve got a head chock full of story ideas, so there’s no end of material. My current project is something quite different: epic, modern day, a subtle twist of fantasy. I’m very excited about it.
WN: How much research do you have to do to get the science part of science-fiction to be real and/or believable? Where’s the line between the science and the fiction part?
MITCHELL: I have a background in science, and groan when I read a book or watch a movie with blatant scientific bloopers. When I taught, I often had to work to correct misconceptions that my students had picked up from entertainment media. So when I sit down to write a book, I try very hard to get the details right. Especially if it’s a field like microbiology, which I haven’t studied. I read books, ask questions through email, do scientific calculations, interview specialists, and even take tours of research facilities like genetics labs. Do I still make mistakes in my books? Of course. I’m only human. But I hope my readers give me credit for trying hard to get the details right.
WN: What’s your writing process like?
MITCHELL: I’m currently playing around with that, trying new things. Before, I always outlined each book, building a solid skeleton for the story before I wrote a word. Now I’m writing more organically, letting the story evolve as I go along.
WN: If you got stranded on a desert island with one of your characters, who would it be and why?
MITCHELL: Dyson Rader from THE LAST MORTAL MAN. (Dyson is actually Dixon Tully from TECHNOGENESIS with the serial numbers filed off. I loved that character so much that I sneakily brought him back under a different guise in my latest novel.) He’s competent, sexy, smart, fun. The kind of guy who could probably find a way off the island; but with him around why would you want to?
WN: What is the best/most influential book you have ever read and why did it inspire you?
MITCHELL: It would be hard to point to just one. I love the work of Larry Niven, Tanith Lee, Peter S. Beagle, Spider Robinson, Ursula LeGuin, Octavia Butler, and gosh, so many more. I’m an omnivorous reader and in my school days would read a novel-and-a-half a day. (Thank goodness for libraries!) I loved different books for different things. Larry Niven’s books for the brain puzzles, Spider Robinson’s for the humor and heart. LeGuin’s work for it’s epic grandeur. Tanith’s for the marvelous settings. The list is endless…
WN: What is your favorite word and why?
MITCHELL: Any word I know that my husband doesn’t. Having two writers in the family, we get a bit competitive.
WN: What piece of advice helped you out the most as a writer?
MITCHELL: “Apply your bottom to the chair and write!” to paraphrase a quote from Marion Zimmer Bradley.
The most important thing about being a writer is to write. All the agents, editors, readers in the world won’t be a lick of help if you don’t write the darned thing down. If it’s bad, you can always fix it later.
To put it simply: Writers write.
I’ve been looking forward to reading HIS MAJESTY’S DRAGON
Captain Will Laurence of the HMS Reliant has just captured a French vessel. He is rather irked at the enemy captain for putting up what he thought of as an unnecessarily stiff resistance . . . until he sees what is in the hold of the enemy ship. It’s a dragon’s egg, carefully packed and hardening fast. And a hardening shell means it’s about to hatch.
Laurence cannot risk the dragon ending up feral. It must bond to someone. The ship’s officers draw straws to determine who is going to bond to the creature. They make their pick, but the dragon has another idea. He picks Laurence. He asks Laurence for a name and Laurence–completely unprepared–names it Temeraire after “a noble dreadnought which he had seen launched, many years before . . .”
It turns out to be an unusual name for a dragon, since they generally have grandiose Roman names such as Maximus, Levitas and even Excidium. There are many other differences between Navy and aviator life, several of which I have a bit of a quibble.
As an Air Force veteran, I have a bit of experience in being a member of the most casual of the armed forces, but I cannot imagine it having been so casual that neglect of even the appearance of my jet (I was an aircraft mechanic) would have been tolerated. It had to be wiped down after every flight. A significant storyline depends on one of Laurence’s fellow officers neglecting his dragon to the extent that the poor dragon had sores under his harness. Such neglect always reflects poorly upon the commanding officer, but in this case, the commander’s reputation didn’t appear to suffer because of the junior officer’s neglect.
Other than this and one or two other quibbles not worth mentioning, this novel is superb. Temeraire was an engaging character. Laurence was almost motherly to Temeraire and even called him “My dear.” The major relationship explored here is between Laurence and Temeraire. I loved the surprises toward the end. Novik prepared the reader so well for the biggest surprise that I could not think of it as a deus ex machina, since it made such perfect sense. My favorite characters are probably predictable: Jane (Excidium’s rider) and her daughter “Roland“, along with Maximus’s rider, the rather overweight Berkley.
Things I wish had been explored? I wish I could have seen a feral dragon. I’d like to know why dragons bond at all with humans. The thing that took me most aback–that dragons can talk right out of the shell–was nicely explained. But I wanted more.
I suppose that’s what the future volumes are for!
Moving slowly toward the 21st century, Lois tilton is now a contributor to A Small Drop of Ink; the announcement is here.
Should she adapt to that experience, we fully expect to turn this blog entirely over to her.
Meanwhile, we note an article of interest to Lois-fen: Clever science solves mystery of Delphi Oracle
(I think from now on, I’ll write a few sentence summary of the book and if I liked it or not and then a longer review for anyone who actually cares to read more).
This book is incredibly good - tight story, excellent plot development, and really great characters. The story follows a clone, Matt, who is the only clone who hasn’t had his brain destroyed and he must figure out if he’s destined for greatness or to be simply an organ bank for his maker. The book doesn’t feel like what I think of as science fiction, but it definitely deserved every award that’s plastered on the cover. Highly recommended.
Matt is a clone. The original DNA holder is a man named El Patron and he’s the dictator of a land called Opium. One hundred years earlier (approximately our time, since this book is set 100 years in the future), El Patron had approached the US and Mexican governments and explained to them that they had two problems. The first was that they couldn’t control their borders - people were illegally entering both countries and the government was pretty helpless to stop it - and the second was the drug trade along the borders was becoming increasingly worse. El Patron and a group of allies offered a proposal: if the US and Mexico would both donate the land along their borders and let El Patron establish it as his own country, they would keep all the citizens in their own lands and also start selling all drugs to Asia and Europe, keeping it and the accompanying problems out of Mexico and the US.
Shockingly, the US and Mexico agreed and Opium was born. Anyone who tried to escape through Opium to the other country was fitted with an obedience chip, which made them incapable of making their own decisions. If they don’t hear the orders to drink water, they’ll keep working until they collapse (or die) of thirst.
Clones are, perhaps, even worse off. It’s legal to have a clone or many clones, but the law states that they must be injected with brain-destroying substances at the moment of “harvest.” But Matt’s maker, El Patron, is powerful enough to circle the law and Matt’s brain remains intact. He is raised in a little cabin on El Patron’s plantation until he is about five or six and then he’s taken to the big house where he slowly realizes he’s a clone and that, worse, nearly everyone appears to hate clones, considering them less than an animal, for reasons he can’t divine since he can’t see any noticeable differences between himself and the humans.
And then Matt realizes that all the other clones have their brains destroyed and that he alone is still capable of thinking and reasoning. He’s actually quite bright and he’s given lessons ranging from math to Latin, instruction in how the plantation is run, and music lessons when his gift for instruments is discovered. It would seem that he’s being groomed to take over for El Patron when he finally dies (he’s currently 147 or so). After all, no one would spend so much effort on a clone just to hack them open and grab a liver when the original El Patron gets ill, would they? Matt doesn’t know and he’s afraid to find out the truth. He loves El Patron - feels a kinship with him (obviously) - but also recognizes that El Patron can be cruel and selfish.
The story isn’t particularly high action, but it certainly has a snappy pace and the story unravels at the just right speed. I really had no idea where the story was going to go, but I was satisfied with the direction it took.
There were certainly a lot of messages you could take away from the book - acceptance, racism, cloning, family relationships, trust, the dangers of wealth, etc - but none of them felt heavy-handed or got in the way of a really excellent story.
I heard about this book first in my children’s literature class (this is really a young adult book) and in the three months between hearing of it and finally reading it, I stumbled upon this title dozens of times. It was suddenly everywhere (I suppose that’s what you should expect from a National Book Award Winner).
And it was worth all the hype. I would definitely recommend this book - I liked it far more than I expected.
There is a Communist jargon recognizable after a single sentence. Few people in Europe have not joked in their time about “concrete steps,” “contradictions,” “the interpenetration of opposites,” and the rest. The first time I saw that mind-deadening slogans had the power to take wing and fly far from their origins was in the 1950s when I read an article in The Times of London and saw them in use. “The demo last Saturday was irrefutable proof that the concrete situation…” Words confined to the left as corralled animals had passed into general use and, with them, ideas. One might read whole articles in the conservative and liberal press that were Marxist, but the writers did not know it. [Emphasis added.]
She goes on to note:
The phrase “political correctness” was born as Communism was collapsing. I do not think this was chance. I am not suggesting that the torch of Communism has been handed on to the political correctors. I am suggesting that habits of mind have been absorbed, often without knowing it.
There is obviously something very attractive about telling other people what to do: I am putting it in this nursery way rather than in more intellectual language because I see it as nursery behavior. Art — the arts generally — are always unpredictable, maverick, and tend to be, at their best, uncomfortable. Literature, in particular, has always inspired the House committees, the Zhdanovs, the fits of moralizing, but, at worst, persecution. It troubles me that political correctness does not seem to know what its exemplars and predecessors are; it troubles me more that it may know and does not care.
She concludes, ominously:
I am sure that millions of people, the rug of Communism pulled out from under them, are searching frantically, and perhaps not even knowing it, for another dogma.
RTWT.
And don’t miss her candid reaction to being informed that she had won the Nobel.
Changelings by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough. New York: Ballantine Books, 2006. ISBN: 0-345-47002-8
Changelings is listed on the title page as “Book One of The Twins of Petaybee.” I was surprised when I checked to see that none of the previous Petaybee novels appear on my blog, as it seemed to me like I had just read them a within the past couple of years. Obviously it’s been longer than that, and when I checked, I found that the original Petyabee trilogy was originally published back in the early 90’s as follows: Powers That Be: 1993, Power Lines: 1993 and Power Play: 1994. I could hardly believe that it was that long ago!
Petaybee is the name of the planet where these stories take place, and is also the name of one of the characters, since it turns out that the planet itself is a sentient being, capable of communicating with and looking out for its inhabitants, both human and animal. The human inhabitants are an entertaining mix of Irish and Inuit, with much of the folklore and traditions of both those cultures included in the books.
Changelings chronices the story of Ronan and Murel, twin children of Yana and Sean, the human protectors of Petaybee from the rapacious corporate exploiters, and unfeeling scientists who want to exploit the planet’s wealth, or dissect and study its life forms. Sean is a selkie, changing into a seal form when he enters the water, and the twins have inherited this capability. They have to hide their ability from the scientists who would like to study them as specimens, with little regard for their humanity.
Petaybee, meanwhile, is herself giving birth to a new continent out in the ocean via volcanic eruptions. Sean disappears while attempting to study this new creation in process, and the twins have to return from their off-planet study exile to help rescue him.
Another ancient earth culture, the Hawaiian, is meanwhile attracted to Petaybee. Can the exiled Hawaiians also find refuge there? The Petabeean stories are science fiction with a very strong ecological orientation and message. Like much of McCaffrey’s writing, the stories are very life affirming, culture affirming, and filled with loving and lovable people fighting off the evil corporate and scientific exploiters.
If you haven’t read the three previous books, this one and its sequels will make much more sense if you read the Powers trilogy first. For a brief synopsis and story of how the books and collaboration that created them came to be, see the bottom half of Scarborough’s Changelings web page. This book is recommended for anyone who enjoyed the other books.