The Saturday Morning Post (No. 67)

 

A reread this week. I must have first read this book some twenty years ago or so. The impression of it that lingers on is that it wasn't as good as its premise promised.  A few months ago, I watched a video talking about the books of this author, and this book, so I decided to see if the premise, which sounds right up my alley, fares any better this time.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below. 

To Say Nothing of the Dog  by Connie Willis  C

This is the second novel in Connie Willis' Oxford Time Travel series. The first one was Doomsday Book. There is also a novella Fire Watch with some of the same characters that are in this book, and two further novels, Black Out and All Clear. All except Doomsday Book have something to do with World War II, though in this case, the main action is set in the countryside around Oxford in 1888. I've read the Doomsday Book, and this story. I DNF'ed Black Out and have not come across Fire Watch.

This entry is a first person narrated, mad-cap comic story written in the manner of those screwball comedy movies of the 1930's, with a silly premise, lots of fast, witty, sometimes nonsensical cross talk, and clever dialog. It also includes plenty of historical and literary references for your education and entertainment. It's a homage Jerome K Jerome's Three Men in a Boat (Not to Mention the Dog) and a satire of upper-class Victorian Era England. I's also a mystery novel that recalls the detective novels of the 1930. And it's an intricate time-travel novel that explores the idea that small events play critical roles in history - the flap of a butterfly's wings which cause a typhoon in China. That's a lot of things. It's too many things. Oh, and its very long. The mass market paperback clocks in at 517 pages. It's too long. 

The premise is that, in the near future when time travel is possible, an American heritress, whose ancestor in 1888 had an experience in Coventry Cathedral - the flap of the butterfly's wing - that led to the heritress becoming very wealth, now wants to reconstruct Coventry Cathedral down to the last little detail as it was on the day it was destroyed in the blitz of 1940, including a piece of decoration called "The Bishop's Bird Stump" - which is the story's MacGuffin. Using the promise of continuing funding the program, she has the time-traveling historians uncovering every detail of the cathedral, driving them to make more trips to the past than it is advisable. One of these historians inadvertently brings back something from the past. This should not have been possible, and thus, seems to threaten a cascading series of changes in the time-line that could affect large events in history. This needs incident to be repaired, even though time itself seems to have a means of doing so automatically. All very confusing.

The narrator is one of the historian who, as a side effect of too much time travel, is slightly gaga. He's sent back to 1888 in part to give him the two weeks he needs to recover from too much time travel, and to do something, that neither he nor the reader ever quite gets in his lala-first person narrative state. Unsure of who he is to meet and what to do in this time period, or where exactly to go to find his contact, he gets roped into taking a boating trip down the Thames with a fellow he meets who has the dog in the title, the homage to Jerome K Jerome's Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), which I'll now have to read. And from there the time plot slowly unwinds.

The premise of the story is silly by design. It's a comic novel, after all. It's silly enough for me, at least, not to care about the premise, and more importantly, not care about the problems of finding the MacGuffin, and fixing the problem with time. Since, as I said, it's a comic novel, after all. Screwball comedies run for something like 90 minutes. This book takes hours and hours to read - far too long for a screwball comedy - such that I found that the series of mad-cap comedy situations grew wearisome rather quickly. The mystery aspect was constantly being pushed back by the mad-cap situations and did not really come into play until after the climax of the story. 

The mechanisms of time travel in this story, if you paid really close attention to them might have been semi-explained, and may have made sense within their premise, but you better pay very close attention. Take notes. Connie Willis did not write this novel on the fly. I am quite sure she had to have every little detail of the "slippage" in putting people in and out of time, worked out and written down since this slippage is the main way of measuring the damage to time. You'll need to do the same, if you care. I didn't bother because it made no real sense to me, i.e. whatever. Every time travel story never makes logical sense, if you bother to think about them. This means that despite all the thought and detail Willis put into the story, it still nonsense. It was all handwaving and mumbo-jumbo.

As much as I admire clever writing and prefer first person narratives, which this story had in abundance, I found the deliberate silliness, too much for my taste. It completely undermined the book's attempt to illustrate "the devil in the details" of history, and the seriousness of the situation with time. 

And boy, did this story run too long for my taste - it ran on and on, even after it reached its climax. Indeed, by the end, I didn't care about the MacGuffin and the solution to the mystery or the restoration of the new cathedral, or the implications of the time travel premise of the story. I skim read the last 15% of the book - enough was enough. But as usual, that's on me. Your mileage may vary.

Back to time travel. Despite the comic nature of the story she tried to make the time travel stakes in the story seem very important - the changes caused by a person bringing something from the past back to the future might even change the result of World War II, unless this incident is somehow fixed. But this makes no sense. It never does. No "change" in history can ever be detected because that change would already be part of the history of the period it is being viewed from in the future. Which is to say that if they weren't Nazi time travelers, Germany didn't win WWII, and so they should have known nothing needed fixing, and that there was no need to worry at all. But the premise is that they did worry, and went to elaborate lengths to fix the "problem."

All time travel stories have logical flaws that must be overlooked if one is to enjoy time travel stories. While I could do that for the Back to the Future movies, they were not to be taken seriously, I usually can't overlook the flaws for time travel stories that want me to take them seriously.

In this case, it has has a number of rules for time travel. One is that you can't bring anything back to the future from the past, except... central to this story is that you can... as well as an number of others that I'm not quite sure about, given the mad-cap narration of this story. Now, I'm willing to turn a blind eye to sending people back into the past using "coordinates" that will land them at a certain date, time, and location within a margin of seconds, even though the earth is rotating, while it is rotating around the sun, even as the sun is rotating around the galactic center, as the universe itself is expanding, which would seem to make it extremely unlikely anyone could place a person back to the correct spot on Earth at any given time. Fine. But what I won't forgive is one of the central premises of this series is that time actively won't let itself be altered - correcting any change in the "Grand Design." Somehow. In this series, historians can not be "dropped" close enough to any pivotal event in the past that would allow them to affect the outcomes in any appreciable way. And when they are dropped far enough away and before any event - in time and space - they are still, somehow, prevented from interfering with these critical historical events. Unless you believe in either an active deity or that the universe is a video game, this rule makes no sense. The fact that universe has a natural law that prevents people from altering it suggests that humans, and their activities, are the central purpose of the universe, so much so that human activity itself becomes some sort of unalterable natural law that can't be violated. How? Who knows? The why, however is clear - to make the stories work. 

As someone who greatly dislikes plot holes and stories written for the convenience of the author's plot, this story, and all time travel stories, are a hard sell for me because you need to turn a blind eye to the inevitable hole(s) in the logic of every time-travel plot. And in this case, the idea that apparently the intrinsic laws of time-space physics are so tied to human history that they activity operate to prevent it from being modified is several bridges too far. 

So as you can see, I've had a lot to say about To Say Nothing About the Dog, without saying anything about the dog. Perhaps that's a sign for a good book, one that you should give a try. It is an ambitious book, well researched, and well written. You think about it. And I think that in my old age, my lack of patience may've well affected my view of this book. I'm pretty certain that I read it from page one to the end the first time I read it. Still, even back then, it failed to live up to my expectations. History, it seems, has not been altered.

Finally

 

Some publishing news this week.

This past weekend I finally published the audiobook versions of the stories contained in The Bright Black Sea and The Lost Star Sea as a six part series called The Lost Star Stories.

This project turned out to be something of a saga. Back on 17 July I posted here that my summer project was to break those two books into three novels each in order to allow them to be made into audiobooks on Amazon and Audible sine, they were too long to use Amazon's Virtual Voice auto-narration program. I worked up six new covers, and submitted them in August. Side note; it seems that you can't submit more than three books at any one time on Amazon. I suppose to limit spam books.

The first three books of the Lost Star Stories went almost without a hitch. At first, I didn't upload them right using Amazon's Kindle Create app, so they didn't get the table of contents that they need to be made into audiobooks on Amazon so they did not appear as being made into audiobooks. I was a bit puzzled, but since the last three weren't even released yet, I let it ride. Eventually I figured that out that I hadn't done it right, and re-uploaded them again the right way and they were good to go. But by that time I was dealing with Amazon over the last three books in the series derived from The Lost Star's Sea.

On 7 August I wrote that I was having problem with those three books being approved by Amazon, because some 4 plus years ago, someone pirated them and uploaded them to Amazon, and I had to prove to Amazon that it was my indeed, book, which I did. Ever since then anytime I've made any sort of alteration of the text of The Lost Star's Sea, Amazon ask me again to prove that I'm the work's owner. That happened again this time. They must either have scanned the text and flagged the content, or saw that I noted that the stories had previously been published as part of The Lost Star's Sea. This time around it took even longer to straighten things out - almost a month. But this time, after they had approved the books, and they appeared to be "Live," they weren't for some reason. Their pages came up as unfound, with a picture of a dog. So it was back to Amazon and their chat support program to get this straightened out. Suffice to say that the chat person couldn't fix the problem so they transferred it to the tech staff, and it takes nearly a week to fix anything. Long story short, it was only last week when everything was finally sorted out and ready to go. Since I don't expect to sell many books, ebooks or audio, all this delay was no big deal - I wasn't losing any money with the delay.

But in any event, all six books are now available from Amazon (only) as ebooks and audiobooks for $3.99 each. I don't plan to publish paperback editions of them, as I would likely be their only customers, and I can live without them.

Just to be clear, the stories are still available for free in ebooks and audiobooks on Google, Apple, B & N, Kobo and Smashwords, pulse a bunch more platforms as The Bright Black Sea and The Lost Star's Sea, as well as in paperback form from Amazon. The Amazon audiobooks are just future proofing my work and getting my work on Audible.

As a final note, I think that  Amazon's virtual voice narration was quite good, if read a little slow for my taste. Perhaps it can be speeded up a little in the audio app. They promised a male British English voice for the summer, which has yet to appear, but when it does, I might change the narrator, and when I do, I'm planning on going back with a list of key names and places to make certain that common names and name places are pronounce consistently across all the books. I think I know how to do that now using the search process. We'll see.

Next week more publishing news. Stay tuned.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 66)

 

A new Cadfeal Mystery this week, and another good one. I am sure glad I picked this series up. Whenever I need a book to read, I can just go to my bookshelf and pick up the next Cadfael story knowing I've got a good book to read.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below. 

The Raven in the Foregate by Ellis Peters  A

Every book has a range of reader reactions and ratings, often from one star to five. Clearly the tastes of readers vary considerably. Still, knowing that, I can only say that I'm almost certain everyone will enjoy Edith Pargeter's (writing as Ellis Peters) Cadfael stories either as mysteries, romances, or as historical fiction. For some reason, these stories are something special for me. They are, in my opinion, almost perfect stories in a world were almost perfect is about as good as you can expect. So what are those reasons?

First, I like small scale stories. I'm not a fan of epic tales and sagas. This story is the fourth story set in one year 1141, the "Anarchy." In December of that year. Important and interesting events are happening around the abbey of Shrewsbury, which affects their lives, but the focus is on the inhabitants of that monastery, the city, and the surrounding area. Secondly, the stories feature two very likeable main characters, the wise 60 year old former Crusader now a monk, Cadfael, and the young but wise Sherriff, Hugh Beringar, as well the various monks of the abbey, along with new, interesting, sometimes charming, sometimes slightly sinister, characters arriving at the abbey for each story - all of them well drawn in words. "Well drawn with words" describes every aspect of the books, from characters, historical setting and the life in the monastery, to the mystery and action. Thirdly, they seem to be written with a deep knowledge and understanding of the historical period they are set in, with lots of period detail to give them an air of authenticity. They are written in a style that is both readable and suggestive of the time period, which is hard to do. Fourthly, I like the stories themselves. For sure, they all follow a formula. You have your mystery, usually a murder, or what appears could be one, to solve. Each one, however, is different, with a rich, well developed background that is often related to what is going on in the world beyond Shrewsbury and the abbey so it ties the small story into the larger history of the period. One other element of the formula is that there is always a young couple who usually fall in love at first sight, but whose happiness is threatened by the mystery, so that Cadfael not only solves the mystery, but smooths the road to true love by doing so. 

And lastly, the writing... Take this descriptive passage of Christmas eve as an example. I find it evocative, without being flowery or ornate. It is simple, concrete, but evocative. My ideal.

A soft, sleety rain had fallen earlier, but by that hour in the evening it was growing very cold, and there was frost in the air. The low, moist sky had cleared and grown infinitely tall, there were stars snapping out in it almost audibly, tiny but brilliant. By morning the roads would be treacherous, and the frozen ruts a peril to wrenched ankles and unwary steps. There were still people abroad in the Foregate, most of them hurrying home by now, either to stoke up the fire and toast their feet, or to make ready for the long night in church. And as Cadfael crossed the bridge towards the town gate, the river in full, silent dark motion below, there was just enough light left to put names to those he met, coming from their shopping laden and in haste to get their purchases home. They exchanged greetings with him as they passed, for he was well known by his shape and his rolling gait even in so dim a light. The voices had the ring of frost about them, echoing like the chime of glass.

Or this description of a taciturn man;

A good man, with his own preferences and peculiarities, and certainly no talker, but if you needed him, he was there, and like his master, would not send you away empty.

Those who could not be easy with his mute company at least respected him, and those who could included the most innocent and guileless. Children and dogs would sit companionably on the steps of the north porch with him in summer weather, and do all the talking necessary to such a friendship, after their own fashion, while he listened.

I admire the use of simple concrete details to create a picture without resorting to ornate or flowery language may be why I love her writing. 

Well, I suppose that I've gone on long enough about Edith Pargeter's writing and should talk about the story at hand. 

As I mentioned, the story is set around Christmas in 1141. King Stephan has been freed in exchange for one of the Empress Maud most important backers who had been captured by the King's forces led by King Stephan's wife, the Queen. Now it is the Empress Maud who is on the defensive, holed up in the west of England, fortunes once again reversed. The long civil war, thus continues. This civil war, by the way, is one that RRR Martin drew on for his Game of Thrones books. 

This story starts with the death of the popular parish priest of the abbey, and the appearance of his replacement, a strict and unpleasant priest who proves to be very unpopular, so unpopular that he quickly ends up dead. That's the mystery. But we also have our romance and ties to the ongoing civil war interwoven in it, which I won't spoil. Just read the book. This one was another excellent addition to the series. It is really amazing how she maintains the quality and originality of each book in the series.

My Universe - The Technology

 

While I don't write hard science fiction, I try to keep my stories somewhat within the limits of actual physics. My space ships don't exceed the speed of light. They don't stop on a dime - they still have inertia. Speed is built up slowly, and then they have to be slowed down by reversing the process. I don't write my spaceships like UPS vans driving around the galaxy delivering a few crates here and there, like in the TV show Firefly and a bunch of other SF books I've read. I base my spaceships on container ships with economically viable cargoes. I recognize that radiation in space is very dangerous, and I have invented materials to protect my spaceers from it, as well as creating Homo Stellar humans to counteract the long term effects of little or no gravity.

My greatest actual, practical invention is the six day week, with four work days and two free days, with five weeks per month, and five or six days holiday week. In The Black Bright Sea I tried to imply that they used a 12 digit numerical system rather than a 10 digit one, which is why some of the measurements are in fractions rather than percentages. Just one of those things I do to amuse myself.

I decided to go full retro when writing The Bright Blacks Sea, no faster than light drives, no artificial gravity - just rocketships and magnets in the soles of your space boots to keep you on the deck. However, I couldn't bring myself to confine my stories to just our solar system, so I set them in another star systems To get there in rocket powered ships they needed to take many thousands of years, so that the humans, and embryos humans and other living creatures travel in suspended animation in stasis pods or sleeper pods. In later books I added quantum to the description to imply that the organisms within the pod are held in a state of suspended existence, a quantum state that is only resolved once the pod is opened - a literal interpretation of the Schroeder's Cat thought experiment, where the outside observer doesn't know if the cyanide capsule had been broken, killing the cat in the box, or not, until they open the box.

I invented designed materials, D-matter. The idea being that all the elements of the universe are product of "codes" which humans have discovered how to manipulate, and have "coded" new elements for specific purposes. Thin layers of various D-matter materials can be used make armor against projectiles as  thin as fabric, extremely strong steel, another material that blocks the full spectrum of radiation, and yet another is a super thermal insulator, that prevents the escape of thermal energy. These inventions, when combined together, allowed me to imagine very efficient use of nuclear power, since all the radiation and heat they generate could be contained by thin layers inside of the D-matter super strong steel container. This in turn allowed me to have super efficient rocket ships driven by nuclear reactions, nuclear power cells that could be the size of soft balls to power all sorts of devices and vehicles, including flying cars. And, of course, I had to have flying cars. In my case they fly using either small arrays of rockets or powerful hyper fans, all powered by small nuclear reactors. I also use power cells that are super capacitors which can hold a great deal of electrical energy - probably also using some D-matter material. I also invented clearsteel, which like its name implies, is a transparent alloy with the strength of steel used in buildings and space ships.

Flying cars, of course.

I also used sentient level machines that are built of D-matter materials and powered by the small nuclear power cells, with almost unlimited life-spans, since any failing part can be replaced. In Earth's Solar System, these sentient-level machines were banned, but they were developed and used in the Nine Star Nebula, until they liberated themselves and most, though not all, migrated to the drifts to start their own society. I've had a lot of fun with sentient machines in my books.

Another invention was the med-units that can treat all the various injuries and ailments that afflict humans, including regenerating organs, at least up to the somewhat artificial 200 year lifespan of humans. 

For law enforcement I invented a machine that can read the memories of humans, and erase memories as well. Suspects of crimes have their memories searched to establish their innocence or guilt in the crime they are suspected off via their own memories. Similar machines are used to reprogram criminals, with mixed success. 

I use terraforming to one degree or another to create human-friendly worlds from not only suitable worlds but airless moons as well. I envision this process varying from planet to planet. On Dara in the Tropic Sea stories which had is own life, it was the humans, their animals, and plants that were genetically adopted to survive on Dara. On other planets with a suitable environment already in place but without advanced life, a carefully selected, but small, subsection of Earth's environment is introduced - enough that everything works together, but without mosquitoes, cobras, and all other dangerous organisms, large and small. This was the case with Beneath the Lanterns. The fact that the environment is entirely artificial meant that I could not come up with anything more dangerous that feral dogs to threaten my heroes with, since all the wild and potentially dangerous beasts would not have been introduced. Other methods than using dangerous to human predators are used to maintain what balances are needed in these designed environments are used, for example, modified birthrates in the "wild" animals that prevent overpopulation without the use of predators.

I have humans creating human friendly environments out of very hostile worlds and moons, like Mars and the Moon, but this process can take ten thousand years or more. In the case of the Moon, and various moons in the Nine Star Nebula stories, I envision a sort of D-matter nanoparticle layer that floats on the top of the artificially created atmosphere that shields the inhabitants from radiation, keeps the atmosphere from escaping, and regulated its climate, smoothing out extremes of heat and cold. This layer isn't completely transparent, so that the Earth is the Blue Lantern in Beneath the Lanterns, with the sun being the yellow one. 

Let's see, what else? I did have the sentient machines of the Nine Star Nebula inventing quantum communication devices using "entanglement" that allows for instant communication over unlimited distances. I use darters powered by power cells as my standard weapon. They propel via a beam, small "darts" fired along the beam that hold electrical/plasma charges, which release their plasma energy on impact, disrupting, or in extreme cases, destroying the human nervous systems. This invention allows me to have a lot of non-lethal gun-fights and such. While violence in my future still exists, it is tame compared to our present day primitive society.

And that's all I can think of. Most of what I invented, I invented to make the story work. As I mentioned, I have certain ideals as to how humans might evolve and things like non-lethal weapons, a justice system based on being able to establish the facts from memories, political issues long settled, are facilitated by my inventions, but for the most part the just work to make my worlds possible.

ADDENDOM  Sex and race. 

I forgot to mention anything about sex or race in my piece about my societies, mainly because they don't play such a a large part in society as they do in our day. Because I set my stories tens of thousands of years in the future, I assume that human society on Earth the Solar System and the worlds humans settle, the distinctions that define race today will have long been eroded away. While there may be local distinctions, customs, and history, these would be based on location rather than skin color. I make it a point not to indicate the skin color of my characters, in part because it would not be a defining factor in the characters within their society and thus, on my pages. That leaves readers free to picture them as they choose to as they will. Indeed, I have no mental pictures of any of my characters outside of the sparse description I assign them. Given that my inability to form visual images in my mind, this is not surprising. 

As for sexual orientation, that too is beyond social distinctions by the time my stories are set. I have several LGB+ characters in my books, but never specifically treat them as such, since in their society, this is a non-issue. You are what your are. Utopian, I know.

And with this entry, I think I've briefly covered the main features of the "universe" I've set all of my stories in since Some Day Days.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 65)

 

I'm still on a non-fiction history kick this week. But this week it's the American Revolution or if you're English, the American Revolt. The book I am reading is from the English point of view. 

Reading it has been a new experience. It's a library ebook, and usually our library service offers ebooks via Amazon for the Kindle readers, or in my case, my Fire tablet. However, some ebooks are offered via Overdrive and the Libby app. Usually, for these ebooks I can download them via my Kobo ebook reader, as Overdrive is owned by the owner of Kobo. But for some reason, this book though it was offered by the library via Overdrive would not show up on my ebook reader. I could download it to my computer, but I hate reading books on my computer, and for some reason, I rarely, if ever, get the downloaded book to transfer from my computer to my ebook reader, even though I've jumped through all the hoops to do so via the Adobe system to do so. I was, however, able to download the Libby app on my phone, and borrow the ebook via that app. So I started reading this book on my smartphone, a first for me. It was an okay experience, but I when I discovered that I could also download the Libby App to my Amazon Fire tablet, and sync the Libby App between my phone and tablet, I was able to read the last half of the book on my tablet which is a better reading experience.  Anyway, on to the book.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below. 

Fusiliers by Mark Urban  C+

This is the history of the British 23rd Welsh Regiment serving in America during the time of the revolt of those colonies. It is drawn from the memoirs, letters, and history of that regiment, as well as other contemporary accounts from other English regiments in that war. I find accounts from the English point of view interesting, as they offer a counterpoint to the American version and its founding myths. For example, he noted the fact that the continental armies executed a lot more of their men for desertion in order to discourage their soldiers from deserting than did the English. And that at least some of the American revolutionary armies killed their own countrymen who they suspected were still loyal to the King. The war, it seems, from my reading of this book, to have been pretty much guerrilla war, with a lot of ugliness on both sides.

I know that I have read one novel set in the period where the main character was an an American loyal to the Crown. Fifteen minutes of a Google Search brings up the most likely suspect, Oliver Wiswell, by Kenneth Roberts published in 1940, which sounds right, as I remembered that the book had the main character's name as the title. In any event, I did know that there were plenty of people in the colonies who were not revolutionaries, and that they didn't fare well in the end.

This book takes much the same route as A World On Fire, in that it follows characters connected with the 23rd Welsh Regiment throughout its ten years of serving in North America, using their experiences to drive the story. The problem with this approach, I feel, is that all the characters are drawn from preserved letters or official records, and are not really fleshed out characters. Each at best  has a page of bio spread throughout the book, and as such, are more of a distraction then a feature of the narrative. They're too thinly drawn to care about, and their stories are not all that interesting. These little episodes make for a somewhat cluttered and confusing read. I gather that the author used this approach for a Napoleonic era British rifle regiment as well, but he had a lot more written material to work from. I think that this story could have been told with less words and greater clarity in broader strokes, rather than as the narrow focus of the story of this regiment.

I think that to appreciate this book to its full extent, you need to be somewhat familiar with the American Revolutionary War in order to put the events described in the book into the larger context. While there is some background necessary to the story of the 23rd, there is a much larger picture surrounding the events that the 23rd participated in that is not fleshed out, so that you only get a small, and far from complete understanding of the events of that era. 

All in all, this is an interesting, ground level view of that conflict from the point of view of the English army. While I learned a lot about the American Revolution (or Rebellion), I feel that I would need to read a lot more about it to put what I learned in this book to fully appreciate it for what it is. 

My Universe - The Time Line

The history of my "universe" began with writing The Bright Black Sea. It did not start out as a fully fleshed timeline, but rather it evolved, with each book set in that universe adding another layer to it. I don't think that there are any revisions needed to the original time line, I just added more "data points" to it as I went along.

The hallmark feature of my timeline is that I set my stories in the far future - 50,000 to 100,000 years in our future in order to make it credible that humans had expanded beyond the solar system to colonize the worlds of other stars - without faster than light spaceships. I have no specific dates in mind. 

In The Bright Black Sea, I recall mentioning that the ships from Earth arrived some 40,000 years before that story was set to allow the time needed for humans to settle hundreds of planets and moons, and spread to uncounted of rocks and planets in the Drifts beyond the formal human civilization of the Nine Star Nebula, The Unity. Figure another 10 - 20 thousand years needed to reach the Nine Star Nebula from Earth, and you have 50 - 60 thousand years since they left the Solar System. There is also several human colony-ships within the Pela, that may've come from Earth, or perhaps a world settled by Earth long enough to have developed to the point where they can send out their own colony ships. Who knows? (I don't.) 

The Nine Star Nebula Mystery/Adventure stories are set maybe a century before the events recounted in The Bright Black Sea, since they recount the tales of the youthful Rafe gil'Giles, the systems mate of the Lost Star, though under a different name. He uses a lot of names.

In the Tropic Sea stories, I had it take the colony ships from Earth 9,373 years to reach Dara, and those stories are set almost 5,000 years after the settlers landed on Dara. I have no idea when they left the Solar System. I haven't settle on any definite time line for the settlement of the planet I've set Chateau Clare on, save that it's been at a little less than 1,400 years since a revolution outlawed much of the high technology brought from Earth, labeling it sorcery. However, I would think six or seven generations of settlers would've lived prior this revolution - so say the planet may've been first settled around 3,000 years before the story told in Chateau Clare. 

Though I can't say when all these colony ships left the Solar System, I can say that they all left prior to the "Death" - the mass flowering of fungi that had been dormant in the lungs of three quarters of the humans of the Solar System. The flowering filled the lungs of everyone it had lodged in, sweeping across the Solar System killing three quarters of humanity in a week, and putting an end, as far as I know, to interplanetary travel within the Solar System, and of course, the interstellar colony ships. Again, I don't have any date in mind, but it would be tens of thousands of years in the future, as I envisioned it taking something like 10,000 years to terraform Mars, so there's no need for us to worry about it. Two of the three three Post Solar Age stories, Keiree and The Girl on the Kerb are set about 1500 after that event. The third, Beneath the Lanterns, which takes place on the terraformed Moon, is set sometime latter. Beneath the Lanterns was the first story in which I invented that event (though only in my mind), in order to use it just to explain my premise of a fallen civilization on a terraformed Moon. Because of the way timekeeping on the Moon works, and the fact that I had the event unknown by the narrator, lost in the mists of legends, so I'm not sure if I set an actual date. Still, my if my memory serves, I think it was more like 2,000 years before the events in the book, and thus, likely after Keiree and The Girl on the Kerb. This would suggest that interplanetary travel did not recommenced any time soon, if ever, since there is no evidence of it in that story. However, there is that other, unknown and unexplored, side of the Moon... Who knows? (I don't.) 

I guess I find it pretty easy to throw thousands of years around like decades, in part because generations are almost four times as long - five lifetimes per a thousand years. While this give me leeway to tell the stories I want without violating too many laws of nature, it does mean, as I mentioned previously, that I have to turn a blind eye to how humans might evolve over such a long time span. In any event, as you can see, there is no definite timeline to my stories, though I think that the stories set in the Nine Star Nebula are probably the outer limits of my timeline.

I have one more installment of this series to write - a piece describing all the things I had to invent to make my stories work. I make no claim to writing "hard science fiction" but I did try to keep things at least seem possible. Stay tuned for all my inventions.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 64)

 

The Sherlock Holmes of my readers are likely going to discover an ongoing theme with the books I am reading. There is an explanation for this, laziness and a lack of inspiration. But hey, I'm learning something, and this time a part of my current historical interest that I never even considered. 

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

A World on Fire by Amanda Foreman  B

This is a long book. The paper edition runs 1040 pages. It boasts 5 pages just listing the illustrations, 4 plus pages of listing the photographs, a page plus listing the included maps, and 18 plus pages listing the "Dramatis Personae" i.e. the cast of historical characters that she follows over the course of her history of the English involvement in the American Civil War.

She writes that her original intention was to write a history of the English volunteers in the American Civil War, but she found their involvement part of a very complex web of interactions between England, The United States and the Confederacy. She says that recalling, "... Trevor Nunn's 1980 Nicholas Nickleby, and extraordinary "theater-in-the-round" production that brought together a vast panoply of characters through a combination of three-dimensional staging, shifting scenes, and running narratives that created  an all-enveloping experience for the audience. This memory became my guide and inspiration..." In short, she decided to tell the story of England and its peoples involvement on all levels in the Civil War through the letters. memoirs, and previous histories to paint this complicated picture.

She certainly succeeded in creating a complete and complicated account of this relationship, though if you're someone who must have a clear idea of who's who in a story, you'll have your work cut out for you reading this book, for, as I said, it has a cast of over 200 characters, some mentioned, some followed in detail throughout the history.

As I said it is a history of American/Confederate/English interactions, both diplomatic and personal during the Civil War. I learned a great deal about the Civil War from reading this book that I never knew that I didn't know. Things like how close the United States and England came to war during that period over various disputes, how popular the South was in England, seen as underdogs fight for freedom - as long as they turned a blind eye to slavery - and how much effort the South put into trying to get it recognized as a country. Her choice to include the personal accounts of so many people may have created a sense of how complicated all the issues were, but it makes it a challenge to keep track of more than just a few of the major characters, and makes for a long book.

A must read for serious scholars of that war, and an interesting read for history buff of England and the Civil war. But it is a long book. Still now I know what I didn't know that I didn't know.

My Universe - My Societies

In my last post I about the impact of a 200 year lifespan on my characters. But what about the society they live in?

In our society we rely on a constant turnover in the hierarchy of every aspect of our lives. You put your time in and over the course a several decades, move up the hierarchal structure, be it from kid to adult, to parent, to grandparent. Or in your career or job, from new hire, through various levels of management, to maybe, CEO, or from apprentice to master craftsperson. These steps involve often little more than a decade or two due to the span of our current lives. However, what would society and our lives look like if people could, in theory, stay in a position at the top for a century or more blocking everyone's advancement down the line? Would most humans be content to advance in their career at a glacial pace - spending 50 years to accomplishing what takes 10 years for people today? And then there is the question of how long would it take to get bored with any job? In my view, I see a society where most people would not want, or expect, to stay in the same job or even the same field for their full lifetime so that most people will periodically embark on new careers. This need and ability to start over a number of times would have to be built into the society one way or another.

Another related aspect of a long lifespan is how it would affect the shape and dynamics of the society over time. Given the time and opportunity to change not only relationships but careers, and a population of people with a wide variety of ages and experience, it would seem that society might by in constant flux. Change would happen because there was time to change and change again within one lifetime. 

And yet... We see that in our society, changes come very slowly, generation to generation. Paper newspapers are still printed, I have to believe because the generation that grew up reading them is still around. My wife still watches the half hour national news program everyday, even though all the news is available all the time on the internet. The life and outlook of people are formed early, and are retained, at least in part, throughout their lives. Would not this be true as well, if their lifespan was doubled or tripled? I'm sure the issue can be argued from both ways - frequent changes because people have time to change vs slow changes because people don't change.

I have generally adopted the latter view for my stories. I have my societies very static because of the innate conservative nature of people, which when held for the better part of two centuries, would tend to extend and impose the values and ideas of their youth on many subsequent generations, despite the multi-generation mix and flux of a long lifespan. And in much the same way, I think that families and children will be postponed or widely separated throughout a long life, especially with woman being able to control their fertility. 

I also use semi-utopian societies in my stories, unless the initially advanced civilization has collapsed for some reason - also a common feature of my stories, like my Tropic Sea stories. My assumption is that 50,000 years of civilization will slowly evolve into a single, homogeneous and inclusive society. In the stories set in the Nine Star Nebula, I pictured a very stable and secure society - The Unity - with a built-in safety valve that allowed the tiny percentage of people who do not fit into the main society to set up alternate societies - dissenting communities - on the various moons - just so long as they met certain human rights standards, and allowed their inhabitants to opt out of it at any time. For those who found even dissenting communities still to socially claustrophobic, they could immigrate to the "drifts" beyond the control of The Unity. This feature allowed me to easily set my characters in more historically backward locations, which I like writing in.

I also like portraying my societies without politics. Given a homogeneous society without outside threats in the form of other countries, I picture a society where all policy issues have been decided upon thousands of years before. Therefore, no new laws would be needed, and the society is administered to by a professional bureaucracy according to detailed long established rules as in the Earth of The Girl on the Kerb, and my upcoming novel Chateau Clare. Just dreaming.

All this said, I don't spend a great time on thinking about my societies, no more than I need for the story's backdrop. As I said, I'm not an ideas writer, I only invent things that I need to write the story I have in mind, and build a world of sorts as a backdrop.