The Awful Truth About Forgetting

L. Jagi Lamplighter has done it again: the fourth of the Rachel Griffin books is out, as of yesterday. This is a delightful series, based on a storyline devised by Mark Whipple, about a girl whose memory is supposedly perfect—she forgets nothing, and can bring to her mind anything she’s ever seen and replay it like a recording, even slowing it down as needed. This quirk, even more than the fact that she’s British nobility or that she’s a magic user at a school for sorcery, drives the plot. What brings it into high relief is that she lives in a world much like our own a few years in the future, but suffering from a strange sort of amnesia: no one (Rachel included) remembers anything about the great monotheistic religions of the world. (The polytheistic ones are still going strong, however.) Perhaps it’s a parallel world where the monotheistic religions were never invented; that would almost make sense, except there are certain details that don’t fit...

The explanation for the mystery is still elusive, but readers do get some more hints in THE AWFUL TRUTH ABOUT FORGETTING. I had the privilege to read a draft of it awhile back. As I recall, besides dealing with danger and intrigue, Rachel has some more usual schoolgirl fun and anxieties in this book: but lacking Rachel’s perfect memory I’m going to read it again this winter. The cover picture is of a particularly gorgeous and magical scene.

There are also five black and white illustrations in the book, drawn by John C. Wright himself! They ought to be in the table of contents too. If you want to turn to them, I found them in chapters 2, 5, 12, 22, and 37, either the beginning or end of each of these chapters. They also appear in this terrific trailer by Ben Zwycky (music by Gilbert and Sullivan, can’t go wrong!).

Another good installment in Rachel’s story. I hope we don’t have so long to wait for book five!

Pulpy Titles as Starting Points

I've always wanted to write science fiction and fantasy, but only recently had my first success at conceiving of a real story with plot and characters and everything, finishing it, and getting it accepted in an anthology. The story is "Kings of the Corona" and you can (and should!) read it in the anthology TALES OF THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING, edited by Anthony Marchetta. A friend who doesn't use Kindle bought the print edition and showed it to me, and it's very handsome. I was struck by what an excellent gift it would make to some book-lover for Christmas or any other holiday of your choice.

Okay, enough promotion for today. I'm currently working on several writing projects. One is a short story with a working title "The Stowaways" (I hope to rename it eventually) whose first draft I've finished. I'm taking my mind off of that for awhile so I can come back to review and revise it later with a fresh mind: based on how my work went on "Kings of the Corona", it seems to me that a lot of the magic comes in the revising and polishing stage. Meanwhile, I'm also about ready to start manuscript work on a story for Superversive Press's Luna anthology, and I have a pretty long line of other ideas I'm anxious to get cracking on after that.

Then there's this concept from Brad Walker on the Superversive website, of writing serialized fiction on one's blog. I've actually been considering that for awhile, and I'd like to do that too: I hope it would spur me to increase the regularity of both my blogging and my writing.

Where do ideas for good, pulpy SFF stories come from? There's lots of advice out there. One idea is to start with a title and make up a story for it. I decided to experiment with that, and loaded a database with a vocabulary taken from titles of Doc Savage stories, with a few I added myself that I thought had a similar flavor, and set up a routine to combine these at random (though with a few rules) and randomly interspersed with numbers and "of" and "of the". Then I let it crank out some titles.

Most of them were just nonsense, but I kept track of some that seemed interesting:

• The Swords of Saturn
• The Undersea Manhunt
• The Six Magic Moons
• The Poison War
• The Deadly Shadow
• The Mysterious Dimension
• The Two Fantastic Quests
• The Sky Tournaments
• The Disaster Comet
• The Child of Europa
• The Fearsome Labyrinth
• The Future Eagle
• The Crystal Dragon
• The Goblin Star
• The Green Portal
• The Caverns of Io
• The Avenging Pirates
• The Meteors of the Sargasso
• The Midas Ogre
• The Cloud Wizards
• The Fiery Castle
• The Encrypted Arenas
• The Four Suns of Mercury
• The Ocean Ambassadors

There are a lot here that seem suggestive enough that I'd pick them off the stand and thumb through them. "The Four Suns of Mercury"--what's that about? Does some evildoer create a space warp and swipe the whole planet out of the solar system to a new sun, where our heroes give chase and force him to flee to yet another sun, and another? Or could there be miniature artificial suns created to orbit the planet--and for what purpose? Perhaps some extra suns are INSIDE the (surprisingly hollow) planet of Mercury?

Or "The Undersea Manhunt": your fugitive flees in a submarine, in the dark and still mostly-unsettled three-quarters of the globe in the near future. How does the hero catch up with him? What's "The Goblin Star"? Perhaps a tiny white dwarf that's been approaching Sol without our noticing for centuries, and due to pass by shortly--but will the brutish inhabitants of its orbiting planet be content to pass along with it? How the heck can "The Encrypted Arenas" be a thing? Perhaps they're virtual? What's the point of encrypting them? Is something going on in them that the participants need to remain secret?

My evaluation: this is not a bad way to stimulate story ideas. As I say, I already have a longish list of "to-be-worked-ons", but please feel free to take on anything here that strikes your fancy. Maybe leave a comment if you do so I know the title has been done, when I look back on this years later.

Review: Paragons: An Anthology of Superheroes

Russell Newquist of Silver Empire was so good as to send me a review copy of Paragons: An Anthology of Superheroes which I've been enjoying very much this past week. Thirteen tales of original superheroes make up the collection, exploring the theme of heroic adventures with fantastic powers.

There’s a wide variety of length and tone here. Steve Beaulieu’s “Medusa” is a good choice to introduce the anthology, being about a 1000-word short look at a superheroine’s isolation, followed by what I think must be the longest one in the collection, Kai Wai Cheah’s “Nightstick”, an intricate novella of a dark superhero fighting to protect his city in a near-future where many people, both good guys and bad, had suddenly acquired extraordinary powers.

Morgon Newquist, who also edited the book, wrote “Blackout”, which delves into the characters of two heroes: the optimistic and candid Jameson Hirsch, and his more brooding and tormented friend, Michael Turner, in an introduction that for me harkened back to G. K. Chesterton’s stories of Father Brown and his frenemy, Flambeau. The subtitle is “A Serenity City Story,” which makes me hope to see much more of their interactions with each other—and the still-mysterious Rhiannon Argall, for whose love they are rivals.

Jon Mollison’s knack for stories of high adventure with heroes motivated by deep family love comes through again in “Like Father”. Dawn Witzke’s “Deadly Calm Returns” takes a lighter look at a superhero’s family life and had the people in the donut shop where I read it wondering, I’m sure, why that fellow kept bursting into laughter. Declan Finn’s “Weather Witch” has his trademark well-told fantasy action. It's one of the few "origin stories" in this collection, and one of the few not set in a city.

If "Nightstick" had a darkness to it that reminded me of Batman, "Someone is Aiming for You" by J. D. Cowan made me think of The Shadow (though I blush to admit I still only know that series through the Alec Baldwin movie): a dark drama between good and evil metaphysical forces. The final story in the book, "Stalina" by Sam Kepfield, tells of a Khruschev-era idealistic Russian superwoman, devoted to Truth, Justice, and the Soviet Way...like many of the stories here that seem to cry out for sequels, "Stalina" made me want to read more about her.

A lot of these stories could be turned into series, and I hope at least some of them will be. I found Paragons to be a terrific read, and I'll be looking for more.

Thursday Review: WAR DEMONS, by Russell Newquist

WAR DEMONS follows veteran Michael Alexander who returned from the Afghanistan war with PTSD, but he also happens to have to deal with war demons of a more tangible variety. Michael enlisted after 9/11 to fight the people who launched that attack, not only from an overflow of patriotism and thirst for vengeance but also because of the gut-wrenching personal impact he suffered from the event. After he returns he finds that the real battle between good and evil is not only on the battlefields in the Mideast, and may never be described in the history books...

This book is filled with engaging characters and memorable, significant action scenes. The themes are serious and it treats them seriously, but there are moments where the somberness is broken not by levity but by hints of grace coming from above, like a sunbeam breaking through the clouds.

The plot builds to a page-turning rush of action that never lets up (well, eventually the book ends...but not till shortly before that). Some reviewers have remarked the first part of the book was slower; it is, but I didn't have any problem with it: Newquist does a great job setting out the background with intriguing storytelling even before you get to the zombies and vampires and...oh, just read it.

Since it's listed on Amazon with the subtitle (or whatever you call it) The Prodigal Son Book 1, I don't think I spoil anything by mentioning that the end leaves room for a sequel or two, or several, and I'm hoping those will be forthcoming. It's excellent reading.

This Week in Cultural Appropriation: Rarebit Fundido

A beery cheese sauce spiced up with salsa and completed (if desired) with leftover taco meat, cooked in the microwave in the bowl you're going to eat it from. Perfect for a night when the lady of the house is out doing something and you're fixing a fast, simple, tasty for yourself for while you watch old horror flicks on Svengoolie wearing an old T-shirt (because you'll dribble).

Ingredients:
Beer, one bottle: I suggest a strong, dark one like a porter or stout
Cheddar cheese, probably 6 ounces (150 grams)
Salsa: maybe half a cup. Check the expiration date on the jar.
Flour: about a quarter cup
Tortilla chips
Optional:
Garlic, one clove, crushed
Leftover taco meat, to taste


Procedure

Use a microwavable bowl, and--important!--it needs to be tall enough to hold the cheese and beer and still have about an inch of room left at the top. You don't want it to boil over in the microwave.

Grate the cheese into the bowl. Toss in the flour. Shake the bowl up and down and toss the cheese with the flour with your fingers. The goal is to coat the cheese with flour and hopefully not have much flour left. The fat from the cheese and the flour make a kind of roux, without needing butter.

Pour enough beer over the cheese to cover it and stir it around. This will not require all the beer in a bottle, so you will have to find another use for the rest of it. Sorry, forgot to mention that. Hope it doesn't make difficulty. If using garlic, crush it into the mix. Then put it into the microwave for one minute.

After one minute it will be a little melted but not smooth yet. Stir it with a spoon and then microwave it for another minute (take the spoon out).

After the second minute, stir again and it should be smooth. If it isn't, you can try mending it by sifting in a bit of flour, stirring to incorporate it, maybe a bit more, stirring again, and then microwave another minute. It's hard not to get lumps doing this. But usually it comes out pretty well for me.

After you have it smooth, pour in salsa to taste: I glop in a good half cup.

Then stir it up and microwave for another half minute or minute, and remove from the microwave.

If you want to add leftover taco meat, heat the meat in the microwave till hot through, and then pour a layer onto the top of the cheese sauce. Arrange chips around it on a plate if taking a picture for a blog, otherwise just grab the bag and head for the TV set.

Sunday, Fun Day

Reading: DRACULA, for the first time. Astounding Frontiers #2. I’m torn: I want to read John C Wright’s NOWHITHER straight through, and it’s serialized. So I’m skipping it until more of it comes out, though it hurts.

Writing projects underway:
“The Kings of the Corona”: 17000 word story: finished, accepted for the upcoming anthology TALES OF THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING, edited by Anthony Marchetta. Publication date not yet scheduled. Anthony showed us a draft of the cover art, by Dawn Witzke, and it looks great. Probably not long now. #Fantasy #Arthurian #YoungAdult
“The Stowaways” (working title) projected as 8000 word story, or maybe 6000 if I can whittle it down: work in progress. I have about 3000 words so far. #ScienceFiction #SpaceOpera




My weekends these days are mostly taken up with work connected with closing Mom’s estate, but I want weekends to be fun days. Here are a joke and a number curiosity.

A Joke

Remembered this old chestnut this afternoon. Modified it slightly:

A young man in the heart of the South wanted to instill his love of his region’s history in his young son, and walked through the park with him one day to the statue of Stonewall Jackson, flourishing his saber, mounted on his horse, frozen in a tableau of dramatic action.

“That, son, is Stonewall Jackson,” he said.

“Wow!” said the little boy.

The statue at once became the boy’s favorite spot in the park. His father noted with pride as the years passed that his son would still return there every Sunday to admire the memorial.

At last the boy graduated high school, and was about to set off for college far away. He and his father went for one last walk through the park to visit their favorite statue one more time, and they stood in silence paying their respects to it.

When they turned to go home again, the young man said, “Dad, I’ve always wondered something.”

“What is it, son?”

“Do you happen to know—who is that man with the funny beard sitting on Stonewall Jackson?”



Recreational Math

Here’s an arithmetical curiosity I noticed that has a pretty good “gee whiz” factor.

It begins with a pleasant little “find the number” puzzle: There is only one number (not counting 1, which is rather a ‘degenerate’ solution) that has this property: it is the product of the first and last digits of its square. Find the number.

To clarify the idea, if you’re not used to how I put these things (so few people are!), if you were to try the number 17 you would square it, 17 x 17 = 289, and then multiply the first and last digits, 2 times 9 = 18. We were hoping to get our 17 back: nope, close but no cigar. In case you want to try finding it, see Answer 1 is below, not to be confused with Answer 2 below.

For a second puzzle, kick the idea up a notch by taking two digits at a time: Find a number that is the product of the 2-digit number at the left and right ends of its own square.

Again, to clarify: if you were testing 2,656, you would square it: 2,656 x 2,656 = 7,054,336. Then you would take the two-digit numbers from the left and right of the square and multiply, hoping to get your 2,656 back: 70 x 36 = 2,520. Nope.

I would think you’d want to use mechanical help to work on this one. A spreadsheet is quite adequate, and it’s a nice little exercise in writing formulas.

The interesting thing is that the one number that answers this puzzle has a curious relationship with the number that worked in the first puzzle.

Okay, you've looked at the answers? Now here's what puzzles me, and I don't have an answer: Why in the world would the numbers that answer the one-digit and two-digit problems have this pattern, where the two-digit answer just repeats the digits of the one-digit answer twice? Perhaps it’s just a coincidence, or maybe there’s a mathematical reason I don’t see.

And no, repeating digits three times doesn’t work for the 3-digit version of the same puzzle.




ANSWER 1: The number is 28. 28 x 28 = 784 and 7 x 4 = 28.





ANSWER 2: The number is 2,288. 2,288 x 2,288 = 5,234,944, and 52 x 44 = 2,288.

Thursday Review: ADVENTURE CONSTANT by Jon Mollison

ADVENTURE CONSTANT: A Tale of the Planetary Romantic, by Jon Mollison

The explanation of the title of this exuberant adventure comes about three-fourths of the way into the book, and is so original and droll—well, and so outlandish—that when I came to it I laughed out loud. By that point, our hero, Jack Dashing, has been in, oh, a half-dozen fights, several chases, a couple rescues, and put a roomful of pompous asses in their place…always acquitting himself honorably and well.

The action begins early, the minute Dashing, a NASA astronaut, finds himself shifted into this parallel Earth as the result of an experimental FTL spacecraft not operating as expected. He is immediately caught up in international intrigue in a mission to rescue beautiful Princess Okanamokoa from the  nefarious agents of the Red Collective, and along with that to find the ambiguous Dr. Abduraxus, the only man who could understand how he came to be here and might get back home. The pace continues throughout the book, which I guesstimate at about 70,000 words, and the conflicts are varied and interesting. It might be easier and less spoilerific to list what it does not have. No vampires; no werewolves; no airplane dogfights. That’s all I can think of offhand.

The characters are colorful and memorable, if not particularly deep: good guys are honorable and sympathetic and you care what happens to them, bad guys are despicable and you're pleased when they get what's coming to them. But I didn't note any agonizing moral choices to be made that would reveal and develop them.

But this book is more about action and adventure and the panoramic setting of Mollison's parallel Earth: a globe divided into the Red Collective, the Shogunate of the Red Dawn, the Machine Empire of Europe, the Allied States, the Hashishim Moonies, and undoubtedly more not yet mentioned (hopefully there will be sequels). The world’s history resembles our own just enough to be vaguely familiar, but as if it had been conceived by a Martian counterpart of Edgar Rice Burroughs creating a setting for tales of exotic derring-do on the Blue Planet.

And that’s the whole idea, of course: Jon Mollison is one of the pulp revolution’s most enthusiastic participants, and hits his stride in this one. ADVENTURE CONSTANT only begins to sample the possibilities of this world, and while it wraps up the story by the book’s end, it still leaves enough characters with mysteries unrevealed that I’m eager for a sequel.