Hi all,
It has turned cold in Wangaratta, hopefully that keeps me inside writing. I won't have to water and weed the garden as much, YAAAAA. I was getting sick of mowing the lawns every week or so too.
My word count increased for the third week running last week. Most words I have written for a year, but considering my eyesight wasn't great over the past twelve months and I spent most of my writing time editing a novel, the largest word count in a year is no big achievement. The word count better improve again this week.
The short story/novella I am writing is soft science fiction/fantasy a bit of a change from the hard science fiction I have written previously, where nearly every speculative element of the story has to be a plausible reality in the future.
I read a few interesting articles for writers in The Age. Patrick Carman has written a young adult novel called Ghost in the Machine, which requires the reader to view a video on the web after reading each chapter. I am not sure how often this sort of interactivity has been done before, probably a bit with textbooks. Greg Egan could have made Incandescence easier to understand if he had included links to short videos of the physics concepts he was describing, complete with alien terminology. I think this kind of interactivity will really increase with ebooks, especially those on an ipad - once they fix up its display.
According to Jason Steger's Bookmarks column, the ipad bookstore has 60,000 paid titles and 30,000 free ones. "Nine of the 15 New York Times bestsellers were on offer at $US9.99, one at $US10.99, two at $11.99 and three at $12.99." Apple look like they are going to charge the same price as Amazon for ebooks.
I mentioned a few posts ago of Robert Silverberg's 20,000 words a day and Georges Simenon's 80 *pages* a day. Jane Sullivan in her Turning Pages column mentioned that Prentiss Ingraham "occasionally wrote 35,000 words overnight". He wrote 600 books.
Stephenie Meyer's vampire novels seem to have finally disappeared from the Australian top ten bestsellers lists. They will probably return with the release of the next movie in the series.
I watched the repeat of the recent Tuesday Night Book Club last night on ABC2 and I now want to read both Solar by Ian McEwen and the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Solar is a satire about global warming and, as it would seem humanity is not going to do anything about it, I might as well have a laugh.
Graham.
A blog about writing, science fiction, the future of publishing, books, and me.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Review of Greg Egan's Incandescence
Incandescence is a science-fiction novel set millions of years in the future. Humans have evolved into immortal data streams that can travel through the galaxy on cosmic rays and reconfigure themselves in any shape they desire. They are know as the Almalgam.
At the core of the galaxy live the mysterious Aloof, who have rejected any attempts by the Amalgan to expand into their territory. The Aloof allow the Almalgam to travel through their territory, but not to stop.
Rakesh is a bored member of the Amalgan who has spent decades looking for something exciting and challenging to do that has not already been done. He is approached by a traveller who was woken during a journey through Aloof territory and told about a meteor that contained traces of DNA. The Aloof want a child of DNA, an Amalgan, to examine it. Rakesh accepts the challenge and sets off with a friend to travel for thousands of years into Aloof territory.
Roi and Zak are bug like creatures living inside a translucent rock world called the Splinter that orbits in a sea of light called the Incandescence. Roi and Zak's scientific curiosity make them outcasts in a subsistence, duty bound society, as they try to work out the true nature of the Splinter. When the Splinter is shunted out of orbit and begins to experience intervals of darkness, Roi and Zak start recruiting others to find out what happened.
Incandescence is hard science-fiction, in both concept and content. Roi and Zak discover many scientific qualities of the Splinter, which are described to the reader in words when diagrams might have been more appropriate. Egan does include a couple of diagrams but I think he could have attached an appendix with more. At the least, a glossary would have been welcomed, as his scientists made up names for a lot of their discoveries.
This reviewer has only year 12 physics and found it hard to understand Incandescence in places. Without a desire to find out how the two separate stories would interlink, the novel might not have been read to the end. This would have been a shame because Egan does some interesting exploring of why society's stagnant.
The Splinter society is one of unquestioning duty, where everything has been done the same way for eons and people haven't the energy to question the world they live in. They are emotionally inert, which is why I found some of the scenes where concerns where shown for their offspring to have a tacked on quality. It felt like Egan needed a reason for the Splinter's stagnating, uncreative society to want to survive the looming catastrophe.
The ending is both satisfying, in theme, and unsatisfying, in plot. Incandescence is not as good as the high concept Quarantine or as well written as the character driven Teranesia. A reader who has a physics degree or perhaps the patience to continually re-read sections, might rate the novel higher.
At the core of the galaxy live the mysterious Aloof, who have rejected any attempts by the Amalgan to expand into their territory. The Aloof allow the Almalgam to travel through their territory, but not to stop.
Rakesh is a bored member of the Amalgan who has spent decades looking for something exciting and challenging to do that has not already been done. He is approached by a traveller who was woken during a journey through Aloof territory and told about a meteor that contained traces of DNA. The Aloof want a child of DNA, an Amalgan, to examine it. Rakesh accepts the challenge and sets off with a friend to travel for thousands of years into Aloof territory.
Roi and Zak are bug like creatures living inside a translucent rock world called the Splinter that orbits in a sea of light called the Incandescence. Roi and Zak's scientific curiosity make them outcasts in a subsistence, duty bound society, as they try to work out the true nature of the Splinter. When the Splinter is shunted out of orbit and begins to experience intervals of darkness, Roi and Zak start recruiting others to find out what happened.
Incandescence is hard science-fiction, in both concept and content. Roi and Zak discover many scientific qualities of the Splinter, which are described to the reader in words when diagrams might have been more appropriate. Egan does include a couple of diagrams but I think he could have attached an appendix with more. At the least, a glossary would have been welcomed, as his scientists made up names for a lot of their discoveries.
This reviewer has only year 12 physics and found it hard to understand Incandescence in places. Without a desire to find out how the two separate stories would interlink, the novel might not have been read to the end. This would have been a shame because Egan does some interesting exploring of why society's stagnant.
The Splinter society is one of unquestioning duty, where everything has been done the same way for eons and people haven't the energy to question the world they live in. They are emotionally inert, which is why I found some of the scenes where concerns where shown for their offspring to have a tacked on quality. It felt like Egan needed a reason for the Splinter's stagnating, uncreative society to want to survive the looming catastrophe.
The ending is both satisfying, in theme, and unsatisfying, in plot. Incandescence is not as good as the high concept Quarantine or as well written as the character driven Teranesia. A reader who has a physics degree or perhaps the patience to continually re-read sections, might rate the novel higher.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
My writing week 3 (13)
Hi all,
I felt like a writer last week. I wrote more, concentrating on a short story that is turning into a novella, and I wrote my first critique of the year, which was also the first for a writing group I joined last year. I even wrote a few well thought out comments on other writer's blogs.
I finished reading Greg Egan's Incandescence, which I found a very difficult read, but it had some interesting thoughts on society. I will post a review of it later this week.
I have also been reading the huge Pen Macquarie Anthology of Australian Literature and I discovered, not to my surprise, that most of Australia's early poets finished their lives as destitute drunks. I don't think there was much of a market for poetry among convicts and those escaping the poverty of England, and many of the poems were deriding authority figures, thus destroying the one potential paying market.
Studio, the revamped Ovation on Foxtel has a few shows on writers tonight (Monday). Writers on Writers is back on and there is a doco on William Gibson. I will either watch or record them.
And now it is time for my weekly look at the Kindle ebook top 100 bestseller list. The mixture of cheap books remains similar to the past three weeks with 21 selling for $2, 11 for $2.25 to $3.50 and one for free.
The ipad was released in America a couple of days ago and it has received very mixed reviews, with complaints about the quality of its display (how could they get that wrong?) and a lack of ebooks to purchase, so I won't be rushing out to buy it when it finally gets to Australia. I will stick to the free Kindle for PC, which I actually used last week.
Graham.
I felt like a writer last week. I wrote more, concentrating on a short story that is turning into a novella, and I wrote my first critique of the year, which was also the first for a writing group I joined last year. I even wrote a few well thought out comments on other writer's blogs.
I finished reading Greg Egan's Incandescence, which I found a very difficult read, but it had some interesting thoughts on society. I will post a review of it later this week.
I have also been reading the huge Pen Macquarie Anthology of Australian Literature and I discovered, not to my surprise, that most of Australia's early poets finished their lives as destitute drunks. I don't think there was much of a market for poetry among convicts and those escaping the poverty of England, and many of the poems were deriding authority figures, thus destroying the one potential paying market.
Studio, the revamped Ovation on Foxtel has a few shows on writers tonight (Monday). Writers on Writers is back on and there is a doco on William Gibson. I will either watch or record them.
And now it is time for my weekly look at the Kindle ebook top 100 bestseller list. The mixture of cheap books remains similar to the past three weeks with 21 selling for $2, 11 for $2.25 to $3.50 and one for free.
The ipad was released in America a couple of days ago and it has received very mixed reviews, with complaints about the quality of its display (how could they get that wrong?) and a lack of ebooks to purchase, so I won't be rushing out to buy it when it finally gets to Australia. I will stick to the free Kindle for PC, which I actually used last week.
Graham.
Monday, March 29, 2010
My writing week 3 (12)
Hi all,
Life continues to get in the way of writing. I have been trying to sell my father's Hyundai Excel Sprint (1995) and the process is a lot more complicated than expected, with road worthy certificates lasting for only 30 days and various problems with selling an unregistered car (if I choose to go that way). My brother has expressed interest in buying it for his sister in law, but his buying price is a bit below the market rate.
I had a new set of lenses, for computer use, placed in spectacles that were for distance use. My old computer glasses were scratched, something I didn't notice until after my cataract surgery. While at the optometrist, on Tuesday, he pulled out an eyelash that he thought irritated my left eye. For reading he said there was nothing wrong with using the glasses I had. Before I had cataract surgery I was looking at getting stronger glasses for reading, but now I have gone back to one of the weaker pairs. My distance vision is a lot better, everything is a lot clearer and more colorful, so I no longer need distance glasses. Since seeing the optometrist my eyes aren't as tired and I am not rubbing them as much, so I no longer have my eyes as an excuse for lack of writing.
On Facebook, Ian Nichols wrote: Bob Silverberg managed 20,000 words a day when he was writing lots of pulp novels, but even this achievement is dwarfed by Georges Simenon, who wrote 80 *pages* a day while drifting down the canals of France with his wife and mistress on a canal barge. That makes slackers like me feel very very challenged. At my current rate it would take me about half a year to write 20,000 words. Perhaps I should try the 10,000 words in a day challenge, but just how do I get life to stop intervening during that day?
My father was back to wandering around the nursing home when we last visited him. He still seemed to recognise us though and did tried to communicate. He is on a small dose of morphine for general pain, but the morphine makes him constipated and, from experience with him when he was home, constipation is one of the reasons he doesn't sleep and constantly wanders. The nurses estimate he has slept for a total of five hours over the past four days. So I expect a phone, at any moment, telling me he has fallen again.
And my weekly look at Kindle's top 100 bestselling ebooks reveals a trend for less $2 books (21) but more $2.25 to $3.50 books (16) with one for free. I still haven't got very far into the ebook I downloaded on to Kindle installed on my computer because I find that when I use the computer I tend to be on the web and sometimes writing. Perhaps if Amazon or Apple gave me one of their readers for free I would read more ebooks.
Graham.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
My writing week 3 (11)
Hi all,
Again, I didn't do much writing last week, but I feel this is about to change. A good sign is that my thoughts frequently drift to the story I am writing, Miracles Rarely Visit Optimists.
As it is now six weeks since my second cataract surgery, I am getting my eyes retested tomorrow and probably new, weaker reading spectacles a few days later, which will hopefully mean less tired eyes and headaches and more writing. Much more writing.
I had a bugger of a start to the day with morons changing the lane ropes while I swam, so I thought it was going to be one of those days, but then I visited my father in the nursing home and he actually sat and tried to converse, instead of just walking away. When I shook his hand to leave he said "goodbye Graham", so he knew who I was, unlike the previous couple of visits after which I concluded he no longer knew who any of his immediate family and relatives were.
My weekly look at the Kindle ebook bestseller list saw 22 selling for $2, ten for $2.25 to $3.50 and one for free. About the same as last week, so there appears to be a trend downwards of $2 ebooks, which has been more than made up by books priced from $2.25 and $3.50. Interestingly, there were eight versions of the Picture of Dorian Grey all in a row from 76-83 and similarly six versions of Dracula in a row from 88-93.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
My writing week 3 (10)
Hi all,
I enjoyed watching a repeat of the Tuesday Night Book Club on Sunday where they discussed adaptations of novels into movies. They talked about popular titles, most of which I had read and/or seen. Jaws and Lord of the Flies were too novels that they thought were well adapted to the screen. The screenwriter on the panel said he thought 2001 was a good adaption too. I wonder if he realised that 2001 was adapted from a short story, The Sentinel, with the novel being written after the movie's release.
Movies which they thought failed to translate the novel to the screen included One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Golden Compass. I really have to agree on the Golden Compass, with most of the Northern Lights novel's questioning of religion removed. They didn't like Bliss either, which I loved, but I am yet to read the novel.
I was delighted to hear that John Marsden's Tomorrow series, all action YA novels, has been made into a movie. The show increased my disappointment with my local cinema for not screening The Road. It seems the only way the local cinema would have screened it is if Adam Sandler had played "the man" and it had been turned it a teenage comedy about farting.
I've been busy cleaning up the back yard after hiring a huge (and I thought unfillable) skip last Friday, but it's nearly full and I still have about a fifth of the backyard to weed. Only one blister so far. Still have some junk to take out of the garage and back shed to put in it too, which should do a good job of weighing down all the garden waste.
I visited my father at the nursing home on Monday and I am now sure that he doesn't remember me anymore. My mother is convinced he doesn't know either of us. In some ways that is a good thing because he doesn't miss home. He actually appears to like it there. All he does is eat, shuffle around the place, and sometimes sleep.
Either my mother or I get a call on average once a week telling us he has fallen over. He has only scratched and bruised himself so far, but it is only a matter of time before he does some real damage. If it wasn't for that inevitability he would probably last a few years in a sort of semi-dream state, where he forgets that he pooped his pants ten minutes after it is cleaned up.
He can't read, doesn't listen to the radio, doesn't watch television. He takes in no information about the outside world what-so-ever. We try to talk to him, he gets up and wanders away. Just shoot me if my brain ever deteriorates to that stage.
I have found very little time to write. When I get some new glasses in two weeks everything should become clearer and my writing efforts will increase. The short story I am writing, like many stories I start, has begun to morph into something bigger, I hope I can keep it under 10,000 words. Stalking Tigers was originally meant to be a longish short story and is currently 130,000 words, a previous short story I wrote for my master is now up to 12,000 words with an estimated 150,000 to go.
My weekly survey of the top 100 kindle ebooks showed some new developments. The first el-cheapo $2 book did not appear to tenth spot on the list. All up, there were 20 $2 books, a substantial drop form the 26 on average of previous weeks, but this drop was more than made up for by a big increase in books in the $2.25 to $3.50 bracket, there were 11 of them and two freebies. I did not see any articles in The Age about ebooks last week - is the massive propaganda assault dwindling?
Graham.
I enjoyed watching a repeat of the Tuesday Night Book Club on Sunday where they discussed adaptations of novels into movies. They talked about popular titles, most of which I had read and/or seen. Jaws and Lord of the Flies were too novels that they thought were well adapted to the screen. The screenwriter on the panel said he thought 2001 was a good adaption too. I wonder if he realised that 2001 was adapted from a short story, The Sentinel, with the novel being written after the movie's release.
Movies which they thought failed to translate the novel to the screen included One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Golden Compass. I really have to agree on the Golden Compass, with most of the Northern Lights novel's questioning of religion removed. They didn't like Bliss either, which I loved, but I am yet to read the novel.
I was delighted to hear that John Marsden's Tomorrow series, all action YA novels, has been made into a movie. The show increased my disappointment with my local cinema for not screening The Road. It seems the only way the local cinema would have screened it is if Adam Sandler had played "the man" and it had been turned it a teenage comedy about farting.
I've been busy cleaning up the back yard after hiring a huge (and I thought unfillable) skip last Friday, but it's nearly full and I still have about a fifth of the backyard to weed. Only one blister so far. Still have some junk to take out of the garage and back shed to put in it too, which should do a good job of weighing down all the garden waste.
I visited my father at the nursing home on Monday and I am now sure that he doesn't remember me anymore. My mother is convinced he doesn't know either of us. In some ways that is a good thing because he doesn't miss home. He actually appears to like it there. All he does is eat, shuffle around the place, and sometimes sleep.
Either my mother or I get a call on average once a week telling us he has fallen over. He has only scratched and bruised himself so far, but it is only a matter of time before he does some real damage. If it wasn't for that inevitability he would probably last a few years in a sort of semi-dream state, where he forgets that he pooped his pants ten minutes after it is cleaned up.
He can't read, doesn't listen to the radio, doesn't watch television. He takes in no information about the outside world what-so-ever. We try to talk to him, he gets up and wanders away. Just shoot me if my brain ever deteriorates to that stage.
I have found very little time to write. When I get some new glasses in two weeks everything should become clearer and my writing efforts will increase. The short story I am writing, like many stories I start, has begun to morph into something bigger, I hope I can keep it under 10,000 words. Stalking Tigers was originally meant to be a longish short story and is currently 130,000 words, a previous short story I wrote for my master is now up to 12,000 words with an estimated 150,000 to go.
My weekly survey of the top 100 kindle ebooks showed some new developments. The first el-cheapo $2 book did not appear to tenth spot on the list. All up, there were 20 $2 books, a substantial drop form the 26 on average of previous weeks, but this drop was more than made up for by a big increase in books in the $2.25 to $3.50 bracket, there were 11 of them and two freebies. I did not see any articles in The Age about ebooks last week - is the massive propaganda assault dwindling?
Graham.
Monday, March 8, 2010
My writing week 3 (9)
Hi all,
Kate Eltham, organiser of the Brisbane Writer's Festival, was on ABC radio last Sunday talking about ebooks. She said that some libraries already loan ebooks, which got me thinking on the effect this might have on both libraries and sales of ebooks and traditional books. If most books come out in an ebook version there will be little need for physical libraries as ebooks could be loaned from web libraries, so I don't see much of a future for costly rural and suburban libraries. Universities and schools may still have them as places of study, but they might not have many physical books in them. State libraries would still exist to hold book collections.
If there are no limits on the amount of times an ebook can be loaned at once, there will be no wait for a popular book and therefore less need to buy an unavailable book. How many parents would tell their child that they could borrow the latest Stephanie Meyer from the web library for free, rather then them having to pay for it? Currently, with a printed book, the child is able to show their peer group that they have the latest Harry Potter, but an ebook is just words on a kindle or ipad, words that could just be owned or borrowed. Kate Eltham said that the files of library borrowed ebooks can only be accessed for three weeks.
The above musings change a little if the ebooks are licenced so only one borrower can access that ebook at once. I reckon ebook library websites could have a big impact on both ebooks and physical book sales.
In other news on the ebook front, science fiction author John Scalzi wrote a blog post on how a free ebook promotion of his books affected the sales of the physical version. The ebooks were only available for a week from Tor and he thought the sales of the physical version increased by 2% over the seven weeks after the promotion.
An article in The Age said sales of ebooks jumped 176% in the US last year and were worth nearly $170 million. Their share of the market went from 1.2 to 3.3 percent. Sales of paper books dropped slightly, but as the US went into recession the drop can be blamed on other things besides ebooks.
As usual I checked the top 100 ebooks on Amazon. This time found the number being sold for $2 steady at 26 when compared to previous weeks, with one free and six selling for $2 - $3.50.
Four Corners had a story on Scientology last night. Bad, greedy, illywhackers picking on the niave and lost. Had me wanting to chuck out L Ron Hubbard's novel Battlefield Earth. I think I will begin by unsubscribing to The Writer's of the Future.
Last week began with enthusiasm as a compelling short story idea took over my thoughts. I started to write it, but then other things started to get in the way, like a visit from relatives, lightning storms suddenly appearing just after I turned the computer on and a recalcitrant printer. I hope to finish the story this week - it could be a long one - and do some more editing of Stalking Tigers. It was great to be have my thoughts constantly returning to, and developing, a story idea.
When I finally get into writing again and have something more substantial to say about my own endeavours, I might start a weekly column on ebooks.
Graham.
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