my writing week (4) 24

Hi all,

Yesterday, a deluge of health issues and other problems felt like it was going to sweep me down a river of despair, into a sea void of hope, filled with sharks that ripped apart... You get the idea. But today, a few dykes have been built to hold back the storm waters.

More about that next week, as this post is about last week. Particularly it is supposed to be about my writing efforts last week. Well, surprise surprise, I actually did some writing on four days last week, which is pretty good when compared to previous weeks.

Of the days I didn't write, one day was spent on a train and bus, escorting my mother down to visit my sister at St Vincents in Melbourne. My sister was getting anti-biotics dripped into her as she waited for an infection to clear so they could operate. They wanted to put a bit of skin grafted from her stomach up her nose to patch a leak. Brain fluid, for lack of a better term, was leaking out her nose. She had the operation on Sunday and it seems to have worked. Yaaa for my sister.

The trip to Melbourne did not help my cold. I was hoping to give it back to the citizens of Melbourne, but they didn't take it. They didn't seem as grumpy as when I first started what is set to become regular visits about a month ago. Perhaps that was because my grumpiness now exceeded theirs.

My sister had volunteered to accompany me to the oral surgeon in a little under two weeks. There is no way she will be able to do that, so I had to find a new volunteer.

My computer started acting up last week. The internet connection kept dropping out. I wondered if it was my wonderful never-cause-a-problem computer or perhaps the modem. Then my thoughts turned to my ISP provider. But what if the aging cable from the phone to the computer was the problem? Or the filter? Or, worse still the telephone line. Perhaps the nick in the cable I caused with the shovel while digging out drain pipes was finally causing problems. All I knew was that it would probably take a slow process of elimination to fix, something I really didn't feel like doing while I was as sick as a half dead dog.

The only good thing about having a cold, is that I have been reading a lot more than usual. I finished reading volume 4 of the Year's Best Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy, which I reviewed in my last post. I have read volumes one to four. Of the lot, volume 2 would be my favourite, followed by volume 1 and then volume 4.

I have been watching Outcast - a British science fiction mini-series, set on a newly colonised planet where everyone speaks with British ascents. So far, it is a lot better than similar attempts, as it is aimed at adults and has lots of dark secrets.

Speaking of adult science fiction, I am looking forward to the new series of Torchwood. It is to be screened on the cable channel BBC TV from July 9. Its premise is that suddenly no one dies anymore on planet earth. The last series of Torchwood was easily the best television science fiction produced that year.

Anyway, it's back to reinforcing the dykes.

Graham Clements.

Review Year's Best Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy Vol 4

Year's Best Australian Science Fiction And Fantasy 4 by Bill Congreve

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I had read all three of the previous volumes of The Year's Best Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy. Like the previous volumes, volume 4 is an uneven collection with some good stories and some just so so. Unlike the previous volumes this volume did not have one particular story that stood out and shouted, aren't I great.

The best story for me was Richard Harland's horror tale Special Perceptions. It is about a delusional man's decent into madness. It really gave me the creeps and had me checking my own delusions.

As in volume two, Greg Egan had a story, Glory, set in the universe he created in the novel Incandescence. Glory asked the question, will knowledge eventually destroy the universe?

I also enjoyed Rjurik Davidson's science fiction story Domine, more for its style than its substance. The story made me work as I tried to figure out the relationships of the main characters to each other.

Rick Kennett's The Dark and What it Said also succeeded as a scary horror story that kept me guessing.

Most of the fantasy stories left me thinking, so what? Fantasy, especially epic fantasy, struggles in the shorter form. I enjoy fantasy novels, but fantasy short stories tend to be instantly forgotten. They fail to engage me with their simple themes of good versus evil and loyalty.

The best fantasy story in the collection was An Account of An Experiment by Adam Browne, which did explore a few themes like learned traits, and had some originality about it.

So overall, I liked many of the stories, but many of them lacked that something special, like a new idea or a major insight into humanity, that makes a story memorable.

Graham Clements.

View all my reviews

My writing week 4 (23)

Hi all,

I still have a cold. The pharmacist's prediction that the latest batch of antibiotics would fix it in 48 hours has proven wrong. I was talking to an ex-neighbour the other day and he told me his wife had had this seasons "cold" for four weeks. Is it just me, or are colds hanging around a lot longer these days? I do have an autoimmune disease, so perhaps it is just me, and my ex-neighbour's wife. It's been two and a half weeks of lethargy so far. It's becoming depressing.

My sister may be in hospital for three weeks, as she waits for the infection to clear up before they operate on her. She has bacterial meningitis. I am hoping to escort my mother down to Melbourne to see my sister sometime this week. My mum does not feel secure in going by herself.

More on Ebooks

I have fallen behind in my newspaper reading (like everything else) so some of this might be old news. But I read that Charlaine Harris has joined Stephenie Meyer, Stig Larson and James Patterson as million ebook sellers. I was curious to see how much they charged and had a look on Amazon. Most of their ebooks were around the $8 mark. With their newer ebooks being around $10.

Another article in The AGE said that The Book Depository in the UK had a special deal with the Royal Mail, which exempted them from paying postage when they sent books to customers overseas. So it is no wonder they offer free postage. When you consider Amazon does not pay state sales taxes in the US and both don't pay Australia's GST and then they don't have the cost of running physical stores, they really have massive cost savings when compared to Australian bookstores.

The same article said ebook sales were currently only 3% of the Aussie market and expected to rise to 30% within a decade. I wonder where they plucked those figures from.

If more companies like Medibank start offering free Kobo ereaders, than maybe the ebook portion of the book market will be far greater than that in a decade. In the US ebooks are predicted to be 50% of the market in five years by a few people including the head of Sony.

I finished reading Cory Doctorow's polemic YA science fiction novel Little Brother and reviewed it in my last post.

Graham.

Review of Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Cory Doctorow was a very enthusiastic panelist at Aussiecon4 last year. He tended to appear on panels about the future of writing and publishing, a subject that interested me, so I found myself attending many of the panel discussions he appeared on. As a small tribute to his energy during Aussiecon, I purchased a signed copy of the novel.

The story is set in a near present San Francisco. The novel centers around a 17 year-old geek called Marcus. Marcus enjoys role playing games and computers, but unlike your typical stereotyped geek, he has a social conscience and is prepared to stand up for himself.

The story begins with Marcus and his friends playing a game where clues are left around the city. The group find themselves near the bay bridge when terrorists blow it up. In the aftermath Marcus and his friends are all arrested by the Department of Homeland Security.

Marcus is eventually released into a changed world, where the DHS has imposed a massive security and surveillance crackdown. As a way of getting back at the DHS, Marcus uses his considerable computer skill to battle this crackdown.

The novel is written in first person. It has large "information dumps" about how to set up particular computer systems to combat prying eyes. These sections are almost written in second person as he tells "you" how to do it for yourself.

Cory Doctorow worked for four years for the Electronic Frontiers Foundation so the subject of web censorship is near to his heart. The novel is very much an argument against censorship and surveillance.

I did find the main character just a bit too good, a bit too courageous. But in the end I enjoyed the novel. Little Brother is a young adult novel, but adults will also enjoy reading it.

Cory Doctorow is into free agency on the web, so Little Brother is available for free download. As I found it easier to read on my Kindle, I also downloaded a free version of his novel from his website.

View all my reviews

my writing week (4) 22 The sickee edition

Hi all,

I still have a cold. Doctor has prescribed different antibiotics with a repeat. He gave me a medical certificate until next thursday. But the pharmacist reckons the antibiotics will do the job in 48 hours. I hope so, as I may need to go to Melbourne again on the weekend. My sister has bacterial meningitis and may need to undergo surgery in the next few days. She admitted herself to Albury hospital on Wednesday and was flown to St Vincents in Melbourne last night. She has had the condition before, about a decade ago - brain fluid leaks from the nose - and they fixed her up.

Her health concerns make my my cold and dental issues pretty petty. I will have to get used to going to Melbourne as I have two root canals and two crowns to be done at the dental hospital as well as a couple of other procedures. If I had to pay for it all it would cost about $9000. Of course I could wait the three years for the local dental clinic to do the job, but then I think I would just be getting two teeth removed.

For those who have had root canals, it is best to get a crown plonked on top as root canal doesn't seem to last otherwise. I will need to travel to Melbourne 13 to 17 times over the next few months to get everything done. Well at least I can read on the train.

And finally in this sickee edition, I have a new article up on Divine, this one is about cataract surgery. The surgery is nothing to fear and can drastically improve your eyesight.

I have a suspicion my next article for Divine might be about the dental system. I am getting a lot of first hand experience.

Now its time to go back to bed.

Graham.

My writing week (4) 21

Hi all,

I was supposed to be down in Melbourne for a dental appointment today, but my cold has worsened and I cancelled the appointment. So instead I get to write about my lack of progress in writing last week.

No fiction writing last week, but I did finally finish and submit an article to Divine online magazine. The article basically says cataract surgery is no big deal and the benefits to your eyesight can be astounding. I speak from personal experience and that of a number of relatives. It seems that with my genes I was doomed to have cataracts.

Carol Ryles pointed out a series of blog posts on the future of publishing written by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Kristine does a good job of showing that book publishing is not the same as the music industry, so any comparison between the publishing industry and how the music industry has supposedly survived the digital revolution is out of place.

I am a miserable grump when I have a cold. That demeanour would have helped me fit in with the people of Melbourne if I had travelled there today. I hope to have the cold and grumpiness under control by Thursday when I make a trip to Albury to see another oral surgeon.

Graham.

My writing week (4) 20

Hi all,

Amazon set to become world's biggest publisher.

I thought that headline might get a few people reading. Readers of this blog would know that I have said that Amazon, Google and Apple will probably be the biggest publishers of books in the near future. Amazon already sells thousands of self-published titles, and recently launched four publishing businesses.

Amazon Encore will buy underperforming, but well reviewed, books that have already been published and republish them. It will specialise in first time writers.

Montlake Romance will publish digital, physical and audio romance books. In an interview, Jeff Belle, vice president of Amazon Publishing said they will eventually publish books in other genres, including science fiction.

Amazon Crossing will publish English translations of foreign books.

Domino will publish non-fiction books.

So watch out. Amazon might achieve what Rupert Murdoch has tried to achieve, total domination of the publishing industry.

Dentists are cold people

I write this belated post between dental appointments and sneezes. Last Friday, the 13th, I visited an oral surgeon in Melbourne about having some wisdom teeth removed. I then returned to visit the dental hospital in Melbourne, on Monday, to see if they would remove the teeth for free. The dental hospital appointment was only a preliminary meeting, I need to go down next Monday for a more thorough examination.

Meanwhile, my local dentist has done a couple of fillings and the preparatory work for a crown. The work for the crown turned out to be a bit of an ordeal, it took 1 and 3/4 hours. For about an hour of that the dentist had drills and other instruments in my mouth.

Here's a riddle for you, if you are seeing three different dentists/dental organisations, how many will attempt to change the time of your appointment? The answer is: all of them.

It would seem that somewhere along the way, I have caught a cold, which suddenly came on very strongly yesterday. Hope it has weakened by Monday.

So I have done very little writing. I almost got my article on cataract surgery finished last week and that's about it.

Why waiting for appointments and travelling on trains and busses, I did manage to get some reading done. I finished reading Margaret Atwood's brilliant The Year of the Flood, which is a prequel to her Booker short-listed Oryx and Crake. I reviewed it in a post yesterday.

Graham.